More than 168 recs from small businesses all over — weird, delightful, and truly lovely stuff you won’t find anywhere else. Dozens of class recommendations, gorgeous jewelry, the best birdhouse I’ve ever seen, foodstuffs you actually want to use, all the good cards, the best calendars, THE gift for the forever horse girl, AND A WHOLE OVERFLOWING SECTION just for Canadians. Again, just click here.

For the 80% of you who’ve already moved over to Patreon: think of this email like a lovely little reminder of what might have gotten lost in your inbox. If you don’t want to receive these emails any more: here’s how you turn off email notifications.

If You Still Haven’t Figured Out Your Patreon Subscription, Here’s How You Move Over:

*If you’re a paid annual subscriber, search your email from Friday for “redeem your free month,” then click that link to come over (if you’re a paid subscriber, it will also port over all of your remaining Substack subscription). If you can’t find the link, submit a support request here and they’ll get it sorted within the next day or so (if they don’t, email me at annehelenpetersen @ gmail and I’ll escalate)

*If you’ve been meaning to become a paid subscriber — or a combo tier subscriber — you’ve got the easiest path ever.

*If you’re a comp subscriber and want your comp to transfer over to Patreon: email me at annehelenpetersen @ gmail

*If you’re a free subscriber and just want to join as a free subscriber without any comp business: click here and then select ‘Join for Free’ (see below)

If you’re having any issues with the process, just email me at annehelenpetersen at gmail dot com and we’ll figure it out!

And again, the people-pleaser in me feels like absolute garbage for asking people to do anything, anything at all, to access my writing and this community. So thank you, thank you, for doing this work along with me. I’ll see you in the comments.

If you haven’t already made the move, please search your email for “Claim your free months” for a link to help you switch over your subscription. Nearly 40% of you have already moved, and I’m so grateful for you.

I would not do all this work, or ask you to do it alongside with me, if I didn’t think this was the way to make this community sustainable in the long term. So thank you again for trying to keep this one of the good places on the internet.

If you’re having issues with your subscription, submit a support request here. (Patreon actually has support people on staff — this is not a bot — so you will get help ASAP). If you had a comp subscription here — send me an email (annehelenpetersen at gmail) & we can manually set it up again.

Finally, if you’re a subscriber who’s already made the move and wants to stop getting these emails/notifications on Substack — here’s how to disable them.

HERE’S A PREVIEW OF THE MASSIVE LINKS & RECS ROUND-UP — GO ACTIVATE YOUR PATREON MEMBERSHIP, THEN CLICK HERE TO READ THE REST….

On Friday, I wrote a little bit about where I live and why I love it — and then an atmospheric river arrived (alongside 40 MPH winds) and turned Halloween into a battle against the elements. But you know what? The kids did not care. They raced around the Trunk or Treat and then came and found the adults in our little island sandwich shop that does a Happy Hour every Friday. And when there’s only a few dozens kids Trick-or-Treating, you can get creative: one couple gave out full sets of markers; another couple gave out mini-LEGO kids (that then kept all the kids busy); I was surprised that all the kids picked the Halloween glasses in my bucket over the abundance of Sour Patch Kids.

As I watched the wind and rain get more intense in the hours leading up to Trick-or-Treating time, I was filled with a sense of dread: everything is gonna be ruined. But I have to remember that it takes a lot to ruin a kid’s joy in wearing the weird outfit of their dreams and acquiring candy. The dread I was feeling was actually just a culmination of the stress of this week — even when you know that you’ve made the right decision (in this case, moving to Patreon), following through on that decision is rarely straightforward. Halloween turned out okay. And so, too, will all of this.

So thank you to every one of you who has put in the time to make this move possible — I’m so glad we’re here, and we’ll continue to figure things out together.

●

And amidst this change, we also raised more than $60,000 for food banks across the country with SNAP benefits still in limbo. It’s a band-aid, but it’s something, and I’m proud of this community for stepping up.

[I’m cashing out on Venmo now — it takes a few days to process — and will post a donation receipt as soon as it happens]

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If you’d like to access this month’s mega round-up of favorite links & personal recs, including the best soup I’ve made this week (in anticipation of the Fifth Annual Culture Study Soup Extravaganza, which is coming your way THIS TUESDAY), my new second-screen trainwreck, my favorite gothic read, and Charlie’s new favorite body wash.....become a paid subscriber today and get all the good stuff that comes with it…….

ACTIVATE YOUR PATREON MEMBERSHIP [see the top of this post for how to do so]….then

GO GET YOUR LINKS AND RECS OVER AT PATREON

Also: this week’s episode of the Culture Study Pod — with Jen Hatmaker, on who gets a mid-life reinvention — is really compelling. Click here to listen and subscribe below:

The Culture Study Podcast

A podcast about the culture that surrounds you — with Anne Helen Petersen and a bunch of very smart co-hosts

By Anne Helen Petersen

I’m just home from cycling and hiking through Catalonia and the Spanish Pyrenees — I wrote a bit about we started going on these trips, the intergenerational friendships we forged on our first one, and how we found ourselves on our fourth iteration here (where you can also find all my favorite pictures from the trip). I found myself deeply delighted and repeatedly surprised by the region, in part because my previous knowledge was so superficial. But now I know how to eat dinner at 9:30 pm like a pro, how to rub my toasted bread with a sliced tomato, and how to say hi in Catalan when I pass someone on a bike.

I’ve put a few specific recs hotel/hiking/eating recs below, but the trip was that perfect length where you come back energized to re-enter your routine (and come back to your work!). So I’m staying put for the foreseeable future: tending to (and digging) hundreds of dahlias, gearing up for soup season, and ready to tackle a long list of new essay, thread, and interview ideas. And as always: I’m so grateful for all of your comments and conversations this past week and the flexibility this work offers; I hope you enjoy reading this unruly gathering of all the stuff I’ve consumed, read, watched, and loved as much as I enjoyed putting it together.

(Gift Links Whenever Possible; No Affiliate Links; Remember Instapaper is your friend!)

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Since finishing my fifth Ragnar relay race in mid-July, I’ve spent my days in deep summer nothing-much-bliss. I work on my dahlias, I work on my book edits, I write this newsletter, I record a few podcasts…..and I make very simple food. I’ll share one of my new favorite salads below, but you absolutely cannot go wrong with grilled corn on the cob (preferably with a little queso fresco and paprika, but with the good stuff you don’t need anything but a little wave of salt).

Other highlights:

• Reading in bed from 9 to 10pm while the sun slowly sets out the window and that sweet PNW night air blows in

• The very first flush of roadside blackberries (they’re invasive devils but they’re also very tasty on a walk!!!)

• Feeding the dogs when I wake up then immediately going outside to catch the light on the dahlia patch

• Walking the dogs not in the rain

• Near-constant dirt under my fingernails

• Learning the very small trick to get rubberbands on your bouquet (for very casually selling bouquets at our very modest farmer’s market, which is a delight)

And like everyone else I’m experiencing the joys of summer against the backdrop of a forced famine and ongoing suffering in Palestine. I’ve dropped these links in a few other newsletters, and it feels important to keep doing so — because people keep dying from starvation and the doctors and nurses tasked with helping them don’t have enough to eat.

• Because there is so little food in Gaza right now, and the free distribution centers are so difficult/unsafe to access, what food there is costs so much money. Inara is getting food to families who have no means of otherwise accessing it. You can donate here (Click on ‘Rapid Response in Gaza’)

• World Central Kitchen has had to intermittently stop serving meals in Gaza because of unsafe conditions and lack of supplies but they are currently up and running, serving more than 60,000 meals a day to Gazans in need. You can fund those meals here.

• The Sameer Project is providing whatever medical, food, and water aid is possible with the current restrictions. You can donate here. (There are easy links to Paypal and Venmo in the Linktree).

Below you’ll find the usual monthly mega-links and recs. As always, there are no affiliate links, but I’ve added gift links whenever available. It’s paywalled, just like the weekly threads (Tuesday: Concentration Music; Friday: TKTKT) and Wednesday’s Summer Reading Report (including Melody’s Romance Corner). If you want access to all that good stuff plus all the good stuff below….subscribe today.

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Last month I went on a Greek Islands absorption vacation that involved a small amount of tourism followed by a lot of laying around and reading. I put together a big, overly ambitious reading list (and you all contributed so many additional summer absorption reading favs in the comments). You can read that post here.

I read managed to seven books on vacation and started an eighth, which I’ve since finished. And I have some notes! A lot of mehs and misses! One exquisite mind-fuck! (If you’ve read any of these, I’ve been dying to discuss, please come hang out in the comments). Plus: Melody, Culture Study’s co-producer extraordinaire, has agreed to share her fav romances (and a few extras) from the summer, so keep scrolling if all you’re really hungry for is MELODY’S ROMANCE CORNER (I read a few romances too, but Melody has more expansive and exquisite taste).

If you’re a paid subscriber, feel free to forward to friends; if someone forwarded this to you, click below to get future editions of Culture Study.

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This Summer’s Book Report (Thus Far):

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Sometimes I write 4000 word pieces trying to grapple with the complexities of the feminist moment…..and sometimes I tell you what I ate and the beaches where I read many, many books in Greece. Here at Culture Study, we contain multitudes. (Also, it’s late July, and this is very late July content).

If you find vacation tips tedious, I get it! Skip today and come back next week when I give a full run-down of the eight books I read! Live your best life. Everyone else: let’s (mentally) go to the Greek Islands. (And yes this is paywalled, because for whatever reason it’s more enticing than the 4000-word piece on feminist exhaustion — which is the sort of thing I don’t want to paywall. If you like Culture Study, if you value all the work here, or if you just want to know where to get the best calamari, subscribe!)

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Hello from the plane back from Greece! I found out I actually like capers (they just need to be BIG, the way they are here), and discovered my new favorite lunch: the dakos salad, which is like a Greek panzanella involving rye husks, cherry tomatoes, giant dollops of soft mizithra cheese, and capers. Could legitimately eat it every day (and did for the last week). I also read eight of the books from my summer reading list from earlier this month — a real testament to just how much of a relaxation vacation this was (book reports coming soon, as well as some targeted Greek Islands tips if people are interested).

Of course, I was also watching as our elected federal representatives passed a bill that will enact both swift and slow-motion suffering for so many. No one acknowledged July 4th in Greece, but the timing of the passage still felt so obliviously cruel when observed from this distance. And yet, like so many of you, I was overjoyed to wake up to the news of Zohran Mamdani’s absolute statement of a victory in the New York mayoral primary. There are so many of us out here who want a different way forward — and that election should underline that there are politicians out there who will lead us there; the vast majority of them just don’t happen to currently be in office.

Which is all to say: a lot of us are working at processing the very real joys of the season and life in general with very real dismay and disgust. We are terrified and heartbroken and we are practicing, as ever, the discipline of hope. That’s been our reality for some time now, and it’s not likely to change any time soon. But that doesn’t make the jarring juxtaposition any easier to navigate or endure. I can’t acknowledge it at every moment, because that sort of rhetorical exercise empties the sentiment of all meaning, but know that’s one of many ways we’re in community.

Traveling, especially to a place with available histories as ancient as Greece, makes me acutely aware of how much beauty there is in this world, both large and small — and how civilizations of all sorts have endeavored to smother it in the name of conquest and power. Those are the thoughts I’m sitting with, all the way home.

If you want some actionable way to support the sort of public art and education that’s been abandoned by this congress and administration — Chris La Tray makes a very convincing case on how to make it happen.

And if you want to learn more about the reality of living in fear of ICE — and how you can help people in your community who are undocumented — read more here.

Below you’ll find the usual monthly mega-links and recs, only some of them related to summer travel. As always, there’s no affiliate links, and I’ve added gift links whenever available.

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I’ll be matching the first $500 in donations. You can donate directly here and forward me your donation email, or if it’s easier, you can Venmo me at annehelen or send money through PayPal. (I’ll post all donation receipts and keep our total updated on Instagram).

IDP also has an extensive library of resources to Know Your Rights in a dozen languages that can be readily printed out and posted in public spaces — find them here. And watch this very short reel for a super straightforward way to help when and if you see someone getting detained by ICE. Finally, if you’re in the Los Angeles or Chicago area, you can sign-up for to volunteer and aid in community assistance via Immigo here.

Earlier this month I was thinking about what I wanted to read on my summer vacation instead of doing all the things on my to-do list. It’s going to be a classic absorption vacation — a small amount of tourism followed by a lot of laying around and reading. Of course, like everyone else here, I have a towering pile of books I need to read — but I wanted summer books. Which, to me, aren’t necessarily frothy or fun (although they can be!) so much as appropriately absorbing. I want books to dive into like a pool I never want to leave — but I also want to remember them, and revel in them. It’s a tall order.

So I asked for some recs on Instagram, and asked some friends’ whose reading taste is similar to my own for some recs, and came up with my own summer reading list — which is ambitious and way too long and incredibly exciting. I’m sharing that today, along with my Hall of Fame summer/absorption vacation reads, and extending the invitation to share some of your own Hall of Famers.

This list doesn’t have to be your canon. Yes they’re all novels because that’s what I like to read on an absorption vacation. You don’t have to agree with every pick. But hopefully it gets us all (even more) excited for summer reading season.

**All links to go Bookshop — and all affiliate proceeds from Bookshop go to Indigipalooza, coming this August to Missoula, Montana.** And yes this is paywalled, it took a lot of work! There are 22 books here plus a whole bunch of backup picks!!!

If you’re a paid subscriber, feel free to forward to friends; if someone forwarded this to you, click below to get future editions of Culture Study.

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This Summer’s Reading List:

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And make sure you check out this week’s episode of The Culture Study Podcast, where we talk about everything we don’t talk about when we talk about periods (death cramps! final boss periods! butt pains! let’s goooooo!!!)

Someone asked me if I had big plans for Memorial Day and I said no one in the Pacific Northwest ever makes BIG PLANS for Memorial Day, because chances are very high it’s going to be 50 degrees and raining. Set your three-day weekend expectations low and when the sun peaks out enough to take off your hoodie for twenty minutes, you’ll feel like you had the best weekend ever.

So that’s what I’m doing this weekend: keeping expectations low, rotating my winter closet into storage with the hopes it doesn’t curse me to a soggy June, and admiring the lupines (see above) having their own party in my backyard. (If you want to follow my garden/dahlia adventures/trials/experiments, here you go).

But I’ve also amassed some particularly good recs & links for this month’s mega-post — and if you’re having an unscheduled knockaround Sunday morning like me, I think you’ll enjoy them.

As always, gift links whenever available — and nothing below is sponsored in any way; it’s all just shit I genuinely like.

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We’re ramping up to dahlia planting, which usually happens sometime in the first two weeks of May where live. My best friend and I added another good friend (with an excavator, who doesn’t want a good friend with an excavator!!) to our very novice collective this year and the plan is to grow around 1200 plants over our respective properties. It’s gonna be nuts and absolutely gorgeous and I cannot wait to get these babies in the ground. (If you want to follow along, I’ll soon be posting more on Lummi Island Dahlias).

But for now — I have a real backlog of recs and good reads to share in the monthly mega-round-up. It’s paywalled, because access to this sort of thing is somehow very motivating for people who’ve been meaning to subscribe, but if you haven’t subscribed and need further incentive, I’ll also dangle Tuesday’s Thread on Three Foundational Books, which I did not expect to incite so much gratitude (people *loved* thinking about this and reading others’ lists) and Friday’s Thread on The Smallest Hill You’d Die On (which just topped 2800 comments, making it the most commented thread in Culture Study History). And why wouldn’t it be successful, when you have elite small hills like this:

Now let’s get to this month’s mega-collection of Links & Recs, featuring my best friend’s outdoor kid shoe hack, new wee mugs, a country song so good I took a picture of the radio display in my truck, in my new favorite romper:

(nothing sponsored and no affiliate links save to Bookshop — and the proceeds from there go to a different book-related cause every six months. All of this is just shit I like).

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The Skagit Valley, just half an hour south of where I live, is home to acres upon acres of daffodil and tulip fields. The tulips are still a bit off, but the daffodils are out in force. Some people go to special pay-to-view places to walk through the fields, and some people snap a picture from across the road from the best and most bonkers garden nursery in the U.S (some people = me). Daffodils are so solid, so matter-of-fact; I love their hardiness and eagerness. Sometimes I wish I were a tulip, but I’m such a daffodil. So I take a lot of pleasure in seeing them in full, glorious display.

I’ve put together a pretty spectacular collection of links & recs for this month’s mega post, but before we get to that: I’m finally emerging from the post-book-stress-haze, and am so excited about a number of upcoming projects here at Culture Study —

• We’re doing a much-requested follow-up to “Ask a Divorced Person” called “Ask a Child of Divorce.” If you have questions for a Child of Divorce, you can submit them anonymously here. And if you’d like to volunteer to be on the panel of children of divorce answering those questions, sign-up here (also anonymous)

• I’ll be putting together the sign-up sheet for our Tenderheart cookbook club this week (there are more than 180 recipes in the book, so it’s TAKING A BIT). Last chance to sign-up here.

• We need your questions for upcoming tapings of ! We’re doing episodes on everyday men’s clothes/fashion (will the business casual fleece vest ever die, what’s going on with socks, why so many earth tones, etc. etc.); backyard chickens + MAHA, like why does the government want us homesteading; SoCal Culture (*all* of SoCal, not just LA! — why do people do things the way they do, why is this part of it so normalized or so taboo — we want questions from people who are deeply SoCal and want to figure out something they’ve been around all their lives and questions from people who’ve just moved or visited and found something bizarre / interesting / alarming. Same for Boston/Mass Culture. **You can submit your questions here.**

▶▶WHAT DOES FIGHTING LOOK LIKE TODAY?◀◀

• Donate to ACLU Massachusetts, which is part of the defense team for Ph.D. student Rümeysa Öztürk after her unlawful detainment by ICE earlier this week. If we don’t continue to fund these organizations, who will fight our expensive, prolonged legal fight for us when and if the government comes after us for our speech, our activism, or simply who we are? (You can learn more about the latest filings in Öztürk’s case here and donate to the national ACLU fund here).

Now let’s get to those sweet sweet links & recs, including my gardening trousseau, another stark island book, the question to consider before having kids with a dude, and so much more (as always, no affiliate links, just stuff I like)

(and yes these are for subscribers only — but subscribe now and you’ll also get to read Friday’s incredible thread on “What Are You Doing On Hard Mode?”)

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It’s time for our once a year FALSE SPRING CULTURE STUDY SALE!!! This only happens this time of year — and it really is the only sale. This isn’t the Gap, where if you just wait around for a few weeks it’ll come around again. So if you want to take advantage of the sale and convert to a paid subscription….now’s your chance.

You get access to these monthly links & recs posts, the weekly thread discussions (see this week’s re: What Are You Working On and What About You is ‘Non-Traditional’), and the knowledge that you’re paying for the stuff you consume and value — and making this job sustainable.

Get 20% off for 1 year

The other day I was cuddling Steve, my five-year-old English Setter mix, which is something we often do, and then his nemesis, our two-year-old German Shepherd mix Beverly, rushed in close and he meant to snarl at her to say “I’m with her, get the fuck back” but really just bucked his head back and his tooth caught the very sensitive skin of my undereye and now I have one of those scrapes that babies get when they touch their faces with their fingernails and the vaguest suggestion of a black eye.

Sometimes, when we’re trying to be our most loving, we end up getting bruised. I don’t mean that as an excuse for physical violence — I’m only okay with this bruise because it was very, very accidental, and dogs are not humans. More like: loving others makes us vulnerable and tender, which is part of the reason so many of us are feeling the actions of the last month in our bodies. If you feel like shit — about the treatment of Zelenksy and, by extension, the people of Ukraine; about the ongoing revocation of trans rights; about our societal regression — that means you’re not numb to the suffering of others. It means you’re awake and alive and willing to fight. I’m holding that thought with me this week, and I hope you will too.

What We’re Doing To Fight This Week: Buying Plan B and Mifepristone

Even if you can’t get pregnant, for whatever reason (including not having a uterus), buying Plan B and Mifepristone is how we invest in the bodily autonomy of our communities. Rebecca Traister has a cogent and targeted write-up of how and where to buy supply now (and also make sure that your kids have their HPV vaccine, which can be administered starting at age 9).

And thank you again to everyone who made our $22,345 (!!!) donation to the Federal Unionist Network (FUN) possible — Venmo still has my account frozen for another day before I can transfer the last of the funds, but I’ll be posting receipts this Wednesday (this also allows me to transfer the handful of donations that have come in the last few days).

And now, let’s do some links and recs (nothing here is sponsored, it’s all stuff I genuinely like):

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This is probably not your fault — Substack is always trying to get us to hang out more in the app, sort of like how dorky adults were always trying to get teens to hang out at the TEEN CENTER or whatever — but you should go into your Substack app settings and check your “notifications” settings and make sure they’re set to email and email alone. This post explains how.

Where I live, on an island off the coast of Washington state, the winter sky is rarely clear. It’s grey, and a different sort of grey, and then a darker sort of grey, before clearing for about an hour right at sunset and making you believe that you’ll wake up to sunshine the next morning (false!). I don’t say this to talk shit; grey almost always means rain, and rain is what makes our brilliant summers possible. But I will say that this past week, when every day brought a new and even bluer sky, was welcome.

Granted, it was freezing. Not Montana cold, but bone-chill cold. Which was more than welcome, since we haven’t had a real freeze yet this winter, and you need a freeze to keep the invasives at least somewhat at bay. Every morning, the marine layer would freeze on the stairs up from my house, on the pebbles on the side of the road, on every blade of grass, and if you left the house as the sun was just beginning to rise — right around 8 am — the world felt blinding in its beauty. Absurd!

And it did this for five days! Unreal! I know some of you in sunny mountain places are used to this, but we are not. It felt like an outrageous gift — and the only counter to the absolute fuckshow that is this administration’s first two weeks, which has transported me back to the feeling of anxious vigilance and fear that defined the first Trump administration, only worse, much worse. I will take my small solaces where I can find them, like the fat snow flakes falling from the sky as I type this, even though they’re melting as soon as they hit the ground.

Below you’ll find a real wintery mix: there are pieces that elucidate what’s happening right now in ways that feel essential, and there are recipes that make me feel like there’s something to look forward to. There’s celebrity gossip that’s distracted me, romances that have beguiled me, the running app that’s pushing me, the book that made me laugh out loud at least a dozen times, and the Substack post that feels like a primary text for Gen-Z’s understanding of the world. Plus a weird salty drink recommendation, because I don’t know your life or your sodium needs.

As always, the only affiliate links here are for Bookshop (all affiliate proceeds go to a different books-related organization every year) and I’ve used gift links whenever possible. And if you haven’t moved to paid, this Late-in-Life Loves Thread from earlier this week is worth the price of admission. Plus you’ll get all the good stuff below.

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With ample encouragement from last months’ thread, I’ve leaned so hard into the In-Between time, feasting on a real mix of things that make me feel grounded, which is to say, like me. I did some sheet mulching for next year’s dahlias. I spent New Year’s Day at a bonfire on the beach (I didn’t cold plunge, but lots of other people did). I made at least five different Rancho Gordo recipes. I finished three books. I took my first run in nearly three months as I gear up for the next marathon. I took so many long walks with my dogs, and let time slip around in a way that felt like the most comfy blanket. I had a dance-off with a 4th grader on New Year’s Eve. I got nailed with a Minions Fart Gun.

I also snuck in four days of skiing, including one with my brother (one of my favorite childhood skiing companions, just don’t tell him I said that) who I hadn’t skied with in more than twenty years.

I somehow did everything and nothing, which is precisely the vibe I was going for.

I also took this time to allow a bunch of ideas for future pieces to rattle around in my head (I’m absolutely doing a Timothée Chalamet star study sometime soon, and still want to write about Blake Lively/Justin Maldoni) but for now, I wanted to share some the things I’ve read and loved (and some new recs) from the last month: the gorgeous new zinnias I’m growing this year, the romance that will keep you up significantly past your bed time, a family game even non-games people will love, the best new soup recipe, and the best book I read since, oh, August, plus all the usual links to good stuff on the internet and the just trust me.

As always, the only affiliate links here are for Bookshop (all affiliate proceeds go to a different books-related organization every year) and I’ve used gift links whenever possible. And if you haven’t moved to paid and are dithering — this Tuesday, we’re doing Culture Study Classifieds, which are a wild ride and wildly useful….and for paid subscribers only. Plus you’ll get all the good stuff below.

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This year, my hope is to raise just as much in order to buy a bunch of beds, kids’ bikes, computers, couches and more for recently arrived refugees through their wishlists at Miry’s List. Big ticket items like this are hard for individual donors to buy on their own — but much easier for big groups like us to cover. Working together, we can make a huge difference in a family’s day-to-day life, comfort, and overall feeling of *home.*

To donate to the fund, you can Venmo me at annehelen, PayPal at annehelenpetersen@gmail.com. I’ll match the first $500 in donations, and as always, I’ll post receipts for all cash-outs and purchases.

If your inbox is anything like mine, this past week has been one long stream of DEALS DEALS DEALS BUY BUY BUY. It’s exhausting, in part because we’ve been trained to conceive of paying full price for anything as getting snookered in some way. If only fools pay list price, then every time you delete or ignore a sale email, you’re participating in your own fooldom. It doesn’t matter if you didn’t really need or even particularly want the thing you’re buying: you bought it on sale, which marks you Unfooled.

All of this is bullshit, of course, but it takes a very strong understanding of math, percentages, and the fact that you actually save far more money when you buy nothing to resist this thinking. And because online shopping means everyone can seemingly shop everything from everywhere, this week has transformed from one of gift-purchasing to everything purchasing. It’s not just that Black Friday is a whole damn week (if not two) — it’s that it’s become the week to buy just as much stuff for yourself (it’s finally on sale!) than others.

None of it feels that great. Even if you are primarily buying for others, clicking order now on a bunch of virtual carts at massive conglomerates just doesn’t have quite the same feeling as running holiday errands, going to a holiday market, or seeing something and knowing exactly who you want to give it to. Maybe you still have the capacity to do that where you live. Or maybe the closest thing you can approximate is buying from small businesses — who, for better and for worse, absolutely rely on this month’s income to get them through the rest of the year.

So that’s what I’m trying to highlight with this Gift Guide — a bunch of small businesses, many of them owned by Culture Study subscribers, where you can find weird and wonderful and different gifts for yourself and others, including gifts for kids, new & practiced cooks, absolute peak coziness, consummate Swifties, pottery-heads, fiber arts addicts, fabulously unique earrings and more.

Yes, some of this stuff is expensive, because making stuff without exploitative labor practices is often expensive. The goal with these sorts of gift guides isn’t to buy everything; the goal is to buy one thing (or a few things) that feel meaningful and right. There are a handful of businesses in here that could be classified as “medium-sized,” but the vast majority are very small and very local.

Finally, yes, this is paywalled — just like the links at the end of every Sunday’s newsletter are paywalled and this Tuesday’s GIFT CONCIERGE thread (where you can ask for help finding a gift for a specific person in your life) is paywalled. For whatever reason it’s small stuff like this that convinces people to subscribe to the content they value. Thank you for valuing Culture Study and the time it took to put together these NINETY-EIGHT recs!

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I’m taking some time away from the internet for a long-planned cycling trip, but I’ve also done a lot of non-Trump-administration reading, and wanted to share some of my favs with you. As always, I’ve added gift links whenever they’re available — and there’s no affiliate links, save to Bookshop (and all Bookshop earnings are donated every six months; this cycle, they’re going to help fund IndigiPalooza MT)

Paid subscribers get full access to everything, as they do every week when I collected “This Week’s Things I Read and Loved” at the end of the Sunday newsletter. If you want to be part of it — and get access to this week’s threads, like How Do You Know When To Quit? — subscribe today.

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Reading something doesn’t mean you agree with it entirely. It means it presses some thinking and mourning and feeling buttons. So here’s what’s been doing that for me — and I’d love to hear what’s been doing it for you.

1.) Angela Garbes, “Four Heated Discussions I’ve Had with My White Husband Since November 8, 2016”

“I want very badly to live honestly. I am angry with my husband for not understanding how hard it is to live in this body in this country.”

2.) Tressie McMillan Cottom, “The Way Harris Lost Will Be Her Legacy”

“I always believed that a conservative woman would be the first female president because of what social science says about gender and leadership. American voters demand compensating qualities — gun-toting, conventional attractiveness, religiosity — to accept a female president. Harris played that game, finessing that hybrid centrist conservative in a progressive package. That feels like a game plan for the many female candidates who will follow in her footsteps. It is less clear to me that Harris’s game plan can ever actually work for a Black female candidate.”

3.) Kate Manne, “Broken Bones: America’s Violent Indifference Toward Women”

“A lot will be said about whether this decision was about misogyny or about the economy. But this is a false contrast. Whatever the proportion of people who didn’t vote for Kamala Harris simply because she is a woman, this is a narrow and, frankly, antiquated conception of misogyny that I’ve been arguing against for a decade. Misogyny isn’t about hating or discriminating against women because they are women and thus attract suspicion and consternation. Misogyny is about exposing women to harm because our gender makes us beneath full consideration. Misogyny is primarily something we face, not something people feel in their hearts. Having to navigate a world where you can’t get a routine D&C after six weeks or obtain care for an ectopic pregnancy or have to carry a fetus to term as a raped ten year-old girl could hardly be one that is more hostile and hateful to women, girls, and indeed anyone who can get pregnant.

The misogyny of this election is not primarily about Kamala Harris, although that is certainly a real force, which I’ve been writing about from the day following the announcement of her candidacy. The main misogyny of this election is that many people will vote to line their pocketbooks at the expense of the basic health and safety of so many of us. Including me, the majority of my readers, my dear trans and non-binary friends, and my daughter and her entire female cohort.”

4.) Amanda Montei “It’s Not the Economy. It’s the Misogyny”

“So many people are going to kick into blame, attack, police, patrol, soften, normalize, hot take, lessen, rationalize—and try to rush us away from our anger and grief. I’m going to dwell in the pain and loss and obviously then I will keep going, as women always have.

We will strike in our bedrooms and in the streets. We will refuse. And we will keeping making art, and loving women, and getting divorces, and mothering, and talking, and feeling joy, and desiring, and having abortions, and taking care of each other—because we always have.”

5.) Garrett Bucks, “I’m Gonna Love the Hell Out of You”

“Of course I’m gutted right now. And while what follows is my way of processing the giant pit in my stomach, it may not be yours. As you sit in whatever combination of anger and heartbreak and fear and numbness that’s enveloping you right now, now might not be the time for a “what comes next” essay. That’s ok. I hate what you’re likely feeling right now, but I’m also grateful for it. At the core of our shared sadness and rage is a longing for a better world for all of us. We’re scared for each other. We’re angry on each other’s behalf. We’re heartbroken, not just individually but collectively. Those are devastating emotions, but they’re also beautiful ones. As I wrote yesterday, don’t listen to anybody who tries to massage or judge what you’re feeling right now.’

5.) Chris La Tray, “All Candidates, Once Elected”

“In the last year, where I’ve spent hours upon hours talking to probably thousands of people, I’ve made a concerted effort to try and draw connections to our shared humanity, particularly as it relates to where we stand on the spectrum of settler-to-Indigenous people. That is a global relationship. I’ve never wanted to make people feel guilty and now I’m not so sure about all that and this is largely what troubles me deeply. This last year and the willingness of so many people to overlook genocide has lit a different kind of fire in me. I’m trying to figure out what it is going to look like. I will say this, though: I will no longer seek solidarity or community with comfortable people living comfortable lives in comfortably unthreatened homes on stolen land who are unwilling to risk that comfort and convenience in service to the liberation of people forced to give up everything in service to all that comfort. It’s that simple.”

6.) Annie Lowrey, “Voters Wanted Lower Prices at Any Cost”

“The optimistic story for the Harris campaign was that, after a year of subdued price growth, the American people would have gotten used to higher bills and appreciated the earning power they gained from the tight labor market. Instead, anger at inflation lingered, even among tens of millions of working-class Americans who had gotten wealthier. This is not a purely economic story; it’s a psychological one too. People interpret wage gains as a product of their own effort and high costs as a policy problem that the president is supposed to solve. Going to the polls, voters still ranked the economy as their No. 1 issue, inflation as the No. 1 economic problem, and Trump as their preferred candidate to deal with it. In interviews, many voters told me they felt as if Democrats were gaslighting them by insisting that they were thriving.”

7.) Zak Cheney-Rose, “Trump’s Multiracial Coalition of Men is Here”

“Whether that means Democrats drive harder to the right, as they have in the past, or opt to more meaningfully differentiate themselves from the GOP remains to be seen. But what’s clear is that when people feel like the systems around them are broken, they might just vote for the person who promises to take them apart.”

8.) Ken White, “And Yet It Moves”

“A country that votes for Trump is broken in very complicated and daunting ways. Harris could have won in a landslide and 45% of the people voting for Trump would still have reflected a country broken in terrible ways. Moreover, any road out is long and rocky and painful. A Trumpist GOP has control of the entire government, the judiciary is dominated by judges who are Trumpist or willing to yield to Trumpism if it gets rid of Chevron deference, and state and local politics are increasingly dominated by extremists. The GOP is doing everything it can to rig the game to make it harder to vote our way out, and after four more years a stuffed judiciary will be even less inclined to stop them. The struggle to fight back is generational, not simple.

But nobody’s telling you that you have to fix everything. You can fix something.”

And if you haven’t read yesterday’s piece, I recommend the comments most of all:

“Yes, America still hates women. Yes. It sickens me.

AND ALSO, more than ever, it hates trans people and Black and Brown people. That, to me, is even scarier.

I say this not to engage in an oppression Olympics; that's useful to exactly zero people. I say this to remind us of all who is at stake here, and selfishly, because I am, too.”

I’d love to hear what you’re reading to process, and I know others will too. And if giving helps you process the way it helps me:

Donate to your regional abortion fund here.

Find your regional resources for LGBTQ+ support — and links to donate — here.

If you find this work valuable, if it helped you process, if you really needed to read this today — and you want to keep the paywall off resources like this one — consider subscribing.

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Subscribing also gets you access to the weirdly addictive threads, like this week’s Music Concierge and a really fascinating discussion about how your childhood influenced your own thinking about having kids. Join us today for the cost of a monthly cup of coffee.

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This week my best friend Beth and I are doing THE BIG CUT of the 550+ dahlias we grew this year in a micro-farm experiment. I’m going to write a bit at some point in the next few weeks about the experience of GOING BIG on a hobby (and resisting my most millennial impulses to optimize/monetize/make it “productive”) but for now, please enjoy this corner of the lay-flat we put together as 40 MPH winds were attempting to blow us and all the flowers into the ocean (welcome to atmospheric river season in the Pacific Northwest!!!)

People always ask if they can steal my dahlia photos for their phone background and yes, absolutely — if you’re a subscriber, borrow away (and follow Lummi Island Dahlias on IG for more dahlia content).

After many hours outside exposed to the wind and rain, I’m thrilled to be back inside putting together all my favorite things I’ve read, loved, and used this month (no affiliate links here, save to Bookshop — and all Bookshop proceeds go to funding this year’s Indigipalooza)

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And if you haven’t listened to this week’s episode of , it’s all about the way contemporary conspiracy theories appeal to women. It’s bonkers and funny and deeply serious, all at once. Listen and subscribe here.

I’m feeling top-heavy with nostalgia this week, at once emotionally rung out and gratified. I spent Thursday through Sunday of last week at my 20th college reunion in Walla Walla, Washington, along with dozens of my very close friends and hundreds of my classmates. A group of 16 of us stayed in one house — no kids, no partners who hadn’t also attended Whitman — and the entire experience had an undercurrent of languid ease and joy.

How wonderful, how priceless, to be surrounded by the people who were so responsible for shaping the adult you became — and the person you’re still becoming? I know not everyone has this experience with college; I also know very few colleges can offer this sort of reunion scenario, which hinges on small classes (as in: 300 in my graduating class) of students tightly bonded through sports, small dorms, interest groups, majors, and, at least in our case, a small but socially important Greek System.

But our small college also does something different than most small colleges I know:

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The dahlias are at their peak, the weather is pretty much perfect, I’ve been thinking about switching from shorts to pants for the morning dog walk, I made the first soup of the season — MUST BE LATE SEPTEMBER, the most glorious time of the year.

It’s also a glorious time to run, and right now I’m in the final stretch of training for the Chicago Marathon — my fourth. If you’ve been reading this newsletter for awhile you know that I was the opposite of a runner when I was a kid; I hated running and all sports. But I’ve discovered the glories of aging into athleticism, and am so excited to run Chicago for the first time…..and raise a boatload of money for the Girl Scouts of Greater Chicago in the process (truly a win/win).

If you were a Girl Scout like me — or have a Girl Scout in your life — you know what an empowering (I don’t generally like that word, but it actually applies here!) and truly inclusive organization it is. The Girl Scouts didn’t teach me how to run but it did teach me how to do things that were new and challenging. I’m matching the first $500; all donations go directly to the Girl Scouts of Greater Chicago to make Girl Scouts available to every girl and non-binary kid who wants to join.

You can donate directly here — or you can Venmo me (annehelen) and I’ll post cashout receipts next week (I have a lot to lose if I lose your trust, so please believe me that I’d never embezzle your Girl Scouts donations). LET’S DO THIS!!!

For this month’s bounty of links and recs, I’ve got two new cookbooks, a cleaning implement that is going to fix all my problems, a pair of overalls that is also going to solve all of my problems, plus the usual long list of lovely and weird articles and the Just Trust Me.

If you’re not already a subscriber, join today and get access to all this plus all the other subscriber perks — including this week’s thread where people from all matter of industry talked at length about how they got their job:

And subscribers, this week we’ll have the monthly WHAT ARE YOU READING thread + “WHAT DO I DO WITH ALL THESE PICTURES” which promises to be both utilitarian and philosophical, so get your ideas answers ready.

Oh, and as promised last month, here’s the cashout receipt for Bookshop — and the donation receipt to Books to Prisoners. For the next round of Bookshop affiliate dollars, we’ll be donating to IndigiPalooza — a celebration of Indigenous Arts and Storytelling next August in Missoula. Learn all about it here.

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