I had the privilege of seeing the penultimate showing of Real Women Have Curves. It was my first time seeing the original cast and third time seeing a Broadway musical. I loved it and wish I could …

By ending the minority recruitment program in May, Harvard shuttered a more than 50-year-old initiative to encourage minority high school students to apply.

Earlier this year I listed playing trivia and word games as one of the sources of joy when things seem hard. I was definitely feeling it in February, but even more now when the other shoe dropped in my work life (see: grants from NSF being terminated). Sean and I play several, mostly just us two. We starting playing the NPR Sunday Puzzle last spring.

One. I have a pretty gnarly cold and had to skip book club at church. Normally this would not have been an issue, but I volunteered earlier in the week to facilitate the discussion and bring snacks. The book for this month was Not Too Late: Changing the Climate Story from Despair to Possibility edited by Rebecca Solnit and Thelma Young-Lutunatabua.

A few months ago I remember seeing a prompt on Bluesky from a contributor with This American Life. They needed stories from when someone said an off-hand remark that stuck with you for a long time …

I've been getting flashbacks to early 2020 when we didn't yet know how COVID-19 was going to impact us. There were huge impacts in my work at a university. I had to pivot to cancel or figure out how to move programs online. I barely knew how to use Zoom before March 2020 and quickly had to learn. I won't even get into all the changes with school and childcare.

YouTube video by Bad Bunny

One of my favorite things about the beginning of the year is updating my list of books I'd like to read. I've already added a bunch of the books friends with similar taste has listed as their favorites so my list keeps growing. It's not a bad problem to have and makes me thankful for libraries. Below are my goals/intentions for the year in reading:

Many years ago I went camping with a bunch of my cousins, siblings, and our significant others in Yosemite. It was amazing, but midway through our week there we got heavy rain overnight. We discovered that our tents were not as waterproof as we expected, or we just didn't set things up right, because we were all Southern California born and raised kids who had years of living through droughts.

Our family home in Altadena was burned down in the Eaton fire.… Blair Quinones needs your support for Help Our Family Rebuild Our Lives and Our Home Post-Fire

What’s the point of being sober if no one notices?- from The Five Wounds by Kirstin Valdez Quade It’s early January, and numerous news outlets and people on my social media feeds are talking about Dry January. Yesterday, I replied to a post on Threads where someone reflected on day 4 of Dry January. That prompted my own short reflection and this longer one.

I love this time of year and scanning friends reading recaps for their recommendations. Of course, I have to put together my own. I read 70 books overall this year and below are my top 20 in literary fiction, genre fiction, poetry and nonfiction. At the bottom are the top 10, if you made me pick. All lists are in alpha order.

I am procrastinating finishing my 70th book of the year so I can write about what and how I read.  For the past 10 years, I’ve been tracking my reading in earnest. I know a lot of people don't bother with this, but I love anything that allows me to make a list and track data in a spreadsheet so I can analyze later.