A Few Things

Hello, Friends. How are you? I had a really lovely trip to North Carolina this week. Ben Blair and I spent a few days in The Triangle (the Raleigh, Durham, Chapel Hill area). It’s SO GREEN. And the food is SO GOOD. The shot above was taken at West Point at the Eno River.

We’re home now and I’ve got lots of Alt Summit deadlines happening. For example: 1) A fresh new website launched this week. 2) Tickets for the 2020 conference go on sale on Tuesday. And 3) I’ve got a site visit to Palm Springs early next week to go over venue spaces.

What’s on your plate these days? Anything you’re excited about? Has the heat wave hit your area? How do you handle it? Ready for the link list? Here are a few things I’ve wanted to share:

This article argues the future of cities is childless, because raising a family in the city is just too hard. Agree?

-“Women clean up because fashion allows it.” Lots to think about in this article about women and the handbags they carry.

-Notre-Dame came far closer to collapsing than anybody knew. (NYT)

On eating the same thing every day in order to establish some predictability in your life.

-Most apartment building in the U.S. used to come in the form of small buildings like duplexes and four-plexes. Today almost nothing like that gets built (which is bad for everyone but a select few mega-developers).

-Hah!Sandwiches with pickles as bread. I am fully on board.

-“Students not only expected female professors to grant their special favor requests but were more inclined to make the requests, be irritated or disappointed if the professor denied the requests, and persist in asking for favors after being denied.”

-Woah. This is a wild story — A Father, a Daughter, and the Attempt to Change the Census.

-On my trip this week I was reminded that I don’t have a good solution for managing my tech cords and chargers. This option gets good reviews. Do you have a solution you recommend?

-When she was 9, Nora decided to test the volume of hand dryers and find out if they were detrimental to kids’ hearing. (Turns out they are!)

-If multiracial democracy cannot be defended in America, it will not be defended elsewhere.

The ideal age for a first cell phone.

-Hey Bay Area friends, my sister Jordan is selling everything before her big move. Her Oh Happy Day Studio Sale ends this weekend.

I hope you enjoy your weekend! I’ll meet you back here on Monday. I miss you already.

kisses,
Gabrielle

15 thoughts on “A Few Things”

  1. The story about the guy who eats Starbucks Egg Bites everyday was exactly what I needed. My life has been upended recently, and I bought seven Whole Foods Rice and Bean burritos last weekend and ate one every night. I felt ridiculous, yet, it was such a relief to eliminate one decision and chore.

  2. I am trying to unpack that article on purses, pockets, and the lack of men ready to help…
    I am that woman who, when I carry a purse, am ready for any and all situations. I feel like I could ‘MacGyver’ any predicament -because as a woman on her own with 5 kids 90% of the time, there were too many instances where I felt it was needed. My car is also at the ready. My adult daughter and her friend were with me at lunch, and when we went to the car her friend said she wished she had some dental floss. My daughter intuitively knew to look in the storage space built in between the front seats, found a pack of floss and handed it to her friend. The friend was shocked; my daughter just replied “Oh, that’s my mom, you name it and she’ll have it tucked somewhere in this car.” –and she’s right.

    We were out in the middle of nowhere when the kids were little and one managed to step on a broken bottle in such a way that it cut their foot pretty gnarly. Husband, who is Mr. DoItYourself HandyGuy, but was then flummoxed as to how to proceed. He was lost without his tools, garage, or even a first aide kit. He needed recognizable instruments and or aides to fix this as he had been trained. He carried our kid back to the car and set her on the seat, He’s an intelligent man, but couldn’t get beyond his ‘training’ and think outside of the first aide box. We didn’t have water, we’d brought soda as a treat, so I popped open a 7-up and washed the cut, cleared the glassed out with tweezers I had on the car, then put a tampon over the cut and secured it to her foot with the few band-aides I had in my purse. The day ended, and we went to Urgent Care. Was 7-up a good choice to clean out her cut? Definitely not, but it was better than nothing and letting the glass stay for the 2 hour drive back to civilization, so there we were. She got a good cleaning and a butterfly at the Dr.’s and was fine.

    1. I love this! I can just hear my husband saying, “Are you sure 7-up is a good idea??” and me snarling, “Do you have any better ideas?!?!?” :D :D

  3. for travel I bought one big multi-USB charger from Anker (they last a long time and cost $25.99 on amazon) which I use to charge phone, camera, anything else with USB, and one mini macbook charger. I carry them together in a zippered make up bag that was free from a flight.

    1. This is exactly my set up – the Anker 4-port plug, 6-foot USB-C cord (SOs phone, my work laptop), 6-foot lightning cord (my phone), 6-foot micro USB cord (bluetooth headphones, kindle, tablet), two pairs of wired headphones and a headphone splitter (for watching movies/shows on the tablet. All are coiled and secured with cord loopy things (technical term, duh), and stored in a mesh pouch from TJ Maxx. They live in drawer in the office at home, and are easy to grab and pack whenever we travel. Swap out the 4-port plug for a similar plug with adapters for foreign plugs and toss in an external battery pack when traveling internationally.

  4. I love the article about the hand dryers! I really hate when places only have the hand dryer option available. I have an ear problem that is exacerbated by loud sounds (to the point that I use earplugs when vacuuming and blow drying my hair) and those hand dryers make it so bad! Especially when the bathroom is just a little one-person room with that very loud dryer. I hope that little girl’s research encourages the hand-dryer companies to make them quieter (or for places to at least offer paper towels).

  5. I think that Inside Higher Ed article is spot on. Plus, I love the path diagram; I’m a statistician!

    I also find that if I deny a student’s special request, they think I’m a b****, but when a male faculty member does the same, he’s “tough” or has “high standards.” Frustrating.

  6. I’ve tried a lot of cord organization, I travel a lot and need lightweight and organized electronics. I was given one of these as a corporate gift and it’s the best. It’s three pockets in one pouch, super lightweight, much simpler to just throw things into without a lot of complicated twisting. I use one pocket for my laptop charger and mouse, one for phone charger, Kindle charger and a multi-usb block, and the small compatment for headphones. I like it’s so much that I got them for the rest of my families and I will each have one and it’s so simple. I’m not sure if the link is the best place to buy them I just found the first place I saw them.

    1. Oh man….I just commented above about my solution, which works great….but I love a good pouch and I may need to upgrade my current one-pouch-for-all-cords solution now that I’ve seen this!

  7. Your travel with cords comment made me smile to myself-my husband just left for a work trip and we were talking about his travel solution. A few years ago I bought him a laptop sized clear plastic box, about 5cm deep and with adjustable dividers. I think it was from the tool box section. He has charger cables, batteries, his presentation pointer thingy, all sorts. I was joking asking if he always gives me the credit when people are impressed with his super organised box, and he laughed that everyone just gives him a hard time for being so over the top organised! He keeps doubles of most things so there’s no packing up his everyday supplies when he travels. Just pick up his box and go. (We do the same with toiletries. I keep his travel bag packed and we just grab it the night before he leaves.) So easy. Joke is on all those others who don’t know what they’re missing out on!!

  8. I have a lot of thoughts about the interesting purse article. My mind was headed in one direction until the final point regarding Pres. Trump using Sarah Huckabee as a scullery maid on loan from her father that sent me into a tail spin. I hope I can always be aware of how I’m being used. I personally will carry around what I need so that I can show up how I want to. Prepared and ready to solve a problem or two. People can interpret that however they want, but I think their thoughts might reveal more about themselves than about me. Shame on anyone who thinks they’re above being helpful, that’s on the entitled person.

  9. I don’t agree with cities being a bad place to raise children – it depends on the city! I live in a city in Europe and I love the fact that I rarely have to use the car. I have an annual season ticket for the bus so hop on and off (and did so even with a twin stroller) whenever I like and don’t have to think of parking or whether I filled the tank. Now my older son is a teenager he takes himself off to any after school activiews whereas my friends in the suburbs have become taxi services! I have neighbours of all ages (0 – 103!) and the city can and should cater for everyone.

  10. re cable chargers – I just read a brilliant idea recently. Put them in individual ziploc bags with all the warranty info, instructions, and any loose pieces and LABEL the bags so you will know what the cord/knobs/ etc etc belong to. I am planning on organizing my cable drawer this way soon :)

  11. I have stopped cleaning my house. After getting married in my 40s – two adult people with their own lives before co-habitating – I assumed that our division of labor would be split equally or at least equally enough to play to our strengths and preferences. After 4 years of living together, it is clear to me that my husband has no inclination to clean – the bathroom, the floors, the stove, the sheets. I took it up, and then I noticed that my husband would spend weekends working on his hobbies. I made time for pleasure also but was always negotiating in my mind the time I would dedicate to cleaning the house. And then I stopped. It’s become a game of chicken – who can endure the grossest, most untidy atmosphere – and I’m disappointed to say that he usually wins. It still shocks and disappoints me. There is the occasion when he’ll clean, say, a toilet. And then he’ll point out to me that he cleaned it and expect me to admire his work.

    All this to say, I’m going to print this and frame it so visitors can see right when they walk into the house: “A new study shows that visitors to a disorderly home will judge the female inhabitant if they believe she’s responsible for the mess but give the male inhabitant a pass.”

  12. My daughter will begin graduate school at UNC Chapel Hill in about one month, and I would love to know your restaurant recommendations! Thank you so much!!

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