A Few Things

Hello, Friends. How are you? How was your week? Our week was mostly filled with Visa-renewal tasks (so many tasks!!), including a visit to Caen where we stopped by the building above (it’s where Williams the Conquerer is buried).

Beyond visa-renewal tasks, my weeks have become progressively filled with more and more decisions, design work, research, and physical labor on the house renovation.

I find it all very exciting, but I keep being surprised by how much time it takes up. Stuff like meetings with different tradespeople, getting multiple bids for different projects, figuring out options for vanities in France, and then the actual on-site work like demolition and floor restoration. Plus sharing it all on Instagram Stories.

I definitely have less time to create blog posts, and I feel very conflicted about that.

Anyway, I’m glad the weekend has arrived. It’s going to be a hot one, so we plan to stop by a nearby lake on the Orne River for some swimming. And hopefully, we’ll make more progress on the attic floors. What are you up to this weekend?

Ready for the link list? Here are a few things I’ve wanted to share with you:

-Did you see the footage of the explosion in Beirut. So devastating and heartbreaking.

-A helpful new tool that shows the coronavirus risk in specific places. “If 50 people gather in the SF Bay Area (like a grocery store) the risk is over 50% that someone there is infected.”

-Oprah is putting up 26 billboards about Breonna Taylor around Louisville.

-Dammit. Facebook employees collected evidence showing preferential treatment of right wing figures and Facebook fired a key employee who gathered info.

No artist is pleased.

-“These documents provide compelling evidence — long rumored but seldom established — that the companies, especially Facebook and Amazon, in their rise to dominance did not always play by the rules and apparently violated antitrust laws.”

Is The Far Side really back?

-The $1,200 stimulus checks served as a natural basic income (UBI) experiment. What happened? Credit card debt in April and May (when the checks were sent) dropped the most on record.

-For generations, the Khasi people have been training tree roots to grow together into living, functional bridges that can last for centuries. And they do it with a tree many of us keep as a common houseplant: Ficus elastica.

The Monstrous Act of Birth.

-Thinking about using copper pots in the French house. Have you ever used them?

Here are some tweets I saved for you:

-The responses to “What radicalized you?” are stunning.

-A life sentence for stealing hedge clippers.

https://twitter.com/QasimRashid/status/1291566102728908800

This is heartbreaking.

-An excellent thread on the U.S. Postal Service.

-Please read this thread on gun violence.

-What in the what??? This is incredibly disturbing. I hate it so much.

-The efforts that Republicans are going to, in order to prevent people from voting, are very telling.

Hahaha.

I hope you have a terrific weekend. I’ll meet you back here next week. I miss you already.

kisses,
Gabrielle

8 thoughts on “A Few Things”

  1. The tweet about the young woman going on spring break and bringing back covid to her father who subsequently died is heartbreaking. We have college aged kids, and they have gone basically nowhere since March. They are petrified of bringing home the virus to us, particularly my husband who has high blood pressure. My 22 year old told me she’s disabled all of her social media because it was alternately depressing and enraging her that most of her friends are still carrying on as though there’s no pandemic.

    1. Good for your kids for quarantining hard. I’m a 34 year old mom to four kids (the youngest born this June) and we’ve basically stayed at home- except for grocery shopping and exercise. My kids have visited their grandparents (2.5 hours drive away), where they just play in their yard and bike. I hate seeing pictures of friends at the beach or on a trip even just to a state park. I like the idea of staying off social media cuz I find myself enraged. If things are bad enough for elementary school to be closed (that’s the case here), people need to be asked to do more to stop the spread so students (and teachers and parents ) aren’t the only ones to sacrifice.

  2. We ve cooked with copper pots for ever. They heat very quickly so it s useful to have something to put under whilst on the heat. They re great for soupe, any dish with lots of sauce or jam. They need maintenance on the copper, for aesthetics mainly and I would recommend that you keep non copper pots for when you don t feel like usung them. They re heavy. I love using them but i guess they remind me of my mom

  3. So much to take in…..

    Re:

    Oprah/Brionna – This is how I imagine I would like to use my money if I were a billionaire or even a millionaire. Very happy Oprah is doing this, though I wish she would have thought of it sooner.

    Spielberg/Lucas/Kasdan – Disgusting. The fact that they and most of that generation didn’t recognize that as pedophilia explains so much of what has come into the light over the past couple of years regarding sexual predators.

    Facebook – For real, Zuckerberg? Seriously alarming

    The sign – Exactly. No shoes, no shirt, no mask, no service.

    Copper pots – Love them

  4. I second the observations that copper pots are very responsive and lovely to cook with but also very difficult to maintain. If you don’t mind the spots you will be ok. But they will never look new again in. my experience. I have tried various DIY and store bought remedies for our copper Alessi pots and pans but none of it works well. But they are great for sautés and risotto (at least before we went induction).

  5. Gabby, I am here to say thank you for using your platform this way. I have been down about all the things people with privilege have been ignoring, so this post literally made my weekend. You may not be posting as often, but when you do, it is worth waiting for. I appreciate it.

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