Good morning! How is your July going? Are you in the doldrums of summer, or off on a fun trip, or watching brat summer tiktoks while chugging a coffee at work? Last Friday I got back from a quick trip to Ireland with my dad. Within 24 hours of landing in Ireland, we trundled out to Forty Foot, an open-sea swimming area in the suburbs south of Dublin (easy to reach on the DART train). They featured this spot in the TV show Bad Sisters, and it looked so, so beautiful. It turns out there are a number of places like this outside of Dublin, but Forty Foot did not disappoint. People of all ages were jumping off rocks into the Irish Sea (temperature: 15 Celsius), but I simply slithered down the stairs and into the water. Divine. After a couple of days in Dublin we headed to Athlone, Ireland, where the annual Graphic Medicine conference took place. This conference is always such a treat—so many kindred spirits, people doing comics in many different healthcare spaces. The theme of the conference was draíocht (Irish for magic), and Ireland was, indeed, enchanting!
Now I'm back to regular life, working with the brand-new doctors who arrive each July. Good news, all of the new interns I've met are warm and thoughtful, kind and caring.
In the category of ‘Media I've Enjoyed Recently,’ I loved My Lade Jane and Drops of God. My Lady Jane is hilarious and surprising, and Drops of God moves from English to French to Japanese in a way that will make you feel incredibly sophisticated, even if you are just eating an ice cream sandwich on your couch. As far as books go, I loved it, but I think I need to start a formal book club to process Miranda July's All Fours. This interview was a helpful start, but I'm still trying to understand this answer:
MJ: In film, we aren’t afraid to make radical changes in the edit; that’s how the movie is found. I guess writers do this even more. Until fairly late in the process of writing this book, every chapter was named after a different woman and featured a conversation with that woman. One chapter was called “Marion,” which was the name of the narrator. Amy Adams, the actress, was a fictional character in the book. I’m just trying to give you a sense of the process and how not straightforward it is. It’s always very, overly, complex until finally it becomes simple and what I think of as “round,” like a comic or cartoon.
'Round' like a comic or cartoon: what does this mean?
In other news, the new Mom's Family Calendar is out! The paper quality and printing are lovely and it has a new non-plastic packaging which feels luxe. The calendar goes from August 2024 to December 2025!
Also, in case you missed it, my friend
at Art Basil did these beautiful illustrations of my fave quesadillas! What an honor to be in her arty foodie newsletter! Lots of fun recipes and interviews with interesting people in the archives.
Oops! I almost signed off before mentioning a steamy romance series I enjoyed! If you have watched all of Bridgerton, read all of Bridgerton, made your way through the Bridgerton prequels and adjacent novels by Julia Quinn, dabbled in the Paris World’s Fair novels by Adriana Herrera, read the entire Kate Bateman canon, watched My Lady Jane, and still require more corsets and claret to power you through the remainder of July (it me), then I recommend this series by Mia Vincy.
Have a lovely rest of July! Let me know what I should read/watch next!
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ahhhh i want to go to forty foot!!!!!! will try to find the west coast of ireland version next month.....
Dead @ goggles the kids like