Must be the season of the links

You've got to pick up every stitch

Author

Courtney E. Smith
October 29, 2023

This week’s newsletter brought to you by a week off for mental health/feeling uninspired by everything I was reading and a week off to take a trip to NYC. It’s good to be back!

My Stuff

Once again putting myself first to let you know that Nevermind Media’s new podcast, Have You Heard This One?, has launched. We’re three episodes in now, with Norma Tanega, the history of the word bitch in pop music, and Wilma Burgess out there. This week will be the story of Ursula Bogner and musical hoaxes. I hope you’ll check it out and that you enjoy it!

I also published a piece on Eater Dallas about David Bull, an Austin chef who is also a past James Beard-nominee moving to Mineral Wells, a small town an hour west of Fort Worth, to open a couple of restaurants in hotels there. Second Bar + Kitchen opened its first location outside of Austin this weekend, inside the Crazy Water Hotel. I got a chance to visit earlier in October, to see and stay at the Craz, which is very cool and budget-friendly, and eat the outstanding food. I also got to take a hard hat tour of the Baker Hotel and Spa, which is going to be a fancy one that will open in 2026. They were both built about a century ago when the town turned into this fascinating wellness destination, a la Hot Springs. Behind the scenes, Bull told me he’s conceptualizing a steakhouse in the Baker, along with an all-day cafe, and I got to get a sense of the massive kitchen he’s building. It’s going to be so cool.

Good Stuff

If you, like me, are not as aware as you should be of the problems that the ancestors of America’s enslaved people face in tracking down their family tree or origin stories, this is an eye-opening read. It’s also a great tale of Harvard gatekeeping owned history and artifacts from people who deserve access to them.

A very long read loaded with incredible reporting and compelling interactive storytelling. Long story short: China and human rights violations. Read it anyway and think about it when you’re in the frozen food section or ordering calamari.

An oddly comforting read, to me anyway. Also, I’ve been thinking about why we said the planet crossing 6 billion people would be a disaster some 20 to 30 years ago and then dropped the conversation. This addresses all that.

I don’t know that I buy the argument, but the method of philosophical thinking that got him here was a great read.

I wrote an obituary for a guy a few weeks ago who wasn’t a famous person, just a local bartender who’d worked at a lot of places and had a great reputation in the community. It took a whole week to verify his death, however, because I couldn’t find a legit obituary. I did find a lot of fake news sites with them and random people on YouTube reading from them. Obviously, I’m now obsessed. It’s apparently a whole thing.

Good Stuff

The Larry Sanders Show (Max)

Is it weird that I never watched this show? Did you ever watch it? It holds up great, not a lot of cringy jokes and many of the guest celebrities are still hella relevant. If you need an easy watch that falls under funny, here it is.

Adam Offitzer, a music programmer whose taste I like very much, dropped a newsletter with loads of links to fall-themed playlists. These days he only drops newsletters every now and then, so it’s a low effort/high reward subscription that I highly recommend.

Totally Killer (Amazon Prime)

Just a cute Halloween movie about time traveling back to the ‘80s. If scares and shocks aren’t your thing, go for this.