Good evening, Kibitzers!
Lovely summer weather here today, but we’re headed right back to humid 90s this week. But, we don’t have a scorching drought, floods, fires, tornadoes, or a cat 5 hurricane, so it’s not that bad. I hope everyone is safe!
Update: Many people in the Caribbean are not safe. Denise Oliver Velez diaries it here, with details on what World Central Kitchen is doing. In the thread, Pogoatty lists some additional worthy donation links.
So, funny story: As I mentioned at the outset of Debate Hell, I had a rapid change of plan about tonight's KTK. I had just the thing to change to, too, because I'd been watching this extremely calming YouTube channel called S.S. Marigold. It's of a species of YouTube in which someone does soothing things in their attractive and perfectly orderly home, often without sound other than quiet, ASMR-type noises. To enjoy these, you have to be willing to suspend disbelief and accept that this person lives in a home (that they often describe as "shabby") that would normally be found only in a magazine. But that's a nice story, right? Who wouldn't like at least an occasional vacation in that lovely, calm life? I happily started assembling a diary in a plain text document, as I often do to reduce my vulnerability to vanishing diary drafts.
The S.S. Marigold is a smallish, 70s-vintage houseboat, moored at a dock in a large lake, probably in northern Illinois or Wisconsin -- there are cicadas. A lady lives on this houseboat with her two cats and a carefully-curated array of mid-century collectibles. (These just look like flotsam from childhood to us older folks, but I think this household was the result of a more deliberate process.)
On her channel, she quietly marks the passing of the seasons by decorating, cooking simple dishes, planting a container garden, and shooting moody nature footage. It's all very cozy, peaceful, and relatively inconsequential activity, the sort of thing I myself am all about when it's freakout time in the real world.
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