Odessa's Oddities & Curiosities | Week of 8/25/2025

Dear friends,

tl;dr moving to nyc! avodah fundraiser, end of paris, coming home, oddities & curiosities, birthdays

Somehow, it only dawned on me very recently that I’m actually moving to New York City!! In a little over a week, I will be moving to my favorite city in the world. What the hell! Somehow, in all the excitement of Paris, the joys of being home, the long-future-oriented-anxiety, I hadn’t really thought about it??

New York City was the very first city I visited at just six months old. And since, I’ve been back, perhaps upward of 35 times. But soon, I’ll get to call it home. At least for the next eleven months. I know some of the romance, the illusion of it all will disappear, but I’m looking forward to excavating all that mystery, leaning into the magic. Baby picture from my first-year-of-life-photo-album below:

My mom has two rules for people in their twenties. 1. Swing big. 2. Live in NYC. My new aim for this newsletter is to be like the Carrie Diaries, but with fewer high heels and more books.

But what’s bringing me to New York City (besides, of course, the childhood dream of it all): the Avodah Jewish Service Corps. I will be managing a digital food pantry (food will not be digital! people can just order online) through the United Jewish Council of the East Side. Many of you might have seen my request on Facebook, LinkedIn etc., but I care deeply about food access and food justice. All the embodiment research solidifies how important it is for human beings (and all creatures, while we’re at it) to have regular and reliable access to food. Not only that, my love and passion for food is deeply intertwined with what it means to be Jewish for me (challah, kugel, brisket, I could go on…). This is why this fellowship and this organization felt almost divinely designed for me. I’m fundraising for Avodah, because food pantries and soup kitchens across the country are under increasing strain because of the Trump Administration’s cuts to SNAP. Read more here and here. You can donate here, and if you’re in the NYC-area, come volunteer at the food pantry! Thank you so much to the folks who have already donated ❤️ 

On the subject of food access, a UN-backed initiative has declared a famine in Gaza. An unimaginable horror that I cannot begin to condense into words. World Central Kitchen is “seeking to rapidly scale up production to an unprecedented one million hot meals a day” in Gaza. You can donate to their efforts here.

I have been home for a wonderful couple of weeks, but a few last tid-bits from Paris. Noah and I visited the Paris Catacombs, which have occupied my imagination for years. Super eerie—and unnervingly organized. At the end of our audio tour, we learned that there was a clandestine concert in the Catacombs in 1897 featuring performances of Chopin's Funeral March and Saint-Saëns' Danse Macabre for approximately 100 guests. Each guest received a secret invitation, inviting them to the Rotonde de Tibias at midnight. Extremely Oddities-and-Curiosities-coded, if I do say so myself.

I took a solo trip to Giverny, home of Claude Monet. Great article about Giverny that Bubi sent me here. I gallivanted in his garden by the water-lilies—well, to be accurate, tried my best to scooch around the hordes of tourists taking photos. It was all indelibly Romantic and cozy and magical. I ended my day reading and working on my novel in the garden.

I’ve been reading Paris, France by Gertrude Stein (merits no explanation). A succulent morsel:

“the essence of being civilized is to possess yourself as you are, and if you possess yourself as you are you of course cannot possess any one else, it is not your business. It is because of this element of civilization that Paris has always been the home of all foreign artists, they are friendly, the French, they surround you with a civilized atmosphere and they leave you inside of you completely to yourself” (56-57)

Stein’s confidence is always a delight.

Maya and I paused in front of this arresting portrait at the Petit Palais. The painted woman is decadently dressed and almost taunts you with your attention. We later each bought a print in the gift shop, and of course, this woman was a Jew: Sarah Bernhardt. Some sort of Jewess-internal-compass at work.

Noah and I had the most marvelous last day in Paris which involved the most flakey croissant, a run along the Seine, cleaning every last nook and cranny of our apartment (earning back our full security deposit!!), a Bateaux Mouche or river cruise along the Seine , and then a spectacular French bistro dinner in the Marais (where they served complimentary green beans and mashed potatoes). Perfection.

Then I have a month back in Mill Valley. And being away always makes me appreciate my home, but especially so when I get to show someone Mill Valley. Danya visited me, and I got to play tourist with her as we visited the waterfalls, did a wine tasting (ask us about Italian varietals), had many park visits with Rosie, went to the beach, The Exploratorium etc etc. I feel so lucky to have a home I love to show to the people I love.

I could lie and say that this was the summer that I went to Paris, that I considered many possible futures, the summer that I graduated from college, but really, really this was the summer that I was obsessed with The Summer I Turned Pretty. Holy shit. Season Three episodes are being dropped weekly, and truly, my entire life revolves around and emanates from this show. Team Conrad, obviously. Anyway, do text if you’re also as obsessed as me.

Some oddities & curiosities:

I consider myself a pretty voracious reader, but my dad sent me this article on a guy who read 3,599 books…my new icon! Read more here.

How Sesame Street reflects the streets of NYC & philosophy of urban design.

Are you familiar with the secret society of the Order of the Occult Hand? A long-standing inside joke between journalists who weave “It was as if some occult hand had…” into their pieces.

There was a lot of Internet flutter about what it meant to be “cultured” in the 90s i.e. in the know enough to work at Vogue. They had a list of people, things, events you should be conversant in. Take the quiz to see how well you would have fared. (I scored 26/32, but with some lucky guesses)

It wasn’t until writing this newsletter that I realized how much I’ve been into urban design recently. But I have three (three!!) videos I recommend on city maps and how they intersect with city history. One on Paris. One on Broadway in Manhattan, and one on Brooklyn. I could nerd out about this forever, and the videos (esp the latter two) are very high production value. I will be watching all of Daniel Steiner’s catalogue, for sure.

This great essay on blurry vision and Impressionism from Dani Shapiro (a friend of my Mom’s).

Oh! Scrolling Substack has been my new favorite procrastinating technique. And also on Instagram, I see a lot of “What media I consumed this week” or “what media you should consume instead of scrolling” etc. (This newsletter is basically another form of that, so I am part of the problem). But I’ve been thinking about this interesting new phase of negotiating our relationship to technology, where we’re hyper-aware that the constant scrolling is not good for us, and searching for “healthy” alternatives. Which is why I thought this Reel was so brilliant, which makes the case that we’ve started to think of the content we consume online a la nutritional value— ‘content diets’. Ahem, food for thought.

Lastly, Morgan turned me onto slime molds—crazy, beautiful, otherworldly organisms. Stop reading and go stare at those crazy creatures.

A few birthdays of note! Glamma turns 85 on Tuesday. In honor of her birthday, I’m sharing an essay I wrote a few years ago about her oasis i.e. her apartment, and our sleepovers. And Ava turns 22 on Saturday! I’m so excited to be in Chicago with her —it’s also our friendship-aversary because we met on her birthday on Old Campus four years ago!

With love & curiosity,

Odessa