Odessa’s Oddities & Curiosities | Week of 3/4/24

Dear friends,

This newsletter will be shorter…both as a function of request and my media consumption this week.

This time next week, I will be strolling the streets of Madrid with Ava. I’ve been using this lovely app/website called Wanderlog (delightful name), which has allowed me to be rather obsessive about our itinerary. I've been joyfully procrastinating on it for the past month. Can’t wait to see the Prado Museum and frequent all of Hemingway’s old haunts. Coincidentally, we’ve just gotten to Don Quixote in my epics class. I have particular sympathy for Don Quixote — haven’t I wished so many times to just pretend my life is a book! I’ve also been listening to Spanish-language podcasts in preparation for my trip.

In order to write my Jewish pirate novel on this trip, I’ve recently purchased a small, foldable Bluetooth keyboard to hopefully enhance the functionality of my phone as a computer on this trip. Even though I am Gen Z, I still much prefer typing with both hands than with my thumbs. I intend to summon the full mysterious vibes of typing away at European cafés.

I’ve been having trouble getting into books recently. I have start-and-stopped many a book in the past few weeks. My reading habits tend to be in clear orbit with my hormones interestingly. The Guest by Emma Cline thoroughly intrigued me but creeped me out a bit too much to continue. I’ve come back to Birnam Wood, this superb and cutting examination of capitalism, the environmental movement, what it means to be angsty in your 20s. Delicious prose.

On my list is All in Her Head — an examination of how medicine gaslights women. In this vein, the dearth of trauma research on the gut-brain axis when it comes to Jews boggles me.

In reference to last week’s newsletter, Cynthia directed me to this fascinating article on “The Neuroscientist Who Discovered He Was a Psychopath.”

My older subscribers will remember my previous experiences with The Giggles (I think this is my first intra-newsletter linkage), but there was another instantiation this week unfortunately smack-dab in the middle of running a study in my lab. I’m not going to give too many details (hopefully some of you will become participants at some point). But, one of our control conditions involves a video that is objectively ridiculous and absurd. I completely broke into ravenous giggles while explaining the procedure to my two wide-eyed participants, who then let out some chuckles of their own. Did I feel guilty interfering with the integrity of the experiment? Yes. But goddamn, were the giggles satisfying? Yes!

This past weekend was the Hillel Student Board Retreat — organized for 90 students that quickly dropped to 75 amid cancellations. Even as a logistics-lover & with a superb retreat-planning committee, this event most definitely ratcheted up my blood pressure, accentuated by acute Jewish pressure of worrying whether everyone will be well-fed and warm. We thankfully had more than enough food — we crammed every last cubic inch of Danya’s car with catered food from two kosher restaurants in New Haven. We also made 75 challah thanks to Harry’s hard work and surprisingly nonchalance when it came to measuring ingredients. And the retreat itself in a Catholic conference center was actually so lovely. We did a little friendgineering and had place settings for Shabbat dinner, and I was so pleased to see so many unexpected people have long conversations. I played many games of Bananagrams and Anagrams and had such lovely conversations about Judaism and ritual. But boy, I’m glad it’s over and went smoothly. Someone still needs to notify my heart to calm down.

Yesterday was the first sunny day of Spring. As you all know, I’m a fan of the seasons, but I’m particularly delighted when Spring samples her wares on the third day of March. The world — campus in particular — comes alight. Students are flushed out from the libraries to congregate on the many grassy courtyards and quads. I gathered my pen and Don Quixote and spent three-ish hours enjoying the sun on my face and the frolicky college students playing frisbee. A college catalog come to life!

In class, we covered Paul Celan. I was particularly taken by this line in the introduction (paraphrased) about how he would not and could not use the German of his destroyers, so he favored strange compound words and extant language. Celan’s poetry is dark and weird and full of texture. I recommend this week a poem, translated in my book as "With all my thoughts”, but online as “With all thoughts” and “With every thought”

My whole family was deeply amused by this Great Read on pants and their ballooning evolution in recent years. Particularly my dad highlighted: “As I write this paragraph, I’m sitting in a pair of wide-legged, double-pleated, dusty-eggplant-colored corduroys. When I glance down at them, they feel stupid to me in the most pleasingly strange, personally appropriate way possible. When I get up and walk around, the way they slosh around my legs strikes me as even stupider. I love them.”

Did you know about the Jewish history of method acting??? I suppose I should have known given its neurotic intensity. But a superb episode from Decoder Ring dives into it here.

Also from Decoder Ring, an episode on who owns the Tooth Fairy! I was tickled by all the different traditions concerning what children do with their teeth, and how this nefarious couple tried to license the tooth fairy much to feminist outrage. I remember my dad telling me these detailed stories of how the Tooth Fairies managed all the teeth-collecting and all the logistics involved.

A conversation with Ava instigated this whole rabbit hole into my all-time favorite makeup remover: Pond’s Cold Cream. Introduced to me by Glamma, this stuff remains my favorite, cheap, and effective make-up remover (please remember I’m 75 at heart). Also, perhaps the key to everlasting youth? Who knows.

This week, we mourned Richard Lewis — as the NYT put it “With Richard Lewis, Kvetching Was Charismatic” — the best obituary title a Jew could ask for. May his memory be a blessing ❤️ 

And it’s Simone’s 21st birthday!!! Happy birthday, Simone!

With love & curiosity,

Odessa