QK.

Maybe the last quarantine kit?

Because, here's hoping you have been vaxxed. Had your shots, stayed cloistered for the requisite two weeks post-vaxx, and are thinking about (responsibly, with masks and distancing) resuming something that maybe sort of approximates life in the Before Times. Listen to Dr. Fauci: don't resume all of it, don't drink from the firehose, don't think that you are entitled to go bonefishing in Belize because you've stayed home and acted (relatively) responsibly for 12 months. You are not entitled to anything. You are responsible for yourself and the people around you, friends, strangers, other humans.

Please hold it together just a little bit longer.

Also, isn't it extraordinary that everyone can get their shot or shots and not worry about how much it costs or how they're going to pay for it? Isn't it incredible that we've realized that public health is a public good?

Which is why this is a perfect time to point out that this state needs to expand Medicaid. We'd really like your help getting Medicaid expanded in Wyoming. Did you know that the Wyoming Department of Health estimates that 111 Wyomingites die every year because we haven't expanded Medicaid?

These deaths are entirely preventable. You can help us prevent them! Join the Healthy Wyoming coalition right here, right now.

In the meantime. We're coming around one more time with 3 essays, books, tv shows, movies, twitter follows, recipes, unsolicited opinions.

Essays

1. The Death of a Cat by Lyz Lenz | "And so, that night, a question about what if more pets die, turned into me telling him about love and about how I hope he’s the kind of person who bets it all on a dying cat and has no regrets."

2. Adia Barnes, Arizona coach and breastfeeding mom, lost a game but won Final Four weekend by Cindy Barnes | ESPN’s Holly Rowe could not let the moment pass. “For those of you who think this is too much information,” she told viewers from the sideline, “let’s normalize working mothers and all they have to do.”

3. I knew the truth about women in the Bible, and I stayed silent by Beth Allison Barr, PhD | "I knew women filled those verses, but I had never listened to their names being read aloud, one after the other:

   • Phoebe, the deacon who carried the letter from Paul and read it aloud to her house church.

   • Prisca (Priscilla), whose name is mentioned before her husband’s name (something rather notable in the Roman world) as a coworker with Paul.

   • Mary, a hard worker for the gospel in Asia.

   • Junia, prominent among the apostles.

   • Tryphaena and Tryphosa, Paul’s fellow workers in the Lord.

   • The beloved Persis, who also worked hard for the Lord.

   • Rufus’s mother, Julia, and Nereus’s sister."

Books

1. Circe by Madeline Miller | Myth, magic and single motherhood: Here's a review in The Guardian UK. "And that is where Miller anchors her story – in the emotional life of a woman."

2. The Sum of Us by Heather McGee | Here's a review in the NYT Review of Books "There is a striking clarity to this book; there is also a depth of kindness in it that all but the most churlish readers will find moving."

3. The Odyssey translated by Emily Wilson | Start with this bonus essay: A Translator's Reckoning with the Women of the Odyssey. "Since I completed my translation of the Odyssey, which is the first published version of Homer’s epic in English translated by a woman, readers have often assumed that I must sympathize above all with the story’s female characters. ... I read Homer’s great poem as a complex and truthful articulation of gender dynamics that continue to haunt us. The Odyssey traces deep male fears about female power, and it shows the terrible damage done to women, and perhaps also to men, by the androcentric social structures that keep us silent and constrained."

TV Shows

1. Ted Lasso (Because, sometimes, non-toxic masculinity is the best kind of feminism.)

2. Zoey's Extraordinary Playlist

3. Alias

Movies

1. Terra Femme | Courtney Stephens: "The part-video essay, part-lecture contains a selection of amateur travelogues, films shot by women between the 1920s and 1940s, that depict a vast range of landscape, travels, and experiences." Check out more about it here and here and here.

2. Legally Blonde | Here's a review of its feminist bona fides. Your question: Does it hold up? Their answer (and ours): Yes.

3. Reclaim Idaho Film | Three friends. One 1977 Dodge RV. 62,000 lives in the balance. Reclaim Idaho, a documentary film by Laura Wing-Kamoosi and Jim Kamoosi.

Twitter Follows | All MedEx all the time.

1. Healthy Wyoming @HealthyWyo

2. Reclaim Idaho @reclaimID

3. Alliance for a Healthy Kansas @ExpandKanCare

Recipes

1. Lemon yogurt anything cake (we make it with blueberries when we have them)

2. Lemony Bucatini With Cauliflower and Bacon

• 8 ounces bucatini pasta

• Kosher salt (optional)

• 1 tablespoon extra-virgin olive oil, plus more for pasta

• 4 strips thick-cut bacon, cut into 1-inch pieces

• 1 small white or yellow onion (about 5 ounces), diced

• 1 small head cauliflower (2 pounds), cut into bite-size florets

• 1 lemon

• 1/4 cup panko breadcrumbs

• 1/2 cup (about 2 ounces) freshly grated Parmesan cheese, plus more for serving

• 1/4 teaspoon crushed red pepper flakes, plus more to taste

Here's how we did it: take the bite sized florets of cauliflower, toss them in olive oil and S&P in a baking dish. Cook them in a 400 degree oven for 15 min, tossing occasionally. Add chopped onion, stir, cook for another 10 min. When you add the onion, throw some pasta--whatever you've got, we had plain old spaghetti, maybe because of that bucatini shortage?--into the boiling water. The roasted veggies and pasta should be done at about the same time. Reserve at least a cup of the pasta water, then drain the pasta. Pour the pasta back into the pot, add the roasted ingredients, some pasta water, cheese, breadcrumbs, and leftover bacon from the morning. Toss together, squeeze lemon over it, add more pasta water if it seems too dry. Serve.

3. Wine-and-honey pizza dough

• 12 tablespoons warm water (may need up to 1 or 2 tablespoons more water)

• 4 tablespoons white wine

• 1.5 teaspoon active dry yeast (one packet)

• 1 teaspoon honey

• 2 teaspoons salt

• 2 tablespoon olive oil

• 3 cups flour

Whisk wine, water and yeast in a medium bowl until yeast has dissolved. Add honey, salt and olive oil and stir. Add flour and no matter how dry it looks, work it with a spoon and your fingers until it comes together as a dough. Add more water one tablespoon at a time if you need. Knead. Oil the bowl, cover with plastic let it rise for an hour or up to two, until it is doubled.

Unsolicited opinions

1. Overwhelming research shows Medicaid is the most successful of all types of insurance in reducing poverty rates for women and in reducing complications and death after pregnancy. And maintaining health coverage for a full 12 months after giving birth is critically important. That’s because even in 2021, even in the United States, even in Wyoming, pregnancy is dangerous for women. The U.S. ranks last among industrialized countries for maternal mortality. Wyoming ranks tenth in the nation for maternal mortality and morbidity. Read the rest of Jen's column right here. You can also read more about why expanding Medicaid matters so much to women in this column by the Wyoming Women's Foundation. Also, p.s., Wyoming Department of Health projects 48% of all MedEx enrollees to be working women under the age of 35. That's because 3 out of 4 minimum wage workers in Wyoming are women. Which takes us back to the first point in this paragraph: Overwhelming research shows Medicaid is the most successful of all types of insurance in reducing poverty rates for women.

2. Read more poetry. Amanda Gorman, Emily Dickinson, Joy Harjo, Jenny Zhang. These female poets and their poems, too.

3. Reconsider what you think about when you pay your taxes. There is so much disdain when tax time comes. So much contempt. We seem to have a dominant narrative that we should avoid taxes, not pay taxes, find loopholes to pay less. There is some joy at getting a refund (except that, if you stop and think about it, that means that someone else has been *borrowing your money interest free* for the last year). We have a sort of backward view of it, collectively. We don't know where that came from, but we really, really hope that more people--especially in Wyoming--will adopt some of Anne Helen Petersen's perspective: "It’s making civilization better, more livable. And I fucking love paying for it. That’s what I say every time I pay my taxes: I love paying for civilization."