Summer social (distancing): A quarantine kit for late July

Welp.

We skipped June.

Call it an act of optimism.

But. Now. [sigh]

We're pretty well heading back to lockdown so, to get you ready, here's a July quarantine kit, slightly tailored for summer. Jump in the comments and add to this with three great outdoor activities!

Essays

1. This is raw, heartbreaking, and essential COVID reading: "The New Stability."

2. Lyz Lenz's weekend essay, "It was a pleasure to burn," from her substack Men Yell At Me. On the occasion of what would have been her 15th wedding anniversary, she burned her wedding dress, reflected on the end of her marriage, and got herself ready for whatever comes next.

3. One more time for the people in the back: Check out CST for a great story on women's representation in Wyoming! Now also featured in Ms Magazine: It's Time for a New Social Contract.

Books

1. When Women Vote by Amber McReynolds

2. Ghosting The News by Margaret Sullivan

3. Belabored: A vindication of the rights of pregnant women by Lyz Lenz

TV Shows | Featuring twitter commentary (and at least one review) from Emily Nussbaum, television critic for the New Yorker.

1. The Great | Historically inaccurate and very, very good. "Somehow equally dark & bright."

2. Never Have I Ever | This is wonderful. Watch it. "Funny, warm & clever."

3. Call the Midwife | "Yep, crying at Call the Midwife."

Movies | We've been outside, we haven't been watching movies much. So we're only offering up two. Both fronted by dudes and therefore breaking with the tradition of these QKs. Sorry.

Also: These are maybe not what you're looking for in quarantine. Like, is it helpful to watch someone wake up and live the same day over and over again? Or is that kind of too much like life as we know it? When you're living in quarantine/on a desert island/experiencing groundhog day, does that fact that Bill Murray is getting better at his one day inspire you? Or kind of bum you out because that's not really how it is going here, in COVID life?

Anyway, here are the two:

1. Palm Springs

2. Groundhog Day

Twitter Follows

1. Karen K. Ho | Best part of this twitter follow? She'll remind you to stop doomscrolling.

2. Laurie Garrett | Pretty sure her Pulitzer came from writing about a previous pandemic.

3. Kelly Dittmar | Just in case we told you about Kelly Dittmar already, here's a bonus: RepresentWomen.

Bonus twitter follow: Susan Orlean. (also provides a bonus book: The Library Book)

Reader, if you did not enjoy Susan Orlean's masterclass of how to rule twitter a few weeks back, do yourself a favor and enjoy her drunken twitter spree. For those of you who can't, won't, or don't participate in twitter, first, we are sad for you, second, we are happy for you, and third, her antics made the Washington Post so you can read about it right here.

It kicks off with:

Hits its stride with:

And she describes it like this, "I wasn’t trying to be funny at all! I was ruminating over this ruin of a Friday night, where I wanted some candy. I wanted my cat to get in bed with me, and I was reaching the limit of patience with modern life in 2020."

Recipes

1. Sausage and peppers pasta with broccoli

2. Scrambled eggs | The trick to these? Whisk the shit out of the eggs until they are good and frothy. Whisk, whisk, whisk! When you see a consistent yellow color and tiny bubbles across the top of your eggs, throw in a splash of milk. Put a touch of veg oil in a pan on medium heat. Pour your eggs in. Slice up some cheese as it starts cooking. Start mixing it around. Add salt and pepper. Cook to your desired level of egg-doneness.

3. Summer fruit & veg! If you can grow it, find it, or can afford it, summer fruit & veggies are the best. Tomatoes, corn, snap peas, spinach, cherries, berries. PEACHES! Stuff your faces, it won't last long.

And a side note in the recipes section. Recipes come from food. Currently, food in Wyoming is tax exempt. AND IT SHOULD STAY THAT WAY. Why are we telling you this? Because the state of Wyoming is on the brink of fiscal collapse. And the state's elected members seem to think that a way to claw back some dollars and buy a few days of reprieve is by removing the sales tax exemption on food. Who is that likely to affect the most? Women. Families. People who've recently lost jobs. Basically, the people who can least afford it. Which is why the exemption was created in the first place. So get educated. Learn more and speak up.

Opinions | Where even to start?

1. The election is less than 100 days away. Get involved. What you do in the next 99, 98, 97... days will determine the outcome of the election. Register to vote. Help other people register. Call your friends and family and make sure they are registered. Then do it. GO VOTE.

2. Get outside! It is so much easier in Wyoming right now to feel a small sense of normalcy if you can get outside a couple of times a day. Sit on your steps, walk in your neighborhood, take advantage of multi-use public lands! Bonus: You can do all these things with friends and family. At a distance. With masks on. And hand sanitizer. We continue to urge caution and respect. And here's why: We live in community. We may be responsible for ourselves, but we are also responsible for our neighbors. We are responsible for the least among us. And we want to make sure that everyone is safe and we do the small and useful and necessary things that we can to diminish the spread of the virus. (Andy Slavitt lays out the steps right here in a (very long) thread.)

3. People. WEAR. A. MASK. Take this seriously. Masks cut the rate of transmission by over 80%.

Bonus opinion: Listen to Folklore the unexpected new album from TSwift and also Gaslighter the long-awaited new album from The Chicks. We're thinking about taking on the rest of 2020 with the energy of Natalia Maines finding tights on her boat.