It was a strange, disjointed month. I started in Istanbul and ended in the US, with a long detour in the middle to the untethered world of quarantine. There was an election this month! It feels like it’s been years.
Best Of The Month
After what felt like an interminable wait, the US presidential was finally called for Joe Biden, and an immense weight was lifted. Though I found it hard to get my brain around it at first, I feel like my mind has been so poisoned by the present administration. Either way, it was the result I wanted and it was a relief.
The liberation from my quarantine was gloriously giddy. After 17 days near but not with my family, it was so joyful to just BE together. A great way to end a weird November.
Worst Of The Month
It seems like most of my “Best” are resolutions of these “Worsts.” Before the election was called, we suffered through the days of stressed-out waiting. Even though we were told ahead of time that it might take a while for the election results to be clear, the fact that it seemed so close at first (though, ultimately, it wasn’t really) felt like a slow-motion disaster.
This is the month I finally left Turkey, and flying 13.5 hours during a pandemic was, as you can imagine, HUGELY stressful. That flight is already uncomfortable, and it’s worse with a mask when you’re worried about everyone’s breath and the airline no longer gives food.
And then it turned out I was right to be stressed, because I came down with Covid that I probably caught on my flight! I wrote about this in depth, and though my case was VERY mild, it certainly falls into the category of this month’s lowlights.
What I’m Loving
Reads: With such a long quarantine, I had plenty of time to read. The highlights were The Medical Detectives by Berton Roueche (an old favorite, and relevant!), Lethal White by Robert Galbraith, and Out by Natsuo Kirino.
Music: My favorite songs from this month were Too Much Information by Dele Sosimi Afrobeat Orchestra, Yeh Vaada Raha by Asha Bhosle and Kishore Kumar (really love that Bollywood groove), and Warszawa by David Bowie. I listened to a LOT of Bowie in quarantine, especially the Low album, and this song is one of that album’s best.
Movies/TV: Even though I didn’t actually watch anything during my quarantine (which my sister thinks is insane, maybe it is?) I did watch both movies AND TV this month. I killed some of my time on the long flights watching Superman and Superman 2, which I’d never seen. They were both perfect silly plane movies, and Christopher Reeve and Margot Kidder are terrific. When I emerged from quarantine, my family and I watched Unorthodox, which they had already seen and many many people had recommended to me throughout the year. And yes, it was great!
Podcasts: I didn’t watch much in quarantine, but I did listen to a LOT of podcasts.
I binged You’re Wrong About’s 5-part Princess Diana series, which was a fascinating deep dive into Diana and the royal family. I remember when she died but was a bit too young to know anything about her before that, so it filled a gap in my cultural knowledge.
At the beginning of the month, I also binged the first season of Fiasco, about the Bush v Gore madness in the 2000 election. Maybe a strange choice to listen to before the 2020 election, but the series is great.
I loved The Edge: Houston Astros, about the long shadow of the Astros’ sign stealing scandal.
The 4-episode Anthems series from Switched On Pop was delightful straight through, and an interesting counterbalance to their Beethoven series earlier this year.
And some episodes I loved: What Trump Can Teach Us About Con Law did an unexpectedly moving episode called “Lame Duck”, which touched upon the effect of this presidency directly on the host of the show. Outlook is generally wonderful, but the episode “Unmasking a Horror Icon” was particularly great; the interview subject is a strange and fascinating man who injured himself as a stuntman before playing Jason in some of the Friday the 13th movies. I loved the episode “The Lost Cities of Geo” from 99% Invisible, about early internet websites and the people who archive them. And “Orphans” from Stories From The Eastern West was an incredibly moving episode about Polish children who ended up settling in New Zealand during World War II.
The Film Files
After accidentally shooting with Ektachrome 220 in my Holga over the summer, I accidentally did it again, and loved the strange results even more. The colors are unworldly magentas and yellows and indigos and the film is full of light leaks and it’s utterly surreal.
Ephemera
I spent a lot of time in quarantine painting with watercolors, and attempting to paint the same subject over and over again. It was an interesting exercise and reminded me how much I enjoy painting.
Upcoming
I will spend all of December in California! It’s the first month I won’t spend in Turkey at all in a long, long time.
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