Nancy Davis Kho's Blog, page 12

Big News

 

 

You guys?

I got a book deal.

I am beyond thrilled, for a few reasons. One is that the project that inspired THANKS FOR EVERYTHING: CULTIVATING HAPPINESS ONE LETTER OF GRATITUDE AT A TIME, when I wrote fifty thank-you letters to the people, places, and things that had shaped my first five decades, was one of the most meaningful, happiness-building things I’ve ever done, and I want to make it easy for other people to replicate it. I truly believe in this practice of writing gratitude letters, and I feel so lucky to have found a publisher to help me spread the word.

Second is that in documenting the project, I not only get a refresher on my fifty people/places/things, I get to think way beyond my original list, to ALL the categories of people with whom readers may want to reconnect. I already have a notebook full of names to whom I’ll be sending Round 2 of my gratitude letters.

Third reason: I have an amazing agent and editor who are going to help me make this book the very best it can be, in time for the planned release at the end of 2019. How fortunate is that?

And the fourth reason: now, when you’re ready to give up on a life dream because it hasn’t happened after ten years of sustained effort, I now get to be the person you picture shouting, “Don’t you DARE.”

Twelve years ago, at my fortieth birthday party, one major career change and three cocktails in, I yelled, “I’M A WRITER!” I figured it would be one year, two years tops before my first book was published, with a whole raft of follow up books after that.

And I have in fact written two books since then, one historical fiction and one memoir. They sit in a drawer. They are not ready for primetime, even if they took a whole lot of time to write. I have also written a gajillion blog posts. I have written articles, I have written profiles, I have written essays, and I have written reviews. I even started a podcast.

What it took me twelve years to do was my original goal: publish a book.

What if I’d given up trying after only nine or ten years of writing, or even after eleven years and six months?

My friend Mary Laura Philpott, whose debut essay collection I Miss You When I Blink comes out next year, said to me earlier this year, “I think you need to burn off a certain amount of words before you get to the good stuff.”

So if you’ve been reading this blog for a while, thank you for sticking with me through all those words as I got them out of my system. I promise I’ll do my best to make THANKS FOR EVERYTHING the good stuff. It feels like the book I was meant to write.

Fun fact! My deadline is November 15. Yes, of this year. That is insane. And yet I will meet it. Which means the blog posts might get a little sporadic here this fall, and I may even skip a podcast episode, depending on how long it takes me to figure out the difference during editing between em-dash and en-dash. (I’ve tried scaling that mountain more than once.) I hope you’ll bear with me.

If you’d like to get the occasional update in the coming year on progress with the book, I’m going to set up a separate email list for that. One thing I know for sure from watching my fabulous successful author friends is that they’ve needed the help of their friends to spread the word. If you’d like to be part of that effort for THANKS FOR EVERYTHING, click on over here and let me know.

Otherwise, I’m heading back into the writing cave until I get to today’s word count. And remember: do NOT give up on yourself. I’m counting on being your cautionary tale.

I decided in the middle of the night Thursday that the book needs playlists so here’s one that will go into the chapter on writing letters to friends, obvi.

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CommentsThis made me get choked up! Very excited for you, Nancy, and ... by Amy EvjeOMG Thank you for being a friend! I am so happy and excited for ... by ShiraBig Congratulations, Nancy!!! I cannot wait to order my advance ... by AnnOMG!! That is such fabulous news!! And to think I knew you when ... by Carolyn LuttickenAlways an inspiration in hard work, tenacity & the value of a ... by Jill McClearyPlus 5 more...Related StoriesTop 5 Things You Can’t Live Without in 2018!Music Books for Holiday Gift Giving 

Ep 38 Listeners’ First Concerts

“Hooked on live shows from that moment on”: From Metallica to Manilow, parking lot panic attacks to pretend roadies, Cow Palace to CBGB’s, Midlife Mixtape listeners answer the question: “What was your first concert, and what were the circumstances?”

Shhhhh, don’t tell Barry’s mom that he was the band’s roadie

Thanks as always to M. The Heir Apparent, who provides the music behind the Midlife Mixtape podcast – check him out here!

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Oakland: Ready for a Close-up?

Oakland has had itself a cinematic 2018.

The first hint came via “Black Panther,” directed by Oakland native Ryan Coogler – the movie starts and ends in Oakland and if you need me, I’m grabbing a coffee at the Wakanda Cultural Exchange Center.

Then came the movie “Sorry to Bother You” by local director/rapper Boots Riley. The movie mixes fantasy and reality in the story of a young black man who finds success working at an Oakland telemarketing company…once he starts using a “white” voice. Things get weird real fast and veer off into disturbing, uncomfortable, and thought-provoking, the kind of movie I am still thinking about two months later. All the while, Oakland peeks over the shoulders of the actors, looking all sunny and gritty like it tends to do.

Then came “Blindspotting” which was even more squarely centered on The Town, and if I haven’t already hammered you to death with my plea to go see this movie, start preparing your funeral playlist. East Bay natives Daveed Diggs (from both Hamilton and black-ish) and Rafael Casal wrote an amazingly funny, frank, eye-opening movie about friendship, about race, about toxic masculinity and gentrification and about Oakland. Doesn’t hurt that the soundtrack is A++ and features Oakland homies like Too $hort and Mistah F.A.B. It’s the best movie I’ve seen in ages.

So a couple of weeks back, when we caught Diggs and Casal at an in-store panel discussion the Apple Store on Union Square in San Francisco, ground zero for the so-much-money tech crowd that has taken over that city, I wasn’t completely surprised to hear the moderator worry a bit about Oakland getting too popular and losing its soul.

One of the panelists runs a clothing line that touts Oakland on every item. She talked about seeing people wearing her designs and wishing she could rip it off of them, and the ignominy of having a BMW with her store’s sticker on the bumper cut her off in traffic on West Grand. (The updated version of having a Deadhead sticker on a Cadillac.) Putting aside the fact that she’s lamenting the commoditization of Oakland cool when her products make it easier to achieve, I had to laugh.

Because Oakland always screws up.

It’s not a diss. It’s true. If any city could take this moment of cultural awareness and turn the opportunity to dust, it’s us. I say it with love, and with the experience of living here 21 years. It’s part of our charm.

When our oldest daughter first started school in 2003, Oakland schools were in state receivership due to budgetary mismanagement. Things got a little better over time and local control was restored. In August 2018, as our youngest daughter started her last year of Oakland public school, OUSD is once again in such bad straits that a huge chunk of school sports were cancelled, triggering Title IX review since the cuts fell disproportionally on female athletes. Of course no one at OUSD considered that before making the cuts. It’s Oakland, baby. When my husband once asked the mayor to look into filling potholes on a street that looks bombed out, she suggested he fill them himself and recited (from memory and repetition) the exact products to buy at Home Depot that work best.

But this is also Oakland: the Raiders pitched in $250k to save sports across the district. An anonymous donor is fully funding two of the axed girl’s sports. Remember last spring when our kids’ high school no longer had the funds to pay for AP testing, and the community donated $35k via GoFundMe? So Oakland. Barbeque Becky calls the cops on people grilling at Lake Merritt, and the next weekend approximately the entire black population of Oakland is grilling at the lake and participating in an Electric Slide flash mob. V. Oakland. The same mayor letting newcomers to the city know that ICE would be conducting raids and to take necessary precautions to protect their families? Peak Oakland.

In the past month, two houses on our block have changed hands. In one case, the new residents are a 30-something couple who drive two Range Rovers and have a third car in their garage, making their car:human ratio 3:2. At the other end of the street, the new people drive a Jag. I’m sure they’re very nice people – I haven’t met any of them yet. It’s reasonable to think they’re calling their friends and saying, “Come see us in Oakland! It’s where it’s at!” If you’ve seen “Blindspotting” you know why I’ll be checking to see if they have cool new tattoos behind their ears.

Wait until they go to the Oakland DMV to update their licenses and learn it’s a 9 hour wait, but only if you make an appointment first. Wait until the city forgets to send them a property tax bill and they don’t realize it’s due and have to pay a penalty. Wait until someone breaks a window on the Range Rover and the 911 operator directs them to call the Non-Emergency Line. That is, if they answer.

If they give up the idea of a Hollywood ending for Oakland and stick around anyway, they may just have what it takes.

I’m from the city of Warriors, I’m from the city of Raiders, I’m from the city of $hort, I’m from the city of Hammer…NSFW but this song is a blapper

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Ep 37 Journalist Barbara Bradley Hagerty

“The bear is dinner”:  Barbara Bradley Hagerty, author of “Life Reimagined: The Science, Art, and Opportunity of Midlife” on two big secrets to midlife happiness, balancing a short- and long-term life outlook, and a French concert that wasn’t.

Barb’s website

Books

Life Reimagined: The Science, Art, and Opportunity of Midlife
Fingerprints of God: The Search for the Science of Spirituality,

More of Barb’s longform writing and radio stories:

No Way Out: Magazine story
Podcast, Part 1: No Way Out
Podcast, Part 2: Who Killed Jeffrey Young?
Podcast, Part 3: How Innocence Becomes Irrelevant

Sandra Day, Angel Dog

Marcus Aurelius

Well, you know, the French always have cutting edge hairstyles, which is why I’ve shown JBJ’s exact cut from this video to my hairdresser in the past.

Thanks as always to M. The Heir Apparent, who provides the music behind the Midlife Mixtape podcast – check him out here!

The post Ep 37 Journalist Barbara Bradley Hagerty appeared first on Midlife Mixtape .

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Adventure in the Tried and True

This week I’m off the grid at Family Camp marking fifty years of this family tradition…and jockeying for position in the bathroom line at Laurel Cabin.

One of the greatest gifts travel provides us is the chance to view the world through a new lens, to broaden our perspectives and reinforce the sense that, despite surface differences, people everywhere are connected. There’s nothing that makes me feel more alert and alive than those first hours in a new locale, absorbing unfamiliar sights, smells, and sounds while I try to get my bearings.

But if I’m honest, my favorite trip every year is to a place where not much has changed since I first visited at age two.

Back in 1968 my parents succumbed to a hard sell from their neighbors up the street to join them at a Family Camp in the Adirondack Mountains, a four-hour drive north from the ‘burbs of Rochester where we lived. Camp Gorham was an old hunting lodge built at the edge of Darts Lake in the early 1900s for vacationing New York City types, and was later purchased by the Rochester YMCA. During the summer, Gorham served as a kids’ camp, its rambling cabins built from logs hewn on site, with an “H”- shaped dock for swimming, a Rec Hall for square dancing, and a big brown barn and corral for horseback adventures. But the last week of August was reserved for families.

Loading up three kids under the age of eight into a woody-paneled station wagon, my parents arrived at Camp Gorham just in time for the rainstorms to roll in. Both the family and the rain stayed for the week, even though by midweek, when an errant flying squirrel careened through the bedroom my older brother and sister shared and set off Richter-scale screaming, my parents were not favorably inclined to return.

Except they did. We’ll go again this coming August, for our fiftieth consecutive year.

Of course, there aren’t five of us anymore. Dad passed in 2016, but we don’t lack for population density. While it fluctuates year to year, there are a minimum of seventeen people – spouses, mother-in-laws, grandkids, college roommates, boyfriends and girlfriends undergoing the Family Camp litmus test. All crammed into Laurel Cabin, with its two temperamental bathrooms. Still no showers. Fingers crossed for 2019!

Many of the thirty-five or so other families who show up every year have also been attending since the Johnson Administration. Like the members of my clan, they attempt to swim, sail, horseback ride, square-dance, bike, and rock climb until even the tendons in their pinkie toes are sore, all while eating food designed to appeal to eleven-year-old boys. For people who don’t see each other for 51 weeks at a time, what we voluntarily subject ourselves to every August has created surprisingly strong bonds. There’s a reason that when a Family Camper gets married, there is a bride’s side, a groom’s side, and, in the back, the Family Camp section.

Still, as predictable and familiar a place as Camp Gorham is to me, I’ve found that I can capture the thrill of discovery and transformation that comes with foreign travel, if I just try hard enough.

Take fashion. If I sit in a Parisian café and watch French women pass by for more than ten minutes, I inevitably decide to throw out my whole wardrobe and rethink my relationship to purple lipstick. Once I when I was in France for work, I blew my entire week’s budget on a silk scarf, which I tied in inventive ways for about a month. Only some of them looked like I learned them in a wound care textbook. My outer appearance shifted, a reflection of the inner changes that come from being far from home.

The same fashion assimilation process occurs at Family Camp, though moving in the opposite direction. I always show up on Day 1 with my hair did, my makeup just so, a fresh outfit and clean sneakers. By Tuesday, I say to my brother as he heads to the shower house, “I swam after lunch, same difference.” By Thursday, I have sorted my socks into “only worn twice,” “probably ok if I air them out,” and “reserved for horse barn” piles. As I pack up on the last day, I’m always startled when I come across my unopened makeup bag at the bottom of my duffel. I packed that? What was I thinking?

Mealtimes are another arena in which it’s possible to recollect the thrill of faraway travel. There’s nothing more exciting when you travel internationally than taking a big, trusting bite of something that may or may not be protein, you don’t know, you couldn’t read the menu and pantomime only gets you so far.

Similarly, in the camp Mess Hall, as each family’s designated “waiter” returns from the kitchen holding a big stainless steel bowl at chest height and wearing an expression of alarm, I get to re-experience the buzz of the unknown. Mystery meat Bolognese? Jello squares? Bread slabs that we have to be informed are “personal pizzas” in order to understand them? Nothing to do other than swallow it down and pray that someone at Laurel Cabin packed Pepto Bismol.

Speaking of Pepto, let’s be honest: one aspect of international travel rife with opportunity for surprises is the bathroom. It’s why, when I used to travel to Tokyo for business, I excused myself for the restroom long before I really needed to use it. Because if you know anything at all about Japanese toilet technology, you know they are light years ahead of the rest of us, and bathrooms offer a menu of buttons to rival a NASA supercomputer. Before I ever sat down on a Japanese throne, I first pushed every single button, so I wouldn’t be surprised at their functions when I was in a more, shall we say, defenseless pose.

Oh, posterior blow dryers. You Japanese are genius.

But even at familiar old Family Camp, there continue to be surprises around the use of the restrooms, most occasioned by the fact that the seventeen of us have to share two of them (not to mention the aforementioned gastronomic adventures.) Whether it’s blow-drying your hair while someone else bandages up a fresh floor-hockey wound, inter-generational communal flossing, or the unannounced arrival of a mouse or Daddy Longlegs just as you’re kidding yourself you might be alone for three minutes, the bathroom is the least predictable place in the cabin.

My favorite incident took place a decade ago when one of my millions of then-teenager boy relatives was in the upstairs bathroom and my younger daughter, about eight, needed to use it. Already schooled in the competitive nature of Family Camp bathroom access, she stood stone-faced in her little turquoise bikini, her noise almost touching the door. When strapping young James, who is 6’4”, finally opened the bathroom door to see this tiny and wholly unexpected sentinel, he emitted a scream not unlike that of an eight-year-old girl. “Jesus, it’s like a scene from The Grudge!” he yelled, slumping against the door frame and clutching his heart as my daughter slipped silently underneath his arm and shut the door behind her.

I think, though, what brings me back year after year are not the things I can still experience with novel appreciation, but the things that never change: the early morning mists off the lake slowly lifting to reveal a family of loons. The fir-scented breeze that sweeps through yellowing birch leaves and bends the grass in the horse pasture before disappearing over the ridge. The pines that ring the whole lake, all meticulously trimmed by hungry deer so that the foliage starts at exactly the same height, like they were quality-checked by an engineer bearing a tape measures and level.

And of course the people who put the family in Family Camp, my unruly and fun-loving relatives who make it worth what is now a cross-country flight for me to attend every August.

I’ll always look for excuses to travel abroad. But I’ll never regret the years that I stick to the tried and true.

 

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What Was YOUR First Concert?

If you’ve listened to any of the thirty-six episodes of the Midlife Mixtape Podcast, you know that the first question I always ask my guests is “What was the first concert you went to, and what were the circumstances?” It’s my favorite icebreaker IRL too because everyone has a story – of a parent who dragged them to a show they didn’t appreciate until much later, or an older sibling who snuck them out to a show they probably shouldn’t have seen, or a road trip with friends that we would struggle to permit our own 21st century kids to undertake.

One important lesson I’ve learned, thirty-six interviews in: the durability of the “1, but then 2!” answer format. It goes like this: “Well, my first concert was Herb Alpert because he was my parents’ favorite, but then I saved up and bought tickets to see Queen!” We can discuss Queen all day but I promise I’m equally impressed by Herb Alpert.

And now, I want to know YOUR answer.

For Episode 38, which will air on Tuesday Sept 11, I’m handing over the podcast mic to my readers and listeners, as it were. I’d love a chance to share your first concert story, with as many details as you care to provide!

There are lots of ways to send in your answer to the question,

What was your first concert, and what were the circumstances?

Leave a comment on this blog post
Email me your story at dj@midlifemixtape.com
Send me a tweet @midlifemixtape
Leave me a voice mail right from your computer! If you’re reading this on your desktop or mobile device, you’ll see a blue button on the right hand side that says, “What Was Your First Concert?”Just press it, and you can start recording with one click. I would LOVE for people to do this so I can use their actual voices on the episode!
Record a voice memo into your phone and email it to dj@midlifemixtape.com. Again, it would be so cool to hear and share your story in your actual voice.

C’mon, I know you guys have some great stories to share – did you sneak out a window in 8th grade to see Metallica? Did you fall asleep on your dad’s lap at The Eagles? Did you drive yourself because you were 34 years old before you went to your first show, and it was the symphony? Inquiring minds want to know.

Let me know by September 1, please!

And then tune in on September 11th for the round-up. I’m looking forward to hearing it as much as you are!

Here’s mine…

Speaking of the podcast, I’m honored that mine has been included on two great lists recently:

10 Podcasts Women Over 40 Need To Be Listening To Right Now, from The Girlfriend newsletter
Podcasts for Midlife Women That You’ll Love, from SheSparks

I would just add that, dudes, you’ll love my show too. Ok thanks.

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Ep 36 Author Rob Sheffield

“10,000 conversations about Prince”:  Rolling Stone columnist and author Rob Sheffield on how how shared music and memories temper our losses, the benefits to practicing adaptability, and the enduring genius of Disco Naps.

Rob’s website
Links to all of Rob’s books

Forever grateful to Rob for reminding me about L’Trimm in one of the chapters of Talking to Girls About Duran Duran. How could I have forgotten them?

Thanks as always to M. The Heir Apparent, who provides the music behind the Midlife Mixtape podcast – check him out here!

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College Search Season Is Upon Us

This post is made possible with support from FindTheRightCollege.com. All opinions are my own.

Our youngest daughter is heading into fall of her senior year of high school, and you know what that means: EVERYONE PANIC ABOUT COLLEGE.

I’m only kidding, but also kind of not kidding. First semester of senior year is rough on everyone: the kids, the parents, the teachers, the admissions officers, the USPS employees who have to deliver approximately 8000 pieces of mail each day from obscure schools that have gotten your child’s name and address from the SAT/ACT Industrial Complex and believe that they are exactly the student needed to make the class of 2023 perfect, or at least drive down those “percentage of applicants accepted” numbers.

Because we’ve done this once already, I’m feeling a little less tender than I did when I wrote an essay about not talking incessantly to the 17-year-olds in our lives about post-high-school plans. More than that, I’ve had watched my oldest daughter and her peers negotiate their first few years out of high school. Some have ended up at their top choice schools and are happy there, sure. It happens.

But a lot more kids we know are at schools that ranked much lower down their “dream school” list and love them so much they can’t imagine being elsewhere, or they’ve transferred after realizing that their first school wasn’t a fit, or they’re taking time off to recalibrate what they want to do. One kid we know is in the Navy working on a nuclear submarine, which gives me a little pause because he’s the same kid who once ate ice out of a chemistry lab sink that had God knows what chemicals in it, but hey, he seems to be doing great.

My point is that choosing the right college is important, but that keeping an open mind about what the “right” college is may be equally important.

School guidance counselors are thin on the ground in many districts, which has given rise to private counselors that families pay out of pocket for help in figuring out where to invest those application fees. And while I appreciate the expertise of these private counselors, and we have used them for own daughters, I do.not.love this system. It widens and calcifies the opportunity gap between the haves and have-nots even further: families like mine that know how college applications work and can afford to buy help in getting it right, and families for whom the college application process is a complete mystery.

I’m torn. My daughter’s class at her Oakland public high school has four guidance counselors for 2,000 kids. I feel like those counselors’ time is better spent with the families who need extra assistance; us hiring a counselor equates to more of their time they can devote to other students. There are a ton of families who need tools that break it all down in easy-to-follow steps.

Which is why I was really pleased to learn about a new service called FindTheRightCollege.com. Created by former admissions officers from top universities who were frustrated when they realized how many families were not finding accurate and complete information about the college admissions process, it’s an affordable online membership program that guides students and parents through the entire process, soup to nuts. Using videos, timelines, worksheets, and interactive planners, Find the Right College makes it so much easier for ALL students to navigate this process.

My daughter tested it out during July – her favorite feature was the US map with sliders that allowed you to input and adjust various criteria for a visual representation of where schools were that fit her wish list. (Northeastern and midwestern schools appear to be off the table for this hothouse flower.) MY favorite feature was that she was doing those sliders with her best friend in the dining room while I shamelessly eavesdropped from the kitchen, thereby learning more about what my kid is looking for in a school than I had garnered in months of face-to-face conversation.

There are three membership levels – Fundamentals, Core, and Premium – so you can size the program for your needs. And the best part is that Midlife Mixtape readers can get 50% off the Core membership by inputting MLMIXTAPE50 at checkout.

College application season isn’t nearly as much fun as holiday season, football season, or even ramen noodle seasoning packs. But if you keep your perspective, keep your cool, and lean on any resources that help, you will survive.

And if all else fails, remember that it’s still probably easier than paying for the college your child gets into.

Wishing you many needles and a miniscule haystack, metaphorically speaking.

The post College Search Season Is Upon Us appeared first on Midlife Mixtape .

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Make It Last

It’s a ritual.

Every August since 2003, I’ve sat at the dining room table with a giant stack of school registration forms, a pen, and originally my address book, now my iPhone, so I can fill out the bajillion forms necessary to enroll a child in an Oakland public school. “Why can’t they carry over the information from last year and just let us update what’s changed?” I mutter every year, as I thumb through stacks of paper labelled “Technology Use Agreement” and “PTSA Application” and “Student Emergency Form,” the latter in triplicate. Multiply times two children, for their 13-year educational overlap, and it tests the most patient form filler.

“Why don’t they automate this?” I have sighed, every year, as my hand cramps up.

Fifteen years later, in the Year of Our Lord 2018, Oakland public schools have finally automated school registration. Of course, it being OUSD, online registration is only automated to a point, and you still have to print the packet out and bring it to school in person the week before classes start. They still don’t carry over last year’s information.

But it hit me with force Monday night as I typed in all the information: they finally did it, just in time for me to fill out these forms for the last time ever.

With our younger daughter entering her senior year of high school later this month, the “lasts” are going to start flying fast and furious around here, as we navigate back to a territory in which we haven’t lived since 1998: Kid-Free. Every marker we pass that centers on our kids – Back to School Night, Halloween, school finals season – will mark the final beat in a rhythm by which my husband and I have marked our day-to-day lives, for twenty years.

(The last Nutcracker this December, after ten years of being a ballet mom, may require therapy and prescription meds. On the other hand, I may be jubilant that I never, ever have to sit through the Sugar Plum Fairy solo or pay ballet school tuition again. Stay tuned to see which direction I veer!)

Every part of our days has kept time with the kids in some way, for two decades – get up so you can wake them up! Make them breakfast! Take them to school! Pick them up from school and feed them again! Drive them back and forth to ballet! Nag them to go to bed! And…repeat.

It’s so unusual in life to actually know the last time you’ll do something – kiss a loved one goodbye, play a favorite sport, see Tom Petty in concert. Having a heads-up is a fortunate thing.  My hope is that I don’t take any of these “lasts” for granted in the year ahead.

I’m not a moper, I have more than enough activities to fill my time, and next year won’t be my first visit to the Send-A-Kid-To-College Rodeo. I don’t feel like I’m going to fall apart when next year’s Back-To-School sales circulars start appearing.

I just have no idea how I’m going to organize my days.

***

My new music pick of the week: Swedish dance hall queen Robyn finally  has a new single out this week, “Missing U.” Seems like it could be my theme song next fall.

***

Hey! Want to hang out next Friday August 10, 7 pm? I’ll be interviewing author Todd Stadtman at A Great Good Place for Book‘s in Oakland’s Montclair neighborhood about his newest novel, So Good It’s Bad. Come hear this talented writer talk about his latest project and say hello to me!

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Ep 35 “Listen To Your Mother” Founder Ann Imig

“You, Again:” Ann Imig, founder of the “Listen To Your Mother” national staged reading series, on knowing when the time has come to move on, making friends with fear, and why lozenges and jumpsuits are so complementary.

Ann’s website
“Listen To Your Mother” website
“Listen To Your Mother: What She Said Then, What We’re Saying Now” anthology
Theatrical licensing of “Listen To Your Mother” at Miracle Or 2
Clip from YOU AGAIN (requires Facebook)

If I were to prescribe some new music to Ann, which I like to do on occasion, I’d point her to the soundtrack from “Blindspotting.” I’m obsessed with this Oakland-grown-and-raised movie and feel it should be required viewing in America in 2018. I hope you’ll go see it. This song is hella NSFW.

Thanks as always to M. The Heir Apparent, who provides the music behind the Midlife Mixtape podcast – check him out here!

The post Ep 35 “Listen To Your Mother” Founder Ann Imig appeared first on Midlife Mixtape .

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