Reading · From Somewhere with Anna Sale

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I got a very special surprise in the mail to start this week. A friend, and Slate Plus listener, heard my conversations with artist Sharon Mashini about creative stirrings and creative overwhelm. One of the coping mechanisms she recommended: fake smoking.

Sharon does it by just pretending she’s holding something in between her fingers, but now I have some real props!

(Thanks, friend! And it’s fake, Mom!)

I also got some deep breaths in while I was back in LA this week for a short trip, and wow, did it make me appreciate the place. It was ten and a half years ago when I did my first Death, Sex & Money reporting trip to LA, and I first interviewed DJ Yesi Ortiz at her Los Angeles radio station. This week, we shared her story again and caught up.

Yesi was in her early 20s and hustling to start a broadcast career while her sister was struggling with addiction. Six of her sister’s kids were headed into the foster care system until Yesi advocated to get custody. She raised these kids as a single mom while holding down her on-air shifts at the radio station.

Yesi’s kids are now grown. She tells me this week that she’s now got four grandbabies, and after years of estrangement, she and her sister have reconciled.

Other highlights of my LA trip:

hearing My Octopus Teacher filmmaker Pippa Ehrlich talk movingly about listening and wonder at a gathering of National Geographic storytellers.
IRL meeting up with AJ Daulerio of (and this episode of Death, Sex & Money)
watching comedy with my sister (and comic) Elizabeth Sale.
in particular, Heated Rivalry: A Comedy Show! at Dynasty Typewriter was a revelation, perfectly produced by comedians Erin Cholakian and Madison Teresa.

Other Recommended Reads, Watches & Listens

Filmmaker Elizabeth Barret passed away this month. She was part of the legendary group of artists who built Appalshop, the film and media production shop in eastern Kentucky. Her film Stranger With A Camera (2000) is probably why I first got into reporting in my home state of West Virginia, and it’s why I’ve long had little patience for parachute journalists who show up in rural communities with more certainty than self-awareness. It’s available to watch on YouTube now. Thank you, Elizabeth.
My Slate colleague David Plotz — co-host of Political Gabfest and CEO of Citycast — talked me through the meaning of The Washington Post layoffs for DC-area locals and how he hopes we find one another again by investing in local news in a special Slate Plus drop.
wrote a sensitive and sad essay about addiction, family resentments and growing up in the shadow of celebrity parents in The Small Bow. Read: Being Kevin, Watching “Being Charlie”
This piece from my Slate colleague Alex Kirchner was very timely and informative as I digested all those Super Bowl ads about AI. Take this, for example: “the most interesting thing about all of the A.I. Super Bowl ads was not how goddamned many of them there were. It was the rupture they revealed in how the big players are selling themselves.”
And this piece in The Atlantic about the future of work as AI works its way into everything made me want to crawl back into bed.
How’d the Bad Bunny halftime show come together so beautifully? A UC Berkeley student who worked tech explains in The Daily Cal.

Until next week,

Anna

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