Reading · Media Musings with Cassandra Brooklyn

Hi friends,

Greetings from New York City. How glorious it is to be home for a month. The pic above is from a 10-mile hike with 3,000 feet of elevation gain that I did in Yosemite National Park on my last day there a few weeks ago. My trip to California was spectacular, and I’m planning to go back again in May.

Over the next few months, I’ll be VERY focused on my Some Days are Shit newsletter about grief and loss. Thank you to so many of you who have subscribed and told me you’ve shared it with loved ones. I’m also working on a book proposal related to it.

Subscribe to Some Days are Shit

I am still working on a few freelance articles, and let me start by sharing what I published in the last few weeks:

The New York Times: Can a Humidifier Help with Winter Dryness?
The Wall Street Journal: Why Yellowstone Is Better in the Winter
AARP: Why Winter Nosebleeds Strike More Often After 50 - And How to Keep Them at Bay
National Geographic: Where to Find the Best Winter Wildlife Watching in the U.S.
National Geographic: 9 Spectacular State Parks to Visit in Winter

Wow. That’s a lot. I’m still exhausted from it.

I don’t have the capacity to review and consider a lot of PR pitches now (I typically get hundreds per week), but I am currently working on a large health feature for AARP, as well as travel features for National Geographic and Hilton Hotels. AARP Travel and I are also in discussion about another spring travel feature.

I’ve already reached out to some of you for input on those pieces (some have very specific themes, so I didn’t blast them out in a wide pitch call), and if/when I confirm other assignments I’m sourcing for, I’ll share that here.

In the meantime, I have a couple of other updates.

Cassandra

It’s still quite early in the year, but I already have many of my travel plans mapped out. In the past, I rarely planned anything more than 6 weeks in advance because I flew back to Milwaukee every month to care for my mother. As many of you know, my mom died of Parkinson’s Disease last year (hence my new writing focus on grief), so I no longer “need to” (really, can) go to Wisconsin so often.

Though I wouldn’t call it a silver lining by any means, a consequence of my mother’s death is that I no longer factor her care and doctor’s appointments into my travel schedule, so I’ve chosen to book some trips out well in advance.

Here is where I’m planning to be this year.

January - Did an amazing trip to Monterey, Santa Cruz, and Yosemite, California

February - I’m heading to Cancun and Tulum for a birthday diving trip, then a health retreat next weekend

March - Bucketlist family trip to Nebraska to witness the sandhill crane migration

April - No travel. Cass must sleep.

May - Back to California (San Luis Obispo, Channel Islands National Park, Big Sur)

June - Grief retreat with my sister in Arizona

July - Family trip to northern Wisconsin

August - Sarajevo (Seeking help with this for late Aug!)

September - Hiking trip in Montenegro

October - Family trip to Montana

November - Hiking trip in Scotland

December - No plans yet, but want to travel somewhere over Christmas

Many publications are interested in articles that feature celebrity takes (Business Insider, Thrillist, Travel + Leisure), so I’m open to considering pitches that involve access to a very famous A-list celebrity. I’m also open to more B- and C-list celebrities, but only if they fall into two specific categories.

Do you rep/know/work with a celebrity who has lost a loved one? This could be a parent, child, sibling, or spouse, and the loss could be recent or could have happened many years ago. If they are willing to talk about this, I’d love to be connected with them.

I’m mostly looking for celebrities with a personal connection to grief. However, if they are based in NYC, their relationship to grief may be a bit less pronounced. For instance, they may never have lost a loved one, but they may have supported a spouse or friend who did. Or, they realized after the fact that they could have done a better job supporting a grieving loved one, and they’d be willing to talk about that.

On both of those notes,

To pitch me: