The Truth Wears (Rain) Boots
Rainy Days and Saturdays
We are gearing up here in the New York tri-state area for our seventh rainy Saturday in a row. The weather people have promised not gentle, skip-amongst-the-fallen leaves, wipe-a-delicate droplet of rain off your nose rain, but drenching downpours.
It turns out Englishmen can have too much rain. My poor husband is pretty miserable about it. Who can blame him? It’s sunny all week as he walks to his job in a hermetically sealed office building in New York, so to wake up Saturday AM with the road outside our house turned into a small creek, and any outside adventures cancelled, well who can blame him for being a bit cranky?
Me? I like the reprieve a day of rain brings. I’m wired from childhood to “go outside and play in the sunshine,” so a rainy day is better for my focus. I’m more likely to tuck into a book I’ve been meaning to do read (William Dalrymple’s The Anarchy is currently staring me down.). The chances of me cleaning the house are raised manifold, as is the likelihood of my grading my journalism student’s homework. I will always ponder a game of Boggle, like my mom and I would play when the days got shorter in fall. And I bake. But I suspect you knew that. I see a rainy day as an opportunity to reset.
And nap. But that goes without saying.
I have a longer substack waiting to send out to you about a fabulous new cookbook I’ve reviewed, but as I wait on permission to reprint a recipe from it, I thought I’d reach out to you lovely people and find out your ideal way to spend a rainy day.
Let me know in the comments!
In the news:
Three Times a Charm!
Sad trombone sound for Jim Jordan in his run for Speaker of the House. I guess calling the wives of House members and telling them to make sure their husbands vote for Jordan…or else…along with threatening House members with death isn’t an effective way of rallying votes.
Polly Wanna Kraken!
Today’s Winner of the Internet is the brilliant legal mind Kimberly Atkins-Stohr, who described Kenneth Chesebro and Sydney Powell’s guilty pleas perfectly.
The Truth Wears Boots
As you probably know by now, I teach journalism at Montclair State University. In my Intro to Journalism class, I make the news the first thing we talk about each class. This week, I reviewed how, after the bombing of the al-Ahli Arab Hospital in Gaza, the media was very quick to accept Hamas’ claim that Israel was responsible. Shortly thereafter, the Israel Defense Forces put a statement out that blamed the Palestinian Islamic Jihad for the deadly blast, which (also not confirmed) killed hundreds of people. And so on, back and forth. The rest of the world reacted quickly to the initial reports by Hamas, with many people, especially in the Middle East taking to the streets to decry Israel’s actions.
The truth — ah, yes, the truth — is not clear. Many news outlets, including Al Jazeera and The New York Times have since begun to do their due diligence and have asked experts to way weigh in on what really might have happened.
It’s too easy to let our feelings and passions get in the way of the truth, especially when the answer to what really happened isn’t instantaneous. We are not good at waiting for the fog of war to lift and we need to be.
Which is why, along with explaining the idea of the fog of war to my students, I shared this quote with my class. If only Home Goods sold wall hangings with this quote painted in curly script:
A lie can travel halfway round the world, while the truth is still pulling its boots on.
Let me know your rainy day favorite things. What are you reading? And have you read Killers of the Osage Moon yet, before the film comes out?!?
This substack is a reader-supported publication. I cannot do it without you. If you’re able, paying for a subscription contributes to the Rainy Day Fund and helps pay for the groceries necessary for recipe-testing and recipe development. Also, it supports me—a freelance writer. The pay scale for journalists and writers has not kept up with the cost of living. That’s why having a substack newsletter has become such a terrific venue for so many writers. Best of all, however, it puts me, Bosco, Calvin and Clyde and my giant dahlias in touch with our readers like never before. Thank you.
Can’t afford a subscription? Do the next best thing and give free subscriptions to all your friends. The more the merrier.
My sewing and craft area is in our basement. Like you I was trained to go out and play on sunny days, so on rainy or gloomy days I feel less guilty "playing" inside.
The chese curdled