This week I returned to NYC. Left NYC. Got caught in the rain on my way to work on Thursday. Tried to minimize my time on social media. Sauna-ed. Listened to the new Luke Combs single and spent a good amount of time manifesting the addition of a Buffalo tour date this summer.
So, average Natasha week.
By the way, a note from my travels. For my flight home from Berlin I had lunch at the airport. It was a pretzel cut in half and lathered with anungodly amount of butter and I just felt like I had to commemorate it somehow LOL.
Down to business:
🗞️ Five Not-Headlines
Submissions for the designs of the final two customizable MetroCards ever are now open to New York businesses small and large. Insanely cool advertising opportunity. How much do you want to bet on a NYON design win (sigh).
Vogue Business wrote about how independent fashion labels are failing left and right because they don’t have and desperately need (what it calls) support structures. Interesting reporting from a journal which has the power to publicize these brands.
Is selling organs immoral? Horrified bioethicists say so in response to a proposed $50k tax credit for kidney donors. Proponents of the tax credit say it would be just the incentive potential donors need to donate, thereby making a scarce good just a little less so.
A former Miss New York fell prey to a scam when two kids approached her and asked for donations via Zelle for their baseball team. When she asked what their username was, one of the boys took the phone from her and sent himself $2000. She’s upset because after announcing this publicly, people accused her of not being a real New Yorker. Maybe harsh, but I guess we all just want to know WHY she is handing her phone to strangers on the streets of New York City.
NYTimes reported on the dangers of consuming raw milk, noting the severe health risks it can pose despite its being pushed on various right-wing media platforms as healthy (what will they come for next, egg slonking?). Scientists and the American government’s anti-raw milk stance has made it a kind of microcosm of a larger debate about government interference with our ability to choose what we want.
💋 <125 words on spring (again)
I’m always looking for excuses to begin again, reasons to work a new start into my schedule: January resolutions, spring cleaning, midyear resets, and the like.
The vital other half of that, then, is integrating my old habits into these new routines, not casting them away the moment I begin exploring a new lifestyle practice. Otherwise, I am coming to learn, growth turns unsustainable. I’m reminding myself that spring is about recovering what was buried last fall. How did the goals I’m trying to realize now look then?
Spring, then, is an invitation to remember that every change I implement in my life has roots. Nurturing them is as essential in encouraging sustained, lasting growth as sticking to the recent introductions to my routine.
⭐️ Three May Things
I think I say this every month, but I can hardly believe it’s my final letter of May.
My May picks are:
Stockholm.
Visiting many friends in Boston.
The elongated bloom season I have gotten to enjoy since I keep traveling northward.
🪩 My Thoughts on the Eras Tour as a not-Swiftie
I cannot believe I’m writing this and if we’ve ever talked about Taylor Swift you probably can’t either, but I’m happy I am.
My little sister was gifted tickets to the Eras Tour and I ended up accompanying her. When Sophia and I were chatting this week and I told her about this outing, the unlikelihood made her laugh.
my eras tour gallery
It was fun to be in the audience knowing a handful of songs and virtually nothing about the production itself besides what I’d learned about it after asking Gemma, Cordelia, Kira, or Tiahna questions. The performance itself is elaborate and comes together as a beautiful production, captivating fans for good reason.
I was impressed most of all by her stamina and capacity to remember three whole hours worth of choreography, lyrics, and guitar chords. At the last RHCP concert I went to I was thrilled Anthony Kiedis got through “Scar Tissue” (song #3 on the comparatively measly 19 song setlist) without ad libbing a verse.
With regards to the music, Fearless and Speak Now were among the only albums downloaded to my iPod touch in 2011/2012 (along with When The Sun Goes Down and Ready Or Not LOL) so it was exciting when I got to watch a song I loved listening to on the school bus home in São Paulo performed live. But, naturally, not being a Swiftie did impede how much I could get out of the actual musical experience.
What could not be taken away from regardless of how many songs I didn’t know was seeing how excited my sister was. She so happily sang along to the entire 45-song setlist. Sharing those hours with her felt exceedingly special, and that is what I’m lucky to be able to take away from my Eras Tour experience.
tiahna is my taylor swift coach.
🤸🏻♀️ Weekly W.R.A.P
Wearing: Big pants. Inspired by the ladies on the streets of Stockholm.
Reading: over my final drafts.
Admonishing: The forever chemicals that made themselves a forever home in my bloodstream <3 (crying)
Pondering: Trump’s reprehensible Truth Social video posted Monday. You know, the one that features a headline about his election being instrumental in “the creation of a unified reich.”
