If you had to pick a song to headline a Sylvan Esso album, you’d probably pick something catchy and heavy on synths, the kind of song that anchors a live show. But ~in this time~ the couple’s new album revolves around a delicate track that’s *almost* just vocals. Conveniently, those sweet, sweet words accomplish a lot. “Oh, people always ask me,” Amelia Meath sings, “What it’s like to love everybody, What it’s like to love everybody, They ask me. I tell them, ”Don’t be crazy. There’s too many people around me. If I loved them all, they’d break me, you see.””
She’s explaining how she seals herself off from people (specifically fans), knowing even people who love her aren’t loving her person so much as the figure they project. That’s what they call Free Love— take a listen.
For all the parents out there homeschooling, roadschooling, and boatschooling, there’s a new option in town (rather, out of town) and it’s extra spendy. As you’ll see in every press outlet ever, luxury hotels are now offering on-site educators as an amenity for guests with kids. Several places have tutors for hire for a couple hundo an hour. At one chain, you can spend $175 for an outdoor “elective” like fly fishing (gym class?) followed by monitored “study hall” (so, no academic education, actually). One resort in Puerto Rico offers complementary “children concierges” with their two-week rate of $27,000. The world is your oyster!
Oh PS, enrollment in public schools is majorly dropping across the country, and not just in rich towns. That’s understandable: with school now an on-again-off-again affair, parents are taking the reins to set some level of consistency in their kids’ lives. But reduced school enrollment also means reduced state funding for schools, which leaves wealthy areas relatively untouched (let’s hear it for those local taxes) but will hit lower-income schools that rely on the state for budgets. So here we are again with that irreconcilable pull between the personal and the collective in the world of education. Wish there was a podcast about this.
Assuming you’re at home and not taking a $200 gym class, let me point you to an item to enhance your lunch hour. I used Rosti Mepal’s storage bowls before the pandemic to bring my lunch to places, and now I’ve got the stacking set stockpiling various salad ingredients in my fridge. To be fair, these do still travel (lightly, I might add), mainly to dinnertime deck hangs and to the glorious park days we have left. If these are closer to the speed of your oyster, find them on Food52.
