The Yellow House

After considering taping a “dirty hippie” sign to my forehead and being done with it, I thought instead we’d talk a little about making your own kombucha, because it accomplishes the same effect. Maybe you’re a little more open-minded to me, but I had always written off kombucha as a vinegary punishment beverage to be served alongside tasteless vegan lentil loaves or plain brown rice. Worst of all, any mention of kombucha always seems to be accompanied by (at best) half-baked and possibly dangerous claims of health benefits. Here is a direct quote, for instance, that I obtained by Googling “kombucha health benefits”: “In the first half of the 20th century…Russian scientists discovered that entire regions of their vast country were seemingly immune to cancer and hypothesized that the kombucha, called ‘tea kvass’ there, was the cause.” That’s some science for you, folks. You heard it here: kombucha does not immunize you from cancer. Okay, glad we got that out of the way.
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spring is like a perhaps hand
(which comes carefully
out of Nowhere) arranging
a window,into which people look (while
people stare
arranging and changing placing
carefully there a strange
thing and a known thing here)and
changing everything carefully

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“it would be good to live in a perpetual state of leave-taking, never to go nor to stay, but to remain suspended in that golden emotion of love and longing; to be loved without satiety.”
― John Steinbeck, The Log from the Sea of Cortez
When my sister and I told people we were going to Baja, Mexico on vacation, their response was pretty standard: Two women, alone?! Drugs! Cartels! Crime! Which is hardly fair, but it did somehow color my expectations. Instead, we found some of the most beautiful, varied landscapes we had ever seen; warm, helpful locals; and not one bad meal. » Click to read more

A woman in graduate school for broadcast journalism contacted me. She was developing a piece, she said, which would be pitched to major media outlets, about female writers, bloggers, and businesswomen in their twenties who were taking advantage of the “recent trend of millennial women’s return to domesticity.” Many young women, she wrote, are creating brands and making money as experts on the domestic arts and “a return to traditional living.” Essentially, her piece would explore cultural and economic factors that have made this sort of content appealing to the public. I would love the chance to interview you about your journey and why you find a return to traditional living to be so appealing to many of today’s young women, she closed.I should have just offered to get coffee with this woman (who I’m sure is very nice and for whom I harbor no ill will!). Regardless of the subject, give me a latte and we can talk about esoteric cultural and economic factors until the cows come home. It’s, like, what I do for fun. The whole email just felt a little weird to me, though. So I wrote back, trying to better understand what she was seeking for content. I thanked her, of course, because it’s flattering (in that terrifying sort of way) to be asked for an interview. But I wasn’t sure, I told her, that I was really the right candidate.

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