harlem ballerinas + stress bombs + juicy fruit

notes from the road, and the keyboard

Hello —

The wifi is so suss where I am right now, I’m having trouble uploading photos. And yes, I have tried my hotspot 🙃.

If I’ve been iffy with my updates (and I have!), I appreciate your understanding. I’ve been on planes, trains, and in automobiles. I have deadlines. And if I’m honest, life has been tossing me fat grenades of stress. I’d tamped it down — but we know those side effects are dangerous, so I’ve stopped. To quote Solange, I’ve tried to run it away … To write it away … cry it away. All of that? Unsuccessful. What’s left is to breathe deeply, and deal with it.

Thank you for sticking with me.

square one.

I recently wrote about Black ballerinas.

It’s for the New York Times Book Review, and it’s lovely to write for the Review again, after years away. The book: The Swans of Harlem: Five Black Ballerinas, Fifty Years of Sisterhood, and Their Reclamation of a Groundbreaking History — by Karen Valby. Spoiler alert: I liked it.

….it’s the odd details that shine brightest: Sells re…