PicoBlog

Every single person has a worldview, whether they know it, whether they can articulate it, or whether they acknowledge it. Simply put, everyone has a worldview. Trying to make sense of the world and to discern our place in it has occupied the hearts and minds of thinking people since the beginning of history. We all grapple with humanity’s basic questions at some point, or at many points, during our lives.

Hello! Happy full moon! I’m in a good mood today as I write this because I’m getting a little kitty home this week. AHHH! Everything’s about to change and I’m just soaking in this newfound anticipation of love and wholesomeness :’) Wrote two mini poems down in response to all the feelings I’ve been feeling: so much is changing so fast we have never met but there is love blooming gently

Hello and happy April! It’s been a while. In what now feels like true Floss form, I started this newsletter on the plane. (PSA: don’t watch the (first) Sex and the City movie in an aisle seat during the early, brightly lit hours of a flight, unless you enjoy squirming when the film’s multiple sweaty (and explicit) sex scenes play out in full view of your long-haul neighbours.) After weeks off newsletter duty, I return jet-lagged but armed with a replete camera roll and abundant addresses.

Howdy, angels of the new year! How is 2024 for your lil soul? These past ten days have been clicking for me. On Saturday, Rhody and I met up with a new friend at the flea market, a hodgepodge of tables and blankets where antiques rub elbows with mom’s reject immersion blender. The market circles the Église St Aubin (which I just learned is built on an ancient cemetery - it’s like these 1800s architects never watched Poltergeist).

Dear friends, “Necessity is the mother of invention,” according to the well-known English proverb, said to come originally fom Plato. But is it really? I suggest a revision, which I think has more truth: “PLAY is the mother of invention; necessity is the mother of engineering.” Play opens the mind to original ideas and creations; necessity takes some of those creations and refines them for practical ends. Play takes us into the realm of imagination.

Hey everyone, welcome to Unruly Figures, the podcast that celebrates history’s greatest rule-breakers. I’m your host, Valorie Castellanos Clark, and today I’m covering Petra Herrera. She lived during the Mexican Revolution and briefly disguised herself as a man named Pedro to fight for Pancho Villa. This is a sort of special episode for me because I discovered Herrera while I was researching one of the chapters in my upcoming book. If you like this episode and enjoy stories about brave female fighters, you’re going to like my book!

Welcome to the official newsletter from Merit Circle. In our previous newsletter, we gave an update on the $MC to $BEAM migration, informed about the collaboration with Immutable and Polygon, provided updates on our in-house game Forgotten Playland, and a lot more! Important: the $MC token is migrating to $BEAM – This requires all holders to migrate their tokens on meritcircle.io/migrate – Full article here. Read on for a summary of what’s been happening and what’s to come…  

Last year I shared a handful of holiday movie recommendations. I sent them out in separate newsletters. This year I received a few requests to send them in one newsletter. You got it! Here are 23 Christmas movies (classics and modern) I enjoy watching each year. You can rent most of these movies on Amazon or find them free or on other streaming channels like HBO Max. Do you have a favorite Christmas movie?

Several years ago my mother wrote out a document, made copies and bound them in slim, dark-green, presentation folders for distribution to her children. They were recipes she wanted us to remember: charlotte russe with lady fingers, shortbread, quiche lorraine, stuffing and gravy, Grandmother Hill’s ginger cookies, biscuits, fried chicken, hominy grits, black-eyed peas for New Year’s Day, and pancakes (the secret of which is not so much in the recipe as in a particular, two-burner griddle with decades of memory cooked into the cast iron).