grazing the internet, February edition

Lately: Lately, huh? I have no idea what I’ve been doing lately besides scurrying in circles, working and trying to organize my life. I haven’t baked anything but bread in weeks, which depresses me. I’ll have to make something this weekend. Drop suggestions in the comments, please. … Oh, also, I’m trying a new format for these monthly emails full of links. I got tired of bulleted lists, and looking back over past newsletters, I realized they didn’t do much to make me want to read or click. So I’m switching to a narrative, one with the loosest thread possible running through.

get off the internet, get a cat, read a book

grazing the internet, February edition

I read at some point in February about the return of Uncle Bill’s Pancake House in St. Louis, my hometown. Uncle Bill’s was an institution before it closed in 2024, and so my initial reaction was excitement. But I happened to see that particular piece of information a day or two after I’d read in the New Yorker about the famed Brooklyn seafood spot Lundy’s, which was recently resuscitated as a shadow of its former self. So I asked myself: What is Uncle Bill’s without Uncle Bill? (It turns out the eponymous Bill was actually two ownership groups ago, so never mind, I guess.) The New Yorker story made me think about the allure of continuity in the restaurant world, the appeal of nostalgia, and how hard it is to modernize while still nodding to the past.

Another highlight this month from the New Yorker: this personal essay by Tara Westover, the author of Educated, a book I very much enjoyed. In this piece, Westover, who’s alienated from her family, travels to India and stays with a good friend’s mother, who also happens to be a powerful officer in the Indian government.