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​Friday Inspiration 551​

I spent probably way too long this past week animating my illustrations from my story about ChatGPT, and put it together in a short film: Why Don’t You Just Have ChatGPT Write It? (video)

I’ve read dozens of tributes to Dolly Parton since she died this week, and the one Hanif Abdurraqib wrote on Instagram is one of my favorites (no surprise).

Speaking of Dolly Parton, in a tribute that required much more physical effort (I assume), Jeff Garmire decided to run 9 5Ks (“9 to 5”) and made a short video, incorporating some bits of Dolly’s biography (this is also one of my favorite tributes I’ve seen).

I long believed that coffee was an extremely powerful diuretic, and that my excessive coffee drinking meant I was sort of chronically dehydrated. Many, many years ago, I suggested to my then co-worker (and still dear friend) Mitsu that he should maybe consider drinking water instead of just coffee all the time and he deadpanned, “There’s water in coffee.” He was not wrong, and I wasn’t 100 percent incorrect, but a better answer is in this article by newsletter sponsor Precision Fuel & Hydration founder Andy Blow: Does coffee ACTUALLY dehydrate you and harm performance? [<—This link will also give you 15 percent off your first 2026 purchase of PFH products]

​My Annual Performance, As Reviewed By My Dog:“Erica excels in creating a positive team-building environment through a combination of belly scratches, gazing into my eyes, and reaffirming my position as the ‘best doggie in the whole wide world.’”

YouTube fed me this 25-minute set of chill electronic music by Jai Cuzco and I can’t stop looping it (and every once in a while clicking back to enjoy the view out his window).

This is not cerebral at all, but I think will make you smile: This guy futzing with the fuel door on a car at the gas station, and then the guy and his friend futzing with it, and then their other friend tries to help, and then they realize they’re being filmed by the folks in the car behind them, and, well, it’s worth a watch (with the sound on).​

I got to talk to writer, podcaster, and former wildland firefighter Amanda Monthei last week for the My Favorite Things podcast, and had a blast—her list had some classics like Hemingway’s Nick Adams Stories, Joan Didion’s The Year of Magical Thinking, newer writing from John Jeremiah Sullivan, and a 2005 ski movie.

Lastly: I collaborated with the Outdoor Alliance to make the below series of illustrations about the USDA proposal to rescind the Roadless Rule. If you’d like to comment, here’s a link to a form on the Outdoor Alliance website where you can customize your message. A note: Apparently the USDA only has to consider “substantive comments,” and the folks at ON-X have explained how to do that here.​

Those links, again:

• ​Form on the Outdoor Alliance website where you can customize your public comment about the Roadless Rule​
• ​How to write a comment that qualifies as a "substantive comment"​

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Books I’m Currently Reading:

• ​Dad Brain: The New Science of Fatherhood and How It Shapes Men's Lives by Darby Saxbe PhD

My friend Sally recommended this brand-new book to us, and I of course was interested because of the big change in my life that has caused a thousand other little changes (including, presumably, how my brain works). I’m only one chapter into it so far but I am already impressed and grateful for Saxby’s engaging writing style.

• ​How to Wash the Dishes by Peter Miller

I picked up this meditative book on, you guessed it, how to wash dishes, at our local bookstore, noting that the “Staff Picks” card inside it was from the owner, Garth, with the simple note “this should settle some arguments.” I’m only about halfway through it, and we don’t have any arguments about dishwashing at our house, but I’m enjoying it so far.

• ​Ninth Street Women: Lee Krasner, Elaine de Kooning, Grace Hartigan, Joan Mitchell, and Helen Frankenthaler: Five Painters and the Movement That Changed Modern Art by Mary Gabriel

Hilary was reading this for months and absolutely gushing over it, and there’s only so much you can hear about one book before you just say “I’ll go ahead and borrow that whenever you’re finished.” And I am happy to say it’s as good as she said it was (although I would be terrified of taking on the challenge of writing about five different [famous] artists all in the same book like Mary Gabriel did).

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