What Just Happened?

#1 October 2024: Child-free travel, on my mind + in my ears, what to do in Nashville, and a recipe for The Best Banana Bread, Ever.

Introducing a new monthly newsletter format What Just Happened? which presents a roll-up of what’s rolling across my mindscape and redirecting my life. It’s a new section of Fetch Me Home, which means you can visit your account page and adjust your delivery settings if you’d prefer not to receive this in your inbox. If hearing from me weekly is too much, you can also only subscribe to What Just Happened? which means you’ll get a handy monthly roll-up of all my pieces together in one place. 

Two weeks ago, on my son’s 872nd day of life, I left him in the care of near strangers to do something I hadn’t done since his birth. I boarded a plane to Nashville to spend 100 blessed, precious hours with my husband, away from my child. 

I like to think of myself as an experienced traveler. I started flying alone as an unaccompanied minor when I was 8, which I imperiously outgrew by age 13. I have traveled to more than 40 countries and I estimate, flown in hundreds of airplanes. I experience a perverse kind of pleasant somatic familiarity living out of a suitcase. 

The airplane offers me a kind of residual familiarity – the gravitational pull of take-off, the curve of the plane window against my head as I doze. Is the taste of the ginger ale in a plastic cup different at altitude? Or is it just enhanced by the taste of the bite-sized pretzel snack I wouldn’t otherwise eat?

Yet, in the last 2.5 years, I have boarded an airplane just 13 times, each time, with my child in tow. There is something all-consuming about traveling with children that refocuses energy away from the personal enjoyment that comes from exiting your everyday lived experience. 

When life at home is encumbered with the demands of children, traveling without them feels like sneaking out of your parents’ house at night, stepping into an altered, heightened state of existence, one that feels both exhilarating and fleeting.

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Before my son was born, I walked 500 miles with him inside me, kicking me in the gut, waiting to break free. For 40 days, I packed the provisions of my life into a hiking backpack and for ten of those days, carried it on my back. Consolidating your life into a proverbial (or literal) suitcase helps clarify what is essential and what is not. At 872 days old, a mother is no longer singularly essential to her child, nor he to her. (We both had an excellent time spending four days seeing other people…)

The flight to Nashville was short – 1h 45m from Hartford. But the cultural distance between Nashville and Connecticut is far enough to foster that joyful sense of wonder at what can happen in a strange new place. 

Traveling without children for the first time in years brought with it the anticipated rush of the familiar along with the stimulating exploration of the unknown. In the early days of travel, time slows down as the body and mind form new patterns and embrace new rhythms. In Central Time, that pesky hour earlier, try as I might to “sleep in,” it was almost impossible to sleep past 7am. Still, for three blissful mornings, we luxuriated in the relaxation of adult vacation, the absence of anyone demanding our time, attention, or care. 

I had been to Nashville once, but never to Broadway, which I soon realized is akin to visiting New York without walking through Time Square – you haven’t really been there. Having resigned myself to a car-bound lifestyle here at home in CT, I was delighted to step back into a pedestrian world, to wander around letting curiosity drive the next move. 

At the honky tonks along Broadway, from 10am to 3am, musicians and singers ply their trade for tips on a long row of multi-level bars, many of which feature a different act on each level. This is where Dolly met Elvis, where the country bumpkins banging out bluegrass tunes became big time stars. It’s a strange universe of hyper-capitalism, forced labor, and implicit mutual aid. A nobody can become somebody literally overnight, and yet musicians play for hours, dependent on their audience’s generosity to reward their efforts. 

It’s a staggering level of live music. And an insane level of effort for what amounts to work for optional pay. 

One cartel in Nashville manages to prevail, however. Most bands promise to play requests in exchange for modest tips. One song, however, is different. In almost every honky tonk, the standard tip “rate” to play Lynyrd Skynyrd “Freebird,” a popular live request, is $100. In one bar, the band playing the late set kept announcing a running tally of tips received so far – “Just $64 dollars away from Freebird, folks!” – to motivate the crowd. A “honky tonk hero” finally came to the rescue and put the $60 they still needed into the tip jar. And wow. I don’t know if it’s because they know they have to pay up after extorting $100 from their audience, or if they just practice hard knowing once a night they’ll need to kill that song, but I could not imagine a more animated rendering.

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As grateful as I was for the trip, it was hard to step away from the demands of everyday life for that much time. It’s been a challenging six months. My father-in-law has been sick with a very serious but not very well diagnosed disease and I’ve been unemployed, and looking for my next job. Money has been tight and stress high, a bad combination that inevitably makes life feel that much more difficult. 

At the same time, I’ve been successfully training the elephant on writing and publishing on Fetch Me Home more regularly, and you, dear reader, have done a remarkable job of continuing to open my emails (THANK YOU). 

Subscribers make this possible, and if there’s one thing you can do to help support me through all I’m going through right now, it’s becoming a paid subscriber. 

There’s so much happening in the world right now, it feels hard to keep track. Russia is still invading Ukraine. Hamas, Hezbollah, Iran, and Israel are all trying to kill each other. Hurricane Helene has now killed more than 200 people. The election is on a knife-edge. It seems likely that whether Donald Trump or Kamala Harris prevails by the numbers, the result will lead to some kind of violence. 

In the lead-up to this election, I’ve managed to allay my anxiety by consuming more analytical news, mostly in audio format. I’m afraid in this increasingly paywalled universe, my media silo is increasingly The New Yorker and the New York Times. So help me… And, of course, Substack!

On my mind and in my ears this month…

On the Middle East… Ezra Klein’s interview with Franklin Foer (The Atlantic) about how and why Biden’s peace deal fell apart and Klein’s interview with Ta-Nehisi Coates about the ethical reality of what Israel is doing to Palestinians. After I listened to the Coates interview, I went back and listened to Klein’s September interview with David Remnick (The New Yorker) which is somewhat breathtaking in its clear-eyed assessment of what is or is not possible. It also precedes so much of the October drama – the pager attack, the Iranian missiles. In August, Remnick published a kind of in absentia profile of Yahya Sinwar, which informed his current perspective, but I was intrigued to learn that 26 years ago, he’d profiled Bibi Netanyahu, who he believes has changed not at all. The Daily has a good discussion on the killing of Sinwar, which also happened this month, and its implications for peace. Cliff Notes: no dice.

I’m paying attention to this conflict because I think it has the potential to escalate. Iran and Russia are allies. This situation could get real bad, real quick.

On the Economy… I can’t really recommend Ezra Klein’s long interview with Jason Furman, former Deputy Director of the National Economic Council, about the state of the economy — it’s long and winding, and highly technical. But it underscored for me how impenetrable “understanding the economy” can be. It’s part of why Trump’s “I’ll fix it with bid-ness” rhetoric works for so many Americans. In some ways, it’s easier to believe that than it is to really understand how and why the economy works (or doesn’t). For more relatable economics, consider this episode of The Daily about “How NAFTA Broke American Politics,” which includes amazing historical clips of Bill Clinton and Congressional leaders trying to persuade the holdouts (hello Bernie Sanders) about the benefit NAFTA would bring to the American economy; and this heart-wrenching episode of The Daily about the exorbitant cost of living in Las Vegas right now, and how that will influence how Nevada votes in this election. 

On the Election… There are a bunch of The Daily episodes that may soon be old news, but are helpful context for what’s happening in this election. 

… Some excellent takes in this T-25 Day NY Times Roundtable with Nate Cohn, Maggie Habberman, and Astead Herndon

… How outcomes in Congressional races in California and New York may influence the presidential election and post-election governance

… How Trump plans to use the powers of the President to get revenge on his political enemies

… The role of gender in this election (TL;DR, Bad boys are for Trump, Good girls are for Kamala)

… What’s at stake in Pennsylvania for the Presidential election (yikes)

And if you listen to just one podcast before next Tuesday, it should probably be this T-6 Days The Daily Roundtable in which Astead Herndon names something not enough people have said, which is that the Democratic Party establishment thinks American democracy, absent Trump, is fine, but, according to a recent Times poll, 50% of Americans think our democracy is not okay. Democrats’ status quo messaging on this issue is almost certainly a mistake. (Meanwhile, someone is lighting ballot boxes on fire in the Pacific Northwest and possibly Arizona?) Astead also offers a helpful reminder: no matter what the outcome, we should probably prepare for the results of the 2024 election not to be believed. 

Persuasion, a wonderful publication on Substack, has also published some hot takes on many of the themes mentioned above. But one that really deserves a read is this latest essay about Donald Trump’s Joe Rogan podcast interview, and what it means for new media.

If you’re looking for both laughs and tears on the internet, the best newsletter I can recommend this month is Alex Dobrenko’s both are true. I think I’ll go out on a limb and describe Alex as a Ukrainian-American low-brow high-brow emo humorist. (Thoughts, Alex?) He writes about real shit that is also extremely funny. He, too, is the parent of a toddler. He also happens to live in Ashville, and did a tremendous job “reporting” on living through Helene, and helping people donate to local direct outreach organizations.

In my own universe, I wrote and published more in a month than I ever have before, and I did something I’ve never done – wrote and finished two essays in tandem – which gave me the freedom to schedule an essay in advance so that I could actually kick back and relax during my five days in Nashville. 

I started the month with a summary of A Family Spy Story, which included my first read-along. 

(Did you like it? Should I do more of this? Please let me know in the comments if this is useful or a complete waste of my time).

If you missed this roll-up, I recommend you give it a read, because the next chapter of A Family Spy Story will pick right up where this leaves off and jump into my grandfather Gordon’s personal history while also charting Marjorie and Gordon’s next steps in Europe… It will also be behind a paywall, so take care of this now…

In others news, I couldn’t stop thinking about the (in)justice of what’s happening in the Middle East right now, so I wrote about this emergent regional war.

Winners and Losers in the War Economy

I wrote a personal essay about driving stick and the future impact of electric cars.

“You let your girl drive?”

I published a poem I wrote six years ago about driving through uncertainty (and driving stick), tbh one of my all-time faves.

Poem: The Passing Place

I shared a perspective on American politics that summarizes a lot of voter behavior and motivation context that I personally hink is helpful heading into this election.

It may or may not be helpful to you, but at least is out of my brain and in the world for those who care to read it. 

Is there some emergent coherence here? Is it feasible or desirable to publish a Spy Story Chapter, a foreign policy take, a domestic politics perspective, and a long-form poem every month? After throwing in the towel on converging on “what this newsletter is about” other than my grandparents’ spy adventures and whatever else is on my mind, I can’t resist the temptation to templatize. I’m unsure if it’s a good idea or a bad one.

Do you have thoughts? 

If you’ve enjoyed reading more of my writing, I would be so grateful if you’d consider two actions: becoming a paid subscriber and sharing my work with someone you think might like to hear what I have to say. (If you’re already a paid subscriber, thank you, thank you, thank you). 

My hope is that What Just Happened? will become a monthly occurrence, one that summarizes what I’ve written this month alongside a curated list of Other Stuff you might possibly make time for in this oversaturated media hellscape we’re living in. You’re welcome? 

But wait, there’s more! Keep reading for a roundup of What to do in Nashville + a recipe for The Best Banana Bread Ever.

What to do in Nashville 

For maybe the first time in my life, I took a trip almost completely planned by someone else without my input, so if I’ve missed some extraordinary do-not-miss experience in Nashville that other people should know about, please let me know in the comments. Most of our travel around Nashville was arranged via tour bus, so I also can’t say much about local transit, though I did manage to take a bus from Parnassus Books back to Broadway…

What to do:

Listen to tunes on Broadway.

From true country to pop to metal, you can find a honky tonk for everyone’s musical taste. And probably a star or two behind the bar on an average Friday night.

Visit Printers’ Alley.

Lower key than the insanity of Broadway, these bars are a nice place to sit for a while, or share a romantic moment with your beau. I can personally recommend the Blues & Boogie Bar and Fedora Lounge.

See a show at the Grand Ole Opry.

NOT TO BE MISSED – 2025 is the 100th anniversary of this incredible on-air radio show. It doesn’t matter who is on the program for the night – the show will be excellent. Book your tickets now. Make the trip to Nashville just to see it. You won’t regret it. 

Dance the night away at the Nashville Palace.

Right around the corner from the Opry is Nashville’s main social dance scene. The Palace is a warehouse-sized building that, for a $10 cover, offers an enormous dance floor and lots of dance music. The DJ alternates well-known line dances, demonstrated by go-go girls, danced by 100+ people at a time, with partner dances. These line dances are WAY more intense choreography than your average Cupid Shuffle, but fun to watch, and you can find videos of many of them online. Partners dance “country swing,” a strange kind of dip ‘n’ trick heavy style, but it’s a lot of fun if you’re looking for a dance floor.

Stroll through history at Centennial Park and the Nashville Parthenon.

In the 19th century, Nashville was known as the “Athens of the South,” home to 80 institutions of higher learning. During that period, the city hosted a Centennial celebration – a common practice at the time – which left behind the Nashville Parthenon, a perfect replica of the Greek structure. It’s an art museum inside a historic structure inside a park towards the outskirts of the city. The perfect place for a stroll to refresh yourself from the sweaty bodies of Broadway

Visit Parnassus Books.

Anne Patchett’s independent bookstore is a great place to pop in to pick up a signed copy of just about anything! They were closing early on the day of our visit for a private event with former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi… It’s in the “regular people” part of Nashville, outside the city center, so you’ll need to grab a car, an Uber, or if you’re feeling adventurous, a city bus to get there.

Stroll the grounds and lunch at Belle Meade plantation.

Belle Meade plantation was owned by one of the south’s preeminent slaveholding families. The grounds are absolutely beautiful, and they’ve also done a pretty good job curating a presentation of place that makes space to understand the conditions enslaved people endured in plantation settings. They also have several different restaurants and wine tasting opportunities, so you can take your sip of American history and clean your palate with a nice local white or red.

Eat a meal at the Loveless Cafe.

This restaurant is known for its biscuits and serves DE-licious southern foods. Apparently, it used to be the only house on the long road from Nashville to Memphis, where hungry and thirsty travelers stopped out of necessity. However many decades later, it’s still going strong as a roadside mainstay! 

Visit the Country Music Hall of Fame. 

But only after you’ve seen a show at the Grand Ole Opry! You’re sure to see a hall of famer or two on stage you’ll recognize later in an exhibit at the museum!

Grab a drink at the Red Phone Booth.

Speakeasies are the new honky tonk it seems, and visitors of a classier persuasion are getting hip to the premier service available behind the bar at these cozy, passworded establishments. Ask the concierge at your hotel for the password to a nearby speakeasy and enjoy some craft cocktails in intimate settings. I can personally recommend the Red Phone Booth, which has exceptional mushroom pizza and delicious cocktails.

And last but not least, a sweet finish…

The night before my trip to Nashville I was staring down three browning bananas on the kitchen counter. It was too late to make banana bread, but in five days, they’d be black and moldy. Falling asleep, I mused about making banana bread the next morning, knowing we’d have to leave the house by 8am.

My husband looked me dead in the eye – “Are you serious?” he asked.

I pleaded – “If I don’t make it now the bananas will go bad…” 

He issued an ultimatum: “You can make the banana bread only if you start baking before 6:30.”

God, nothing motivates me like a deadline… Challenge accepted. 

At 6:10am, I rolled over in bed and looked at the clock. 

Oh! I thought. Time to start baking! 

The banana bread was in the oven by 6:45. 

This is a banana bread recipe I’ve iterated and tweaked for a few years now. It is…

The Best Banana Bread, Ever

3 ripe bananas, mashed

½ c. brown sugar

¼ c. white sugar

2 large eggs

¼ unsweetened applesauce

½ c. vegetable oil

¼ c. butter, melted

1 ¾ c. flour

1 ½ tsp baking soda

¾ tsp salt

1 tsp vanilla extract

1 tsp almond extract

Cinnamon to taste

I should say upfront that this recipe is incredibly adaptable. You can make it with all butter and no vegetable oil, or all brown sugar and no white. I can’t recommend the inverse? But I’m sure it would hold up. I discovered the value of adding applesauce only when I got halfway through the recipe only to discover I only had two eggs in the fridge and needed a substitute for a third. (Three eggs in lieu of applesauce works fine, too and you can make it with or without either extract.) The biggest success factor is the ripeness of the bananas. The closer they are to dissolving, the better. If your bananas are underripe, put them in a low-heat oven for 30 minutes before you need to bake to accelerate the ripening process. 

Process: Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Blend 3 bananas to mush with a rubber spatula. Add ½ c. brown sugar and ¼ c. white sugar. Beat in 2 eggs and add ¼ cup applesauce. Add ½ c. vegetable oil and ¼ c. melted butter. Add the extracts. Dump the flour, baking soda, and salt on top and swirl the dry ingredients together before mixing them into the wet ingredients below. Sprinkle as much cinnamon as you like over the batter and swirl it in. Dump the batter into a loaf pan lined with parchment or greased or lined muffins and bake for 1 hour or until firm across the top. (If you want to stick a toothpick in this puppy, be my guest, but you should be able to see that it’s firm and slightly browned on top.)

Allow the loaf to cool partially in the pan. Serve with butter or cream cheese (yes, really).

Enjoy!

And don’t forget you can find me on Notes, here.