Kristinia Vu

Where do you find affordable art? One piece we love in our home is this hand-pressed seaweed print from Cornwall, England, where my aunt lives.

Two friends — Melanie Molesworth and Julia Bird — make their artwork by foraging for seaweed on beaches or in shallow water after a storm. “We love it when they’re faded and a bit sea-bashed sometimes,” Julia told Toast. “Some of the beautiful pale pink colors are very faded as they’ve been drifting about in the sea. That can make them so beautiful.”

What if someone is just making stuff up?

Years ago, I worked with the supermarket tabloid to make an ironic, shouty, somewhat funny book that has turned out to match much of the discourse we find surrounding us.
When we flew down to Florida to meet their team, I was amazed to discover that this nationwide newspaper, read by millions, was created by three people in a storage closet. They had a single filing cabinet with stock photos, and every day they went to work and invented stories about Bat Boys, UFOs and weird illnesses.

Last weekend, Freddie and I went to see the Amy Sherald exhibit at The Whitney Museum. She paints portraits of Black Americans, both as a way to show people just being themselves and also to correct the omission of Black people in classic American portraiture. For example, this man sitting on a beam nods to the famous photo “Lunch Atop a Skyscraper,” and the painting of two men kissing (above) references the 1945 photo of a sailor kissing a woman in Times Square. They’re stunning in person, and I’d highly recommend seeing the show, if you can!

I sent my friend Alison flowers this week, and the florist, knowing the goal was to comfort, added such beautiful wispy, feathery blooms. I was touched by the idea of women helping women help women.

Do you have clothes you’ve worn a million times? Mine include this shirt and these flats. So easy and comfy. (Here’s a steal version of the shoes.)

Status shows up whenever humans do, and it is the invisible underpinning of our culture.

Most parenting manuals end up gathering dust on my bedside table, but Melinda Wenner Moyer’s Hello, Cruel World! isn’t one of them.

Hello, Cruel World!