SHORT & SWEET #3
Pluto Retrograde, Alan Turing, Benedict Cumberbatch, Peg Yorkin, and DI Morse
Time may be a great healer, but it's a lousy beautician. - Dorothy Parker
Hiya Friends!
It’s Sunday and I’m sending along a Short & Sweet round-up of content that I thought you might enjoy. I always love hearing from you, so drop a note in the comments, or tap the ❤️ button, and let me know if you get a kick out of any of this stuff. Or if you have any friends who might like my musings, please feel free to pass this on.
PLUTO RETROGRADE IS AN OPPORTUNITY FOR SELF IMPROVEMENT
Don’t know about you, but I’m slowly emerging from what has felt like a month-long funk. I just couldn’t motivate to get any work done. I’d go outside for a bit of fresh air, or make a cup of tea—the cure for any problem that arises in British TV shows—but nothing worked to shake off the ennui.
A couple of friends mentioned feeling the same way and I speculated (as I am wont to do) that our paralysis might have something to do with the planets. Well, dear readers, turns out I was right. Pluto is in retrograde. Here’s what that means, according to PopSugar.com:
Pluto's purpose is to urge you to contend with your inner shadows, potentially toxic beliefs and patterns, and deep-rooted psychological and emotional wounds in order to come away healed and empowered. However, when Pluto is retrograde, its effects are more internal, psychological, and emotional. The planet named for the God of the Underworld will challenge you to check — and ideally address — your own toxic, negative, and self-destructive behaviors, patterns, and belief systems.
What’s strange is, during this slump, I did start to contemplate my inner shadows and my “potentially toxic belief and patterns.” I thought about why I have such a hard time saying “no,” to things I don’t want to do, and why I tend to abandon projects. My plan is to try to change some of this behavior, though I don’t suspect it’ll be easy after 50+ years on the planet. Wish me luck! Whatever happens, I suppose I have Pluto to thank for forcing me to do some self evaluation.
You’re probably thinking—Oh, Hilary, you can’t blame everything on the planets, or as Jared made sure to point out, “Pluto isn’t even a planet!” He’s taking an astronomy class right now and suddenly he’s an expert on space. Perhaps it sounds far-fetched to believe that the planets affect our moods and decisions, but as Joni Mitchell sang and Carl Sagan noted in his book, “The Cosmic Connection,” we are stardust. “Every atom of oxygen in our lungs, of carbon in our muscles, of calcium in our bones, of iron in our blood - was created inside a star before Earth was born.”
I love the idea that our bodies are powered by stardust. It speaks to the wonder of life and energy and our never ending cosmic journey.
ALAN TURING’S ONE FRIEND AND WHAT HAPPENS AFTER WE DIE
And since we’re on the subject of space, I need to gush about the SubStack, The Lunar Dispatch, inspired by the moon. I stumbled across it the other day and was so moved by the post below about the code-cracking scientist/mathematician Alan Turing and his one friend, Christopher Morcom that it actually made me weepy. The touching story ends with a hopeful idea of what happens after we die. The post also contains a very spooky and funny conversation between the writer and an AI Chatbot that quelled my fear a smidge about the robots taking over. Highly recommend. Click below to read.
THE BENEDICT CUMBERBATCH PLATE DEBACLE
Here’s a quick sidebar that is tangentially related to Alan Turing. The actor, Benedict Cumberbatch played Alan Turing in a movie called The Imitation Game released in 2014. If you haven’t seen it, it’s streaming for free on Amazon & Netflix, and definitely worth a watch.
The year before, I worked on a movie called The Fifth Estate about Julian Assange starring Benedict Cumberbatch. You can probably skip that one. At that time, I was a huge Cumberbatch stan and loved him as Sherlock. I still like him, but the fervor has waned. Too much of a good thing and all that. Anyhoo, a couple of my incredible friends were with Cumberbatch during a press appearance and, in lieu of a paper napkin, grabbed a cocktail plate from a table nearby and asked the actor to sign it for me. They then snapped a photo of him holding said plate. My pal, Steve stashed the plate in his hotel room and later, someone from housekeeping popped in and scrubbed the plate clean. If you think that’s the end of this wacky tale, you don’t know Steve. He went back to Benedict Cumberbatch a SECOND time and had him sign another plate. Apparently the actor said, “Who is this woman, Hilary?” Lol. I had the plate on display at my place for a while until one day, after we’d had the house tidied up by a professional crew, I noticed the plate had been scrubbed clean yet again. The universe did not want this plate to be defaced. Fortunately, I still have the photo.
THE (ICYMI) OBIT OF THE WEEK: PEG YORKIN
In typical old school fashion, we still get the New York Times delivered on Sundays. I love reading obits that celebrate unsung heroes and I thought you might too. Starting today, I’ll be including a new feature to my weekly posts called The (ICYMI) Obit of the Week. This week I’m highlighting the ultra badass, feminist activist, Peg Yorkin, who died on June 30th, 2023 at 96-years-old. Click the headline below to read the full obit. It’s a gift link so if you don’t subscribe to the NYT, you should still be able to read it.
Peg Yorkin, Who Helped Bring the Abortion Pill to the U.S., Dies at 96
A Hollywood producer’s wife who was emboldened by second-wave feminism, she was a founder of the Feminist Majority and worked to get female candidates elected.
The Feminist Majority was founded in 1987 by Ms. Yorkin, Katherine Spillar, Toni Carabillo, Judith Meuli and Eleanor Smeal, a former president of the National Organization for Women. They took the organization’s name from polling indicating that more than 50 percent of women in the United States identified as feminists.
The organization’s first push was to increase the number of women running for office; at the time, only 5 percent of the members of Congress were female. To galvanize women, Ms. Yorkin produced a multistate tour through 21 cities that she designed like a political convention; at the end of each event, there was what Ms. Smeal characterized in a phone interview as an “altar call,” with some women pledging to run for office and others pledging to support them.
Within five years, the number of women in Congress doubled (it is now 28 percent). Ms. Yorkin was so dogged in her efforts and so generous with her financial support, Ms. Smeal said, that Barbara Mikulski, the longtime Democratic senator from Maryland, once described her as a one-woman political action committee.
Ms. Yorkin and her colleagues next turned to mifepristone, which the French government in 1998 had approved for use in family planning centers to induce abortions in the early stages of pregnancy. (Claude Évin, the French health minister, declared the drug “the moral property of women.”) But it would take 12 years for its use to be approved in the United States.
Women have to “put our money where our anger is,” Ms. Yorkin told The Los Angeles Times in 1991, adding that, “it is time to stop begging men for our rights” and to “turn our rage into direct action.”
Hell Yeah, Peg!
WATCH ENDEAVOUR ON PBS MASTERPIECE
If you love great acting, compelling storytelling, excellent period art direction, and British murder mysteries solved by a natty, cerebral, and emotionally tortured detective, you MUST watch the PBS series, Endeavour. The show stars Shaun Evans as Morse—an Oxford University dropout-turned-police officer who listens to opera, solves crossword puzzles, and nurses his broken heart with a bit too much booze. He teams up with DI Fred Thursday, played by Roger Allam—a seasoned copper and family man, who’s not above roughing-up bad guys and who ends conversations with the catchphrase, “mind how you go”. The show starts in the early 60s and weaves in actual historical events.
The 9th and final season just aired, but I can’t bring myself to watch the two last episodes because I don’t want it to end. That’s how much I love the show and my TV boyfriend, Detective Inspector Morse (he’s replaced Benedict Cumberbatch as my #1 brainy detective crush). Instead, I went back to the beginning and started watching all the early episodes and because they aired ages ago, they all seem new to me. That’s the perq of getting older and having a spotty memory I guess—you can rewatch a whodunnit and be genuinely surprised when they ID the culprit. The other bonus of rewatching the show is that I spied several actresses who guest starred in early episodes before they blew up like Anna Taylor-Joy and Jessie Buckley. Whee! I’m seriously having the best time of my life rewatching this show. It’s SO GOOD. Check it out and let me know what you think even though I’m certain you will love it as much as I do.
Okay, that’s a wrap! Thanks for subscribing, reading, liking, and sharing these posts. Your support brings me endless joy. xo
So... I love the plate (and I think if you ever get another, you should either frame it somehow or put a big note next to it about how it is NOT TO BE CLEANED. EVER. Also YES to Endeavour! I can't believe it's over, but like you, I've forgotten so much. I kind of want to go back and re-watch Lewis, but Lozza Fox has shown his true colors since then and I don't know if I can stomach him anymore. And finally, I wonder if Pluto is still retrograde (Venus is right now, I'm told), because I, too, have been delving into shadows and other such things...
Will do! I'm sure you've seen Broadchurch? If not, it's bloody good. I haven't seen your other recs. Thanks!