Good things #10
In which I join TikTok for mental health advice, discover how to mend broken pots with gold and feel happy when a newsreader cries on TV
Dear friends,
Happy Friday! And a warm welcome to all my new subscribers. Thank you so much for your support with this newsletter. I get such a thrill from the feedback. And this is the tenth edition! Over the last ten weeks, I’ve managed to find almost 60 good things, which seems mad given the ten weeks we’ve had. So thank you, and please keep spreading the word for me.
Now, without a doubt, the best thing this week was finally a bit of good news, but specifically, I enjoyed watching the newsreader deliver it on the BBC…
TV: BBC News reports Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe and Anoosheh Ashoori are free and the newsreader cries
So many good things to unpack in this clip. First, of course, it’s the wonderful news that Nazanin and Anoosheh are finally home, after years of hell in Iran. This clip from from the BBC News shows the moment news of their release first came through and pro-newsreader Joanna Gosling got a bit choked up with the emotion of it. I love it when a newsreader shows emotion, especially on the BBC. They’re absolutely not supposed to do that and, when it’s about something good, it’s all the more delicious.
Mental Health: Dr Julie Smith
Dr Julie Smith is a clinical psychologist, author of Why Has Nobody Told Me This Before? and a Tik Tok sensation. What’s Tik Tok? Oh I don’t know, I can’t be bothered either. But I’m afraid because of Dr Julie I have now been sucked into yet another social media channel and have even created a “Tik Tok account” for myself. She makes short, clear and engaging content about mental health and, if you’re not on Tik Tok, you can watch a compilation of some of her best videos in the YouTube clip I’ve shared here. My favourite is where she explains what happens when you bottle things up by whacking together two bottles of Corona.
Art: Kintsugi
Kintsugi apparently means “golden joinery” in Japanese and it’s basically the art of mending broken pottery with gold dust. The idea is that you treat breakage and repair as part of the history of the object, rather than chucking the object away in a fury or trying to disguise and hide the cracks.
It symbolises the embracing of flaws and imperfections, making something beautiful and strong from something broken and damaged. It’s basically an absolutely top metaphor, as far as metaphors go.
You can buy a Kintsugi kit, so next time you smash something you can mend it back together even better than it was, and then look at it and remember that you are also a beautiful broken, damaged, strong, golden Kintsugi pot.
|Check out this Kintsugi kit available on Etsy.
TV: Jeen Yuhs, Netflix
This documentary is only for you if you are (or have ever been) a little bit of a Kayne West fan. If not, then it is simply too long for you to endure. But I loved The College Dropout album back in my 20s and therefore thoroughly enjoyed all four and a half hours of this, which is edited down from 20 years of footage, and shot by Kanye’s good friend “Coodie”.
Over 20 years we see Kayne go from enthusiastically playing his demo-tape to super-disinterested, bored marketing executives, to becoming a Grammy Award-winning, Kardashian-marrying, mansion-living, mega-famous, music industry success and living in a house made almost entirely from cream leather (as far as we can tell).
Highlights include Kanye singing Hey Mama to his mamma in her kitchen (he LOVES his mamma and she dies). It’s also an intimate insight into his mental health struggles and Coodie has to turn the camera off a few times.
|Jeen Yus is on Netflix.
Treasure from the Internet: Letter from John Steinbeck to Marilyn Monroe
This is a letter thought to have been written by the writer John Steinbeck to superstar Marilyn Monroe in 1955. It was something she kept and was part of her estate after she died. You can read more about the letter and find out if she every wrote back here.
Kids: Tuning Red, Disney+
After a very long time of watching nothing but Encanto in my house, we’ve finally moved on to watching nothing but Turning Red. Pixar’s latest movie is a coming of age story about a 13-year-old girl who turns into a giant red panda when her feelings get the better of her. Basically it’s a giant, red metaphor for periods and puberty which I really wish I’d known before I watched it with my 8-year-old because I wasn’t ready to answer questions about any of this yet. It is a great movie though and worth the awkwardness to get the damned Family Madrigal out of my head at last.
I hope you’ve enjoyed this week’s “Good Things” newsletter.
If you have, will you please “like” it with the little heart, and do me a favour? Please send it to a friend and encourage them to subscribe too?
You can find me on Twitter @emilyincam if you want to say “Hello” or you can leave a comment below.
See you next week!
Love, Emily xx
And P.S If you you spot something good, tell me.
So nice to read this from Australia . Nazanin has been the subject of our conversation over the last 24 hours . All of us emotional with happy tears .
Thank you for the weekly newsletter- love it ❤️
Another great newsletter, I really look forward to these on a Friday afternoon. More so this week as I finally succumbed to Covid. I had the honour of breaking the news of Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe heading for the airport on Cambridge 105 Radio on Wednesday morning and it took a lot not to choke with relief and happy tears. I love the Kintsugi art too xx