Bette’s Weekly Roundup — Wash Our Spirits Clean

The Best of Bette for the week <3

***Registration link for today’s Happy Hour wellness checkin at 5 pm PT can be found here. If you are not yet a member of the Bette community and would like to join us, please join today at a great rate.***

I left my heart in Joshua Tree, but I carried the vacation spirit with me back to L.A.

Last night, I walked around Old Town, recharging on the energy of people — an Uber driver who works as a digital matte painter, a Piehole employee who turned me on to a lo-fi chillhop mix. It was late and he offered me the last of the coffee, a brand called Klatch. Being a coffee connoisseur, I was quite pleased to try a new brew.

I forget how much I love and appreciate interacting with people, because I’m still coming out of the COVID recluse phase. I often say people everywhere you go are pretty cool. And last night, was a good example of that.

In the before times, I was a nightlife writer for the LA Times, and that’s as good a place as any to start with this week’s Best of Bette — the one email that sums up the key reports from the previous week.

Here goes…

When the Viper Room Ruled the Sunset Strip

• I was honored when Los Angeles Magazine asked me to contribute to July’s After Dark issue — commissioning me to write a multiple stories, including a memoir on the Viper Room — my home for decades. It’s lovely, and I hope you read it. The best part was being compared to Eve Babitz.

Wash Our Spirits Clean

• What better way to celebrate a desert moon in an RV with a book of Pablo Neruda poems than to write about it. I stayed up all night to write ‘Wash Our Spirits Clean’ — a tribute to all that I cherish. As I wrote, war is hell for birds. Here is an excerpt (podcast version also available):

  • The desert sky is pink and subtle, muted like a faded postcard. I miss the astrophysicist, who used to tell me things about scattered light and black holes, gravitational waves and string theory. I understood little but loved the magic — a universe filled with wonder and beauty, particles colliding.

    As the pink sky becomes blue black, manmade fireworks conclude for another year, and the real fireworks reveal themselves — first a scattering of stars — blink — then more — blink blink — then millions, sky sparklers, shooting through the night, an infinite tiara crowning the cosmos.

    The buttery moon is big and its face bemused. I stare at it as if to never forget what it looks like in this moment. I am asked if I have a vision of heaven. I respond, “Yes… it’s this moment.”

    I see heaven in moments such as these, and I don’t want to miss a single second of the wonder and beauty.

    “We come and go, but the land is always here.”—Willa Cather

    I come to the desert to wash my spirit clean…

• Joshua Trees — which are really yuccas — are endangered. That’s our real fight.

American Monster — Paul Manafort

• As a rule, Americans are pretty lousy at recognizing monsters. Paul Manafort — tanned and in a nice suit — spent a career reputation-washing dictators and mobsters. The world is worse is for it, as 72 percent of countries are ruled by authoritarians, as opposed to 50 percent a decade ago. ‘American Monster’ is the first in a series exclusively for paid members of convicted US criminals who accelerated the fascist creep (podcast version also available).

‘Nazis Go Home’ — Protesting Moms for Liberty

• This terrific post is a guest op-ed from Bette member Ellen Zucker, who reported from the Philadelphia protest of the dark-money funded group, Moms for Liberty, which is a designated extremist organization according to SPLC. Here is an excerpt from Ellen’s fantastic op-ed:

  The presence of M4L counter protesters is a message to M4L followers, the American public, and our politicians that we are aware, and we are not going to roll over.

  On a broader level, for progressives, non-violent protest is a life-affirming activity as it seeks to promote a more humane society. It brings people together in support of a cause larger than themselves. It builds community by breaking down barriers of race, class, gender, and geography to focus on our commonality. It provides an outlet for creativity, humor, and self-expression. And it resists attempts by those who seek to keep us divided.

  In pushing for change, public protest is an empowering activity: that by taking to the streets we can take power into our own hands and shape the future. Ultimately, it is an expression of optimism and hope.—Ellen Zucker

  Protest is patriotic. 💘🇺🇸🙏🏼

Dead Clown Walking

• A mafia state is having problems, and whether it’s kayfabe or a lust for power and greed spun out of control, Putin is dead clown walking. Here is an excerpt (also available in podcast form):

  • Bette community member Michael MacKay, a Canadian academic who lived in Ukraine, as he pointed out the gullibility of mainstream news media:

    Since 2014 they reported “ceasefire agreements” made by the Russian fascist invaders of Ukraine as if they were real. Now they’re reporting a “peace agreement” between two Russian fascist leaders as if it is real.

    Putin and Prigozhin are mass murderers and liars. They say the coup is over. Ukrainians know better. They mock the enemy warlords but know Russia’s descent into hell is a sideshow.As much as Putin may hope for immortality, mortality has other plans.

    Putin was not going to live forever anyway. It is true that you now have a dead man in charge of a Russian political party.—Timothy Snyder

    I dream the future, and I often carry images from my dreams into the world as a wake. And yesterday morning as I awakened, I saw an image of Putin lying in state, dressed as a clown.

    A girl can dream.

• Read the full report below:

Calendaring Bette

• A new feature I’m adding is a calendar, so you can easily remember key dates. Among them, our ‘Speakeasy this Sunday with Dr. Michael MacKay, and our next ‘Speakeasy’ with Ruth Ben-Ghiat, on July 30. In addition, I noted the dates/times of our weekly Happy Hours. The next one is in less than two hours btw.

Alright, that’s not a bad roundup for a week when I was allegedly on vacation lol.

See many of you soon!

🪶

***

Bette Dangerous is a reader-funded magazine. Thank you to all monthly, annual, and founding members. Thank you as well to all those who support my work with your generous coffee tips and who buy my ebooks. Some of you prefer making subsidizing donations via venmo, and it’s always greatly appreciated. Thanks to a generous donor, we gave away six annual memberships! We have three new gifted memberships to offer, so please send a note to the email address below if you would like to join the next membership lottery — tell us who you are and what concerns you most. If you wish to gift a membership, you can do so by donating to the ko-fi or venmo accounts, and indicate it’s for a gift, or do so here:

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The registration link to our weekly Bette’s Happy Hour wellness checkin Tuesday, July 11, at 5 pm PT can be found here.

💘

We just have to see that the battle for democracy is broader. It's deeper.—David Pepper

I need people to see they're on the frontline. Wherever you live, if you’re doing this work, you are the frontline.—David Pepper

The message should be a fair deal… fairness everywhere.—Martin Sheil

💘

“I say a silent prayer of thanksgiving as I walk upon the earth.”-Audrey Peterman.

“May the viral hope for truth and humanity wash away the chaos of these years.”-S.C., Bette community member

“Something Sacred never dies in almost all of us, who can hear the invitation of Truth…”-words from a Bette Dangerous community member

“Nothing but blue skies from now on…”-Irving Berlin

“Non-violent protest is a life-affirming activity as it seeks to promote a more humane society.”-Ellen Zucker

💘

Save the Joshua Tree xo