The Good Things of Summer '25
Food, music, books, podcasts, and more
Hi friends,
It is currently the ten-day cowboy fever dream here known as the Calgary Stampede. People who are not from here always ask me, skeptically, if it really is a city-wide party and the best way I can answer that is: yes.
Yes. Yahoo and bless our hearts, yes, the Stampede absolutely is a ten day city-wide party with daily free pancake breakfasts from every church or dentists office in town, cowboy hats, fantastic live country music everywhere you turn, lax dress codes, late nights under fireworks, dancing, midway rides, rodeo, and general yahoo culture.
Since I’m in my annual cowboy-era and shortly headed for the Big Four Roundhouse for the Jason Isbell concert myself as I write this, I figured this was a perfect summer week for us to take a breath and celebrate the good things of this summer.
For the uninitiated, once a quarter or so, we do take this break to talk about the small - or maybe not-so-small - things that are bringing a bit of goodness to us.1 For me, that includes my current favourite rhubarb recipe (I am absolutely feral for rhubarb), a dress I’m wearing constantly, the shows I’m watching/loving, the good reads, a music rediscovery, the podcast I can’t shut up about right now, Substack reads worth a scroll, the reels that I sent to my friends (I’m old, I don’t do the TikToks), and a few more things. And then you get to share the stuff in the comments.
And just as a reminder, this is a sponsored-content-free zone because I’m nobody’s influencer.2 These are things I genuinely experienced myself and/or paid for myself, so I feel good talking about them with you.
📖 A Good Line Worth Holding Onto
“… nothing worth having comes without some kind of fight
Got to kick at the darkness 'til it bleeds daylight".”
- Bruce Cockburn, Lovers in a Dangerous Time
📚 Reading
For my fellow bookworms, our latest Book Corner is right here with all my favourite recent reads. We’re having a great chat in the comments about books there, too.
