Entertainment

1.

On the pale-green book’s cover is a painting of a bust of Nefertiti, an image of a sculpture of a long-gone queen, one who’s smiling vaguely to the left, her gaze shy. Below, a title in all caps: WHEN THE DEAD AROSE NO ONE SAW THEM.

That squid costume was crazy,” said my husband appreciatively, meaning an artist-made balloon suit that had so threatened the mental health of our dog at the previous week’s festival. He wasn’t there, but had finally seen a picture of the suit in action on Facebook, and he agreed: absolutely, it would shake a husky’s foundation of reality.

In an outbuilding on our farm that we’ve called the Spyhouse – from its window, with binoculars and a lack of haze, you can get a pretty good view of the grain mill in Cottonwood – there are many things.

In season one of a certain HBO show – one whose name I’m not sure I can say in a community paper – Sarah Jessica Parker’s columnist character is at a party and gets hit on by another writer. That smarmy fellow is played by the actor Justin Theroux. This will become important.

It’s been a bad week to be preparing a class in editing and publishing. On Thursday, my husband roared up on the lawnmower and was greeted by the sight of his wife frantically slicing her arms at him. It was a gesture I hoped meant “please, cut the noise, I’m on the phone and can’t hear the other person” and not “get out of here, love of my life!” I probably seemed deranged, though; the person I was talking to was my literary agent, who was moving to a new firm and thus delivering the news that we had to part ways.

“Hello,” says a kid, startling me. She’s appeared on the back patio of the Bluenose Gopher; since I’m sitting down and she’s standing, her large eyes are roughly at the level of my own. Her gaze is very confident in the bright summer sun.

I’d like to first make it clear that I am not a famous writer, and that this story might just be the result of sour grapes. The closest I’ve come: last July, our sketch show performed at Bryant Lake Bowl in Minneapolis. Local treasure Scott Tedrick came, took notes, and featured us on the cover of the second edition of the Yellow Medicine Arrow, the magazine he edits about happenings along 212.

“You just have to get in up to your tummy,” my mother yells. We can barely hear her over the wet wind; it’s mid-June, but a face-slap of a day, one where the waves crest like we’re standing in Lake Superior instead of in a medium-sized lake in a modest suburban neighborhood.

It is a dark and stormy night: perfect weather for my current activity, which happens to be “sit in a potentially-haunted chapel with a group of 10, two professional ghost hunters, a historian, and an app that purports to translate spectral voices into audible speech.” Later, I will quietly complete a Duolingo lesson before midnight so as not to break my streak; a hard bench in a long-dead pastor’s home church will officially become the weirdest place I have ever learned Polish via an angry bird app.