It Feels Good

Hosting a live revival, sharing about grief, commiserating about typos

We fired up the Death, Sex & Money engines last night for a live show to celebrate our new home at Slate and revivals of all kinds.

It was such a thrill to throw this party with our friends at KQED in San Francisco. After our show’s transition and break, it felt really good to be together in person with a sold out crowd of Death, Sex & Money listeners and to hear new stories from our wonderful guests: comedian W. Kamau Bell, artist Carissa Potter, writer Vicki Larson, physician Bonnie Chen and our band leader D’Wayne Wiggins of Tony Toni Toné.

D’Wayne Wiggins not only talked about revival, including the Tony Toni Toné reunion tour last year, but he also created the perfect groove with his backing band. Below is the moment below when the room was bouncing as they transitioned from Tony Toni Toné’s classic anthem “Feels Good” to a few bars of Sly & the Family Stones’ “Dance to the Music”:

You can hear it all in your Death, Sex & Money podcast feed next week, but here are a few more fun behind the scenes moments:

Carissa Potter visits with Bonnie Chen while Frank Stickemz soundchecks, DSM's Daisy Rosario and Vicki Larson have a laugh, Melissa Bell and W. Kamau Bell with pre-show pizza, Husband Arthur and me with post-show glow and new hats.

One of the threads that came up during the show last night was how the energy of revival is often co-mingled with grief. I wrote here last week about long-distance grief and got this response from a reader named Jenna, which she said I could share with you:

I live in a state of grief from afar. I live in two states — Colorado, and California, where I have moved after retirement to provide practical support for my father in San Diego and physical and moral support for me and my sweetheart, in Erie, Colorado.

Home is everywhere and Home is nowhere. My young adult children, ages 23 and 26, live far enough away that I need to drive for two hours or fly for several hours in order to see them and spend time with them. I’m separated from my husband of nearly 30 years. His mother, who has lived a century, is slowly fading into deep dementia. My friends from a 34 year teaching career are back in the Pasadena area, a place I love and called home for nearly 40 years. I miss it, and I try to stay connected as best I can.

 As a newly minted grief educator, I’m aware that everyone’s grieving something because life is constantly changing and we’re missing that which we have left or has left us behind. It’s a complicated, bittersweet life.  

–Jenna Waters

Thanks for writing, Jenna.

And thank you to so many of you who have become Slate Plus members to support the work of Death, Sex & Money. Slate Plus members get an ad-free feed of our show (!), and along with access to all the wonderful writing at Slate and ad-free listening to other Slate podcasts like Decoder Ring and Slow Burn. Sign up here.

And, finally, thanks to all of you for reading. You may have noticed last week that I sent off the newsletter while it still had some typos — sorry! I have stubborn bad habits from starting out in radio newsrooms, where it didn’t matter if you wrote something wrong on paper as long as you said it right on air. This is not the world you live in anymore, Sale!

I’m endeavoring to get better at this — nothing snags afterward like the dumb unforced error of a typo. I was just talking about this over a cup of tea with my friend Whitney, and to commiserate, she told me her worst typo moment — and said I could tell all of you. It was years ago, and she was new to a job in a county public health system. Whitney is a white woman, and when she sent out her first email to all her new coworkers across this expansive urban county, she introduced herself as “Whitey.”

So, in conclusion, may we all try to do better with typos, but if one slips through, I hope it’s one that earns us a hilarious nickname!

Until next week,

Anna