Letter from the Editor #37

Readers,

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Yesteryear, my PBS period comfort watches, and the problem with nostalgia for “the good old days”...

Over the weekend I tore through’s bestselling satirical thriller, Yesteryear. The novel was so absorbing that for the greater part of 48 hours, I could not put it down. (Actress Anne Hathaway is adapting the book for Amazon, and will star in the film.)

Its protagonist, Natalie Heller Mills, is an Idaho ranch-based right wing Christian “ tradwife” who makes her living as an influencer, peddling a back-to-the-land lifestyle (replete with her own popular brand of related products) that naturally also includes a return to retrograde gender roles.Order the book…

But when Natalie finds herself time-traveling back to 1855—the pioneering period in American history upon which her business profitably casts a halcyon glow—she gets schooled in the dangers of valorizing “simpler times,” particularly for a woman.

I was primed for considering such contradictions because for the past year my “comfort watches” have been T.V. series that take place between the mid-1930s and the early 1960s. I’ve come to realize that I am anesthetizing myself against the news of women’s (and minorities’ and queer people’s) rights being systematically, frustratingly reversed by…doing some time-traveling myself, ironically to times when those groups had many fewer rights, and littler power to speak of.

Don’t get me…