The dahlias are at their peak, the weather is pretty much perfect, I’ve been thinking about switching from shorts to pants for the morning dog walk, I made the first soup of the season — MUST BE LATE SEPTEMBER, the most glorious time of the year.

It’s also a glorious time to run, and right now I’m in the final stretch of training for the Chicago Marathon — my fourth. If you’ve been reading this newsletter for awhile you know that I was the opposite of a runner when I was a kid; I hated running and all sports. But I’ve discovered the glories of aging into athleticism, and am so excited to run Chicago for the first time…..and raise a boatload of money for the Girl Scouts of Greater Chicago in the process (truly a win/win).

If you were a Girl Scout like me — or have a Girl Scout in your life — you know what an empowering (I don’t generally like that word, but it actually applies here!) and truly inclusive organization it is. The Girl Scouts didn’t teach me how to run but it did teach me how to do things that were new and challenging. I’m matching the first $500; all donations go directly to the Girl Scouts of Greater Chicago to make Girl Scouts available to every girl and non-binary kid who wants to join.

You can donate directly here — or you can Venmo me (annehelen) and I’ll post cashout receipts next week (I have a lot to lose if I lose your trust, so please believe me that I’d never embezzle your Girl Scouts donations). LET’S DO THIS!!!

For this month’s bounty of links and recs, I’ve got two new cookbooks, a cleaning implement that is going to fix all my problems, a pair of overalls that is also going to solve all of my problems, plus the usual long list of lovely and weird articles and the Just Trust Me.

If you’re not already a subscriber, join today and get access to all this plus all the other subscriber perks — including this week’s thread where people from all matter of industry talked at length about how they got their job:

Threads

How Did You Get Your Job?

Anne Helen Petersen · Sep 17

I love demystifying adulthood. When I was a teen and in my 20s, I had no idea how people actually found themselves in a place to buy houses, or know they should get married, or, frankly, GOT JOBS. Like I knew that you applied — I had been hired at jobs before, just not BIG JOBS. I remember wildly applying for jobs out of college and wondering:

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And subscribers, this week we’ll have the monthly WHAT ARE YOU READING thread + “WHAT DO I DO WITH ALL THESE PICTURES” which promises to be both utilitarian and philosophical, so get your ideas answers ready.

Oh, and as promised last month, here’s the cashout receipt for Bookshop — and the donation receipt to Books to Prisoners. For the next round of Bookshop affiliate dollars, we’ll be donating to IndigiPalooza — a celebration of Indigenous Arts and Storytelling next August in Missoula. Learn all about it here.