Lucas Camilo

A lot happened in 2022. Ida started 2nd grade and Lucas started 8th; we continued getting out into the wilderness and tracking our favorite wheelchair accessible trails; Krista published some beautiful essays on her way to writing a book (!); Burke kept organizing, raising money and supporting grassroots grantmaking at Social Justice Fund NW; and we had lots of adventures that we never got around to documenting like spending 10 days RVing through the Canadian Rockies.

This year the pandemic entered a new stage allowing to get out more and spend time in person with friends and family. But we still also spent a lot of time learning and and engaging in the world through our favorite pastimes: reading, watching movies, and listening to music and podcasts. So we thought a fun way to share something from our year would be through a few top 10/ year’s best lists. We’ll start with the kids since their list are shorter:

Ida’s favorite books that she read in 2022:

• Belly up
• Poached
• Big Game
• Panda-monium
• Tyrannosaurus Wrecks
• Bear Bottom
  (These are all from the Fun Jungle series by Stuart Gibbs)
• Smile
• Guts
• Chester’s Masterpiece
• Frankie’s world

My favorite Music Documentaries that I watched in 2022 (by Lucas)

For my years best list, I decided to write about my favorite music documentaries because I have loved watching music documentaries with my dad the past year. As you may know, my dad and I are both huge music nerds and we watch things for music nerds. All the documentaries in this list are music documentaries we’ve watched in the past year that I like. So, without further adieu, I, Lucas Hanson present…

• 808 is a documentary about the history of the 808 drum machine and how it changed across the world.
• Watch the Sound is a docu-series where music producer Mark Ronson talks about different music technology and experiences them by talking with different people about them.
• Soundbreaking is a docu-series where each episode talks about the production and history behind a type of music technology.
• Band called Death is a documentary about an obscure all black punk band called Death.
• Classic Albums is a series where each episode talks about the making of a classic album like Pet Sounds.
• 1971: The Year that Music Changed Everything is a series that goes deep into the music and culture of the year 1971.
•  Amy is a documentary about the life of Amy Winehouse as a musician.
•  Tad: Busted Circuits and Ringing Ears is a documentary about the Seattle rock band Tad.
•  Summer of Soul is a movie about a music festival of all black people in Harlem.
• Eight Days a Week is a documentary about the Beatles and how they’re so popular.
• Bad Reputation is a documentary about Joan Jett and how she was an activist, especially for women.
• Rock Milestones is a series about famous rock albums like Ziggy Stardust and Master of Puppets.
• Monterey Pop is a concert movie of the Monterey Pop festival in the 60s.
• Woodstock is a movie that’s the filming of a famous festival called Woodstock that happened shortly after Monterey  Pop.
• Running Down a Dream is a documentary about the life of the band Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers. It goes through the positive and negative stages of the band.

Krista’s Favorite Books (Memoir and Essays), 2022

Here is my top-10 list of my favorite books of personal writing (memoir, essays, and cultural criticism with a strong first person) I read in 2022. Most books were published recently, but some are from years back. I list them in the order that I thought of them (which roughly correlates to reverse order that I read them), and I’m sure I’ve left off some that should be here, but here you go. Let me know what books you loved this year.

1) Punch Me Up to the Gods, by Brian Broome. A memoir from a brilliant young writer that you should read! (Others agree with me, listing this in their “best books of 2021” lists.) The craft and beauty Broome brings to rendering incredible pain and vulnerability made me almost buckle with envy at his writing talent. Broome writes about being Black and gay, about gender and his childhood, about addiction and community and survival, all while telling a beautiful story of a long bus ride across town.

2) Easy Beauty: A Memoir, by Chloe Cooper Jones. Another incredible memoir that weaves many threads of personal stories with meditations on life as a woman, philosopher, a person with disabilities, a grad student traveling to report on tennis, a mixed-race Phillipina-American, a lover of art. A woman on a pilgrimage to see Beyonce in Rome. Beautiful renderings of time with her young child. The writing is deeply intellectual and grounded in her not-easily-beautiful experiences.

3) Minor Feelings, by Cathy Park Hong. My writing teacher likes to say that poets write the best memoirs, and with this book I’d add cultural criticism. If I say I learned so much about Asian American history and experience reading this book I sell it way short, though it is also true. The book is poetic. It is brave. Hong goes deep and invites you there, with her, into the murkiness of wanting and not wanting to recognize our subjugation and complicity with so many systems of oppression. And she made me want to go re-watch Richard Pryor.

4) Chronology of Water, A Memoir by Lidia Yuknavitch. I sat hiding from my family in the back of our RV in the mountains of Canada, bawling at the beauty and pain and honesty in this book. I wasn’t hiding because I was crying, but because I couldn’t stop reading. I’m late to the game of the cult of Yuknavitch devotees, but I am now a card-carrying member. Among other things, she mines devastating loss, childhood trauma, addiction, pleasure and art. I put her book down and tried to write something more honest.

5)  The Faraway Nearby, by Rebecca Solnit. In this book of essays, Solnit meditates on so much – the cold, the dark, literature, family, memory, art, preservation – using meandering and mirroring structures. I know Solnit’s name from activist circles (we pulled Hope in the Dark off our bookshelf in 2016 but I only read the first couple essays). This was the first time I sat down with her for a whole book. At times I had to take breaks (for life), and I was sad for it because I started to lose track of the threads… but I still loved it enough to put it on my list!

6) Having and Being Had, by Eula Biss. More brilliant personal essays! Biss uses the purchase of her Chicago home as the jumping off point for meditating on class privilege and the ways we collude with capitalism. The mini-essays are filled with moments – she started with a journal – in which she is often uncomfortable with comfort. She inspects the ways in which she has not necessarily “sold out” as an artist, but certainly had to sell (and then sometimes buy back) her time to be able to live the life she wants.

7) I Live A Life Like Yours: A Memoir, by Jan Grue. Another non-linear memoir, Grue lets his thoughts on a life of limits and privilege meander and circle. Grue’s life has one parallel to ours (he has a neuromuscular disease) but otherwise our families look pretty different (he is an academic in Norway, he can get up out of his wheelchair and walk a little), and yet I couldn’t stop seeing my life in his writing. That! I kept thinking. And that! and that!! He circles around grief and acceptance, pleasure and pain, describing ways of adjusting to living a life that is more confined – by medical language, by inaccessible construction, by other’s expectations – than it should be.

8) Year of the Tiger, An Activist’s Life, by Alice Wong. OK, I haven’t finished this yet, but my excuse is that I got the book from the library and I couldn’t NOT dog-ear and underline pages, so I had to return it and go buy my own copy. Wong writes essays, transcribes interviews, gives you fun practice exercises, and shares so generously and from her incredible life as a disabled activist, organizer, podcaster, culture and community builder.

9) Body Work, by Melissa Febos. I am obsessed with Melissa Febos’s work. This one is a craft book – a book for anyone who needs a fierce advocate whisper-shouting in your ear that your voice matters, that you have permission to write from your whole body, that you can write through and including your shame and your pleasure. You can write without knowing what you have to say. You can write because it is a pleasure to create, and you can find what you have to say through the act of creating.

10) Queer Ducks (And Other Animals): Natural History of Animal Sexuality, by Elliot Schrefer. OK, Lucas and I are just a quarter of the way into this book, but it falls into one of my favorite nonfiction genres outside memoir – the critical, and sometimes funny, study of Western science. In this case, looking at the history of scientific understanding (and misunderstanding) of homosexual behavior in animals. Schrefer says he is writing this book in part for his eleven year old self who saw that gay meant “unnatural” as he was realizing he was a queer kid. He’s also writing it for all of us who want science to see its human biases and notice what it hasn’t been able to see. In this case, more than a thousand species of queer animals getting it on!

And two books from 2022 that are works of fiction, but also, good fiction is also truth…

The Door of No Return, by Kwame Alexander. I’ve read some really good books with Lucas this year (yay for reading with a teenager with good taste in books!!), but this was my favorite. We had to put it down a couple times because of the intensity of reading about violence experienced by young people. But also, I have never read a book like this for young audiences (maybe a gap in my own reading), that introduces readers to wonderful and complex African characters living their full lives with the slave trade a violent rumor in the distance.

The Sentence, by Louis Erdrich. This isn’t my favorite book I’ve ever read by Louis Erdrich, but it is still one of my top books of 2022 because I love everything she writes. (If you haven’t read The Night Watchman, which won the Pulitzer in 2021, or The Last Report of the Miracle at Little No Horse, read those too.) I needed this book so deeply – it takes place at the bookstore Erdrich owns in Minneapolis in 2020. The beginning of the pandemic and the uprisings after George Floyd’s murder were just two years ago, but that can feel so far away sometimes. It felt so important to go back and process these events with amazing characters who were living it up close.

Burke’s Favorite Podcasts of 2022

This is a list of 10 favorite limited series podcast which were launched in 2022. It’s my favorite genre of podcast — deep dives into specific historic or current events and personalities. Enjoy!

The Walk Home (KNKX)
This podcast tells the story of the police killing of Manny Ellis in Tacoma in early 2020 and how his family members fought to expose the story (which echoes the murder of George Floyd). In the age of declining local media it’s impressive to see reporters from the Seattle/Tacoma area put together such a powerful and compelling narrative, with huge implications — the trial of the cops who killed Ellis will take place in 2023. There’s also a lot of insight into how the Right has used controversies around police violence to stoke culture wars.

The Last Cup (NPR)
I got swept up in the World Cup this year and couldn’t help but root for Leonel Messi, arguably the greatest soccer player of all time, and his Argentina squad. This podcast tells the backstory of how Messi came to be Messi, including his connection to Diego Maradona and how leaving Argentina for Spain as a teenager impacted his career and relationship to the mother country. The fact that Argentina ultimately won this year’s world cup — in dramatic fashion — set up a beautiful final episode.

Slow Burn: Roe v. Wade (Slate)
I’m a big fan of the Slow Burn podcast (check out season 4 on David Duke and season 6 on the L.A. riots) and the 2022 installment on the history of the Roe vs. Wade decision was indeed timely. That historic decision gets referenced so often and yet I didn’t actually know much about how it came to be, or about the evangelicals and right-wingers behind the original anti-abortion movement, or about the brave women lawyers who came up with the strategy that led to the 1973 supreme court decision.

Legacy of Speed (Pushkin)
Most people have seen the iconic photo of John Carlos and Tommy Smith raising their fists in the Black power sign while standing on the podium at the 1968 Olympics. But few know the story of what brought them there, not to mention the repercussions of their actions. This podcast from Malcolm Gladwell — who is not exactly my favorite writer but does have a knack for unearthing compelling and underappreciated history — features the great Dave Zirin and his message of how sports figures can and should speak to politics.

Season 2: Death in the West
The first season of this podcast (produced by some friends and acquaintances from my college days in Missoula, Montana) deftly told the history behind the murder of IWW union organizer Frank Little in Butte. Season 2 rolled out slowly and took a while to get going but tells the nearly as compelling story of Richard McCoy, a skyjacker who modeled himself after (or was??) the infamous D.B. Cooper.

Brazil on Fire (NACLA)
This podcast (made by an old friend Mike Fox) was a great listen in the lead-up to the 2022 presidential election in Brazil, and it remains compelling even after the all-too-close defeat of the autocratic, Trump-like Jair Bolsonaro in November. As more right-wing populist/nationalist leaders come to power around the world it’s important to know how it happens; Brazil’s story is unique but also emblematic of the rise of other potentially fascist leaders in places like Italy.

The Wire at 20 (HBO)
It’s almost become cliché to say that the HBO show The Wire was the greatest TV show ever made. I loved it as much as the next guy and thus devoured this podcast looking back on the show 20 years after the first episode was made. Hosted by Method Man (aka Cheese) and featuring interviews with many of the standout actors that appeared in the show, it gives some hilarious and often touching back story. The tribute to Michael K. Williams (who died last year) and the heartfelt shout outs to Jim True-Frost (who played Pryzbylewski, and who our family got to know years ago, and who really is a sweat guy) were among my favorite moments.

One Year: 1986 (Slate)
Slate’s One-Year Podcast is a deep dive into a few stories of major (or forgotten) events that happened over the course of one year in the United States. 1977 remains my favorite season, but 1986 definitely had some episode gems, especially the one about Herschel and his crew of sea lions that terrorized salmon (and exasperated humans) at the Ballard Locks in Seattle. I actually remember the controversy from when I was a kid so it was fun to hear how it all played out. Slate released One Year: 1942 in the second half of 2022 and it’s also worth a listen.

Love Thy Neighbor: Four Days in Crown Heights (Pineapple Street Studios)
The story of riots that took place in the Crown Heights neighborhood of Brooklyn in the early 90s and the social dimensions (racism, antisemitism, police violence) that were at play in a mixed Black Caribbean and Jewish neighborhood. The journalist who hosts the show weaves in her personal story and puts the 1990s unrest in the context of the modern Black Lives Matter movement.

Pink Card (ESPN 30 for 30)
As you may have figured out by now, my favorite podcasts often involve politics, social movement history, and sports. Pink Card is an intersection of all those things, the story of Iranian women getting banned from attending soccer games and how a group of brave female soccer fans over generations came up with ingenious ways to sneak in anyway, often at great risk. The podcast was made in the lead-up to the huge protests in Iran this year, ignited after the death of a woman in police custody. The final episode – which brings together personal and national history with the modern women’s movement in Iran – is riveting.

Honorable mention:

• Mother Country Radicals (Crooked Media) — The story of the radical Weather Underground told by a child of one of its leaders.
• The Rest is History (Goalhanger Podcasts) — A couple of British guys talk through episodes in history
• Throughline (NPR) — Superb history podcast with implications for our present times.
• Mossback (Crosscut) — Seattle history as told by reporter Knute Berger
• When We Fight We Win –  From Greg Jobin Leeds and featuring “Twenty-First-Century Social Movements and the Activists That Are Transforming Our World”
• Trojan Horse Affair (NYTimes) — Compelling and well produced… but also kinda over-hyped.
• Cameleon: Hollywood Con Queen (Campside Media) — The story of a bizarre Hollywood scam.
• Under the Influence (iHeart Podcasts) — Fascinating and disturbing look into the world of mom influencers.