{Raditorial} Museum of Ice Cream | San Francisco, CA

i celebrated my 26th birthday at the museum of ice cream in san francisco last week with my friends, and after showing my parents and siblings (little sis is an ice cream connoisseur) the photos we took, they wanted to check it out so we took a quick family trip to the museum. having visited the museum three times already, somehow every visit gets better and better. i've only been to the ones in LA and SF, and personally i like SF the best.

it was pretty cool to see all the ice cream-themed exhibits, although the lines and crowds were not. some of the exhibits were interactive and full of ice cream fun facts. some exhibits gave away free ice cream, pop rocks, cotton candy & lemonade for those with a sweet tooth out there. as you go through the exhibits, you'll find yourself jumping into the sprinkles pool, to candyland with a gummybear, to a crawl space that's made of all mirror, to a unicorn, to a ring toss game, to a 1950s diner with a jukebox, to a magnetic exhibit with refrigerator magnets to leave your mark, and more. there's also a set of swings perfect for the (insta)gram.

originally opened as a pop-up museum for a few months, by demand they extended it. twice. we're glad to hear that the museum of ice cream is here to stay permanently! so if you've planned on a visit to san francisco one day in the near future, make sure to put this down as one of your stops (if you're into ice cream and sweets). currently there are museum of ice creams in san francisco, LA, NYC and miami.

location: museum of ice cream

1 grant ave.

san francisco, ca 94108

website/tickets: https://www.museumoficecream.com/san-francisco

♥ have you been to any of the museum of ice creams?
what were your favorite exhibits and flavors? ♥

august 2018 | a look back

highlights

• my lola (grandma) came back from philippines. again. she'll be here for my birthday and for the rest of the year until she goes back march next year.
• my little brother started the 5th grade. his last year of elementary school :'-(
• saw valfre and charmaine olivia paint their murals at our local open wide walls mural festival. they're my favorite artists, so it'll be nice to have a piece of their work on the streets of downtown and pass by everyday.
• roomies + i participated in an aclu people power postcard writing party campaign with fellow local aclu volunteers to get out the vote to folks across the country.
• celebrated end of summer at third thursday event hosted in downtown sacramento, where there were crafts that people got to participate in, games, drinks, silent disco, + a free showing of lady bird.
• joined indivisible guide's textbank team (aka indivisitext) to text people in florida for andrew gillum for governor.
• attended local aclu people power's 'demand police accountability' lobby day for ab 931. thank you assemblymember skinner and cosigners for creating and pushing for this bill. it's good to know there are still some people who care about accountability and the community.

lowlights

• if you've been following me on twitter the past few months, you'll know that i've been having a bug problem particularly in my room. the usual culprits are spiders (and 2 cockroaches), but this time we found a centipede in there. how did a centipede get in the house? we have no idea.
• mendocino fire grew and outbeat last years napa wildfire at 459,000 acres. larger than the size of the city of los angeles.
• my skin broke out in weird patches out of nowhere, and then got puffy after putting aloe vera gel. i looked like a zombie with red circles around my eyes but luckily everything went back to normal a few days later.
• ab 931 was shelved for another year, unfortunately. but we're not giving up on passing this bill to hold california police accountable for abusing their power.

what i read

the descent of monsters by j.y. yang

unapologetic: a black, queer, and feminist mandate for radical movements by charlene carruthers

legacy by whiti hereaka

rising out of hatred: the awakening of a former white nationalist by eli saslow

nejma by nayyirah waheed

mindful moments: everyday mindfulness for real people by haven e. carter

so done by paula chase

give a sh*t: do good. live better. save the planet. by ashlee piper

new poems of native nations, edited by heid e. erdrich + more

noughts & crosses by malorie blackman

girls resist!: a guide to activism, leadership, and starting a revolution by kaelyn rich

the joy of less, a minimalist living guide: how to declutter, organize, and simplify your life by francine jay

rad women worldwide: artists and athletes, pirates and punks, and other revolutionaries who shaped history, edited by kate schatz and miriam klein stahl

what i listened to

lucid dreaming (cover) // first to eleven

the 1 // blackbear

summertime magic // childish gambino

real friends (remix) // camila cabello x swae lee

tootimetootimetootime // the 1975

all the time // kim petras

lomesome love // mitski

devil's in the backseat // lostboycrow

beautiful // bazzi x camila cabello

summer on you // prettymuch

[full summer playlist coming in my next post]

adventures

none. i'll be going to the museum of ice cream sf and seattle next month, so stay tuned.

looking forward to in september

• my birthday on the 1st! (but not so excited at the prospect of turning 26)
• museum of ice cream
• capitol airshow
• vacation in seattle

summer 2018 playlist

f.f.f. // bebe rexha x g-eazy
give yourself a try // the 1975
playwitme // kyle x kehlani
i do // cardi b x sza
myself // bazzi
girls like you // maroon 5 x  cardi b
middle finger // phoebe ryan x quinn xcii
i got time // bebe rexha
enemies // lauv
all the talk // mike stud
tension // cappa
5 in the morning // charli xcx
gratitude // livvia
so sad so sexy // lykke li
hunger // florence + the machine
first love / late spring // mitski
beautiful // bazzi
spin the globe // lostboycrow
better alone // lykke li

♥ the 1975 and lykke li are back!!

what were you listening to this month? ♥

july 2018 | a look back

highlights

• family road trip to venice beach to celebrate my little sister's birthday. i can't believe she's 4 already!!
• friend from alaska surprised me with a last minute quick visit. unfortunately i didn't get to spend much time with her or take her on adventures like we talked about, but it was still good to see her and hug her.
• attended the indivisible guide's #savescotus visit to senator kamala harris' office alongside fellow indivisible volunteers/activists.
• phone banked for ami bera (ca-07) with the local swing left team.
• text banked for aclu people power to commit voters to 'be an aclu voter and vote like their rights depend on it' campaign. more info on the campaign: aclu.org/avpp
• i got to hangout with a friend and her baby after a few months of her recovering from surgeries. glad she's doing okay and it's unbelievable how fast my little nephew is growing.
• phone banked with indivisible volunteers for the #100daysout, which is an initiative to volunteer for the 100 days countdown to the midterms

lowlights

• senate is back on their b.s. again. can't wait to vote those suckers out.
• dad and brother got into a car accident, luckily it was small and everyone involved is okay. can't say the same for my parents car insurance rates though.
• it's finally been confirmed that russia did in fact meddle in the u.s. 2016 elections, but of course our government doesn't give a damn nor are they going to do anything about it. no surprise.
• the carr fire in redding, ca -- 2.5 hours away from us -- has grown exponentially. we're getting a grey haze and smoke smell all the way out here. that's how bad it is. a good chunk of the city had to be evacuated. roomies and i opened our couch in the living and lounge rooms to a couple of evacuees over a weekend. wish we could do more.

what i read

girls resist!: a guide to activism, leadership, and starting a revolution by kaelyn rich

trail of lightning by rebecca roanhorse

second wave summer by jay e. tria

mindful moments: everyday mindfulness for real people by haven e. carter

sweet sixteen by brenda rothert

the mere wife by maria dahvana headley

fire & heist by sarah beth durst

gotita de dragon and other stories by nick joaquin

a quick & easy guide to they/them pronouns by archie bongiovanni & tristan jimerson

among the glimmering flowers by lynn e. o'connacht

the death of truth: notes on falsehood in the age of trump by michiko kakutani

rad girls can: stories of bold, brave, and brilliant young women by kate schatz

mindfulness for compassionate living: mindful ways to less stress and more kindness by patrizia collard

a girl called murder by kennedy cannon

white kids: growing up with privilege in a racially divided america by margaret a. hagerman

what i listened to

eastside // benny blanco x halsey x khalid

in my feelings (cover) // lights

lucid dreams // juice world

love it if we made it // the 1975

ex // kiana lede

broke // will jay

[more to come in my full summer playlist]

adventures

venice beach, ca

inspiration/motivation this month

firefighters and first responders battling the wildfire flames. thank you for your service and rest in peace to those who lost their lives due to the fires.

"go back to europe" viral video

looking forward to in august

• little siblings starting school
• my fall semester classes

{Story Diary} The Secret History by Donna Tartt

The Secret History by Donna Tartt
Literary Fiction, Mystery, Social Issues, 1980s
July 1, 1993 from Penguin Books

Truly deserving of the accolade Modern Classic, Donna Tartt's cult bestseller The Secret History is a remarkable achievement - both compelling and elegant, dramatic and playful. 

Under the influence of their charismatic classics professor, a group of clever, eccentric misfits at an elite New England college discover a way of thinking and living that is a world away from the humdrum existence of their contemporaries. But when they go beyond the boundaries of normal morality they slip gradually from obsession to corruption and betrayal, and at last - inexorably - into evil.

"Forgive me, for all the things I did but mostly for things that I did not."

--Donna Tartt, The Secret History

Setting

New England, US 

[Image Source]

Set in college somewhere in New England in the 1980s.

The Misfits

aka the characters

• Richard Papen
• Henry Winter
• Camilla Macaulay
• Francis Abernathy
• Charles Macaulay
• Edmund "Bunny" Corcoran

 

Tropes

• unreliable narrator (also morbid)
• morally gray characters
• accidental murder
• murder mystery sans the whodunit aspect
• classical mythology influence
• politically incorrect
• fatal flaw
• the five-man band archetype
• set in the 1980s New England

Literature/Poetry/Plays

There's a ton of classics mentioned in this literary novel.

• Untimely Meditations by Friedrich Nietzsche, Epigraph
• Republic, Book II by Plato, Epigraph
• Tom Swift by Victor Appleton
• Paradise Lost by John Milton
• Goodbye, Columbus by Philip Roth
• The New Testament
• Agamemnon by Aeschylus
• Oresteia by Aeschylus
• Inferno by Dante
• Poetics by Aristotle
• The Iliad by Homer
• The Bacchae by Euripides
• Parmenides by Plato
• The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
• Ivanhoe by Sir Walter Scott
• Rover Boys by Edward Stratemeyer
• Journey from Chester to London by Thomas Pennant
• The Club History of London
• The Pirates of Penzance by W.S. Gilbert
• Bobbsey Twins by Laura Lee Hope
• Marino Faliero by Lord Byron
• The Waste Land by T.S. Eliot
• Sherlock Homes by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
• Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert
• Mémoires by Duc de Saint-Simon
• Vanity Fair by William Makepeace Thackeray
• Othello by Shakespeare
• The World Book Encyclopedia
• Men of Thought and Deed by E. Tipton Chatsford
• Invisible Man by H.G. Wells
• Peter Pan, or The Boy Who Wouldn’t Grow Up by J. M. Barrie
• The Divine Comedy by Dante
• The Upanishads
• Perry Mason Novels by Erle Stanley Gardner
• With Rue my Heart is Laden by A.E. Housman
• Lycidas by John Milton
• The Charge of the Light Brigade by Alfred Lord Tennyson
• In Flanders Fields by John McCrae
• Corpus of Mycenaean Inscriptions from Knossos
• Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll
• The Malcontent by John Marston
• The White Devil by John Webster
• The Broken Heart by John Ford, epilogue epigraph
• Doctor Faustus by Christopher Marlowe
• The Revenger’s Tragedy by Cyril Tourneur
• Our Mutual Friend by Charles Dickens

Favorite Quotes

-

"There are such things as ghosts. People somewhere have always known that. And we believe in them every bit as much as Homer did. Only now, we call them by different names. Memory. The unconscious."

--Donna Tartt, The Secret History

-

"Beauty is terror. Whatever we call beautiful, we quiver before it."

--Donna Tartt, The Secret History

-

"It is better to know one book intimately than a hundred superficially."

--Donna Tartt, The Secret History

-

Meet Donna Tartt

-

Donna Tartt is an American writer who received critical acclaim for her first two novels, The Secret History and The Little Friend, which have been translated into thirty languages. Tartt was the 2003 winner of the WH Smith Literary Award for The Little Friend. Her novel The Goldfinch won the Pulitzer Prize in 2014.

The daughter of Don and Taylor Tartt, she was born in Greenwood, Mississippi but raised 32 miles away in Grenada, Mississippi. At age five, she wrote her first poem, and she first saw publication in a Mississippi literary review at age 13.

Enrolling in the University of Mississippi in 1981, she pledged to the sorority Kappa Kappa Gamma. Her writing caught the attention of Willie Morris while she was a freshman. Following a recommendation from Morris, Barry Hannah, then an Ole Miss Writer-in-Residence, admitted Tartt into his graduate short story course where, stated Hannah, she ranked higher than the graduate students. Following the suggestion of Morris and others, she transferred to Bennington College in 1982, where she was friends with fellow students Bret Easton Ellis, Jill Eisenstadt, and Jonathan Lethem. At Bennington she studied classics with Claude Fredericks.

She divides her time between Virginia and New York City.

Goodreads

Purchase The Secret History

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