“I cheer for everyone”

A special Weekender curated by Edith Zimmerman: handsome physical therapists, interruptions mid-Bach, and what it takes to call oneself a runner

Chicken by Jill Badonsky

This week’s edition of The Weekender was curated by Edith Zimmerman, who runs the comics newsletter Drawing Links on Substack. There, she illustrates vignettes from her life, like Taskrabbit-ing her way to a new table, shopping for underwear with her daughters in tow, and making a wish on an abandoned IKEA lamp. Her work has also appeared in The New Yorker, Vogue, and New York magazine. If you enjoy Edith’s edition today, be sure to subscribe to her newsletter.

Hi, I’m Edith, and I’ve been publishing Drawing Links, an illustrated journal, since 2019. I’ve chronicled getting married, having children, and searching for purpose, although I feel like it’s best when it’s not really about anything. Before this, I was a staff writer at The Cut, and before that (skipping back a bit), I worked at The Hairpin, the women’s website I founded.

Some of my most popular posts are the ones that aren’t actually about my life (hmm . . .), like Princesses Over 40 Publishing House and Venus En Route.

I’m also a longtime Substack reader—my profile tells me I subscribe to 99 newsletters, 17 of which are paid subscriptions. I think a few of those are comped, but I don’t remember anymore. Here are just a few current favorites!

HEALING

Diary comics (not mine)

For anyone interested in diary comics (which IMO should be everyone!), Vanessa Davis is a master. The master? Every post of hers is great, but I love unreasonably handsome guys, so I’ll pick this one as a teaser.

Pencils are everything

—Vanessa Davis in Spaniel Rage

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PASTRY

Galette by Anastasia Hladyr

MUSIC

Classical music and a phone

In 2024, Evan Goldfine listened to every Bach composition and chronicled it in A Year of Bach, complete with audio clips. I loved reading it even more than I enjoy listening to Bach, aka LTB (and I like LTB!). Evan is still LTB (and occasionally complaining about NYT Games), and the other day he described a recent experience at Carnegie Hall.

On the Shattering of Shared Silence

—Evan Goldfine in A Year of Bach

Víkingur Ólafsson, in his March piano recital at Carnegie Hall, requested no applause between long works of Bach, Schubert, and Beethoven. He set an absurdly high bar of holding 3,000 people’s attention without any release. Between pieces, his body never quite rested—he just paused in suspension for a moment and began anew. [. . .]

Víkingur creates a sense of space like no other living pianist. He is synesthetic, and he reports experiencing the key of E as green. (He sported a sage velvet jacket at the show.) There was almost something of dewed grass in the performance, he and Beethoven both alluding to fragility and renewal. Notes and their overtones rang and reverberated through the centuries and the uninterrupted hour.

Plenty of sturm und drang follow in the theme’s variations, each pointing inevitably toward a peaceful recapitulation. After about 80 minutes in shared, focused silence, we started to sense the first shimmers of our pending reentry to the unceasing noises of 57th Street (and of our private minds). But in those final moments, the hall remained as one consciousness distributed among thousands of bodies.

And then, from the first-tier fancy seats, in the second measure of the returned theme, came a familiar sensory shock. The ringer was set to loud, of course—the tune went something like this:

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LITERARY ADVENTURES

FAME

Celeb gossip

I regularly save Allie Jones’s celebrity gossip posts for “rainy” moments. Alternately, they might be the posts I open the most quickly. It’s pure candy. When she sold Gossip Time hats, I bought one immediately.

Is Pete Davidson breaking up with his normal girlfriend?

—Allie Jones in Gossip Time

I have been following Pete Davidson’s relationship with Elsie Hewitt with some interest, as the two had a baby together in December, three days before I gave birth to my second. Given my familiarity with this particular baby timeline, my suspicion is that Hewitt was pregnant or just about to be when Davidson started rolling out their relationship in the tabloids at the end of last March. (Sources insisted to Page Six at the time that Hewitt, a model and influencer with one million followers on Instagram, was a “non-celebrity” and thus “different” from the parade of famous women Davidson had dated in the past.) Now, both of our babies are hitting the four-month sleep regression, and Davidson and Hewitt’s relationship is reportedly hitting the skids. Makes sense!

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ATHLETICS

Running stuff

Terrell Johnson writes about running, although there’s a lot of running-adjacent and non-adjacent content too. Because, really, what isn’t about running? In my opinion, The Half Marathoner is a must-read for anyone interested in running and the people who do it (it also inspired my dream of traveling the world to run half-marathons). He interviews “regular” runners every week or so, and I loved this bit from a recent interview because it reminded me exactly of how I started.

Hearing Your Stories: Thu Nguyen

—Terrell Johnson in The Half Marathoner

What have you learned about yourself from your running journey? Is there anything that’s changed about you since you started?

I’ve learned that people run for all kinds of reasons, but I run for my mental health. I run to be outside. Everything else is nice to have: good gear, good company, etc., but I don’t need anything except that time alone.

I’ve learned that it’s okay to do things seasonally. I can still call myself a runner even in the summer when I refuse to run in the 90-plus degree heat of D.C. I used to have such strict ideas about what made someone an athlete or a runner, and now I know that it’s more about a mindset than anything else. Every time I see someone running on the roads as I drive by, I am clapping for them in my head. I cheer for everyone.

A couple of years ago, I signed up for a running retreat in Alaska. I didn’t know anyone on the retreat, but I wanted to see Alaska, and I wanted to do some trail running. Our group ran and walked at such a diverse range of paces, and it was the first time I really gave myself permission to not go all out every time.

I ran a 10K, and then the next day I felt like I wanted to walk to the glacier lake instead of running it. The person I was with felt like she wanted to run. We high-fived, and then went at our own paces. On the way back from the lake, I felt like running, so I caught up with another couple in our group.

I loved getting to know them through this run. I learned that I can really listen to what I want and need in the moment, and that giving it to myself is the right thing to do.

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GRATITUDE

MATURING

Aging female bodies

I only recently followed this author, Sara Szal, but I enjoyed the first post of hers I came across (below). She’s also currently microdosing psilocybin.

The Female Body Was Not Designed for the Sex Most Women Are Having After 35

—Sara Szal MD in The Female Edge

Progesterone decline affects sleep architecture and stress recovery. A fatigued nervous system does not easily enter the parasympathetic state required for full arousal. The sleep data is directly relevant: women in perimenopause who experience disrupted sleep are also experiencing disrupted recovery of the autonomic baseline that makes sustained arousal possible.

Orgasmic capacity is generally maintained with aging, but the intensity of orgasm may diminish due to decreased pelvic floor muscle tension and reduced uterine contractions during climax.

The opportunity is important to consider. Women in perimenopause and post-menopause who understand their anatomy and advocate for adequate arousal time report higher sexual satisfaction than younger women—not lower. The research on sexual satisfaction across the lifespan shows satisfaction peaks in the fifth and sixth decades for women who have the knowledge and the partners.

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ART IMITATING ART

“The Debutante” by David Seidner, shared by Martin Lerma. Seidner spent the ’90s tracking down descendants of aristocrats painted by John Singer Sargent and photographed them in similar style.

READING

Book insider stuff and beyond

I’m currently reading Emma Straub’s (excellent) new novel, American Fantasy, which is partly about boy bands and which I was compelled to buy after Missive No. 1 of her supremely charming book tour travelogue. My favorite missive, though, was No. 2, when New Kid on the Block Joey McIntyre came to a tour event. I cried. (Should this be fodder for a romance novel!?)

Book Tour Missive #2

—Emma Straub in Emma Straub’s Newsletter

You ever write a novel about a boyband and then befriend your favorite member of a boyband and then he comes to your book event in a sweatshirt from your bookstore and calls you his therapist in answer to someone else’s question????????? Just me? I think in this photo, I am saying, what is life, and he is saying, it’s just friendship, my bro, let’s not overthink this. Joe Mac showed, everybody, he showed.

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Substackers featured in this edition

Curator: Edith Zimmerman

Art & Photography: Vanessa Davis, Martin Lerma, jill badonsky, Anastasia Hladyr

Writing: Evan Goldfine, Adam Voith, melissa broder, Allie Jones, Terrell Johnson, Sara Szal MD, Emma Straub

Recently launched

ESPN commentator and six-time Grand Slam doubles champion Rennae Stubbs is now on Substack. Her Stubbsy Snippets will delve into tennis strategy and what to expect in major tennis action, like accurately predicting what might take Jannik Sinner down at the French Open.

OffBall has launched its homepage on Substack, where Ashtyn Butuso and Daniel-Yaw Miller will be curating “the amazing stories, posts, and narratives in sports—the things we are all talking about in our group chats, happy hours, and cookouts.”. Simultaneously, they’re launching OffBallFC, a soccer-focused news and opinion site, in the lead-up to the World Cup.

Nick Viall, host of The Viall Files podcast and a longtime figure on The Bachelor, is launching a Substack where he’ll share weekly digests on “life, relationships and culture through the lens of reality TV.”

The pioneering music collective Massive Attack is now on Substack, creating an archival series that pulls back the curtain on past productions ahead of their forthcoming tour.

May Berthelot has brought her fashion and lifestyle expertise to Substack. In her eponymous newsletter, she traverses between luxury fashion, the secondhand market, and motherhood.

Inspired by the writers and creators featured in the Weekender? Starting your own Substack is just a few clicks away:

The Weekender is a weekly roundup of writing, ideas, art, audio, and video from the world of Substack. Posts are recommended by staff and readers, and curated and edited by Substack’s editorial team.