The Best: A Year in Review
On basically a whim, I launched The Best Newsletter almost a year ago, on January 12, 2023.
This space has been a great creative outlet for me and an excuse to share cultural recommendations with readers. What’s been a very pleasant surprise is how engaged and enthusiastic so many of you have been, sending me feedback, sharing my work with your friends, and, above all, pointing me in the direction of really cool stuff to read/watch/listen to. My sincere thanks to you all.
I also want to give a big thanks to my friend Jonathan S. Paul, Esq. In addition to the many professional and personal hats he wears, he somehow finds time to read my drafts and give me invaluable feedback, always reminding me that “it’s gonna be great.” Thank you, JP.
Since there are many more of you today than when I launched, I thought I’d share a few of the more popular posts from the past year. So feel free to catch up if you missed any. Otherwise here’s to a wonderful 2024!
The one that started it all:
Episode 1: The Best Newsletter
Hello, friends. Welcome to this new thing I’m doing. Thank you for joining me. Though it may strike some folks as the height of arrogance to call something “The Best Newsletter,” that’s not really what the title means...
On creativity, art, and a U2 song that stirs my emotions:
My Poem
One night when I was three years old, my father put me to bed as usual, turning off the lights and closing the door behind him. He didn’t notice, but there was something different about this night: on the usually clean floor of my room sat an open tin of crayons...
Discovering the influence of New Haven apizza in Norway:
Heading West
Today is another travel day as I leave Oslo, heading west to Bergen, Norway’s second-largest city. Rather than taking a direct train across the country, though, I’m following a more scenic route that will take me through some of Norway’s famed fjords...
In the footsteps of UConn’s first Israeli basketball star:
Fever Dream
My high school friend and a loyal reader of this newsletter, Jed B., texted me the other day to recommend UConn’s Dream Season: An Oral History, a 15-part podcast series about the 1989-90 University of Connecticut men’s basketball team...
How a kindergarten classmate’s long-lost drawing brought me to tears:
From the Mixed-Up Files of...
Lately my mother’s been cleaning out her file cabinets, mostly looking for old paperwork to throw out. But occasionally she comes across something she thinks might be meaningful to someone, and she delivers that something to that someone...
Marking three years in my life alongside the creation of a comedy special:
Mike Birbiglia and Me
In June 2020, comedian Mike Birbiglia launched a podcast called Working It Out. The premise was that every week, he and another comic or professional storyteller would talk for an hour and work out new material together...