Last Night I Saw an Ambulance Party at the Hot Dog Stand

Oh, we are so back.

Oh, I’ll produce, project manage AND be a stand-in with a baby I steal from on-camera talent!

Welcome to the first of four free issues of SARATONIN in October! Paid subscribers get two additional, exclusive issues each month. Whether you’re a free subscriber, paid subscriber, or just a casual visitor, I’m glad you’re here.

I’ll get to the ambulance party at the hot dog stand soon, I promise. A little farther down. Further down? Yes.

What a busy few weeks it’s been. I’ve been concerned about a lot of friends and extended family in the Carolinas, particularly in Western North Carolina (see this post for more info.) I’m so thankful they are all accounted for and safe, though many are without power and potable running water.

I’ve also been busy with preproduction, project management and travel for a photoshoot. Now that the travel part is out of the way, I can get down to creative birthday business. My bday is October 25 (October Scorpios unite!) and I am doing a birthday fundraiser for BeLoved Asheville (a great local nonprofit) and Warren Wilson College.

WWC is my alma mater and it’s in Swannanoa, NC, a small town devastated by Tropical Storm Helene. Every student has to do 100 hours or more community service to meet the WWC graduation requirement. Every student also works on a campus crew for at least 15 hours per week, doing everything from sustainable agriculture to landscaping to waste & recycling. It’s one of the more affordable four-year private liberal arts schools in the U.S., largely because so many on-campus services are provided by students (under the supervision of trained professionals).

Most colleges won’t ever send trained students out with chainsaws to help clear wreckage (thank GOD) but WWC can do all that and more.

If you do make a donation to BeLoved or to WWC, you can DM me a screenshot of your receipt on Instagram or email it to workwithsarabenincasa@gmail.com. I’ll send you a handwritten thank-you note like it is Olden Tymes!

In the spirit of Halloween, please behold a few photos from when I spent an hour or two in New Hope, PA recently. I’ve loved going to New Hope since I was a wee baby witch weirdo and I love it still as a big adult witch weirdo.

ARE YOU SCARED? Don’t be; it’s a town full of art-dealing gays and recently-arrived celebs and also bikers and tattoo artists and piercing geniuses and Stevie Nicks-looking sorceress babes who enjoy incense and pretty rocks. Also, you can get good ice cream and various herbal teas there.

I want to share with you an example of why I love to write and tell stories. It also may be an example of how I need to not think so hard about random shit. If your mind also operates this way and you’ve never given creative writing or storytelling a try, now may be the time.

On my adventures recently, in the spooky darkness, I happened to pass a couple of ambulances idling with their lights on in the parking lot of a popular hot dog stand, a place that may be closed for the cooler months or may still be open. At any rate, it was after operating hours (for the hot dog stand, not emergency medical services.) This sight brought up many questions for me, personally:

1. Were the ambulance drivers on a well-deserved break?

2. Were they en route to clocking out of work?

3. Were they handling a non-emergency type of emergency (dead body at the hot dog stand, no foul play, cops were already gone and they just felt like hanging out)?

4. Was it Secret Hot Dog After-Hours Night at the hot dog stand, emergency workers only?

5. Were the ambulance drivers IN LOVE?!

Very normal things to think about for twenty minutes after passing an innocuous scene.

Of recent note

• This Saturday, October 19th at 7 p.m., I’ll be at Secret World Books in Highland Park, IL reading and in conversation with author Susan Rukeyser (The Worst Kind of Girl, Braddock Avenue Books 2024) talking about queer lady things, writing, and presumably the Illinois prairie and the California desert.

• I’m doing a re-listen to Beyonce’s Renaissance and, to the shock of no one, it remains an ideal aural experience.

• The Los Angeles Review of Books is doing their LITLIT (the Little Literary Fair) in Glendale on November 2.

• If you’re interesting in reading about one Abraham Lincoln, I suggest David Herbert Donald’s Lincoln, Jon Meacham’s And There Was Light, and James McPherson’s Abraham Lincoln. Doris Kearns Goodwin’s Team of Rivals is also illuminating, and you’ll learn more about the men in Lincoln’s Cabinet as well as Mary Todd Lincoln.

• I’ve been doing physical therapy for back pain two months, and it turns out it’s basically a lot of stretching and strength training? I was unaware! It’s like going to the gym and only doing the parts I like, and insurance covers some of it. They give you homework, which I do sometimes.

• I’m working on a book proposal, and I wish I’d known the benefits of physical therapy and Pilates back when I was writing my first few books. If you’re at a desk all day or most of the day, whew! Stretching can change my whole mood. Maybe it will help you, too.

Let me know in the comments what you’ve read or listened to lately that is good and enjoyable and not bad and terrible. It can be A New Thing or An Old Thing.

More soon. Thanks for being here.

Love,

Sara

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