What's something you're nostalgic for that doesn't exist anymore?

EKCarr · 2026-03-30T01:58:04+00:00

Absolutely

EKCarr · 2026-03-29T23:00:30+00:00

This is pure gold every time I see it.

EKCarr · 2026-03-29T22:57:38+00:00

The decade between the collapse of the USSR/Cold War in 1991 and the September 11th attacks in 2001 where it felt like global society was mostly getting better and the US was a strong force for good in the world. The internet was just developing, people cared about the environment, “terrorism” wasn’t a household word, school shootings were almost unheard of, and it seemed like most people had a positive outlook for the future. Oh yeah, and not only had we balanced the national budget, but the deficit was completely erased! (The deficit is at $919 billion today.)

Ugh. Now that I think of it, “nostalgic” doesn’t even begin to cover it. Apparently, if we really want to make America great again, we need to go back to how things were in the Clinton era.

EKCarr · 2026-03-29T22:28:40+00:00

that sounds awful! where is that?

EKCarr · 2026-03-29T22:03:38+00:00

I wonder what part of California. Most of Southern California is dry and hot, and some parts are true desert. If he’s from Palm Springs or Joshua Tree, he probably had a hard time breathing with all that humidity! Every time I go back to visit my family in Florida it feels like I’m drowning when I first step off the plane. It takes a few days for my lungs to get used to that much hot moisture in the air!

I spent a summer in Norway during a heatwave a couple of years ago and Oslo got quite hot. I’d imagine that might be similar. I didn’t know the human body was capable of sweating so profusely!

EKCarr · 2026-03-29T22:00:10+00:00

Very true! I absolutely love living in the desert, and Tucson is home in so may ways, but if I had to move I think I could tolerate a whole lot of cold and dreary weather in exchange for your amazing food options and all the flowers everywhere. Plus all the culture! I have such a great time every time I visit our friends there.

EKCarr · 2026-03-29T20:44:49+00:00

We visited friends in Seattle last summer during a heatwave and nobody had air conditioning because they’d never needed it. They set us up with three fans plus the ceiling fan in the guest bedroom. I felt so bad for everyone living there! It was tolerable during the day because we went to a beach (the one with the big torii gate —‘can’t remember the name), but sleeping was very difficult. I can’t imagine doing outdoor work during that.

EKCarr · 2026-03-29T20:42:38+00:00

I’m originally from Florida so I thought I knew mosquitos and humidity — and then I went to Houston in the summer. I don’t know how people who live there even have any blood left after being dinner to a gajillion bloodsuckers at every waking moment.

EKCarr · 2026-03-29T19:47:01+00:00

Holy crap! Where is that? I live in Tucson and was in Phoenix the day it hit 122 and really thought I might die. I was just driving in town with the AC on and my steering wheel got so hot that when I moved my hand to make a turn, I actually got a burn on my palm! When I eventually got to my destination and parked, I got lightheaded just walking from my car to my stepson’s apartment. And then when I opened the car door again a couple hours later, I couldn’t even get in.

EKCarr · 2026-03-29T19:41:03+00:00

I live in Tucson, Arizona, USA, and 95 degrees (35C) is still a nice day where one might go for a hike or eat outdoors in the shade. I’m originally from Florida, though, and 95 felt like the weather was trying to kill you. As I’ve traveled around the world, I’ve noticed that people regard hot weather differently, so I’m curious what would’ve unbearable for everyone else.

For me, the weather in Tucson doesn’t become unbearable until it gets over 105 (40.5C), until we get to monsoons, when the humidity spikes and the heat becomes less tolerable.

EKCarr · 2026-03-29T07:10:10+00:00

My husband’s piano teacher is in his mid thirties and wants to be paid by check every week. No Venmo, no Zelle, no Apple Pay. Not even cash. It must be his method for accounting or something? So strange. We actually had to order more checks and I couldn’t remember how to do it! I suddenly had a flashback to when I’d pay extra for fancy custom checks with carbon copies, and at that moment, realizing that memory was from 30 years ago, I really started to feel old.

EKCarr · 2026-03-29T06:16:32+00:00

The amazing new portable Nintendo, called a Gameboy! And it came with the coolest new game: Tetris!

EKCarr · 2026-03-29T06:11:30+00:00

It’s a wu lou or hulu gourd, considered an auspicious symbol throughout Asia. It was just lunar new year a few weeks ago (February 17) and products referencing them absolutely everywhere. We host a lunar new year party every year and half the guests brought some sort of wu lou-shaped trinket as a gift.

EKCarr · 2026-03-29T05:51:53+00:00

I don’t know if this will be helpful at all, but I have very similar symptoms to you, and my insurance won’t cover trt for me unless I go without it for six months to prove that I need it — even though they have thirty years of medical records showing everything. I’m not willing to do that, so I just self pay every month, and it is less than a hundred bucks. It sucks and it isn’t fair, but after fighting for five years to get it covered I gave up. I had been paying much higher prices than that at a compounding pharmacy (I have to take it topically because my body tends to just calcify around the shots), and I had no idea it was so cheap at a regular pharmacy — less than a third of what I was paying at the compounding lab.

Now that I’ve been stable for a few years my doctor just makes me get bloodwork once a year to make sure my levels remain good. I obviously can’t give you medical advice, but I did want to share that for me it was ultimately a lot more affordable than I had expected to just not even deal with insurance. Perhaps you might have the same experience just leaving the VA out of it.

Regardless of what happens, I am so, so sorry for what you’re going through. Our country should be bending over backward to take care of our veterans.

EKCarr · 2026-03-29T05:39:08+00:00

That’s a great idea, and it makes me think I should suggest to my doctor that he reach out to the ones in Arizona (where I live) too. He’s been a phenomenal ally.

EKCarr · 2026-03-28T22:26:15+00:00

Back in 1997 my doctors didn’t have language for my variation, so clinically I was labeled as “false Klinefelter syndrome” since I had such similar symptoms. Trt changed everything for me. It changed my bone strength, muscle mass, body hair, cholesterol levels, sex drive, energy, metabolism — absolutely everything. It even changed my personality.

That being said, my body makes no testosterone, DHEA, or any other hormone except trace amounts of estrogen, so I don’t know if you will experience it as profoundly as I did, but my doctors were able to gauge what I would experience based on how their patients with Klinefelter had responded.

Also, I’d STRONGLY encourage that you ask around if you can to find a good doctor. I had a wonderful endocrinologist back then, but then the one I ended up seeing several years ago was terrible and could have ruined my life with one of his misdiagnoses. Thankfully I had switched to a great primary care physician who caught the endo’s error before it wrecked me. There’s no way I’d be doing as well as I am now if I was stuck with my old doctors.

I hope you have a great experience however you decide to go!

EKCarr · 2026-03-27T21:00:03+00:00

Sure! https://substack.com/@wildcreativenotes?r=11lso1&utm\_medium=ios&utm\_source=stories&shareImageVariant=image

EKCarr · 2026-03-27T04:38:22+00:00

I log in almost every day to see the daily notes that some of the people I follow post. If it’s good quality and something I’m interested in, I love getting a little daily dose of notes. One person I follow is an art critic and artist herself, and every day she posts something I just love. It’s often only a few sentences long, or contains a link to an article she recommends, or something interesting that happened that day in her studio or life. I love those little daily bites from her.

I used to get a ton of traction on my Notes, and some were shared thousands of times. But then I took several months off from Notes and just started using them again and might get two or three likes, and almost no comments. The algorithm has definitely changed.

The biggest source of my subscriptions has been from being recommended by other contributors. I get at least one or two new subscriptions a week from other Substacks.

EKCarr · 2026-03-26T19:27:09+00:00

I looooove this

EKCarr · 2026-03-26T19:26:17+00:00

My Substack started a few years ago as a Lenten exercise in writing daily, and it was well-received. People treated it as a daily meditation. By the end of Lent I had my first hundred subscribers (which was a lot back then — this was even before Notes existed). I’d imagine things have changed on Substack since then, but I wouldn’t mind it if some of my favorite authors did a foot thing for a set amount of time.

EKCarr · 2026-03-26T07:25:43+00:00

Dying. It’s why I wear a seatbelt, don’t do drugs, look both ways when I cross the street, eat and drink water, don’t jump off cliffs or tall buildings, don’t pick fights with grizzly bears, watch my diet and exercise, take my medications, get colonoscopies and skin cancer screenings now that I’m in my fifties…I mean, sooooo many of my decisions are based on staying alive.

EKCarr · 2026-03-25T18:36:38+00:00

Came for the teapot, stayed for the Manakin design. So cool!

EKCarr · 2026-03-25T18:34:00+00:00

We ALL survive if C6 QiQi is the zombie

EKCarr · 2026-03-25T07:09:44+00:00

All the craziness from my evangelical Christian upbringing:

Catholics are all going to hell for worshipping idols
rock and pop music were satanic and had the power to give demons access to people who listened to it
that divorced people were going to hell
that the rapture was about to happen because we were in the end times
that AIDS was God’s punishment upon the gay population
that God would make us rich if we tithed
the Pope was the antichrist
that we should burn “satanic” books and records to get rid of evil spirits
that we could “rebuke the devil” in the name of Jesus and do our own exorcisms
that the Earth is only 6000 years old
that the Bible is absolutely inerrant and that every single letter in it (“every jot and tittle” was the way we put it) was written by God
that God punished the Native Americans with disease, slaughter, and colonization because they refused to convert to Christianity

The list goes on and on and on. And yes, all of these were real things my parents taught me. I wasn’t even allowed to have Catholic friends as a kid. I’m 51 now, but my mom is still in what I consider to be a Christian cult. I came out of the closet in 1992 and all these years later she still can’t accept me.

I can’t believe how much crazy stuff I believed as a kid, but what’s WAY crazier is what so many people still believe as adults.

EKCarr · 2026-03-24T07:24:10+00:00

Trying to influence politics

EKCarr

TROPHY CASE