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How to have the best Sunday in L.A., according to Justine Lupe

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How to have the best Sunday in L.A., according to Justine Lupe

For years, Justine Lupe bopped back and forth between Los Angeles and New York.

It wasn’t until the pandemic that she decided it was time to stop living out of her suitcase in hotels and short-term sublet apartments. “The world was in upheaval,” the actor says. “My idea of what my life was felt like it was [too].”

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In Sunday Funday, L.A. people give us a play-by-play of their ideal Sunday around town. Find ideas and inspiration on where to go, what to eat and how to enjoy life on the weekends.

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In 2021, she and her fiancé, Tyson Mason, bought a house in L.A. Then this summer, the couple welcomed a baby named Ellis, whom Lupe was carrying while she was filming Netflix’s romantic comedy “Nobody Wants This,” alongside Kristen Bell and Adam Brody, which is set to return for a second season next year.

“I was right in the sweet spot of the second trimester for most of the shoot, so you have energy, you feel creative and your body feels good — at least that was my experience,” says Lupe, who plays Bell’s sister and podcast co-host Morgan.

Lupe, who also starred in “Succession” and “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel,” adds that certain concerns she had about working while pregnant, such as gaining weight on camera, disappeared when she was on set. “It was just kind of this magical experience because there’s so much emphasis on bodies in this industry,” she says. “So just to be healthy and happy through that experience, embracing my body through that big, big change, feeling confident in it and feeling ecstatic about this life inside of me, it was just the best.”

On an ideal Sunday for Lupe, 4-month-old Ellis is strapped to her body as they pick up veggies and fruit from the Atwater Village Farmers Market, take a baby-friendly yoga class and walk around a glorious botanical garden.

This interview has been lightly edited and condensed for length and clarity.

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7 a.m.: Cuddles in bed

I mean 7 a.m. sounds great with my baby. A little bit lazy, lying in bed. I love snuggling with her, Tyson, our dog Lilly, and our cat Addie. It’s kind of a fort that we have in our bed with all of our little creatures living in it and it’s really nice to just chill.

8 a.m.: Catch up with friends over coffee

I would probably go and get a coffee from this place called Amara Kitchen. It’s a really nice farm-to-table spot. Everything is organic, grass fed and ethical. I go there to meet friends a lot, so I’d probably meet a few friends for a coffee. I usually get an iced coffee. They make their own almond milk. If I want something sweet, I’ll get a pastry, and if not, I’ll just get a bone broth with my coffee. They make really good pastries in house and they have incredible gluten-free, dairy-free chocolate chip cookies that are way more delicious than you’d imagine when you say those two words aloud. It’s usually too early for me to eat a lot, but on days where I have a really long night or I’m starving, I’ll get their breakfast burrito.

9 a.m. Go to the Farmers Market

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Then we’d all go to the Atwater Village Farmers Market. It’s really sweet and small. I know all the stands well by now. It was kind of a project when I first got there to understand which stand had the vegetables I like, which ones had the right eggs that I like, which ones had the best cheese. You kind of get to know which stands you prefer and you form relationships with all these farmers. I care a lot about the quality of the food that I eat, so having kind of a rapport with them and figuring out what their standards and practices are is important. It’s also just lovely. There’s flowers and honey, lots of families are there, there’s so many kids and it’s just a happy place to be.

I usually get ingredients that I want to make for the week and for whatever other things I need, I’ll go to Whole Foods. As I shop, I will snack on Nature’s Fynd, which is a vegan yogurt. It’s sustainable, it’s ethical, it’s dairy free and it’s high protein. [Editor’s note: Lupe is a brand ambassador for Nature’s Fynd.]

12 p.m. Baby-friendly yoga

Then I would go to Silverlake Yoga for a yoga class. It’s run by this woman, Juliette Kurth. I found it during my pregnancy and they do a lot of prenatal classes, postnatal classes, baby and me yoga classes where moms can bring their baby and get their yoga in while the babies are hanging out there. It’s just like the sweetest place. She does labor workshops and I’ve fallen in love with it in the past year. To have a postnatal class so that you can still the care that you need and take care of your body after having the baby and to have free childcare essentially — it’s just the best. Juliette is just an angel on Earth.

2 p.m.: Walk around Descanso Gardens

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I’d probably go home and cook myself a little something to eat, then the whole family would go to Descanso Gardens. It’s so pretty and we’d walk around. You can get a snack at the door and have a little picnic if you want. Sometimes we’ll get a coffee or a tea and just post up somewhere.

5 p.m.: Pick up dinner

I’d go pick up Side Pie or Sugarfish on the way home for a cozy evening at home where we just eat pizza or sushi, hang out on our deck and just enjoy being in L.A. [Laughs]

At Sugarfish, we always do the Trust Me or Trust Me Lite box [which comes with edamame, tuna sashimi, salmon and more] depending on our appetite. It’s so good and sometimes we’ll throw in a little bit of eel. At Side Pie, we like the house herb ranch salad and the Altadena and the Z pizza, which is a vegetarian option with jalapeños. There’s another pizza with ham and honey that we like called the Honey’s Hammered. It’s soooo good. Side Pie is a little hole in the wall. You order it inside, then you can eat in their back area, which is really cute especially during the summer, or you can take it home.

For my beverage, I’m usually a water-with-electrolytes kind of person, which is so boring. [Laughs] I do drink wine, but just because I’m breastfeeding, I try to keep it to a minimum and do it well. I have a couple of glasses of wine a week. I’m a pretty light drinker, but when I do, I usually will pick up something from Cookbook Market in Highland Park. They’ve got a really great natural wine selection.

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6:30 p.m.: Luxurious bath

Every day the baby and I take a bath together. It’s a really good wind-down for her and I. Tyson sets up our bath area up each night. He puts out candles, plays music, puts our towels out and puts out a glass of water with ice. He’s just so sweet, so it’s kind of this ceremony for us. Then I give her a baby massage, which I also really love doing. My daughter has got it really good. I’m like, “I want a massage every night.” [Laughs]

8 p.m.: Watch T.V. until we fall asleep (and the baby wakes us up)

Then we’d get into bed and watch “The Great British Baking Show” or some fun TV show until we fall asleep. I know this is my ideal day, but the reality is that you go to bed kind of going like “Oh, no. Oh, no. Oh, no. Here comes the night” because of the baby. [Laughs] She’s 4 months now, so I think she’s about to hit that four-month sleep regression. So I think we’d get to bed fairly early just because we know we’re going to be losing sleep. She goes to bed at like 7 p.m., so we’ll probably get in bed by like 8 p.m. and fall asleep by 9 or 9:30 p.m.

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Mundane, magic, maybe both — a new book explores ‘The Writer’s Room’

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Mundane, magic, maybe both — a new book explores ‘The Writer’s Room’

There’s a three-story house in Baltimore that looks a bit imposing. You walk up the stone steps before even getting up to the porch, and then you enter the door and you’re greeted with a glass case of literary awards. It’s The Clifton House, formerly home of Lucille Clifton.

The National Book Award-winning poet lived there with her husband, Fred, starting in 1967 until the bank foreclosed on the house in 1980. Clifton’s daughter, Sidney Clifton, has since revived the house and turned it into a cultural hub, hosting artists, readings, workshops and more. But even during a February visit, in the mid-afternoon with no organized events on, the house feels full.

The corner of Lucille Clifton's bedroom, where she would wake up and write in the mornings

The corner of Lucille Clifton’s bedroom, where she would wake up and write in the mornings

Andrew Limbong/NPR


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Andrew Limbong/NPR

“There’s a presence here,” Clifton House Executive Director Joël Díaz told me. “There’s a presence here that sits at attention.”

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Sometimes, rooms where famous writers worked can be places of ineffable magic. Other times, they can just be rooms.

The Writer’s Room: The Hidden Worlds That Shape the Books We Love

Princeton University Press

Katie da Cunha Lewin is the author of the new book, The Writer’s Room: The Hidden Worlds That Shape the Books We Love, which explores the appeal of these rooms. Lewin is a big Virginia Woolf fan, and the very first place Lewin visited working on the book was Monk’s House — Woolf’s summer home in Sussex, England. On the way there, there were dreams of seeing Woolf’s desk, of retracing Woolf’s steps and imagining what her creative process would feel like. It turned out to be a bit of a disappointment for Lewin — everything interesting was behind glass, she said. Still, in the book Lewin writes about how she took a picture of the room and saved it on her phone, going back to check it and re-check it, “in the hope it would allow me some of its magic.”

Let’s be real, writing is a little boring. Unlike a band on fire in the recording studio, or a painter possessed in their studio, the visual image of a writer sitting at a desk click-clacking away at a keyboard or scribbling on a piece of paper isn’t particularly exciting. And yet, the myth of the writer’s room continues to enrapture us. You can head to Massachusetts to see where Louisa May Alcott wrote Little Women. Or go down to Florida to visit the home of Zora Neale Hurston. Or book a stay at the Scott & Zelda Fitzgerald Museum in Alabama, where the famous couple lived for a time. But what, exactly, is the draw?

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Lewin said in an interview that whenever she was at a book event or an author reading, an audience question about the writer’s writing space came up. And yes, some of this is basic fan-driven curiosity. But also “it started to occur to me that it was a central mystery about writing, as if writing is a magic thing that just happens rather than actually labor,” she said.

In a lot of ways, the book is a debunking of the myths we’re presented about writers in their rooms. She writes about the types of writers who couldn’t lock themselves in an office for hours on end, and instead had to find moments in-between to work on their art. She covers the writers who make a big show of their rooms, as a way to seem more writerly. She writes about writers who have had their homes and rooms preserved, versus the ones whose rooms have been lost to time and new real estate developments. The central argument of the book is that there is no magic formula to writing — that there is no daily to-do list to follow, no just-right office chair to buy in order to become a writer. You just have to write.

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Bruce Johnston Retiring From The Beach Boys After 61 Years

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Bruce Johnston Retiring From The Beach Boys After 61 Years

Bruce Johnston
I’m Riding My Last Wave With The Beach Boys

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On the brink of death, a woman is saved by a stranger and his family

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On the brink of death, a woman is saved by a stranger and his family

In 1982, Jean Muenchrath was injured in a mountaineering accident and on the brink of death when a stranger and his family went out of their way to save her life.

Jean Muenchrath


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Jean Muenchrath

In early May 1982, Jean Muenchrath and her boyfriend set out on a mountaineering trip in the Sierra Nevada, a mountain range in California. They had done many backcountry trips in the area before, so the terrain was somewhat familiar to both of them. But after they reached one of the summits, a violent storm swept in. It began to snow heavily, and soon the pair was engulfed in a blizzard, with thunder and lightning reverberating around them.

“Getting struck and killed by lightning was a real possibility since we were the highest thing around for miles and lightning was striking all around us,” Muenchrath said.

To reach safer ground, they decided to abandon their plan of taking a trail back. Instead, using their ice axes, they climbed down the face of the mountain through steep and icy snow chutes.

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They were both skilled at this type of descent, but at one particularly difficult part of the route, Muenchrath slipped and tumbled over 100 feet down the rocky mountain face. She barely survived the fall and suffered life-threatening injuries.

This was before cellular or satellite phones, so calling for help wasn’t an option. The couple was forced to hike through deep snow back to the trailhead. Once they arrived, Muenchrath collapsed in the parking lot. It had been five days since she’d fallen.

 ”My clothes were bloody. I had multiple fractures in my spine and pelvis, a head injury and gangrene from a deep wound,” Muenchrath said.

Not long after they reached the trailhead parking lot, a car pulled in. A man was driving, with his wife in the passenger seat and their baby in the back. As soon as the man saw Muenchrath’s condition, he ran over to help.

 ”He gently stroked my head, and he held my face [and] reassured me by saying something like, ‘You’re going to be OK now. I’ll be right back to get you,’” Muenchrath remembered.

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For the first time in days, her panic began to lift.

“My unsung hero gave me hope that I’d reach a hospital and I’d survive. He took away my fears.”

Within a few minutes, the man had unpacked his car. His wife agreed to stay back in the parking lot with their baby in order to make room for Muenchrath, her boyfriend and their backpacks.

The man drove them to a nearby town so that the couple could get medical treatment.

“I remember looking into the eyes of my unsung hero as he carried me into the emergency room in Lone Pine, California. I was so weak, I couldn’t find the words to express the gratitude I felt in my heart.”

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The gratitude she felt that day only grew. Now, nearly 45 years later, she still thinks about the man and his family.

 ”He gave me the gift of allowing me to live my life and my dreams,” Muenchrath said.

At some point along the way, the man gave Muenchrath his contact information. But in the chaos of the day, she lost it and has never been able to find him.

 ”If I knew where my unsung hero was today, I would fly across the country to meet him again. I’d hug him, buy him a meal and tell him how much he continues to mean to me by saving my life. Wherever you are, I say thank you from the depths of my being.”

My Unsung Hero is also a podcast — new episodes are released every Tuesday. To share the story of your unsung hero with the Hidden Brain team, record a voice memo on your phone and send it to myunsunghero@hiddenbrain.org.

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