*special* double issue

summer fun guide (part 1) ~PLUS~ a studio visit with phoebe mol!

dudes! june ruled! weather-wise, anyway. it wasn’t too hot, and it rained! and the baby animals were really putting on a show! i love those stinking cuties.

so far, so good, summer.

but i’ll be honest, ever since the heat dome in 2021, summer fun has felt kind of…inaccessible? like there’s part of me that wants to be skipping gayly thru the meadows of summer but this part of me is also fully anticipating that sometime between now and october an evil heat blob will whisk us under its stifling gummy cloak of 100+degree days and sit on us with it’s merciless deadly dome.

fun + dread = not fun

plus, does anyone know if we’re even doing fun anymore in 2025? like, is fun even an option these days? in any season??

these are serious questions! and maybe they are questions that make me sound like i have a serious attitude problem. cus I DO! but THAT’s ABOUT TO CHANGE!

even tho i feel kind of over summer i recognize that i have a (hopefully!) LOT of summers ahead of me. and like walking or lifting heavy things or climbing flights of stairs, having fun is GOOD for me! and i’ve gotta practice exercising my joy muscles NOW if i want to still be having hot girl summer fun when i’m 80 years old wearing a cute bikini non-stop because summer lasts 365 days a year!!

SO THIS SUMMER I’M improving MY TUDE. i’m going to try to be happy and healthy and pursue pleasure and fun even if the world is uncertain & i’m tired & my nervous system is a little jacked up & i’m honestly probably genetically better suited for a misty overcast climate and cave life.

and i plan to document the summer fun to come with the

*butterfly friend summer fun guide*

maybe it’ll help me have more fun! maybe it won’t work at all! but let’s goooooo

THREE WAYS TO HAVE SUMMER FUN

1. remember summer fun

this summer i’m going to get back into the stuff i liked to do when i was a kid in rural upstate new york & the summer days were long, lazy, boring, lonely, hot, buzzing.

being bored is a treat that i often deny myself by doing too many art projects (haha). but boredom really contributes to summer fun. so i’m going to try to make this summer a little more boring, if i can.

also i used to spend a lot of time laying around reading books. in all seasons, but i feel like there was something about summer reading that i’d go all in and immersive with the imagination. so, yeah, more of that.

right now i’m reading endurance by alfred lansing about ernest shackleton’s incredible ordeal in antarctica which miraculously his entire crew survived (no spoilers but their boat got destroyed and they had to travel 850 miles over ice and water back to civilization). i’m enjoying the book, trying to read it slowly and with a daydreamy attitude.

it is honestly especially fun to read a book about 27 men who are stranded together for years, and seem to still enjoy each other’s company, after recently reading stag dance by torrey peters, a novella about a lumber camp that attempts to thwart low morale with a cross dressing dance party. (several of shackleton’s crew also dressed as women during parties).

2. new summer frontiers

if summers lately haven’t felt too fun, maybe it’s time to try something new. like a new summer outfit! or an activity you’ve always wanted to try! or a research project - just for the summer!

my sister and her family were in town this weekend & i thought hey let’s try a new fun summer drink recipe. everyone was in the mood for a new summer frontier so we got all the ingredients for a dirty coconut coke, which tbh at the time sounded like maybe the most delicious thing i could imagine that would probably rocket me straight into pure summer fun forever.

but actual results varied: no pics because it looked like the willamette river after an overflow event from the big pipe - brown and foamy, with a tacky residue. and i’d give it a 6 out of 10 flavor-wise, i’d probably use more lime next time and ditch the cream of coconut. but trying new things plus sitting around sipping cool drinks was pretty fun, like at least 9 out of 10.

3. it’s summer, duh

probably the most easiest way for me to access summer fun is to notice the things of the season. klug and i went for a walk at oak island last weekend and i noticed it was the time of year when the cottonwood fluff is floating, and the swainson’s thrush is singing, and the sturgeons (maybe?) are flapping their fins in sturgeon lake, and the pelicans are flickering against the darkening sky and the blackberries have just set fruit but they haven’t started ripening yet. summer brings so much, and all of it is temporary, and changing. and whatever it takes to notice these little things is very fun, to me. very 2025 style fun.

k that’s it for now, but i’ll be back with more summer fun soon. in the meantime sound off in the comments - what did you love to do in the summer when you were a kid? what new things will you try this summer? what’s your favorite thing that summer brings?

treats for you

1. season 2 episode 2 of butterfly friend studio visits - documenting my studio visit with phoebe mol - is here!

i first knew about phoebe when she read from her comic extinction at floating world last year. i was so impressed by her drawing skill & the story which was delicately heartbreaking and illustrated with such a finely grotesque precision. fast-forward through lucky twists of fate to that one super hot day in early june, when i visited phoebe in her (air conditioned!) studio in southeast and we talked interspecies communication and experimental comics and papier mâché and she showed me around the work she was preparing for a collaborative show with re pinter and molly lecko herro.

their collaborative show, titled “fishbone harp” will be up at multnomah art center (7688 sw capitol highway) until august 2. the three of them hang out and make art together and work collaboratively and their whole thing is just like my dream of art friendship.

phoebe is so fricking cool and nice and she’s really good at drawing and i’m so glad i had the chance to interview her & i know you’ll find her inspiring!

the incredible harp music in the video is by mere of light.

2. dude, have you tried a santa claus melon yet?? sorry i keep calling you dude, but dude, these melons are really good.

3. okay, if the be-bored-and-read-books approach to summer fun appeals to you but you’re thinking “yeah but what if i also cried a little bit during it, wouldn’t that be extra fun??” then i have a book recommendation for you: beautyland by marie-helene bertino.

   the basic story is that little girl discovers that she was projected to earth at birth, and communicates with her home planet via a fax machine that her mom finds in the trash. have you ever felt like an alien, observing humans but not really getting what is the big deal? yeah, me too.

4. ART FUND* UPDATE —→ i just picked up this sick fabric collage from lila jarzombek !!!

informal photo cus it’s too hot to hang it up properly right now

lila’s got more for sale on her website inkbloom. i love the one i got, but this one is really cool, too:

*the ART FUND is a bunch of money i made selling tshirts that i’m only spending on art made by my friends. you could buy a tshirt and contribute to the art fund at bizmiller.com but you should prob just buy one of lila’s fabric collages cus they rule.