luv/pops
A Father's Day note from love, journalism
I’m Darren Samuelsohn, and this is love, journalism.
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When my dad was around my age, he did something that didn’t have a name yet.
I was fresh out of college, somewhere between lost and launched, and I had pointed myself at Japan. Every few days or weeks I’d fire off an email dispatch to anyone who wanted it — family, friends, whoever gave me their address. It was Substack before Substack. A newsletter before I knew what a newsletter was.
He didn’t just read them. He printed every one. Saved the handwritten letters too — the ones I’d sent airmail from Saitama, Japanese stamps. He put it all in a binder and had it waiting for me when I came home.
The notebook sits on my desk now. The spine is labeled DARREN, in all caps.
He was keeping the archive before there was anything to archive.
That’s the thing about my dad. He’s always been a few steps ahead of where I thought I was. As a kid, he waved me away from professional sports like football or golf - my persistent broken bones and wicked slice the evidence he was right. When I wanted to quit in journalism school, he didn’t let me — not with a speech, just with a stubbornness and steadiness that made quitting feel like the wrong option. When I was broke and circling the globe and firing off panicked emails from Bangkok at midnight, he ran the bank balance, sorted out the Japanese check, handled it — and then signed off luv / pops. When I finally landed somewhere and started building something real, he became my most faithful reader.
He reads everything. He always has.
To the dads out there who pushed their kids toward the dream even when the dream looked like a bad idea. Who showed up quiet when the kid needed loud and loud when the kid needed a lifeline. Who kept the record when the kid was too busy living it to look back.
My dad did all of that. He did it before I knew to say thank you.
Happy Father’s Day.