1. A note
The kids are in school and the house is quiet. This week, after a summer of research and reading, I started writing the next chapters in this thesis on the history of Aubigny. I love research, but it’s always in service of writing, because writing is that wonderful creative part where all the information I’ve been squirrelling away now gets to be arranged and set to a page. When I can’t write, I come here to play with words and set thoughts afloat. But now I’m busy writing elsewhere, so writing here would become a chore, which makes me a bore. I think this blog post on Kottke helped me clarify these feelings.
2. Self care
I was reading a book by Pierre Berton titled The Promised Land, in which Clifford Sifton (the Minister for the Interior in charge of getting immigrants settled across the prairies) is described this way:
Sifton took office with the reputation of being an iron man. In the words of an admirer, ‘he never gets tired, works like a horse, never worries, eats three square meals a day and at night could go to sleep on a nail keg.’ During the Manitoba provincial campaign of 1896 he would climb off the train at Brandon at eleven at night, sit up until morning talking politics with friends, entertain at breakfast, and then take off in the winter’s cold by sleigh, speaking at Souris, say, in the afternoon, and Hartney at night before heading off to the railhead at Oak Lake to catch the train back home. (p. 19)
When he resigned in 1904, the author writes that his “nerves were badly shattered” and that
As soon as he had cleaned up the backlog of work in his office […], he left Ottawa […] for treatment in the mud and sulpho lithia water baths of the Indiana Springs Company at Mudlavia. (p 196)
(Pause… First off, Mudlavia! Fascinating! I had no idea… and then, of course, why wouldn’t there be spa treatments in 1904, just as there have been forever? Still, when Louis Litt’s devotion to mudding is shown in the tv series Suits, I thought it was exotic and new.)
Pierre Berton goes on to write about Sifton’s resignation, and I can’t help but feel like he’s poking fun at these mud baths:
It is difficult to picture the imperturbable Sifton […] emerging with nerves shaken so badly he was forced to immerse himself in mud for the best part of two months. (p 197)
Granted, Berton is writing in 1984, and he definitely wasn’t a millennial.
3. Eating
Our rhubarb plant produces rhubarb from spring till fall and before the first frost I make as many loafs of Rhubarb Nut Bread as I have time for. I am fond of a recipe I found years ago while working as a secretary by day and learning to bake by night. It’s from The Angel of the Sea Cookbook, which is still operating as a real bed and breakfast. (It looks so pretty!)
4. Audiobooks
When I’m reading, reading, reading for research, I notice that I don’t read much just for fun, and turn instead to audiobooks for a change. This summer I’ve enjoyed S.P.Q.R. by Mary Beard, Patrick Radden Keefe's Empire of Pain, Susan Orlean's On Animals and The Nineties by Chuck Klosterman.
I heartily agree with this advice from a librarian quoted on Recommendo: "Ditch Audible and get a library card to listen to free audiobooks. Many libraries offer apps where you can download audiobooks straight to your phone."
5. Seen here
I love how the thistles, still drying from the dew, look wonderfully dishevelled.
Psst: Happy Friday!
This is the last in this series, but I’ll still pop in, with perhaps a different kind of post because I like this blog as a digital record of thoughts and experiences over time… Cheers!