A week on Sunday 9/52

History

This week I finished reading Gordon S. Wood’s collection of essays titled The Purpose of the Past: Reflections on the Uses of History. Containing 21 reviews of books on the subject of American history, Wood makes observations about the way an author treats a historical subject, and it’s the observations that I appreciate. For example: 

Since we can never completely escape, even imaginatively, from our present, some degree of anachronism is inevitable in all history writing. But any good historian needs constantly to worry about the problem of injecting his or her contemporary consciousness back into the past. (p 39)

History is not a science; it is an art. History needs writers, or artists, who can communicate the past to readers […]. (p 63)

It's the differences, the discrepancies through time, however slight, however marginal, that intrigue and interest them, for cumulatively they tell us how that different, distant past world evolved into our own. (p 82)

It is the historian's responsibility to analyze and evaluate all these different views and narrations and then arrive at as full and as objective an explanation and narration of the events as possible. (p 106)

History writing is creative, and it surely requires imagination, but it is an imagination of a particular sort, sensitive to the differentness of the past and constrained and constricted by the documentary record. (p 107)

[…] historians seek to study past events not to make transhistorical generalizations about human behavior but to understand those events as they actually were, in all their peculiar contexts and circumstances. (p 271)

In my opinion, not everyone who writes about the past is a historian. (p 276)

It is a truism that history writing tends to reflect the times in which it is written. All history is "contemporary history," wrote the Italian historian Benedetto Croce, by which he meant that history is seen mainly through the eyes of the present and in relation to its problems. (p 293)

(I’ve previously quoted Gordon S. Wood from the same book, but on the subject of ideas here.)

And other things

All that being said about history, I was busy away from the computer most hours this week… Having received my diploma by mail, the symbol is one among a few others marking a season of transition and I’ve been sorting through piles and clearing out neglected spaces. At one point, as I was about to empty the shredder, I was struck by the prettiness of what had accumulated inside.

A friend told me that there is such a thing as white beets, and that she plants them in her garden. I went to see for myself… Being unable to make that leap (beet colour feels fundamental to beets…), I instead chose Hakurei turnips, delighted that the Lacoste greenhouse carries them. Amy Thielen writes about them in her cookbook Company describing them: “as round as golf balls, these […] turnips […] are juicy, almost fruity-tasting.” I really look forward to trying them! 

Eating

Isn’t this fresh-year-round Swiss chard pretty? 

This time last year, I made the same Pancetta, White Bean and Swiss Chard Pot Pies.

The novelty this week was serving breaded broccoli, based on a recipe from Mark Bittman’s How to Cook Everything. His is fried, not baked. Served alongside General Tso’s Tofu and a pile of lightly flavoured rice, it was a hearty vegetarian meal.

Considerably less effort was Friday night’s Tomato Sauce with Butter and rigatoni with a salty kale salad as a complement.

Baking

I recently made Dorie Greenspan’s World Peace Cookies which turned out like so:

I also made Sarah Fennel’s Cinnamon Roll Cookies (sans cream cheese) and they were so well appreciated, so soon disappeared, that I didn’t have a chance to take a picture as proof. The recipe can be found here.  

Enjoying

1. I like how Orla Stevens, a painter in Scotland, generously shares her reflections on her eponymous Youtube channel. In a recent video, one of her tips (at about the 19 minute mark) is “to not limit yourself. If you’re someone who also thrives off of variety, then allow different side quests to happen while you’re working on a series.” She, for example, likes to sew, and she made her own outfit for an exhibition of her series of paintings. “Giving myself permission to do that made me way more excited to come back to painting. So I think it can be a really good thing to have that variety in our lives.” I can apply this advice to research and writing (like her series of paintings) in contrast with the cooking, baking, and side hobbies (akin to her sewing), and make peace with the fact that indeed, I do like variety.

2. A quote! As I was clearing out stacks of old notes, I found this on a post-it: “The force of character is cumulative. All the foregone [i.e. past] days of virtue work their health into this.” - Ralph Waldo Emerson. It is from the tenth paragraph in an essay of his titled “Self-Reliance.” I tired of reading the essay, but Claude gave me a good summary.

3. On a recent podcast episode of How To Be A Better Human, guest Courtney Martin said this thing I liked: “Because if we only show how bad that leadership is or how corrupt, and we don’t say, ‘look at this other leader who’s doing it this way,’ or ‘look at this other organization’ or ‘look at the state that has figured our this thing,’ then that’s actually holding power accountable because you show that it is possible.” I also really liked this essay of hers from her newsletter “The Examined Life,” titled “It takes a village to love an elder.”

4. I really like the style of Carol Nazatto’s collages… here and here. They feel so considered and imaginative.    

Postcard

Twice this week, Enzo and I spotted a coyote not far from us, but Enzo howls so much, it would be impossible to take a picture. Instead… a little colour contrast… Nature is endlessly inspiring!

Happy Sunday!

A week on Sundy 3/52

Intro

This week, quotes and links related to creativity… It’s where my mind is leaning at present, and I’ll tell you why in a minute. But first, a documentary.

David Hockney: A Bigger Picture

About 12 minutes in to the above titled film available on Kanopy, Hockney says this:

I got a little sketchbook, a Japanese one, like a concertina and I would draw a certain kind of grass. I filled the book in about two hours with all these different kinds of grass. To most people, it looks like a jumble - because it is - but because you’ve done that, looked into the hedgerows, seen all the variety, then you draw it. When you’ve drawn it, when you then look again at the hedgerow, your seeing becomes clearer and you know you understand what’s going on more. And you realize there’s a fabulous lot to look at. If you want to replenish a visual thing, you’re gonna have to go back to nature, ‘cause there’s the infinite there, meaning you can’t think it up, I don’t think. 

I like how he shares a tip, a little practice he’s used himself that I can use too, and the subsequent appreciation for nature that comes from it. It makes me feel like drawing should have a place in education. Not a prescriptive kind of place, but a “freedom of exploration” kind of place. (I found this documentary from a book Sandi Hester recommended on her Youtube channel here. The library here doesn’t carry the book, but does have the documentary and I enjoyed it.)

A few more quotes on the subject

I like how Kristen Vardanega begins her first video of the year with a phrase to contradict the other well-known one… She says “I would like to ‘move slow and make things’.” Me too! In that vein, I appreciate the encouragement such as Orla Stevens offers it: 

You don’t need to know why you’re doing something. You don’t need to know where it’s going to take you. You just need to listen to your curiosity and let it take you where you’re meant to be going.

And her reflection that comes from pursuing that curiosity:

One of the main life lessons I think have been as a kind of byproduct of making and working in sketchbooks it’s not even really the art that’s the most important bit. It’s like the way that it lets you see the world more creatively and lets you appreciate the little things.

House upgrades and Mr. Enzo (the dog)

One day last week and two days this week, a little team of workers ascended ladders to replace the original eaves troughs on our house. Until then, we didn’t know it could be a winter project. It seems especially productive to transform a bit of our house when the yard is in hibernation, so that spring runoff will have a brand new highway.

As nice as that is, our dog was acting as if the fortress was under siege and I would have reached the end of our Tupperware of treats before he would agree to settle. Eventually, he seemed most comfortable in his cage, but at risk of teasing the poor boy, let’s just say his anxiety was still manifest:

As soon as the workers left and order was restored to his little universe, all he wanted was a peaceful stay in his new bean bag.

Hardly less rattled than our poor dog, I eventually dedicated a few hours to playing around with collage. Collage feels like almost childish fun to me, and in my imagination it has even fewer rules than drawing does… collage, in the end, doesn’t need to look like anything. You stop when you feel like it. You arrange at will. 

To trick myself into doing collage, I’ve given myself an appropriately small mission… Having been accidentally gifted the game “Cards Against Humanity”, I’ve been covering the inappropriate phrases with visuals I like better. “Cat pee in a water gun”? How about a floral sticker with a tiny animal-piloted plane flying overhead?

And who knew that India ink roughly brushed onto Kraft paper could make for such interesting textures! I call this series of tiny collages, my “cards for humanity”. 

After making ten, cortisol levels were indeed lowered just like Amie McNee says here.  

Reading online

I really liked the point made in this essay by Owen Kellogg who opens with the following

Phones do matter, but their role is often misunderstood. Instead of operating as a primary source of distress, heavy phone use appears to function as a compensatory behavior. When young people lack reliable sources of support or connection, they turn to tools that provide stimulation or regulation. Heavy screen use fills gaps left by unmet material and psychological needs.

This came via The Marginal Revolution who quoted a line from the conclusion: “The most reliable way to improve youth well-being is to meet individual needs through connection instead of control.” 

One of the things about December is that it’s a busy month, always and forever will be, meaning that I didn’t have the chance to sit down and peruse all the great year-end type posts that are so fun to read. It’s mid January, and I’m only now delving in… Thus did I come across… (thus did I? Alas, I am reading Smollett’s translation of Don Quixote and it is full of fancy language, so now I write in fancy language too… I’m about 170 pages in, since January 6th, and, yes, had to remind myself why I should be patient with all Quixote’s useless scrapes, and so read the first link served up to me… this by a Mr. Nick Senger back in 2018. Fine. Back to where I was going…) 

As I was saying… Kottke linked to this list of Best Video Essays, and I enjoyed listening through Josh’s “You are a better writer than AI. (Yes, you.)”. Anything about writing and A.I. is like catnip to me, and Josh’s comments about “beauty in recombinance” (at the 7:38 mark) makes me think of collage. His class syllabus has me nod with recognition, because yes, I find myself ”writing because you feel like you need to” (at 28:12). Literature that feels impenetrable? Another bit reminding me of the purpose of the self-imposed reading list!

Postcard

This week the temperature has fluctuated dramatically in Winnipeg, from melt to freeze, and one morning, the changing conditions during my walk lead to capturing some dramatic lighting. This dark slate sky and orange willow branches reminds me of summer evenings after a storm, when the sky is dark blue and the foreground is gold.

Happy Sunday!