A Week on Sunday (no. 19)

Documentaries

Finishing one project and before heading into another I rewarded myself with two documentaries I’d bookmarked… Turn Every Page featuring Robert Caro and Robert Gottlieb and directed by Lizzie Gottlieb. I liked seeing footage of things I’ve only heard on podcasts or read in articles. The documentary adds another layer of visual stimulation… No Other Land an entirely different subject. It felt well-edited. The other day I was thinking of a small injustice I’d felt recently, a detail really, and my mind travelled to scenes from this film. In the overwhelm of one’s personal inability to stand against a torrent of suffering in this world, it feels right to imagine that an act of love, the sacrificial acceptance of what is difficult in one’s own experience, can be a not insignificant action that carries in its offering an invisible but true counterbalance to what is wrong right now. 

Food

Really liked reading Sophie Mulgrew’s “The Weight of Pasta Water” on her Substack Notes to No One. It reminds me of several women I’ve known. 

This week, I made a giant Challah, served half fresh with Deb Perelman’s Spring Asparagus [Bacon] Hash, and reserved the other half for decadent French Toast the next day, alongside a [Frittata] Maraîchère adapted from Dorie Greenspan’s Quiche Maraîchère. 

Labels

I know that applying labels to behaviour, and clumsily, applying labels to people by extension, is wrong if it is done uncaringly. I know that it can be hurtful to reduce a person to a label. I know some people are more sensitive to using labels than others. But I’ve also found labels to be extremely helpful for understanding behaviour, moving past frustration and accessing a more robust empathy. I therefore find Annabel Fenwick Elliott’s Tiktok about understanding her own labels really heartening to hear. “[Instead of feeling] punished by them, I study them.”  

Treat

This isn’t some fancy premium chocolate, but we like it and treat it as if it is, taking only a rectangles at a time instead of a snack or dessert.

Postcard

If I were to make a calendar for the year, I think it would entirely feature the seasonal transformation of the milkweed plant.

Have a great week!

Friday Five

Welcome to my little spot on the web, where, like a bird on a blade of bluestem I cheerily chirp in comfortable invisibility. Ha! This week brings more thoughts on writing, the foundational joy of these weekly dispatches, and… some fall colour! Cheers!

1 Writing

I like listening to writers talk about writing because I crave all their voices and experience in the silence of muddling along. For example, I nod along with Alexandra Shulman when she says “I’m somebody who never knows what I’m going to write ever until I start writing it. […] I write it down and then once I’ve written down wherever I get, then I go back and try and turn it into something that’s a bit more ordered.” It makes me think of Joan Didion’s expression: “I write entirely to find out what I’m thinking, what I’m looking at, what I see and what it means.” But do you see how Shulman’s statement is a little more raw, a little less literary? In the yellow glow of my black desk lamp, I more often feel like Shulman, a little humbled by my inability to draw up a plan and follow it. It’s in the glare of sunlight through a café window, joking with a friend over lunch that I can venture to be Joan Didion-like, just “writing to think…”

Or, for another example, I like how Jon Ronson said he needs “months to write”, that being a columnist wasn’t something he liked because his brain just didn’t work that way… “I’m very slow.” And while this might seem like an unflattering quote, such confessions are deeply reassuring for people whose creativity has a matching way of working itself out.

Slow percolation and spontaneity … I wonder if it’s related in a way to Carson Ellis’s own observation on the subject of narrative storytelling, when she tells Debbie Millman that she wishes she “felt more comfortable with it and better at it” but that she freezes when “faced with the challenge of making up a story, even if it could be about anything. Like you’re telling a story to a three-year-old with no expectations, the bar is very low, and I still feel kind of frozen by it.” I too get the same feeling.

Perhaps the fun of listening to this kind of “shop talk” is the excitement of a kind of pattern recognition, whereby I find in the professionals things I’ve begun to notice in myself and it’s a boost to my confidence. 

2 Breath

The ideas in this book have recently taken over our thoughts and modified some of our habits… I originally heard about the book on the podcast “People I Mostly Admire”. James Nestor’s writing voice is nice to read and he has a kind tone. Steve Levitt remarked on this in his podcast, saying “you came to book writing somewhat late” and then noting the success of his books. Nestor answers that for him, writing has been an outlet, “what I would do to feed my soul at nighttime and on weekends.” I find it inspiring that this kind of attitude toward writing imbues a reader’s experience of the book itself.

3 Eating

I made doughnuts from scratch for the friends and family festivities at our house Halloween night. It was a little chaotic… Christian had to serve supper on limited counter space while answering the door and being cheerful while the dog howled so I could concentrate entirely on managing dough and hot oil. But! They were a SUCCESS! I followed Sohla El-Waylly’s recipe in Start Here to the letter, and the outcome was plush and crisp and perfectly sweet. I learned about proofing dough - comparing the right amount of proofing to a handprint on memory foam was effective - and used coconut oil for frying as she recommended. Having our whole house smell like it was doused in coconut-scented sunscreen seems like an extra perk of the recipe. Wow.

Photo credit.

4 Research

I’m doing this little side-project for fun and it involves these directories that get bigger and bigger along with Winnipeg’s population growth. They’re called Henderson Directories and they list an individual’s name, their occupation, place of employment and address. They also list house owners by street. These tactile sources of data amaze me. They’re also a poor subject of conversation, of the “did you know” type. 

Research makes me think of Tyler Virgen’s post “The Mystery of the Bloomfield Bridge”. I really like this blog post. It begins small, leads to a little goose-chase and lots of sleuthing, contains self-doubt, has moments of humorous refocusing, plunges into dusty archives, contains newspaper clippings and delivers a satisfying ending. If I were a professor, I’d dedicate a class to this blog post, just for the illustration of research it provides.

5 The view

It’s so colourful this time of year…

I feel like milkweed makes a flamboyant show in the fall compared to the demure dusty-rose of its summertime flower clusters.

In case you were doubting the above statement…

The river recedes from the shore, going so low as to reveal new islands and the perfect profile of a duck.

Today, a row of willow looked like this, still leafy:

Happy Friday!

Friday Five

A spider just drifted by and I let it be, floating on its piece of silk, because, I think, I should let bugs live. But when the ambient air in this big-windowed study room moves a stray hair against my cheek, I think "spider?" But no, it's now landed and is exploring the floor...

1. Having a routine just to take a break

Today, I give you no weighty thoughts, no facts or quotes, just this leftover feeling... Yesterday, I broke my self-imposed week-time routine to take the day and celebrate my brother-in-law's birthday. We packed a picnic and spent all afternoon at Assiniboine Park, visiting the Leaf, getting ice cream across the bridge at Sargent Sundae, and touring the English Garden and Leo Mol's sculpture garden. Besides the fact that the outing was itself really nice, that it pleased the generational span of our family and that everything went smoothly, it was also the momentary release of choosing to take the day off without setting any expectation on it that brought a "relaxing into the moment" kind of happiness I wasn't expecting. But I think that contrary to the impulse of wanting to chase that "relief from routine" feeling, it only reinforces (for me) the benefit of having a discipline to help me with this isolated - and isolating - kind of pursuit. I'm happier when I consciously dedicate time to both.

2. See?

This is the hat-wearing contingent of our little group headed over to get a treat. I'm really grateful to the city for maintaining such pretty gardens in the summer! 

3. Eating

The beginning of the week, and most of the month of July so far, has been unusually cold. After a decadent supper with relatives, we had Christian's brother and mother over for Fish Stew on Sunday. Fish stew doesn't sound appetizing, but I can always trust Nigella Lawson to win me over to something over the course of one lengthy recipe introduction or another... This one, she promised, would resolve my "fissues", and just being provoked to lol, I decided to take on almost two pounds of cod.  

Sometimes, I think, it's not about the recipe itself that I want to devote all my enthusiastic writing... sometimes it's better to just appreciate the "a-propos"-ness of food. The supper felt like a healthy pause in the midst of going-out extravagance and it felt warm against the chill. I appreciated it for that.

Yesterday, it was warm, and sunny, and after a day of walking around gardens and plants, we had salade nicoise, just to catch up on all the wax beans our garden has been producing. The day before, I'd said to Christian "maybe plant fewer beans next year?" A second and third serving of the salad and my mind thinks maybe I should hit "backspace" on the comment. Before assembling the salad, I made a riff on this Antipasti by Grossy Pelosi. (What? A salad before a salad? Ah! It's summer dear!)

4. A podcast I like

I'm new to listening to Hard Fork, and press play whether or not I understand the episode titles, only to feel like I'm always learning something new about AI and feeling a little smarter for it. There's a gap between appreciating new ideas and actually being able to explain them to someone else, but still, hosts that help pierce the nebulous nature of this technology are to be commended! (And hey! I learned about the Effort Heuristic!) 

5. Scenery

From the beautifully manicured Assiniboine gardens, to the lightly-maintained Henteleff, here are thistles and milkweed. The milkweed is treated with care in this park so that monarchs can lay their eggs on them. Swaths of grass will be weed-whacked, but special allowance is made for milkweed. 

And the thistles? They grow everywhere! I kind of like them though... Celtic nations associate positive qualities to the thistle and so I look at them with a benevolent eye. 

Psst! Happy Friday!