A week on Sunday 18/52

Intro

A little while ago, in an e-mail to my brother, I declared “The blog helps me to confront, weekly, two struggles: 1) clarifying my thoughts and 2) handling topics that expose opinions I feel vulnerable about.” For the longest time, I thought it was much safer not to have opinions about things and I think that can be felt in the stiffness of earlier writing. Taking a plunge - life is a river in this metaphor - distilling a cup at a time, paddling on; all that is a more vigorous way of living… And so, this week, more reading, more listening, and just a little more opinion.

Finished reading

I’m happy there are so many books on the subject of writing… I can go on in life continuing to find them and take in their little doses of inspiration. Lately I finished a classic; John McPhee’s Draft No. 4. Of the dozen pages bearing a sticky note, I’ll transcribe two quotes that are in fact pieces of advice. The first:

No one will ever write in just the way that you do, or in just the way that anyone else does. Because of this fact, there is no real competition between writers. What appears to be competition is actually nothing more than jealousy and gossip. Writing is a matter strictly of developing oneself. You compete only with yourself. You develop yourself by writing. (p 82)

And the second:

Never market-research your writing. Write on subjects in which you have enough interest on your own to see you through all the stops, starts, hesitations, and other impediments along the way. (p 180)

Podcastland

Part of being a fan of the Freakonomics podcast, with host Stephen Dubner, is admiring how he manages to find not just interesting topics (horses!) but also interesting people. Recently he interviewed Judy Faulkner, shining a light on how a company can be run differently than the maximizing profits model I feel trained to accept as normal. It felt like a refreshing point of view.  

The other, less-fun part of being a fan of a podcast and its host, is accepting that they, like you, are paddling a river and can influence you to like and accept something that later, you realize, wasn’t all that great. A case in point is a recent episode of If Books Could Kill. Titled “Grit”, I was reluctant to listen. Grit is Angela Duckworth’s word for a quality associated with success, and I’d been won over by her voice on Steven Levitt’s People I (Mostly) Admire. But here, Michael Hobbes and Peter Shamshiri were going to apply their show’s tagline: “the airport bestsellers that captured our hearts and ruined our minds”. 

Is it embarrassing to have to revise a previously favourable opinion of something? I used to think so. I used to think that you had to be categorical about things, about people. It’s both harder and more liberating to accept that people are more like fellow travellers than sovereigns; that ideas can be more ephemera than doctrine. 

Collecting

Adding to a previous picture of a bar code I liked, this one, featured on a bag of Pop Corners:

A French audiobook

I liked listening to Veiller sur elle by Jean-Baptiste Andrea. This description of the protagonist’s feat of sculpting a saint, as if he was alive, made me laugh when I heard it:

Il examina le saint François dans mon atelier tandis que Francesco et moi, comme autrefois, attendions  son verdict. J’avais bien travaillé. […] J’avais sculpté François la main levé près de sa joue, un oiseau perché sur l’index. Jusque là, rien d’anormal. Mais l’on devinait par une audace insensé de ma part, que l’aile de l’oiseau avait dû frôler son cou dans la seconde d’avant, le chatouiller, car le saint souriait. On n’avait jamais vu un saint chatouilleux, encore moins souriant, en tout cas, pas en statuaire, où tout les saints arboraient en générale des mines de fonctionnaires divins, harcelés de demandes d’intercession.

In interviews around this book’s winning the Prix Goncourt, (such as here and here) Andrea talks about his love of writing and the priority he gives to a story’s structure. 

A birthday

Enzo, our velvety drapes-for-ears beagle, turned 6 this week, so we gave him some gifts to unwrap.

Baking

Occasionally I’ll get a really specific dessert request, and this week, is was for something simple. Something that didn’t have any hidden “health” to it. No sneaking in some fancy flour, like buckwheat. No fruit and nut-filled batters. I complied and made vanilla cupcakes with chocolate buttercream frosting, thanks to a recipe for both from Smitten Kitchen Every Day. In the quest for interesting flavours and unusual ideas, I sometimes forget that basic can be perfect.

Walking the dog

This week, what caught my eye was texture… more golden grass, more sticks, more curly bark, and hey! Check out the chickadee that landed there!

Sun-drenched texture… from pine tree branches to pussy willows.

And in the forest, where last week we spotted a frog, this week, there was a box.

Do you know what was in the box?

Nothing!

Happy Sunday!

A week on Sunday 17/52

Intro

Of what is a week composed? Of daily walks, and small routines. Of BBC News in the morning and bringing my 88-year-old mother-in-law to her eye appointment in the afternoon. Of making a shopping list on Saturday and dessert on Sunday. Of packing lunches in the evening and the impromptu visit of a nephew travelling through Winnipeg on his way elsewhere. Amidst these routines and events, the mind flits elsewhere, a stream of consciousness fed by podcasts and books and little projects. Here’s what caught my attention this week…

Intentional effort

When I was young, I thought that “bothering” was to be avoided, as in “bothering” people, and by extension that the point of life was to get to greater ease. I don’t think that way anymore, and the following quote from William James nicely contradicts the idea of wanting to get to “ease”:

Keep the faculty of effort alive in you by a little gratuitous exercise every day. That is, be systematically ascetic or heroic in little unnecessary points, do every day or two something for no other reason than that you would rather not do it, so that when the hour of dire need draws nigh, it may find you not unnerved and untrained to stand the test. Asceticism of this sort is like the insurance which a man pays on his house and goods. The tax does him no good at the time, and possibly may never bring him a return. But if the fire does come, his having paid it will be his salvation from ruin. (Via)

In a similar vein is are two interviews of Stewart Brand who is promoting his latest book titled Maintenance of Everything. There is the idea of care - caring for tools, of “honouring the process of taking care of things and yourself and others” and there is the contrast with a world that is increasingly automated. He says at one point: “we're going to spend more and more of our life arguing with robots. These things have automatic procedures based on somebody else's idea of what will be obvious and not obvious when you're messing with it.” Stuck in line at a bank for half an hour, then with a teller for an hour and 15 minutes to resolve a small issue made me think “here we are, arguing with robots!”. The intentional effort manifested in the form of equanimity - a kind of caring for each other as we’re dealing with these robots.

Environment

Beau Miles recently concluded a series of videos on four different rivers in Australia, ending with the Murray River. I like how he grapples with being unable to end the story on a satisfying note, and how he includes his conflicting feelings in the video… His friend, Brian Wattchow, suggests “Unfortunately it’s going to have to be managed and rules are going to have to be imposed until we can get a whole new set of values and values for the river. It’s sad but I can’t see personal choice and individual responsibility saving the river at the moment.” His argument is consonant with Andri Snær Magnason’s observation on humility toward nature (quoted here).  

On the subject of rivers, but in Canada, is the CBC’s Ideas podcast episode “What the River Wants to Be”. 

Baking

This week I made Vaughn Vreeland’s Lemon Blueberry Cookies.

There remained, after this recipe, a lot of frozen blueberries left, and so I made a pie. The pie was unphotogenic, but delicious.

Walking the dog

This week, there was a bit of cold weather leftover… just enough to take pictures of the icicles formed on the branches from the preceding days’ higher water levels.

The sun came out, and so there was the view across the water…

I look down when I walk, eyeing the ground, surveilling Enzo who follows his nose everywhere. At one point I looked up and was so delighted to see pussy willows!

The last few mounds of snow that remain covered in grass look like wooly mammoths.

One day this week, we found a frog on our path! 

Enzo’s sniffing  caused it to raise its arms… “Leave me alone!” So we did…

Happy Sunday!

A week on Sunday 16/52

Quotes

Via the newsletter Scratch, a link to Marisa Kabas’ post “Refusing to accept an AI-poisoned future of journalism” had this wonderful bit on writing:

I don’t write because it’s fun (though sometimes it is.) I write because it feeds my spirit. It helps me unspool my thoughts and feelings in the hopes of helping others do the same. The process is the purpose. You don’t have to always like or enjoy the process, but if you don’t respect it enough to do it yourself, there is no purpose.

And from Taffy Brodesser-Akner’s article “I Taught My Son Everything, Except How to Take a Vacation” this reflection on the oft-repeated “it goes by so fast” (referring to childhood) that felt especially true:

I realized that it’s not that it goes fast, that’s not what people mean. What they are saying is that they wished it would last forever. And that is something I can endorse, that I wish it all could last forever.

Old recipes

Our household has inherited a pile of cookbooks and a stack of hand-written recipes. Fond memories of a particular recipe from Kitchen Treasures prompted me to make it this week. I’m not very familiar with hot dish type meals, and in fact failed to get this one right (the rice I’d prepared in advance and took from the fridge stayed too cold and prevented the layers from combining in that pleasing hot dish way…). I think that my interest in cooking coincided with the trend towards from scratch cooking and very much influenced our family’s taste in food. 

Trying to discover more about food trends lead me to The Food Historian’s blog, and two posts in particular here and here. Besides some helpful context, there was this:

As the old adage goes, you can have good, fast, and cheap, but never all three at once. Good and fast is expensive, good and cheap takes time, and fast and cheap is usually not very good. And when you're working multiple jobs to make ends meet, getting decent-tasting food on the table in a timely manner is more important than worrying about cooking from scratch.

On the subject of old recipes, there is a touching story of a cook at a nursing home, choosing to find and use recipes from the residents’ lives. Told (around the 9:42 minute mark here) by Craig Bowerson thanks to host, Chef Owen Roy, Bowerson concludes saying: “cooking: it’s the ultimate expression of love.”

Cooking

This week we tried Hetty McKinnon’s “One Pot Broccoli Quinoa Soup” and it was perfect, considering, if you will, the weather here… freezing rain, and snow, and ice…

Postcards

Adding a mushroom to last week’s collection…

Making up for the dismal views this time of year is the cheerful birdsong.

Happy Sunday!

A week on Sunday 15/52

Language

There are lots of opinions on the subject of bilingualism in Canada, and they’re boring as heck, even when they’re revived under extraordinary circumstances, such as… well, a condolence speech. There’s one side. And then the other side, sympathy for the poor people who have difficulty learning a second language:

I know that people have picked up languages later in life, but once you’ve passed 17, 18 years old, your porousness for new languages drops off. It’s hard. Remarkably. Which is not to say you cannot learn a language… you can, really poorly.

Sometimes the debate confines itself to a province… “Should Manitoba officially adopt French and English?” asks the CBC podcast.  And a language professional weighs in:

Up to age 11, your brain absorbs language, so you can learn 50 words a day and five languages hearing the word one time in station. So we forget the power of the brain. After age 11, 12, 13, which the school system often starts now, that word has to pass through your brain, thinking, hearing or reading or whatever, a thousand times. So it becomes a real chore. You would really have to work at it. So of course people get turned off.

I like not thinking of Canada at all… I like thinking about language just by itself… Like when Steve Levitt asks Steven Pinker for tips, or when Levitt confesses to a trick he used when visiting China.

Or when Arthur Brooks talks about learning Catalan:

[…] there’s research on this, and that’s the research Raymond Cattel and subsequent researchers on crystallized intelligence. Crystallized intelligence is one of the reasons that people are better teachers when they get older, people have better vocabularies when they get older, they’re better scrabble players when they get older. And the reason is because of pattern recognition, and you can help that along.

You can get better crystallized intelligence, sort of a bigger library and a better ability to use it as you get older if you study a foreign language. Now I had looked at that literature. I try to live according to research. I mean, why be a behavioural scientist if you can’t live according to the research? And I saw that people became happier and they had richer lives, and they actually were better able to learn foreign languages after 50.

I said, huh, what if that’s true?

So, I had never taught in Catalan. I just sort of spoke in street Catalan up at that point, because when I lived there, and with my wife, et cetera, we speak 50-60 Spanish and English at home, with some Catalan thrown in. And so I decided that I was going to give a series of speeches in Barcelona, in Catalan.

And I studied up and I did that, and it dramatically improved my ability to speak Catalan. My Catalan is much better at 61 than it was at 41, or 31 as a matter of fact. And that’s made my life better.

Yes for little language experiments done in the spirit of joyful investigation! Let’s have more of that please!

Cooking

Julia Turshen’s Palm Springs Pearl Couscous Salad is a great salad.

And Madeleines are a great cookie! You can make the batter ahead, pour it into the molds (silicone makes it especially easy to remove), and cover it overnight until you bake them the next day. 

Passing along

1. Lunch at Le Croissant makes you feel like you stopped in a tourist spot in Europe somewhere… a sunny, busy atmosphere!  

2. Gabor Maté on 10% Happier: “the American psychotherapist Carl Rogers called it unconditional positive regard, which means that you accept somebody with all their flaws, however they are, but you accept them. And that’s what parents need to give their kids.”  

3. In the same vein, this poem by Kahlil Gibran titled “On Children”.  

4. A glimpse at Mason Currey’s method for note-taking in Jillian Hess’s Noted newsletter. (I find it inspiring! I want to go organize notes!)

Park notes

The river is high… 

And then in the middle of the week, we got snow like cotton balls…

Between the weather conditions and the river height, there are mushrooms on trees, decorating the bark like lace, filling the cavities with frills…

Happy Sunday!

A week on Sunday 14/52

Quentin Blake - quotes

While visiting my sister, I read through Words and Pictures by Quentin Blake and enjoyed the reflections he made about his career as an illustrator. 

On the transition from being a student to being employed he writes:

Once I had stopped being a student I was no longer restricted to submitting cartoons to magazines; on the basis of my printed work I could go and look for other work which might extend my range and offer me new problems to think about. (Emphasis mine.)

What an open-minded way of thinking about work! He also writes about his quest to improve his life drawing skills:

Extending my range made me all the more conscious of my lack of experience of life drawing - I just didn’t have enough knowledge to draw the things I needed to draw. […] He [Brian Robb] sounded like the sort of person who could give me the advice I needed; and so he was. It’s strange how sometimes one has the instinct to do the right thing; something that will go on having an effect throughout your life.” … “He [Brian Robb] introduced me to one of the Chelsea life-classes. I attended one or two days a week for about eighteen months. […] Many students attended because it was a duty; by contrast I was there to get some useful element in my diet that had hitherto been lacking.

About the tension between seeing and imagining, he writes:

In front of the model and away from the model I was trying to establish some kind of balance between seeing and imagining; so much of the essence of drawing is in imagining what you are drawing, of trying to feel the balance, the gesture; of trying to become the subject.

His daily routine is simple. He goes to his studio and notes:

I’m not, in fact, quite sure what inspiration is, but I’m sure that if it is going to turn up, my having started work is the precondition of its arrival.

I really enjoyed his description of teaching himself to draw like a child for one of his illustration contracts… 

My most extreme example of adaptation, and quite different, is Monsters by Russel Hoban, which deals with the drawing of a boy who likes drawing monsters. It seemed to me that it wasn’t enough simply to look over the shoulder of the boy to see him drawing. I thought I actually ought to do the drawings myself; and so I had to learn once again how to do children’s drawings. / I thought at first that I could do it by drawing with my left hand; but that gave me too little control. I had to practise having the desire to depict something, but at the same time to forego manipulative skill. I was also reminded that for children drawing a picture is an activity that exists in time - a happening - and as I tried for that I was soon close to making the noises that they make when they draw. […] it was fascinating to find my way back to the kind of drawing that you do when you are small. (p. 95)

He concludes the book with the same tone found throughout its pages… a gentle enjoyment and sincere appreciation for the craft to which he dedicated his life:

If I look back over the picture books of recent years - my own and the diversity of the works of others, both veterans and newcomers - I think I can see the prospects for the picture book open out and become more various; not merely in technique, but in the way that is has split open its nursery constraints and is now available for contemplation and discussion well beyond the nursery ages. […] What I hope it has is those pleasures of being and doing, which make up a lot of life and which adults and children can share, celebrated in drawing; which is one of the specialties of that ever-interesting activity. (p. 203)

On the subject of morality

The OED defines morality as “Conformity of an idea, practice, etc., to moral law; moral goodness or rightness.” And: “The quality or fact of being morally right or wrong; the goodness or badness of an action.” It’s the only word that comes to mind that embraces a variety of quotations I’ve noticed from different sources… (Emphasis mine in each example.) Take Craig Mod’s recent newsletter. He concludes:

I’m not actually a Doomer around AI — don’t worry, I think we’ll be working more than ever, sometimes more interestingly, but mostly, perhaps, more depressingly. What’s special about this moment is there is something existential in the air, and that makes us open to reflection and change. I really do believe the denuding of purpose and meaning is coming for many, many jobs (coding being the first). But I also think we’ve long ascribed meaning to the wrong activities. So it’s a good time to start meditating, to spend a few afternoons talking about what you’re doing, why you’re doing it, and maybe what you’d rather be doing.  

On Debbie Millman’s podcast, Design Matters, Timothy Snyder is describing something he appreciated through reading the book A Wrinkle in Time:

And then in the instance you’re talking about, the only way to reach someone is by way of love. But it is so important because one way our kind of authoritarianism works is to laugh at things like empathy and to laugh at things like love and to try to bully us out of believing that anything is good. And that’s very dangerous because when you accept that you can’t love or you can’t feel empathetic, then you’re accepting that nothing is really good. And when you accept that nothing is really good, then you’re on the terrain of the nihilists and the nihilists have much more wealth and much more power than you do. It’s a little bit the same with knowledge, like factual knowledge.

One in a series of videos, “Last Ice Age” by Adam Often and Emmanuel Vaughan-Lee, features Andri Snær Magnason, who (approximately 13 minutes in) reflects:

So in Iceland, we had engineers, and they always claimed that a glacial river was running for nothing, because it was not going to a dam, it was not producing electricity. While more advanced modern biology was telling us that the river, the ocean and the glacier were connected, in a way that the glacier was actually feeding marine life with these muddy waters. We pretended that we understood. We pretended that we had everything under control. While maybe in the older traditions, they had to address things with humility, which we have not done.

Finally, in reaction to a recent article by Cal Newport titled “There’s a Good Reason You Can’t Concentrate” Alan Jacobs linked to a blog post he wrote two years ago, from which, the following quote:

Those of us who care about the future of our children, our neighbors, and ourselves don’t need to repeat what everyone already knows. We need to devote our full attention to one question and one question only: How do we love rightly and teach others to love rightly? If that’s not our constant meditation, we’re wasting our time. If we cannot redirect our desires towards better things than Silicon Valley, AKA Vanity Fair, sells, then nothing, literally nothing, will get better.

And so, while it feels like there’s a tearing apart of structures, or a crumbling-from-within of them, seeing evidence of an urge towards finding moral goodness is something I find uplifting.

While in Calgary

In lieu of postcards, I thought I’d share a few pictures of a walk down 9th Avenue SE in Calgary. First, there was the plant store, called Plant.

Eventually, we made our way to Fair’s Fair Books, a bustling second-hand bookstore that we spent most of our time in…

I picked up a copy of The Cake Bible by Rose Levy Beranbaum. I remember having read, years ago, of a man who decided to bake cakes from her book for his office, and who felt enriched in the process. When I came home, I made Golden Grand Marnier Cake and it felt like I’d performed a magic trick - from a book, something light and pillowy and delicious.

Enjoying

There’s a strip mall in our neighbourhood that has this sign… The typography of “Dakota Park”, the pleasing way it’s centered, the colours - red, beige, and brown - that still haven’t noticeably faded, all these elements make it one of my favourite business signs.

Two podcast series I listened through: Catching the Codfather and The Idiot. I particularly liked how Ian Coss describes how the story of the “Codfather” changed for him, from being unimportant, to illustrating much bigger themes.

When I first heard about the case of Carlos Rafael, it sounded like an intriguing but kind of small story. I looked into it, I interviewed Carlos, and then I put it aside. For all the big talk, this is not the fraud of the century. […] The Codfather was a colourful character in a colourful world that has nothing to do with most people’s daily lives. That was the conclusion I came to.

But then…, as he narrates it:

If you are someone who believes in expertise, who believes in science, who believes in procedure and rules and regulation as a force to make the world more just, then you should also look long and close at the friction points where those things actually touch people’s lives. (From episode 6.)  

Also… playing elaborate games of Catan! In this setup we battled pirates and points were close!

Happy Sunday!

A week on Sunday 12/52

Three quotes on writing

There are things that I appreciate being reminded of… I recently opened a commonplace book I had on my desk, to the first page and read the following from Verlyn Klinkenborg’s Several Short Sentences About Writing:

Being a writer is an art of perpetual self-authorization.
No matter who you are.
Only you can authorize yourself.
You do that by writing well, by constant discovery.
No one else can authorize you.
No one.
This doesn’t happen overnight. 
It’s as gradual as the improvement in your writing.

I came across this quote by David Foster Wallace, on a page I photocopied from Zadie Smith’s book Changing my Mind (p 257). It feels especially pertinent with the advent of A.I.:

I’ve gotten convinced that there’s something kind of timelessly vital and sacred about good writing. This thing doesn’t have that much to do with talent, even glittering talent… Talent’s just an instrument. It’s like having a pen that works instead of one that doesn’t. I’m not saying I’m able to work consistently out of the premise, but it seems like the big distinction between good art and so-so art lies somewhere in the art’s heart’s purpose, the agenda of the consciousness behind the text. It’s got something to do with love. With having the discipline to talk out of the part of yourself that can love instead of the part that just wants to be loved. I know this doesn’t sound hip at all… But it seems like one of the things really great fiction-writers do - from Carver to Chekhov to Flannery O’Connor, or like the Tolstoy of The death of Ivan Ilych or the Pynchon of Gravity’s Rainbow - is to “give” the reader something. The reader walks away from the real art heavier than she came into it. Fuller. All the attention and engagement and work you need to get from the reader can’t be for your benefit; it’s got to be for hers. […] Maybe it’s as simple as trying to make the writing more generous and less ego-driven.

(The interview can be found here.)

And finally, a little quote from Brenda Ueland:

I have a kind of mystical notion. I think it is only by expressing all that is inside that purer and purer streams come. It is so in writing. You are taught in school to put down on paper only the bright things. Wrong. Pour out the dull things on paper too - you can tear them up afterward - for only then do the bright ones come. If you hold back the dull things, you are certain to hold back what is clear and beautiful and true and lively. So it is with people who have not been listened to in the right way - with affection and a kind of jolly excitement. Their creative fountain has been blocked. Only superficial talk comes out - what is prissy or gushing or merely nervous. No one has called out of them, by wonderful listening, what is true and alive.

Cooking

This week, we tried Priya Krishna’s “Kaddu” (Sweet and Sour Butternut Squash) and I made a loaf of bread to go along with the meal. Did you know that butternut squash produces a resin-like liquid that can coat your skin almost as permanently? I had no idea until I noticed my left-hand index looking shiny and feeling numb. I wonder if the recipe should not have come with a warning!

Enjoying

1. “Even a moment’s grown-up reflection reveals a very obvious, pretty dull truth to us: most people in the past were not less morally enlightened than us. They were the same — they just lived in a different world, with different structures of oppression.” From an article by Paul Sagar. 

2. Playing Pictionary. I found a first edition at a thrift store last fall and it’s become one of our go-to games when family is visiting. Age doesn’t matter, and we’re either laughing because competition reveals that one of our kids draws something that looks exactly like a carry-on, while yours looks like a lumpy toaster popped a lumpy slice of bread; or else we’re amazed with the other one’s execution of “Middle East”. Rather than using paper, we take a large piece of dry-erase board and set it down on the dining room table and use it from one game to the next.

3. The Thinking Game. I’m familiar with many of the events that form the chronology of this documentary, but seeing them presented as they are here was more satisfying than I expected.  

4. I liked watching how Brook Cormier took a travel experience and made it into a meaningful piece of art for her husband and their home.  

5. I appreciated how The Ezra Klein Show recently interviewed a person who could provide some context for the war in Iran in the person of Ali Vaez.

6. I’m in a season of decluttering, making my way through an accumulation of paper and the organization of an office space. Coincidentally, my mother-in-law is downsizing. Freeing up space and putting things in order is a thing I put off, even though I often enjoy doing it. Learning that Margareta Magnusson of The Gentle Art of Swedish Death Cleaning died earlier this week made me smile to think that her practical ideas live on… “And people should start early. If your things are in order, then you don’t have to waste time looking for them.” (In my experience, nothing takes longer than paper-related clutter…)

7. I remember first coming across the recommendation for If You Want To Write so many years ago that when I think back to it, the internet by which it was recommended had a different flavour than it does today. Had I thought to google the author’s name to tether the questions she raised in my mind? Was the search unfruitful? Today, I googled Brenda Ueland and came across this article by Alice Kaplan in The American Scholar, (published September 1, 2007) and thoroughly enjoyed reading it. Kaplan gives this criticism of Ueland’s writing: “Her biography of Clara (published posthumously under the title O Clouds, Unfold!), a sentimental series of sketches written in the first person, put together with whatever materials came to hand, shows Ueland’s strengths and her failings as a writer. She was headstrong, charming, disorganized, and enthusiastic, without much distance from her own feelings.”  

Postcards

The weather was cold, then windy. There was a snowstorm, then melt. What is enchanting is hearing the songbirds, feeling the glare of a bright sun, and seeing blue skies and impeccably white snow from a fresh snowfall. I can’t quite capture it, but here is a blue sky!

Also… the geese are back! (Since last week!)

Happy Sunday!

A Week on Sunday 10/52

History (The Purpose of the Past, part 3)

Previously, I transcribed quotes from Gordon S. Wood’s book on the subject of ideas, and then on the subject of history in general. But I especially like what he writes about the benefits of learning/writing about history. From the introduction:

I don't believe that history teaches a lot of little lessons to guide us in the present and future. It is not, as the eighteenth century thought, "philosophy teaching by example." Yet by disparaging the capacity of history to teach lessons, I don't mean to suggest that studying the past can't teach us anything. If history has nothing to say to us, then it wouldn't make much sense to study or teach it or read about it at all. History is important to us, and knowledge of the past can have a profound effect on our consciousness, on our sense of ourselves. History is a supremely humanistic discipline: it may not teach us particular lessons, but it does tell us how we might live in the world. (p 6)

Done well, history can offer an appreciable usefulness:

Indeed, historical explanation is only possible because we today have different perspectives from those of the historical participants we are writing about. Most new historical investigations begin with an attempt to understand the historical circumstances that lie behind a present-day problem or situation. It is not surprising that our best recent work on the origins and nature of slavery coincided with the civil rights movement of the 1960s. Or that our recent rich investigations into the history of women grew out of the women's movement of the past three or four decades. This is as it should be: the problems and issues of the present should be the stimulus for our forays into the past. It is natural for us to want to discover the sources, the origins, of our present circumstances. (p 10)

Finally,

By showing that the best-laid plans of people usually go awry, the study of history tends to dampen youthful enthusiasm and to restrain the can-do, the conquer-the-future spirit that many people have. Historical knowledge takes people off a roller coaster of illusions and disillusions; it levels off emotions and gives people a perspective on what is possible and, more often, what is not possible.

An observation about being true

Lately, I’ve been thinking about the things that prevent us from being true… This could be a discussion of giant proportion, but I’m thinking of it very narrowly. I’m thinking of the mild anxiety I get in social situations that sometimes causes me to talk with less consideration than I wish I had. If truth reflects the goodness inside of ourselves, changing the manner in which we express ourselves, or performing insincerely are both ways that contravene the truth. Two minor examples from podcast-land come to mind: Mary Beard on Always Take Notes and Carlos Rafael on Catching the Codfather.

In the first, Mary Beard is talking about her academic career and how her writing changed…

I then wrote the seminar up for a kind of pretty prestigious, but also pretty traditional UK Classics magazine. And what I think was funny [when] I looked back at the article, [is that] it’s got all the arguments I want to make, but I could see that I was so intimidated by the Academy at that point; it’s all dressed up in academic language which makes me now want to throw something at it. […] What I did - I didn’t see it at the time, but I see it now - [is] […] I was pretending to be an elderly male academic. I was burying my own bright ideas in their language. And I eventually stopped doing that, but it took a long time.

In the second, Ian Coss, the podcast host, is contrasting two versions of Carlos Rafael, who speaks reasonably in interviews, but who is cut-throat on a secret recording. (47 minutes in here.) Coss concludes “I think both versions of Carlos are performances to some degree.”

It makes me think of Katherine Boo’s conclusion in Behind the Beautiful Forevers and the circumstances that can “sabotage [the] innate capacity for moral action.” Boo shows a situation in which corruption removes that innate capacity. But I’m intrigued by the degree to which we are responsible for building the strength of our innate capacity in even the smallest of ways. 

Cooking

This week I made Caroline Chambers’ Beef and Sweet Potato Flautas, as I did last year. However, since I was making the meal for company, I doubled the filling, and they were less “flauta” and more “fagotto”. 

Baking

A friend of ours is celebrating a milestone birthday and I seized the occasion to work on sugar cookie decorating skills. I followed Grace Gaylord’s instructions for making the cookies and the icing on her blog The Graceful Baker. She’s very generous with her tips and it was just the kind of guidance I needed as an amateur. All in all, a fun project!

Enjoying

1. I like reading Rob Stephenson’s newsletter “The Neighbourhoods”. Sure, it’s about places I’ll never see, but I enjoy his writing and usually come away having learned something. I didn’t know castor oil was used as a laxative. And until reading Mussolini and the Pope, I didn’t know castor oil was used to torture clergy. What a contrast to its rosy promotion now!

2. I liked Guy Winch’s advice on preventing yourself from lengthy rumination: first, recognizing a thought that is a rumination (it’s upsetting), and second “converting the ruminative thought into a problem that can be solved.”  (Here, at 20 minutes.)  

3. I like how the barcode on this container of meringue powder is illustrated as if made with icing!

Postcard

This week was 4/5 gray days… But I caught this bit of sun on Monday!

On Friday, there was freezing rain, and instead of being transparent, it looked gray and strange.

Happy Sunday!

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 Sunday 8/52

Painting

This week I primed and painted the wall-mounted shelves Christian made for me in 2024… made of pine, they perfumed the guest-room/office for a year as I let them dry, before applying the special primer this kind of wood takes. Tidying the space this way felt good.

Listening

Painting a piece of furniture takes hours. Some of them I let be silent, the rest I let fill with audio… Jad Abumrad’s podcast series “Fela Kuti: Fear No Man” and a French audiobook titled La maison vide by Laurent Mauvignier.

The first line of Mauvignier’s epilogue caught my ear: “C’est par l’invention que l’histoire peut parfois survivre à l’oubli.” (Sometimes it is through invention that a story can survive through time.) And thus, by inventing a story, Mauvignier remedies the pieces of a tragic story that were handed down to him in real life. He says as much in the second interview here (“j’ai l’impression qu’écrire c’est peut-être pour réparer une angoisse de l’enfance; une peur lié à cet enfance…”). And so, as much as I appreciate listening to French fiction for the sound of it in my ears, I’m all the more interested in the real-life connections, the way fiction and facts cross-pollinate in this story.

Date night

We postponed our Valentines supper out and went to Gather at the Assiniboine Park’s horticultural garden this week instead. Isn’t it pretty reflecting sunset rays?

On the actual Valentine’s day, we went skating with the kids and treated them to boba at (our favourite) KHAB Tapioca…  

The special was a Ferrero Rocher drink that, when ordered, came with the question, “any nut allergies?”

Eating

Cooking from Hailee Catalano’s cookbook By Heart continues to surprise and delight… (Her website is really nice too!) On Sunday last week, a “Pasta alla Norcina with Roasted Squash” so delicately flavoured, so wonderfully balanced - one could decide that Beef Stroganoff had been permanently dethroned. Then, on Wednesday “Spinach and Artichoke Ziti” described as a pasta rendition of the beloved appetizer. The fact that the dip is not beloved in our house is a trifle when you’ve decided to whole-heartedly trust a good cookbook author, and this trust was rewarded! Not a single artichoke-spinach sauce-covered noodle was lost, cast aside, distractedly left for the dishwasher or digestive failure of our dog (shallots and a whole head of garlic, roasted and blended, would surely finish a beagle). 

Dog coat

An Etsy purchase for Enzo arrived this week… a perfect-fitting coat made of 73% wool for when the temperatures really dip in Winnipeg…

Here’s what he looks like on our walks, most of the time, sans coat.

Postcard

It’s cold again as I write, but still, just the way the light is, in the mornings, on our walks, shows the approach of spring even if it can’t be felt in the temperature.

Happy Sunday!

A week on Sunday 7/52

Day in the life 

I’m currently reading Influenza 1918: Disease, Death, and Struggle in Winnipeg (Amazon) by Esyllt W. Jones as I conduct a bit of family research and have little to say on the subject right now. (Reading, reading, reading… I’m just a little squirrel gathering facts.) 

I was going to leave it at that, but as I was looking up a recipe for the following section, I was scrolling through my history and found that Thursday was particularly illustrative of a day spent in research… I spent the day going through the online archives of Henderson Directories. (It’s so convenient, even though I did appreciate feeling the heft of these books at the library when I went in November of 2024!)

Isn’t it glamorous? All this clicking through year after year of directories, to find names and to see where they’re living? 

Here, in 1933, we see two families, the Faucher and the Tytgat, living in St. Boniface: Arthur on Aubert Street and Alice with her father Camille on Dawson Road, a few years before they marry. 

I am unable to write a story out of thin air, but as I gather these elements one by one, a story starts to take shape in my mind…

Eating

It took exactly one TikTok video to convince me to make this Spicy Carrot Rigatoni. (Canadian content creators - yay!) (Also the library identified Hailee Catalano’s cookbook as Canadian?)

But back to the recipe… so clever! Carrots went sneakily undercover camouflaged as sauce and crossed into defended “no vegetables allowed” territory unnoticed. It was a strategic win for this kitchen chef.

From a main to a side… can we discuss polenta? Until this week, I’d been fine with using plain old, abundantly available cornmeal. Cornmeal is tiny, not powdery, of a texture similar to iodized salt. It reminds me of cream of wheat. Polenta made from cornmeal is similar in texture to cream of wheat. Once most of the water has been absorbed, bubbles form, puff and release as it cooks. I could not understand recipes that called for long cooking times… Enter Carla Lalli Music’s recipe “Baked Polenta with Floppy Broccoli” which, in the list of ingredients in the cookbook, specifies “polenta, not quick-cooking”. What is “not quick-cooking polenta”? Cornmeal didn’t seem right anymore! Indeed, if you like bearing down on details, using cornmeal that is smooth and small for polenta is fine, but cornmeal that has more of the character and shape of ground corn (or maize) kernels, that is a bit more roughly ground, is more flavourful. And thank goodness for stores that carry brands like Bob’s Red Mill for just such a product. One night we baked it in the oven, as in Lalli Music’s recipe, another night we cooked it in the slow cooker as per package instructions. The latter was better: longer to cook, but more evenly cooked and easier to clean. All this for Jenny Rosenstrach’s Cider Braised Meatballs.  

Baking

Do you have a favourite chocolate-chip cookie recipe? Until this week, our family didn’t. I therefore planned a cookie test. I had four recipes, but had to cut one because, having been written entirely by weight, I was left with too big a puzzle when the kitchen scale I’d been using for the past 20 years disappeared its digital numerals forever. Oh well! I made do with cups and tablespoons, and the family voted and agreed that by a very slim margin, Sarah Fennel’s “Best Chocolate Chip Cookies in the World” was the winner. Hooray! We now have a dedicated chocolate chip cookie recipe!

Enjoying

1. Podcast interviews with local historian Murray Peterson and city archivist Sarah Ramsden on Our City, Our Podcast. Conducted in 2024, I stumbled upon the former’s name when finding that my mother-in-law’s grandfather’s first residence in Manitoba is today a Heritage Building. From seeing a person’s name online, to having their voice in your ears and hearing their thrill for a subject you too are thrilled about is the gift a podcast can offer. 

2. This three-part story of a meet cute by Amber Estenson, known as That Midwestern Mom on TikTok, pleased my little romantic heart. Not to mention that she fell in love with a teacher!

Postcards

Another week featuring fog and frost! One morning the conditions were just right for even Enzo to have frosty hairs! So cute!!

The frost was different from day to day…

Happy Sunday!

A week on Sunday 6/52

A few more postcards

Last week I shared the bulk of what I appreciated from reading through Tom Phillips’ The Postcard Century, but there are still a few more postcards I really liked… For example, this picture of mill workers in 1908 caught my eye… some of the ancestors of the families who settled in Aubigny, who were a subject in my master’s thesis, worked at a mill like this, and were, yes, just as young.

This postcard of an early style of flapper is so interesting for marking a not-yet-complete shift in trend.

I really like these pictures and the author’s notes...

And this one from Japan…

I like this mini-history of the hovercraft…

Final two… one noting a game gone “out of fashion” and the other, just silly, featuring cement!

Tangentially, Tom Phillips’ home was featured on World of Interiors.

Cement

Speaking of cement makes me think of my dad who really liked working with cement. I don’t think I ever learned to appreciate it as much as he did, but this TikTok account I follow, of a woman building a tunnel under her house, recently went briefly in-depth about the material, and I thought it was pretty neat!  

Taking care

I’ve mentioned Liana Finck before, having unearthed a quote of hers that I liked on the subject of perfectionism (see here). More recently however, she illustrated the feeling she has for “needing to draw” in a way that reminds me of the feeling I have of “needing to write”.  

Swimming (part 2)

For part 1, see here. 

I realize that I’m getting more comfortable with water, it now being 20 times I’ve been to the pool… 20 hours since October 17th. It’s not that many hours, nor does the training have the intensity of multiple-visits per week. And I think that is part of the surprise and delight of it… Here Christian and I have found a cheap way of getting out of the house on Friday nights and this simple practice is already to good effect. Observing the brain… the thoughts as they arise, as they change, is still a source of wonder. Take the sound of water… Recently, Kottke linked to a video of a breaching whale, and as I listened to the gurgle of the water in the speakers, I noticed my brain register a kind of comfortable familiarity. I only noticed because it was new. The sound of water has never given me that signal before.   

Where I’m at with technique (and fear!). I’m at a stage of doing freestyle laps in the shallow end with a snorkel and sometimes fins. Ten visits further on my quest to teach myself to swim, I notice that I’m more comfortable using the snorkel. I do take breaks, and I do look forward to being able to swim a lap without it, but for now, it’s become more and more useful. At first, my brain couldn’t get past the sensation of breathing through a snorkel, and feeling water in my nose. Repetition of the exercise has allowed me to move on and for attention to go to concentrating on kicking and pulling. 

This growing awareness of how the body moves through water has been really fun to explore, and when I write explore, I’d underline the fact that it is a very gentle exploration. Fear causes a kind of rigidity in the water that’s normal. I notice it in other beginning swimmers like myself, who - unlike myself - generously agree to have their learning filmed for YouTube, on channels such as Rocket Swimming.  Kicking on my back in streamline position has an almost natural feel now, compared to when I did so 9 visits ago. The first time I did a lap in this position, my arms were so sore out of water - from being so tense in water - that I could barely lift them. It’s nice to feel less rigidity in my body.

Finally, in the queue of self-guided Youtube tutorials I’m currently paying attention to, are those that demonstrate backstroke and proper form for freestyle (like this video from Effortless Swimming). Putting the drill for 90 degree rotations (at about 12 minutes) into practice feels like another way of preparing myself for taking breaths, sans snorkel. 

Why does this seem to be working? I suspect a good chunk of the credit can go to my husband whose love of swimming is further inducement to continue. It takes a little shove to get ourselves out of the house in the middle of winter, but we feel so good after an hour in the pool. Seeing how we are both mutually benefitting from it is a real source of happiness.

Enjoying

1. I really liked this quote by Walt Hunter in his article “Stop Meeting Students Where They Are”: “The reaction to declining reading skills, poor comprehension, and fragmented attention spans should not be to negotiate or compromise, but to double down on the cure.”  

2. It makes me smile when unrelated podcasts happen to share a theme… In that nonchalant way professional podcasts can interest listeners in any subject, Search Engine did an episode on flushable wipes. Then, because I’m striving to be a good citizen by being moderately informed about local subjects, I listened to the most recent episode of Our City, Our Podcast and was amused to find out it was on the subject of “Water and Waste” and our city’s new wastewater treatment plant. Both podcasts emphasized not flushing wipes.  

3. Peter Rukavina shared (here) Mita Williams’ post (here) directing readers to this Youtube video titled “You are being misled about renewable energy technology” by Alec Watson and if the path leading to this video doesn’t matter so much, I like highlighting the names of Canadian bloggers and newsletter writers I come across… Watson is an American, but I learned a lot from his video… one part in particular, at the 12 minute mark, on the subject of corn. (I also enjoyed his video titled “Algorithms are breaking how we think”.)

4. In the documentary Secret Mall Apartment, (Netflix) I learned about tape art!

Eating

This week, Molly Baz’s “Pork Sausages with Mustardy Lentils and Celery”, which can be seen executed on Youtube (here).

Postcard

Varying temperatures this week made for cold days with a sprinkling of warm ones… I like when the sun illuminates the foreground while trees in the forest behind are dark.

Happy Sunday!

A week on Sunday 5/52

Postcards

In that wonderful way that one thing can lead to another, an Instagram post from the World of Interiors account lead to a virtual perusal of titles from among the eye-catching stacks of books. Tom Phillips’ Postcard Century then happened to be available for borrowing from the library. It has taken some time to get through his collection… (I took a picture of the book outside in September when I’d started it…) but the fact that this tome exists delights me.

First, that collecting postcards is called deltiology and that Philipps takes some time to describe postcard attributes is an inviting window on a previously unknown world. Second, that Philipps is an artist, and therefore freely comments on the style and design of the postcards he has curated for this book. But third, and most significantly to me, he uses postcards as a lens for viewing history. He writes: “Postcards provide the world’s most complete visual inventory.” Thus, with the caveat that “My own interests and predilections (not to speak of prejudices) play a part in my choice yet I have also tried to keep a special watch on certain themes…” among which leads that of feminism. He writes:

Women were of course invented before the beginning of the century but the realization of the proper role in society and their acquisition of rights has been perhaps its most important single development. From a voteless, socially subjugated and legally disadvantaged condition in 1900 to the ambiguities of the post-feminist state in the 1990’s it has been an epic take that here, inevitably, has to be conjured from a sequence of telling fragments. Needless to say it is not only the images that tell the story but the content and style of the messages which speak, in sum, so eloquently of the relations between women. (p 18)

There are moments artfully captured, like the “crossword craze”:

And there are seemingly boring pictures that have an entire backstory that Philipps manages to unlock, as in the case of this USS New York. (p 196)

In 1966, Philipps notes a shift in the tone of comic postcards that I find intriguing… “A cynical hardness enters the comic card as a new generation takes over, coupled with a meaner kind of image.” (p 300) And neighbouring that passing reflection, a postcard featuring a beautiful ocean liner, offers a little reality check: “For all the romance of last voyages, ends of epochs, shipboard affairs and images of fine living on the high seas one mus remember that, for anyone but the rich, long ocean voyages represented weeks of cramped boredom.” (p 300)

One of my favourite is food-related…

At one point, Phillips’ comments, about one postcard’s provenance, “In the absence of institutional interest from the academic world primary research into postcards is done by collectors themselves, often at the most scholarly level.” (p 144) But perhaps this is turning out not to be the case? I recently came across Omar Khan’s website Paper Jewels, which links to his academic research on the subject of postcards from India.  All in all, it’s been fun to learn how postcards are a medium for viewing history from a different vantage point.

Tangentially

Postcards are now rare and perhaps correspondence is a dying art. But I’m always feel inspired by ideas such as Rose Pearlman’s “How to Make A Correspondence Kit”. I agreed to make one for a niece and I’m curious to see whether the tangible feature of letter-mail still holds charm.  

Local love

For his participation in the school’s band, my son needed black pants and a white shirt. These were handily found at Value Village, although there was a problem with the shirt sleeves being too long. The solution for long shirt sleeves is called “sleeve garters” and ushering in their fashion renaissance is my own 7th-grader. While he lives oblivious to shows like Peaky Blinders (and long may it be so), my sister and I have not. So if this partially-Irish, growing weed of a boy is fine with his mother’s fondness for Irish lore and Irish accents, I will blame not only the culture which inspires a collection of wool scarves, but also the local Winnipeg businesses that purvey such accessories. There is Amazon of course, but a sense of duty had me call a suit store and the gentleman there suggested another local business, and the gentleman there suggested a third. Were it not for this chain of phonecalls and kind voices, I would not have pulled into the sunny parking lot of a store called Vintage Glory. And had we not strolled confidently in to try sleeve garters on the aforementioned long-sleeved white shirt, we would not have met the kind man who encouraged us to explore all three rooms of his store. And when we thought we’d done a good bit of exploring, he asked if we’d opened any of the drawers… We hadn’t. So then we did, suddenly noticing all the wood cabinets with narrow drawers everywhere… and my goodness! It was like being in a hands-on museum, encouraged like children to look at all the treasure…

(This is a single drawer where brooches on a theme of chivalry were gathered, making me think of Don Quixote that I’m currently reading.)

Could I have just bought a dumb shirt that fit my son at H&M? Yes, of course. But let’s just say that for a few dollars more, his ensemble has a pretty rich backstory.

First

For the first time in his little beagle life, Enzo was fitted with boots. He finds this very weird, but will walk for treats. But only around the house. Outside, in daylight, he refuses to walk. He says it is undignified. Since the weather is not that cold, we don’t insist. 

Eating

For guests on Sunday we made Carla Lalli Music’s “Pork and Pozole Stew” (which can be seen here on Youtube). Pork stew is generally easy and delicious, but I appreciated this version for the short ingredient list, and a chance to try pozole for the first time. I found it at Latinos Market here in Winnipeg.  

Enjoying

I liked learning a bit about potatoes and the Irish famine on CBC’s podcast Ideas. A focus on one architectural detail, explained in depth but also light-heartedly, is a talent I admire. Enter a recent discovery on TikTok. Abby Happel is a junior architect in Chicago who talks about corners and libraries, and I feel like I could take notes. Also, another podcast episode I liked is Chuck Klosterman being interviewed on The Book Review (Youtube link). I felt like I knew a little something about football from having watched all seasons of Friday Night Lights!

Postcard

I’m feeling a little self-conscious titling this section of the post in this way, given the picture isn’t a real postcard… but when I thought of changing it, I felt a justification naturally spring to mind… The picture of the view I take on one of the week’s morning walks with the dog is a virtual postcard. Inherent in it is the typical message of old… “The greeting, the weather, health of writer, enquiry as to health of correspondent, signing off; such was the standard pattern, either enough itself or forming a safe basis for permutation and variation.” (Postcard Century p 13) So… weather cold, I’m fine, you too?

Happy Sunday!

A week on Sunday 4/52

Intro

It’s cold here right now… colour is found in gifted bouquets…

and sunsets observed from indoors…

This week, an overview of a hobby-project, quotes I liked from podcasts I heard lately, and what I’ve baked and cooked in the kitchen.

Genealogy as a puzzle

I’m not that interested in my own genealogy, so much as I am in other peoples. Delving into ancestry reveals first, that it exists… that a person is descended from a long line of individuals within families; and second, little else. The satisfaction comes from filling in a table, which, in the scientific language of academic research, is called “family reconstitution”. It’s a method of filling-in information about a family in an organized way. It has at the top the couple’s name, their parents’ names, their marriage date, and births and deaths; and then it lists their children with all the dates of their birth and death and marriage and who they married.

This past little while, I’ve been gathering information from registries online, to fill in a table for my mother-in-law’s great-grandparents. It is possible to do so because her great-grandparents lived in Quebec, where Catholic parishes kept excellent records. It is also possible because the “Bibliothèque et Archives nationales du Québec” has made these registries available online. (See St. Zéphirin-de-Courval, for example. A map of parishes in the province of Quebec can be found here.)  

Filling in the table for her great-grandfather’s family looks like this:

A table allows me to summarize facts like this: Abraham Faucher and Rose Delima Geoffroy married in 1870 and in their 23 years of marriage, they had 14 children, among whom were a set of short-lived triplet boys. Three of their four surviving sons came to Manitoba: Didier, Arsène and Wilfrid. Didier brought his family. Arsène, recently-widowed, brought his children. Wilfrid was a bachelor. The recently-widowed Arsène met with ill-fate. His arrival in St. Boniface coincided with the outbreak of the Spanish Flu, and he, along with 60,000 other Canadians, became one of its victims. His son, Arthur - Rose-Marie’s father - was 4 years old when his mother (Arthur’s wife) died. He was 6 when, two years later, almost to the day, he lost his dad. 

Listening

I find narcissism interesting and appreciated this observation in passing by Diarmaid Macculloch on Conversations with Tyler:

[Thomas] Cranmer survived, remember. He survived by loyalty to King Henry VIII, and I think he genuinely loved Henry VIII, and so served him with a good conscience.

Trouble about that is that a man like Henry VIII is a narcissist. […] The thing about narcissists is that they make good people do bad things. Henry VIII was talented at making good people, such as Cranmer and, I would say, Thomas Cromwell, do bad things. 

I have a theory that persons with a narcissistic disorder build up an image of themselves that they constantly maintain and demand to be maintained. So, indirectly, I feel like Kevin Townley’s comment (here) on the subject of personal brand is indirectly related to narcissism. He says “[…] the attempt to codify and maintain a branded identity is an act of violence. It requires a kind of aggressiveness that is detrimental to you, and I would venture to say others as well.” 

But I also liked his descriptions of art and creativity: “Art is a liberation from being a self. You can do anything.” And:

The writer Robert Olin Butler talks about how creativity is hard. It’s really hard to do. And quite often, we avoid doing it because to delve down into the unconscious realm where the creative impulse seems to simmer is literally hell for a lot of people. For most people, it’s hellish. Even if you’re trying to write a joke, it’s torture.

So the idea is like, if you’re looking at a masterpiece, then you are engaging with a work made by somebody who is doing this all the time. […] you are looking at something that went through this kind of rigorous practice, it’s a practice of not knowing, of transforming negativity into something colourful, something with shape, something with tone, somebody who is able to handle the heat, the white hot heat of the creative process, and bend it […] into some other medium.

Approving

Any new article that makes the case for blogging is one I’ll read! This one from Joan Westenberg.  

Eating

The foray into bread-making continues! This week, a lovely brown “Oat and Molasses” loaf.

Winter is a wonderful time for ragu-type recipes… A slow-simmering meat sauce served over pasta felt like the perfect way to welcome Christian home after his class’s 3-day camping trip. Molly Baz’s recipe in Cook This Book, titled “Paccheri with Pork and Lentil Ragù” (see an iteration on Instagram) uses anchovies for depth of flavour and red lentils for creaminess.  I think I preferred it over other group-pork-based ragù recipes that simmer with milk and vegetables. It’s proof, I would argue, that recipe collecting is a good thing, because you get to discover variations on a theme!

Postcard

On cold days, when temperatures don’t invite much more than a glance at the landscape as you trudge through the snow, it’s the golden colour of the grass that draws my eye.

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!

A week on Sunday 2/53

Reading

I recently finished Mussolini and the Pope by David I. Kertzer and enjoyed the product of his historical research. I can only imagine how thrilling it must have been to access the Vatican’s archives for this story. This inside look at Pius XI’s pontificate and Mussolini’s political career grounds the tangential things that have floated past in the last little while… The political unrest in My Brilliant Friend, for example. This online peek at an exhibition of fascist posters. Or Tom Philipps’ comment on Hitler’s organization versus Mussolini’s: “This anniversary card of Hitler’s year-old chancellorship was hot off the press and Hitler makes his first appearance on a stamp. The control exercised over all the semiotics of power, masterminded by Goebbels, already marked Hitler out as in a different league of dictatorship from Mussolini who only made one philatelic appearance in Italy […].” (From Postcard Century, p 172).

But back to Kertzer’s book for a quotation… This one encapsulating the crux of the scandal from those years:

Neither Pacelli nor the pope's two emissaries - the official nuncio and the unofficial Jesuit - had ever uttered a word to challenge the government's decision to treat Jews as a danger to healthy Italian society. For anyone eager for a sign of the Vatican view of the new campaign of persecution, including parish priests and bishops seeking guidance on how to respond to it, the message was clear. The state was finally heeding the warnings that had been appearing in the Vatican daily newspaper and that had been regularly repeated in the Vatican-supervised La Civiltà cattolica and in much of the Italian Catholic press, from weekly diocesan bulletins to major daily newspapers. The recent opening of the Vatican Secret Archives has brought to light a report that makes clear that, as far as the Vatican was concerned, the August 16 [1938] agreement Tacchi Venturi negotiated with Mussolini, promising not to criticize the racial laws in exchange for favorable treatment of Catholic Action, remained in effect. (P 345)

Ideas and the elderly

Reading Gordon S. Wood’s The Purpose of the Past, I came across this passage on the subject of ideas:

These early twentieth-century historians [like Theodore Draper and Lewis Namier] knew that ideas existed, but they tended to dismiss them as propaganda, as manipulated rationalizations covering more deep-lying motives, which were usually economic. Ideas, they said, could not realistically be considered as motives for action, as causes of events.

Even if this realist or materialist position is true, however, ideas are still important for explaining human behaviour. Although ideas may not be motives for our actions, they are nevertheless the constant accompaniment of our actions. There is no human behaviour without ideas. Ideas give meaning to our actions, and there is almost nothing that we humans do that we do not attribute meaning to. We give meaning to even our simplest actions, a wink, for example, and these meanings - our ideas - are part and parcel of our actions. These meanings or ideas are the means by which we perceive, understand, judge, or manipulate our experiences and our lives. They make our behaviour not just comprehensible but possible. We have a human need to make our actions meaningful. 

Although we have to give meaning to nearly everything we do, we are not free at any moment to give whatever meaning we wish to our behaviour. The meanings we give to our behaviour are necessarily public ones, and they are defined and delimited by the conventions and language of the culture at that time. It is in this sense that the culture creates behaviour. It does so by forcing us to describe our behaviour in its terms. The definitions and meanings that we seek to give to our behaviour cannot be random or unconstrained, which is why the concept of “propaganda” as freely manipulated meanings is flawed. Our actions thus tend to be circumscribed by the ways we can make them meaningful, and they are meaningful only publicly, only with respect to an inherited system of conventions and values. [Emphasis mine.]

This feels especially pertinent when I think of my 88-year-old mother-in-law. As I am reading through the newspaper archives of her young adulthood in the late 1950’s, I am struck by the social conventions that shaped her and that feel so alien today. If she comments about the number of immigrants she has encountered on an errand, it helps to recall that in 1958, the appearance of a Black student teacher in the French school’s grade 7 class was a newsworthy headline. (See page 4 here.) 

Eating

The Big Book of Bread has encouraged me to try making simple loaves… Basic White, and a whole-wheat Everyday Bread. I’m learning about controlling the temperature of the ingredients so that the dough doesn’t overproof. I like the feeling of bread-making as an art.

Postcard

We had three days of frost on the trees, the third being the most impressive…

Happy Sunday! 

A week on Sunday 1/53

Reading

If you’d like to be convinced of Henry Oliver’s “Ten reasons to read great literature in 2026” I’d suggest Sleepwalker in a Fog by Tatyana Tolstaya for the first two… “particular pleasure” and “the force of language”. I mean, sure, read any great literature you would like, but having just surfaced from this one, this slim volume of short stories, I feel a little like laughing along with the jollity of her descriptions, I feel like I’ve been awash in the brilliance and control of her use of words. Here are two quotations:

People assert themselves, sink their hooks in, refuse to go - it's only natural! Take the recording of a concert, for example. A hush falls over the hall, the piano thunders, the keys flash like lozenges gone berserk, lickety-split, hand over fist, wilder and wilder; the sweet tornado swirls, the heart can't stand it, it'll pop right out, it quivers on the last strand, and suddenly: ahem. Ahe he kherr hem. Khu khu khu. Someone coughed. A real solid, throaty cough. And that's that. The concert is branded from birth with a juicy, influenza stamp, multiplied on millions of black suns, dispersed in all possible directions. The heavenly bodies will burn out, the earth will become crusted in ice, and the planet will move along inscrutable stellar paths like a frozen lump for all time, but that smart aleck's cough won't be erased, it won't disappear, it will be forever inscribed on the diamond tablets of immortal music - after all, music is immortal, isn't it? - like a rusty nail hammered into eternity; the resourceful fellow asserted himself, scribbled his name in oil paint on the cupola, splashed sulfuric acid on the divine features. [From the title story, “Sleepwalker in a Fog”]

Having company in the country - it's not like having company in the city. There's a pleasant lack of obligation. In the city a guest  won't just drop in, he'll phone first to say, I'd like to come by and visit you. The hostess will glance quickly at the floor: is there a lot of dust? - she'll do a mental check: is the bed still unmade? - she'll give a nervous thought to the refrigerator shelves - all in all, it makes for tension. Stress. But in the country none of that matters: what to sit on, what to drink, or from what cups. And it's no disaster if you leave a guest alone for five minutes - in the city that's a cardinal sin, but not in the country. It's a different type of hospitality. The guest lounges in a wicker armchair, has a smoke or just sits quietly, gazing out the window at the view, at the sky, and there's a sunset playing through all its colors - it'll give off a red or lilac stripe, then a golden crust will flare on a cloud, or everything will be tinged with a frosty green or lemon - a star will sparkle... Better than television. [From a story titled “Heavenly Flame”]

Eating

Last Sunday, I made this Sheet Pan Chicken with Tomatoes and Chickpeas by Carla Lalli Music and it was well liked!

I was very happy to receive The Big Book of Bread (see here) as a gift on my birthday and chose, as a first recipe, Knackebrot to feature in a platter. It’s an intriguing bread, flat and seedy, but, as the recipe’s introduction says, it is flavourful and lightly sweet. 

The New Year’s Eve spread at a friend’s house looked like this:

Photo credit: Sébastien Forest

It reminds me that I should mention a fruit dip we really like… Contrary to most fruit dip recipes found online, this one doesn’t feature cream cheese. I suspect it’s consequently a bit lighter. I hadn’t kept the little cookbook it came in, called Rookie Cook, from the Company’s Coming series, and I regretted that decision just for this recipe. Fortunately, the Internet Archive has a copy you can borrow and because of that, I had the pleasure of being able to serve it to the kids and share in their enjoyment of it!

Cool Fruit Dip
From Jean Paré’s cookbook Rookie Cook (p. 23)

¾ cup marshmallow crème
½ cup sour cream
1 tablespoon brown sugar, packed
½ teaspoon vanilla
2 cups frozen whipped topping, thawed

Beat marshmallow crème, sour cream, brown sugar and vanilla together in medium bowl until blended and brown sugar is dissolved.

Fold in whipped topping. Makes 2½ cups.

Happy Sunday!

A week on Sunday (no. 42)

Christmas

It’s a nice feeling to be on the other side of a holiday having enjoyed the anticipation, and participated in creating the mood. We hosted a small cookies and cocktail party, baking enough cookies and bars to share.

This year’s cocktail was Alton Brown’s Clarified Milk Punch, a recipe seen on TikTok that made me feel like I was pulling off a chemistry experiment in my kitchen. Even the kids were intrigued.

This year, our living room tree was a live one, bought all wrapped-up from Home Depot. I decorated it very simply in blues and golds. But our house features three additional trees… Marie-Hélène’s pencil tree, the boys’ room tree, and the downstairs mini tree.

Reading review

Looking over the 20-some titles of books read in 2025 reminds me of the books I enjoyed… The year began with Matar Hisham’s memoir The Return (mentioned here) and continued with William Finnegan’s Barbarian Days (no. 10). And so impactful for the conclusion it drew, was Katherine Boo’s Behind the Beautiful Forevers (no. 21).

But I didn’t just appreciate Pulitzer-Prize winning books… I also liked the books that taught me something, just by being stories set in a different time, in a different place. With my daughter, I read Betty Smith’s A Tree Grows in Brooklyn and was delighted when an edition of Rob Stephenson’s “The Neighbourhoods” included a picture of the author’s house (here). In the same vein was Kamel Daoud’s novel Houris, containing accounts of the civil war in Algeria. This year I started listening to audiobook versions of French novels just to keep my ear trained to good language. The effects overflowed one day when my daughter said “Why are you speaking [so much] in French? It’s weird!”

Media

Like any typical pop culture consumers, the year’s streaming included Severence and White Lotus, The Night Agent, Adolescence, Friends and Neighbors, The Eternaut, The Wrong Paris and My Brilliant Friend (and the associated documentary). Also Kneecap, Slow Horses and Pluribus. We went to the theatre for Anora and One Battle After Another. But in the last month or so, we discovered that it’s especially relaxing on a Sunday night to just sit and read and stream a live fireplace instead. It took an extra effort, a little push in that direction to commit to doing it, but during the holidays, having finished the first season of Pluribus, we found ourselves reading several nights in a row.

Eating out

New lunch spots tried with friends this year included: Nicolino’s on Pembina, Bonnie Day on Westminster (so cute and cozy!), Dave & LaVerne’s on Lakewood (really nice customer service!), Next Door (I liked their mango jam!), Le Croissant (a deservedly busy spot!), Primo’s Deli (come hungry!), Buvette (Mmm, that Hashbrown Breakfast Sandwich…), Gather (sorry, the word “outstanding” comes to mind… it was unexpectedly my favourite of the year) and The Forge. At The Forge, I had a Polish Double Malt served as a Devonshire Cream Open Face - Blueberry Patch and it looked - pardon my poor photo skills - like this:

It was delicious.

Thanks 2025

To a year that has taught me: in the happiness of finishing a thesis, a deep appreciation for history; in the confusion of A.I., a love for the soul of craft; and in the ordinariness of life, the steadiness and reward of wholesome routines. Here’s to more of that, to still “refusing to lose your own sense of purpose”!

Happy Sunday!

A Week on Sunday (no. 41)

Reading

Contrast can serve to highlight appreciation for something and this was the case when I was reading Bonnie Tsui’s book On Muscle, and also reading a short story collection by Tatyana Tolstaya. In “Serafin” Tolstaya writes from the character’s point of view of disdain for humanity: “Fat is nauseating muck. The whole world of flesh - is fat. Fatty, sticky children, fatty old ladies, fatty redheaded Magda.” (p 48) But Tsui, focusing on muscle, delves into its various intricacies with an infectious appreciation. Here is a collection of quotes from the book that I liked:

Being a writer as well as a lifelong athlete, I can’t help but notice how language is telling. Muscle means so much more than the physical thing itself. We’re told we need different metaphorical muscles for everything: to study, to socialize, to compete, to be compassionate. And we’ve got to exercise those muscles - putting them to use, involving them in a regular practice - for them to work properly and dependably. (p 4)

The way you build muscle is by breaking yourself down. Muscle fibres sustain damage through strain and stress, then repair themselves by activating special stem cells that fuse to the finer to increase size and mass. You get stronger by surviving each series of little breakdowns, allowing for regeneration, rejuvenation, regrowth. (p 5)

In big ways and small, life is a movement-based relationship with everything around us. Muscles make my fingers fly across these keys, knit my brow in concentration, correct my seated posture, shift my gaze to the window, square my shoulders, tap out the rest of this sentence. So much has become virtual, and yet my body still very physically influences my thoughts even as it conveys them to you. Your own muscles allow your eyes to take this in, to blink thoughtfully and tuck your chin in hand and tilt your head in consideration. We haven’t said a word, but our bodies are talking to each other - even through the page (…). (p 12)

Exerting our influence on the world: That’s the modern-day definition of a flex. (p 13)

Maybe that’s what makes some people uneasy: muscle as potential. And sometimes we don’t know our own power, until, finally, we are given the opportunity to discover it. (p 27)

For all its nobility, the pursuit of mightiness remains grounded in the body and all of its appetites. But the strength community’s insatiable curiosity about the human body is something I find surprisingly moving. To know one’s own strength: I’ve come to understand the meaning of these words not as a binary statement, an “I do” or an “I don’t,” but as an ongoing process of discovery. Muscles matter - they allow us, in an observable way, to see what we can do. Though you may not initially know what you’re capable of, you have vast reservoirs of potential, waiting to be tapped. For just the right moment to be revealed. (p 44)

(…) there is a process in place for human donor dissection, and with that process comes a reverence that helps you to understand the privilege of getting to look. Head, hands, and feet are wrapped before dissection. And at the end of every academic year, a special memorial is held (…). (p 52)

Interoception is your body’s ability to sense itself from inside. (p 142)

All these quotes show a respect for the human body that the character in Serafin does not want to see and both writers make their point with the deft use of language. Words can be so strong…

Cards

Cards are divisive. The postal service has only to go on strike for a debate to flare up dramatically in the news. Cards are important. Cards don’t matter… Cards take time. My grandma could dash off a stack of 80. Or was it 100? But cards are like everything else: cookies and food and Christmas trees…  home-made or store-bought or real or fake. There are hundreds of permutations for celebrating Christmas and just as many ways of dispersing one’s energy for this demanding season. And so with all that in mind, juggling our own list of pros and cons, I made this year’s Christmas cards by hand and cut the envelopes from old wrapping paper. (This envelope tutorial was perfect!) At a time when AI is spinning reality to ever greater heights of improbability, a return to basics felt reassuring and solid. (I think this is what B. Dylan Hollis is getting at in his appreciation of vintage cards here on Instagram.) 

Baking

There’s a Nanaimo bar chilling in the fridge, but earlier this week, I tackled the start of this year’s baking with blondies and brownies…

Eating

Making things a little less demanding in the kitchen while I concentrate on cards and baking, are old favourites, like Jamie Oliver’s “Mini shell pasta with a creamy smoked-bacon and pea sauce.”

Postcards

This week, there were two days featuring a sundog in the sky, and Friday’s was so big, it reflected itself on the windows of the U of M’s Pembina Hall student residence.

Happy Sunday!

A Week on Sunday (no. 40)

Teaching myself to swim

Friday was the tenth time I put on a bathing suit, cap and goggles and slid myself into a city pool with the firm intention of getting over my fear of water. As an experiment, it has been going well. My goal is to be able to swim laps with Christian. Meantime, I stay in the shallow end, learning buoyancy, while he goes back and forth and tests ever higher diving boards. I think that an account is due, a little summary of the impressions I have of the experience so far, before I forget what learning to swim felt like.

An unexpected feeling. I’ve learned that there’s a distinction between feeling “enthusiasm” for something and feeling “invigorated” by something. An idea can create enthusiasm, but it can be temporary. Its definition associates it to speech: “she enthused” or “she spoke enthusiastically”. By contrast “invigorate” feels more stable and less superficial. It is “to impart vigour to; to fill with life and energy; to strengthen, animate”. I’ve had ideas for projects in the past, talked about them, felt enthusiastic, and fed myself on other peoples’ reaction. But it quickly wears out. Having a practice, like writing or drawing, has taught me persistence beyond the idea-phase because I can see that incremental improvement happens over time, despite feelings of impatience. 

One of the first instructor’s advice I followed was Kaitlin Frehling’s video. It begins by teaching buoyancy. I wasn’t able to follow her instructions until the third visit to a pool, but finally being able to gather myself into a ball while gently exhaling under water and feeling my back bob to the surface was a brand new sensation I was thrilled to repeat and repeat. My brain forgot to be okay with this feeling by the next visit, but picked it up again fairly quickly. Feeling this happen and observing the brain learn was very invigorating!

Learning technique. Swimming is so technical that breaking it down into steps is a little puzzle on its own. There is theory and application… but a big part of learning how to apply something is learning how to digest it in pieces that don’t lead to overwhelm. When I told my sister I was teaching myself to swim, she asked me why I didn’t just take lessons. The thing is, a big part of learning to swim is just getting over my own fear of the water… I understand technique quite well, and there’s a plethora of Youtube videos for every kind of technique. 

Videos that don’t break down technique are instructive in their own way. Take “Learn to Swim as an Adult” which compresses into three episodes Harry getting over fear of water in the first, learning front crawl in the second, and going at it in the deep end in the third; all within a month. The instructor is encouraging, and Harry is a good sport, but there looms over this production a feeling of “Ugh, why won’t this just come together?” expressed in Harry’s comment “it is frustrating…”. The technique is there, but really, what Harry needs, and what the Youtube channel doesn’t specialize in showing, is a whole bunch of time dedicated to getting comfortable with being in the water. I suspect that actual footage of an adult learning to swim is boring. More fun for the viewer is the exciting montage you tend to find in movies. More useful for the adult learner are the techniques that can be applied visit to visit. The two objectives are at odds in the above example, but there are other instructors who target their audience well by giving them very small steps to try on their own.

Pausing here to acknowledge fear. I want to take a minute to appreciate various sources of encouragement… Articles like Alexandra Hansen’s “Learning to swim as an adult is terrifying, embarrassing and wonderful” for The Guardian or videos like Dan Swim Coach’s “How to Overcome Fear of Water” and Sikana’s “Overcome a fear of water” treat this feeling seriously. They also emphasize the key to overcoming it by exposure. Exposing myself to water again and again and again is a small doable step and I’m happy after every time I take it.

Breaking down technique into small and smaller steps. I’ve mentioned Kaitlin Frehling above, and have used the PDF “Beginner Swim Resource” illustrating routines you can do to learn to swim, as a guide. But I do have a slower pace… For example: week 5 workouts introduce a swimmer’s snorkel. I’d never tried a snorkel before, and I had to confront the sensation of water in my nose. I’d been avoiding this by gently breathing out of my nose underwater and not just holding my breath. The first attempt - my 7th visit to the pool - I had to get past the panicky feeling. Between weeks 7 and 8 I watched Youtube tutorials (this one and this one) on snorkel use. Pool visits then included time gradually getting used to breathing with a snorkel for 2, then 4 then 6 lengths, with flippers and then without. But I don’t begrudge the extra time I’m taking, because there’s no one to impress but myself. 

Supporting local We visit our favourite city pool Friday evenings and it feels nice to be connected in this way to a service we now support. We’re starting to recognize regulars, becoming ones ourselves… And I found swimming gear I needed from a local business called Swimming Matters. All these things are motives for gratitude!

Reading

I think the book 1177 B.C. by Eric H. Cline was recommended by a podcast guest for its final chapter detailing the collapse of civilisations and the end of the Bronze Age, because of the “eerily prescient” (in Adam Gopnick’s words) conditions it highlights.

Personally, I liked the difference between then and now that the author highlights in this passage: 

I should hasten to add that, although it’s clear that climate change and such factors as pandemics have caused instability in the past, there is at least one major difference between then and now - concurrent knowledge of events unfolding. The ancient Hittites probably had no idea what was happening to them. They didn’t know how to stop a drought. Maybe they prayed to the gods; perhaps they made some sacrifices. But in the end, they were essentially powerless to do anything about it.

In contrast, we are now much more technologically advanced. We also have the advantage of hindsight. History has a lot to teach us, but only we are willing to listen and learn. If we see the same sort of things taking place now that happened in the past, including drought and famine, earthquakes and tsunamis, then I ask again, might it not be a good idea to look at the ancient world and learn from what happened to them? Even if the various problems at the end of the Late Bronze Age were “black swan” events, as Magnus Nordenman has suggested, the mere fact that we have so many similar problems at the present time should be cause for concern.

Enjoying

This definition of taste in a substack by Henry Oliver, written two years ago, is so clear, I’ll likely go back and reread it again.

Baking aspiration

There’s nothing like a baking project to inspire confidence in pulling off your own roundup of cookies at this time of year, and I’ve been enjoying Justine Doiron’s cookie advent-calendar she made over four (!) days. (On Instagram here.)

Postcard

This week: snow on the river!

Happy Sunday!

A week on Sunday (no. 38)

Reading

Another book done from the reading list! This one a tiny book of short stories, titled Escapes, by Joy Williams. Reading her, the sensation of the short unexpected sentences in my brain is like eating popping candy... The writing seems to fizz.

From a story titled "Rot": "The Aquarium was where a baby seal had been put to sleep because he was born too ugly to be viewed by children." (p. 17)

"Health" so acutely described a tanning salon that I was jolted into the memory of having gone to one with Christian, some weeks prior to our wedding so we'd look attractively tanned for the pictures... "Aurora leads her to one of the rooms at the rear of the building. The room has a mirror, a sink, a small stool, a white rotating fan and the bed, a long bronze coffinlike apparatus with a lid. Pammy is always startled when she sees the bed with its frosted ultraviolet tubes, its black vinyl headrest." (p 115)

Perhaps my favourite passage is a character's thought about overheard conversation: "Pammy coughs. She doesn't want to hear other people's voices. It is as though they are throwing away junk, the way some people use words, as though one word were as good as another." (p. 119).

A fun read!

A poem

This is a beautiful poem: "Miss You. Would like to take a walk with you". It is by Gabrielle Calvocoressi. Here on the Poetry Foundation website.

Part of me wants to leave the poem like a gift on a doorstep with the secret anticipation of the recipient enjoying it. Another part of me wants to confess that until reading it, a poem had never made me cry. I didn't believe, till now, that poems could contain this power. It's like a little gift that arrived, that proved Patti Smith's description of a poem to be true: "… it can distill everything like a teardrop. If you’re thirsty and you get that drop of water, it suddenly becomes like a liter of water. Then you’re satisfied." (Quote taken from Patti Smith's interview here.)

AI and history

I've held the misguided belief that AI couldn't do much for the archival work inherent to the field of history, but a recent interview on Hard Fork with Professor Mark Humphries is proving that AI might become very helpful. Humphries has a substack on the subject here.

Eating

Sometimes a meal is less about the recipe and more about the pairing. This week, we tried Deb Perelman's Skillet Macaroni and Cheese - liberally messing around with the quantities of pasta vs sauce because we're not a creamy-sauce-loving family - and paired it with an almost virtuous broccoli salad by Jamie Oliver.  (See here.)

For dessert, I made these Pink Party Cookies, per my daughter's request... "Could you make a sandwich cookie, but with icing in between?" It was subsequently so fun to come upon Carla Lalli Music's recipe.  The thing with her cookbook picture, is that I suspect the saturation is heightened. If you "bake until there's a barely perceptible tint of light golden around edge, 8 minutes. Do not overbake." it yeilds a pale cookie. Mine looked anemic by comparison. But still delicious!

Postcards

This week... a look upwards, to the pretty leaf outlines of a willow tree.

The lovely golds and browns and reds…

And the dog…

Happy Sunday!