May 12, 2020
Gleanings
- Thrilling (read: meaningful, brave, productive) conversations between friends don’t require mountaintops or war zones—they thrive in deceptively placid settings, where restless hands brush aside crumbs while the worst of life’s torments are explored.
- Though the mulberry is technically invasive, and sometimes I resent the way it’s shaded out part of my garden, I still see the tree as a gift.
- This virus is teaching us a whole new vocabulary. Social distancing. Self isolation. Presumptive. COVID-19. I even had to dictate this new word into the dictionary of the voice recognition software I use to write. (New blog alert! By a BLOG SCHOOL GRAD, no less!)
- While we all remain a little concerned individually that our reading enthusiasm and tempo is not quite what it was (but hey, it’s never been a competition), our aggregate book list is still rich, formidable and gorgeous.
- When the pool re-opens, I’m not sure how I’ll feel.
- What matters even more for me is a cookbook about eating and sharing as much as it is about cooking.
- It’s been ten years since my mother died but I think of her daily.
- You are one great dame and each time I think of you I’m reminded that there is really no higher aspiration for a woman.
- Homemade tater tots, huh. Huh. I would not bother, personally.
- As this shut-in time wears on and wears me down, it helps to imagine doing a little more ‘square haunting’ of my own some day.
- One of the things I’m most grateful for in this life is the innocence, security and endless love of my childhood.
- This is one instance of a more general dilemma which radical political movements have often grappled with: should we choose our terms to reflect the world as it currently is, or the world as we would like it to become?
- You’ll have to write a new Covid edition of your book called The Artist’s Way: Watching The Great Canadian Baking Show Counts as Art when the Alternative is a Mental Breakdown.
- ‘I think I have forgotten what a street fully lit and all the other things that go with peace look like…’
- It felt like hope. The world was showing off and waking up and maybe that was the sign that she would, too.
- If you’re lucky, like me, and live near a forest full of shagbark hickory trees, it’s easy to make this wonderful, velvety, smoky, sweet syrup – a gift from the forest.
May 5, 2020
Gleanings
- We’re adapting. We didn’t want to. I’d rather be swimming…
- At this threshold, in this, our most vulnerable moment yet, can we find in our heart, our soul the empathy, the compassion and the kindness that is needed so badly?
- The pandemic might turn us all into birders.
- Pandemics actually “unfold in slow motion,” he says, and “there’s no event that changes the whole landscape on a dime.” But it feels that way, because of how relentlessly we quest for updates.
- We are living through unusual circumstances, and you are not obligated to do anything extra right now. But if a complete dinner on a single pan appeals, this one is pretty easy, and easy to adapt.
- I kinda want to say, “this week’s cake is…” but it is only Tuesday and there are five of us so half the cake is already gone.
- I’m not yet mourning or grieving the closure of the library. I guess I’m busy looking to the future of libraries.
- walking where no one walks
- From the very beginning, This Ain’t was familiar and it was all Hamilton.
- There, the sum of my sourdough expertise–it’s honestly not very much but has allowed me to cruise through many years of bread-making with much pleasure and little stress.
- I don’t want to leave my characters on the brink — maybe one or two, if they deserve it, but for at least some of them, I want church bells, or trumpets, or the Rocky theme song.
- The clouds have blown on, the sun is shining, it is 18°C and, at long last, it does seem as if we are in the opening stretch of an Ontario springtime in a year when optimism is utterly essential.
- However, if we can exercise our imagination and envision possibilities for the future, if we can live in a better future for even a few minutes in our minds, it is far likelier that we will experience hope and a belief in a better world.
- She gave me my love of reading which I treasure above most things in my life.
- Now I know, I know, you’re really not supposed to pick them but we have to cut ourselves some slack right now and I think the hedgerows can cope.
- I’m not sure they’ll function as vases. Or anything, for that matter. But I plan on glazing and firing them, anyway. We’ve come so far.
- Where on the map’s contours is the place where a woman paused to consider the beauty of the morning?
- She’s too smart and too artful a novelist to have left in anything that didn’t serve her purpose as she understood it, and she’s the kind of writer (meticulous, deliberate) who has earned my trust. That, arguably, shifts the burden to me: if the novel seemed too long to me, what was I missing?
April 28, 2020
Gleanings
- I have baked enough over the past 40 years to know that one can use less yeast if one is willing to wait
- Even as I keep teaching my students that stories need conflict, I’ve grown perplexed about the ethics of abusing characters to drive a narrative arc.
- I am interested in the value of a mistake. If the character knew how to pronounce that word from the beginning, there wouldn’t be a story.
- Our world is changing drastically, but we don’t know what it will look like, which means there is room for us all to imagine.
- It’s more a matter of learning to live with the debris and planting what is hearty instead of wishing for what we can’t have.
- We first met somewhere on Cape Breton, remember?
- I mean, shouldn’t you stock the stuff you need for what you’ll want to cook and not some arbitrary list from a lady who loves Triscuits?
- I’m always inspired by people who make something out of discards, remnants and broken pieces
- It’s a lot to process, as is said, and it really freaking is. But we can hold it. We can, we do.
- Mondays are for Melancholy
- From the famous first line: “Mrs. Dalloway said she would buy the flowers herself” to the bittersweet ending, it’s a story told like the alighting of a butterfly on different consciousnesses as the narrator’s eye sweeps over London.
- every first draft is a success because by definition, its only job is to exist
- If Cineplex collapses, I honestly don’t know. But gawd, I need to go to a movie.
April 21, 2020
Gleanings
- My tiny problems are nothing compared to everything else right now. But they’re our stories. If we can be brave enough to listen, rewrite them (which we’re all going to have to do) and then share them—that’s hope!
- This will probably be the last time I read The Order of the Phoenix aloud.
- Hey, just realized my recipe for a writing day is kind of like my recipe for sourdough!
- Feel free to get completely carried away. Make a mess.
- I won’t wait 25 years to finish the candles. I can’t. The box is on the floor in the way.
- Finally, believing it must be true, what they say, about Fred and Ginger movies cheering people up in the Great Depression, because we saw them dancing “Cheek to Cheek” on TCM yesterday
- And now we’re at the point in April where, because we’re isolating and distancing, I’m more aware of ghosts.
- Lately I prefer Grimms’ fairy tales to the news headlines. Yet I definitely prefer the news headlines to the garbage being spread, fertilized, and growing on social media.
- I miss everyone so much and if I think about it for too long the sadness is overwhelming.
- “Open up. Keep trying.”
- Another life-saving thing has been to – quite late in life, I feel – begin to consciously and deliberately seek out fellow readers and connect with them.
- The novella seems such a perfect form to hold certain things I want to do with language and with the possibilities of story.’
- You might think it’s just sweet advice I’m handing out, but this goddamned practice is saving my life.
- The reason I re-read this book, is the same reason I re-read a lot of books on trees and nature generally… because of learning how to be on this planet.
- All I’m saying is that when Rosner talks about chicken, I find good reason to tune in.
April 14, 2020
Gleanings
- Not everything is a lesson. Not everything that happens is for you to analyze right as it’s happening.
- Though I was raised Catholic, my family actually worshipped at the Church of Frugality.
- I was grateful the book was there, even if I couldn’t give it the attention it deserved.
- Maybe I can write about what life is like when you feel like it is slowly ebbing away from you and some days you wonder why you are holding on so tightly.
- I wondered, myself, where is this surge of joyfulness coming from—not to be mistaken for the lack of concern for everyone that is and could be affected by COVID-19—and there is not one reason. I actually, counted 19.
- Love of reading in the time of corona
- Women Talking is itself a kind of manifesto, I suppose, though it does not read like a statement of intent so much as an inquiry, almost an autopsy.
- There’s never been a better time to enjoy the calm of green spaces. As the Chinese proverb goes, Life begins the day you start a garden.
- My fascination with loos began in early childhood, when a trip to the powder room felt like a flirtation with independence.
- So, I’m not. Nimble at catching my thoughts, that is. Quite the opposite. Mine are like dragonflies, abundant, right there in front of me but impossible to corral
- Yeast privilege is something that before the pandemic you may have thought you didn’t want to have because it sounds itchy.
- if there’s one thing we are good at here, it is staying the fuck home.
- As long as we can find (not just find but SEE and grab hold of) the tiny moments, the patches of light, the glimmers, then the days will continue to be ok.
- No, this is not what being retired is like
- The kind of book that feels like letters from a favourite aunt.
- Every picture a couple posts of a delicious meal they cooked together makes me wince with pain, as I eat sardines out of a can with my fingers.
- One thing, though which has really surprised me, is that I am much more of an introvert than I ever thought I was…
- It might be the least of our troubles, but curating the internet has never been trickier.
- But sometimes I’m kind of, I don’t know, done? I want to say, “Shhh.”
- I can solve nothing, I can save no one, but dammit, I can mail Patrick a copy of The Night Watchman.
- Two very different kinds of days and for me, two very different ways of reacting to each during these stressful, odd, pandemic days.
- You can’t be happy all the time, and you can’t be grateful for all moments, but all moments are opportunities for gratitude.
- It takes a true bibliophile to appreciate the desire not just to read books, but to surround oneself with them, to collect them, to pile them on shelves until the wood bows from the weight.
- I thought of how easily one adjusts to solitude. It doesn’t mean I don’t get lonely.
April 7, 2020
Gleanings
- how to make a log cabin while sheltering in place
- The exceptional does not faze us.
- “Gentle,” I told myself as I worked. As, I recognized, I have been telling myself for several weeks.
- the thing has to be read to be appreciated, otherwise I could as easily say frogs, bulrushes, English sparrow, landscape, polar ice, sunlight, rain, thunder, a gravel path, the egg cases of a praying mantis, the thin membrane of an onion, that sort of thing.
- I believe this is how we will all build the future of journalism: person by person, reporter by reporter, opportunity by opportunity, story by story.
- Is it possible to think of the time right now in some ways as holy or sacred? Where can we locate our “collective effervescence?”
- It would be easy to feel hopeless.
- Things turn out best for the people who make the best of the way things turn out.
- Given the times, given that we are keeping our distance, given that more people than ever are strolling along my usual routes by the river and other green spots in the city, I’ve been tromping along backstreets, down alleys, through what others might call the uglier parts of town.
Cool New Blog School Offering Coming Soon:
LET’S GET TOGETHER in June 2020
March 31, 2020
Gleanings
I made a list of Books With Vision whose authors imagine a different, better kind of world. If you’re looking for a book that’s relevant to read right now, here would be a good place to start. Hope you are keeping well.
- And yes we are watching numbers when what we are looking at are people, bodies, lives no more, deaths. Yes we are baking upside down plum cakes and eating salt and vinegar chips and worrying about our children. Yes we are finding it hard to concentrate.
- But what we do know, is that we’ve all navigated challenges, and that we’ll navigate this one, too.
- Tragic times call for extraordinary qualities. We are made for heroic realities.
- Finding our purpose is not a direct flight. I think, maybe, our purpose is the journey itself.
- That there’s no one I’d rather be cooped up with than my husband
- …two months ago, a positively bizarre time in which we entered and left our homes with abandon, casually hugged friends we were happy to see, and if our nose became itchy, we’d scratch it and not stand paralyzed in panic afterward. What salad days!
- I choose to see the silver lining, to embrace what is good and right.
- Such contrasts make life more interesting.
- Clare Hunter’s Threads of Life is a marvelous, inspiring, touching, and extremely wide-ranging account of the myriad ways needle crafts of all kinds have mattered and made meaning throughout history.
- Can making stuff amidst the mayhem REALLY improve our mental health?
- I guess it’s not a big surprise to me that Virginia Woolf is what I need right now.
- Let’s be okay with ourselves at our laziest, at our saddest, at our most vulnerable.
- Possibly the best bit of our day is the afternoon walk to the woods, and right now they are looking stunning, though the next best bit is the fields on the way up.
- Believe me when I say I started out intending to read The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane, just that one book. I couldn’t stop.
- And some day, I’ll be ready to begin my own work again. Not yet–not today. But soon. And until then, I’ll visit with old friends.
- Five things I am grateful for
March 24, 2020
Gleanings
In good news, I have pulled myself off the floor after a week of abject panic. Before I share this week’s gleanings, I wanted to let you know that I wrote a piece for 49thShelf on the strangeness of being unable to read, and also that I created a mini-guide to blogging for kids if you know any who are looking for a creative outlet.
- A person’s tolerance for uncertainty is how well they handle being in a situation with an unclear outcome.
- What I’m trying to say is, if you’re feeling a lot of anxiety over the next few weeks, just turn off your phone and focus on those little details.
- Don’t try to be ‘happy’. Just aim for a steady baseline when you can. Being OK is a much better goal. Happy can be the cherry on the cake. Steady as she/he goes is just great. The odd dip is totally understandable too.
- If my online brand is cute things on the internet and openly available then I guess I will use this time of crisis to recommend resources to get us through.
- Count blessings. Practice gratitude. Do your part, however small it feels.
- Watch out for the bullshit, and whenever you come into contact with it, wash your hands.
- So much is beyond control or management, but clean bedding I can do.
- Who would be shadowing our days and even (it seems) our nights, ambling around outside while we sleep, helping himself to kale and a few succulent ants.
- And at the time, bedrest was all we could do to feel some semblance of control in a situation where we had none.
- I left my Heart in Paris and my Appendix in Berlin
- You don’t really notice how much you count on a guy like Tom Hanks.
- Not to be Outdone, I Rode a Wild Cow in a Rodeo
- Each time I open one up to write, the words don’t come.
- All shall be well and all manner of things shall be well and fingers crossed for the return of the swallows soon and owlets to come.
- When those reserves run low, one of the things we celebrated in the old world that can still replenish our spirits in this new world is a good, inspiring, comforting, diverting book.
- We shouldn’t shut joy out of literature even when – maybe, especially when – we are all too aware that the world is full of troubles. Sometimes it’s important to stand facing the sunshine.
- However does a woman teach herself to be an awesome photographer?
- Once upon a time a tree grew into the wires overhead.
- I’m shaken, as we all are, by how quickly our personal safety and our collective safety has been changed and compromised
- It seems unlikely my book club will be meeting any time soon, but if we were able to, I’m not sure this book would give us that much to talk about.
March 9, 2020
Gleanings
- How to be Sick and Single
- This was the era of travelling around Europe in a camper van and that’s what we were going to do.
- The ‘fetch’ from the bookshop in Plymouth was as exciting as collecting any book you’ve waited years for could be. I’d preordered and thus supposedly saved £7, except we drove an eighty mile round trip to get it, got stuck in a slow traffic jam for half and hour with the engine running, had to pay £2.80 to park the car, ended up needing sustenance in the M&S cafe and so I think came out of it in financial deficit. But at least I can say I was there on the dawning of the day.
- …what’s easy for us may be hard for other people. That talents and skills don’t always intersect.
- That time between eighteen and twenty-three was vulnerable and embarrassing and I’ve kept it private for no reason other than it was weird and messy and full of a soughing longing and despair, and because I hadn’t really lived in my own skin at that point, so that it hurts to look at it even now.
- It’s what both overwhelms and excites me about pottery, and life, how very much there is to learn.
- ALL THE THINGS that I spend my life trying to avoid in my own work. All the stuff I suggest authors don’t do. This book is STUFFED TO THE CEILING WITH ALL OF IT and it didn’t bother me once.
- That turtle toilet filled me with such irrational joy when it turned out so well! Who would ever think of such a thing? Who would ever make it?
- One of those mornings, the sky soft and promising after a few days of chilly rain and snow creeping down the mountain behind our house, one of those mornings when you turn to each other in bed, saying, Where did they go, the years?
- Quiet time is space our minds need to recharge also helping us to discover what matters most in our life.
- On #IWD2020 and every day from now on, be bodacious, be brave, be brilliant but please don’t tell me you’re not a feminist…
- Still life of ketchup, hot sauce, and empty champagne glasses.
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March 2, 2020
Gleanings
- I like to think of myself, in some ways, as an artist of the everyday.
- “Let it rest” can mean giving the piece an hour, if that’s the deadline. For an essay, a week or a month is better.
- Some moments call for flowers, or a lasagna.
- This is what blogging is about, that we can see each other even when we feel invisible, that through time and space and memory and algorithms, we see each other. We hear each other. That in the quiet, we are briefly together.
- First steps and leap years
- I’ve been keeping a “book” since 2011.
- A long time ago my husband built a hang glider.
- Due to the luck of the draw I was one of the last to be called, and the jury was selected before I was asked to return to court.
- So I’ve developed a kind of short hand for interpreting dating profiles to save me from spending a precious evening suffering through a bad date instead of chocolate-dipping a whole box of strawberries and eating them by myself.
- When people suggest feminism has somehow been a failure, I like to hark back to the world I was born into, the world that made my mother so full of suppressed fury…
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