July 7, 2020
Gleanings
- One of the goals I set for my epic 2020 to-do list? Make more preserves and pickles than last year!
- I think if we really go deep and allow ourselves to answer those questions, the world would be a better place.
- All I know is that I feel beleaguered – by these strange and difficult times, and by people who are making it worse.
- Despite outside influences, my attitude toward dandelions sashayed as if in a dance.
- There is the constant ongoing slightly absurd persistent splendid fact that you are required to make something beautiful.
- She’s good– very good, even! It’s just that she’s always good in exactly the same way, sometimes even in the exact same words.
- You’re walking and your eye yanks at your brain and says, Hey look, look again, look closer.
- Swimming, the swallows light on the surface of the lake, I want to tell that young woman to linger in the garden, linger among the vines and leaves.
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June 30, 2020
Gleanings
- We white people, who have the privilege of not being treated badly for our skin color, are being called to create new stories for everyone.
- The work I’m doing is my business and I have to think hard—constantly — about how to effect change and uphold my values
- Strawberries pretty much steal the show…
- “Oh my god,” I thought to myself in shock, “what am I doing? I don’t even know this guy and in just a few hours I’m going to marry him!”
- But watching these clouds parade across the sky, was a ritual which brought into my body, through my eyes, a sense of possibility as endless as that blue sky….
- So anyway, that’s me and masks and I’m just going to have to embrace it like everyone else.
- Writing is not the only work.
- I am never quick to clear plates, because I find this stage of a meal thoroughly satisfying.
- Six nags and mottos to embroider, when I master the satin stitch.
- Cruel systems surround us. Unless we’re cut by them, we can stay blissfully unaware.
- There is a specific kind of rain that warms my cockles. It’s the steady, light as the wing of a hummingbird, and flows in a gentle, easy way.
- You never knew, eavesdropping on Mildred’s stories, what you might hear, but it was guaranteed to be good.
- If, during these sheltering at home times, you’re lucky enough to have a garden, I’ll bet you’re embracing it.
- Swimming this morning, I wondered, where does the word “lake” come from?
- The chamomile is posing against the black currants that I’m looking forward to.
- I really admire Vivian Maier’s photographs, in particular her black and white self-portraits.
- The thing about posting photos of yourself through time, is that you really begin seeing yourself, and seeing yourself differently.
A handful of posts here are from writers who took part in my June blogging experience. They have been amazing. My next course offering is coming in September, and registration is open now.
June 23, 2020
Gleanings
- People’s relationships with their dads are on such a huge spectrum, and they are both complicated and simple.
- And like Lionel Shriver delivering a keynote in a Sombrero, every beat of his book twanged false.
- it was so very wonderful to gather some of our silent book club friends to finally, companionably, utterly luxuriously enjoy our reading on the grass, in the gorgeous shade, in each other’s bookish company once again.
- From him I learned …that when things are especially crummy you should be very pleased because there’s nowhere to go but up and that the patio in a summer rain is a fine place to dance.
- Because for me, how I walk through the world is the thing. This is what living is.
- It’s late in human history. Is it too late? You can’t say.
Do you like reading good things online and want to make sure you don’t miss a “Gleanings” post? Then sign up to receive “Gleanings” delivered to your inbox each week(ish). And if you’ve read something excellent that you think we ought to check out, share the link in a comment below.
June 16, 2020
Gleanings
- It may be a little faint, but I can still feel the pulse of my city.
- I think if we just each quietly did something positive… this can be something.
- Caitlin Moran has a new book on the way.
- It wasn’t until the late 1920s that technologies in dance photography evolved to allow photographers to capture their subjects in flight.
- I don’t need a pandemic to stay home and notice the minutiae of daily life
- Another recent insight: it’s possible to be grateful and nauseated at the same time.
- These are beautiful times and I am lucky to be alive right now.
- Fact is, I’ve already been down this diversity road to nowhere.
- Who wants to eat a good supper should eat a weed of every kind.
- Even before the doorbell rang, through the side window, I could see someone holding flowers.
- When I was fourteen I got arrested often.
- Whenever I decide to buck a trend and do something my own way, I yell “I’m going rouge!” with gusto.
- Almost every time I go to make something that involves my sewing machine I have to go to the YouTube video about how to thread the bobbin.
- When you’re a writer, most of the time your work is invisible.
Do you like reading good things online and want to make sure you don’t miss a “Gleanings” post? Then sign up to receive “Gleanings” delivered to your inbox each week(ish). And if you’ve read something excellent that you think we ought to check out, share the link in a comment below.
June 9, 2020
Gleanings
- If you’re not a person of color, please read this.
- I should say: I never intended to become a spy.
- What does a story about a verandah in the1930’s have to do with COVID19 social distancing?
- The firehose of love for mothers left me in the dark…
- Between walking and sitting, between exploring and absorbing, this generation is shaping themselves to guide the future.
- I see glimpses of a great awakening in these times, and I hope it’s true.
- Death is weird. The ultimate fake out.
- Letter from a white home, to other white people
- I am not great at metaphors, but I think living through 2020 is turning out to be much like that vine.
- I love coincidence because it makes us see patterns that aren’t there. I’m pretending this is part of some grand plan I’d unconsciously made for myself.
- So yes, say something, but also: Pause. Know when to listen.
- When I am swimming, the water ruffled by wind, no one else on the shore but my husband wrapped in a towel, it could be any summer, any lake, any morning.
- In praise of heroes…
- 7 books by Black poets I think you’ll love
- So that’s how my week is going–how my weeks are going, as they blur together, weirdly ephemeral and indistinct but also somehow relentless, a foggy procession through time.
- We talk about our culture because we are white and it is important to talk about whiteness, and what it means in the world: it means that we are safer, and we are heard, and that we always have the benefit of the doubt.
- On notice
May 26, 2020
Gleanings
- It’s time to resist the siren call of pie season and make a galette instead.
- At my desk, in the night, I was thinking about rumours.
- Having the decision made for me by circumstances hasn’t changed everything about how I feel about teaching online, but it has made a lot of those feelings irrelevant.
- What I know about kitchens, is that we make them work, even when they don’t make sense.
- The world is opening up, meaning that we’ll have to see each other again. Get to see each other. My bad.
- And yesterday, I was reminded that all writing starts somewhere, and a sense of wonder–both in the sense of “awe” and in the sense of “curiosity”–is a great starting point.
- when I do get the urge to sew, and when I’ve gotten out all of the things, I binge like a run-on sentence
- Probably I would have melted down by now, but it’s the flowers keeping us going.
- Do you keep a book on your breakfast table and read it in the morning?
- A diary of the mundane and (some of) what we ate.
- what do you think will happen?
- I realize as I do this that I am more interested in the process than the result.
Do you like reading good things online and want to make sure you don’t miss a “Gleanings” post? Then sign up to receive “Gleanings” delivered to your inbox each week(ish). And if you’ve read something excellent that you think we ought to check out, share the link in a comment below.
May 19, 2020
Gleanings
- In one of those ironies you might not even notice if you were swimming three times a week and driving to Edmonton, flying to Ottawa, the flowers have never been lovelier.
- As we speak, my mother is dying.
- What is even better than regular mail you ask? Why, book mail of course!
- What is going to happen to our whole lexicon of (germ-infested) interpersonal body language and gesture?
- What did you think? That a weeded garlic bed would somehow act as a charm against the dark?
- The novel worked for me as a reader, even if, when I sat back to think more about it, it hasn’t proved quite so satisfactory for me as a critic.
- My views are drastically altered, but I must accept it. Gradually, I will. I’m embracing the brightness and the new things out my window.
- In a world that’s on its head, it’s reassuring when we can count on a season to send an evening that is beautiful, and wholly familiar.
- I think we owe it to men to start telling them the truth.
- She wrote about women writing, living in the suburbs, having small children, in a way that gave me hope and acted in some ways as caution.
Do you like reading good things online and want to make sure you don’t miss a “Gleanings” post? Then sign up to receive “Gleanings” delivered to your inbox each week(ish). And if you’ve read something excellent that you think we ought to check out, share the link in a comment below.
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.
