A week on Sunday (no. 23)

A week in pictures

It’s often the case that when a week fills the photos app with colour, my desk has been conversely empty of desky activity. So, I’ve bravely dusted off my keyboard to show you some of the week here…

There was MH’s birthday which occasioned an outing at The Leaf; and aren’t they pretty, the smiling family seen through a water fall? This butterfly agreed to pose.

Then it was Canada Day and we joined a crowd of people at Assiniboia Downs. A thunderstorm broke shortly after we arrived, delaying the horse racing until it was cancelled. But we got to watch the clouds and lightning from our seats in the stand, sheltered from the rain and cooled by the breeze.

The fireworks, begun just before 10:30 were impressive: close, loud, and choreographed to last 20 minutes. Far quieter, but just as pretty, the rose a friend cut for us:

And one of the linden trees in our front yard bloomed this year. It smells so nice!

We went strawberry picking yesterday…

So many summers in a row, it’s a tradition now.

Four baskets were transformed into 19 and 3/4 jars of freezer jam, a quart of strawberry lemonade, a strawberry summer cake and strawberry-rhubarb popsicles, with more strawberries leftover for a strawberry milkshake for the kids, and maybe… a daiquiri for the adults. (But I’ve written about strawberries before… more than once!) So here… let’s end on a furry note.

Listening

Advertised on another podcast, I started listening to Outlaw Ocean, beginning with S2, episode 4: “The Repo Man” then went back and listened to everything available from the series. Episodes like “Waves of Extraction” and “The Magic Pipe” from Season 1 recall Toms River (mentioned a few weeks ago in No. 18) for our world’s continuing problem with pollution. And the latest episode in Season 2, “The Shrimp Factory Whistleblower” makes me think of themes in Behind the Beautiful Forevers. I really appreciated the more personal take on this work by Ian Urbina himself, in Season 1, Episode 7: “The Spell of the Sea”. All in all, a podcast series that I both learned so much from and enjoyed listening to, even if some of its topics were especially heavy.

Postcard

A quick phone capture of a meadow spied on a Friday night bike ride with Christian.

Happy Sunday!

A week on Sunday (no. 22)

Reading - Pauline Boutal

I like my bookshelves to contain books that smile back at me with the smug satisfaction of having been read and not the opposite… the furrowed-brow sigh of waiting-to-be-read. But it happens. Sometimes I pick up a book second-hand and put it on a shelf for awhile. Pauline Boutal’s biography, written by Louise Duguay, was such a book. The delay is unexplainable, except that maybe the familiar suffers at the expense of the exotic…

But Pauline’s life was romantic! And from so far in the past, it was a little exotic too…

Her family, like my husband’s ancestors, immigrated from Brittany. Her father made stained glass windows. She worked as a typesetter for a small local newspaper at age 15. The paper’s editor recommended she take drawing classes. They both liked theatre. Over time, she and the editor fell in love. They married in 1916. For many years Pauline was an illustrator for the Eaton’s catalogue. She honed her talent for drawing and produced pastel portraits, took more courses and painted landscapes. She helped her husband produce plays for the theatre group he directed - le Cercle Molière - and Pauline not only acted, she did a lot of the related artwork. They were friends with Gabrielle Roy. And then suddenly Pauline’s beloved husband died, age 54.

Pauline grieved and filled the second half of her life with the direction of the theatre, more classes, more travel, more art. As she aged, she let go of theatre direction, travelled a little less, painted buildings in St. Boniface and mourned changes in the landscape. (In particular, she mentions buildings pictured on pages 8, 27 and 29 of this PDF about St. Boniface.) She died in 1992, at 96.

(Above: one of my favourite paintings of hers from the book, titled Le Prunier.)

The biography contains many photos and paintings, but you can get a little idea of her life on the Radio-Canada website here.

Eating

For company this week, I made a reliable pasta recipe, but changed things up a bit for the salad, loosely following Nigella’s salad recipe in Cook Eat Repeat.

She writes:

For 2 romain hearts and 1 iceberg lettuce ([…] or indeed any lettuce you want), you will need, well in advance, to peel a large shallot and slice into 1/3 cup of fine half-moons. Put these in a jar or a bowl, and pour over 3 tablespoons of red wine vinegar. Push the curls of shallot down with a teaspoon so that they’re submerged, and replace the lid on the jar, or cover the bowl with food wrap, and leave to steep for at least 6 hours.

When you’re ready to go on the night itself, tear the lettuces into bite-sized pieces and drop them into the largest mixing bowl in the house. Stir 3 tablespoons of finely chopped chives into the vinegar-steeping shallots, followed by 1/3 cup of extra-virgin olive oil, 1/2 teaspoon of Dijon mustard and an amber drop of honey or maple syrup. Put the lid back on the jar and shake to mix, or whisk if the dressing’s in a bowl, and add salt to taste. Pour half of it over the leaves and toss gently but thoroughly for twice as long as you think it needs, then add as much of the rest as required, going slowly all the time. Turn into a very large salad bowl, or divide between two bowls, and sprinkle a couple more tablespoons of finely chopped chives over the top.

It was perfect!

Enjoying

When well-written, obituaries can provide excellent perspective, and this one, read on the TikTok account “Tips From Dead People”, did just that.

The latest episode from the podcast People I Mostly Admire titled “How to Help Kids Succeed” focused a lot on adult’s attitudes toward teenagers (like enforcer, protector, mentor) and it felt like an affirming listen.

Postcard

Milkweed is growing abundantly in the grassy parts of Henteleff Park. Recently I read this from Candace Savage’s book Prairie: A Natural History of the Heart of North America:

Some plants - like the big, bold butterfly milweed of the tall-grass prairies - vanish from the range the second they appear because the cows enjoy eating them. Out in the pasture, grizzled rangemen shove their Stetsons back off their brows and lean against their pickups to discuss the status of these “ice-cream plants” in their pastures. (p 106)

I’m so happy to think of them with this image in mind!

Happy Sunday!

A Week on Sunday (no. 21)

Behind the beautiful forevers

I’d feel a little deflated every time I finished reading a chapter from this book, but never dissuaded from picking it back up the next day. The low feeling had the effect of an unexpected take-off at the end… a kind of moral that sparkled like a discovery dissimulated from view until the final chapter. I therefore appreciated this quote, taken from one of the book’s subjects: “For some time I tried to keep the ice inside me from melting. […] But now I’m just becoming dirty water, like everyone else. I tell Allah I love Him immensely, immensely. But I tell Him I cannot be better, because of how the world is.” (p 241).

In her author’s note, Katherine Boo writes:

In the age of globalization - an ad hoc, temp-job, fiercely competitive age - hope is not a fiction. Extreme poverty is being alleviated gradually, unevenly, nonetheless significantly. But as capital rushes around the planet and the idea of permanent work becomes anachronistic, the unpredictability of daily life has a way of grinding down individual promise. Ideally, the government eases some of the instability. Too often, weak government intensifies it and proves better at nourishing corruption than human capability.

The effect of corruption I find most under acknowledged is a contraction not of economic possibility but of our moral universe. In my reporting, I am continually struck by the ethical imaginations of young people, even those in circumstances so desperate that selfishness would be an asset. Children have little power to act on those imaginations, and by the time they grow up, they may have become the adults who keep walking as a bleeding waste-picker slowly dies on the roadside, who turn away when a burned woman writhes, whose first reaction when a vibrant teenager drinks rat poison is a shrug. How does that happen? How - to use Abdul’s formulation - do children intent on being ice become water? A cliché about India holds that the loss of life matters less here than in other countries, because of the Hindu faith in reincarnation, and because of the vast scale of the population. In my reporting, I found that young people felt the loss of life acutely. What appeared to be indifference to other people’s suffering had little to do with reincarnation, and less to do with being born brutish. I believe it had a good deal to do with conditions that had sabotaged their innate capacity for moral action.” (253-54)

The above set up a kind of intellectual precondition for reading every word of this whole long substack article by Edward Zitron who writes at one point : “Everything is dominance, acquisition, growth and possession over any lived experience, because their world is one where the journey doesn’t matter, because their journeys are riddled with privilege and the persecution of others in the pursuit of success.”

Recently, at the Munk Debates, Ezra Klein relayed a quote from Charles Mann. Klein narrates:

The writer Charles Mann tells a story. He’s at a wedding in the Pacific Northwest […], he’s at a table with all these 20 somethings who want to make the world better, who see the ways in which it currently falls short. And it’s not that they’re wrong, he writes, but he says, ‘the heroic systems required to bring all the elements of their diner to these tables by the sea were invisible to them. Despite their fine education, they knew little about the mechanisms of today’s food, water, energy, and public health systems. They wanted a better world, but they didn’t know how this one worked.’

Mann’s quote is eloquent, and I would argue that both are writing in parallel on the issue of morality… Zitron writes in the same article:

We train people — from a young age! — to generalize and distance oneself from actual tasks, to aspire to doing managerial work, because managers are well-paid and "know what's going on," even if they haven't actually known what was going on for years, if they ever did so. This phenomenon has led to the stigmatization of blue-collar work (and the subsequent evisceration of practical trade and technical education across most of the developed world) in favor of universities. Society respects an MBA more than a plumber, even though the latter benefits society more — though I concede that both roles involve, on some level, shit, with the plumber unblocking it and the MBA spewing it. 

He, like Mann, like Boo, is pointing to similar symptoms of a societal ill. 

Food

Last week I had friends over for lunch and made a sweet little windowsill bouquet for the occasion.

But even more fun was building a little menu inspired by KISMET cookbook recipes. The idea was to serve a bunch of things to nibble on, as they featured on Instagram

or written about here. I’m so pleased that in Winnipeg, you can find ingredients for Marinated Feta with Dates + Rose Water Onions and Kale Tahini with Pomegranate Molasses and Garlicky Bean Dip that has an alluringly salty olive topping made with oil-cured Moroccan olives by stopping by De Luca’s for fresh bay leaves, Blady Middle Eastern for good tahini, rose water, and oil-cured Moroccan olives and Vita Health for lacinato kale. Were it not for cookbooks that show readers how to use ingredients and treat their taste buds, I wouldn’t feel encouraged to visit these smaller stores.

Lazy dog

As summer hits, bringing warm weather and sunny days, Enzo leaves fur behind and chooses air-conditioned interiors.

Postcards

This week features a little collection of bugs… The first, my sister informed me, is a fly that looks like a bee. To the left, slightly out of focus are two stink bugs, lumbering about, like heavily-armoured plunderers!

I suspect this second one, inert and cozy, is a napping bee. I love the beautiful white anemones, and always check the centres of their pretty five-petalled flowers to see what they invite. This one had two visitors at once!

The third is a mayfly, a dramatic silhouette for a dramatically short life…

Wishing you nice week ahead!

A Week on Sunday (no. 20)

Father’s Day

It would be rude not to acknowledge the fine theme of the day, considering how my own dad is dead, and rather than tell you about him, how he had thick salt and pepper hair, how he loved working in concrete, and how he answered my questions about the politics of the day; I prefer to insert a quote here, from another daughter’s reflection about her dead dad. Thus does Janet Malcolm write in Still Pictures:

He loved opera, birds, mushrooms, wildflowers, poetry, baseball. I am flooded with things I want to say about him. He left more traces of his existence than most people do, because he was always writing things down, on little cards, on onion-skin paper (his poems), in diaries, even on the walls of the cabin on a lake where he and my mother spent weekends and summer holidays. My mind is filled with lovely plotless memories of him. The memories with a plot are, of course, the ones that commit the original sin of autobiography, which gives it its vitality if not its raison d’être. They are the memories of conflict, resentment, blame, self-justification - and it is wrong, unfair, inexcusable to publish them. “Who asked you to tarnish my image with your miserable little hurts?” the dead person might reasonably ask. Since my father was not concerned with his image, he would probably not object to the recitation of my wounded-child’s grievances. But I do not wish to make it. He was a wonderful father. I know he dearly loved my sister and me. (p 32)

An ode

I couldn’t quite figure how to title this section… One of the things I like about how our household runs, something I hadn’t expected to feel when first marrying Christian and setting up house, is the ongoing physical transformation of its spaces. Our house feels like a boat that we helm, functional and cozy, the interior adjusted as needs change. This last little while has yielded the perfect example in the case of our desk downstairs.

Before our boys came along and became toddlers, we had this two-desk set up, which can be glimpsed here…

There was a computer desk, and a kind of large-table desk, both from IKEA.

I wanted a better use of space downstairs, seeing as these two desks divided the living room. I wanted something solid. Kijiji yielded this 100$ engineering-student project. We brought it home in the winter of 2015 by renting a van from Home Depot and Christian re-assembled the jigsaw-like sections.

Do you notice the boys as toddlers also feature here? Christian is the kind of dad that likes working with kids around him. 

It’s kind of special how he doesn’t get agitated as they mill about. But back to the desk…

The desk was long enough to provide working spaces for the both of us. I sat at the left end, close to the wall we painted navy blue, and to which we affixed shelving Christian had made to match the desk; and he sat at the right end. At night, I had only to glance over to see him there, doing schoolwork corrections.

It held up to all kinds of abuse…

… all sorts of craft project.

During the pandemic, I asked for a studio space in the garage, and Christian made it. (I talked about it here.)

How spaces transform seems to come from incremental banalities, glacier-like. I started working from the guest room… the backyard pool warranted a change-room. The desk in the downstairs living room was suddenly too long, given how little I used my side of it and so, with its disassembly in mind, we re-designed the studio and now call it by a fancy French name… le vestiaire. Its a small thing that makes us feel incredibly pleased with the use of space.

HAMBURGERS

This is a still life of our counter on a smoky Saturday two weeks ago… thankfully, we’ve since had rain. Other than the orange glow, this is the scene most Saturdays when Christian makes hamburgers. This is our hamburger recipe, based on one from Lisa Gay on the website Food.com:

1 teaspoon onion salt
1 teaspoon seasoning salt
12 Ritz crackers, crushed
2 tablespoons oatmeal
500g extra lean ground beef
1 large egg, beaten

Mix the dry ingredients together roughly, by hand. Mix into the ground beef, add egg, mix again and shape into burgers. Grill until done.

Podcast quote

I enjoyed Ezra Klein’s interview with Kathryn Schultz, in the course of which she reflects:

I think that in our worst moments, the thing that can sustain us is serving others. […] And it’s really powerful to remember that there are other needs in the world, that other people have needs, and that actually you can help meet them and ameliorate them in whatever small ways. There’s no community on earth that does not need your help. And it is good to get outside of your head and outside of your own misery. So if duty is part of your sense of happiness, you will never have to look far to replenish it.

Postcard

My dad was a truck driver, and he’d note spotting an eagle in the countryside on his routes throughout the province. “I saw an eagle today,” he’d say. So now, when I see an eagle, I think of it as a good omen, because it reminds me of him.

Happy Sunday!

A Week on Sunday (no. 19)

Documentaries

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

Food

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

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

Labels

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

Treat

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

Postcard

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

Have a great week!

A week on Sunday (no. 18)

Reading

I just finished reading Toms River, a book by Dan Fagin about a community that suffered the consequences of a chemical company’s environmental malpractices. It is a case not unlike one my mother told me about when I was in elementary called Love Canal. And it is not unrelated to the disaster in Bhopal, which I read about in Dominique Lapierre’s book Il était minuit cinq à Bhopal. 

From Dan Fagin’s book, I especially appreciated the history that eventually lead to the building of the chemical plant… a story that stretches all the way back to the 1800’s when

coal gas and solid coke had replaced candles, animal oils, and wood as the most important sources of light, heat, and cooking fuel in many European and American cities. Both coal gas and coke were derived from burning coal at high temperatures in the absence of oxygen, a process that left behind a thick, smelly brown liquid that was called coal tar because it resembled the pine tar used to waterproof wooden ships. But undistilled coal tar was not a very good sealant and was noxious, too, and thus very difficult to get rid of. Burning it produced hazardous black smoke, and burying it killed any nearby vegetation. The two most common disposal practices for coal tar, dumping it into open pits or waterways, were obviously unsavory. But Hofmann, a Hessian expatriate who was an endlessly patient experimenter, was convinced that coal tar could be turned into something useful.

In the course of his experiments, a chemist named William Henry Perkin made the accidental discovery of a dye that would be named anilin purple. Fagin writes:

Perkin had stumbled upon the molecular magic of aniline. [...] The young chemist did not know why the resulting color was so vivid; the ability of molecules to absorb photons at specific wavelengths based on the structure of their shared electron bonds would not be worked out for another fifty years. He did not even know exactly what he had created; the precise molecular structure of his new chemical would not be deduced until the 1990s.

Much as I appreciate the history, it’s the fact that it took so many decades to understand the chemical properties that made the dye possible that feels like a larger metaphor for all kinds of experiences that are only explained after their occurrence.

Enjoying

Jodi Ettenberg just published the 50th edition of her newsletter “Curious About Everything” and it is one I alway look forward to reading.

A friend of hers wrote a lovely appraisal of her work here.  

Food

This week I made a supper so colourful, I took a picture…

Alsatian Pan Pizza from Don’t Worry Just Cook by Bonnie Stern and Anna Rupert, and a cucumber and strawberry salad.

The Bay

Closing sales continue at the Bay, the models have congregated.

Pool

The weather was so warm earlier this week, the boys took full advantage of the pool’s early set up this year.

Postcard

And just like that, everything is green…

Have a great week!

A week on Sunday (No. 16)

The scene is joyfully warm…

Outings, food, Enzo’s birthday… the week is a celebration in pictures! The crocuses in our front yard are blooming…

Enzo turned 5 in human years, but is significantly more mature in dog years. He’s pretty good… we’re happy to have him around. He got a big dog cookie shaped like a cake, and a toy and some treats he had to unwrap. He’s good at unwrapping…

I made falafel this week and fried it perfectly golden, a success in my non-expert frying experience. And were it not for the “shaping into balls and frying” bit, which is slightly effortful, I consider falafel to be an almost perfect meal… satisfying, vegetarian, interesting, customizable… Here, on our sun-drenched table, it is served with cucumbers, tomatoes, mango and pita, and (not-pictured) tahini sauce. Recipe here.

Thursday’s outing with my mother-in-law was a chance to document The Bay’s closing.

A friend and I visited the greenhouses for her garden. Such pretty places in spring!

This geranium caught my eye… It’s called “Starry Pure White” and I went back later and bought a few for our flower bed. Its petals are serrated instead of smooth and round.

Reading

Larger questions around childhood education usually piques my interest, and this week, Austin Kleon’s newsletter lead to the appraisal of a list of books,  which lead to Josh Brake disputing a comment by Harari (“Today, nobody has any idea what to teach young people that will still be relevant in twenty years.”) with “Education is not primarily about the acquisition of skills like learning how to code, designing an engineering system, analyzing a business plan, or critiquing an essay. It's about learning to think, to ask questions, and to foster virtue.” (“Foster virtue”! A noble ideal it seems almost strange to admit…) which lead to his link to John Warner’s substack “What is the Purpose of Education?” refuting marketing around Sal Kahn’s upcoming book (titled Brave New Word) and Warner’s writing “I think education should be a process through which individuals become their best selves, which definitely includes finding their way to an economically productive life that provides material security, but is also much more than that.” All of which I found interesting.

Wobble

Sohla El-Waylly revealed her spring must-have items on Instagram, which included something that looks like these wedges, because “you don’t want to sit at a wobbly table when you eat out.” And I thought “clearly, I don’t eat out enough.” But it made me smile because my dad was always keen to fix wobbly tables with whatever cardboard or paper was at hand. Then my friend and I ate out at lunch on Friday and…

Postcard

This week a view toward the river, from beside a great big poplar and its buds. The green is just beginning to show!

Happy Sunday!

A week on Sunday (no. 15)

An almost poem

I was struck earlier this week by how when I go about making a new habit, I'm uncomfortably clumsy at first. The scene: I'm tying the dog to the playground structure so I can hang from the monkey bars. It's all awkward and I don't feel good hanging from the bars yet. But in this as in anything, it takes a little while before you develop a deftness that looks like grace.

Another moment, that afternoon: As I cross Marion Street, a delivery man has hefted a box over his shoulder and steps down from the back of his truck as his other hand catches the strap that pulls down the door as he steps down from the platform and traces an arc from the street to the curb to the reception desk.

An exchange: My mother-in-law is sitting as a passenger as I drive down the tree-lined street to our house. She says: “ceux qui sont nés pour un petit pain, ça vaut rien… elle avait raison ma mère quand elle disait ça!”
“Aimes-tu des gros pains?” I ask.
“Oui!” She says.
“Moi aussi!” I say.

Later that evening: I'm driving home from having dropped her off. The sun is setting. Its rays reflect on the power lines that swoop over the road, making them shiny pink against the dark mauve clouds.

Quote

John Green is talking about the good feeling of cheering on a team, and yet his concluding line strikes an oddly spiritual note: "But hope is still correct because things might get better, especially when we all orient our love in the same direction.”

Courage

I'm inspired by high ideals - like seeing the medical staff on “The Pitt” or reading about nurses in the oncology ward at the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia in the book Toms River. The author writes:

Many parents practically lived in the ward and went home only to shower and change clothes before rushing back. The nurses worked under the unforgiving gaze of mothers and fathers driven half-mad by lack of sleep and the sight of their children enduring a pitiless cycle of excruciating needle sticks, nausea attacks, and dressing changes. Parents would frequently take out their anger on the nurses, and the nurses who lasted on the ward learned to respond without rancor or condescension. (p 252 - emphasis mine)

What an amazing skill!

Granola

I have been making granola for myself as a snack for years, one batch lasting about a month. I first used a recipe from Orangette's blog and then switched to Joshua McFadden's in Six Seasons because it is very similar and omits the pecans. Consider this an ode to something simple I am grateful for.

National Geographic

This week I finished watching a National Geographic series titled "Photographer"  It reminded me of Chef's Table... you get to feel like you're living in someone else's life for a little bit and you get to admire people who have great talent. 

Episode 1, featuring Paul Nicklen and Cristina Mittermeier had these concluding remarks: "I have no desire to go live in a fricken' glass bubble. We are living in heaven, to think that there's been four billion years of evolution to arrive at this moment of perfection where, you know, this place is just beautiful. Where we can swim in crystal-clean water and you're surrounded by grizzly bears and black bears and there's whales that come up to you. And it's here and now." I like being reminded of the beauty of the earth!

Creative work

And I really appreciated a moment in Episode 2, from the above series, featuring Anand Varma, when he's recalling the first story he pitched to the magazine: "I had just pitched an idea that I did not know how to execute." He generously shares how challenging it was to translate an interesting subject (parasites) into an intriguing picture, that was not copying another photographer's style, that was intentional and new and that ended up making the front cover of the magazine. But it had been a struggle. At one point Varma says "None of it was working and I took over 5,000 pictures. I felt stuck. It was completely paralyzing." 

It's similar to a frustration Hattie Crisell identifies with writing. She quotes, in her Substack, from a book titled Art and Fear by David Bayles… “The artist’s life is frustrating not because the passage is slow, but because he imagines it to be fast.” Crisell comments: “Ugh - so true. I write every day, but it takes me so long for an idea to crystallize and become substantial.” I so agree!

Enjoyed

An interview with Samin Nosrat on Song Exploder.  

Postcard

This week's snapshot captures this year's first pelican! What a beautiful big bird!

Happy Sunday!

A Week on Sunday (no. 14)

Motto

Since hearing it on the season finale of White Lotus, I've found the fake Buddhist monk's phrase "There is no resolution" a comfort. Sometimes it's nice to just acknowledge that trying to reason through a thing is a weight that can be sloughed off. 

Reading

I enjoyed reading Taffy Brodesser-Akner's article "This Is the Holocaust Story I Said I Wouldn’t Write” and these two quotes stood out:

I realized, suddenly, that there was no future in which I would know enough Holocaust to move on from it. What the education was asking of me was to not move on. Not ever.

So here it is, an old Jewish story about the Holocaust and a man who somehow survived the pernicious, organized and intentional genocide of the Jews. But right behind it, just two generations later, is another story, one about the children and grandchildren who have been so malformed by the stories that are their lineage that some of them made just as eager work of running from it, only to find themselves, same as anything you run from, having to deal with it anyway.

Donald Knuth

This interview was linked somewhere else for the productivity advice provided: "my scheduling principle is to do the thing I hate most on my to-do list. By week’s end, I’m very happy." But I also like Knuth's other observations:

A person’s success in life is determined by having a high minimum, not a high maximum. If you can do something really well but there are other things at which you’re failing, the latter will hold you back. But if almost everything you do is up there, then you’ve got a good life. And so I try to learn how to get through things that others find unpleasant.

My life would not be complete if it was all about cut and dried things. The mystical things I don’t understand give me humility. There are things beyond my understanding.

In mathematics, I know when a theorem is correct. I like that. But I wouldn’t have much of a life if everything were doable. This knowledge doesn’t tear me apart. Rather, it ensures I don’t get stuck in a rut. 

Cooking

Ever since coming across Dead Greg's recipes on TikTok, I've been wanting to try the Gourmet Grilled Cheese with Christian and the kids. This week I finally did, and it was as good as they said! Really charming story here. 

Postcards

This week, no more snow, the lawn is raked, the green is coming up. But just last Saturday, the evening walk looked like this:

The still stunning milkweed.

And this was captured at a moment when a cloud shadow fell across the trees on the other side of the river and highlighted the gold tones in the grass nearby. 

A Week on Sunday (no. 13)

Intro

I feel a little like the whole news situation involving our neighbours is akin to being in the vicinity of an argument. There’s tension in the air, therapist-like suggestions on social media, and people who go about willfully business-as-usual. I’m fine, but I’m a little distracted? 

Pot-pourri

In the midst of Spring Break, there is still time to read, thank goodness. Reading from all kinds of books yields a collage of quotes… There’s William Trevor’s short story “Broken Homes” in which the main character is 81 years old:

The dread of having to leave Catherine Street ordered her life. With all her visitors she was careful, constantly on the lookout for signs in their eyes which might mean they were diagnosing her as senile. It was for this reason that she listened so intently to all that was said to her, that she concentrated, determined to let nothing slip by. It was for this reason that she smiled and endeavoured to appear agreeable and cooperative at all times. She as well aware that it wasn’t going to be up to her to state that she was senile, or to argue that she wasn’t, when the moment came.

In Goodbye to Clocks Ticking, Joseph Monninger catches himself feeling annoyed because cancer is forcing him to accept letting go of control.

What I rejected was the possibility, the absolute likelihood, that I needed help. That I needed guidance. […] As a former English professor, it reminded me of Regan’s statement to her father and liege, King Lear, when she points out that he needs governance.

Regan. O, sir, you are old!
Nature in you stands on the very verge
Of her confine. You should be rul’d, and led
By some discretion that discerns your state
Better than you yourself.

In Olivia Laing’s book Funny Weather, I met Derek Jarman, and find his last creative project, his garden, so arresting. 

If this all seems a little bleak so far, all a little too old age and dying, there’s this curious incongruity in what Canadians consider their “back yard” and what the British consider their “garden”. I found this while reading A History of Domestic Space by Peter Ward:

A pair of French doors led outdoors from the dining room at the back of the dwelling and, as we stepped outside, I mentioned what an attractive back yard they had. 'Garden,' he corrected me, one of the endless small cultural confusions that bedevil Canadians in Britain. Two words had betrayed my rough postcolonial origins. In his world a garden was a tranquil enclave of lawns and flowers. In mine a garden might be a plot of worthy vegetables or a handsome floral border, but it formed part of something larger and rather more crude - a yard.

This, he writes, comes from the farm where our farming ancestors had yards

taken up by kitchen gardens, chicken coops, animal pens, storage sheds, and the like. In any case, the grassy swards and floral bowers found in occasional farmyards did little more than decorate utilitarian spaces.

And should we push the fun of contrasts just a little further? This week, I was listening to Harry Belafonte at Carnegie Hall and this made me smile:

(Have you heard of Harry Belafonte? I’m pretty sure that prior to this 1000 Recordings adventure, I had not. Which isn’t the point… I’m young, he’s dead, my musical knowledge is only beginning to expand. But what a delight to listen to his voice! This album was really nice.)

Good advice

I came across this woman’s point of view that felt both kind and mature.

A good meal

This week we had this Creamy Chickpea Pasta With Spinach and Rosemary and it was delicious!

Postcards

The remaining snow is ice and slush slumped in shadows. The colours are pretty blond and deep blues…

A Week on Sunday (no. 12)

Thoughts on Thrifting

I took time last weekend and this one to visit thrift stores in Winnipeg, which I hadn’t all last year. First I get overwhelmed. Then I remind myself that it’s fun. 

And it really is! I make a game of quickly going through each piece of clothing on a rack, testing feel and design and checking the label to see if I’ve guessed the quality right. 

I have rules: an aversion for some brands, an exception for cheaper fabric or un-fancy brands if the item looks brand new, an aim for classic cuts (no shoulder holes), colours (I don’t care for purple), materials (is that wool?), and a dismissal of store categories (I browse across size, gender and type of clothing).

I now have more 5 more pairs of pants I didn’t a month ago… I found a belt making me retroactively happy I didn’t buy the one at the Bay - the store that is now closing, that has sprung a slew of pink and white 15%-off sale signs like a field of clover in spring. 

Thrifting takes the weight off of shopping for new clothes, and quirky accessories, like this scarf I could unwind from my neck and read if I was ever bored, let me be playful without feeling frivolous.

Thrifting is a pastime. As I comb the racks, I feel people around me. I’m conscious of picking through items that unknown others have dropped off, I’m spending time considering what I could wear, what I like enough, really enough to try, to buy, what others would think of my choice, what my choice says about my style… What is my style… Is everything all vanity… 

The counterpoint is this: that by taking time to examine clothing, I’m learning… I’m not only teaching myself brands, materials, quality, I’m noticing what people donate; I’m looking at items that have been assembled an ocean away, advertised in a store, purchased at some point, worn or stored before being passed along and processed and hung on these squeaky hangers for my benefit. Sometimes, the thought of all that inspires a kind of gentle reverence for clothing, for the journey it took to land in this neutral wall, bright fluorescents building. Mentally, I bless the people who were part of that journey… the lowly workers in particular. More often than not, I leave feeling grateful for the experience.

Baking

This week, I got compliments on the Banana Bread Blondies from King Arthur Baking Company. They have a generous list of free recipes and this one is a keeper. Not only is it easy to make, but it uses bananas in an unusual way…

Cooking

In other news, I made Smitten Kitchen’s “Meatballs Marsala with Egg Noodles” this week. I had a craving. But also, I keep notes and record the meals we’ve had week to week, year after year. I’d tried the recipe for the first time last year and noted “kids don’t care for the sauce.” But I made it anyway, and curiously, the kids’ opinion has changed from a year ago. They could not recall disliking the sauce. I take this as tastebud maturation!

Writing (for a Blog)

This series of blog posts by Tracy Durnell, titled “Mindset of More”, has been gently thought-provoking and I enjoyed reading through them… This other post by James Horton, “The Non-Writer’s Guide to Writing A Lot” could seem to contradict Durnell by its title, but in fact it aligns well, since Horton says “Write for joy” and Durnell writes “it is more rewarding to treat writing as atelic, meaningful in itself.” I think Matthew Gallaway expresses this in a way I relate to when he writes:

blogs in my mind are still the best means of subjectively capturing the world around us in a manner that's best suited for the internet

and

I still like to blog, and I have no plans to quit. It's a place where I can write a few words and share some pictures that for whatever reason mean or meant something to me. It's not about making money or even trying to, which is itself an act of #resistance in our sadly money-obsessed culture. And while I sometimes question the meaningfulness of my work, I never question the meaningfulness of others who are doing the same thing, which would dictate that (if you took my neurotic insecurity out of the equation) the work is meaningful to someone, even if (stay with me here) that someone is me, or a past version of me.

(Also, I liked this post of his about opera.)

Postcards

Spring, while it is greenery and asparagus for people south of us, is fields of frozen half-melt and quiet hopeful plants.

As it moves along, inch by inch, snow turns to puddles that freeze.

Can you spy a fox?

It drove Enzo crazy. He howled wildly as I pulled him along and the fox watched, as if amused, sitting down even, as we passed.

Then, a new snowy landscape on Friday morning…

A Week on Sunday (no. 11)

Dream

This week I dreamt I was in Concours oratoire (a public-speaking  contest at school). My chosen subject was how great it was to be a parent. I realized my audience was a little young. I thought to myself afterward that I should have framed the subject as: “doing hard things is worthwhile.” 

I remembered the dream the next morning when I was blow-drying my hair. 

Quote

Dan Winters in the National Geographic documentary series “Photographer” quoted Henri Cartier-Bresson’s expression: “Life is once forever”. It’s so poetic in that way that poetry is a small container for deep meanings.

Confused

I thought bemused was a variation on amused… I thought it meant a lower key amusement, like the affect of a person observing a thing happening, in which they’re involved, but not too much, so that everything is just mild… In fact, bemused means confused. There is no amusement.

Country music

This week I checked off the last on the list of country albums from Tom Moon’s 1000 Recordings to Hear Before You Die. Having listened through folk music before this, I think I might prefer it. Some of the albums are Celtic, one was Acadian, and those sounds from my cultural background are immediately familiar. But country music makes me laugh… From “Don’t Think it Ain’t Been Fun” Lefty Frizzell sings about his heart: “it’s in so many pieces I’ve run out of glue”. Or when Hank Williams sings in “I’ll never get out of this world alive” that he’s so poor, 

These shabby shoes I'm wearin' all the time
Are full of holes and nails
And brother, if I stepped on a worn out dime
I bet a nickel I could tell you
if it was heads or tails.

Others, like Tammy Wynette’s “I Don’t Want to Play House” make me sad.

Postcards

The weather has varied this week. I am still wearing crampons.

The number of geese on the river has increased. When it is warmer, they walk about and swim out on the water.

When it is cold, they group together. If this was their postcard, they’d write: “Wish you were here. We could use the body heat.”

Trees are still skeletal.

A week on Sunday (no. 10)

Quotes

Reading Barbarian Days by William Finnigan taught me so much about surfing.

1. The history! 

In old Hawaii, before the arrival of Europeans, surfing had religious import. After prayers and offerings, master craftsmen made boards from sacred koa or wiliwili trees. Priests blessed swells, lashed the water with vines to raise swells, and some breaks had heiaus (temples) on the beach where devotees could pray for waves. This spiritual awareness did not preclude raucous competition, even large-scale gambling. (p 27)

This was not what the Calvinist missionaries who began arriving in Hawaii in 1820 had in mind for the islanders as a way of life. Hiram Bingham who led the first missionary party, which found itself in a crowd of surfers before it had even landed (...) 

Twenty-seven years later, Bingham wrote, "They decline and discontinuance of the surfboard, as civilization advances, may be accounted for by the increase in modesty, industry or religion." He was not wrong about the decline of surfing. Hawaiian culture had been destroyed, and the people decimated by European diseases; between 1778 and 1893, the Hawaiian population shrank from an estimated eight hundred thousand to forty thousand, and by the end of the nineteenth century surfing had all but disappeared. Westwick and Neushul count Hawaiian surfing less a victim of successful missionary zeal, however, than of extreme demographic collapse, dispossession, and a series of extractive industries - sandalwood, whaling, sugar - that forced the surviving islanders into a cash economy and stripped them of free time.

2. The skill!

The close, painstaking study of a tiny patch of coast, every eddy and angle, even down to individual rocks, and in every combination of tide and wind and swell - a longitudinal study, through season after season - is the basic occupation of surfers at their local break. Getting a spot wired - truly understanding it - can take years. At very complex breaks, it's a lifetime's work, never completed. This is probably not what most people see, glancing seaward, noting surfers in the water, but it's the first-order problem that we're out there trying to solve: what are these waves doing exactly, and what are they likely to do next? Before we can ride them, we have to read them, or at least make a credible start on the job. (p 75)

3. The motivation

(…) surfing became an excellent refuge from the conflict - a consuming, physically exhausting, joy-drenched reason to live. It also, in its vaguely outlaw uselessness, its disengagement from productive labor, neatly expressed one's disaffection. (p 91)

Chasing waves in a dedicated way was both profoundly egocentric and selfless, dynamic and ascetic, radical in its rejection of the values of duty and conventional achievement. (p 96)

4. The paradox

For me, and not only for me, surfing harbors this paradox: a desire to be alone with waves fused to an equal desire to be watched, to perform. (p 314)

5. The growing popularity

Surfing blew up, I'm not sure when. It was always too popular, in my narrow view. Crowds were always a problem at well-known breaks. But this was different. The number of people surfing doubled and doubled again - five million estimated worldwide in 2002, twenty million in 2010 - with kids taking it up in practically every country with a coastline, even if it was only a big lake. (p 418) 

One memoir, and I’ve learned so much about surfing…

crafty

These things are called oak galls and people make ink from them.

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Cooking

If cooking is a hobby, inspiration can be taken everywhere. A post from Tess on TikTok made me feel like I should try homemade lasagna. 

Pasta recipes have opinions on type of flour, whether two types should be mixed, in what percentage, with spinach or not...

Asking your teenager to take a few pictures yields dramatic angles…

The thing about trying a new recipe, a 10 hour lasagna if you count babysitting the bolognese for 6 hours, the dough resting for 1, homemade ricotta draining for 1 and assembly for 2, is that it makes it a little daunting to do-over if there are things to tweak. Still, I find Suzanne Goin's words in Sunday Suppers at Lucques inspiring:

To be a great cook you must be an interactive cook. Using all of your senses throughout the entire process is key. Watch, smell, listen to, and most of all taste the dish as you go along. Cooking isn't an assembly line or a chemistry project - adding A to B to C and then stirring 10 minutes. When food is cooking properly it's "happy" and "dancing" in the pan, glistening and sizzling along the way. (p 6)

And I think trying new things lets you get past the nervous first stage, and closer to the feeling Goin describes.

Postcard

I spy a goose!

A week on Sunday (no. 9)

Thoughts

News feels like a constant rain, a subject as pervasive as weather. Keeping up on news is a way of keeping conversational. But not here... Here, I never feel like talking about the news. I feel like, if I talked about news, I'd be a big phony, like the phonies Holden Caulfield calls out all throughout Catcher in the Rye. And Catcher in the Rye is what Marie-Hélène and I are reading right now... Then, this week, Tyler Cowen wrote why he didn't feel like writing about "various topics" on Marginal Revolution, and I suddenly felt the same way... words to a feeling, someone else expressed better than you. At number 1: "1. I feel that writing about the topic will make me stupider." And stupid is a good word... it means "Emotionally, morally, or spiritually dull, numb, or indifferent; lacking in natural feeling, moral sense, or spiritual awareness." 

Fandom

I follow any link that leads to more Robert Caro, and Kottke served up one to another recent interview, by Chris Heath, with more writing tips! Like routines: "When not beset by distractions, Caro keeps to the same work process he has had for decades. He rises early, puts on a jacket and tie, and walks to his nearby office, picking up a croissant and coffee on the way." And admiration for Ernest Hemingway, from whom he learned, “Every day, you write first before you do anything else. That was a rule. And I followed that.” And a quote from the eulogy he wrote when Hemingway died:

The Ernest Hemingway who was a legend in his own lifetime was the bearded, barrel-chested central figure in a boisterous tapestry of gin and bananas and giant marlins. But the Ernest Hemingway who created the work that will be remembered in centuries to come was the man who, for 40 years, dragged himself out of bed at 5 a.m. to begin long mornings of loneliness before unyielding pads of yellow paper.

Drawing

I never really understood Lynda Barry's excitement over drawing with young children until this week when a friend's 5-year-old showed me his sketchbook, and critiqued mine. He added missing wings to a bird I'd doodled, and took inspiration from a grid I'd drawn. I got to admire his spontaneity, his wonderful unself-consciousness. We inspired each other, we doodled subjects we could think of on the spot. Now I get it, when she said in her typewriter interview with Austin Kleon: "This summer I spent 3 days a week drawing with [4 year olds]. [...] They changed me in a deep way in 3 months. A feeling of aliveness and realness is what they gave me all the time."

Cooking

Ali Slagle's Mighty Meatballs! Served on top a soft heap of mashed potatoes, with a few bright peas on the side for colour and slices of baguette. Comfort food to the max!

Postcards

This week begins the long slow spring melt, when warm days turned back snow to slush, then cold days return and make the slush into ice. The colour palette is limited... but the Red River looks blue at this time of year, and that is when it is prettiest.

Also... a view of the trees planted last year in Henteleff, awaiting the warmth to grow a little more...

A Week on Sunday (no. 8)

Disappearing references

Disappearing references: My mother-in-law has always wished she was taller. She makes several jokes about it. There is the self-deprecating one, that she would be too vain if she had been tall. There is the one with a French saying that goes: “dans les petits pots, les meilleurs onguents” (something like the “good things come in small servings” in English) and the rapid-fire response she gives “et dans les grands, des excellents” that rhymes.

Once, when I was visiting her in 2021 and we were sitting and chatting she told me that she and her friend were called “Mutt and Jeff”. I happened to be recording her anecdotes; it was the first time I’d heard the reference. (It was a very casual conversation so forgive my unmodulated voice…)

I didn’t understand it as part of the vernacular of the period until reading this passage from Barbarian Days: “Physically, we were an unlikely pair. I was more than a foot taller. Caryn’s mother, Inge, liked to call us Mutt and Jeff.” (p 125) 

Serendipitously finding a cross-reference is a perennial source of delight. 

Quotable

Some deep relationship wisdom from Gabriel on Humans of New York: “They [your partner] pay the tax for what happened when you were a kid. That’s why it’s so important to heal childhood wounds.”

Liking

This channel on TikTok, called CultFlav, does cookbook reviews I really appreciate. They are very thorough and I learn a lot just watching them interact in the kitchen.

Cooking

This week, I made Smitten Kitchen’s Pancetta, White Bean, Swiss Chard (Kale) Pot Pies for our Thursday evening visitors, not having revisited the recipe for years. They’re cute and while they do have three steps (filling, sauce, lid) the steps are easy. And, um, I forgot how good they were…. really, really nice.

Baking

Last Sunday I made éclairs, large and small, but only the small choux pastry was properly dried out in the baking. This miniature format was nonetheless well liked, and so, all éclairs from my kitchen will be tiny. Ha! Also… jam thumbprints, with strawberry jam from last summer.

Not yet glazed…

Postcards

The warmer weather earlier this week has already melted the ice on the river… On the other side, a venerable tree in King’s Park.

Enzo and I walk past Parkview Terrace’s ongoing development. This week, the impact hammering of sheet piles being driven in has a sound that reverberates off the Waterfront condo that changes as you walk.

A week on Sunday (No. 7)

Thoughts

I like the word resentment. I like how it is defined in the OED as “a sense of grievance” and I like the word “grievance” because it expresses a “state of things which is felt to be oppressive”. I never really thought of resentment before, and thinking about it now feels like the discovery of a unique blend, when before I’d been only thinking of varietals. (I like the comparison to wine.) (I also like the comparison to wine because wine takes time and resentment seems to be uniquely tied up with time.) When I google resentment, it assumes it’s a feeling I have in my marriage. When I try to add time, it assumes I’m a resentful caregiver. Maybe sometimes I am. Mostly, I wish an old person wasn’t resentful about aging. But there’s lots of things that are hard about aging that I should take into consideration, before being annoyed by their complaining. They complain. I wish they didn’t. It makes me feel ineffective. But feeling ineffective, argues Flannery O’Connor, is the nature of a kind of suffering. And that kind of suffering has merit. “We help overcome this lack of effectiveness simply by suffering on account of it.” So, I suppose that getting old and complaining about it should not be so harshly judged, because Flannery O’Connor says as much in a letter about another old person: “The harshness with which you speak of Caroline is not justified. She may be basically irreligious but we are not judged by what we are basically. We are judged by how hard we use what we have been given. Success means nothing to the Lord, nor gracefulness. She tries and tries violently and has a great deal to struggle against and to overcome.” So there. If I don’t like an old person’s grievances, that’s too bad. They should be allowed to have them. And I should hold my peace.

Food

This week, we had Caroline Chambers’ Sweet Potato and Beef Flautas and they were delicious!

Enjoying

How this poem, Gate A-4 by Naomi Shihab Nye is like a short story.

Postcards

In the spirit of amateur photographers from the Golden Age of mail by post, here are two pictures  from my walks this week… Enzo, when startled, deploys himself like a four-legged tripod, limbs rigid, nose pointed at the offending thing…. In this case, it’s a Christmas tree thrown onto the river, and this beagle doesn’t know what to make of it.

This is the progress of a condo called The Banks. Two and a half years ago (July 30, 2022) it was a recently cleared lot and the fences had not yet gone up so that Christian and I could take a bike ride and look at the view sitting on a giant log, imagining the ghosty presence of families who once lived there.

Listening, reading, watching

Listening

Guest journalist James Pogue recommended a podcast series titled "God's Socialist" and I jumped in, eyes closed. This is my preferred form of cliff-diving, involving no physical harm, but an equivalent mental exhilaration. He describes the series to Ezra Klein as "a counternarrative of the entire history of post-1960s progress."

The Guardian wrote, in 2018, "The Jonestown massacre was, before 9/11, the largest single incident of intentional civilian death in American history" and I suppose that that is what obscured it from my view... I was in Grade 12 when the towers fell. Therefore Darryll Cooper's research for this long-episode podcast series provided an unfamiliar view. I especially liked the episode titled "Head North, Then Turn Left" summarizing civil rights movements. I also admit there are lengthy parts of episodes I found hard to listen to.

I tend to avoid historical podcasts of this type... Honestly, I think it's because I prefer to read books because books are so much easier to put down, pick up, cross-reference, and situate yourself in. When I listen to a lengthy podcast, I feel a bit enslaved to the host's choices, like I'm being taken on a cruise rather than being invited to a dinner party. 

That would be all I have to say about that, except, coincidentally, I've been listening through Tom Moon's selection of folk albums from his 2008 book 1,000 Recordings to Hear Before You Die. I've always been a little ashamed about my poor musical taste and year over year resolve to broaden my listening. But Tim Moon's book is imposing and I soon get overwhelmed. It wasn't until I was listening to Glen Weldon's New Year's resolutions (here) that I found the key to tackling this project... Mr. Weldon had targeted a specific movie genre, and so I too, would target music by genre. I started 2025 with Folk, for no reason except that it seemed like an innocuous choice. 

It turned out to be so much more than just innocuous. Take Moon's description of "The Essential Ramblin' Jack Elliott"... Described as "a pretension-free performer with a gruff voice" Moon credits Elliott for preserving all kinds of music... He writes, "Thing is, that arcane stuff in his head is culturally significant, a part of American history that has escaped the books. Just by singing his simple songs, Elliott pulls listeners into that earlier time - when personality mattered, when entertaining meant telling a story (...)." (p 255). "Buffalo Skinners" is an example that seems like it could apply to history on the Canadian prairies. (I had the kids listen to "In the Shade of the Old Apple Tree" because it was so hilarious to hear for the first time.) 

I felt this pull "into [an] earlier time" listening to the Pete Seeger album of his 1963 concert at Carnegie Hall. Having just listened through the above podcast series, It felt both thrilling and poignant to hear him remark once or twice about the marches in Birmingham. What historical immediacy in my ears! But also, what enjoyment... how music can be just some pathetic notes, and then suddenly morph into a feeling. I liked Tim Buckley's album “Dream Letter” for that, songs like "Love from Room 109" and "Carnival Song" and especially "Hallucinations".... I'm thoroughly enjoying this musical adventure!

Reading

I like reading from three books at once… something from Francine Prose’s list, something educational, and something fun, like a memoir. Right now, I have William Trevor’s The Collected Stories, Julie Satow’s When Women Ran Fifth Avenue, and William Finnegan’s Barbarian Days. Such disparate book subjects can lead to serendipitous matches though… For example, a short story by William Trevor titled “Nice Day at School” involves a girl being harassed at school. She considers how she cannot involve her parents in her dilemma, for, as the author writes:

Her mother was trapped, married to him, obliging him so that she’d receive housekeeping money out of which she could save for her morning glass of gin. He was trapped himself, going out every night in a doorman’s uniform, the Prince of Hackney with a bad back. He crushed her mother because he’d been crushed himself. How could either of them be expected to bother if she spoke of being mocked, and then asked them questions, seeking reassurance? (p 167)

Finnegan too was also harassed at school. He writes:

I don’t know what my parents thought. Cuts and bruises, even black eyes, could be explained. Football, surfing, something. My hunch, which seems right in retrospect, was that they couldn’t help, so I told them nothing. (p 10)

I suppose it’s because of being a parent that these strike me… In such neat words, a deep pool of thought, that strange gap between a parent and a child that you have to work at bridging in so many ways…

Watching

I finally finished The Taste of Things on my own this week. Christian asked me if I liked it and I hesitated. It’s the kind of movie that falls more into the category of artistry than plain enjoyment and when that happens, I like hearing what people with better judgement have to say about it. Roger Ebert’s review offered the perfect explanation. I especially liked the inclusion of MFK’s quote at the end, tipping my hesitation a little more toward a kind of retrospective enjoyment. Funny how that is, eh? 

Attachments, etc.

I'm often held captive by the feeling that I cannot publish a blog post unless I've spent time gathering and synthesizing a quantity of information. Real life impedes such a habit however when you find yourself having ended one book and started three others. I am confronted with my own attachment to how I think something should be done. 

Being attached to something can be an obvious flaw. In Caro's biography of Robert Moses, it is a recurring, damning theme:

About building more roads and ignoring mass transportation, Caro writes:

But for New York, only one mind mattered, and that mind would not change.
As Moses' first postwar mileage had been opening, he had been as confident of the wisdom of his policies as he had been when he announced them in 1945. [...] Now, in 1954, with considerable new mileage open, the problems were worse than ever, but the confidence was diminished not a whit. All that was necessary, he said - and believed - was more of the same. (p 918)

Being attached to something can be a worthy endeavor, or a good intention, or a positive personally-held belief as in the case of John Green's signing tip-in sheets for his books and then being physically forced to give up this practice, which turns out to be its own kind of sacrifice:

Being forced to give up attachments can be, unknowingly, the necessary opening made for something new, or better. Reading Birds, Art, Life by Kyo Maclear, I found a quote along these lines from Amy Fusselman: "You would be surprised at how hard it is to be open to new and different good things. Being open to new things that are bad - disasters, say - is pretty easy... But new, good things are a challenge." (p 28)

--

This week, two things grabbed my attention. First, having listened to John Green's video above, I borrowed the book he mentions in it: Mortification: Writers' Stories of Their Public Shame, edited by Robin Robertson. In it, there's a little essay by James Wood that recounts how in one of his books, he mistakes characters' names from a Jane Austen story and adds a further misspelling in the same paragraph. He explains: "As  far as I know, these were the only errors in my book; yet in one small paragraph, three howlers!" And...

Like most writers, and certainly most journalists, I work, and work most happily, from memory. Memory is organic. The notorious fact-checkers of the New Yorker are irritating not only because they often prove how fallible are our memories, but because they seem to mechanize what ought to be a natural, unmediated, fast-moving process. (p 144)

Being myself more on the side of fact-checkers (induced to paralysis should I be unable to check my facts...) I discovered the existence of an opposite personality trait. Wood continues:

But why do we all prefer to use our memories rather than look things up? The memory, after all, is an error-producing organ, as the police know only too well from millions of fallacious eyewitnesses. We do it not only because it is easier than trotting to the shelves, but to show off - not to others, who after all can't know we have used our memories unless we tell them so in print. We do it to show off to ourselves. But since using our memory is certainly bound to lead to error, the conclusion must be that showing off to ourselves is really - however unconsciously - commending ourselves for getting things wrong. Showing off to ourselves is getting things wrong to the secret satisfaction of our unconscious. And the further conclusion to be drawn from this is that we want to be caught at it. (p 145)

Second, these character descriptions in William Trevor's short story "The General's Day":

The General's breakfast was simple: an egg poached lightly, two slices of toast and a pot of tea. It took him ten minutes to prepare and ten to consume. As he finished he heard the footsteps of the woman who daily came to work for him. They were slow, dragging footsteps implying the bulk they gracelessly shifted. The latch of the door rose and fell and Mrs Hinch, string bags and hairnet, cigarette cocked from the corner of her mouth, stood grinning before him. 'Hullo,' this woman said, adding as she often did, 'my dear.' (p 30).

So much conveyed in so few lines!

I finished reading the Power Broker

I finished reading the Power Broker! Granted, I started during pandemic lockdown and listed it as a resolution in 2024…. By January 1st of this year, I had only 375 pages left to read. It’s a big book, not only heavy and over a thousand pages long… the pages themselves are large and packed with words. For university, I remember timing myself and finding that for one of Peter Gay’s books on the Enlightenment, I could read 50 pages in an hour. With the Power Broker I averaged 25.

I don’t live in New York and I don’t know if I’ll ever visit it, but The Power Broker is fascinating because it is a biography, because the subject in question is (I strongly suspect) a narcissist, and because the author, Robert Caro, is an amazing writer and researcher.

My favourite chapter (titled “And When the Last Law Was Down”) incorporates a description of one of Moses’ traits (vicious personal attacks), a description of a historic park (The Battery), his plan to build a bridge through it and the author’s description of a lesson of moral responsibility (letting ends justify means). 

First, Caro describes the park. He begins: “Sunlight, serenity, a sense of the sea - and something more. For walk into Battery Park at its Broadway entrance and staring at you, at the end of a long, broad grande allée, was an odd-looking building.” (650) He describes the building and he describes its history and I like all of it, but the park’s website does a great job of condensing everything with the help of visuals here: The Battery. Caro says, it was important, because: “In New York in which the old was ruthlessly demolished to make way for the new, the fort was pricelessly rich in ghosts of the city's great past.” (652)

I was listening to The 99% Invisible podcast series breakdown of The Power Broker, and the host in the 7th episode dealing with this chapter, Roman Mars, is a little critical of Caro’s invocation of historical ghosts. He says:

I do think that some of this reverie about, like, George Washington once walked here, and Lafayette had a brownstone nearby, is often used to stop cities working for people of the modern day. When you have so much reverence for history, […] nothing can move forward, and cities also need to function for the people who live today, and so it’s always a balance. […] When I read this, I can totally hear that in this case, it is the right argument for stopping the wrong project. But often, this is the wrong argument used to stop the right project.

It’s a comment among many that illustrates one of the reasons why I enjoyed this 99% Invisible podcast series… They balance Caro’s work, now published 50 years ago, against a modern-day perspective.

But back to quotes. 

Moses wants to build a bridge:

Sunshine, serenity, a sense of sea, a sense of history - build the bridge that Robert Moses wanted to build and they would be accessible to the streets of Lower Manhattan no longer. Build that bridge and the vista of New York Harbor would be destroyed, the majestic harbor sweep thrown into shadow, the sheer-rising skyscraper mass slashed in half and blocked, on of the wonders of the world turned into mere, rather unimportant backdrop for just another East River bridge not very different from the three others just behind it. (653)

A group of reformers, as Caro describes them, tried to stop him, by trying to convince him that a tunnel was better. Moses didn’t like tunnels, he preferred bridges and he met their efforts with derision. In this case, he insulted their members:

As for the vicious personal attacks, Moses had been making vicious personal attacks for years. The only difference was that this time the target was them - and they therefore saw how unfair the attacks were. Previously they had laughed indulgently at Moses' propensity for personal vituperation, regarding it as a harmless idiosyncrasy; perhaps, when one took into account all the crooked politicians, hack bureaucrats and selfish private individuals with whom Moses had to deal, even admirable. In that laughter and that indulgence was a feeling that Moses' methods, however distasteful, however antithetical to their principles, were justified by the difficulties he had to surmount to Get Things Done. (669)

Realizing at one point that they would not get through to him, no matter the arguments they used, some were shocked. But Caro writes, “They had no justification for such an emotion.” (669) Moses had not changed; it was they who were wrong for thinking he could or even should. And this is the moral lesson I love. To illustrate it, Caro refers to a movie my dad liked:

In A Man for All Seasons, Sir Thomas More warns young Roper about the consequences of letting ends justify means. When the young man says he would "cut down every law in England" to "get after the Devil," More replies: "Oh? And when the last law was down, and the Devil turned round on you - where would you hide, Roper, the laws all being flat?" The reformers could have benefited from More's warning. Robert Moses was of course not a Devil, but to give Moses power in the city, they had cut down the "laws" in which they believed. Now those laws no longer existed to protect the city from him. For the reformers and the city they loved, there was no place to hide. There was nothing the city, opposed to the bridge, could do to keep Moses from building it. (671)

I really enjoyed this book. I’ve enjoyed the discussion around it and the special 50th-anniversary interviews Caro has done for it. Tangentially, I’ve also been enjoying Rob Stephenson’s newsletter “The Neighborhoods” because it blends photography and history so nicely but it’s also studded with the present-day realities of Moses’ building projects.

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Other things: We really liked Suzanne Goin’s Lemon Tart (made with regular lemons), which can be seen here.

Since spending less time on social media, I feel like I can relate to this, and the article she links to here.

Orange

One thing leads to another…

I thought I’d go walking without bringing along a camera. Who cares? I thought… I’m not a photographer.

But I kind of missed it. 

Then I thought that really, a camera is only there to assist my writing. I’m not shooting for the sake of a picture. I’m shooting for the sake of a story. 

I like seeing things over time… But accruing the observations takes a lot of time. 

Right now? 

This week I photographed trees that have been marked for removal, likely  because of Dutch Elm Disease… 

Once on a walk, I came across a plume of black smoke to discover a city worker supervising the gasoline-fed fire on the riverbank of a pile of newly cut wood from an infected tree. 

The numbers nailed to these trunks suggest these trees are inventoried on a list somewhere… a unique distinction among their tree peers of being singled out because they’re sick.

They stand out against blue skies, the white ground and the brown in between. No monarch butterfly wings, no dazzle of fall leaves. Orange is hidden away under jackets unless you’re hunting, in imported seasonal citrus protected indoors; some navel oranges set aside, if you want to bake, for a nice loaf.