Serving up the usual: reading, eating, looking!
1.
Virginia Woolf’s Diaries: I plug away at a thesis chapter, editing, adding 500 words like little historical dispatches while braving daily life of meals, appointments, sick days from school (and gingerale refills), trips to Costco, lunch dates and Valentine dates. The blog is for fun and silliness, just as Virginia Woolf would have recommended it. She writes:
My notion is that there are offices to be discharged by talent for the relief of genius: meaning that one has the play side; the gift when it is mere gift, unapplied gift; and the gift when it is serious, going to business. And one relieves the other. (From her diary entry October 27th, 1928).
2.
A memoir: For my thesis, I've been re-reading Telesphore Robert's On va passer l'hiver. He writes stories from his childhood in the years following his father's untimely death from a car accident. He was only four at the time, but he recalls scenes from the vigil, his mother's determination to survive on the prairie with a family of eight children, and the scrapes he got into as a school boy. It offers a glimpse of life in the 1920s on a farm and casting aside the sometimes strident anti-clerical, anti-government opinions, it's an entertaining read, with scenes I relayed to the kids at supper time. As a reader, one gets the sense that Telesphore admires his mother... still, life back then was rough. When she married her husband, she spent two years living with his family, her mother-in-law insisting she learn how to live on the prairie.
Cela a été utile, voire indispensable à ma mère, elle qui avait été élevée dans la ouate chez ses parents, grand-père et grand-mère Campeau, qui avaient un magasin général à St-Norbert, et qui avaient des sous au point de faire instruire leur aînée pour en faire une soeur enseignante et une pianiste. Mais dans ce temps-là, comme aujourd'hui, le rêve des parents ne se réalisait pas toujours.
C'est ainsi que maman, dont les mains ne connaissaient que le chapelet, le piano et les fleurs, s'est vue obligée de se durcir, et les mains et le coeur. Sans quoi, on se faisait des ampoules et des blessures qui nous obligeaient à nous arrêter, chose qu'on ne pouvait se permettre, la ferme commandant inlassablement. (p 113-4)
Nous étions tous foncièrement convaincus qu'elle aurait donné sa vie pour nous, n'importe quand. Ça, c'est l'amour absolu. Mais enfants, nous ne pouvions arriver à cette conclusion et, lorsqu'en quête d'une caresse, d'une manifestation affective quelconque, nous essuyions une rebuffade, nous ne pouvions savoir que c'était par peur de ramollir, par frousse de se laisser aller à la sentimentalité, de relâcher sa poigne sur le mancheron de la vie qu'elle s'était tracée: "Nous allons survivre." Et même, depuis peu, elle avait élargi ses horizons: "Nous allons vivre," c'est-à-dire, installer les garçons sur des fermes à eux, faire instruire les filles ou ceux qui le voudront. "Nous allons être riches," pas de dettes, et chacun sera en mesure de gagner sa vie. (p 93).
3.
In the kitchen: I'm charmed by recipes where food is delivered in a little package... egg rolls, piradzini, calzones, apple turnovers. Recently we tried Julia Turshen's Everything Bagel Handpies, and they were delicious! I bought Everything Bagel Spice at Black Market Provisions.
I also made Smitten Kitchen's Chocolate Peanut Butter Cup Cookies, and they too were unanimously well received. (A bit fussy imo...)
4.
Art: Follow artists on Instagram and it becomes a delight to scroll... I'm inspired by Julia Rothman, Sandi Hester, Magali Franov and Kristen Vardanega at Little Tiny Egg .
5.
Pictures: In winter, the Red River turns a deep blue that contrasts so beautifully against the white snow. Yesterday morning, the dip in temperature made for impressive evaporation fog along the river.
And should you need a hug, I hope you get one that is burr-less. Happy Friday!
