The Joy of Tulips

Tulips…whereas my abandoned tulips planted too late have not shown signs of life (yet!), I have been getting a lot more joy than usual from my tulips.

I always love to watch the tight green buds become so incredibly bright. I love the colors and the wild combinations, the way the light shines through the petals. I love watching the colors of each tulip change, the yellow petals with an almost undetectable red edge becomes a red streaked.

At a time when many joys are inaccessible, this accessible joy has expanded more than I would have expected to be possible.

The Satisfaction or Baking Bread

I’ve been baking more bread lately. Other people have too. There is no better time to have previously been a flour collector: I normally have many different kinds of flour—cake flour, three kids of all purpose, bread flour, assorted whole wheats, to say nothing of semolina, almond flour, potato flour and other speciality items. On a practical note, I keep many of them in the freezer.

Yesterday, I made King Arthur Flour’s Pain de Mie . I usually have trouble with the second rise. But this time, when I forgot to set a time and got interrupted, and messed up the timing and temperature to the point of over-rising, which I find is generally worse than under-rising…The bread turned out beautifully.

It is an undeserved success and I may not be able to replicate it, but I’m going to enjoy it.

Take Time to Do Nothing

I’m taking my own advice. The pressure to use our newfound free time is absurd. Also, as someone now without childcare who is working remotely full time (and my job is significantly impacted because a majority of it is face-to-face teaching that is now online), I don’t have more free time. In some ways I have even less.

But it’s true that time itself is different. Our entire way of life is upended, and of course ways we structure time are changing. Try to relax into that. To truly be our “best selves,” we need to process and adjust and develop our long-term perspectives. Overwhelming productivity is actually going to slow down that process.

For a related take on this, check out Rachel Charlene Lewis’s “All the ways the internet is pushing hustle culture during the quarantine.”

Collaboration and Creative Freedom

Collaboration can be a great way to jolt your creative process. Sharing control can be frustrating, but knowing that you have to let go is freeing.

Also, for the purposes of creative exploration, I’m not focusing here on collaboration where one person follows another’s directions.

I recently have been inveigled into a number of this sort of collaboration by my kids. One of them will start a drawing, and then firmly request my assistance. Sometimes my job is to “add ten caterpillars,” each with a red head like the quintessential very hungry caterpillar. Sometimes my job is to “add a touch of blue to the brown soil so it’s wet.”

I’ve tried to assert myself a bit here. Collaboration is a back and forth, a conversation: I made a floral pattern and let one of my young artistic partners have at it. The result is whimsical and better than you’d think possible under the circumstances, and the process was a pleasure. Collaboration is letting yourself communicate creatively, letting yourself go, and letting yourself get inspired.

Maple Acorn Cakelet Party

Sometimes you just want a party. As every kid knows, a party means cake, or, in this case, cakelets.

We had a lot of fun with this two day party project. On the first day, we baked the cakelets and on the second, we made the frosting and decorated with red, green, purple and rainbow sprinkles. We ate tasty cake both days.

We used this acorn-shaped cake pan that makes absolutely adorable tiny acorn cakelets. We followed the recipe for maple spice cakelets, more or less (no nutmeg, no maple flavoring, water instead of milk).

They were delicious, and we were happy, and we’re planning to have a doughnut party this weekend. Sometimes you’ve got to treat yourself, and there’s nothing quite like a party.

Slow Stitch: a Book Review

I normally read a book before reviewing it. I haven’t exactly done that this time.

I’m terrible at sewing, and I can’t say that I’ve devoted much energy on improving, but it has always appealed to me.

Not machine-sewing. It’s fast with the seams, but then the bobbin gets stuck, and where are I? That’s right: I’m doing annoying repair work that I’m even worse at than sewing itself. The process is not worth it to me. So I don’t even have a sewing machine, though I won’t rule out acquiring one in the future. As it is, though, while I’m very impressed by friends who sew themselves or their kids bespoke cute clothes, or let’s face it, people who make their own curtains, I just don’t do it.

I also don’t hand sew, and I’m no better at hand sewing than I am at machine sewing. But the process—I love it. The sound of the needle piercing the fabric, the annoying way my stitches veer off course and become uneven, in the wrong ways, like an accidental syncopation or a failed sonnet. The strange compulsion I have to try to see efficiently —the right way—without a messy chaotic back. Who cares? I do. Every time I sew on a loose button, I think: I need a sewing project.

When, recently but in another lifetime, I was browsing a knitting store (I am not a knitter either), the book Slow Stitch: Mindful and contemplative textile art by Claire Wellesley-Smith, caught my attention. Although I have not actually done anything directly related to this book, it has inspired me. In fact, after reading only a few paragraphs, I became far more interested in cutting up a white sheet and stitching the pieces back together..

My re-stitched sheet is coming along slowly. The back is somewhat inefficient and chaotic, but I’m loving it. I give this book 5 out of 5 stars for that.

Intruder in the Dust and Vintage Paperbacks: A Book Review

I love vintage falling apart paperback mysteries. The covers are so melodramatic and often tacky. The physical books do not stand the test of time, or the test of having their pages turned. Sometimes the pages fall from the binding before I can even finish reading the book the first time. 

I cannot resist. 

One of my favorites is William Faulkner’s Intruder in the Dust (1948). I have two 1962 Signet paperbacks -- the one with the author’s name in yellow across the top, a black and white illustration, the feet of a menacing crowd encircling two men, one kneeling. I also have two other editions of this unloved failed mystery. I even wrote about this book for my dissertation. Its mystery plot is so illogical and baffling; its treatment of race so troubled; its most annoying character so long-winded. 

On the front cover of my favorite 1962 editions, we read: ““The superb novel of murder and violence in a small southern town by one of America’s greatest writers.” And on the back, we are assured that this is the “explosive story of an arrogant old man who faced death rather than relinquish his identity… and a young boy who broke the law to save him” (ellipses in original). 

As you’re reading Intruder in the Dust, you’re probably wondering: Did I lose track of something that would make this all make sense? Critics relentlessly point this out, but: Isn’t that what people wonder when they read Light in August (1932) too? But Light in August is serious Faulkner, from his prime. Light in August may be more worth reading than Intruder in the Dust, but here’s the thing: I don’t actually care. 

People say Intruder in the Dust is terrible because the plot is terrible.

People, with ample justification, read Yoknapatawpha County’s Gavin Stevens, a lawyer, as Faulkner’s mouthpiece, which is awkward, because Gavin is wrong and in a way that aligns all too beautifully with Faulkner’s own argument in a piece published in Life magazine on March 5, 1956 as “A Letter to the North: William Faulkner, the South’s foremost writer, warns on integration—‘Stop now for a moment.’” 

And also: Just shut up Gavin Stevens. This guy really likes to talk, and it’s way too easy to get lost in his monologues. 

People say Intruder in the Dust is a pot boiler. They saw that cover and knew Faulkner needed money, and the book was popular. As Lawrence H. Schwartz puts it in Creating Faulkner’s Reputation: The Politics of Modern Literary Criticism, “In January 1948, Faulkner dropped work on the fable and began writing a short detective novel that he was sure he could complete. It was Intruder in the Dust. Faulkner finished the manuscript in April but wanted to delay in order to sell segments of the novel to magazines for additional income” (61). Yes, this bad mystery was written fast and it was written for money. It sold well and Faulkner got a $40,000 movie contract from MGM.

But here’s the thing: If you want to read a real Faulkner pot boiler, read Soldier’s Pay. 

I have a vintage copy, complete with a brooding man seated in the background and a beautiful woman with a pensive expression and a voluminous yet revealing pink garment in the foreground. 

I only have one copy of Soldier’s Pay.

Sour Cherry Pie Cocktail and Anne with an e

Drink pairing! 

Sour Cherry Pie Cocktail:

1.5 oz sour cherry vodka (I made this by leaving cherries in vodka for a while)

1.5 oz sour cherry juice (frozen, from aforesaid cherries)

.5 oz dry vermouth

Dash of bitters (optional)

Splash of sparkling water or more, depending on taste

Serve over ice. 

While sipping, read with Anne of Green Gables (published 1908), the first and best of the Anne series by Canadian author Lucy Maud Montgomery. This is a comfort read, but manages to be wholesome and energetic in a nineteenth century way that is very suitable for a cocktail with the word “pie” in its name. Anne is the poetic redhead who says, “I can't help flying up on the wings of anticipation. It's as glorious as soaring through a sunset... almost pays for the thud.”

The cocktail is extremely simple, as long as you’ve arranged to procure sufficient sour cherries during their very brief moment of being in season to make your own sour cherry vodka. Since I don’t live near sour cherry orchards, it’s kind of a project and involves ordering ahead by the five gallon bucket. It’s simple in a wholesome nineteenth century way, innocent just like Anne, with an e. Like it, it’s the kind of thing that actually exists later.

Dispatch 6 from a Novel Formerly Called Red State: Weekend Fiction

If you’re interested, start with Dispatch 1

“Test test test test news…”

Liza spoke into her pocket dictaphone with her formal practiced newsreader diction recording every detail of the scene. Her parents had started sending her to diction lessons when she was nine. Every afternoon, after normal school, she would walk to Miss Scutton's house to recite old newspaper cuttings while the strict old widow listened carefully to correct any slip ups. If you wanted to get anywhere in journalism or politics, you had to be able to speak Commonwealth diction. It was a voice you could trust. You'd never hear a bark of a yankee or the honk of a midwesterner on the radio. You'd certainly never hear a southern drawl. Being only half-Kentuckian and having spent her early childhood in New England, Liza would need to learn to be a Commonwealther. But not just a normal Commonwealther. That was the point of Miss Scutton.

 "'Looavuhl', not looiville" corrected Miss Scutton. She had seemed ancient with her piles of old browning newspapers and shelves of old books. She served tea in a cup and saucer, and you didn’t drink your tea — you sipped it.  It was good for your voice, she said.

Those newspaper clippings. Some of them had been ancient, dating back even to before Kentucky separated from the Virginias. She even had some out of state newspapers. Why would you want to read those? Liza had wondered. She had quickly learned that you couldn't trust what other states wrote about us in Kentucky.  They couldn't possibly understand anything. They were foreigners. But she read them, because she had to. Every day Miss Scutton had a new pile of cuttings selected and every day, Eliza read through the pile, stumbling over the carefully chosen words and trying hard not to say them wrong.

Now Eliza had her own collection of news clippings. She cut out anything that might lead to a new story. And of course, she cut out any of her own wires or stories that made it into print.

Morning Post

Extra

Commonwealth of Kentucky Aug. 2, 20__

Tres Amigos Dead in Crash

Little View, Kentucky

By Elizabeth Owle

We can now confirm that the three highest ranking party members of the Commonwealth of Kentucky are dead in a small plane crash. Their plane crashed into a dry corn field and they were found in the early hours of the morning, their charred bodies surrounded by popped kernels.

Little View resident Andrew McCurtain, a local corn and soy farmer, saw smoke coming from his corn field and, upon making his way through several other corn fields, came upon the crash site. "I was just heading toward my tractor barn," he explained.  "It was ‘bout time for me to get started for the day. Saw the smoke rising. So I went over to it." 

Why was there so much popped corn? Eliza wondered to herself. You would expect just the area around the streak where the fuel was  and where the plane itself was to be burned. Of course she hadn't put that in. She hadn't described McCurtain's stammers and anxious glances, either. He was obviously afraid, though his fear could be due to any number of unrelated factors. Eliza was a slick and intimidating city reporter. Maybe she was attractive enough to make a successful country farmer nervous. Or maybe McCurtain had been doing something questionable that morning. Maybe he had something unofficial planted in one of his corn fields.

"I saw the smoke,"  he repeated stubbornly, regardless of what Eliza asked him. There was no reason for him to say more to her, and really, Eliza told herself, there was no reason for her to be bothered.  

If she put any of this in, it would never get printed and she would find herself suddenly promoted to a job that sounded better, but wouldn't actually let her do anything. She kept her theories to herself.

The Secretary of Energy, the Secretary of Alcohol and Tobacco, and the Secretary of Gaming were universally recognized as the three most powerful posts in Kentucky. The current three were colloquially known as the Tres Amigos because they came to power at the same time in the recent take-over of the Party and were thus assumed to be friends. Somehow, they had managed to secure support from enough distillers, tobacco men, coal runners, and casino owners. From White Hall, too. Liza was in a position to know that White Hall pulled strings, but she didn’t know quite how, and, in this case, she didn’t know why. Why would White Hall want the Tres Amigos in? Or did he just want the Mountain Boys out? 

Liza knew that the Tres Amigos had editorial support, too. So it was not exactly a surprise when, out of nowhere, as it were, the eastern-commonwealth-based Mountain Boys were out of the top posts, and three relative unknowns from the central knob region, rose to prominence: The Tres Amigos. They were suspected of blackmail. They were suspected of smuggling and murder. At first, they were suspected of being the pawns of a Hoosier railway magnate with designs on the commonwealth’s stellar, state-subsidized rail system. There were rumors of all kinds. Then the Tres Amigos announced a new state holiday for the Monday before the annual Derby race. It would be the one day of the year during which Commonwealthers could gamble at the casinos, and the rumors stopped. Liza noticed these kinds of things. She couldn’t help it. But she had earned the right to cover this crash. She wouldn't jeopardize that. 

Almost anyone could want these power brokers dead—mainstream political rivals from within their branch of the Party, or it could be the recently ousted Mountain Boys, or other domestic terrorists. Or a neighboring state trying to destablize the commonwealth in order to step in. Or it could in theory be an accident. Until she knew the whole story, she would play it straight.