Greetings from the depths of the past, friends! 

Okay, maybe not the absolute depths. Wednesday. So not maybe so far past after all. But who knows what has happened since Wednesday? Not me, because I have fled the scene. Specifically, I am on vacation! I have gone on vacation to the Montreal Metro.

This is a slight exaggeration. I am in fact taking my family to visit a great deal more of La Belle Province, including Quebec City, the parts of Montreal that are not the Metro, and the train tracks in between. But friends, the Montreal Metro is one of the great inanimate loves of my life. I have been missing the wee fanfare when the train pulls out since I was last there in the fall of 2019. And finally, finally, I will be there again, and I will ride the nice trains and change at Berri-UQAM and make the well-worn joke about how Pie-IX is like Ice-9 but for pastries. (Vonnegut joke. Full of cynicism and ennui, and apparently in this case pie.) Anyway, as I cannot tuck you all in my suitcase to take you with me, here are two pieces of evidence for how much I have missed the Montreal Metro: I wrote a poem and a story about it in the intervening time.

You will hardly know I'm gone, with all I have to share with you. First up, the poem! The Truth About Wolves was written for my wonderful younger godchild and has been on their dorm room wall all year, and now here it is in Uncanny for all of you as well. The saying that "inside you there are two wolves" never sat well with me, and here is my response.

The new story--which, yes, does require registration to read--came out in Nature Futures: Waiting for Them. I love first contact stories. To me they feel like they're at least as much about us as whoever it is we're trying to make friends with. (For example, the fact that I frame this trope as "trying to make friends" sure doesn't conceal very much about me!) I keep returning to it, and I won't promise I won't do it again. In the meantime, here's this iteration.

Last month I went on a podcast hosted by writer Karlo Yeager Rodriguez, with whom I had a lovely panel at CapClave last fall and also some fun hangouts on the patio. Karlo wanted to talk to Minnesotan writers about what it was like to be where we were this year, so I got to hang out, in podcast terms, with fellow Minnesota writers Naomi Kritzer, Lyda Morehouse (Tate Halloway), and J.R. Dawson--all of whom are dear friends with whom I love to spend time whenever we get the chance. Full disclosure: I am terrible at listening to podcasts in the first place and absolutely cannot do it when I'm one of the people talking. But if you're a podcast person, I hope we gave you a good episode with much to think about!

I have been having trouble keeping track of how recently things have happened, because we have had so much going on this spring. I feel like someone got hold of the verse from Ecclesiastes 3 about "a time to build up, a time to tear down, a time to laugh, a time to weep," and the whole rest of the passage and decided, "That! All at once, in a blender, and call it April!" I…am not sure May is going to be much less like that. In fact I'm fairly sure it is. You won't believe what we have in store for May.

But speaking of blenders, my beloved elder godchild had his wisdom teeth out, and I made an avocado mousse, a pureed cauliflower and potato curry soup, and roasted pears so that he could have a soft feast. I would mess with both the mousse and the soup before I made them again, but the pears were perfect. I hope you enjoy them while I'm off enjoying the joys of La Belle Province and its public transit systems--or whenever, really.

Excelsior,

Marissa

Roasted Pears

For some of you, the last moment when you want to heat the oven for an hour and more may have already passed for the year, but they're still lovely pears that will be good again next time you want to do it. And for our friends in the Southern Hemisphere, hooray, an idea whose time has just now come!

Preheat oven to 400 F and put down parchment paper.

So you want:

6 Bosc pears, peeled, stemmed, cored, and halved, arranged in the dish cut side down

Drizzled/sprinkled with:

1/4 c brown sugar

1/2 t cinnamon

1/4 t nutmeg

2 T lemon juice

1/2 t vanilla extract

4 T butter, cut into small cubes

Bake for half an hour. Take out of the oven and flip the pears to cut side up. Take a moment to spoon some of the juices from the bottom of the pan onto the top of the pears. Bake another half hour or more, depending on how mushy you need them.

We ate them plain, but they'd be lovely with yogurt, sour cream, or ice cream, and with granola, chopped roasted nuts, or similar.