thirty-two: just make sure you get your hours in
For most of October, I've been spending time in a kind of unstructured thinking that's really been forced to the wayside in the past few years: rowing myself out onto the water, putting the nets out, and seeing what happens today. One Wednesday early this month, it was new sock needles folding into someone's comments on our personal impact on history, folding into the annual opening of the Toronto Island Purchasers' List (there are houses on the island; if you want to live in them, it gets a bit complicated). I found myself asking a friend okay, do we think the island's going to be above water in thirty years? and then found myself wanting that life anyways, as soft and impermanent as it might be: pastel siding and lake wind and stitches accumulating at night. Even if the lake came to get it, in the end. And then I was writing fiction about it.
Pragmatically: It's the right headspace to finish a draft, and I'm getting myself into shape like an athlete. Nothing happens unless I carve out the space to truly (madly deeply) think. But on every other front: I can't actually think of the last time I had time like this? Pre-pandemic, definitely; it's hard to shake crisis, and the feeling that every time I relax into something long-term, the next proverbial floorboard's going to break. It's been hard to deliberately look away from the idea of preparations and obligations, and if there's the sound of water running somewhere in my head, just follow it upriver.
The long stretch without having to constantly react to something is making me think about what I want out of this whole exercise, which is -- I am guessing, not an uncommon feeling in this Year of our Lord 2022. It's also a bit hard on newsletter reportables. We'll do our best.
can can can you do the
Life continues faintly crushed under the bounty of autumn harvest. I put up recipes over a few weekends this month: tomato paprika jam, apple honey jam, and a large batch of cranberry ketchup (lots, because there's no such thing as a decorous cranberry recipe, Leeeeroooooy Jenkins!).
Last month daikon was getting a little overwhelming around here; this month it's garlic. You can tell food prices are going up: the still-affordable seasonal things are showing up more often in our thankfully affordable, social enterprise-driven produce box. Unfortunately, that's increasingly condiments and early winter storage vegetables. Macro: All is not well in Food System Land. Micro: I need to get smarter about potatoes and carrots. And garlic.
I do have Dan and Kat's Castilian garlic soup on the docket, but if you've got a few good recipes for hard times (garlicky ones) feel free to send 'em by. If we get a handful, I'll link them in the next issue.
act
Some of those canning sprints were fueled with a small documentary binge: mostly about climate work and activist work and things that remind me adults who do stuff are out there.
If you have Netflix, my favourite was probably Gather, which is about Indigenous food sovereignty but also the wider web of social, environmental, and cultural effects that touches. It's a wonderfully structured set of stories, like spiderwebs picked out by rain. I especially appreciated this quote from Yurok environmental organizer Samuel Gensaw. Guy knows what's what.
We also had our municipal election, which went very well on certain levels (some bluntly corrupt older councillors replaced with dynamic, smart, young racialized community organizers who will do stuff! and actually rep their communities like a boss!) and not very well at all on others (oh lord, this empty suit of a mayor).
I'm feeling a little deflated about it, but not as deflated as I might have been, because -- I'm at the point with my goldfish nibbling at municipal organizing where I get to see the wayward outcomes of projects I helped with years ago. Ten years ago I did a stint on the organizing committee of a women in local politics group, ran some events, and helped set some steering values; people who came to those events and picked up that org work were council candidates this year. Other people it touched spun off a dedicated project for 2018, WomenWinTO, and the candidates they supported then got elected this year.
It can be so easy to feel like those projects did nothing, and then you get a longer lens, and -- whoa. Nothing ever happens for one (1) reason, but it's actually possible to be an active, living part of the accretion of reasons; to help create the conditions in your ecology. It reminds me that all the little goldfish nibbling I do now isn't Campbellian or sexy, but it's accreting. In ten years I might see what it grew. It's wild.
So the next four years in city-building are going to be as tiring as ever (I really wish austerity conservatives clocked out once in a while), but not as much as they could be, because -- I got my hours in, and so did a bunch of other people. It's long, but it works.
things to read
"fertile week" is live in at least the purchasable portion of Reckoning: Our Beautiful Reward; it goes live on the free-to-read site Sunday. This is also the day the clocks turn back and we relive an hour of our lives again. Given the topic, it's a ritually appropriate release date.
Pragmatically: It's the right headspace to finish a draft, and I'm getting myself into shape like an athlete. Nothing happens unless I carve out the space to truly (madly deeply) think. But on every other front: I can't actually think of the last time I had time like this? Pre-pandemic, definitely; it's hard to shake crisis, and the feeling that every time I relax into something long-term, the next proverbial floorboard's going to break. It's been hard to deliberately look away from the idea of preparations and obligations, and if there's the sound of water running somewhere in my head, just follow it upriver.
The long stretch without having to constantly react to something is making me think about what I want out of this whole exercise, which is -- I am guessing, not an uncommon feeling in this Year of our Lord 2022. It's also a bit hard on newsletter reportables. We'll do our best.
can can can you do the
Life continues faintly crushed under the bounty of autumn harvest. I put up recipes over a few weekends this month: tomato paprika jam, apple honey jam, and a large batch of cranberry ketchup (lots, because there's no such thing as a decorous cranberry recipe, Leeeeroooooy Jenkins!).
Last month daikon was getting a little overwhelming around here; this month it's garlic. You can tell food prices are going up: the still-affordable seasonal things are showing up more often in our thankfully affordable, social enterprise-driven produce box. Unfortunately, that's increasingly condiments and early winter storage vegetables. Macro: All is not well in Food System Land. Micro: I need to get smarter about potatoes and carrots. And garlic.
I do have Dan and Kat's Castilian garlic soup on the docket, but if you've got a few good recipes for hard times (garlicky ones) feel free to send 'em by. If we get a handful, I'll link them in the next issue.
act
Some of those canning sprints were fueled with a small documentary binge: mostly about climate work and activist work and things that remind me adults who do stuff are out there.
If you have Netflix, my favourite was probably Gather, which is about Indigenous food sovereignty but also the wider web of social, environmental, and cultural effects that touches. It's a wonderfully structured set of stories, like spiderwebs picked out by rain. I especially appreciated this quote from Yurok environmental organizer Samuel Gensaw. Guy knows what's what.
We also had our municipal election, which went very well on certain levels (some bluntly corrupt older councillors replaced with dynamic, smart, young racialized community organizers who will do stuff! and actually rep their communities like a boss!) and not very well at all on others (oh lord, this empty suit of a mayor).
I'm feeling a little deflated about it, but not as deflated as I might have been, because -- I'm at the point with my goldfish nibbling at municipal organizing where I get to see the wayward outcomes of projects I helped with years ago. Ten years ago I did a stint on the organizing committee of a women in local politics group, ran some events, and helped set some steering values; people who came to those events and picked up that org work were council candidates this year. Other people it touched spun off a dedicated project for 2018, WomenWinTO, and the candidates they supported then got elected this year.
It can be so easy to feel like those projects did nothing, and then you get a longer lens, and -- whoa. Nothing ever happens for one (1) reason, but it's actually possible to be an active, living part of the accretion of reasons; to help create the conditions in your ecology. It reminds me that all the little goldfish nibbling I do now isn't Campbellian or sexy, but it's accreting. In ten years I might see what it grew. It's wild.
So the next four years in city-building are going to be as tiring as ever (I really wish austerity conservatives clocked out once in a while), but not as much as they could be, because -- I got my hours in, and so did a bunch of other people. It's long, but it works.
things to read
"fertile week" is live in at least the purchasable portion of Reckoning: Our Beautiful Reward; it goes live on the free-to-read site Sunday. This is also the day the clocks turn back and we relive an hour of our lives again. Given the topic, it's a ritually appropriate release date.
***
So: short! A little self-involved! Sorry, folks. We'll have a little more substance next month, and stay safe.
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