Better Living Through Literature
Words + Projects + Stuff I Like
Does this make me feel better about not knowing whether to ignore the news completely or go part-time at my job and start volunteering with the ACLU? Not really. But I think it’s good to hear.
The Real Work
by Wendell Berry
It may be that when we no longer know what to do
we have come to our real work,
and that when we no longer know which way to go
we have come to our real journey.
The mind that is not baffled is not employed.
The impeded stream is the one that sings.
I surprised myself this year by really going for all the seasonal pumpkin flavors that popped up–pumpkin waffles from Trader Joe’s, a pumpkin cheesecake for Thanksgiving dessert, pumpkin and squash pasta sauce, you name it. So it makes sense I’d go for a pumpkin shirt, too:
This shirt came about from my search for a heavy flannel. I was really tempted by this brand that adds contrast facings and is made in America–but it was $120 and it wasn’t even pre-shrunk (!).
So I got some trusty Kaufmann “Mammoth Flannel” (that I’ve used for shirts for Doc) and made my own. My contrast has a pheasant print with grasses and old barns and I love it–it reminds me of visiting my mom’s family in Nebraska and of Bob Ross, who never met an old barn he didn’t paint with a palette knife.
Pattern: Archer Button Up, Grainline Studio
Mods: Flat-felled the seams, put in a real tower placket on the sleeves
Main fabric: Mammoth Flannel in Crimson
Contrast fabric: eQuilter
Warm pumpkin feelings: 100
Ours included a hike in the sun, a hike in the snow, making pies with golden syrup, hosting our families for dessert (of which not a single picture exists, whoops), and lots of couch time with Toby.
PS, if you’re not baking your leftover stuffing with eggs and cheese for post-Thanksgiving breakfast, your leftovers are not living up to their full potential.
1. What a few weeks it’s been, amirite? Let’s call this one early and make some pie. Remember, pie is the food of the heroic.
2. After the pie, Doc and I will Opt Outside on Black Friday. Yay for days off!
3. And finally, something to ponder from Nora Ephron:
“It’s a miracle that once a year so many millions of Americans sit down to exactly the same meal as one another, exactly the same meal they grew up eating, and exactly the same meal they ate a year earlier. The turkey. The sweet potatoes. The stuffing. The pumpkin pie. Is there anything else we all can agree so vehemently about? I don’t think so.”
Happy Thanksgiving!
And it’s rainy, and we didn’t go up into the mountains because of cleaning and grocery shopping and social engagements, and now Doc is getting sick to boot. So let’s do our best to be as relaxed this week as Toby here:
Jellybean toes!
1. The NY Times has a nice interactive feature about different Thanksgiving traditions and recipes across the country. If, as the lede says, “The stories of these home cooks help tell the story of the nation, the story of who we are,” then in this case we are all a happy melting pot making tasty food. I’d like to think that.
2. A nice list of things you can control, if you feel yourself spinning out.
3. A reminder:
When you’re feeling down and it’s getting into seasonal depression and the busyness of the end of the year, why not listen to something that will make you feel better?
Ok, maybe really terrible recorder covers don’t do it for you. But as I told a coworker I subjected this to, “It’s how I feel on the inside.” (Also, the dedication to describing the entire organ solo in the middle deserves to be commended.)
Well this is appropriate. Keep finding joy.
Reasons to Survive November
by Tony Hoagland
November like a train wreck—
as if a locomotive made of cold
had hurtled out of Canada
and crashed into a million trees,
flaming the leaves, setting the woods on fire.
The sky is a thick, cold gauze—
but there’s a soup special at the Waffle House downtown,
and the Jack Parsons show is up at the museum,
full of luminous red barns.
—Or maybe I’ll visit beautiful Donna,
the kickboxing queen from Santa Fe,
and roll around in her foldout bed.
I know there are some people out there
who think I am supposed to end up
in a room by myself
with a gun and a bottle full of hate,
a locked door and my slack mouth open
like a disconnected phone.
But I hate those people back
from the core of my donkey soul
and the hatred makes me strong
and my survival is their failure,
and my happiness would kill them
so I shove joy like a knife
into my own heart over and over
and I force myself toward pleasure,
and I love this November life
where I run like a train
deeper and deeper
into the land of my enemies.
Well, I finished the “Om Shawl” I started back in July, which is good; and it was fun to knit, which I guess is the overall point. But my substituting a lighter weight yarn means it’s all a little smaller than the designer photos–and I definitely made the middle section too short, so it’s hard to really wrap around you as it was originally shown:
It’s been blocked and stretched with extreme prejudice in this picture and I think I’ll sew buttons on and try to wear it as a poncho. But if it just doesn’t work out, Toby’s going to get a lovely new blanket.
Diners, yarn, mountain frost, and a MOMMA MOOSE AND TWO BEBBEHS. (No pics of the babies because you don’t try to get closer to a momma moose.)