When I refreshed this website, I had big plans for a newsletter. I’m not quite there yet—despite being reassured that I could just pop in a newsletter template, and voila!—it’s not that easy for me and I don’t have the bandwidth at the moment. So, for now, I’ll start here.
Why Wrack Line? Because I spend a lot of time on the beach, exploring wrack lines, that place where stuff washes ashore and is deposited. So here, in the very periodic Wrack Line, I’ll track what washes ashore in my brain and what I’d like to remember … and share.
I’ve been loving the newsletter of Lorene Edwards Forkner, an artist and gardener I first heard about through the fabulous podcast, Cultivating Place. I get Lorene’s newsletter, in which she shares her recent art—deceptively “simple” small paintings, colour swatches really, of natural objects that have caught her eye. You can see them on her website, A Handmade Garden, and she’s gathered them in her book, Color In and Out of the Garden.
Not a fan of kale? You know you need to massage it, right? (Seriously, it’s a game changer moving kale from hard-to-digest fibre to delicious, soft, and okay on the gut.) I’ve been doing this for years, but was a bit shocked to get served unmassaged kale at a restaurant the other day, so consider this a PSA.
I loved this short essay by Ann Finkbeiner, “In Praise of the Bean Men.”
But these long-haul people, they find a thing they want to do, that needs doing, that they do well, and they do it for the rest of their lives. We adore our flashing heroes, but these long-haulers we deeply love. I think they seem necessary to our continuance as a society, that human communities are worth the effort. I think they’re necessary to our sense of meaning as humans, that we ourselves are worth the effort. We count on these people, they’re keeping it all going, the only thing stopping them is death.
[Life goal: …find the thing I want to do, that needs doing, that I do well,…]
I knew that January came from the god Janus, but I didn’t make the connection to janitor. Now I have, thanks to another fabulous newsletter, The Whippet. “Two-faced Janus is always looking forward and backward, so he represents points of transition (like doorways), portals and sea ports, beginnings and endings – which is why January is named after him. ‘Janitor’ originally meant doorkeeper rather than cleaner, but you can see how you’d get there via ‘building custodian’.”
Goal for 2023? Follow the Exploding Whale Trail. File that under “what not to do when a whale washes up on the beach.” On that note, though, here is a fascinating video series showing a much better way to deal with a dead whale, from my colleagues at the Hakai Institute. There are several episodes in Whale Bones, but here are the first two: A Whale Washes Up and Cleaning a Carcass.
Secretly love children’s picture books, even though you’re an adult? I say, go for it! The art can be beautiful, the prose heartwarming or nostalgic or just plain silly. I’ll be keeping an eye on Unruly, a new imprint from the published Enchanted Lion. Unruly is “dedicated to making space for picture books created with older readers in mind. … Unruly titles will stand apart as visually complex works of fiction and nonfiction created for older readers. By reframing the readership’s age, Unruly invites a more complex instantiation and exploration of the relationship between text and image, while also inviting consideration of more mature topics.” (Yeah, I had to look up instantiation.)
Do you harbour a dream to work for NASA? Here are 30 citizen science projects you can take part in. (Thanks to Recomendo, for “recomendoing!”)
I make a lot of lists and Umberto Eco says that’s okay. “The list is the origin of culture. It’s part of the history of art and literature. What does culture want? To make infinity comprehensible. It also wants to create order — not always, but often. And how, as a human being, does one face infinity? How does one attempt to grasp the incomprehensible? Through lists, through catalogs, through collections in museums and through encyclopedias and dictionaries.”
Things I’m looking forward to:
Watching: Sarah Polley bringing Miriam Toews’s Women Talking to the screen. Two Canadian women, one captivating—and intense—story.
Drinking: Cranberry Gin Fizz looks like a yummy Christmas cocktail. I’ll might make it a mocktail, by subbing in Lumette alt gin though. I just come for the ginger beer anyhow.
Eating: Vegetarian Tourtière. Yes, I know that’s probably an oxymoron, but it is so good. As made by James Hoyland on the Great Canadian Baking Show and prepared at our place by my husband, which was a feat indeed. So good. On the menu for my upcoming birthday, I think. These labneh balls might make a great appetizer. (I am late coming to labneh, but man it’s good.)
Reading: Remainders of the Day: a Bookshop Diary by Shaun Bythell. I mean, with entries like this, who could resist?
TUESDAY, 1 MARCH
Online orders: 5
Books found: 2My mother appeared at 11 to take Granny out for coffee. Once my mother had left the room, Granny said, “Ha ha, fucking bastard, now you have to do some work,” as she held the shop door open and let the cold wind in to add to my discomfort in her absence.
Here’s a full excerpt from Lit Hub.
End of Wrack Line 1. I think the only way you’d read it is if I told you to (thanks, Margi) or if you happened to follow my website, but thanks for stopping by!