Bluestocking Catalogue #5
Marking the end of one season & the call to another with pumpkin muffins, a September poem & good books.
Four years ago today, I had just moved from Maine to the North Shore of Massachusetts. I was lucky enough to be close to my favorite beach, so I went twice over the long weekend. The first trip I bought ice cream as a last hurrah to summer. The second trip I ate a cider donut as a hello to fall. Today, I’m remembering that weekend and its twin urges: enjoy the last drops of summer sunshine and move beyond a troubled summer into a new season, both inside and out.
This Labor Day weekend, after an unusual but not unpleasant summer, I’m recalling that transitional weekend four years ago and wanting to mark the moment in a similar way, but I feel an added urgency because of the times. I imagine that I’m not the only one who feels we’re entering “Phase 3” of the pandemic.
Phase 1 was the “Summer Camp Phase,” back when we thought we’d be home for a matter of weeks and enjoyed the novelty of staying home. I made sourdough and started embroidering and read a lot of nonfiction. Phase 2 - “Summertime Sadness” - hit me sometime mid-May as I realized we were in this for the long haul, and I needed to shift my mindset and my summer plans. This realization came as a bit of a downer, but I (eventually) pivoted and decided to teach summer school and practice my virtual teaching skills. My husband Noah and I embraced camping and taking long bike rides on the weekends and eating lunch together, since we were both working from home. We widened our social circle a bit. We had a Covid scare. (We are both fine.) We found our summer rhythm. Now, I sense Phase 3 is upon us.
I am ready to feel as though time is passing, and find myself grateful for cooler weather. I am proverbially girding my inner loins to be in this for the long haul. Part of that, for me, means planning time with the people who are in my Covid bubble. I need human connection more than ever, even if it’s at a safe 6 feet. I am also trying to release my expectations about what my teaching job will look like in 1 month, or 3, or 6. Right now my school is completely virtual and will be until the end of the month, although I assume we will be online much longer than that.
I don’t know what this fall holds. But I want to be as centered & healthy & faithful as I can - which, as I wrote about last week, feels like not enough and too much at the same time. Yet here I am. Here we are, in the in-between.
Read on for how I’m finding joy in this liminal season.
Recipe: Pumpkin Muffins
I made these yesterday morning because it was 60 degrees when I woke up and we are in that perfect late-summer-almost-fall cool season I ADORE. September in Indiana tends to be sunshiney but not hot, and I am here for it. Also, I am ready for the crispness of a new season, especially since fall has the best memes:
Here’s me toasting the end of the patriarchy with my PSL in one hand and a pumpkin muffin in the other.
I CONTAIN MULTITUDES.
This recipe is not identical but very close to my mom’s, which is the one I make. However, I have made the above recipe before, and can attest to its deliciousness. Here are my suggestions:
Over-stir the dry ingredients; sometimes my baking soda doesn’t get distributed evenly, resulting in a salty bite every now and again.
You can absolutely make these as muffins. My favorite is to make large muffins by filling the tins almost full (7/8 of the way) with batter. This way, you end up with a crunchy defined muffin top and a killer texture.
Of course you can add whatever morsels you want! I made one batch plain, and one with chopped pecans and craisins.
I think this recipe is forgiving enough to be made with gluten free flour, but I haven’t tried it myself.
Instagram Recs:
My friend AJ is documenting her New Year’s Resolution to read more on her bookstagram account. AJ & I share a similar taste in books, and I always enjoy her brief reviews of what she’s reading.
This post on @pantsuitpolitics names a pattern I hadn’t yet, but it resonates with me. For those of you also familiar with white evangelicalism, I wonder if will resonate with you too. (Click on the post to read the whole thing.)
Book (Nonfiction): Native by Kaitlyn Curtice
I read this book at the recommendation of my friend Lauren, and then joined an online book club to discuss it. The online discussion added a lot of depth to my reading of this book; it helped me slow down and digest it more deeply.
For me, Native provided a primer on Indigenous histories, cultures, and spiritualities - the author carefully interweaves her own experience with research and poetry. I love memoirs written in this style. One of my take-away after reading this was: how did I not know about these issues sooner? How do I have my Master’s degree in English and I’ve never had to read any Native literature*? How can an educated person be almost 30 and not have a basic understanding of these issues? And so, my work is just beginning.
Curtice dissects the white supremacy embedded in the American Christian church of all stripes. She shares how re-connecting with nature and other creatures has been a large part of her spiritual reawakening. Although Curtice explores the intellectual nature of this topic with finesse, she never steps away from the lens of her embodied experience as a Potawatomi woman who grew up in the church. Her insistence on embodiment and experience provides its own type of resistance, further underlining her journey from the compartmentalization she felt forced into to the healing she has discovered as she has embraced her Native heritage & spirituality. I think of Audre Lorde’s insistence that “the master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house.” In that vein, Curtice offers a way of being and seeing that is powerfully subversive. She prophetically makes visible the Indigenous lives & cultures white culture seeks to erase and calls us to re-imagine not only faith but the structure of the world itself.
I’ve struggled to write about this book, which shows, I think, how powerfully it has affected me. I imagine it being a text I return to (despite my typical reluctance to re-read), and I also hope it catapults me into the re-education I need on this topic. I would highly recommend Native, and would love to hear your recommendations for my Indigenous TBR list.
Book (YA): Find Layla by Meg Elison
TW: child abuse
I read Find Layla in two or three sittings; it’s a short novel that packs a punch. High school student Layla struggles to protect herself and her little brother from the hostile environment their mom creates, while presenting a clean face to the outside world. I related deeply to Layla’s fierce protectiveness of her little brother, as well as her propensity to put on a mask for the outside world. I cared deeply about Layla and thought her trauma was depicted with nuance.
Also, for you science nerds out there, Layla dreams of becoming a scientist and finds a creative way to express her experience by documenting her biome. I don’t want to say much more, because I want you to read it for yourself. I realize this description sounds heavy, but the author builds the plot slowly so that the reality of Layla’s situation comes more like a wave than a slap in the face.
Movement: Dance Church Go
I am not an “exercise-y” type of person. And also, I have learned that exercise helps stabilize my mental health in an almost magical way (I know, I know- it’s not magic, it’s science.) Pre-pandemic, I was attending workout classes at my local Y and found that the scheduled, social, external-motivation nature of those classes worked for me. I don’t yet feel comfortable returning to that kind of group class situation, but Dance Church Go, which streams live a few times a week, has been a solid substitute. Think dance cardio + pilates + a sprinkling of yoga, all set to a solid playlist. It’s playful and fun. If you’re reading this Sunday morning(ish), there’s an online live class at 1 p.m. EST today.
Poem: “September, 1918”
My friend Emily (of the blueberry pound cake recipe last week!) sent me this poem last week as a response to what I wrote about. Isn’t it lovely?
September, 1918
BY AMY LOWELL
This afternoon was the colour of water falling through sunlight;
The trees glittered with the tumbling of leaves;
The sidewalks shone like alleys of dropped maple leaves,
And the houses ran along them laughing out of square, open windows.
Under a tree in the park,
Two little boys, lying flat on their faces,
Were carefully gathering red berries
To put in a pasteboard box.
Some day there will be no war,
Then I shall take out this afternoon
And turn it in my fingers,
And remark the sweet taste of it upon my palate,
And note the crisp variety of its flights of leaves.
To-day I can only gather it
And put it into my lunch-box,
For I have time for nothing
But the endeavour to balance myself
Upon a broken world.
May your long weekend be full of deep peace as you “endeavour to balance [yourself]/ upon a broken world.” Thank you for being here.
See you next Sunday!
*This is not entirely accurate. If my concentration had been literature (rather than creative writing) in college, I assume I would have had to read Indigenous literature at some point. In grad school, my comprehensive exam in grad school included some Indigenous literature, but since the list included over 30 books, I did not read them all - and even those I did read I did not analyze deeply.