This week’s issue:

Reminder that you can find the newsletter here, which is my website. You can add your email address in the most prominent field. It arrives in mailboxes in its entirety and has extras, like guest submissions and recipes. This week’s entry has a poem. That this may be a deterrent to some is something I will have to live with.

I never know what is interesting to readers, but I am humbled and grateful that so many of you open the emails and read them. I can only promise to do my best when putting these together.

Is Log Cabin/Jane Austen February interesting to anyone? I’m learning a lot about myself here, but whether it’s universal is a mystery. If it’s not interesting, the good news is that this week it’s half over. To this point it has been a breezy affair; to stroll about on a day to day basis not worrying about if this or that is content is freeing in a way that I couldn’t have anticipated. I don’t miss the churn of hope that this post will finally pop off and really hit virality like they used to, but have not managed in at least 365 days. I don’t miss a well-intentioned idea landing in a way I didn’t anticipate and confronting an inbox full of anger. I especially don’t miss the endless scroll of new things to be angry about and why.

I do miss my friends.

I miss your voices and faces, your jokes, your outfits, your cats, your enthusiasm, and your supportive comments on my little posts. I was sad not to see your valentines day celebrations of your partners, or the galentines day fits and treats, or the palentines day bro-downs–with their natty vests and waistcoats–which I’m sure must have happened. It’s kind of nice to think that the part I long for on these smartphone applications is not what I thought it would be, that constant drip of dopamine from likes and shares; rather the compatriots I’ve made along the way.

It also makes me angry and sad that we have to take so much bad with the good on these platforms. When Myspace and Facebook and Twitter and what-have-you first came about, they genuinely seemed to fill a need in a society that was splintering as it was. People move away from home probably more than our species ever has; even nomadic peoples would at least move together. Reconnecting with old friends and making new ones was kind of intoxicating. But like all this tech stuff, the pattern is the same. They give us a new idea that is genuinely revolutionary, they make us depend on it, then they ruin it.

I tried to look up a word that captures a mixture of sadness and anger, and the closest I could find in the English language is betrayal. That seems a bit dramatic, given that these are just corporations and their job is to make money; they’re not providing a public good. There’s more money in dividing us than there is reminding us why it’s nice to be human, and at some point these companies become autonomous machines bent only on finding and exploiting the smallest new ways to extract value. That we’ve managed to scrabble out a way to make them fun and fulfilling is our own doing. That I played a part in making them money by providing–let’s face it–consistently excellent content to keep your eyes on their screens longer and grow their share prices does however give me the slightest right to feel hoodwinked.

I daresay bamboozled even.

While reading the Jane Austen canon and watching as many of the adaptations as I can without subscribing to Britbox (which is a fair amount, to be honest), I’ve become obsessed with their tiny little letters. I love that the letters don’t come in envelopes, but are wrapped in the very paper they’re written on and stamped with wax. I also am enamored by how small they are. It reminds me of the notes girls used to pass one another (but never to me) in junior high that were elaborately folded. These letters can be chatty missives or filled with the utmost import. It makes me nostalgic for an era I never experienced. Recently a word was coined for this feeling: anemoia.

I am feeling old, but I was not so old that the majority of anticipated news arrived via letter. Most things happened over the family phone. If you wanted to ask a girl on a date or just chat, you had to face the potential mortification of talking to her brother first. Sometimes the conversation would be going particularly well and you’d be informed it was time to wrap it up because someone needed to log on to the internet. But I did experience it for about two years when I was a Mormon missionary. At the time we were allowed two phone calls a year, so everything happened via post, and letters would come only once a week. A letter from a crush could include the best thing you could possibly get: a new photo. Or it could include the bleakest of news: a wedding invitation. Updates on your family would come sporadically and could range from a surprise $10 bill from a relative to news that your family was moving to a whole new city. I knew many an elder who returned to a home they’d never set foot in.

In that tiny way I relate to the anticipation of waiting several weeks for an answer to a burning question, and the almost indescribable schrodinger’s cat possibility of a chunky envelope with your name written in unmistakably feminine penmanship. There is nothing so tidy and filled with potential as a letter. I also relate to Mr. Johnson of Edward street because I, too, am “inflicted with a gouty constitution.” I can’t justify the price of a post office box, or I would ask you to send me one.

Instead, an entreaty. A very small percentage of my social media audience will read this, but if you do, don’t ever hesitate to drop me a chatty update at [email protected]. The nice thing about this being a smaller group of readers is that the responses are easy to keep up with and respond to without the sometimes overwhelm of social media messaging.

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My reading of Jane Austen’s works continues apace. I have read, at this point, Pride and Prejudice, Emma, Mansfield Park, Northanger Abbey, Persuasion, and the novella Lady Susan. I’m about 18 chapters into Sense and Sensibility. This week we watched Love and Friendship, based on Lady Susan, and the legendary 1995 Pride and Prejudice miniseries. My appetite for meaningful glances, snide asides, grand manors, wool tailcoats, ardent confessions of love, and empire waist dresses seems to be unquenchable.

This weekend I also read a lot of graphic novels, including the Hellboy Omnibuses 1-3. Man that Hellboy gets up to some hijinks does he not.

On Sunday I listened to The Singles 86-89, by Depeche Mode; The Clair Obscur Expedition 33 soundtrack; Fear Inoculum, by Tool; and Ophelia, by Natalie Merchant. I swear there’s another one in there but I can’t remember what. I need to keep better notes.

(All recipes featured in this newsletter can be found here)

I have a guest recipe that I made yesterday! It’s a versatile way to use up extra vegetables in the crisper. The version I made included chopped chicken, zucchini, spinach, and couscous. It was a perfect cold day soup and I think I’m going to have more for lunch today.

This was submitted by Ashlee.

“My name is Ashlee K, and my food-centered account is @kitchen_ashlee, where I try to highlight my cooks and bakes using local food producers as much as possible! I'm from Southeastern New England, where we are lucky enough to have incredible access to local produce and prepared foods.  I'm a research biologist by trade; in addition to cooking and baking, in my spare time I like crafting, kayaking, hiking, and weekly pub trivia.”

Ingredients:

fresh lemon zest and juice

a few cups of chopped veggies/aromatics of choice (ex.: carrots, celery, onions, scallions, or leeks, bell peppers, minced garlic)

seasonings of choice (suggest salt and pepper, Italian herb seasoning, turmeric, garlic and onion powders)

vegetable or chicken stock, or water with bouillon

chopped dark greens of choice (spinach, kale, or chard all work)

optional: chopped zucchini or summer squash

optional: wild rice, pearl couscous or orzo, or egg noodles

optional: milk of choice (cow, soybean, coconut, and almond milk have all worked for me!)

optional: chopped, roasted or poached chicken

Instructions: saute the aromatics of choice (except garlic) with oil, salt and pepper, until softened. If adding zucchini or summer squash, add to the pan next and saute those until softened. Add the garlic, the remaining seasonings and the lemon zest, and saute for a minute or so to bloom. Add stock/water to cover by a few inches, then toss in the greens and bring to a boil. Once boiling, reduce to a simmer and (if adding,) add the chicken and/or the rice or pasta, then simmer until the rice or pasta is cooked. Finally, add in lemon juice to taste, milk of choice (if adding) to desired level of creaminess, then top off with additional water or stock as needed to reach preferred broth thickness. This recipe is highly adaptable to allergies or food preferences - feel free to mix up with other veggies you have on hand or even mushrooms; the most critical components are having a mix of aromatics and the lemon zest and juice. Adjust all flavorings to your specific taste! This soup freezes well also (as long as large wheat pasta is not used, which gets really mushy in soup when frozen - a small amount of couscous or orzo seem to be fine!).

I am taking any and all submissions. Poems, art, essays. The only request is that the fit into the general vibe of what I do online, these include: ecology, domestic violence and sexual assault advocacy, books, recipes

Also, if you make stuff that you sell online, I would love to feature your products in anticipation of stocking season.

Feedback, chats, questions? Email [email protected]