Hey it’s newsletter number 5 maybe one of these I’ll get the hang of it.

Today’s issue includes:

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I had a great real life week and especially weekend, which is good because my posting morale has been kind of in the pits this week. Confidence for the persona Howie who performs on the internet as a character who believes his presence is valued is at perhaps an all-time low. I’m in one of those phases where not only do I not feel like creating content, but I don’t actually recognize the version of me that did. He really had all the audacity, didn’t he?

Matt, though, had a lot of fun. Out of the sheer stubbornness you sometimes see online as I try and fail at endeavor after endeavor, we have decided that we are going to single-handedly (double-handedly because there are two of us?) prevent the end of trick or treating on our street as our neighborhood ages. This entails setting up in the driveway with a firepit and a relatively elaborate welcome space for kids. This is the second year and it’s working OK. People will sometimes stop while driving by just for their kids to stop at our house before piling back into the minivan. Because we don’t want leftovers, it works out well for the teens especially. Because they tend to come towards the end of the night, we tell them to take so much. I love seeing them still dressing up and still going outside and walking around in their neighborhood and they’re unfailingly polite and pleasant.

The following day my parents came to visit, we ate a lot of good food, and then later that night I met up with old friends and saw my favorite band live. While the show was sold out, I don’t encounter a lot of AFI fans in my day to day life. Chances are that you, the reader, are at best vaguely aware of who they are. Come along with me on a journey anyway, while imagining this is your favorite artist.

Over the years I’ve seen a lot of concerts, and lately I’ve noticed that people in the crowd will have the Setlist website up so they can see the whole show’s songs ahead of time. Most of the time, these are pretty spot-on as predictors of what you’re going to get. Usually there may be one or two songs that get rotated in and out to make it unique but the show is built around a pretty tight schedule of pyrotechnics and video or whatever. When I realized this it was kind of a disappointment. There are unfortunately a lot of things like this, where as an adult you see a peek behind the curtain and realize that the world is not as bespoke as you thought. When I was a teen watching live concerts the audience never knew what was coming next and every song was a surprise. The next one they played could be literally anything and the show felt just for you and collectively losing your mind when the first notes ring out and you all realize what song it is can’t be replicated.

That’s what happens at an AFI show. This tour they have played 81 songs so far, with an average of 17 songs per show. I know this because there’s a person on Reddit who has been managing a spreadsheet. This is a sickness I profoundly relate to. At the SLC show we got a cut so deep the last time it had been played live was 26 years ago. I like to cram for concerts so that I know as many of the songs they play as possible, so for comparison’s sake usually these cram playlists are an hour and a half long. The AFI one is 5, and still can’t cover the whole thing because every ding-dang show they play something that nobody thought they would. It’s not just AFI. I’m going to see Nine Inch Nails in the spring and it’s a different show every night too. And of course it’s a common jam band thing. I believe Phish once played an entire tour where they didn’t repeat a song once. But the difference here is that this is good music.

Maybe it’s a generation thing, like me hanging on with a death-grip to the whimsy of Halloween in spite of sensationalist headlines, trunk-or-treating, or teens worrying that their peers (or neighbors) will make fun of them for being too old to put on a costume and greet strangers in exchange for an eventual pillowcase full of candy. I remember being a little too old for trick-or-treating and doing it anyway. I’m grateful for my kind neighbors who saw us for who we were: kids who weren’t ready to grow up just yet. I don’t know or pal around with any members of AFI (yet), so I don’t know their motivations. But I like to think that they also remember being kids in a confusing world and what it was like to see a favorite band and not know what they’ll play next.

I’m not much of a dancer and I’m even less of a singer, but Saturday night I sang, and I danced. I screamed when they started the first few bars of a song I’d hoped to hear, but wasn’t sure I would. There’s a lot of sucky stuff going on, so an hour and a half of having that drowned out by banger after banger was as welcome a thing as I could have hoped for. I did make a playlist of the show I saw and I will listen to it when I’m sad, which is a lot these days. And because I’m 46, it took an entire Sunday afterwards to recover.

That’s your segue into the Log Cabin Sunday report, which I’m pleased to report was very relaxing. Because we flurry-cleaned on Saturday for visitors, it only took a bit of maintenance to be ready for the week. I napped, went for a walk, read a whole book, listened to a lot of records, and made the recipe you’ll find in this newsletter. Because of the time change, the day extended like my cats making an absolute meal out of a stretch in a sunbeam. This was the feeling I’ve been seeking. A day that feels long, with plenty of time to do anything and big gaps in between for quiet thinking. I unfortunately have to continue to admit that quitting football watching is the best thing I’ve done this year. Much of the latter half of my life has been addition by subtraction, or improving my life by removing the things from it that don’t work anymore. I guess this may be one more of those.

For the Log Cabin Sunday media wrap up: 

Listened to Dua Lipa, Future Nostalgia

Mozart something (I can’t remember what it was called but it was a woodwind 8-piece and was quite lovely)

The Faint, Fasciination

Boston, Don’t Look Back

Fleetwood Mac, S/T

Elton John, Greatest Hits

Read: Stephen Graham Jones, Don’t Fear the Reaper

Social Media Roundup:
I didn’t do any social media because of the sads

My name is Harley ‘Harles’ Monteiro, & I am a naturalist based in New England. Former park ranger, now a native landscape designer & restorationist, & in my free time I am fundraising to restore a large patch of forested wetland behind my childhood home that was formerly a rare habitat.  This poem was written observing my restored grassland in what used to be lawn, just in pure awe at the number of Insects flying around where previously nothing was growing! Amazing to witness the land starting to “remember” after just a few years!

“‘The Things Are Back’

I look across this yard

clambering back to

a memory of this ground

I look across this yard

to see all

the things back flying around

I look across this yard

& my eyes fight between

all the things I’m supposed to see

& I can’t help but realize

that this is almost what a place

is ever supposed to be

A Fox trots by

lifts a nose to the air

then disappears without a trace

& Fireflies are now

the only nightly lamps

that the Moths can yearn to chase

The Mosquitos still hunt me

but much more tolerable now

with the Dragonflies & Bats to avenge

The caterpillars eat the leaves

The flowers feed the Bees

The Spiders & the Wasps eat them

The flowers become seed

The Birds eat these

& the cycle repeats as they are sown

This place is remembering

& so are the things

as if, all along, they’ve known

For dinner I made the following recipe from Chef Heidi Fink. All recipes so far can be found here as well. It’s a virtual ongoing cook book!

Heidi Fink is a chef, food writer, and award-winning culinary instructor. Previously a restaurant chef and a culinary instructor at Camosun College in Victoria, Canada, Heidi now manages her own business teaching cookery classes and running culinary tours. She is the host of CHEK TV’s cooking show, Cookin’ on the Coast, and the chef representative for Vancouver Island’s own Country Grocer. www.chefheidifink.com

CHICKEN AND WINTER VEGETABLE SHEET PAN DINNER

Full of delicious fall flavours – thyme, rosemary, winter squash, and mushrooms – this easy weeknight sheet pan dinner with warm your whole family from the inside out! Feel free to swap the squash for a different winter vegetables (e.g. potatoes, carrots). If your family objects to mushrooms, replace them with 1/2 lb of any vegetable of your choice.

This can also be made in an air-fryer - see variation below.

Ingredients

6 large skin-on, bone-in chicken thighs

680 g (1-1/2 lb) winter squash*, peeled and chopped into 1-inch cubes

1 large cooking onion, peeled, halved, and sliced

500 g (1 lb) brown mushrooms, trimmed and cut in half or quarters

10 ml (2 tsp) minced fresh thyme leaves (or use 1 tsp dried)

10 ml (2 tsp) minced fresh rosemary leaves (or use 1 tsp dried)

7.5 ml (1-1/2 tsp) salt

5 ml (1 tsp) freshly ground black pepper

60 ml (4 Tb) oil or melted butter

*Feel free to substitute other winter vegetables (potato, turnip, parsnip, carrot, etc) for the winter squash

Instructions
1. Preheat oven to 400 F (200 C), using the convection setting, if you have it. Cover a baking tray with parchment paper.
2. Place chicken in a large bowl. Add 22 ml (1-1/2 TB) oil or butter, 2.5 ml (1/2 tsp) salt, 2.5 ml (1/2 tsp) pepper, and 4 ml (3/4 tsp) EACH minced thyme and rosemary. Mix everything to coat the chicken well in oil and seasonings. Place at spaced intervals on the prepared baking tray.
3. Place the prepared squash and sliced onion in the same bowl. Add 15 ml (1 Tb) oil or butter, 2.5 ml (1/2 tsp) salt, 1.5 ml (1/4 tsp) pepper, and 4 ml (3/4 tsp) EACH minced thyme and rosemary. Mix well. Place on tray, in the spaces between the chicken, making sure to spread out the vegetables in an even layer.
4. Place in the oven and bake for about 30 minutes.
5. Meanwhile, place the prepared mushrooms in the bowl, adding 15 ml (1 Tb) olive oil, 1.5 ml (1/4 tsp) salt, 1.5 ml (1/4 tsp) pepper, 2.5 ml (1/2 tsp) EACH minced thyme and rosemary. Mix well.
6. Once 30 minutes has passed, bring the sheet pan out of the oven and place on a metal rack or heat-proof surface. Add the seasoned mushrooms to the tray, scattering it as evenly as possible.
7. Return the tray to the oven and bake about 10 to 15 minutes more. Turn the broiler on for the last minute of cooking if you need more colour on the chicken skin and vegetables (this step will be more important if you didn’t have a convection setting in your oven).
8. Remove from oven and serve immediately, garnishing with parsley if desired.

Air Fryer Variation – serves 2 to 3 people

Use 2/3 of the recipe size (4 chicken thighs, 600 g squash, a smaller onion, etc). Set your air-fryer to 400 and 25 minutes. Preheat the airfryer basket before putting the chicken, potatoes, and onions in. Cook for only 20 minutes before adding the mushrooms. Cook for 5 minutes longer. Remove basket, and serve immediately.

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]