It’s been since [checks notes] March? Gosh.
Hi to all, but especially the handful of new subscribers who came along from the A++ comments section of Anne Helen Petersen’s Culture Study back in June. I’m a longtime reader and supporter of her newsletter but rarely add to the conversation. I was intrigued, though, by her recent musings regarding “Grandparent hobbies” (gardening, napping, specialty baking, woodworking, birding, etc - activities she defines as “something that you do without mind towards optimization”) and left this brief comment:
Opinion: Grandparent hobbies are really about the business of living in the moment and are increasingly important in these days of competition for our attention.
I’m of grandparent age and then some, but I very much believe these and other grandparently practices belong to everyone at every age, and that we must assert and regularly indulge our extremely human desires to engage more deeply and colorfully with wherever we are.
I’m enjoying her new Garden Study weekly series (and the comments). Read more about that project here.
Topics I find myself considering these days, each of which may eventually be its own post/edition/whatever we’re calling these installments:
What is dynamism? What is conviviality (ask Cookie the Cat - I think he might know)? What do we want? What do we need? What are we willing to support? How are we willing to participate? I ask myself these questions every day. I feel very guilty about my tired answers.
OK, I’m still thinking about “grandparent pursuits”. Are they really just the business of engaging with the world that happens to be around you because, maybe, you have the time to do so? The headspace? I don’t know. Even though I get it, these pursuits’ relegation by the overculture to hobby status, or something “older” people do seems strange to me, as I’ve always preferred such activities to almost any other kind of “real” job. They certainly feel more necessary. Hmmm.
I ponder travel and the eye’s need to do so. I was in Savannah, GA in June, thinking often about Patrick Skinner’s Eastside Orangeys and the best Twitter feed there is. We all matter or none of us do.
I think about our Very Large Array of Rain Barrels (more details forthcoming) as I garden a little less this year. A friend asked me what I was planting following the garlic (harvested far too early this year, I think, but it had to be done), and I confessed I wasn’t sure. Late-stage capitalism is, ironically, a driving force in my not going as hard in my more home/community-oriented pursuits, but so are age and hormonal challenges, frankly. This train of thought brings me, of course, to 20+ years ago, when I was learning about growing food and reveling in the empowerment that comes with being able to grow things, to coax them out of the ground. Such stamina! Such smugness, too. I understand much better my extreme privilege of being able-bodied and having plenty of room to grow food. This reminds me that I see fewer people trying at the local community gardens this year. Is it a knowledge gap? Is it too hot? Bad air quality? Is it just here, in central Illinois?
Every weekend, as I sling peaches for my friends from Mileur Orchard at Urbana’s Market at the Square, I encounter eaters coming to terms (or not) with their currently held ideas and expectations regarding summer local food availability in our part of the lower Midwest. Peaches, for example, have been extremely unpredictable this summer. When I tell people the orchard’s stone fruit really is week-to-week at the market due to climate and weather, they often respond that they know it’s been dry. When I tell them that the stress on the trees actually happened last fall and throughout the winter due to the all-over-the-place temperatures happening at the wrong times, I see some processing going on. We’ve been lucky af to have any fruit at all, truly. I mean, what happened to Georgia’s 2023 peach crop is terrible, but my guess is it will become much more common. We need to adapt, we need to do it quickly, and we need to do it together. This is but one reason why belonging to where we are matters. Global matters in the existential sense, but local provides texture, depth, culture, community, and empathy.
Which: I think of my neighbors, including new ones, with their weaving (or not) into the fabric of neighborhood life. It’s pretty worn fabric these days - not frayed as much as worried thin. People are busy; we all work a lot. My friend David, who I sometimes refer to as Colorful House Guy, is a newer regular. His tireless efforts and fresh eyes are so welcome. Has it already been 4 years since he arrived in town? Did it really take that long for him to join us for a bowl of chicken barley stew and a beer earlier this spring, and for a drink in the driveway this summer?
Listening: Jane’s Addiction’s discography & this 4-hour juggernaut about their work; same for The Clash; the current season of YMRT (now on break) is a… banger; Desert Oracle; Brown Spirits; Mapache; Anika; Weval; Bananarama; Hole; Orang
I opened my email at the same moment this notification popped into it and I smashed the open button so hard I broke it. I'm having so many similar ruminations. My garden is nothing this year. Last year's endless long covid battle, post-menopause malaise, heat exhaustion, shit air quality, general despair over ::waves around at everything:: all add up to me having no stamina. I'm focused on healing in an indoors way and it's fine but I miss the garden and every time I look at what a bloody overgrown mess it is and the woodchucks and rabbits that found their way under the fence I spent a month building and the deer that has made it her den to sleep every night, I just don't even know where to begin. So good to read your voice again. Miss you, friend. Life is weird and hard.
What a welcomed letter from a friend, this issue was, and per usual, you wrote to my heart. After losing a beloved pet this spring, I find myself much less interested in things I once thought important. Some of it, I am certain has to do with a little bit of stretching as I move into a different part of my life. Restless. Unsettled. Almost annoyed.