April, Come She Will
How are you? I am genuinely interested in what has been keeping you busy, happy, nourished and/or concerned — enquiring minds want to know!
As I write this, I’m snuggled up on the sofa, watching snow blanket the neighborhood, even though the forecast only calls for 1/10th of an inch of rain.
April Snowers
That said, April 1st is one of my favorite days of the year, not for the hijinks and foolery, but because three of the loveliest women I know were born on this day:
Sharon, a 5’2” 100 lb dynamo who went from being a Wall Street broker to pretty much single-handedly running a 140-acre farm near the Blue Ridge Mountains in Virginia. There she raised her two whip-smart daughters, one of whom now runs a fantastic grocery store/cafe in Water Valley, MS (NY Times gift link). Sharon is now raising heritage sheep and lambs, chickens, I think a few goats?, and a couple of ridiculously adorable dogs.
Abby (Gaia in human form), a driving force behind our local food bank, also owns a farm here in Deschutes County where her son and daughter-in-law grow amazing produce for their business Boundless Farmstead; honest to Pete Buttigieg, Abby makes the best salads all from the goodness grown on the farm.
My beloved Grandma, Lucy Riggs, born in 1902, marveled in her later years at the things that she had witnessed over her lifetime — indoor plumbing and electricity, two World Wars, the Great Depression, vaccines, airplanes, space exploration, and moon landings. She was a grandma’s grandma — always making sure everyone in her orbit had a nourishing breakfast, lunch, and dinner; the food she made wasn’t fancy, but it was chock full of love, making it pretty much all healthy comfort food. She passed in 1992 and I still think of her everyday. 💖
“Grandma Paul” from a photo taken sometime in the 1940s.
What’s curious is that I know more people born in April than in any other month. My sister Terri, the love of my life, would have been 68 on April 6th; my friend and badass mountain biking shero, Susan, will celebrate on April 9th; and Janice, a woman who has been a second mother to me, turns 86 on Earth Day, April 22nd.
Food has been the common love language among all these women - they have intuitively understood its magic to build and strengthen relationships with family, friends, and the community. To be honest, it’s my love language too, even if I don’t speak it quite as fluently. I believe my passion for cooking and baking was the single reason my marriage lasted as long as it did; food was the “binder” that held us together. Now that I’m on my own, I have often (read: compulsively) gifted family, friends, and neighbors with, among other things, my riff on Martha Stewart’s cheesecake, chocolate stout cake, the Kamala coconut cake, ciambellone, baked ziti, lasagna, chicken parmesan, and butternut squash galettes. Everyone has been patient and kind, but none more so than my next-door neighbors — a charming young couple, three lively kids (10, 8, and 5), and a doting grandma. This past weekend, I made a “mountain biking” birthday cake for the now 8-year-old boy, and the weekend before, a chicken pot pie (iterations of which have become my obsession, but more on that later). I joked with Jess, the mom, that I have also been working on a Netflix screenplay about a creepy neighbor who keeps foisting food on the lovely family next door; she said, “And it’s going to be called ‘My Neighbor Is Better Than Yours!'"
I won the neighbor lottery…
Over the last several weeks, I’ve been recipe-testing pot pies, striving to make gluten-free, vegan, and vegetarian versions of the classic chicken pot pie. (I hesitate to bring this up to my brother because I’m unsure whether he and his bride have fully recovered yet from the three enormous pot pies I sent them a few years ago from Great Lakes Pot Pies.) The gluten-free version has yet to be perfected, but the vegan, vegetarian, and classic versions, I must say, are swoon-worthy. Today, I’m recipe-testing empanadas — a vegetarian tempeh & brown rice empanada and a barbecue chicken empanada. My friend Patty is egging me on to start a little side gig; to be honest, I’m tempted because it feels like a labor of love (at this point 🤪) and a very welcome distraction from the news of the world. An inspiration has been entrepreneur Tanner Bowen (whose birthday, I just realized, is ALSO today!), the 20-year-old son of former pro cyclist and April-born friend Bart Bowen, who envisioned, built, and launched a food truck serving the best pizza in Bend. I’m so smitten with his efforts and his pizza that I volunteered to make a website for him.
In any event, I am planning on having a savory pie tasting party in a month or two, so if you are local, let me know if you are interested in partaking.
Finally, as you may have noticed, I’ve steered clear of discussing our national nightmare because I know many of us have been teetering between horror and hope. On a particularly dark day in mid-March, I languished in bed after waking, only to check my phone and learn that someone I love deeply is expecting identical twins, probably around Labor Day. It was a much-needed double dose of hope! To you, my dear, and your amazing family, Sláinte!
In the meantime, with love…
S.
4.1.25
What I’ve Been Reading
On Tyranny by Timothy Snyder 😳 (a gift from my friend, Laurie 🙏🏻). I don’t recommend reading it at night. 😬
Dinner Pies: From Shepherd's Pies and Pot Pies to Tarts, Turnovers, Quiches, Hand Pies, and More by Ken Haedrich
What I’ve Been Watching
Sing Sing (MAX) - Colman Domingo (“Rustin”) is phenomenal in this inspirational film about the Rehabilitation Through the Arts (RTA) program at Sing Sing and other prisons.
The Residence (Netflix) - Wonderful, with a hilarious finale. Uzo Aduba continues to amaze me with her acting range; she was great in HBO’s In Treatment.
Becoming Katharine Graham (Amazon Prime) - My Prime membership expires in May so I’m glad I was able to catch this before then. It may make you cry and/or enrage you, as it did me, thinking what Bezos has done to the Washington Post.
In the News
Kansas Babysitter Checks Under the Bed for Monsters (NPR)
A Kitchen Resolution Worth Making: Follow the Recipe Exactly (NYTimes gift link)
Blocking mobile internet on smartphones improves sustained attention, mental health, and subjective well-being (Oxford Academic)
New York’s Most Exciting Restaurant is Just a Warm Up Act (NYTimes gift link)
Quote of the Month
“The truth is, the small power that each of us has to do something is right in front of us. If we're all doing that, it outweighs anything that some big leader somewhere can do.”
- Michelle Obama
So long, February!
It’s crazy, isn’t it, how the last two months have felt like two years and yet, at least to me, February seemed to fly by…
Since the election, I’ve been sending smatterings of emails to various groups of friends and family, prequels to this inaugural post. You may have heard me say before that I firmly believe the solution to this cluster in which we find ourselves is to strengthen our personal connections with like-minded folks and try to “hold space” for the others. As many of you know (and are probably tired of hearing!), I have canceled my Washington Post subscription (last July!), access select articles in the New York Times free via the local library, and have entirely foregone all social media. I’ve since opted to connect directly with people in my circle, either in person or by text/email; I have some loved ones I can only reach with an old fashioned letter, for as long as the USPS remains intact. (I solemnly swear my mental health has improved dramatically with these changes alone.) This Substack-ish newsletter is a streamlined way of reaching out to my circle and to encourage you all to connect personally with your respective circles. It seems intuitive to me, by making this effort, we will find safety and comfort, and hopefully change, in numbers.
Not gonna lie (ngl, for the hipsters): A few months before the election, I was just emerging from a deep, three-year, post-divorce funk peppered with health issues (both mine and my furry children’s) which nearly tanked me. As my spirits began to lift (queue July 21st), I continued to follow through with a hope-filled plan to transform my political/non-profit-oriented consulting business into one focused on grant writing/non-profit support. I consulted mentors, took many classes, read all the books, developed a website, and was in the process of reaching out to my network when November 5th happened. (As I correctly predicted that night, grant writing, as we know it, has been dramatically imperiled, along with everything else right now.)
Since then, you too have likely had gut-wrenching 3 AM wake ups, if not outright insomnia. Along with envisioning the impending demise of democracy, I had been calculating daily the right day to say goodbye to my almost-19 y.o. cat girl Annie[1]; I learned shortly after Christmas that Maya, my 13 y.o. “pit llama” dog, has a mass in her liver[2]; and I was in chronic physical pain. These stressors and the seeming lack of viable future financial prospects led me down The Dark Path.
Don’t get me wrong: I have a true “dream team” of friends and family who would stand by in tough times but, at that point, nearly everyone I know was grappling with a terrifying future and I did not want to add to the disquiet with my inner terror(s).
In early January, with A LOT of time freed up from banishing social media, I read The Body Keeps the Score by Bessel van der Kolk. All I will say here is most everything that had been confusing about my life — including the political landscape — suddenly untangled. I’ll venture to add, in addition to just reading a good book, an effective anti-depressant can be reliable and resonant scientific information that fills in the gaps between what we feel and what we know.
On January 21st, a whimsical Substack post by writer Jen Louden landed in my inbox. It entertains the idea that “magic” might be a way through/out of our collective national nightmare. That led me to consider so many of the “magical” moments I’ve experienced over my lifetime; it was then I realized (again) life and this world are brimming with pockets of magic and small miracles… and so are we. I’m reminded, too, of what Bill Clinton said in his first inaugural address: “There is nothing wrong with America that can’t be cured by what is right with America.” Maybe we can’t “fix stupid” (or evil) but we can use our own individual magic for good. For me, that means writing — to you, to newspaper editors, for organizations doing good work, or for the sake of writing.
I hope you’ll continue to join me here for some collective pondering and whimsy in the weeks and months ahead. I want to know too how you’ve been dealing, what you‘ve been reading, watching, making, paying attention to. If you’d like, please share in the comments.
In the meantime, with love…
S.
2.28.25
What I’ve Been Reading
A Walk in the Park by Kevin Fedarko. If you haven’t read it, The Emerald Mile, also by Kevin, is the place to start; it’s arguably the best book I’ve ever read.
No Bad Parts by Richard Schwartz.
If You Can’t Take the Heat: Tales of Food, Feminism, and Fury by Geraldine DeRuiter.
What I’ve Been Watching
The Wire (MAX) (I can’t believe, as a former Marylander, that it took me 20 years to watch this—incredible dialogue.)
Zero Day (Netflix)
Rustin (Netflix) Produced by Barack and Michelle Obama.
What I’ve Been Making/Baking
Baked Feta and Chickpeas (Love & Lemons, ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️)
Chocolate Raspberry Swirl Cheesecake (NYTimes Gift Link) (Made this for friends & neighbors for Valentine’s Day - BIG hit!)
In the News
“Seal seeks sanctuary in New Haven streets” (Yale News)
“‘What fresh hell awaits me today?’ Federal workers share their stories”
(The Baltimore Banner)
“10 Things We Can All Do to Protect Democracy” by Marc Elias (Democracy Docket)
“The SAVE Act Is Voter Suppression Disguised as Election Integrity” (Ms. Magazine)
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[1] The girls (Lily and Maya), my dear friend Susan, and I said goodbye to Annie here at home on January 23rd, with assistance from the girls’ longtime vet.
[2]…which could be removed to the tune of $8k-$12k. I won’t make you queasy by telling you how much I’ve spent over the last two years at the vet. Elizabeth Warren is not wrong. It may or may not be cancer but is likely, at some point, to be fatal. I sure hope not. In the meantime, I’m making sure she is living her best life.
