Goodbye, field tomatoes. I’m crying like Jimmy Swaggart.
 
***
 
Every profession has evangelism — faith, chefs, books, sourdough, movies, tech, vintners, politics, and clothes — with preachers selling their way and handing out labels like scout badges. We’re all wrapped up in it. A friend sent me this fascinating interview by Nahlah Ayed with David Samson to add to the discussion about tribalism from last week. One of his suggestions is an offering custom-made for Thanksgiving — focus on “pro-social, face-to-face relationships.” Gather and feast, people. Do it again soon. Exercise your hospitality skills. Invite people in.
 
***
 
I felt dread and panic reading posts of people unable to evacuate from Florida this week because of poverty, isolation, incarceration, illness, or disability. There’s a grassroots culture of national and local mutual aid on social media. BlueSky is reminding me of the goodness of Bluebird Twitter. It’s a relief to see a virtual community, “the helpers,” jump into action. (There are better moderation tools to stem toxic invasions from the evil believers — the evangelic trolls — who try to follow me with fake Keanu Reeve’s accounts.)
 
Maybe you have friends in Florida starting completely over or calling it quits. Climate migrants leave a place in a hurry and never look back because of too much first-hand experience. Think of it for a moment. Even prepared, there are hard decisions to make at the last minute. Imagine the run on supplies in the few days before. Then spending hours on a highway in a long chemtrail of taillights hoping there’s enough gas to get to safety. This kind of stress is an increasingly common experience for us. 

Cole Gregson writing for Oxford American about North Carolina. Being a helper first and a writer next. Doing rural wellness checks and spreading the word of great need. All the way to the end showing us the spirit of Thanksgiving.

What if every time you turn on an engine this week, you thought for a moment about global coastal and island citizens losing everything? My tribe has advocated for Mother Nature since way back. I dug the button below out of one of my precious tins. I wore it on my jean jacket in Katimavik when I was seventeen — in this together.
 
***
 
I turned some whipped M-S Dairy cream cheese into a fabulous salad dressing. I shook these ingredients in a small jar: cream cheese, white wine vinegar, avocado oil, garlic puree, lemon zest, sugar, salt, MSG, and pepper. Bring to room temperature if refrigerated.
 
At one of my local markets, there was a sign advertising newly harvested carrots for $1.99/lb. How could I resist? I made a sweet, crisp julienne of one using a mandoline, added pea shoots, and tossed it with the dressing. So. Damn. Fine.

***

​A harrowing story from APTN. Basically a re-enactment of our entire history — the experience since the first invasion. Another thing sent to destroy the First Nation’s culture. The storyteller is reporter Kenneth Jackson and he shows up brave, demonstrates respect at every step, and cares for people.
 
“…and had no idea what it felt like to be queen in this castle of dissolute men.”
The Anita Pallenberg documentary is deep-fried perfection — extraordinary and bittersweet. Scarlett Johansson narrates Pallenberg’s journal entries. The footage is breathtaking and it’s revelatory in terms of her relationship with Keith and the band. So much of their enduring style and culture came through her, a vivacious and magnetic Euro girl. Keith is a whole lot of things and a large side of tender. Their children are brave, brilliant, and candid. Prepare for devastation and love — the Kate Moss finish is delicious. Kudos to directors Alexis Bloor and Svetlana Zill.
 
When I was a kid, I had a portable record player and a small pile of Jackson Five, Osmond Brothers, and Beatles 45s. My most prized possession because music was the first place I felt free. 

***

Music notes are the crème Chantilly of communication.
 
The Oliva Dean felt like a snug fit with Keith serenading Anita. The two songs are like parallel parking in sunny Villefranche-sur-Mer. I’m am basically supersaturaed like confiseur at this point with Leon Bridges. An evangelic sound.

I set a big work goal for myself this week. I’m embarrassed, but I will tell you it was to write 7,000 words. I’ve never done that much in five days in a decade of writing. I will never write with the speed of Kazuo Ishiguro. Five to seven hundred words a day is super bon. (Of course, there are days when I can do more.) I don’t know if this is the way it will always be. On Wednesday, it was clear I would not make it, so I took a ride on the mental rollercoaster called Funk. Living alone, there was no one to remind me to get off. Then I remembered my ex would look at my To-do lists and ask me why climbing Mount Everest wasn’t on it. Poking fun at the gap between my desire to achieve and what is humanly possible. Making me laugh was helpful. Is this a women's thing? Is it a way to prolong disappointment in myself? A micro-abuse to act out daily. A lifetime of making restaurant mis en place lists with tasks perpetually dropping off the bottom into an abyss. After a few hours of moping, I settled on being more than halfway through the first draft.
 
Then I turned Friday into a minor celebration of my achievements because cake weather is back. I’m a card-carrying member of the night baker community. I made the Banana-Date Tea Cake from one of my favourite books, Tartine, because Elisabeth M. Prueitt writes good recipes. Sent a friend a text later that read: “This is the best banana cake I have ever had.” The crunchy sugar crust is texture perfection, and the dates and toasted walnuts give it elegance.
 
***
 
This devastating photo from Liz Renzetti of the clear-cut at the former Ontario Place circulated on social media this week. I imagine seeing the same thing in cottage country from a boat when a big property is being built. A sure sign a developer lacks the imagination to embrace the landscape. Globally there was one big takeaway from the pandemic and that is the value of being together and outdoors. Some can’t imagine nature having priority over commercial waterfront development. The idea of public space delivered by the people who don't spend summers here. Projects born on a wave of bullying have doom built into their DNA.
 
***
 
Something I read this week written in 1961 by Robert Ulich at Harvard University:
 
“In many groups hatred against outsiders has been a social glue as effective as internal understanding; we have not completely overcome the dangers of tribal mentality.”

***

​My standing desk in the kitchen. The blinds were down, and a fan blowing on me because Tuesday, October 1, was humid in the city.
 
“We know it’s not individual genius.” Long live Derrick Gee. The discussion on bands is *chef’s kisses.* 
 
“I always say it feels like church...When I go to AMC, I just sit there. And I can’t really experience that communal thing that we have here, where we’re all just worshipping at the altar of celluloid.” Because watching movies is not better at home.
 
Fangirling over Andrea Brusendorf.  Then, out for a walk with a friend, I see an Honorine Jobert anemone growing in my neighbourhood. I must take half a dozen photos of flowers every time I’m out for a walk. Who can resist? Might need the reminder in February.
 
***
 
I was introduced to Melody Gardot at the place of heart-shattering sunsets. The rest came this week in radio mode.

I went through a period in my late 30s where I was trying to figure out what my relationship was to having children. Facing the fact that whatever choice I made would be for forever. Feeling the medical pressure of being at a crossroads where ideal biological conditions and being single met. Approaching the reproductive cul de sac.
 
I made a decision of golden proportions. I chose no children. It was not a flighty-uninformed-selfish-crazy-hasty-flip-of-the-switch decision like I don’t know how to live my life. I gave it thoughtful consideration. I could care less about most opinions on the issue. How soon can we colonize Mars with the people who are emotional wrecks over my right to choose?
 
My parents knew the strength of my spirit. I did not feel a great pressure to be anything else but me. But there were no era-marking celebrations for me. I will never tie a paper plate of bows to my head or unwrap a breast pump. To the pronatalist, I’m a loser. That reminds me of one of my heroes, Lisa Simpson.
 
I knew enough to leave my heart open to have relationships with children and parents. There are aspects of a family I need. And I’m a lesson for people who hold a stereotype of mature women — like we’re all Stepford Wife-style grey-haired grannies. I’m a challenge to some and that’s something to be proud of.  
 
My mom would come to terms with never having grandchild news — a sometimes toxic, highly competitive landscape she’s been spared. She adjusted nicely. But I understand the loss too when I think of the pleasure of holding my grandfather Harry’s calloused hand.
 
I’m thrilled with how it worked out. Squeezing into the hetero-patriarchal mold is not all that, amen. 
 
***
 
When I see Borlotti beans in their pods, it takes me straight back to my dad. We’d buy a bushel basket at the Centre Mall market in Hamilton on a Saturday morning around this time of year and then spend a few hours in the afternoon shelling. The feel of the velvet talcum residue on the pods — dirt from the field transferred to my hands. Driving country roads past bean fields that look apocalyptic just before harvest. Store fresh beans in the freezer. They cook up tender quick and are best simmered with loads of vegetables and herbs.
 
A note for some cooks and bakers, it’s time to fill up your wallet and buy the dried ingredients to macerate for fruitcake. Get the best you can afford and mess around with flavors. Even an economy model fruitcake is a work of wonder. My magic mix includes dried cherries, currants, apricots, golden raisins, Flame raisins, candied ginger, and peel. I’m team rum. Also, start thinking about fruitcake’s favorite side squeezes —  aged cheddar and quality milky tea.

***
September is for Dahlia lovers. Here too.
 
This wins Instagram this week. 

This six part podcast tracing Joni Mitchell's career is fantastic. Her commitment to the creative process and her indomitable spirit are something to admire.
 
***
 
I’m thinking about the voices of North American protest. I began with women when I shared a few tracks of Roberta Flack’s Compared to What as a high watermark a few weeks ago.
 
At the tenth hour, I was offered a single ticket to see Joan Baez at Roy Thomson Hall in 2018. (Come to Toronto for our stellar music venues.) A great deal of intimate enrichment happens when you go to a cultural event alone. It’s a good practice and I felt full up on her music that night. She’s in a top spot here for good reason. One of many voices from the March on Washington.
 
Stevie Wonder with the Jackson Five giving it to Richard Nixon and playing his fingers over the keyboard like butterflies while we all groove. Seeing the back of some “politicians” is sweet.

Willie Dunn's baritone voice, guitar and words. 

​There’d be a long row of broccoli if I had a garden.

I steam it until just before it crumbles, then toss it tenderly with an insane amount of butter and flaky salt. I can eat a lot of it and don’t care if there’s nothing else. I had some of that head left to crush with leftover steamed fingerlings for a quick mash — it was second-day delicious. Stir-fried broccoli with lots of half-crisp onion crescents, garlic, ginger, mushrooms, and black bean paste is so good. A cook’s treat is the peeled stem eaten raw while I’m pulling dinner together. Why would you ever buy crowns?

***

A year ago, the west end of Bloor Street went through a metamorphosis. The stretch I live on went from a four-lane speed trap to a proper boulevard. One lane was removed for cyclists, the speed limit dropped to 40 mph, and planters were installed as barriers. A downtown pinko's dream. The nights here are quieter. On Sunday mornings, I hear the whir of racing bike tires when a peloton passes on the way to High Park. There hasn’t been a single accident. Months before the work began, I spent what felt like an eternity holding the hand of a catatonic young man who’d hit a speeding motorcycle right out front. Mixed-use roadways are inclusive and civilized. I like looking out my front window at dusk and seeing the long trail of red taillights snaking toward downtown. There is enough time to admire a classic car passing — like this intoxicating '68 Chevrolet Corvette convertible. Driver inconvenience does not bother me. The east-west axis is well served by a subway. I want to believe property value and business benefit from the change. Let me bury you in urban studies.

***

September is a sultry month. I walked south along the Humber River to an appointment this week, parkland all the way. The quality of late summer light in the morning is something. The sky was azure, the sun made a silver shimmer on the river, and the vegetation along the path was a wild tangle of skeletal seed heads and late blooms. 

​***

This is a loving tribute. My writer's heart melted reading it. Mentors are everything. Thank you, Katie Ward, for stitching those words together. 

I booked an hour of a librarian’s time through the Toronto Public Library. Where is my crown? I had three specific questions about their collection and international library access. The response I got was thorough. Brilliantly helpful. Librarians are superheroes of democracy. They are on the front line.

I read everything about Peggy Guggenheim. "For it was while staying at Yew Tree that the budding gallerist began to reframe her life, seriously considering her long-held desire of opening her own art museum." The privilege in buying a painting a day.

This interview on funk music with D’Angelo is thoughtful — he is a pro and knows where he fits. The intro is pulse-raising. What he says about Prince is right. The list of bands he offers is a gift.

I keep your notes in a file labelled "for the days of doubt." 

***

This week’s mood was R&B. The beauty of the collaboration in the first song. Then Snoh Aalegra followed by D’Angelo. Her angelic voice...the tension he creates with the keyboard...their vocal range...his live performance. Imagine the thrill of being in an audience full of feeling. A community singing along, “Won’t you get closer.”

My father wrote letters to politicians. The kind that got him annual Christmas greetings from men like Brian Mulroney. A well-set photo on nice cardstock — Canadian posh. He hung out smiling on the shelf above my dad’s desk where I could give him a side eye.  
 
Democracy is a demonstration. It is a multi-tasking action — exercising your voice and chasing off cynicism. I miss having political conversations with him. We’d regularly talk events through on the phone because we were interested and tried to stay informed. I wish I’d recorded some of those conversations to hear his voice again and get reassurance.
 
In the past month, I’ve written letters to federal and provincial government members across party lines about the temporary foreign worker program, and about food bank use rising to over a million in Ontario. Human security concerning housing, jobs, and food is an essential contract with our governments. The issues are non-partisan and serious enough to demand a response that isn’t racism or posturing. People are not being served.
 
I’m fed up and put that energy, time, and talent to good use. Putting words together is how I contribute. I can get to the point quick and am mindful of not wearing out the welcome. 
 
***
 
Our national apple. The McIntosh. The pride of the country, in a basket with so many other regional beauties. 
 
When perfect, the skin’s so taut you can almost see your reflection. The memory of the crisp, saliva-triggering tart-sweetness of biting into one as a kid. Lush and milky. A frothy drink of freshness. The season is a day long. I buy them one at a time. Like their blossoms, spectacularly here and then gone.  

​Small wins:

Discovering Melissa L. Sevigny this week was a miracle. I followed her trail and now I’m waiting for one of her books to show up on the hold’s shelf at the library.  
 
A heartwarming tribute to Mr. Jack Long of Long & McQuade. “Jack’s generosity was legendary…If you told him your circumstances, he’d go to his staff and say, ‘Cut this person a deal.’ That caring approach carried throughout all his stores.” 
 
This little bit of sanity about research and the comments and quote posts that extend out from it.  
 
Stunning glazes and structure. Japanese ceramics on social media. 
 
I had no idea that YouTube caps a playlist at 200 songs. I’ve started today volume two. 
 
***
 
A fine example of the power in the singer. Both versions are stunning. 

It’s the grande allée between green bean and Hubbard squash season. Maybe my favourite vegetables. Sorry, celery root. 
 
I like to blanch beans, quickly fry them with garlic, and snug them against a roast chicken. Good hunger is standing beside my friend Ghaithaa at the stove while she makes Fasoulia with the flat green beans she loves. Sizzling heaps of thinly sliced garlic and green onions in ghee.
 
An embarrassment of salted butter is all a roasted Hubbard squash needs. 
 
The garden grows like a fever in September. A desire path, a wheelbarrow tire wide runs between it and the kitchen.
 
***
 
Scarlet rosehips are luminous in the dinnertime sun. A geisha’s lips. Spent blooms hang like an Issey Miyake among them. The Rosa Blanda metamorphosis. The scent on a hot July night hangs in memory’s closet.
 
***
 
I recognise myself as a writer while reading Duncan J. Watts, Five Feet at a Time. I’m working on a project and striking out in several directions, like the ink blots. A colleague once commented on my mind-map note-taking. My concentration on one thing caps out at three hours. Of course, I can get caught in a flow that lasts a day. But in figuring out how to be productive, I’m learning to flip the switch. And the solo climber metaphor he uses in the title is the way. 

***
 
I don’t have much extra, but there’s always enough for: 
 
Eating cassis sorbet in Trinity Bellwoods. The French know how to extract the lush essence from fruit. Ripeness has to rise above the numbing effect of cold. In flavour and texture, sorbet is a masterclass.
 
Stopping at the Polish deli for a raspberry donut. Two quarters change back from two dollars. A cheap thrill. Puffed like a foam pillow stuffed in a velum sugar case. Carried home in a small brown paper bag. Eaten while I make coffee. 
 
***
 
The songs go out to a friend from high school.

​“Their increasing liberation makes the country itself more beautiful.” 
 
Sentiment for the times. 
 
Rebecca Traister on Thelma and Louise. Maybe the best paragraph about a movie ever written:
 
“It’s not just that Thelma and Louise get inarguably hotter with every discarded lipstick, floral blouse, and trapping of conventional femininity; it’s that, in Khouri’s script and through director Ridley Scott’s lens, along the geographically impossible road from Oklahoma to Mexico, their increasing liberation makes the country itself more beautiful, both to them and to us. These women and their willingness to disobey, hang up on, laugh at, and even kill the men who degrade and underestimate them are not a blight on the nation; rather, their trek west, toward imagined freedom, flatters America, lights it up from within.”
 
***
 
Eating three perfect Ontario peaches in two days in the last week of August is haute seasonal. Like Gucci, but fruit. A Las Vegas fountain for the taste buds — passionfruit and tamarind and lime and agave and what-else. 
 
A few days later, they were mealy. The season comes to a smoke and screeching tires halt. Louise behind the wheel of the Tahoe Turquoise 1966 Ford Thunderbird Convertible — "peaches."

Stories of the week: 
 
“This paragraph took three fucking hours.” Ed Yong on practiced intentionality. Crazy good.
 
A guitar and a mahogany tree from The Met.
 
***
 
There was a trickle of emails waiting for me on waking last Sunday — messages about orchards. Thank you, universe. 
 
One from a friend telling me of a heritage apple tree they inherited with their Wolfe Island property — a St. Lawrence. The poetic embrace of location and tree. The watercolour by Deborah Griscom Passmore is on page 144 of The Ghost Orchard. 
 
If you’d like to get today by email, please send me your address. Then check your junk mail.
 
***
 
Music from two women. The Maya Delilah song is a new jewel. Phoebe Bridgers singing Metallica.

For the last two years, when I pass this tree on the Humber River, I put my hand on it to express solidarity with it in age and spirit. My admiration is more urgent this year because there's no fruit, the charcoal limbs are knobbly-arthritic, and the leaf cover is thin like a bad comb-over. Two days ago, I put my arms around it and hugged it proper.
 
It's part of a ghost orchard — five trees from an orchard planted in the 19th century. They are wild now and produce green apples the size and consistency of a jawbreaker. Before they hit the ground there are copper blemishes marking insect feasts. Starting in late August, the scent of fermentation is in the air.  
 
I might see this tree pass. I don't know the tree plan for parkland in the west end. I bet it's safe and economical. Why can't we establish orchards in city parks? 
 
I went on a Saturday outing to Ben Nobleman Park Community Orchard. It's right across from Eglinton West station. Volunteers care for it. There's a beautiful pollinator garden, too. I strolled back downtown along the Cedervale Ravine. 

​​My love of orchards goes back to my Niagara childhood.

​***
 
"It was more powerful than I had imagined finding Frost's last orchard still thriving…All praise and all miracle...The poet may die, but the poetry continues."
 
A passage from Helen Humphrey's The Ghost Orchard about the thrill of standing in Robert Frost's orchard at his Ripton, Vermont writing cabin.
 
***
 
You can't imagine the talks I've heard on addiction in nearly 30 years of recovery. None have expressed more compassion than this talk from Tara Brach. She expresses humanity beautifully. 
 
***
 
I like the way these songs sound together. Adrianne Lenker is something.

The ribbing is seductive. I leave it on the table until I smell a jasmine aura. When it’s juicy as a peach and there’s no struggle scooping out the guts. Eat it all in a day so that it won't sour or, worse, need refrigeration. Ripeness turns quickly to rot.
 
The first time I went to the market in Cannes and bought a melon the woman asked me when I would eat it. I was confused. Why did she need to know that? It was like a lesson in magic. Knowing when it was ripe was her job.
 
Ripeness is a state at odds with travel. Consider the care needed to drive anything ripe and tender the few short miles from roadside stand to home. It's like transporting a stack of porcelain tea cups.   
 
Growers who ship their produce might harvest fruit before it reaches its "last, intense phase of life."[1] The essential pleasure remains in the field. The natural cycle foreshortened. Edward Behr writes that "a melon that's picked only partly ripe will gain in juice off the vine but not in aroma or sugar."[2], so under ripe specimens will never realize their potential as a "feast for our eye and palate."[3]  Niki Segnit in The Flavour Thesaurus writes, “Melons…share cucumber’s green, grassy flavor notes.” I want to make melon jam according to Christine Ferber.

You should see my mom’s smile when I talk about cantaloupe and ice cream. We like a scoop of maple walnut or pralines and cream in the glorious orange bowl made by nature. To amplify the fruit’s caramel finish. It tastes like a rocket ride to childhood.

Blanket flowers and cantaloupes share the season. In colour they’re cousins. I took that sexy photo.

Found inspiration in a refreshing Syrian beverage:
 
Cateloupe + organic plain yogourt, + lime juice + rosewater + too much ice + sparkling water or kombucha + mint.
 
***
 
When I pull over to park on the shoulder of Highway 8 or a Lincoln County Road near a roadside stand something snaps in me. I want it all — six of this and two of that and a basket of something.
 
I remember the region in an earlier agricultural time when the fruit trees towered over you and people from all corners of the globe grew grapes for Brights, or for wine at home, and had big gardens. When E.D. Smith was booming.
 
My dad was always a solid gold passenger in the country around Grimsby. We'd drive through orchards near the Lake Ontario shore and past wineries heading toward the escarpment. Behind the wheel of his Black Buick Regal with the red leather interior. My family has lived in the Niagara region since the 1930s — closer to the locks and shipyards. I’d give a lot to do that with my dad again or with anyone in my family.
 
***
 
"I’ve tried everything but therapy." We know. Thank you, Teddy Swims.

​
[1] McGee, Harold. On Food and Cooking. The Science and Lore of the Kitchen. (New York: Scribner, 2004) p. 353
[2] Behr, Edward. 50 Foods. The Essentials of Good Taste. (New York: The Penguin Press, 2013) p. 84
[3] McGee, p. 353

Do you know what a lighter is as it relates to lake boats? I didn’t until a conversation last week with my uncle about running aground in the Detroit River. Now I’m an expert almost influencer.
 
I’m not, and I know more than your average bear. I’ve spent most of my life living on the Great Lakes. I ask real conversation starter questions like, 'How often were you on the Detroit River?'
 
I’m proud to have family who can answer that. Boat talk is like a breakfast of fresh sourdough with tangy cultured butter and a wedge of cantaloupe that tastes like tea roses and honeycomb and sunshine. It’s the lush fat on top of yogourt. Plain and good and often brings on laughter.

A lighter is a boat to offload cargo, allowing a stuck boat to rise in the water.
 
I think about my grandfather Harry trying to rock the boat off the riverbed. Throwing the laker into forward and reverse, like you do with a car. Growing a Molson Golden thirst in the swelter of the engine room. Calling a lighter or a tug is likely a costly last measure.
 
It got me thinking about water levels:
 
“Climate models indicate that lake levels could drop as much as a metre and outflows could be reduced by 30% in the next fifty years. Water diversion to areas with drought may further lower lake levels.”
 
Lakes are always in flux. Even with state-of-the-art equipment, hitting bottom is inevitable. Search Google for ‘freighters stuck in the Great Lakes,’ because there is a flotilla or two worth. The proportions are Ridley Scott. Just another day at the office.
 
The work of a lighter is poetic. I’m grateful to the humans who help me get unstuck.
 
***
 
August is the season of hollyhock thirst. Plant me a yard full of flowers to tower over me. 
 
***
 
A beautiful mother with two young children on the subway randomly told me my eyes were stunning — just like that. I was out on a solo ice cream trip.
 
Twice lately a person I respect has called my writing “breathtaking.” A word in the dictionary. 
 
Trying to notice the ways I’m seen.
 
***
 
A New Kind of Slavery.
 
This reporting on temporary foreign workers from Ghada Alsharif of the Toronto Star is important. (For hospitality and farm workers who can’t afford the newspaper subscription, you can access it through Canadian Newsstream at your local library online.) There are other writers who have been thoughtful on this subject.
 
I am using my letter writing skills for good now. Being of service. Practicing another kind of influence.
 
***
 
This came to me in radio mode a week ago. I have always loved Chicago. The piano off the top is a tease. Look at this album jacket.
 
The second song lightens my heart. The title is my message to a friend.
 
And that last song...