10 things of interest #9

Subscriber goals, engagements and a fall bucket list

October has been such a whirlwind — I hit a big subscriber goal that I’ve been snail pacing towards for months, opened up Substack Chats, which you can find here… and I got engaged.

It’s been a great week curating this month’s things of interest, there are so many incredible writers out there and it’s always exciting rounding up my favourite pieces of the month. I’ve thrown in an extra one because I just couldn’t trim the list.

Happy Halloween!

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1. In “The ones we sent away” Jennifer Senior gives us a raw and heartbreaking story about learning and discovering about her aunt Adele, who was institutionalized as a toddler because of an intellectual and developmental disability. She details conversations with her mother, Adele’s caretakers and the horrifying stories of the treatment of institutionalised children in the 1930’s and beyond.

2. In “How to light the dark months”

   Katherine May
   suggests 10 ideas for fighting the gloom in the dark half of the year. Number 4 (making candlelight ordinary) and number 6 (appreciate apricity) are my favourites.

3. Maddie Burton
   from The Five-Year Plan wrote about sorting through her mother’s belongings after she passed, and finding that perhaps, instead of neatly stacking life into drawers and boxes, she should instead embody the boldness her mother had.

4. It’s apple galore this autumn. I’ve made a list of things to bake before the end of the year is over and one of them is this Apple Pie Bar recipe from NYTCooking. They are so so delicious, perfectly soft and full of cinnamon and warm spice.

5. Laura Kennedy
   from ‘Peak Notions’ writes loneliness and how it’s “feeling unseen.” But it’s this earlier paragraph that hits the most for me, “How you write that without appearing to feel sorry for yourself or more than a little pathetic, I haven’t quite figured out. You’ll simply have to take my word for it – I don’t feel sorry for myself. But I do feel lonely, and I’m a smidge embarrassed to admit it because I understand somewhere in my guts that we aren’t supposed to say that.”

6. Not sure what to cook this Autumn?

   deb perelman
   from The Smitten Kitchen Digest lists several great recipes to try in “a fall cooking bucket list.” Apple cider caramels make for a great Christmas treat and who can resist a butternut squash and caramelized onion galette?

7. I think there’s few chefs more enjoyable to read on Substack than

   Will Cooper
   . I went down a rabbit hole of his archives and found this delicious recipe for sourdough seed crackers. At Christmas, I think these would make for a great little gift.

8. Tyler Austin Harper, an assistant professor of environmental studies at Bates College, wrote a powerful essay on gun-violence after this weeks mass shooting in Maine. In “How much blood is your fun worth?” Harper speaks on the gun epidemic in America and reassesses his relationship to it as a gun owner. It is a goosebump essay because it looks at the problem from the lens of a gun-owner and someone who finally admits the truth: “I have been forced to confront reality, a truth that has been there all along but that I have refused to admit: I own guns because I like them and because I am an American and I’m allowed to and no one stops me.”

9. Ethaney Lee
   from ‘try a little tenderness’ writes with such honesty and rawness that it’s addictive to read. “it’s rotten work,” is written like a diary entry that’s started in the middle of the page. It feels random, but she details her days through grief after the loss of her relationship, the familiarity and comfort of it and, most important, the loss of herself.

10. Amanda B. Hinton
    from ‘The Editing Spectrum’ shares an incredibly vulnerable piece about finding a stranger’s suicide letter in her nightstand and how she responds to it. In A Stranger's Letter Wedged Inside My Nightstand, the note forces her to question who wrote it and opens up a dialogue about her own mental health journey and DID diagnosis.

11. In “Becoming a Dad at 69,” Ezra pens a personal essay to all the ‘old dads’ out there and describes his first three years of fatherhood — awkward playground small talk, putting his daughter’s needs before his own as a family lawyer, and wanting to have more time with her.

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