A hard week, an easy post
Feeling lots of grief, so I cooked a big pot of pork.
A stressful week, a quiet week, a strange week. A week with headaches, a busted tire, a lot of takeout, and (another) Very Hard medical appointment. A week of more horrific news from Gaza. A week with a whole lot of grief and a little bit of writing.
Also, a week when blue green baby leaves appear in my garden and the hellebore shines like stars.
I’m going to keep this one brief, my friends. Off to a mini writing retreat next weekend!
What I’m writing
Did some research into Inuit folk tales and went down a rabbit hole. Pulled myself out and found myself able to write an elevator pitch description of my book for the first time. Going to bookmark this description and come back to it six months from now, a year from now, and see what’s changed.
What I’m reading
I started The Quickening by Elizabeth Rush for our upcoming book club on March 17 and 18. If you want an abbreviated taste, her reading for Emergence Magazine’s podcast is lovely. She name drops Ursula K. Le Guin in her discussion of Le Guin’s short story, “Sur,” which is a favorite of mine. Rush also inspired me to pick up a copy of Do Glaciers Listen? by Julie Cruikshank from an interlibrary loan.
Inspired by Ani Lee’s post about parenting (or choosing not to parent), I listened to a couple episodes of the podcast, Women Without Kids, a podcast project related to the book of the same name by Ruby Warrington. This episode about procreation ethics with Carter Dillard expressed a lot of my ethical discomfort around our society’s focus on birth new humans into the world, rather than focusing on taking good care of the children already here.
I’ll be going to Red Emma’s to celebrate the publishing birthday of my beloved Rabbi Ariana Katz’s first book, co-authored with Rabbi Jessica Rosenberg, For Times Such As These. I serve on the board of my local lefty shul, Hinenu, where R’Ariana is our resident rabbi. If you love your Torah covered in glitter, delight in queer and disabled readings of our sacred texts, and crave a Jewish community that has called for ceasefire since Day 1, you are so, so welcome here (in-person or virtually)! I’m already underling passages from the chapter on Nisan to share at my own Pesach seder.
A helpful thing
If you’re pressed for time and your stress level is through the roof, make a lot of food in a simple way. A pot of soup, or several pounds of meat cooked slow.
I made this Melissa Clark recipe for pulled pork in my Instant Pot yesterday, preparing the marinade the night before. (Maybe this seems strange in a post that talks about my Jewishness, but yes, I’m Jewish, and yes, I eat pork.) We ate it with roasted sweet potato tossed in taco seasoning, leftover pickled onions from our taco takeout, and guacamole I made with a slightly overripe avocado I found in the back of my fridge stirred together with more leftover onions and cilantro from taco takeout and lots of lime juice. We’ll now have pork for days, not a bad thing.