the beauty of an ordinary life
Brief, sincere, and tactful. If you remember nothing else from what follows, below, then just remember these three words and you'll do fine. One of the things I've learned from having a small stationery business is that people often are reluctant to write notes because they don't know what to write, or how to express … Continue reading Something about writing condolence notes.
I'm going to write this free-form and fairly quickly, because I have for days now worked a little at a time, writing and erasing, editing and refining what I intended to offer as the last entry in this 56-day lark. I've written and re-written and it's still utterly dull and now quite overworked. This morning, … Continue reading Something about companionship.
This is a pandemic story, though it won't be clearly so until the end. It's an old story, rooted in distant places, long ago. We'll start here: The first time I cooked for other people I was in college. A friend invited several of us to her family's house in Vermont for a Presidents' Day … Continue reading Midnight cooking.
Stay for dinner, I said often in the early days, though much less frequently of late. I have been busy, preoccupied, blue. Stay for dinner, why don’t you? There’s plenty to share and we’d love to have you, I said, peeling pears and mincing garlic, wondering if we’d actually have enough. I wish I were … Continue reading Company
These are things I dislike: Pork rinds Rigid ideology The smell of fish sauce Waking up early Rachel Ray cookbooks Donna Tartt novels It isn't a comprehensive list, just a few current, top-of-mind thoughts. I include them here in case you're thinking of leaving, in case one of your New Year's resolutions is to declutter … Continue reading Field particles.
jenny's lark 