monthly musings vol. 8
anniversaries, fall in the mountains, and why I really don't like the New Substack
Seven years ago Chris and I got really festive for Halloween and dressed up as a bride and groom. It’s my favorite costume party to date.
We’ve had very romantic anniversary celebrations in the past - sitting outside the Louvre while a cellist played in the moonlight, watching the sunrise on Cadillac Mountain in Maine,1 fancy dinners with dozens of oysters.
This year wasn’t exactly romantic - at least not in the same way. We drove down a golden hillside in the Shenandoah Valley where we’d been staying for the better part of a week, and as the altitude shifted, the sinus infection I’d been fighting off the past few days kicked into high gear as my ears popped and my headache split and we just prayed the kids would sleep for a decent part of the drive back. A slight fever brewed as we got home and I was grumpy a la Kathleen Kelly in You’ve Got Mail - “I have a TEMP-A-TURE!”
And like a kindly Joe Fox, Chris put me to bed and took the kids and this is a wildly romantic, wonderful thing when you have young children. I remember hearing once that the two qualities that matter most in a partner are kindness and good humor. I think this is absolutely true. There are many things to hope for and look for in a spouse but these two qualities will see you through most anything.
But really we were very lucky this year in that we were able to get away for nearly a week, no small feat with children and farm and work. We hid away in a cabin in the Virginia mountains and made campfires and took walks and breathed fresh air. We saw bald eagles, a heron, blue jays, frantic nut gathering squirrels, and two bobcats. The kids slept great 4/5 nights and that seems like a major win to me. At first I was disappointed that we would be away during an odd warm spell (after weeks of wonderful, cool fall weather - just cruel!) but it actually worked out well - no worrying about bundling the kids up (one part I really do loathe about winter these days) and we still had very cool mornings and nights. Plus being high up in the hills we missed some of the awful heat down in the valley below.
The fall foliage was in true glory year, wildly beautiful gold everywhere, and when the dawn light hit through the trees I felt like we’d fallen into Rivendell. Magic.
Now back on the farm its grey and misty and cool - a perfect Eve of All Hallow’s Eve. I’ve come to really like Halloween, even the more gaudy displays - cobwebs on trees, ghouls hanging from the branches, jagged jack o’ lantern smiles glowing in the night. Shared festivity is a rare thing, as is imaginative play - at least for us adults. So costumes and parties and cider and candles glowing in the dark - all such good things. Wear a mask, play for a little while. It’s good for you.
Our toddler has about a dozen different identities throughout the day - Peter Rabbit, Ferdinand the Bull, A Cat named Jones, A Cat Pirate, A Bunny Pirate, A Doggy, A Pony named Max, and only rarely Jojo. I’m frequently corrected. “Baby Lucy needs a nap,” I’ll say. “Don’t you mean The Baby Bull needs a nap?” Jo (or Ferdinand, rather) will respond with immense seriousness. So I’m deep in the imaginative world.
How naturally magic and thin places and fairy stories come to us. We are taught so many things - even things you would think should come naturally (nursing, eating, even crawling or walking) - but Imagination comes untaught, unprompted and fully formed. Tolkien was right, I think - this is the Imago Dei - we are made in the image and likeness of God as Creative Beings, co-creators in this wildly beautiful world.
On the new Substack…
Have you noticed? There’s a new Substack. And you can’t avoid it now. If you hadn’t updated your app yet (as I purposefully hadn’t) too bad because the update has found you anyway. If you’ve been only going on desktop, too bad, because the update is there as well. In this new version
has very foolishly turned itself into another social media feed, only it’s much less interesting because I don’t even know who these people are or why they are on my feed at all. “Notes,” which I used to view as a necessary evil, benign at best, possibly bad news, now dominates the whole platform instead of being a sidebar. You don’t have an inbox front and center anymore. I don’t follow most of the people in my Notes feed, I don’t subscribe to their newsletters, and yet there they are, with their picture updates and one liners and memes, like a bad Twitter feed of yore. I can only assume some handy algorithm has brought them to my doorstep, inviting more clicking, more browsing, more time online.Oh Substack, Why? So many people, if you had done any research, don’t want the feed. They don’t want to scroll. They don’t want videos or personalities. They just want good writing in their inbox. And small details - like “add friends” are giving me PTSD flashbacks to those Instagram and Facebook feeds I deleted nearly five months ago now (and haven’t missed since).
I don't know what to do about this. I’ve trusted this platform, I’ve done a lot of writing here, and it’s brought good into my life. I’m even making a little money doing it - no small thing for a freelancer! So I’m here, I’m staying, for now, but I just wanted to say, I don’t like it, and I will not sacrifice my mental health or my own ethics when it comes to using this platform or any other online space - if it goes the way of so many other sites, I hope you’ll all join me with my antique printing press and fall festival in-person gatherings on the farm, because that seems the only safe escape.
Onto the links…
The baby is up from her morning nap and before long it will be time to pick up a certain fox cub from her costume party at Nature School, so time marches on , and here’s this month’s links!
A truly terrifying story here about the dangers of AI, copyright, and how writers really need to keep an eye on their work… from
: A True Crime Story: When AI Stole My Work And Didn't Pay Me For It- with some beautiful ideas for not just surviving winter, but thriving in it, with warm lights, candles, stories etc.
- ‘s writing is a balm for the soul: “To Trust the Invisible”
So there’s an International Agatha Christie Festival? Well, add that to my bucket list!
I feel like I’m in the minority here but I don’t like True Crime. I think it sensationalizes real death, real horror, real tragedy. Here is a story from NYT about a mother who had to grapple with the ‘entertainment’ her son’s murder became.
Chris has been so much better with sticking to our New Year’s Resolution of memorizing poetry (as in, doing it all) - he recently tackled Ulysses and I was reminded what a profound, stirring poem it is. Tennyson just wrecks my heart - in a good way. I get major Aragorn Not This Day energy here -
It may be that the gulfs will wash us down:
It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles,
And see the great Achilles, whom we knew.
Tho' much is taken, much abides; and tho'
We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are;
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.
My friend Joanna sent me this great old
essay on “locked room mysteries” - a genre I didn’t know I love, but I do.A moving essay from David Brooks on “The Essential Skills for being a Human” - I especially enjoyed his definition of what it means to be an “Illuminator.” I want to read his new book!
I am such a huge fan of voice memos. With the kids it’s hard to find time for a phone call or a lengthy text update, but I can send voice memos while cooking dinner, rocking a baby, going for a walk, driving to preschool, etc. I love the intimacy and the rawness. I love hearing my friends’ voices, the inflections, the emotion, everything. Three cheers for voice memos! Thanks to my friend Laura for sending me this article on why they’re so great.
- shared an important essay that again highlights what a train wreck women’s healthcare is. I have had hormonal imbalances in the past (directly affecting my ability to be/stay pregnant, so pretty darn important) and I was so grateful to have a doctor who immediately ordered a hormone panel (Thank you Napro!) - most doctors never do this or only as a last resort, often after medication, surgery, etc.
Well that’s all folks! Lucy is doing the most adorable babbling in her bouncer - ABABADADADA - I have no idea what she’s saying but she clearly thinks it’s hilarious. So onto the real important conversations of the morning!
Oh, and if you missed it, be sure to check out the Born of Wonder podcast - I had a great conversation with Rachel Sherlock of Risking Enchantment on Letter Writing and why it’s so important and I also interviewed the author Nancy Marie Brown on why Icelandic People Believe in Elves.
Here’s the inscription from the book 84 Charring Cross Road that Rachel and I reference in our Letters episode. Mine is a used edition and it was really eerie when I opened it and it was directed to Katie! I love the serendipity of things like this.
The podcast recently reached a big milestone - 50,000+ downloads! I know we’re so used to hearing about millions and hundreds of thousands but this is a big deal to me. This podcast has been my intellectual lifeline during a season of little babies and too little sleep and it has given me more opportunity than I could have imagined. I took a real risk when I quit my ‘real job’ to do this sort of thing and I’m so grateful.
Sincerely, thank you.
As long as my health cooperates, I'm hoping to have some spooky poetry out for the monthly sound escape for paid subscribers tomorrow. And just remember, November is the month of the dead so we have plenty of time to get eerie and recite poetry in graveyards. Isn't that something to look forward to? I really do just love this time of year.
All good things!
Katie
the first place the sun rises in the U.S. this time of year
Thank you for clarifying my disappointment. I'm a new reader (not a writer) who discovered Substack just before the update, and I feel baited and switched. I was slowly following the breadcrumbs from one beautiful essay to another and then things speeded up. So now I never access the app directly. I wait for email alerts from the writers I've subscribed to, and I follow links they recommend. I may be missing authors I'd like to know, but I just can't deal with all the noise.
I absolutely do not like the new Substack layout either. Solidarity.