Footnotes to a Conversation, May 10, 2021
“We live with mystery, but we don’t like the feeling. I think we should get used to it. We feel we have to know what things mean, to be on top of this and that. I don’t think it’s human, you know, to be that competent at life. That attitude is far from poetry.” – Mark Strand
Local News
Join Fair Trade Saskatoon for a talk by Tamara Stein on Fair Trade, Quinoa, Communities and Markets: The View from Bolivia from 12-1 pm, May 12, on Zoom.
Books
In my day-to-day life, I don’t give much thought to women’s equality. I live on my own, have my own income, and travel as I will (pre-pandemic!). And yet, women are discriminated against in so many subtle ways, from only testing new medicines on men to only recognizing male achievements. I am thoroughly enjoying reading Writing Wild: Women Poets, Ramblers, and Mavericks Who Shape How We See the Natural World by Kathryn Aalto and discovering some amazing women writers and their perspectives on the natural world.
On Chapel Sands: The Mystery of My Mother’s Disappearance as a Child by Laura Cumming is an intriguing book. On one level, it’s a mystery story about a daughter unravelling her mother’s past as an adopted child. But on another level, it’s about parental love, family, loss, and betrayal. I was left pondering the mysteries we leave behind us when we die.
History Repeats Itself
There is nothing new under the sun. Today’s anti-vaxxers are simply following in the steps of 19th century anti-vaxxers protesting against the smallpox vaccine. The anti-vax posters were dramatic with humans morphing into cows or being chased by diseased mermaids!
How to Knit
The first knitting manuals were published in the 1830s and were designed for women who wanted to work from home: “this Book may prove beneficial to that numerous and useful class of Females, whose pecuniary means are limited, but whose minds and pursuits are well regulated and directed.” Take a look at some of these manuals, now available online, with their exotically named patterns and lists of places to sell your wares. The manuals were collected by the “knitting bishop” who assembled quite a collection of knitting paraphernalia.
Flat-Packed Noodles
A new noodle could save on cupboard space and packaging. It “comes out of the box looking flat and straight, but emerges from a seven-minute stint in boiling water transformed into curling 3-D shapes." Grooves in the noodles “increase the surface area of some parts of the pasta, those areas absorb water faster and swell up, contorting the noodle as they do so”.
Footnotes to a Conversation is a weekly Monday feature covering an assortment of topics that I’ve come across in the preceding week – books, art, travel, food, and whatever else strikes my fancy. If you share my love of nature, I suggest you also read EcoFriendly Sask that I publish in collaboration with my brother, Andrew.
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