Issue 8, containing: Cloud Castles, A Handy Household Tip, Historical Ephemera, Letters, Commonplaces, &c.

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SOME EDITORIAL NOTES

It’s a challenge to come up with a newsletter that manages to talk about neither my business (I have a blog and a twitter for that) nor the mess of the year surrounding us all. I always feel better when I’ve done so, though, like pushing my way through a sequence of stretches, or the evening after a very long walk. Moving my brain to discuss the very minor moments that make a year is, I’m coming to find, very much worth the trouble. 

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CLOUD CASTLES

For the last few weeks, I’ve found myself consumed with planning my future home and garden.

I had a house, many years ago, when I was too young and too married to appreciate it properly, but singledom has given me the opportunity to envision what makes me really happy — and I have time in abundance to plan how to achieve that vision.

I know, now, that I need space, more space than I assumed before this year began. I need a yard. A firepit, because night feels better with a fire. I want to quietly mulch the lawn and replace it with creeping thyme, which turns pink in the spring, and never needs mowing. I want crabapple trees, because there was one outside my childhood window, and once when I was young the tree bloomed in one day and all the petals fell the next, a white drift that was brief and beautiful.

I want a water fountain. At the beginning of this summer I wondered if I was the sort of person who would enjoy indoor fountains, and a week ago I had the opportunity to test the idea by purchasing a very cheap one. It promptly broke after about 24 hours’ worth of use, but it was long enough for me to determine that yes, I was very much someone who loves indoor fountains. I’ve ordered another one, of a proper construction this time, and I know now that I want one outside, too, where I can sit and watch and listen.

I want my home to use more white beadboard than seems reasonable. I want guest rooms that can be reached on the first floor, so that my friends on the more aged side can visit without pain. I want a flat driveway that can be plowed in one go, and a laundry room that isn’t in the basement. I want a kitchen I can cook in, in view of the living room so that friends can chat and wander through easily. I want room for both my children, and a writing space with a window to my left, and a room to store my strange craft objects.

I want there to be bells. I want to plant tiny wild strawberries, like the ones I once sat on a hillside picking and eating over the course of an afternoon, sitting beside a girl who was my best friend (and probably not very good for me). I want a porch I can sit on and watch storms, like my grandmother’s porch, where I remember sitting with my aunt while lightning cracked from one side of the sky to another and the trees formed a bowl around the hill the house stood on.

I want someplace that smells like trees, and stone, and home. I want a place made at no one’s discretion but my own. I want all this, and it’s good to want things — it’s good to think about what’s coming up around the bend, and have it be that cloud castle, vast and waiting for me.

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A HANDY HOUSEHOLD TIP

It is that time of year: fruit flies come for us all.

I think every home must have some strange remedy for fruit flies, usually passed down from an elder who is eager to showcase the one they themselves grew up with. The one I knew of was the cone of paper stuck into a cup with soapy vinegar at the bottom — fun to make but not, in the end, very effective.

So, this year, when the fruit flies came again, I finally did the sensible thing, and Googled for solutions.

What I eventually found was Faith Durand’s blog post “I Tested Four DIY Fruit Fly Traps and One Method Clearly Worked the Best,” which has all the appeal of science, lists, and solutions.

Rather than recreate her experiments, I opted to just try the one she found worked best: a mason jar with small holes punched into the lid, and soapy vinegar at the bottom. (I was sad to ruin a mason jar, but, on the other hand, I now have a dedicated death machine.) The results were immediate, and very satisfactory, but I thought they could be improved just a smidge. To that end, the mix at the bottom of my mason jar has apple cider vinegar, a dash of dish soap, and several bits of salad/fruit/avocado (i.e., the material that was attracting the flies in the first place).

It is extremely disgusting. It is also completely effective. In less than a day, I was rid of them all, and they have not returned. 

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HISTORICAL EPHEMERA

I think I said in a recent issue that I was interested in trying out historical recipes. In my quest to start more projects than I can possibly complete, I’ve found started transcribing — and then translating — recipes from Samuel and Sarah Adams’s The Complete Servant, a handy manual from 1825.

Much as I am not one of nature’s horticulturalists, I am not one of Her cooks either, but I still find it very fun. More importantly, translating the recipes into modern cookery is a challenge that I find I want to test. Or, better, have my gentle readers test.

Below is a recipe for what is described as a “cake” that can be sliced and given to children at breakfast as a replacement for buttered bread. I’ve given a shot at translating the recipe, but haven’t had the opportunity to test it (yet). Should any reader attempt it, please write to the magazine and let me know how it went. Pictures (particularly amusing ones) would be appreciated and probably printed for the edification of others.

Transcribed:

A GOOD PLAIN CAKE

Take as much dough as will make a quartern-loaf (either made at home, or procured at the baker’s), work into this a quarter of a pound of butter, a quarter of a pound of moist sugar, and a handful of caraway seeds. When well worked together, pull into pieces the size of a golden pippin, and work it together again. This must be done three times or it will be in lumps, and heavy when baked.

Translation/Modernization:

2 ¼ cups flour
1 tsp salt
1 tsp instant yeast
¾ cup water
1 Tbs lemon juice (optional)
½ cup butter, room temperature
½ cup of moist sugar (dribble water into sugar and mix, just until it clumps together slightly)

½ cup of caraway seeds (or a small “handful”)

Preheat oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit. Grease and flour a 4 lb bread tin and set aside. In a medium bowl, cream butter and sugar together, then mix in caraway seeds. Set aside in a cool place. In a large bowl, sift flour and salt together. Stir in instant yeast until well mixed. Stir in water and lemon juice until a dough forms. Cover and let rise in a warm place for 45 minutes. After the rise, work the butter mixture into the dough. When it’s all well incorporated, pull apart the dough into pieces the size of small apples, then knead all of them together again. Do this three times. Put into prepared tin and shape into a loaf. Bake for around 50 minutes.

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LETTERS

From the Magazine, to the Any New Readers, “Apologies”:

We sincerely wish that we were better than we are, but failing that, we pledge to not be worse than we seem.

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From the Bivalves of the Nation, to the Magazine, “Our Solemn Vow”:

To the Editors: Be advised that the Bivalves of the Nation, the Crustacean Coalition, and the Phosphorescent Fighters of the Forty-First Latitude have joined together and are preparing joint remarks on the topic of the cruel and unusual decimation of our peoples by the humans, birds, and large otters of your world. Expect our letter.

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From the Magazine, to the Bivalves of the Nation &c., “Wrong Address”:

We here at Minor Hours Magazine appreciate the Bivalves and their friends for the charming note, and would like to ask whether they have considered addressing their vitriol at people who actually eat clams, muscles, lobsters, and other similar remnants of the  Ordovician, Cambrian, and Seaspiderseverywhere eras.

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From the Town of Essex, to the Magazine, “Did Someone Say Sea Spiders?”:

Today only, lobster rolls half off!

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COMMONPLACES 

From Janice Lee’s Daughter:

Draw a monster. Why is it a monster?

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From Terry Pratchett’s Wintersmith:

A witch ought never to be frightened in the darkest forest, Granny Weatherwax had once told her, because she should be sure in her soul that the most terrifying thing in the forest was her.

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From Ursula K. Le Guin’s “The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas“:

The trouble is that we have a bad habit, encouraged by pedants and  sophisticates, of considering happiness as something rather stupid. Only  pain is intellectual, only evil interesting. This is the treason of the  artist: a refusal to admit the banality of evil and the terrible  boredom of pain.

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ANNOUNCEMENTS

As I ended up announcing on my twitter, all issues of this magazine are now free to the public. If you want them delivered to your inbox, there’s still a tier for that, and if you want monthly fiction, there’s a different tier for that, but this magazine, in and of itself, is now open to all.

To that end, I hope, gentle readers, that you engage with it. It wants to be talked to. And I’d like to hear your minor hours, your small thoughts, and treasure them as I do my own.

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If you would like to write a letter to be produced/answered in the magazine, please email me at minor.hours.magazine@gmail.com with the subject line: 

Letter to the Magazine: [subject of letter as you would like to see it printed]

If you wish the letter to be anonymous or under a nom de plume, please state so in the body of the email; similarly, if you’d rather not be printed at all, please also state so in the body of the email. It will otherwise be assumed that mail sent to that address is intended for print. 

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-Until next week, be safe.