Issue 9, containing: Autumnal Rites, A Recommendation, On the Meanderings of Memory, Letters, Commonplaces, &c.

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SOME EDITORIAL NOTES

A day isn’t really finished until you go to sleep — I’m pretty sure that’s true. To that end, this is clearly still a Friday zine. Hooray.

In my day job, I work at a university, and classes have started. The beginning and the end of each year is always busy — and I always manage to forget just how busy. But it’s worth the effort. Which, as I regularly seem to conclude around here, is a Good Thing.

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AUTUMNAL RITES

As is well known, Halloween is the night that demons, boogiemen, long-leggedy-beasties, and things that go bump in the night have one last hurrah before they’re swept away by All Saints’ Day on November 1st. The purpose of dressing up in frightening costumes is, naturally, to scare these creatures away from human society (and/or possibly to camoflage ourselves as these creatures, so that we’re passed over).

Things being as they are, it should be assumed that we will have to be extra vigilant in our Halloween preparations this year, which is all the excuse I’m giving as to why I’m decorating my home already.

Of particular interest is the new (to me) craft of creating a “cemetarium”, or a Halloween terrarium. It’s essentially just creating a tiny themed diorama in either glass containers or purpose-built objects (open-faced plastic pumpkins, shallow black dishes with a suspiciously graveyard-fence-like lip, etc.). I also appreciate that, because death is a cheerful theme at Halloween, it is not expected that one actually have any living plants or animals in one’s terrarium.

Various craft stores have, at this time of year, piles of miniatures for sale that are useful for crafting a cemetarium, but that’s by no means the only way to go about it. Handmade items can lend a special eeriness to Halloween displays: hand-painted stones turn into pumpkins, a bit of wood becomes a fallen tree, a bit of starched cheesecloth becomes a ghost…

Miniatures in general are, I think, always a little on the liminal side. When placed into a enclosed world — whether that be dollhouses, glass globes, hollowed out eggs, etc. — they force the viewer into this constrained, exaggerated world, where the sizes and perspective are slightly off and the minor imperfections that make up the real world are replaced with the fumbling errors (or the broad, covering strokes) of a larger hand.

It reminds me a little bit of how bees and various other insects see a much larger number of colors than humans do. Their world — the same world we live in — is filled with much more detail and nuance. Do they see reality as it really is? And do we see only the broad strokes of it, general shapes fitting a narrative, constrained by our own understanding?

All that being said: My children very much enjoyed creating their own little cemetariums, and we will probably be creating several over the course of the season.

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A RECOMMENDATION

If you can find it — and generally at this time of year, you can — see if you can get the following:

• Pumpkin-stuffed pasta
• Apples
• Apple cider
• A large quantity of butter
• Sage (rubbed for preference, but I’m not your mother, you may do as you like)
• Cinnamon or, better, Chinese Five-Spice

Cut the apples into paper thin slices of around an inch or two (essentially what you would get if you were bored and idly paring at an apple to see how much you could get out of it). Make more than you think you should. In one pot, cook the pasta, but not all the way. Just mostly. In a large pan, melt the large quantity of butter. Add the five spice and sage, letting it bloom in the butter. Add the apple slices, and saute them as if you were browning onions. Add splashes of apple cider. Add yet more butter. Add more butter than that. Now maybe some more apple cider. Taste it. Should there be apple vinegar in there? Possibly. Apple vinegar is great. Keep messing with the ratios until you eventually end up with a really fantastic appley slurry with the same approximate consistency of browned onions but with a sort of sauce around it. Now add the pasta. Cook together briefly. Eat.

Possibly would be nice with some cheddar on top.

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ON THE MEANDERINGS OF MEMORY

Part of the reason I like (when possible) to keep the Magazine open and added to throughout the week is that it is much easier to remember what to write when I don’t, actually, have to remember.

There was a topic that I wanted to write about. It came to me about two days ago. What was it? No idea. It eludes me.

Possibly it was my birds, of which I now have a small flock of around seven house sparrows regularly visiting — and fighting — over my birdseed.

Equally, it could have been something about rain. It’s been raining here a great deal. I like rain. And I like writing about the things I like.

I’m reading Connie Willis’s To Say Nothing of the Dog for the first time — was it that? Maybe, but I don’t think so. I want to say something about it and Dorothy Sayers when I’m done, but I’m not done, and therefore I can’t. (Logic.)

Ice cream? Music? My little fountain? Autumn as a season?

I mean, about the only guaranteed thing is: It will come to me approximately three hours after posting this.

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LETTERS

From the Magazine, to the Student Population, “Go to Sleep”:

The Editors are aged miscreants and imbued with bad vices, which is our excuse for being awake at this hour. Why are you? Go to sleep. It’s still the beginning of the school year, don’t burn yourselves out this quickly. You have to work up to the sheer peaks of nonsense that we Editors can regularly achieve.

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From the Magazine, to the Faculty Population, “Stop Working Like This”:

The Editors are extremely aware that there are some of you who are just as full of nonsense as the students, and it does none of you any credit whatsoever.

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From the Students and Faculty, to the Magazine, “We See You”:

The students and faculty would like to tell the Editor some kind of parable about rocks, glass houses, and hourly staff. 

[We don’t know what you’re talking about. -Ed.]

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COMMONPLACES

From Dorothy Sayer’s Murder Must Advertise:

Mr. Bredon had been a week with Pym’s Publicity, and had learnt a number of things. He learned the average number of words that can be crammed into four inches of copy; that Mr. Armstrong’s fancy could be caught by an elaborately-drawn lay-out, whereas Mr. Hankin looked on art-work as waste of a copy-writer’s time; that the word “pure” was dangerous, because, if lightly used, it laid the client open to prosecution by the Government inspectors, whereas the words “highest quality,” “finest ingredients,” “packed under the best conditions” had no legal meaning, and were therefore safe; that the expression “giving work to umpteen thousand British employees in our model works at so-and-so” was not by any means the same thing as “British made throughout”; that the north of England liked its butter and margarine salted, whereas the south preferred it fresh; that the Morning Star would not accept any advertisements containing the word “cure,” though there was no objection to such expressions as “relieve” or “ameliorate,” and that, further, any commodity that professed to “cure” anything might find itself compelled to register as a patent medicine and use an expensive stamp; that the most convincing copy was always written with the tongue in the cheek, a genuine conviction of the commodity’s worth producing—for some reason—poverty and flatness of style; that if, by the most far-fetched stretch of ingenuity, an indecent meaning could be read into a headline, that was the meaning that the great British Public would infallibly read into it; that the great aim and object of the studio artist was to crowd the copy out of the advertisement and that, conversely, the copy-writer was a designing villain whose ambition was to cram the space with verbiage and leave no room for the sketch; that the lay-out man, a meek ass between two burdens, spent a miserable life trying to reconcile these opposing parties; and further, that all departments alike united in hatred of the client, who persisted in spoiling good lay-outs by cluttering them up with coupons, free-gift offers, lists of local agents and realistic portraits of hideous and uninteresting cartons, to the detriment of his own interests and the annoyance of everybody concerned.

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ANNOUNCEMENTS

I am announcing that today is still Friday, and shall continue to be for at least another hour. Make your own fun while you can.

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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.