Foggy Ridge Dispatch: November 4, 2024
Election Eve. Stick season. Delicious wines. The Wednesday Waffle. Getting older. Absolutely necessary whimsy.
Before I dive into the FR Dispatch, I want to wish you all a happy Election Eve.
And please, for the love of all things good, vote tomorrow (if you haven’t already).
Earlier today, some young folks of voting age in our town told me they weren’t planning to vote tomorrow. My young friends - you won’t even let someone else pick out your clothes…but you’ll give up having a say in things that will impact you for some of the most formative years of your lives? C’mon - y’all know better, so be better.
If you’re voting in St. Johnsbury, VT, chances are good you’ll see me outside the polls tomorrow, asking my fellow Vermonters what they think it means to be a good Vermonter. If you see me, I hope you’ll share your thoughts with me, and let me know if you’d like to sit down for a longer conversation about it over some tea sometime.
And now, back to our regularly-scheduled programming (below the line break).
Here are the things of note from last week (October 28-November 3).
It’s officially stick season. The last leaves fell from the prominent maple tree on the cusp of our forest and our yard - and for me, that’s my annual bellwether for ringing in stick season.
If you’re not a Vermonter, you may not be familiar with the term “stick season”…or at least you weren’t, until that Noah Kahan song came out. Stick season is the time between the end of autumn and when winter proper arrives; many Vermonters (but not all) say that the official end of stick season is the first snow that covers the ground opaquely and hangs on for more than a day.
And in case you haven’t heard that Noah Kahan song, here it is.
To combat the stick season blues, I’ve been leaning into learning more about wine and enjoying some wonderful natty (“natural”) wines at my fave local spot in St. J, The Buttery. If you haven’t been to The Buttery yet and you’re a fan of those cute little quintessentially European spots you’ve savored in Greece, France, Germany, etc., then you MUST check it out - the vibe is *chef’s kiss*. Here’s one of my fave wines from their collection:
It’s a medium body red wine with aroma of red fruits, a bit of bell pepper on the nose, and a healthy touch of minerality on the tongue - just like I like it!
This week, I did my first Wednesday Waffle with a dear friend in Philly. WTF is a Wednesday Waffle, you ask? It’s one of the few useful trends on the internet, IMHO. Essentially, you record a quick (~2 minute) video update on your life every Wednesday and share it with a friend (or friend group) who reciprocates. It’s SO much better than lurking on each others’ social media, and certainly more intimate. Yes, yes, why not just pick up the phone?, etc…I know, I know. But folks, life and schedules can be very hectic for those of us who live in a late-stage capitalist society where it feels damn near too expensive to be alive. I couldn’t buy a house when they were still affordable…because I was in high school. So, for those of us who bounce from meeting to meeting and project sprint to project sprint, the Wednesday Waffle is such a heartening way to tide each other over until you really can connect IRL (or at least on Zoom).
…and no, I’m not a socialist. I just calls it like I sees it. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Finally, I want to share an uplifting little reminder with you all - and this especially is for you fellow creative folks out there: whimsy is absolutely necessary to thriving in a creative life…and honestly, in any human life.
[[Video taken on a garage “creeper” in my driveway. I wanted to look up at the sky and spin in the sunshine the way I had just seen a beautiful leaf do. Music credit: “Little Things” by Adrián Berenguer…a favorite of mine, and a perfect soundtrack for whimsy. ]]
You deserve to live in a world that gives you emotional space for whimsy.
As a creative person, sometimes you just need to do weird little things. No explanation needed - just doing, being, touching, playing, seeing, thinking. We are all born creative; the creative adult is the child who has survived.
Today is hard. Tomorrow will be hard. The next day will almost certainly be hard.
But through acts of absolutely necessary whimsy, we feed our creativity…and through our creativity, we survive.
That’s all for this edition of Foggy Ridge Dispatch, friends. Thank you so much for reading. And if you’re a fellow rural resident that has a unique way of archiving the small things that bring you joy each week, I hope you’ll share them with me. Good luck out there tomorrow, and please be especially kind to yourselves for the rest of the week…by Friday, we’ll all more than have earned it.