Beloved friends,
I was away last week, nestled up in my parents' homes for a visit. Returning home feels like a moment for orientation. Shall we?
While I was away I got to visit the dyno shop where my 86 year old dad tunes engines, had beautiful drives from New York to Maine and then Maine to Massachusetts during peak glory-of-the-changing-leaves season with my brother and my husband, and helped my mom harvest her vegetable garden and put it to bed for the winter. I lugged her pots into the garage and look forward to returning in the spring to carry them back to the deck. I cherish this ritual we've created for meaningful visits that don't involve travel at the peak holiday season.
James and I were missed by some of our wild neighbors while we were away, which we learned when our human neighbor sent us video of the cacophony of corvids shouting in the grove of trees in front of our house. It appears that the sudden cessation of the peanut service was NOT appreciated by our Stellar's Jay friends. It also appears from the complexity of the sound that this friend is not actually one jay. Or maybe it is one jay and they take the nuts back to share with their friends and everyone came by to complain? Or perhaps it is one Jay and when they got cranky at the loss of peanut offerings they just rounded up friends to shout about the poor customer service around here? In any case, I was out on the deck a moment ago with my jar of peanuts. Jay had arrived, hopping along the deck rail to let me know they wanted nuts, and I went out for the usual: I got out six peanuts, one at a time, pressing each under my palm and rolling it against the rail to crack the shell. I'm glad they didn't give up on us while we were gone.
Upon returning home, I found that the season had turned – the air was distinctly colder; instead of throwing the windows open like I do after light-side-of-the-year trips, I had to turn the heat on. This morning I drove to town and for the first time since the bright days began, I did so with a cashmere shawl wrapping my head and shoulders to keep me warm instead of just the light cotton scarf that keeps my hair from tangling in the warmer season. Autumn is afoot! I cherish the cozy-making of the darker season, that quality that the Scandinavian people call hygge. Embracing this is crucial to living well here in the PNW when the Long Dark is afoot.
It is pitch dark when I rise for work in the mornings now, which makes it dawn candle season. Hurray! A couple of years ago my workshop focused on the cultivation of small rituals. The first one was the dawn candle. This has been a dark-season habit for me ever since: when I wake in the dark before dawn, I light a candle in the kitchen window that faces the sunrise. I like to think of it as a call to the dawn: "Hello, I'm here, welcome back, come back!" I like to think of it as an offering: raising my small flame toward the vast one that nourishes our solar system. Just now is special because I'm burning a candle that I dipped myself, the one I mentioned in my last missive. It's a bit curved; I didn't quite manage to get my wick straight on the first couple of dips, but it burns brightly and the imperfection of my own handiwork is pleasing in and of itself.
We are rich in apple-things now, as it has been a banner year for the apple crop here. First, a friend reached out to ask if I was interested in sharing their harvest. I was so moved! I came by with a basket and had a visit and picked some up. Then I went to an Equinox gathering at a farm where the basement was full of apples that "needed to be processed yesterday" and where we were encouraged to take as much as we might wish. A couple days later a neighbor asked if we wanted some apples. At that point, I politely declined – until I'd finished cooking the apples I already had, at which point I thought, you know, it might be fun to just keep saying "Yes, thank you" and see how that goes. So I accepted that third batch of apples. Then one afternoon the doorbell rang and some other neighbors were there with both apples and several gallons of freshly pressed cider, the results of an annual family tradition. They suggested I pasteurize the cider, and I did, and froze it, and now my freezer is chock full of apple sauce and apple butter and apple cider. We've been eating pork chops with apple butter and chicken with applesauce and ice cream with apple sauce and oh, yum.
The delicious frisson of autumn is so alive within and around me: the wealth of harvest and the dying off of the lighter-season plants. The lavender has been cut back, the bracken ferns are dying off, there are drifts of big leaf maple leaves. The mushrooms are arriving. Both of the freezers are full and I am looking at the house with a squint, wondering where I could put a chest freezer. I think I'll be getting out my neoprene gloves and booties and my warm hat from the high closet shelf for our dip into the Salish Sea this Sunday. I'm looking over the land we care for and thinking of all the changes that have happened during the light season. I am stunned and pleased with all the changge, though of course I hoped to do more. I have learned, though, that I am a dreamer, so I will always hope to do more! That's just fine. I'm learning more and more to enjoy the hoping and be satisfied with what can be done. That is a beautiful thing. To love the process, love the dreaming, find the results good enough. The candle is crooked. The garden beds aren't finished yet. I really ought to go pull the last of the green tomatoes and learn how to store them to ripen indoors before we have a frost.
Summer was so full. I am ready for rest, for the gathering season and the winding-down season and then the cold, quiet fallow winter. Ahhhhhhh.
Love,
Dahlia
PS. I will be working in San Francisco November 9-12, seeing folks for bodywork, counsel, energy work, yoga, and the creation of personal meditation practices from my hotel, nicely located for both East Bay and SF folks at Fisherman's Wharf. I'm having a little snag getting this onto my Calendly, so for now, if you'd like to book a session, drop me a line and we'll do it conversationally, the old-fashioned way! $175-225/hr. 1, 1.5, and 2 hour sessions available. I'd like to hold an evening gathering for meditation and hugs on Wednesday 11/11; if you're in SF and open to hosting, drop me a line! James and I will probably have a purely social gathering at a bar someplace on Saturday 11/14. You can drop me a line to ask about that as well.
Resources
Preservation
I love slow cooker dishes both for their ease and for the way they fill the house with good flavors. To make applesauce, you simply peel and core some apples and drop the slices into a slow cooker. I do smaller batches in my countertop smart oven's slow cooker setting in a dutch oven. Applesauce is ready in a few hours; apple butter goes overnight or into the next day. You can remove the lid if you like a denser apple butter, cooking more liquid out. It's delicious simply with apples! My current favorite is apple, ginger, cardamom, cinnamon, and nutmeg.
To pasturize apple cider, you simply warm it to 170 degrees.
Starstuff
The current path of the Earth through space is bringing us through the stream of dust and ice that trails behind Haley's comet, resulting in the Orionid meteor shower. It peaked midweek, but you might still catch 10-20 stars an hour over the next few days! For best viewing, experts suggest lying on your back between midnight and 5am. I usually get up at 5 to polish my teaching for the Saturday Gathering when I have a workshop on, as I do now, and I'm going to try getting up at 4:30 tomorrow if the skies stay clear. We'll see; rain is headed this way. That, too, will be a blessing; the cedars are sagging thirstily from the dry bright season.
Venus is passing between the Earth and the sun tomorrow. This happens every 584 days, and the change means that Venus will now change from being the brightest star in the evening sky – often called the Evening Star at that time – to being the brightest star in the morning sky, the Morning Star. I look forward to seeing them in the dark before dawn soon.
Becky Chambers
Speaking of space, Becky Chambers of the Hugo Award-winning Wayfarers series and the Monk +Robot duology (which is a part of what I'd call my personal scripture) has a new book out! I'm about halfway through As You Wake, Break the Shell, and so far this beautiful queer love story is doing its usual hopepunk job of sweetening my days.
If You Love Libby
I am not opposed to the existence of AI. I think that LLMs have incredible things to offer human living and knowing. I am quite concerned about lots of things about AI, though, and one of them is the loss of the capacity for human people to earn a living through our art. If that's a concern you share and you are an avid reader, you might be excited to hear that the Libby e-reader which lots of folks use for library books has a new setting which allows users to filter between books written by humans and AI. (Account/Menu - Settings - Content Controls - AI Contributions – then choose Human Only for any categories you wish to restrict. Turn OFF Deep Search Only.)
I was also tickled to learn recently that there are a bunch of libraries which allow anyone to use them on Libby. These include Books Unbanned, Read Freely, the Queer Liberation Library, and the Quatrefoil Library.
Resistance
I was flying home from Maine on October 17 so I wasn't able to make the No Kings demonstration this time. Did you go? I'd love to hear about it!
Of course right now our best resistance is to vote. VOTE! Vote early. Ask your friends and neighbors and random people you meet if they've voted! Ask your elderly and disabled and very busy friends if they need help with voting arrangements – a ride, childcare, a list of the downballot issues they may not feel like they have time to research for alignment with their values?
Supporting me in supporting you
This is entirely human work – my work, done by hand, with my own mind and heart. I do not have an AI. The half day I devote to creating this each week is a labor of love for which I earn about $15/hr. You can chip in on giving me a raise with a one-time donation, or by upgrading to a paid subscription for as little as $5/month.
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If you are a supporter, thank you; I am honored and humbled by your willingness to support my work in the world.
