Three Things from the Last Days of January
The E train, Indiana, The Letter Q!
What I’m writing…
Friends, it was cold and gray in NYC yesterday. As readers here know, I love the rain and temperatures in the 50s. I love to wear a big sweater and cute socks and rain boots and my Stutterheim raincoat and Kathleen MacAuliffe rain hat, drink whisky by a fire while my beloved and I play cribbage or Spite and Malice, preferably with a loch or churning ocean outside my window.
But winter cold? Not so much.
Michael and I had braved the weather with a long, brisk walk to the Angelika theater to see the movie The Room Next Door, a worthy expedition. But what I needed was a pick me up, some place warm and bright.
I remembered that MOMA was showing Matisse’s cutouts. Perfect. I bundled up and headed to the uptown E train. Twenty-five minutes later I was standing in Gallery 406, awash in vibrant blue.
Just what my soul needed!
On my way out, I paused to stand in front of two other favorites of mine, a Rothko and a Pollack.
What I wasn’t prepared for was what happened before I got to MOMA. As I maneuvered through the 53rd and 5th subway station, I was suddenly overwhelmed by emotion, a time travel of sorts back almost forty years when I would take this train to the Bantam Doubleday offices for editorial meetings for my first novel, Somewhere Off the Coast of Maine.
I could see twenty-something me giddily riding the long escalator up out of the subway station and into the gleaming lobby. My first time in the offices, I sat almost knee to knee in my editor’s tiny office as I listened to her say, “This is a very big book.” And then we both cried.
Riding that escalator, I cried a little too, thinking of how the E train brought me from Bleecker Street to my future all those years ago.
From here…to here…
What I’m knitting…
I made it into October on my temperature blanket!
And now that I’ve found the rhythm of the Purl Soho Quaking Aspen Wrap pattern, it is one of the most zen knitting I’ve done in a while. The color changes remind me of watching waves from a beach, and then there’s a few rows where the new color gets to take center stage.
I’m teaching two classes on novel writing this month—one at Writers in Paradise in St. Petersburg, Florida, and one via Zoom through 24Pearl Street (both now past). I’ve been busily organizing and planning for these, and was struck by how this pattern kind of mimics writing a novel, the way scenes build into chapters.
What I’m thinking about…
Swiss steak!
Since I grew up in an Italian-American household, I have written a lot about being Italian. But, according to Ancestry.com, I’m actually completely evenly split: 50% southern Italian and a combination of English, Irish and Scottish that adds up to the other 50%.
My father hailed from Greensburg, Indiana, a town famous for a tree growing out of the courthouse roof. One of my greatest pleasures growing up was our summer road trips to Greensburg to visit our Hood relatives.
It was a magical place of endless cornfields, fireflies, and cousins.
So when I got a craving for my dad’s Swiss steak, I asked my cousin Chuck if he had the recipe. He did.
Reading it, I could see my father standing in the kitchen pounding seasoned flour into steaks with the edge of a plate and almost taste the oniony yumminess of the finished dish. I don’t remember tomatoes in it, but I’m going to experiment and see if memory matches reality.
One of the absolute best things in Greensburg was—and still is—fried chicken. So much so that every few years I have to go and have some, preferably surrounded by Hood cousins.
Want to read more about the marvel that is Indiana fried chicken? Read my darling husband’s New York Times article about it.
And also…
The letter Q!
Well, not just the letter Q. But rather, the whole alphabet and the death of cursive. Did you know it stopped being taught in 2010?
In a New York Times Op-Ed, titled “Let Cursive Handwriting Die,” Morgan Polikoff argued: “…there is little compelling research to suggest the teaching of cursive positively affects other student skills enough to merit its teaching. While both research and common sense indicate students should be taught some form of penmanship, there is simply no need to teach students both print and cursive.”
Friends, I disagree. I like nothing more than writing notes—in cursive—to people I love. And scribbling in a notebook still provides me endless joy.
Instead, I agree with Drew Gilpin Faust who, in her article, "Gen Z Never Learned to Read Cursive" in The Atlantic, wrote: “…when we can't read documents from the past, then the past is presented to us indirectly.
Look at what we lose if we can’t read cursive!
And so, besides continuing to write in cursive, I’m also considering volunteering to become a Smithsonian Digital Volunteer and help (us) make historical documents and biodiversity data more accessible.
Here’s to the letter Q, and the other twenty-five!
PS…
As always, thank you for reading. We’ve been away from home for a couple weeks and boy is it great to back in chilly NYC. As we walked through the Jet Blue terminal at JFK yesterday, Michael called to me, “Ann, look to your left!”
When I did, this former TWA flight attendant stopped to look and remember…
Life is full of these travels back in time, isn’t it? Like the E train, one glance and—Oh! I could almost see myself walking past the clicking departure board, down the TWA Red carpet, to the waiting arms of a 747!
May these final days of January be full of memories and waiting arms that make you smile.
Here’s another place to volunteer as a transcriber of old script: https://www.archives.gov/citizen-archivist/missions/revolutionary-war-pension-files. Thanks, Ann!
Having lived in Southern California and now Central California, my kids have learned cursive in public school. My 12 year old is learning it now. It's not taught as a daily penmanship lesson but as a unit and she has a practice notebook. This is how she's learned it since 4th grade. Same with my now high school sophomore.