What's cooking: food, books, and local politics
If only I could go witching for a book plot in the same way my town witches for water...
Hi friends,
Mud season is ending and things are suddenly cooking here, literally and figuratively.
On the literal side: I’ve been cooking a lot, since I can’t get any food delivered. I’m like a sea captain’s widow, pacing by my upper windows, looking in vain for the DoorDash driver who will never come.
Luckily, I like to cook, and the pandemic primed me for making meals out of infrequent, fear-infused grocery runs. But my local grocery store carries little in the way of fresh produce (and the avocados are usually rotting from lack of buyers), so my meals are mostly dry-goods-based unless I make a trip to Des Moines. I guess I’m gonna have to garden this summer if I want basil or mint or any other fresh herb or veg. It’s infuriating that one of the most fertile farm areas in the country is a barren food desert for the people who live here, but that’s another story.
On the figurative “cooking” side, several updates:
I’ve gotten way too involved in the local mural festival, to the extent that my phone number1 is on the front page of the local paper almost every week in case anyone wants to volunteer to help.
We’re trying to raise another $50,000 for the festival. In my old corporate life, this was basically half my team’s travel budget, which we all complained about for being too small. In my new life, this feels like a grandiose and impossible sum for a community to come up with, especially when the community already crowd-funds the swimming pool, and the volunteer-run movie theatre, and the fire department2, and people’s hospital bills and funerals, and on and on and on. It seems like there’s a fundraiser every week for something here, and people tend to show up for them.
We’ve got some good fundraising ideas for the festival, and I hope they pay off. Otherwise I’m going to have to go to every local celebration around the area this summer, riding in parades and begging for money like it’s my job. That may be good practice for running for office — but I’m going to be too busy growing basil to do it, so let’s cross our fingers for fundraising to come through.My new book is starting to cook a little quicker, which is heartening. I’m really excited about the concept — it’s a blend of small town fantasy and futuristic AI that will either be amazing or impossible to pull off. I’m banking everything on “amazing,” but it’s easy to succumb to despair on the days when I don’t get anything done.
Then there are days like today, when I’m reading an article about AI and look outside to see the town water guy witching in my yard to find my buried water line, which isn’t documented on any of the city’s plans. Witching for water involves carrying a dowsing rod over the ground until it pulls itself down over hidden water, like a Ouija board for plumbers. It was considered divination and banned by the Inquisition, and it shouldn’t be a thing in the modern age; most experts consider it to be debunked3. But in towns where the city can barely afford employees, let alone equipment, witching is a solution. And I know people who can witch for water, and I wouldn’t say they’re lying about it, even if it doesn’t make logical sense.
There’s magic everywhere, if you look for it. It just feels a little closer to the surface here than it does in San Francisco. Hopefully I can capture that vibe in my book without the process of writing the book driving me insane first.Speaking of tech vs fantasy — Google Street View makes it everywhere, even here. I wonder if the drivers like taking the car down all sorts of lonely dirt roads and through small, half-abandoned towns. The grid is almost impossible to get off of completely, even if there are people here who manage it….
Finally, a book recommendation for you! I’ve been alternating between reading sci-fi and fantasy as I try to thread the needle of my own story between hard science and soft magic. On the fantasy side, I read and loved EMILY WILDE’S ENCYCLOPAEDIA OF FAERIES by Heather Fawcett [link]. As Stefon from SNL would say, this book has everything: a lovably awkward scholar who goes to Scandinavia in search of some Fae to complete her encyclopedia of faeries. The charming, mysterious professor who follows her, and clearly loves her (if she can get out of her own head long enough to see it). A village full of…villagers, in the best and worst ways that small town people can behave. And a lot of magic, turning ever deadlier as winter sets in. I adored it, and I think you will too.
Until next time, I’ll be dreaming of witching for water and growing basil and running for governor. If there’s something you want me to write about regarding my #smalltownlife, or if you have a book recommendation or any other thoughts, please drop a comment! I’d love to hear from you.
Cheers,
Sara
It’s a burner Google Voice number, but it feels shockingly open compared to my San Francisco life. But it’s also not at all open here, where people were accustomed to looking each other up in the phone book all the time, before cell phones screwed that up.
The firefighters here are all volunteers, and it’s amazing that there are enough volunteers in a town of 400 to have a fire department, but I’m very glad we do. This is one of those services that becomes impossible as the population continues to drop…
Here’s more on water witching from Wikipedia if you want to try it for yourself. It’ll probably make it into my book, but I also probably won’t use it to dig a well.
What's cooking: food, books, and local politics
So...I was always told that dowsing was a real thing by my relatives in New York City where I was born and raised. Obviously no one needed to do it there...but there were these vague stories about life on the farm (or plantation as it were) where this had to happen before you could decide where to put the pump in the ground. I never doubted it, but I never tested it either.