a note from Mendy
A family dinner with the owners of Wm. Farmer & Sons (Hudson, New York) to celebrate the opening of their pavilion last week.
Hello!
This is the start of our fortnightly (a word Skye uses, but feels like the typing version of faking a British accent to me) newsletter. We know you are busy, and we know that we could share on our instagram account, but lately we’ve felt it’s a really limiting way of communicating with our readers. There’s so much focus on quick videos and it’s a noisy place to be when you want to connect in a more personal way. We are going to take turns, so you’ll only hear from us individually once a month, and if you don’t have time to read it when it shows up in your inbox, we will also post it on our blog and provide a link so you can visit when you are ready. You can expect a range of topics, but mostly it’s going to be things we find interesting, stuff we’re talking about with friends, and (for me at least) plenty of pop culture references and parenthetical remarks.
Fieldfare Stuff
We have received some lovely feedback about our second issue and feel that we’re moving decisively towards a robust journal that’s more than just a travel magazine. We know we need to scale if we’re going to continue, so we have engaged a distributor to get Fieldfare into more shops and in front of more people. The selling and the promoting of Fieldfare is probably our least favorite aspect of what we’re doing, but obviously necessary if we want to make another issue! I’m not going to whine about the difficulties of a small business, I’m just acknowledging that we’re definitely feeling the challenges.
Reading
Poetry
Lots of poetry these days.
Kate Baer to be exact.
My husband picked up her latest book at the bookshop, thumbed through it and decided we needed all of her books. He’s a smart guy.
I started with her first book because I liked the cover (yes, I said it) and quickly became hooked. She’s deliciously snarky, political, angry, emotional, guarding herself with brutal honesty wielded with a bit of humor. I followed her on instagram to complete my fangirl status. I am envious of her writing, her use of words for thoughts I want to claim as my own. Perhaps it’s too confessional, but a much younger me kept a notebook of poems, hoping that time would turn it into a gem to be discovered, à la Emily Dickinson. In the spirit of brutal honesty, it was shit. Fortunately, I had the good sense to dispose of it when it resurfaced many years later.
Watching
Okay, I know mentioning Stranger Things wanders into overhyped territory, but I’ve had many conversations with my kids about life in the 80s that have got me thinking and feeling my age. (And there are no spoilers here, fyi.) My daughters are now old enough to watch it, so they’ve started at the beginning and are racing their way through the seasons to catch up. A lot of their comments are directed at the archaic music listening tools (omg, cassette tapes are so quirky! you could put them in your car?! what’s rewinding?), but more often there are exclamations demanding to know why there are no adults around. They simply cannot get over how much these kids are alone and left to their own devices. It really was the era of benign neglect – you just had to figure it out on your own and sometimes it worked out and other times it was a huge mess. Problem solving opportunities were not crafted by adults in my cohort, but that’s now the situation I find myself in as a parent. It’s made me think about personal autonomy and how it’s developed, and I’ve been trying to recall the specific experiences of my adolescence that I would attribute to that category. (I’m resisting the urge to list them. Lucky you!) Not that I want to romanticize the past because I certainly think that lack of adult supervision and intervention was problematic and resulted in what we refer to as the “Golden age of bullying” around our house, which rightly shows up frequently in the show. It’s another thing they ask about and yes, kids were really that mean and tormented anyone the least bit different with impunity. That reminder keeps my nostalgia in check. The really controversial thing for me is the hair – there’s not enough truly 80s hair in my expert opinion.
But how great is it that a new generation is discovering Kate Bush?
The News I Like
Admittedly, I read the New York Times too much. I’m not balanced at all with my news sources. My only defense is that they have some very useful and innovative infographics that make the experience of reading online completely different to reading a paper. But I digress in my defense. What I wanted to say is that this article about a General Store in Montana (one from The Great Read section that is meant to showcase storytelling narrative and more off-the-beaten-path reporting) recently caught my attention with that brightly trimmed wood framed shape that is immediately identifiable to anyone that’s taken a road trip across the States.
In the years since I’ve returned to the US, I’ve often lamented that there is nothing like the English pub. Sure, there are some places that use it in name and believe it comes down to decor and food/beverage options. I’ve never been in one that acts as a hyper local community hub the way I experienced in London. But while I was reading through the article, I began to notice that the General Store is a distinctly American enterprise that functions in a similar way. It is indeed a community hub. Every 19th-century Main Street had one and they almost completely disappeared until about 15 years ago when a gradual shift began in attitudes toward shopping habits and retail veered back toward local and more sustainable movements. And so while I’ve never been to this particular General Store in Montana, I can tell you that I know the feeling of this place. Upstate NY (where I live now) is dotted with small towns that have also seen the return of the General Store. (Though sometimes it masquerades as “Mercantile” or “Provisions” depending on the area and the parlance of the ex-urbanites that own them.) Part cafe, part hardware, part homewares, part grocers, part traveling paraphernalia; general stores have a little bit of everything for their customers and sometimes very specific items based on their location. Maybe they’re not drinking pints and watching the match, but you can be sure it is an all walks of life destination where mundane details and stories are swapped openly (and there’s always that one person that overshares and talks way too much).
It was just nice to read something pleasant about the ability of inclusivity to strengthen a community.
And with that, I bid you a happy weekend!
Mendy xx