Happy Birthday Happy Wanderer!

We All Have Something to Say

Fifteen months ago, I finished my last project for school—assembling and editing a cookbook of parents’ favorite recipes—and so, after eighteen years, I retired from my job as a parent volunteer. My tasks were varied, challenging, and always rewarding:¹

• Chaperoning countless field trips, field days, parties, and arts events

• Serving as class parent for eleven years (sometime for two grades at once) and on PTC boards for five years

• Planning and running a dozen Halloween and Valentine’s Day parties, plus the occasional St. Patrick’s Day, Pi Day, and Thanksgiving events

• Shelving tens of thousands of books in four school libraries

• Volunteering for, cooking for, and running (respectively) Bagel Day, Cafe Day, and Pizza Day every month for several years

• Volunteering and cooking for almost every school event (international days, welcome-back barbeques, book fairs, craft fairs, plant sales, and fundraisers) for all eighteen years

• Coordinating adult education and leading craft clubs, book clubs, and a trivia night

• Writing for and editing the school newsletter

• Teaching art appreciation, knitting, and “fun science”

• Performing at school shows and cabaret nights

• Plus a bunch of things I’ve forgotten.

I was drenched by water balloons. I used my Opera Voice. I travelled to Berlin to chaperone and judge an international speech and debate tournament. I was hugged by kids and graciously thanked by teachers. No wonder I loved volunteering!

A few weeks after my volunteer role ended, my youngest child flew to the US to visit her grandparents before starting college, and I became an empty nester. Bereft and at loose ends, I found myself thinking, as Robert Redford says at the end of The Candidate, “What do we do now?” And I hatched a plan to start this blog.

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This essay’s subtitle is a reaction to an episode from Lily King’s semi-autobiographical novel, Writers and Lovers. At the beginning of the novel, the main character’s landlord, aware that she is working on her first novel, says, “It is just extraordinary to me that you think you have something to say.” An acquaintance of King’s really did say this to her when she was first starting out. Lily King! Who is on the New York Times top-ten books list every year, who has won multiple awards for her novels, and who is a best-selling author! In my more vengeful moments I entertain a fantasy that every time King wins another award she calls that guy up and says, “Guess I had something to say after all.”

In fact, I believe that regardless of our status in society, we all have something to say, and I have a competing anecdote to illustrate that point. When I was a lowly grad student, I did a lot of dogsitting to earn money (and also because I am a fanatical lover of all dogs). One beloved client was Bear, a German shepherd who belonged to an academic couple in the neighborhood. I was at their house one day when the phone rang. It was Victor Navasky, then the publisher of The Nation, and someone I greatly admired. I took a message, and he asked, “And who are you?” Star-struck, I replied, “Oh, I’m nobody. I’m just the dogsitter.” Navasky told me that I should never say I was nobody, and that everyone has an interesting story to share. He asked me a few questions about what I was studying, and we had a nice conversation. In life, we can choose to be like King’s acquaintance, or like Navasky. To paraphrase Deuteronomy, therefore choose Navasky!

When we’re embarking on a new enterprise, we need a vote of confidence from others that we have something worthwhile to contribute. In the Happy Wanderer this year, I’ve discovered that I do have plenty to say—about art, books, education, everyday life, food, hiking, photography, politics, and whatever else strikes my fancy—but always with the aim of helping us to lead happier, more compassionate lives. Readers, thank you so much for wandering with me, for your vote of confidence this year, and for sharing your thoughts in the comments every week!

At the literal and figurative high point of the North Face Trail above the Lauterbrunnen Valley.

A Few Words about Substack

Some readers may find it surprising that a left-leaning Democrat like me chose Substack instead of some other platform. If you Google “why Substack is bad,” you will find catastrophizing articles in Vox, Medium, the New York Times, Wired, New York magazine, and many other publications, which call Substack a “scam” and a “playground for the deplatformed” and which claim that Substack is bad for writers, readers, democracy, and even the world.² Needless to say, I find such claims overblown. It is true that Substack provides a home for many writers with whose opinions we disagree. But, as a strong supporter of the First Amendment and a believer in listening to and talking with people across the political spectrum, I like Substack’s restrained approach to content moderation. The platform doesn’t allow porn, hate speech, doxxing, harassment, incitement, or other violations of the First Amendment, but it otherwise allows its writers to express ourselves as we see fit. Again, we all have something to say.

For readers who are still uncomfortable, I’d like to share another story. I used to belong to a book club in our suburban neighborhood. One reason I dropped out is that one member of the club, whom I’ll call Denise, objected to some of the books we read, complaining that they were “about weird and extreme people.” (The books were Middlesex, by Jeffrey Eugenides, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, by Mark Haddon, and The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency, by Alexander McCall Smith.) As a rather weird person myself, I liked those books, and I confess that I was surprised and disappointed that Denise wasn’t content to just skip the books and let the rest of us discuss them. She wanted to make the entire book club quit reading these books, and she argued with us about this frequently. How do you feel about Denise? I think the horseshoe theory applies here: People who object to Substack are more similar to Denise than they might care to admit.

One final way that Substack accords with my old-timey left-leaning politics: Successful writers on the platform subsidize small-timers like me. I am able to offer my essays for free, and I get to use the same elegant and intuitive writer interface that the bigwigs use. Even better, there is no advertising. (I wrote last week about the destructive intrusion of selling into human relationships, so you will not be surprised that I am grateful that my blog is free and has no ads.) While Substack runs afoul of the identity-politics left, it accords well with the free-speech and economically-progressive left where I sit.

What’s a Birthday Celebration without Cake?

I am not much of a dessert person, but I make an exception for my mom’s Red Cake. Many families have their own version of red velvet cake. My mom can’t remember where she found the recipe for the cake itself, but the frosting recipe comes from my grandma and reflects our Norwegian heritage, consisting as it does of the archetypal Norwegian dessert ingredients—butter, flour, and sugar (and very little else). We have this cake every year on Christmas Eve, and also to celebrate special birthdays.

For the cake

Ingredients:

2-1/2c cake flour

1-1/2c sugar

1tsp baking soda

1tsp salt

2T cocoa powder

1c buttermilk, at room temperature (if you don’t want to schlep to the grocery store just to buy buttermilk, you can put 1tsp lemon juice in 1c whole milk and let it sit for an hour or so until it curdles)

2 eggs, at room temperature

1tsp white vinegar

1-1/2c vegetable oil

1oz red food coloring (this is unobtainable in Switzerland, so I substitute beet juice, which works surprisingly well)

1tsp vanilla

Method:

1. Preheat oven to 325F/165C. Butter and flour three round cake pans.

2. Combine the first five ingredients in a medium bowl.

3. Combine the remaining ingredients in a large bowl and beat with a mixer.

4. Add the dry ingredients to the wet ingredients and mix slowly by hand until thoroughly combined.

5. Pour batter evenly into the three pans and bake 20-30 minutes until a toothpick inserted in the middle comes out clean. (Baking time can really vary—be sure to check frequently the first time you make this recipe.)

6. Cool cakes in their pans on racks for 10 minutes and then carefully remove the cakes and leave them on the racks until they’re room temperature.

For the frosting

Ingredients:

1/4c flour

1c water

1c unsalted butter, at room temperature

1c sugar

1tsp vanilla

1/4tsp salt

Method:

1. Earlier in the day, cook the flour in the water, stirring constantly, until it is translucent. (I know this instruction sounds vague, but I promise that there will come a point when you will look at the mixture and say to yourself, “Aha! That’s what she meant!”) Cool for at least 2 hours.

2. Cream the butter, sugar, vanilla, and salt with an electric mixer.

3. Add in the flour mixture and beat and beat and beat³ until light and fluffy and the sugar has all dissolved.

For the assembly

Divide the frosting into thirds and frost and stack each layer. Don’t frost the sides. You want to have each slab of frosting be almost the same thickness as the cake layers. I’ll let you in on a little secret: This cake is really an excuse to eat lots of frosting!

This is a stock photo. Our Red Cake has three layers and an even better frosting-to-cake ratio. Photo by amirali mirhashemian on Unsplash.

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How about you, readers? How have you coped with and celebrated the changes in your life? Please share your thoughts in the comments!

The Tidbit

I used to be a music snob and would sneer at REO Speedwagon (I was into the Cure, Depeche Mode, Echo and the Bunnymen—you get the idea). But, as kids these days would say, this song slaps. Plus, Garren Lazar has done a terrific job of syncing clips from Peanuts cartoons to the song. Fun! During the past year as a new empty nester, I have been following the wisdom in this song: “If you’re tired of the same old story, well, turn some pages.”

1. I offer this exhaustive list for the edification of anyone who thinks that we housewives just sit around eating bonbons all day.

2. I am not going to link to these articles, because I would prefer not to boost their signal. If readers are concerned, as I am, about the decline in funding for investigative journalism, I encourage them to donate, as I do, to ProPublica.

3. When my son was a preschooler, he loved to chant “beat and beat and beat” whenever I made this cake, so this instruction is in his honor.