In these parlous days, Rustica’s Polenta Bread (available on Mondays) offers solace. The crust is crunchy, and the inside is cool and airy and squishy soft. It smells like popcorn, and tastes like corny, slightly sour, very luxurious white bread. Toasted or not, it is magic with salty butter — just the thing to calm the heart and smooth down the hackles. [Appeared in Heavy Table. Photo Credit: Rustica Bakery]
Writer Keith Lesmeister has a blog called “Life as a Shorty.” Each week he picks a short story and uses it to talk about craft, either by exploring some aspect of the piece or interviewing the writer. Earlier this month, we talked about my short story “Fledgling,” which recently published in Rappahannock Review. You can read the story here. ***** Keith Lesmeister: The story starts out with this horrific, nightmarish scenario, which draws readers in immediately. And while I had thought initially that the story would be about the parents who lost the child, it wasn’t about that at all. Did you know, upon starting this piece, that that would be the case? Was this always going to be about Mary Beth? Susan Pagani: Yes, it was always Mary Beth’s story. There was a draft where I began with Mary Beth and the finches, thinking that would help the reader understand it was her story and create more of a build to the actual accident. It didn’t work as well for me. I felt the accident needed to …
Word limits are word limits, and sometimes editors have to trim good stuff out of stories. So here’s another outtake from one of mine. In September, I wrote a piece for Civil Eats about the Seward Co-op, which had recently made a series of necessary changes to its hiring policy in order to get more people of color onto its staff. In the course of our interview, Leila Wolfrum, a co-op manager in Durham, North Carolina, stopped the conversation to make a point that was later cut but now — in the aftermath of our election last week — seems critical to the story. The Durham co-op has been open for a year and a half and employs 45 people, 32 of whom identify as people of color. As Wolfrum told me, diversity in the co-op is important for several reasons: it brings jobs to the people who live in the community, it creates a grocery store that reflects and welcomes the community it serves, and it’s just good business. “I think it’s important to recognize that diversity is not something we’re doing solely for the health …
I’ve been working on an essay about a goose that flew into the yard and fell in love with William, my husband. In the course of my research, I found an amazingly funny letter that Gouverneur Morris wrote to George Washington in the fall of 1788. I could not, in the end, use it — and it was a hard darling to kill — so here is an excerpt: I promised you some Chinese piggs, a promise which I can perform only by halves for my boar, being much addicted to gallantry, hung himself in pursuit of meer common sows. And his consort, to asswage her melancholy (for what else can helpless widows do) took up with a paramour of vulgar races, and thus her grunting progeny have jowls and bellies less big by half than their dam. Such however as I have, such send I unto you. And to piece and patch the matter as well as I may, in company with the piggs shall be sent a pair of Chinese geese which are really …
A letter arrived on Saturday, describing an incident with an egg that filled me with bright-green envy and true delight at once. Although one cannot blame the author for declining to pass along the pale, blue egg of hope, it might have smarted less if she hadn’t expressed it quite so poetically. Here follows the lovely little note: Yesterday, while bringing out the garbage early in the morning, I nearly stepped on a pale, pale blue bird’s egg — an egg no longer than the bowl of a baby’s spoon. I expected the egg to be smashed or cracked given that it was on the concrete and within [word smudged] of someone’s shoe, but it was not. The egg was intact and shaded, in part, by a fuzzy bird feather that was stuck to the top of the egg like a royal fascinator. Knowing your fondness for little birds, my initial thought was to ship off this brown-speckled, pale-blue egg to your doorstep. surely this egg must be a sign of good fortune, and that is where …
I love letters, and recently there have been a great many letters exchanged — as you can see from the photo here. Letters from far-flung, eastern hotels on lovely, thick stationery. Handmade notes with tidbits of poetry and garden updates. Silly postcards and brief, but heartfelt birthday wishes. There have also been notes of condolence. My sweet grammy passed away. She was the last of the grands, and a very good friend to me. As a kid, she let me run straight from the lake into the house — barefoot and sopping wet — and filled me with homemade pies, cookies and jam, another contributor to my lifelong love of good food. She indulged my eccentricities, allowing me not only to sleep in the musty room over the garage rather than in the house, but also to hunker down in an ancient feather bed there for hours, sometimes whole days, reading. Of course, we didn’t always get along: She insisted on good manners and took away my sweets the day I bit my older brother on the stomach for …
Django is a catahoula with exceptionally soft ears and a warm demeanor. He is a fine birder and a great companion on walks.
Susan Pagani 
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