Notions & Notes
Sharing the little odds and ends: ideas, reading, food, nature, art, and the occasional life update.
Notion (n): 1. a conception of or belief about something 2. an impulse or desire, especially one of a whimsical kind 3. (plural) items used in sewing, such as buttons, pins, and hooks.
As a child, I always loved digging through my mother’s notions box and looking at her collection of jewel-like and lost buttons—I loved just running my fingers through them and then examining each one in its uniqueness and wondering where it came from. Something of that fascination has lasted as an adult where finding odds and ends—a note on the sidewalk, a lost button, or rummaging through junk shops for old photographs—always felt like a discovery. Objects, whatever they are, carry their stories with them.
Throughout the pandemic, I missed sitting in a coffee shop for hours and striking up a conversation with a stranger, I missed dark and crowded concerts, I missed getting lost in distant cities. What I missed most of all was sharing the random odds and ends I “discovered” and found meaning in with the people in my life. This past year when the world felt too enormous and isolating, I found solace and much-needed connection in the humanity and (sometimes) hidden stories found in recipes, writing, art, and music. After all, these are the little things that make life rich and meaningful. And every time I read a great piece of writing or cooked something delicious I wanted to share it.
As we start to emerge from our isolation and imagine what the future will look like, I feel certain that I want to share with others the ideas and odds and ends that I’ve connected to, that have meant something to me, even for a moment. Notions with its meanings in both the tangible and intangible felt like the right word for what I wanted to share with you all. So I’ve created this little newsletter to occasionally share the things I find and hope you enjoy and connect to some of them too.
If you’re getting this first newsletter, that means I thought (or hoped) you’d appreciate some of the things I decide to share. If you’d like to unsubscribe, I really won’t be offended. If you stick around, I’ll send a poem with ghosts in it, an article about sheep, an album that you should listen to alone in your car, and a nice little shortbread recipe, among other things.
(My own box of notions)