Nudge
I think it may be that
the occasional nudge
to look the right direction,
in just the nick of time,
to see the pink-orange sunrise
within the embrace of the pale blue sky
is actually from someone I once told goodbye,
on a brief visit and just saying “hi.”
A Spell for Migration Season
A dusting of seeds tossed to the wind, protection against
the reflection of glass. A song of drifting leaves to buoy
tired wings over long nights. A hand placed to the
frostbitten black earth to darken artificial light.
Mortal Considerations
& Cemetery Walks
On a trip to Coralville/Iowa City this weekend with my parents, we were lucky enough to see eagles a brief walk away from our hotel. When we first spotted them, they perched together on the same branch, their sharp eyes far more aware of the world than we were.
The white of a bald eagle’s head might soften the visual impact of its large, shadow-colored body if it weren’t for the pointed punctuation of its yellow beak, like an em dash that leads to nothing, a cliffhanger that nevertheless promises a harrowing conclusion to rodents and fish. But seeing a pair of eagles near their empty nest puts them into perspective. The nest is giant, the eagles are suddenly less so.
Perspective goes to work again, shrinking the nest, because the nest sits in a tree along the river, protected by other trees and grasses, yet within viewing distance of the interstate rush. The world is big, we are small, but maybe we feel big enough in our allotted space until faced with our own limited power—to attain a personal goal, to make the world better, to cheat death.
I recently organized some files and realized I’ve been working on Rootbound since at least 2019. I comfort myself with the fact that, in the meantime, I’ve learned so much (with more learning to come). And I know I had to get my work to a place where I, personally, thought it was decent. Besides, it wasn’t the only thing I’ve cared about doing, there have been other important ways to spend my time.
But reminders of my age are present when that recurring ache in my big toe comes back or I feel a new weird hair on my face (I despise knowing it’s there but having to wait for it to grow enough to tweeze). The math of our lifespans doesn’t accept alternative answers—we get what we get. I’d like to finish writing this book/duology/series before my time’s up and I have a few people I’d like to be able to read it within the time they have left (if they so desire). While reminders of aging and death are annoying in the best case, and devastating at their worst, we still seem to need them to fully consider what’s meaningful to us—is this the right way to spend my time? Have I done okay for the people I love and myself? Touring a cemetery is probably a more dignified way to spark this internal conversation than endlessly rubbing the stub of a chin hair.
The Secret Life of a Cemetery: The Wild Nature and Enchanting Lore of Père Lachaise is the account of Benoît Gallot, the curator of the famous Parisian cemetery for six years by the time of the initial publication date of this book. I landed on 2.5 stars for this book, right down the middle. Completely unfamiliar with this cemetery at the beginning, I closed the book feeling like I continued to have a poor grasp on the space’s physicality, though I did become acquainted with its famous occupants and some interesting history. The photos are black and white versions of what I assume are originally color shots, but it was still fun to see the animals. Nature was a limited aspect of the book, despite the subtitle, but it was admirable that Gallot admitted it took him time to see the mandated pesticide phase-out in cemeteries as a good thing. Overall, I felt like the book tried to do too much in too small a space and the self-centric narration weighed the book down. There were also a couple of notes that I found surprisingly insensitive for a death care professional. In one section, Gallot discusses epitaphs—“Most people recycle standard messages chosen from a catalog and etched into mass-produced headstones so often that they lose their meaning”—and offers commentary with one example, “Time passes, but memories linger. Who really believes this?” (199)
As someone who spends a lot of time trying to find the right words, I’m still never going to judge you for leaning on a pre-baked sentiment from a fellow human to express your grief when you are overwhelmed having to choose the permanent engraving for your loved one’s headstone. That’s like being forced to draw a tattoo that’s going on someone else’s face, when you haven’t drawn anything since you were a kid, all while a clock is ticking down.
As for “Who really believes this?” Me. I don’t see anything inaccurate about it. If it was “Time passes, but memories last forever,” then sure, but “memories linger” is an accurate, benign, and comforting statement. These types of sentiments aren’t for tourists, they’re for the bereaved. “Memories linger” means something much more specific to the friend or family member.
(I clarified “sentiments from your fellow humans” since companies are trying to make bots our best friends despite the fact that bots cannot feel or care and are incapable of offering genuine sympathy or empathy. Their human overlords have stolen from the rest of us and chewed up our work to spit it back out like a kidnapper cutting letters out of a magazine for a ransom note. There’s a reason love letters aren’t written that way.)
For a thoughtful read about death, I highly recommend Caitlin Doughty’s book From Here to Eternity: Traveling the World to Find the Good Death. I also loved Bob’s Burgers Season 13, Episode 9, “Show Mama from the Grave,” in which the family plans to go snow tubing, but when Bob realizes they’ll be near the cemetery where his mother is buried, they detour there first instead. Unfortunately it’s been decades since Bob visited last and the map is bad and his wife Linda is terrified of cemeteries and the sun is setting… and you’ll just have to watch it to know what happens next. (Lucas and I have been watching an episode of Bob’s Burgers every night at dinner, total TV comfort food.)
Have you walked, or would you ever walk, through a cemetery as part of travel? Do you prefer to mourn in a cemetery or elsewhere? What did you take away from The Secret Life of a Cemetery?
That First Real Job
Or, You Don’t Know What You Don’t Know
Those first weeks on a new job tend to be rough. There’s so much to learn! Processes, coworkers’ names, if the boss really means it when she tells you she’s open to feedback…
In Mort by Terry Pratchett, Mort’s own father isn’t sure what to do with him and his uncle isn’t willing to take him on either: “It was also acutely embarrassing to Mort’s family that the youngest son was not at all serious and had about the same talent for horticulture that you would find in a dead starfish. It wasn’t that he was unhelpful, but he had the kind of vague, cheerful helpfulness that serious men soon learn to dread. There was something infectious, possibly even fatal, about it. He was tall, red-haired and freckled, with the sort of body that seems to be only marginally under its owner’s control; it appeared to have been built out of knees.” (3) But as luck would have it, Death is looking for an apprentice. If only Mort’s father and uncle weren’t so spot-on in their concerns… but who hasn’t screwed up at their first real job so badly it tears the fabric of reality?
Okay, I may not have gone that far, but as someone who has had a coworker tell me “Well, I’ve never messed up that badly before” while trying to make me feel better(?) about a project—that, in my defense, never stated a particular critical requirement until weeks into the work—I can relate a bit to Mort. I was a temp hire caught between the line of pixel-specific and responsive web design, an era so irrelevant now that I forgot the word “responsive” a minute ago and had to ask Lucas. (Add that to the whole “reminders of my mortality” list.)
Pratchett’s keen insight into humanity and sly writing kept me chuckling and constantly reading entire sections aloud to Lucas so he could enjoy them again. Usually he humors me when I want to read something aloud to him, but Mort has a special place in his heart, and despite my repeated interruptions, he’s been an enthusiastic listener each time. Every time I finish a passage he says, “I should really reread that book.”
So there you have it. Read Mort, reread Mort. You deserve it.
What’s your most memorable rookie mistake? (I broke a brand new digital camera the first day we used it at my first office job.) Did anything in Mort make you laugh out loud?
When You Need a Boost
Try joining a club
What happens to princesses whose curses can’t be lifted? If they’re lucky, they join the charming cast of the Cursed Princess Club. Gwen, youngest of the princesses of the Pastel Kingdom, may not be cursed, but she has more in common aesthetically with witches than the rest of her glittering family, and when she encounters the outside world and an arranged fiancé from the allied Plaid Kingdom for the first time, it’s the CPC that can help her grow beyond her father’s rather stifling love and into her most capable self. And she has a pet possum, how great is that?
LambCat, the creator of Cursed Princess Club, describes themself on the last page of Vol. 1 as “a small, omnivorous, and easily frightened creature who has burrowed deep into the Pacific Northwest to draw comics and make music.” Many thanks to LambCat for the plentiful out-loud laughs I enjoyed on my third reading of Cursed Princess Club, Vol. 1. I once came across a stranger’s playlist on Spotify: Lilo and Stitch Soundtrack for Emergency Situations, and Cursed Princess Club is, without a doubt, my graphic novel equivalent.
Zine Scene
IRL Possums & Paper Dolls
“Possum, O Possum” by Emily Halbardier was so cute and informative. I’m glad her family was able to coexist happily with the possum family living under their porch. I’ve had the chance to get up close to a possum in rehabilitation thanks to my caring (and veterinary professional) sister, and he was adorable. I have to confess we haven’t had as good of luck sharing our backyard. This summer we had a groundhog move in beneath the shed and then in his wake, a possum. Our shed stands on top of compacted gravel and though we had protected the open sides with hardware cloth, the groundhog dug under the wood frame on the front and back and ripped off parts of the hardware cloth. (Really, the chipmunks probably gave the groundhog the idea with their tunnel city throughout our yard, including beneath the shed.) The possum then added a few other entry points to the groundhog’s work. Have you ever read Jan Brett’s The Mitten? It started to feel like that, only a bummer adult version with a dash of National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation.
Jan Brett’s books are a wonderful addition to the library of any child (or anyone who loves illustration). There’s so much to absorb in her illustrated frames in addition to the main picture on each page. She’s one of my favorite author/illustrators and I was lucky to meet her at a WI Book Fest event in 2023.
Unfortunately all this tunneling resulted in a crumbling shed foundation, which isn’t good for anyone going into the shed above or likely, anyone below either. So we had to spend a few rough days digging down into the compacted gravel, cutting stainless steel hardware cloth, burying and screwing it in along all four sides.
Saying it now, it sounds pretty simple, but the sore backs and blisters would like to protest that label. We made sure via wildlife cam and a one-way entry flap that the possum wasn’t under the shed when we sealed it completely and we hope he or she takes up residence in a different part of the yard or comes back to visit.
The granddaughter doll fashion show of the early 2000s
I Like Bats! is a collaborative zine of just over a dozen contributors. Writing, illustration, and a paper bat house filled the pages. As with anything of this nature, some pieces interested me more than others, but I appreciated exploring them all. Lynn Ruth Stephens’s painting “it’s a bat” and Io Blair’s paper bat house with its own bat paper dolls were my favorites, which is no surprise after unearthing the gem below from my letters to my grandparents (which my grandma recently returned when moving).
What’s your emergency comfort read (or watch)? Your most arduous outdoor project?
November Books
Get lost in the forest with me next month! Don’t worry, we’ll find our way back out again. Probably. Maybe. Honestly, I’m very bad at maps, but I have an excellent sense of smell and someone’s bound to be baking some cranberry bread or cookies at that point.
The Tree Collectors: Tales of Arboreal Obsession
Amy Stewart
Fifty small stories of tree lovers, illustrated in watercolor by the author herself, interspersed with other tree tidbits. This seems like a lovely one to enjoy a bit at a time during the increasingly busy holiday season.
The Easy Life in Kamusari
Shion Miura, translated by Julie Winters Carpenter
The mountain village of Kamusari is not where young Yuki Hirano wanted to find himself, but like Mort, he gets pushed by his parents into a life path. If you enjoy the TV show Best Medicine, I think you’ll like hanging out with the villagers of The Easy Life in Kamusari.
The Art of The Wild Robot
Jerry Schmitz
November seems like the perfect time of year to spend a cozy evening going behind the scenes and rewatching the movie with newfound appreciation. Have you read the beloved children’s book? I might finally give that a spin too.
Exhibit within an exhibit at the University of Iowa Natural History Museum—this miniature delighted us
October Scrapbook
Raccoon Dinner Date
Spotted while out with Lucas and my parents in Coralville, IA
Pink Paint
While working on the shed, I repainted a mirror frame that formerly belonged to the previous owners of my grandparents’ house. That makes it more than 60 years old! We actually thought it was my great grandmother’s because she had the exact same one. (I used ECOS primer & paint.)
Merry Marigolds
Gorgeous marigolds from heirloom seed gifted by my mom—they finally had a chance to bloom after being consumed by bunnies all summer!
Credits
All doodles and photos by Leigh Anne Gray or Lucas Gray.
The reviews are based on the following books: the 2025 English translation, hardcover edition of The Secret Life of a Cemetery: The Wild Nature and Enchanting Lore of Père Lachaise by Benoît Gallot and translated by Arielle Aaronson, published by Greystone Books; the 2013 hardcover edition of Mort by Terry Pratchett, published by Victor Gollancz Ltd, a subsidiary of the Orion Publishing Group; the 2023 paperback edition of The Cursed Princess Club, Vol. 1 by LambCat, published by Wattpad Corp.
Accoutrements
Chipmunk, Bat, and Tiny Trees by SetApartCreation | Tiny Wooden Broom by Granville Island Broom Co. | Planter Ghosts by Moss House Miniatures | Vintage Quilt Tree by WeatherKim
