Apples, apples, apples. ‘Tis the season for apples. Apple cider, applesauce, apple pie, apple butter: who doesn’t like this season? This week, let’s write some apple stories. Just in case you’ve forgotten what they look like, here are three reminders.
Paul Cézanne, The Basket of Apples, 1895. Oil on canvas. Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, IL.
Grandma Moses (Ann Mary Robertson Moses), Apple Butter Making, 1947. Oil on wood.
René Magritte, Le prêtre marié, 1961. Oil on canvas. Private collection.
PSST: IT’S OPEN MIC WEEK THIS WEEK!
Submit your work-in-progress prose or poetry piece by Tuesday night, in time to get feedback from your fellow writers on Wednesday!
Three Things: Thanksgiving Edition
Our family’s Thanksgiving tradition is an all-out, 30-plus people affair, hosted every year at our parents’ house. Up until a few years ago, though, it wasn’t as easy for me to get home for Thanksgiving, so I’ve celebrated the holiday in a number of ways over the years, from going out to dinner with friends, to tagging along to another family’s meal, to taking the train up to Montreal for a solo weekend away. What the holiday boils down to, for most people, is eating food (usually lots of it) while sitting next to people they love. Or at least tolerate.
This week, let’s write something set on Thanksgiving Day. Will your protagonist enjoy the usual ’round-the-table feast? Here are three fairly traditional activities to get those gears turning: food prep, table setting, and after-dinner games. Happy Thanksgiving!
Grandma Moses, Catching the Turkey, 1940. Oil on wood.
Ann Toebbe, Red Plastic Plates, 2008. Handpainted cut paper on cardboard. The West Collection. www.anntoebbe.com
Susan Lichtman, Cards, 2003. Oil on linen. www.susanlichtman.com
As I write this, I sit amidst a sea of boxes, some taped and labeled, others not yet half full. On Monday, while you read this, said boxes (and a million other things) will be carried into their new home. Moving days are a little bit sad, exciting, dreadful, hopeful, exhausting, exhilarating: moving out of one home and into a new one is perhaps one of the most tangible ways to experience a beginning and an end in one’s life.
Being, as I am, entrenched in move-mode (as is Wren, who also moves today), it seemed appropriate to find three moving days for this week’s Three Things. I found a cooperative effort (by Grandma Moses), a day of insanity (from what used to be the madness of May 1 in New York City), and a lovely mystery to end (by photographer Jessica Bruah).
Grandma Moses (Ann Mary Robertson Moses), Moving Day on the Farm, 1951. Oil on pressed wood. Private collection.
“May-Day in the City,” Harper’s Weekly, April 30, 1859. Cartoon.
Jessica Bruah, Untitled #6 from “Stories,” 2003. Photograph. www.jessicabruah.com
