Friday Joy: There Is Nothing Wrong With Loving Fall
Capitalism & social media have tried to ruin autumn, but I won't let them do it.
Welcome to Friday Joy! This is a weekly short piece on something that is making me happy, and a few recommendations for books, recipes, and articles to check out. I hope it brings something good into the end of your week.
It's difficult to remember a time Before Pumpkin Spice Latte (BPSL), but I lived in it. In the BPSL years, you could enjoy your warm fall beverages and apple picking in peace, without the world either judging your basic-ness, or trying to push pumpkin spice poop spray1 on you.
But despite the annual PSL hand-wringing, I love fall. I LOVE FALL. It has nothing to do with buying buffalo plaid products and everything to do with being a human being.
Changing seasons mark the passage of time in the most elemental way; not through square calendar days, soccer schedules, or dentist appointments2, but through the minute and relentless changes in nature that manage to be both totally predictable (the leaves will change color, the squirrels will become nut-hiding maniacs) and delightfully surprising (did that tree turn into a blaze of orange overnight?)
And our minds and bodies are also part of nature, our changing habits—craving soup, drinking a ton of tea, curling up in bed at 8pm—also predictable yet surprising.
Even in supposedly season-less L.A., it was there if you were looking for it: the butternut squash and persimmons popping up at the farmers market, the shadows a little longer at the end of the day, that one maple tree down the street doing its thing.
In The Dawn of Everything (more on that below), the authors describe how Upper Paleolithic societies (the period roughly 50,000 to 12,000 years ago) would gather once a year for giant communal events: seasonal hunting of migrating game herds, nut harvests, fish runs. Often these events would happen in late summer or autumn, when food was briefly too abundant for smaller groups to handle, and would include communal work (hunting, processing food, building structures) as well as feasting.
It's human to note and celebrate this time of year, and I refuse to be shamed by it, or convinced that I need to buy something in order to commemorate it. Instead, I'll be celebrating with an annual tradition that my friends and I didn't know was going to be a tradition back when we started it in our 20s: the Fall Fête.
We gather, we have a potluck of autumnal foods (braises, starchy-buttery things, squash-filled things, apple crisps), and we share the work of helping our children carve pumpkins, which no one ever tells you is one of the bigger bummers of parenting. (Scraping out the guts? The wooooorst.)
It's a celebration with our community, a ritual marking the passage of time in a special way that goes back a decade—but in a way, much, much longer than that. I can’t wait. I might wear buffalo plaid.
Tell the truth: do you love fall too?
What I'm Into This Week
Reading
The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity by David Graeber & David Wengrow. Just some light reading about the history of humanity. When this 706-page behemoth showed up on the library holds shelf for me, I said, "HA!" I might not finish it before my renewals run out, but until then, it is fascinating. The authors set out to make public the discoveries and discussions in archaeology and anthropology that dispel myths around how humankind has organized itself over the years, sketching a picture of the past that is much less simple and paternalistic. I'm making it sound boring, but it's not! The first chapter blew open my understanding of Native Americans’ early interactions with Jesuits and other European settlers. If you want to read about Indigenous intellectuals ripping Western culture to shreds for its lack of mutual aid and freedom, this is the book for you. And in reexamining our false assumptions about the past, the authors also open up hope for the future, and hope in humanity's ability to reorganize and reimagine our social structures—because we've done it before, so perhaps could do it again.
Drinking
Hojicha from Ippodo Tea. The smell of hojicha—roasted green tea—is the smell of autumn for me, and I drink a ton of it when the weather gets chilly. Ippodo Tea is a Kyoto-based tea company that has been around since 1717, and I love their loose leaf hojicha, genmaicha, and sencha. To brew it, I fill up this Oxo strainer with a few tablespoons of tea leaves, pour boiling water over it, and let it steep for about 30 seconds. The leaves can be reused a few times during the day to make more tea. This is how they make tea in a casual setting in Japan, at home or at work, which I found really surprising when I learned about it, but for everyday tea, you don't need to worry about water temp or being fancy.
Cooking
Thai Roast Chicken Thighs With Coconut Rice from Bon Appetit. Crispy-skinned, coconut-milk-marinated chicken thighs cooked on top of cabbage wedges that get all soft and jammy in a pool of chicken-y juices infused with lime, fish sauce, and ginger? And then you eat it on top of warm coconut rice? Yes and yes. One child eats the coconut rice and cabbage only. The other child eats the coconut rice and chicken skin only. I call that a win.
Thinking About
The Touching Earth series from Earth in Color. This series, which was inspired by bell hooks's Belonging: A Culture of Place, "celebrates the many ways [the Black] community has always been connected with the Earth, and how our healing and self-recovery is rooted in our care for the natural world around us." Clearly my autumnal enjoyment has me thinking about ancestors, connection to nature, and rhythms and cycles of life, and these stories embody so much of that. Click on the Instagram post above to see the Reel featuring hooks’s words—it’s so so good.
What are you eating/drinking/reading this week?
H/T to the team at Rest Days podcast for alerting me to this horrifying product.
Bonus recommended read: The Diminishing Returns of Calendar Culture from the Culture Study newsletter.