I was sad to learn of the death of Ralph Hostetter, in 2019, something that escaped my attention at the time.

Ralph was a Maryland newspaper publisher who had a summer place in French River, here on PEI, a piece of bold architecture for the village, an A-frame high on the hill overlooking New London Bay.

I knew Ralph through my work as Executive Director of the L.M. Montgomery Land Trust, of which Ralph was a generous patron. I always found him gracious and straightforward, qualities his obituary expounds upon:

Hostetter was blessed to have loving family members, friends and caregivers around him in person and he enjoyed connecting with others using today’s technology during his final time at his beloved home that he called the Fourth Estate. He freely shared his quick wit, political opinions and talent as a storyteller.

That might be the end of the story, had I not been chatting with Lisa’s mother Karen and Aunt Dianne last week about the houses their father—Lisa’s grandfather—Eddy MacLeod had built over the years. 

One of those houses: Ralph Hostetter’s.

Here’s an artist rendering of the house from family files:

And here’s what the house looks like from the road in French River:

One of the best pieces of advice I got, on moving to PEI 31 years ago, was to be careful about burning bridges: the Island, I was told, is enormously interconnected, and if you offend someone, you’re likely offending, by association, vast swaths of people you don’t yet know.

In this case, no offence occurred. But if you’d told me 20 years ago, when I first met Ralph, that I’d eventually be dating the granddaughter of the man who built his summer home, I would have thought you mad.

I had a hankering for a Factory Coffee this afternoon, and seeing that Island Chocolates was open today, I drove out to Victoria. Only to find that Island Chocolates wasn’t open today.

I rerouted to Foxy Fox, in nearby Crapaud, and enjoyed a flat white and a peanut butter cup, over my sketchbook.

Foxy Fox, by the way, is expanding: they are soon to have locations at Blackbush and in the Charlottetown Mall.

From this week’s 10+1 Things, a link to a beautiful infographic of 77 cocktails.

For example, here’s a Russian Spring Punch:

Zoë Schlanger, reporting for The Atlantic, on how your black plastic spatula might be made of e-waste:

For the past several years, I’ve been telling my friends what I’m going to tell you: Throw out your black plastic spatula. In a world of plastic consumer goods, avoiding the material entirely requires the fervor of a religious conversion. But getting rid of black plastic kitchen utensils is a low-stakes move, and worth it. Cooking with any plastic is a dubious enterprise, because heat encourages potentially harmful plastic compounds to migrate out of the polymers and potentially into the food. But, as Andrew Turner, a biochemist at the University of Plymouth recently told me, black plastic is particularly crucial to avoid.

I’m immune to social media “granola contains outer space debris” fear-mongering, but this is a well-researched article from a reputable source. So I’m going to replace our black plastic spatula with a silicone one.

Speaking of The Atlantic, and toxicity, this interview with editor Jeffrey Goldberg is a good overview of their decision to endorse Kamala Harris, a thoughtful review of the Washington Post’s decision not to, accompanied by a bits of interesting history from the magazine’s past.

Annie Mueller writes about the dumbness of getting AI to do dumb stuff, concluding:

But what if we spent less time figuring out how to do dumb stuff faster and more time pointing out how dumb the stuff is or finding ways to avoid it altogether. Not always possible, sure. But sometimes, it’s possible. Might be possible more often than we think.

It’s PSC Awareness Day, Frank reminds us. 

From his blog marking today (in translation):

What is PSC?

PSC is a rare disease. There are just over 1,000 cases known in the Netherlands and around 100,000 worldwide. It is a progressive and chronic disease. This means that over time the symptoms become more severe and that there is no medicine for it yet. The treatment of PSC mainly focuses on preventing the symptoms of the disease. Since the beginning of the diagnosis, I have been taking ursodeoxycholic acid (Ursochol) and fortunately it visibly slows down the disease process. My liver functions are improving slowly but surely, as we see in the blood values every few months. But I’m not the old Frank anymore. PSC is a part of my life and will not go away. That’s why every year with Global PSC Awareness Day, an update on how I’m doing now.

PSC Partners has a good overview of the disease.

I am a voracious highlighter of RSS feeds and email newsletters in Readwise Reader, an accumulator of songs in my Spotify “Liked Songs,” and a saver of “Watch Later” videos in YouTube, often with the thought that I should, one day, blog about whatever I’m noting. These piles of interesting things have now risen to the point where I need to disgorge them all at once. Here goes.

Music

• Night Vision, by JJ Heller and and Sandra McCracken. I am not constitutionally programmed to love Christian folk, but this song’s got me by the tail.
• Little Blue, by Jacob Collier. If you need an introduction to Collier, David Weinberger has you covered.
• Different When It Comes to You, by Bruce Cockburn.
• We Surrender, by The East Pointers. My favourite of a crop of their recent great tunes.

Videos

• Bruce Guthro Last Song, with Jodi & Dylan. Guts me every time.
• Steve Knightley - Romeo and Juliet.
• Bruce Sterling, Reboot 11 Closing Talk.
• The Raconteurs feat. Ricky Skaggs and Ashley Monroe - Old Enough.
• SCTV: Gerry Todd, and Michael McDonald (and McDonald’s memories of it).
• Casual by Chappell Roan but Make It Indie (Winnetka Bowling League).
• George Carlin, Stuff. I used to play this on my community radio show, from vinyl; I think about it every time I pack to travel.
• How One Building Changed Filmmaking (368 Broadway).

Blog Posts

• My approach to GTD and PKM, by Justin Duke (“It’s easy for me to overfocus on short-term urgent work to the detriment of longer-term, more important but less time-sensitive work.⁠”)
• Just do the thing, by Annie Mueller (“I start doing something I care about. I’m enjoying the rhythm. The feeling. The action.”).
• Creel Flies to Paree, by Thelma Phillips.
• Better conversations, also by Annie Mueller (“If things get really uncomfortable/you get bored, consider a spontaneous interpretive dance. It’s amazing how quickly people can exit a conversation when they really want to.”)
• Night Drive, by James Reeves.
• P&B: Alison Wilder, because who doesn’t like being referred to as a “wonderful person” by a stranger!
• Safari URL Bar, by Jamie Zawinski (a helpful hint for making the URL field longer).
• Parable of the Sofa, by Tim Bray.
• Note to Peter, by Elmine Wijnia. I love this reply.
• Silk Screen Printed T-Shirt, by Ton Zijlstra. Would but for the world work like this in general.
• Why accessibility is good for business (according to my mechanic), by Nic Steenhout (“Why should I?” he shrugged. “You’re the only disabled customer I have.”).
• Green Bay Packers 2023-24: Game Sketchnotes, by Mike Rohde. I took Mike’s Sketchnote Lettering Workshop, and use the lessons I learned every day.
• Earle’s Paintings, by Rob MacDonald.
• Release Notes: How to make self-hosted maps that work everywhere and cost next to nothing, by Chris Amico.

Pressing Matters magazine first came to my attention last year, through Frab’s Magazines, the wonderful Italian magazine shop. I’d first come across Frab’s last spring, and fell into a deep (and expensive) rabbit hole of magazine ordering; I’m still reading my way through the backlog. (We made a pilgrimage to Frab’s this spring, when we realized we’d be driving by their shop in  in Forlì, Italy).

One of the magazines that came in that expensive shipment from Frab’s last year was Pressing Matters, and although I’d purchased it with the thought it might inspire my letterpress work, it quickly became something of a look book for our emerging practice as printmakers.

Jump ahead to this summer: we sent a This Box is for Good to publisher John Coe, and John reached back to us with a generous offer to feature our April box, a collaboration with Dutch printer Roy Scholten, in their October issue. This issue hit the newsstands this week; here’s the piece:

This lovely development is the continuation of a set of dominos that Ton set in motion in 2018, when he first pointed me to Roy’s work. That led us, 6 years later, to contact Roy about doing a residency with him in Hilversum, which led to the box featured in the magazine, and also led us to a visit with Ton and Elmine, who generously adopted some of the boxes. 

A kind of perpetual motion machine of inspiration, activity, inspiration, activity.

Pressing Matters is available on better newsstands everywhere, or you can order a print or digital copy online directly.

The latest of the tests in our strength cycle at Kinetic took place during today’s workout; this time it was the back squat. Where a dead lift — which we tested earlier in the month — is picking up a barbell off the floor, a back squat is holding the barbell on your shoulders, squatting down, and then standing up. I finished with a single rep of 175 pounds, which was a new personal best for me. 

This is what 175 pounds looks like (the barbell itself weights 45 lbs., and then there are 2 x 25 lbs., 1 x 10 lbs., and 1 x 5 lbs. on  each end):

I was wearing my “everything’s hossible” T-shirt this morning — one of the lot we produced as a birthday gift for Lisa’s father, who’s long been known as Hoss — and I like to think that the spirit of the shirt, and the spirit of Hoss, helped me with the last 5% I needed to get there.

Until this weekend anchovies were a mythical beast, never encountered, but often referred to in popular culture, frequently preceded by “hold the…”, and certainly something I’d avoid if offered.

But then, Thanksgiving.

There was a decision to have a Rukavina family lasagna meal on Saturday. Mike would make the lasagna, from Mom’s recipe, and we would be responsible for the Cæsar salad, the drinks, and the dessert.

“Will you make the salad dressing from scratch?”, Lisa asked, with a tone that suggested that a real adult would, definitely, be making the salad dressing from scratch.

“Of course,” I said, as though that had always been the plan.

The Internet is preloaded to assume anchovy aversion in its presentation of Cæsar salad recipes, often leaving them out entirely, or listing them as “optional.” 

There was also the issue of the heart of the vrai dressing being a raw egg, something that, in the Rukavina culinary universe, was anathema. To say nothing, for some parts of the family at least, of the vehement anti-garlic stance.

Which is to say that my first go at the dressing was a stripped-down version that omitted anchovies, garlic, and eggs altogether. 

This might have you asking “why bother,” and the result was a sort of “watery tasteless mayonnaise” that never fully emulsified. We made the decision to just go with it, put the mason jar of it in the fridge, and went on with the day.

But I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t serve that dressing, or at least only that dressing; I felt called to put aside my preconceived notions, and dive all-in.

I found another recipe, this one with no hesitations. I bought the last tin of anchovies at Kent Street Market, and reassembled the other ingredients, this time with garlic and egg. I followed the “immersion blender” version of the instructions. Made a paste of the anchovies and garlic, drizzled in the olive oil. The result was, relatively speaking, divine.

Mindful of my larger family’s preferences, I prepared another version, anchovy and garlic-free. It lacked the kapow of the full version, but was nice and creamy at least.

In our various ways, we enjoyed a lovely Cæsar salad for Thanksgiving, went through three heads of Romaine lettuce, plus some aftermarket leaf lettuce additions when the bowl ran dry.

I feel like I have a new salty fishy kapow-offering friend in my culinary reportoire.

Once you’ve embraced anchovies, they pop up everywhere, it seems.

The very next day’s episode of Jeremy Cherfas’ Eat This Podcast was a deep dive into anchovies and their role in Basque cuisine:

Anchovies can be very divisive; some people absolutely cannot stand them. I can’t get enough of the little blighters. What’s the difference? It might be as simple as the way they’re stored.

At the Dublin Gastronomy Symposium this past summer, I was delighted to learn one crucial way to improve any tin of anchovies: keep it in the fridge until you’re ready to use it.

Marcela Garcés is a professor at Siena College in New York, and as a side hustle she and her husband Yuri Morejón run La Centralita, a culinary studio that aims, among other things, “to teach guests about anchovies as a gourmet food in context”. As a result of our conversation, I now hold anchovies in even higher regard.

It’s worth a listen to the entire episode, as Marcela is engaging and very anchovy-aware. You may emerge, as I did, wanting to book a flight to Bilbao.

And then, again, today.

Patrick Rhone pointed to a book recently published by his tax accountant, A Season for That, that details a 6-month sojourn to the south of France the that author, Steve Hoffman, a food writer and Francophile in addition to accounting for taxes, undertook with his family.

This naturally led me to Hoffman’s blog, where I found a post art and anchovies on the vermillion coast that described an anchovy transition similar to my own. He writes, in part:

But shortly after the turn of the century, I fell in love with Alice Waters. (You might know her as, oh, the chef/owner of Chez Panisse and inventor of the farm-to-table movement, for starters.) It was a long-distance affair, which, if you asked her, she might not remember well. But in its first full bloom, there wasn’t anything she suggested that I wouldn’t try, anchovies included.

Hoffman is a delightful writer. To the point where I’d hire him to be my tax person should I need a tax person in Minnesota.

All of this has me planning a future for my next tin of anchovies.

Maybe you might want to become an anchovy-loving person too?