What the World Needs Now

Handwritten recipes, phone calls, and dinner parties

The other day, I sat down and thumbed through my collection of family recipes. Stained and tattered, handwritten with care or sometimes in a hurry, I loved seeing the sweet swirls of my mother’s writing on those pages. She’s been gone 20 years this year and that doesn’t seem possible. My grandmothers had similar hand writing, so I often have to check with one of my sisters to see which grandmother wrote a particular recipe.

Since making an effort, a concerted effort, to stay off social media, I have had to scrape the boundaries of my memory to remember how we did things in the BEFORE. While I have been surfing Facebook reels and Pinterest pages for the right recipe, my collection of cookbooks and recipes have sat in boxes and on shelves gathering dust. So, I pulled them out. There was something magical about opening a beloved cookbook again. I LOVE vintage cookbooks and while I have certainly paired down my collection, I still enjoy thumbing through what I have. I especially love the booklets of recipes that came with new appliances and my heart soars for a good ol church cookbook.

I wonder if my children will keep my recipes, often printed out from a website. I doubt it. My handwriting is difficult to read so I have avoided writing down much over the years, but looking through my family recipes reminded me that the loops and twirls are what make the pages special. My children have spent their lifetimes figuring out my handwritten notes. I bet they’ll be able to decipher a recipe here and there.

A collection of recipes found in an old notebook filled with family recipes and vintage cookbooks.

Last week, I picked two recipes I found in my mom’s collection. I don’t remember her making these, but I loved both, and the people with whom I shared loved them too. I have vowed to write down the recipe on a card and mail it to my friends.

I think these old practices and recipes need to be brought forward. The conspiracy theorist in me suspects the “old ways” will be needed in the not-too-distant-future. The “grandma hobbies” that I enjoy are now in vogue again, and I suspect I’ll be teaching someone how to sew, or can, or use a rotary phone sooner than later.

In this world which feels so intentionally divided, (because it IS intentional) doing the things that used to be common feels like an act of rebellion and I’m here for it. I am bringing back the old fashioned phone tree. I’m sending mail (like with a stamp and everything) It takes time, but it never takes as much time as I fear.

I read a great piece from a fellow Substacker the other day that summed this up well.

“You are hearing the same chorus, not because it’s a hip trend, but because it’s true. My friends, you really do need to host a potluck. You need to bake cookies and write little notes inviting your neighbors to a block-wide Signal chat. You need to untether yourself from the urge to clean your house or whip up a fancy meal. You need to host stoop coffee and hang up flyers for park hangs and register for a potentially disappointing community rec class. You need to ask yourself “what’s the thing I most like to do with other people?” and then take the risk of inviting people, even strangers, to do it with you. These are not pleasant distractions from fascism, nor mere salves for loneliness. We need them. Urgently. They won’t feel like enough (and there’s not a guarantee they will be), but now is the time to build community like our lives depend on it.” —Garret Bucks https://substack.com/@garrettbucks

I’ve long preached that if you want to truly live in a democracy, you have to engage in it. You have to participate somewhere, somehow. For some people that’s running for office or attending city council meetings. For others, it might be joining a book club or bowling league and for more people, hosting a dinner or a coffee. Whatever you chose might just be the thing you can do to feel connected, to feel hope, to feel like who you are matters. Whatever you can do that takes you out of the comfort zone of isolation, do that.

There’s a great movie called Join or Die, which explains why we have to engage. It’s based on a fascinating book called Bowling Alone. Before cable television and the internet took over our lives, we did things together. We joined the Rotary or a bowling league and we figured out how to work together. Today, we are so tuned into what we can get easily in the palm of our hand, we’ve forgotten how to coexist and as a result, I believe, our democracy has suffered.

Friendships that have lasted decades are more and more reduced down to the sharing of silly videos and snarky memes. I’m here to say I want more. I want time with people. I want phone calls and drop-ins and dinner parties. I also want to invite my neighbors over for soup or driveway drinks. Technology has it’s place, for sure. I’m using it now, obviously. But it has to be balanced with authentic interactions, personal, real relationships and shared experiences.

Folks, I’m challenging you to do something. Take a friend out for coffee, mail a thank you note, call an old friend, host a party. Remember what it was like before we had a digital intermediary and communicate with someone the way you used to. If you can’t remember, ask a parent, a grandparent, an elder. Someone in your life will remember and can likely tell you as story about what they heard on the party line (google that, if you don’t know).

This world has so much good in it. Let’s not waste the good by hiding from the bad. Find the good and it will grow.

What am I reading? I am still trying to finish all of the books I’ve linked here since I started. You can find links to them here:

What am I listening to? Honestly, all I can hear right now is the constant ringing of tinnitus, which provides a short road to crazy. When that isn’t making me bury my head in my hands, I’ve been listening to this classic: What the World Needs Now.