Letter 28: Favorable conditions, cultural literacy, and a brisket recipe.
March and April 2025
Notes from Me
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Reading (article): I very much enjoyed this article, “How to Host in 2025” by writer Ben Christensen. In it he interviews author Leah Libresco Sargeant about building meaningful connections with others, even when it’s not easy.
She told me she’s since found an even better quote for how she faces the headwinds of modern life. This one’s from C.S. Lewis:
“If we let ourselves, we shall always be waiting for some distraction or other to end before we can really get down to our work. The only people who achieve much are those who want knowledge so badly that they seek it while the conditions are still unfavorable. Favorable conditions never come.”
She said that last part with gusto: “Favorable conditions never come!” It has become a motto in her house for making it work, even with kids and commitments and all the usual excuses.
My husband and I have been repeating, “Favorable conditions never come!” to each other the last couple of months— its applications seem endless.
Reading (book): I listened to the audiobook of Ed Hirsch’s 1987 book Cultural Literacy: What Every American Needs to Know. In it, he argues that children should be familiar with a base background of knowledge. “Dry incompetence,” he writes, “is not the necessary alternative to lively ignorance.” He articulates well the need for children to learn a body of knowledge before forming their unique responses to what they have learned.
Children can express individuality only in relation to the traditions of their society, which they have to learn. The greatest human individuality is developed in response to a tradition, not in response to disorderly, uncertain, and fragmented education. Americans in their teens and twenties who were brought up under individualistic theories are not less conventional than their predecessors, only less literate, less able to express their individuality.
Before reading Cultural Literacy, I had not read any of Hirsch’s many books or seen his well established, Core Knowledge Foundation, which offers many curriculum and instruction resources. After reading his book, I’m interested in exploring more of his work.
Reading (book): After nearly two years, I finished reading Middlemarch, a very long ode to the ordinary life well lived. I can’t say I’ll read it again soon, but am I thrilled I made it to the end? Yes. Do I consider myself slightly more capable of entering into a novel filled with dense prose and finding my way through it? Also yes. Totally worth it.
Listening (music): I have listened to composer Johann Sebastian Bach’s Brandenburg Concertos over the last couple of months, and this is my favorite of them all: Bach’s Concerto No.3 in G Major, BWV 1048:1. Such a pleasant piece of music.
With the Boys
Reading Aloud: We read Peter Pan and are now in book four of The Melendy Quartet.
Listening in the Car: James Herriot’s Treasury for Children (read by Jim Dale) and A Midsummer Night’s Dream (performed by Jim Weiss).
In the Kitchen
Kitchen: Here are two recipes to recommend. Around Passover, we enjoyed Deb Perelman’s Simplest Brisket with Braised Onions. On Easter morning, we ate Alexandra Stafford’s Cinnamon Sugar Monkey Bread (I let the rolls rise overnight in the fridge).
Small Joy
Hearing my almost 8-month-old son giggle and babble.
Until next time,
Susie
P.S.
“Particularly the kind of art that has something insightful to say about the way we live now” (still one of my favorite short videos).
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I was late to read this post, but laughed out loud at your Middlemarch description. Maybe I'll try to get through a few pages of it this summer :)