64. Solstice dark and bright.

plus some announcements and a recipe for pomegranate tahini cookies.

Jodi Rhoden

Dec 22, 2024

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“The alchemist who had achieved illumination” from the Clavis Artis alchemical manuscript from late 17th century Germany. AKA big solstice vibes.

Yesterday I was planning to host a solstice brunch, but I cancelled it at the last minute. The roads were icy, I reasoned, and I was tired, and only a few people had RSVP’d; I was haunted by imagined scenarios of just two mismatched people showing up, trying to make awkward small talk over the coffeecake. I still made the whole menu I had planned, though, and ultimately had a very pleasant day sending pigs-in-a-blanket, hot cider, cookies and deviled eggs serially down the stairs to the basement, where my son and his friends watched old movies all day from the huge collection of thrifted VHSs and DVDs that they have amassed, oohing and ahhing at each new comfort food that progressively came their way, a scenario that I think encapsulates my whole state of being here at the end of 2024: functionally ambivalent, socially skittish, hungry, cozy, happy to be of service, satisfied.

I would be lying if I said this year wasn’t hard, devastating even. Do I need to make a list? I lost my job in March, and then my dog. So many friendships have evaporated into thin air, without a trace, that I don’t even try to make sense of it anymore, I just wave goodbye, wish them well, and watch them fade into the distance. The constant background noise is that of an ongoing holocaust, but it seems that people don’t want to talk about that anymore, if they ever did, and that moral collapse, that apathy is beyond anything I ever thought I would see or ever thought was possible. Then there was the election, and it’s subsequent gruesome battles played out on screens and in comments sections, a climate catastrophe that devastated my hometown, changing it irrevocably, traumatizing my community forever in what was just a blip on the news cycle for the rest of the world.

I would also be lying if I said this year wasn’t beautiful, fruitful, amazing. I’ve gotten to travel: some jaunts to New York City and the Jersey Shore, a trip to Scotland with my family, and several visits to to North Carolina, each one nourishing and enlivening. Regular visits to the art museum, frequent visits from friends, and gatherings with our Pennsylvania family have become a settled and welcome routine. Days filled with music, long walks in the city, working at the farm and so much time and attention spent being intentional with food and cooking. Jasper had his prom, and graduation, and he started college, and is working in a restaurant, and I don’t think it’s possible for me to have more pride, adoration, and admiration for any person on earth than I do for that child (who is now a man).

I started a new job as a therapist in a private practice that also takes Medicaid; it’s literally the best of both worlds of working in service to community mental health while having the flexibility and autonomy that, let’s face it, a woman of my proclivities (being a Leo) requires. I work 3 days a week on a hybrid in-person/telehealth schedule and can’t believe the bravery, resilience, humor, intelligence, and kindness of my clients; I lay in bed at night and I marvel at the poetry of their tragedies and triumphs, and I feel incredibly lucky to bear witness to their growth and healing every single day.

And I’m good at it. I know because my clients tell me and I know because I see it working, and the seed I sowed five years ago when I first decided to go back to graduate school to become a therapist is bearing fruit, and I couldn’t be more thankful.

All the things I appreciate most as I look back on the year have been so small, seemingly: simple little pleasures like taking time to pack elaborate lunches for myself as if I was a third grader and every day was my birthday; putting a little cinnamon in my coffee and forgetting that I did until later, then taking a sip on the subway and having an absurdly happy little moment of delight. The subtle and quiet ways I’ve become more attentive to preparing for the possible futures ahead, like gathering up scraps and baubles, stockpiling coffee cans and baling twine, just in case, just in case. Spending time with Duncan and Jasper unhurriedly; taking walks, and doing good work, real work, like protests and mutual aid and therapy and ritual and farming, and making new friends and watching people I’ve known for a long time or just a little while rise up to embody the best of themselves, because I know it’s hard, its so so so hard, and anybody would be forgiven for not knowing what to do, or how. A safe and healthy home shared with people I love, which is not little at all, but monumental, gargantuan, everything, the whole world.

And still the dystopian hellscapes of science fiction seem ever more real. Just this week on the subway I noticed it all at once in horror: the filth, the disrepair, the pervasive dislocation and alienation, the surveillance infrastructure, the discarded humanity: people in suspended animation everywhere, one trying to hold a phone to their ear while slipping in and out of consciousness, another leaning down to tie their shoes and coming to a standstill, fingers looped on the laces, a tableau vivant of dissociation. And every single person you see on the street like that, doubled over from opiates mixed with horse tranquilizer, every one to a number, was abused by someone who was supposed to protect them, I’ll bet my life on it, and the fury that this fact raises in me is incandescent.

This rage is sacred, it is what it means to want to protect what is essential, it is what it means to be alive.

And I feel very alive in 2024, maybe more alive than ever. My skin tingles, I get butterflies—everything is a sign from the universe, and everything matters a great deal. And I’m gathering up these trinkets, these knickknacks, these signs from the universe, and taking them with me into the unseen, unknowable future.

And now, some announcements!

1. New Year’s Day Raffle.

Ten more days until the First Annual Home + the World Benefit Raffle for WNC and Gaza closes! Tickets are $5 each and entries are unlimited. Raffle items include a tattoo from Kerry Burke of Terra Vasa Tattoo in Philadelphia, a 10-card Celtic Cross Tarot reading from me, a 70-minute internal family systems (IFS) intro session with practitioner Jess Begans, and some super cute handmade woodblock prints from Nina Ruffini!

To enter, donate to:

Rural Organizing and Resilience (ROAR) in Madison County, NC, who are doing incredible mutual aid relief work after the cataclysmic climate event of Hurricane Helene and/or
Many Lands Mutual Aid in Gaza, who are distributing cash and material aid to displaced families surviving genocide in an UNRWA school in Deir Al-Balah.

Then send me your receipt. So far we have raised $530 for these two organizations. I would really like to reach $1000 in donations before January 1st! Raffle tickets make a great last minute digital stocking stuffer (I’ll be happy to make up a little gift card graphic if you would like to give your donation as a gift❤️). If you can’t donate right now, please spread the word. All the details can be found here!

2. Walnut Family Bakery Traveling Bake Sale.

Camille Cogswell and I are ships in the night: the celebrated pastry chef moved to the Asheville area from Philly at the same time I moved to Philly from Asheville. Though we don’t know each other well, we are kindred spirits, so I was completely honored to be asked to participate in this New Year’s Eve bake sale in Philly as a part of her Walnut Family Bakery traveling bake sale to benefit ongoing flood recovery efforts in Western North Carolina.

The event will take place from 12-3pm on Tuesday, 12/31 at Kampar in the Bella Vista/South Street neighborhood of Philadelphia, with 13 amazing bakers and bakeries represented. I’m stoked to be repping Short Street Cakes with some classic cake slices: Strawberry Short Street and Vegan Deep Dark Mexican Chocolate, and maybe some of Aunt Tissy’s Italian Cream Cake as a bonus.

Proceeds from the sale will benefit Community Housing Coalition of Madison County: “an immensely important organization in helping the residents of our community recover from Helene and thrive beyond it.”

3. Entering year 3 of Home + the World!

It’s incredible to share that January 1st will mark two years of writing Home + the World! It’s no exaggeration to say that this newsletter has changed my life. I love the connections that I have made with readers and writers here (from less than 100 subscribers in 2023 to almost 700 now!). I love the freedom and discipline of this bloggy/journaly format, which I believe has made me a better writer, with 64 original essays and counting. And your paid subscriptions have made a measurably significant impact on my life. I take none of it for granted.

AND, this newsletter will be changing in the coming year. As has naturally been occurring already, I’ll be posting less as I feel called to spend my thinking and writing time in other places. I’m working on more long-form projects, including a chapter contribution to a forthcoming oral history book edited by Elyse Muñoz,

Cindy Crabb

, and Mac Marquis, that tells the story of the Asheville Community Resource Center, the anarchist community center that a bunch of us freaks in 2002-2004 cobbled together in an empty warehouse in downtown Asheville for a brief but glorious moment, and the larger anti-globalization/anti-war/mutual aid movement in the South at that time. I would also like to perhaps work on more academic writing; perhaps pitching to journals and magazines again; perhaps that elusive memoir.

I want to focus more on creating content for my own website—I appreciate the durability and craftsmanship of that little corner of the internet (made by my beloved bestie Michael Frey) more and more as Substack becomes more popular and therefore devolves politically and ethically as these platforms inevitably do (see: Substack’s recent announcement of their “partnership” with Bari Weiss1 and the “Free Press,” an utterly fascistic project).

I have considered pausing paid subscriptions while I loosen the timeline on my writing, but I’m going to leave them on for now, since many of you have expressed that paid subscriptions gives you a way to support my writing life more generally, and because paid subscriptions are also a means for generating mutual aid funds. But as a person who plans to audit and cut my kind of ridiculously bloated subscription budget soon, I will understand if anyone needs to take a break from paid subscriptions.

The world is different than it was on January 1st, 2023, and so am I. I’m taking space to get to know it, to get to know me, to get to know the ways that Home + the World wants to show up in these times. I’m proud and grateful for what Home + the World has become, and it’s not going anywhere. But I’m going to loosen the reins on the format, schedule, and content, and see what happens. I am excited to see Home + the World change and grow, as everything in nature, everything in life always does.

Sunrise and sunset on the shortest day of the year

Home.

Tahini Pomegranate Cookies.

I adapted this recipe from several I found online; they’re hearty, not-too-sweet, with a satisfying complexity and depth. I also found that in baking the pomegranate arils, they became sweeter, softer, and less bitter, making it easier to crunch and swallow the seeds.

Ingredients

¾ cup tahini
½ cup brown sugar
½ teaspoon almond extract
1 egg
2 cups almond flour
½ teaspoon cinnamon
¼ teaspoon ground cardamom
¼ teaspoon ground ginger
½ teaspoon baking powder
½ teaspoon salt
½ cup pomegranate arils

Instructions

Preheat the oven to 350°F
In a large bowl or stand mixer, combine the wet ingredients and mix until smooth. In a separate bowl, sift the dry ingredients together.
Add the dry to the wet, and mix until combined. If the dough does not come together and form a ball, add a teaspoon or two of vegetable oil.
Roll the dough into balls, then flatten the balls onto the cookie sheet while pressing the pomegranate arils into the surface. Bake for 15-18 minutes or until lightly browned around the edges.

Home + the World