About Pat

I write about the physical life. The bread that didn’t rise and got demoted instead of thrown out. The chair mended so the mend shows. The cottage that has to be closed in the fall with enough imagination to survive the winter, and opened in the spring with enough patience to survive the opening. Small work, done by hand, mostly for people I love. It turns out that’s a life, if you keep at it.

I’m not against machines. I own a good drill and I’m typing this on a computer, and I’ll take a washing machine over a washboard every day of the week that ends in a load of towels. But given the choice, I put my money on the human side of the screen. A recipe card in your grandmother’s handwriting knows things a search result doesn’t. A repair you made yourself sits in the room differently than one you paid to have hidden. What I’m for is simple: attention, patience, and the people at the table — the rest is tools.

The stories here sort themselves into a few piles. Cooking for people, which is not the same thing as cooking. The cottage year, which is a long conversation with weather. Things done by hand, badly at first, then less badly. And field notes from the rest of it — the small joys that don’t ask to be content and get written down anyway.

I wrote a book called No Bots Allowed: A Christmas Book for Imperfect People. It’s about December as it actually happens — the squat loaf, the late guests, the card list with the crossed-out addresses — and why that’s the version worth keeping. You can find it on Amazon. There’s a novel on the workbench now, too. Like most things on my workbench, it will be done when it’s done, and it will show its mends.

If you want to hear from me when the season changes, there’s a letter. Four a year, no filler. Otherwise: the kettle’s usually on, and the stories are all here.