As usual, luncheon will begin at noon. Joanna will ring the bell at 1PM for our
meeting, after which, in what has become a beloved Lit Club tradition, Carla Potash will be giving the final presentation of the season, this time on the “Letters of MFK Fisher.”
Members, please let Christine know if you will not be attending, and associates, please let her know if you will.
Since we won't be meeting again for a while, I've included the link to Frances' blog below so you can re-live some of the highlights from the club's past and not feel too forlorn. Unfortunately for me, I will not be able to join you all, as I am currently in Oklahoma City with my sister, preparing for our first bookstore presentation of our new book, Flower Girls: A Story of Sisters. I'll be in Chicago on the 21st, before heading on to Salt Lake City, and then home next Sunday. We have four store presentations and 11 school talks throughout the week, so it should be a blast, but I am sorry to miss Carla's presentation and all of you.
But I hope to see many of you at the Friends of the Hastings-on-Hudson Library Annual June Gala on June 8th. I'm sure Joanna will give you all the details on Wednesday. It's going to be a wonderful evening.
Have a terrific meeting! It's been quite a banner year for Lit Club. Now to start thinking about next year...x Jacquie
Frances' Minutes Twelve members and one associate met for the last presentation of our 2024-25 season of “Letters, Journals and Diaries” in Christine’s gracious mid-19th century home. We have fully emerged from pandemic mode of not-lunch. Outstanding in Christine’s delicious lunch was a blueberry soup, made from her homegrown blueberries, harvested at full ripeness last summer, aged to perfection in the freezer. Several of us copied down the recipe, aware that sourcing the blueberries may be our biggest challenge to duplicating the soup.
President Joanna rung the bell at 1 PM
Treasurer’s Report: from Lori $548.26
Joanna announced the Friends of the Hastings Library would hold its Annual Gala on June 8 at 5:30 PM. Supporting the Hastings Library is one of the Lit Club’s objectives; many of us will attend. We will donate $150 to the Hastings Library for the purchase of books. We will contribute $150 towards to purchase of children’s books from the Barkin Bookstore, to be donated to the reading program of the Family Service of Yonkers.
Book and film suggestions: Laura suggested Peter Hessler’s books on his time in China, as a teacher, and a parent of children attending Chinese schools: Other Rivers: A Chinese Education. After attending a tribute to Martin Amis at the 92ndSt Y, Christine was inspired to read The War Against Clichés, a collection of his book reviews. Thinking of food, as we were while having a good lunch and looking forward to an afternoon discussing a food writer, we thought of our two favorite food films: Babette’s Feast and The Taste of Things.
Joanna suggested we consider, as a topic, books about New York City. She was inspired by The NY Times Book Review’s interview of writers on their favorite books about NYC. See:
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2025/01/30/books/new-york-city-books.html
In what has become a tradition, but not part of our constitution, Carla gave the last presentation of 2024-2025, on M F K Fisher.
Carla discovered that Fisher did not keep a diary; however, she had an enormous circle of friends and close relations with her family. Her letters were kept, treasured, and ultimately published. She revealed her intimate feelings more in those letters than in the work published during her lifetime. Her literary gift was describing her experiences and her observations, looked at through the prism of food and wine.
In an interview in 1990, she said, “people ask me ‘Why do you write about food and eating and drinking? Why don’t you write about the struggle for power…security… about love…’ They ask me accusingly as if I were somehow gross, unfaithful to the honor of my craft. The easiest answer is to say that, like most humans, I am hungry. But there is more than that. It seems to me that our three basic needs, for food, security and love are so mixed and entwined that we cannot think of one without the other. So it happens when I write about hunger, I am really writing about love and the hunger for it, and warmth and the love and hunger for it.”
M F K Fisher was born Mary Frances Kennedy, in 1908, in Michigan. She grew up in Whittier, California; her father was the owner and editor of the Whittier News. She said she was a reader and “scribbler” from an early age. After college, in 1929 she married Al Fisher, a doctoral student. They went to Dijon, France where he could complete his studies.
One can’t help but wonder what Fisher would have written if not for the formative experience of living in a French boarding house. Her landlady was stingy, the furnishings shabby. Her landlady produced meals from market cast-offs, but no matter, they were superb. Living in France was the start of her true education.
In the The Art of Eating, Fisher and husband ordered trout in a French restaurant. There was a large fish tank in the middle of the dining room. The waitress netted a suitable trout and killed it by smashing it against a counter. Fisher wrote that the cooked trout was as “fresh as clover.”
She also delighted in describing “ghastly” meals. On a cruise, she noted a fellow passenger who, when handed the menu by the waiter, would hand it back, with one word: yes. The woman was served everything on the menu and ate it all. On another cruise, in Mexico, Fisher discovered there were two kitchens. One for the American tourists; another, a country kitchen, for the crew. She asked her waiter for food from that kitchen. What she got, she said, was “the first thing that fed me.”
Fisher divorced the man with whom she discovered French food and wine, and whose last name she kept. She married two more times, divorced again and was widowed once. She died at 83 in Glen Ellen, California, in a home where she recreated the sensuous warmth of her written words.
Respectfully submitted,
Frances Greenberg, secretary
President Joanna rung the bell at 1 PM
Treasurer’s Report: from Lori $548.26
Joanna announced the Friends of the Hastings Library would hold its Annual Gala on June 8 at 5:30 PM. Supporting the Hastings Library is one of the Lit Club’s objectives; many of us will attend. We will donate $150 to the Hastings Library for the purchase of books. We will contribute $150 towards to purchase of children’s books from the Barkin Bookstore, to be donated to the reading program of the Family Service of Yonkers.
Book and film suggestions: Laura suggested Peter Hessler’s books on his time in China, as a teacher, and a parent of children attending Chinese schools: Other Rivers: A Chinese Education. After attending a tribute to Martin Amis at the 92ndSt Y, Christine was inspired to read The War Against Clichés, a collection of his book reviews. Thinking of food, as we were while having a good lunch and looking forward to an afternoon discussing a food writer, we thought of our two favorite food films: Babette’s Feast and The Taste of Things.
Joanna suggested we consider, as a topic, books about New York City. She was inspired by The NY Times Book Review’s interview of writers on their favorite books about NYC. See:
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2025/01/30/books/new-york-city-books.html
In what has become a tradition, but not part of our constitution, Carla gave the last presentation of 2024-2025, on M F K Fisher.
Carla discovered that Fisher did not keep a diary; however, she had an enormous circle of friends and close relations with her family. Her letters were kept, treasured, and ultimately published. She revealed her intimate feelings more in those letters than in the work published during her lifetime. Her literary gift was describing her experiences and her observations, looked at through the prism of food and wine.
In an interview in 1990, she said, “people ask me ‘Why do you write about food and eating and drinking? Why don’t you write about the struggle for power…security… about love…’ They ask me accusingly as if I were somehow gross, unfaithful to the honor of my craft. The easiest answer is to say that, like most humans, I am hungry. But there is more than that. It seems to me that our three basic needs, for food, security and love are so mixed and entwined that we cannot think of one without the other. So it happens when I write about hunger, I am really writing about love and the hunger for it, and warmth and the love and hunger for it.”
M F K Fisher was born Mary Frances Kennedy, in 1908, in Michigan. She grew up in Whittier, California; her father was the owner and editor of the Whittier News. She said she was a reader and “scribbler” from an early age. After college, in 1929 she married Al Fisher, a doctoral student. They went to Dijon, France where he could complete his studies.
One can’t help but wonder what Fisher would have written if not for the formative experience of living in a French boarding house. Her landlady was stingy, the furnishings shabby. Her landlady produced meals from market cast-offs, but no matter, they were superb. Living in France was the start of her true education.
In the The Art of Eating, Fisher and husband ordered trout in a French restaurant. There was a large fish tank in the middle of the dining room. The waitress netted a suitable trout and killed it by smashing it against a counter. Fisher wrote that the cooked trout was as “fresh as clover.”
She also delighted in describing “ghastly” meals. On a cruise, she noted a fellow passenger who, when handed the menu by the waiter, would hand it back, with one word: yes. The woman was served everything on the menu and ate it all. On another cruise, in Mexico, Fisher discovered there were two kitchens. One for the American tourists; another, a country kitchen, for the crew. She asked her waiter for food from that kitchen. What she got, she said, was “the first thing that fed me.”
Fisher divorced the man with whom she discovered French food and wine, and whose last name she kept. She married two more times, divorced again and was widowed once. She died at 83 in Glen Ellen, California, in a home where she recreated the sensuous warmth of her written words.
Respectfully submitted,
Frances Greenberg, secretary
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