Living · Eunice’s Kitchen
What to Do About All This Rhubarb
It is June, which means there is too much rhubarb, which means it is time, once again, for the only sensible answer: cake.
Read more →News You Heard First at the Café
The Klatch & Living
Coffee’s on at the Daybreak. Pull up a chair. — Eunice Dahlquist, around the table
Well. It has been a week. The Sorensens are back from Arizona, tanned and a little smug, and report the drive took “two days if you don’t stop,” which Walt does not, ever, a fact Carol has made her peace with over forty-one years of marriage.
Congratulations to Pastor Lindholm, who finally got his boat in the water Saturday after a winter of being “almost ready,” and to whoever backed the trailer down the ramp, because we all watched and it was not him.
The Hendrickson baby has arrived — a girl, eight pounds even — putting the population sign at 3,914, pending Earl and his ladder. And somebody’s rhubarb is doing extremely well this year, and the rest of us would not say no.
Open 5:30 a.m., bless us
The Daybreak Café
Bottomless coffee • Pie that ended a meeting
Hotdish daily • The Klatch convenes here
Main Street, you’ll smell it
Also in Living
Living · Stars Over the Chain
The Week in the Stars
As read by Sigrid Pelto, who has lived in Misquah her whole life — but for college, and the summer of 1995, when she and the girls did Europe on a rail pass and a woman in a Florence market took her hand and told her she had the gift. She reads from the end of her dock on Loon Lake.
Cancer season opens with the solstice — the longest light of the whole year, and we get every minute of it up here. The Moon favors small, tended things this week: the loon chicks, a grudge finally set down, the slow part of summer. Mars is already looking ahead to the Fourth, three weeks off, restless as a boy in church.
Aries
The subcommittee’s got three and wants a fourth, and you’ve got opinions and want an outlet — Mars can see where this is headed. Go gently, now. The solstice favors warmth over heat. Win the corner with patience, not a charge at it.
Taurus
Loon chicks are riding their mother’s back out on Big Pelican this week — so slow your boat, and your whole week with it. The Moon’s fond of what’s carried, not chased. You’ve already got everything worth carrying; just mind your wake.
Gemini
Rhubarb’s at its peak and so’s your calendar. Bake it, sauce it, give it away — run abundance through your hands and it turns into kindness. Hand a bag to a neighbor, and give yourself one gift too: you don’t have to go to everything you’re asked to.
Cancer
It’s your season, and the solstice pours out the longest light of the year right over the Chain, just for you. The Fourth’s coming and the town will want a lot — say yes to one thing, no to two. Even the one who holds everybody up deserves a lawn chair and an hour off.
Leo
You gave the proper wave on the water and the other boat didn’t give it back. Let it go. The Sun in Cancer softens even you this week — your manners aren’t worth less because someone forgot theirs. Wave at the next boat the same as always.
Virgo
The bear got beat by a bungee cord — exactly the kind of sensible, slightly silly fix you’d have rigged yourself. Take the small win. Then order the locking lid, because you already know, the way the café’s about to learn, that a bungee’s only a truce with a thinking bear.
Libra
‘Three is a sufficient number,’ the paper said, and lately you’ve felt that about your own life. Trust the smaller table. The solstice asks what you can set down — not every chair needs filling, and sometimes balance is just fewer of them.
Scorpio
Something’s stirring as summer settles in — the bear, the splash, that old restlessness of yours. Watch it from shore a while before you wade in. The Moon pulls hard at your water this week; feel the tug all you like, but pick your moment.
Sagittarius
The Fourth will run the same one street it always runs, and you’ll be wanting more horizon than that — Mars is restless already, three weeks out. Plan the bigger trip for August. But march this week anyway. Even a wanderer needs a hometown to leave from. I should know.
Capricorn
The hydrant flushing went off exactly as predicted, and it pleased you more than you’ll admit. Take your comfort in the dependable this week. The solstice and the schedule agree — the steady, unshowy things are holding. That’s underrated, like Mud Lake, and like you.
Aquarius
Everybody’s fretting over the bear, but you’ve come round to admiring how it keeps at things. Borrow a little of that. The thing you keep circling back to — the project, the question, the whole dumpster of an idea — might yet be yours, if you go at it the bear’s way: calm, and often.
Pisces
Loon chicks, warm water, long light — the soft middle of the year, your very favorite kind. You came through the hard months; the solstice says you can sit in this gentle one without bracing for the next. It won’t last, no. That’s exactly why it’s sweet. Go float in it.
On Your Big Three. People ask me to explain the three big pieces, so here it is the way I learned it. Your Sun is who you are at the Daybreak counter, where everyone can see you. Your Moon is who you are at two in the morning, when the wind comes up off the lake and you can’t sleep. And your Rising is who the new pastor thinks you are, before he knows any better. I read all three by appointment, Tuesdays, out at the end of my dock — weather and coffee permitting. Bring your birth time if you’ve got it. Bring a thermos if you don’t.