My neighbor said that a few weeks ago, in response to the infodump I’d just delivered about keeping backyard chickens. I hadn’t thought of myself that way, but when he said it, it felt true. I do love to research. Every new interest sends me straight to the library web site where I’ll put way more books on hold than I’d ever have time to read.

It’s no different with the novels. A few of the books I read as I was working on The Revolution of Every Day: War in the Neighborhood, Resistance, Suffer the Children, Dark Remedy, and The Revolution of Everyday Life, from which the epigraph* is drawn. And then, of course, there were the hours of digging around on the internet, turning up firsthand accounts of squat evictions in the East Village and in Amsterdam, newspaper articles and listserv posts. I researched as I wrote and revised, weaving the facts in with the narrative.

For the new book (no longer known as Cold Black Stars because that doesn’t fit it anymore. For now let’s just call it the Portland novel), I’ve been reading up on farming. Farming memoirs (It’s a Long Road to a Tomato, The Dirty Life, The Seasons on Henry’s Farm), and of course lots of Wendell Berry. But farming? You need to get your hands dirty, too.

I contacted a farmer who I’d taken a class with a couple years ago and asked if I could come work with them (in whatever capacity would actually be helpful rather than slowing them down) and ask them questions, and she kindly said yes. They needed me to come on a Wednesday, because that was the slowest day in their schedule. It seemed like it was working out perfectly. I would drop Kiddo off at school, arrange for the girlchild to be at daycare (she usually goes on Tuesdays and Thursdays), and off I would drive to work on the farm and do my research. I was so excited.

But. (Yeah. You heard that but coming, right?) But turns out there wasn’t room for the girl at the daycare on Wednesdays. There had been flexibility in the past and I just assumed that flexibility would continue. So that takes care of that assumption. I can’t leave my kid with just anyone and drive a half hour out of town and be away for hours. That’s way outside of my comfort zone. It would have to be her daycare provider or Billy or nothing. Billy doesn’t have a desk job. He’s got patients in pain who count on him showing up. So nothing, then. I missed the early spring window. The farm is now too busy for me to come on any day of the week. Cue sighing violins, right? I know. Let this be my biggest problem.

The farmer has agreed to answer questions sent in a Word doc, and I’ve done that. And the farmer we buy our meat from is doing the same, and we’ll be heading down there to visit once the mud dries up. All great, all helpful. But the only dirt under my nails comes from my own garden. Nose still firmly planted in books. I can admit to being disappointed without sounding like a petulant brat, right? Though I do feel a little bit like that, stamping my feet, not able to research the way I want to.

Our overgrown backyard. The closest I'm getting to a farm for a while...

*“People who talk about revolution and class struggle without referring explicitly to everyday life, without understanding what is subversive about love and what is positive in the refusal of constraints, such people have corpses in their mouths.”

—Raoul Vaneigem, The Revolution of Everyday Life