'Hallow Beets' revisited

An old radio essay, an older self

After breaking one too many Pyrex pans, I roast beets in enamel now.

My mom recently sent me a legal folder packed with scripts she’d printed out from my radio essay series, ‘A Cook’s Notebook’ (ACN) that ran for 4-5 years in the early 2000s out of WCAI in Woods Hole, MA. It was my weekly slot that happened by luck and in retrospect, was a highly creative + potent time because it’s when, where, why and how, I became a writer. WCAI took a chance on me and it was one of the greatest life-affirming gifts I’ve ever received.

My mom, being my mom, was and still is, my most loyal fan. She’d print out my ACN scripts in a large font so my father, Paul, could read them. Then he’d edit them with his red pencils. I used to take umbrage with that, shirking from his corrections. Especially his grammatical edits because in radio writing, you write like you speak. And so proper grammar…it’s just not strictly the priority.

But thank god I’m older now. I’ve learned that publishing anything, even this itty-bitty newsletter, is like a full-contact sport. As I re-read those scripts/his edits, I never took in the positive things he noted or that he liked. Through my eyes today, I can see how he edited me to become a better writer. He was trying to help me. Writing and words meant the world to him.

And he was funny. One of Paul’s notes, “Your Protestant is showing,” is adjacent to a description of holding my breath as I passed a graveyard. He was also generous in sharing his own anecdotes. Like when I wrote about how my mom stuffs shiny pennies in her dumplings, to the delight or dismay of whoever bites into the coin, or as he recounted in the margin, a gold ring of his.

When I look back at these essays now, I also wonder about the me’s I’ve been - the learning writer, the anxious observer, that voice. Where did she come from and did she go somewhere?  I read something I wrote a decade(s) ago and it is nearly unrecognizable. I can readily recall sequestering my uncomfortable-self inside our pantry when ACN aired - feeling exposed, vulnerable yet enlivened at the sound of my own voice, my stories.

Here’s one searing memory from that time: I’m under the pressure of an impending radio deadline, sitting at our kitchen table on N. William St., deep into a destructive melodrama of my own creation that made words feel galaxies away. I’d gone way into a black-coffee-fueled self-important lament of: ‘This essay, it has got to MEAN something.’ My stars! How I took/take myself oh-sooooo seriously.

So in my writing practice now, I’m seeking meaning where I may of underestimated it before: in breath and beauty, roots and vines, humor and sweetness - and that it’s okay to give myself a break. To be kind to myself. To revel in wide-open creativity, connections + write with wonder-joy unencumbered.

I was definitely tapped into something sensational with ‘A Cook’s Notebook’. The rhythm and responsibility of a weekly deadline suited the workhorse in me. As does the intimate, creative relationships and exchange between writer, editor, producer and listener. I also learned to accept what my ‘good enough’ is, without complacency, and the ‘You’ll never do that again’ lessons that every publishing moment presents while making accountable corrections along the way. Publishing is a ‘why’ of creativity - to release something anew into the world. To participate. Because otherwise it’s like hoarding candy. Ideas - they can get stuck, stagnant + eventually hardened then disintegrate like concrete.

There are also the cringables that I hope I would not and will not accept in my writing anymore. Like the ‘boys will be boys’ line in Hallow Beets the essay below. That said, I left this essay in its original state like an unearthed fossil in an archaeological dig. And Hallow Beets does remain on the PRX Exchange. You can even listen to it, if you’d like.

I know that I’m not the same writer I was when Hallow Beets came out - since then nor even since yesterday. A creative life is ever-responsive, I hope. Thanks to that folder of archived scripts my mom sent me, I’m plumbing those essays like they’re bones of my creative life - a record to read with curiosity and care. To integrate and move forward with who I am today. And to learn how to not be so hard on myself, how to be less afraid.

And if the opportunity presents to republish ACN in some format, this work will get a rework. When I listen to my 2002 first-ever published radio essay, Wonderland Chicken Stock I’m reminded that I am still here: My name is Alice and I am after all, as my mom likes to say, my father’s idea.

One of Paul’s nib collections he would store in an old Altoids tin.

Meanwhile, to start again. Cooking for me is creating something new every time. Never the same and never meant to be the same. Food is what brings me back to writing, my kitchen. Another project, another process. When I move between+through the raw and the cooked–the cooked and the raw, I am more myself than ever before. Until the next meal.

Thanks for your ears, eyes, heart and balance. I’m so glad we’re here.

~ ali

Notes/readings/listenings lately:

Are You the Same Person You Used to Be? By Joshua Rothman, Oct. 3rd, 2022, The New Yorker

Radical Wholeness: The Embodied Present and the Ordinary Grace of Being by Philip Shepherd.

If Women Rose Rooted by Sharon Blackie

Gustav Mahler, Symphony No. 2 "Resurrection" conducted by Leonard Bernstein and the New York Philharmonic from a 1963 performance in memory of President John F. Kennedy.

So Romantic (Live at DZ Records) by my son, Elijah Berlow

Hallow Beets aired on WCAI in 2004. ‘A Cook’s Notebook’ was produced by Atlantic Public Media and many of the audios can be found on PRX Exchange.

Hallow Beets by Ali Berlow, 2004.

In the blackened windows of the night kitchen Augustus strained his eyes past the shadows of the moonlight, to see if it was the skunks in his garden or just the neighborhood kids playing tricks on him again. Whether it was doorbell ditch or swiping his newspaper that gang was always up to something. And since tonight was Halloween, Augustus was expecting them. Every year they throw burnt out jack-o-lanterns on his yard even though they’d been told by their parents to leave the old man alone. Their mischief hadn’t bothered him too much. Boys will be boys and Augustus remembered being one, a long time ago. In the morning he’ll pick up whatever broken pumpkins are out there and put them in his compost where they’ll grow back, strong and resilient.

His dinner - beets from the garden - were steaming in a pan on the counter. He’d roasted them with a head of garlic in a bit of water. His house smelled like sugar and dirt. The cooking liquid had evaporated - leaving the Pyrex dish glazed like stained glass and the garlic saturated a deep pink. When he sliced the top off one of the roots and peeled away the rest of the skin, it bled into him in a warm and satisfying way.

The doorbell rang before he could rinse off - the first trick-or-treaters were always the little ones who came early. They seemed genuinely excited about dressing up and at least tried to be polite about the candy. It occurred to Augustus as he handed the princess on his front-step an apple and a piece of licorice - that as the night wore on - the children would gradually start looking more and more misshapen, like poorly disguised, greedy adults.

The girl ran away, waving her wand and shouted ‘thank you’ only after she reached the safety of the sidewalk and her father. It was then that Augustus noticed how bloody his hands looked and that his fingernails were dyed deep purple like a plague of bruises.

He went back to the kitchen, turned on the television to the evening news, muted it and played music instead like he always does. He chose Mahler’s 2nd Symphony - the Resurrection. In a sad way it reminded him of a better time and place and of JFK because it was performed for the president’s funeral in 1963.

As the cellos and basses grew in strength during the first movement - Augustus picked up the largest beet and bit into it like an apple. Juice dripped down his chin. He didn’t wipe it off. Instead he rubbed the beet all over his mouth. Then he ran his fingers through the sticky magenta coating that was drying on the bottom of the Pyrex and drew a thick line under each of his baggy eyes and across his forehead. He took out a paring knife and slowly started carving the beet, shaping it into what he thought a heart would look like. When the doorbell rang again he didn’t get up. Not yet. It was still too early and the little kids don’t like his apples and licorice anyway. The older trick-or-treaters would be by soon enough.

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