HeyJaredCyn Harris: A Writer's Notebook
Home of my narrative biography-in-progress (Edward & Pegeen Fitzgerald), occasional Friday Finds (recipes & forgotten voices), & The Bates Gazette, written by a wounded, pompous, male feline Victorian journalist reporting household events.
- Indexed issues, last 90 days
- 16
- Latest publication
- Sep 28, 2026
- Audience
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- Earliest in this view
- Jul 27, 2026
Latest issues
Clementine Paddleford at 128: Still Serving Up Americana—with a Side Dish of Quirk (opens the original)
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What would Clementine Paddleford think of today’s food blogs and cooking shows? I have often asked myself this question.Long before food blogs or cooking shows existed, she was doing the same work in print. She traveled across the United States and to other countries in search of food and its history. In the “Foreword” of her book How America Eats (Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1960), Paddleford wrote:<a class="image-link image2 is-viewable-img" href="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_
The Bates Gazette, Vol. 1, No. 32 (opens the original)
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<img alt="An ornate Victorian masthead titled The Bates Gazette. There is a black cat with glasses dressed in Victorian clothing sitting at a desk holding a quill pen. On the right side is an ink well and pen holder. On the left are 3 books titled “Reporting,” &
Work That Feels Right in My Hands (opens the original)
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Why I spend years piecing together the lives of people who are no longer here to tell their own stories.A while back, a reader asked what motivated me to research and write a biography. I have given this some thought.The answer begins long before I ever thought of myself as a biographer. In the 1980s, I became interested in genealogy. There were no digital archives then, so I had to walk into a courthouse, genealogical society, historical society, or state archive and ask to see marriage, death,
The Bates Gazette, Vol. 1, No. 31 (opens the original)
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<img alt="An ornate Victorian masthead titled The Bates Gazette. There is a black cat with glasses dressed in Victorian clothing sitting at a desk holding a quill pen. On the right side is an ink well and pen holder. On the left are 3 books titled “Reporting,” &
I’m Letting the Notebook Be a Notebook Again (opens the original)
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When I stepped away from regular Monday posts a month ago, I said that things might look different when I returned.I also admitted that I had no idea what that meant.For once, I resisted the urge to figure it all out before taking the break. I knew there were forgotten voices I still wanted to write about, family stories I wanted to explore, and things I might stumble across while researching. Beyond that, I decided to follow my curiosity and see where it led me.During these past couple of weeks
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