On SCOTUS and Stone Fruit Season

Finding a place for latent political angst.

July in Colorado is a special time.

Long days run into even longer nights, and it’s as if there’s some collective push to just slow down and take it all in. There’s a real and tangible vibe shift, as if summer was going to linger indefinitely.

Most importantly, it’s also the beginning of stone fruit season (why do I feel so compelled to add ‘motherfucker’ here?!). Stone fruit season is that magical time when Colorado markets are awash in peaches, plums, cherries, and apricots— which I adore but let’s be honest are the fussiest of the stone fruits and rarely worth the hassle. I’ll save that for another post, though.

This is usually my favorite time of year. Except for the reality that July in Colorado happens to fall just after the end of June, well everywhere. And it’s the end of June when the United States Supreme Court unleashes a fresh new hell on this country. Every year. Without fail.

So it’s not always great for time to slow to a crawl, especially if, like me, you’re a chronic over-thinker. Because trust me one of the last things anyone should spend a lovely night in July ruminating on are the various ways the conservative wing of SCOTUS is hell-bent on ushering us into autocracy. It’s a mood killer.

It’s also the perfect opportunity to try your hand at something like a from-scratch-cherry—crisp. Take two pounds of fresh cherries, a sturdy cherry pitter, put on something kiiiiiind of aggressive on to listen to, and get to rage pitting. The ping of the pit as it hits the side of the bowl, the splatter of bright red cherry juice that splatters your fingers and workspace, it’s soooo satisfying and I’ll be honest a little murdery. Which has to be part of the satisfaction.

Because what else is there to do after a term where the conservatives on the Court gutted affirmative action because they could?! What else is there to do after a term where Justice Neil Gorsuch drove a bulldozer through the First Amendment to open a path for wide-scale discrimination against LGTBQ folks and used a cooked up case involving a non-existent wedding website to do so? I mean that case is LITERAL ACTUAL NONSENSE and pretty much all of the country seems to have moved on.

What else is there to do but pound out two pounds of cherry pits in response?

One of my hopes with Alla This is to cultivate a space for collective rage-pitting. Because it turns out, that kind of work is not just therapeutic, it can transform into something sweet and sustaining and worth sharing.

So welcome. I’m so very glad you’re here. Cherry crisp recipe to follow for my paid subscribers!