Monthly Recap Joshua Sauvageau Monthly Recap Joshua Sauvageau

April 2025 Recap!

Races! Curling! California!

Happy May, my lovely readers. September is grand and the weather is lovely, but in May, with the flowers blooming and the soft Spring rains falling: is there a sweeter month?

My April here in Saint Paul was packed with work, travel, writing, and curling!

Leah and I spent the last five days of the month traveling to California! The main reason we went there was so Leah could run the Big Sur Marathon. I am happy to report that she crushed it! Having run that course myself several years ago, I can confirm it is NOT an easy race. It is VERY hilly, including a two-mile-long-four-percent-grade monster known as Hurricane Ridge. She raced smart and was really diligent about her approach to training, tackling the hills of Saint Paul, some gnarly running weather, and a 16-mile hilly treadmill longrun on one of those extremely cold February Saturdays. I won’t go into great detail (because it’s her victory, not mine), but I am super proud of her and what she accomplished along the Pacific Coast Highway last Sunday.

Bixby Bridge (aka mile 13) in the distance. Hours before the Big Sur Marathon.

Outside of the race, we spent a night in Santa Cruz, two nights at the Big Sur Lodge (no wifi or cell service—highly recommended), and two nights in the East Bay. We ate Burmese, drank copious amounts of wine in Napa, forest-bathed in the redwoods, and enjoyed the beautiful scenery and weather (every day except race day, when it unfortunately rained quite a bit).

At one of the vineyards we visited in Napa

I learned how to curl in April! A few of my coworkers were forming a curling team for Spring League, and one longtime team member recently retired, so I volunteered. It’s a fun activity! I can’t ice skate, and have never tried skiing, so curling felt like an easily attainable winter hobby. I had to take a mandatory “learn to curl” course, which was essential as I literally knew nothing about the sport. Our team has now played two games (11 “ends” if we’re using the proper terminology) and our record is 1-1. My personal play is a work-in-progress, but my teammates are very encouraging, and truly just want to have fun.

I participated in my first Habitat for Humanity home build in April. A majority of the TCHFH builds are on weekdays, which won’t work for me, but I was able to jump into a rare Saturday build. I mostly installed insulation in a home in Maplewood, MN. I learned some skills, met wonderful fellow volunteers, and helped some future homeowner have a less drafty second floor. Win-win-win!

Shoutout to my buddy Tommy who gave me the idea to volunteer with HFH!

Things are busy at work, and aside from the regular audio work I’ve been doing for news and podcasting, I had an opportunity to record Lady Blackbird for The Current. Video coming soon, but I can’t get her songs out of my head. What a voice!

My eldest nephew, Jackson, joined the US Navy in April. I’ve been thinking about him a lot lately. In fact, the last time I was on the Pacific Coast Highway was when I found out he was born—July of 2004. That time, I was driving back home to Silverdale, Washington from San Diego when I got the call on my cell from his father. So now Jackson is at Recruit Training Command, Great Lakes IL (just north of Chicago), which is where I went to basic training too, and where, in January 2001, I found out that Jackson’s older sister—my first niece, Hailey—was born. Excited to have another “squid” in the family.

A stretch of the Pacific Coast Highway on the day Jackson was born—July 2004

April was National Poetry Month, and in honor of that designation, I decided to post a poem each weekday throughout the month. I was NOT participating in NaPoWriMo (National Poetry Writing Month, where participants wrote a poem each day), so most of these poems were years old, but I did write a brief introduction for them, and I’m impressed that I stuck to my goal of posting each weekday. A list of the poems and a link to each one is located at the end of this month’s newsletter. My ultimate goal was to build a bigger Substack following by posting regularly throughout the month.

Additionally, I wrote an essay on empathy titled “I Melt With You”. I spent weeks researching, writing, and editing the essay, and am pretty happy with how it turned out, though it is a bit long.

A few months ago, I applied for a writing residency at Tofte Lake Residencies—an opportunity to spend a week in nature working on my writing project of choice. The application required a writing sample and a description of my project.

The net result of all this writing effort was disappointing. My Substack following did not increase; in fact I got fewer and fewer eyes on my work as the month progressed. I got perhaps the fewest reads/views on the piece I spent the most time on—my essay. And a few days ago, I found out that I was not selected for the Tofte residency. To put my writing goals into curling terms, I scored a “blank end.”

I’ve only been on Substack for a couple of months but I’m already feeling burned out. The popular thing there is “Notes” which is basically Substack’s social media component. Kind of like old-school Facebook, before it was taken over by shoddy memes and Russian trolls, but as Substack is marketed as more “literary” than the other social media sludge, I figured it would be a great place to—you know—write! Turns out that the most traction comes from the social media side of things than the actual posting of written work, which feels, again, disappointing.

Honestly, I’ve been feeling genuinely dismayed about writing for a long while now. There was a time in my life—many, many years—where all I wanted to do was write. I would wake up in the middle of the night, with a voice inside my head saying: “You should be writing more. Don’t waste your time. Write.” Really—it happened regularly. But, I am gradually realizing that a “voice” encouraging me to write is—let’s just call it what it is—insane. In fact, between my going-nowhere-fast writing and my equally abysmal musicianship, I am starting to realize how many hours of my life I have utterly wasted. It feels—like so much else these days—bleak.

That said, I do hope that you are staying happy and healthy and feeling whatever the opposite of bleak is.

Seal Rock, near Monterey

A Redwood in Big Sur

Big Sur Lodge FTW

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Monthly Recap, Poetry Joshua Sauvageau Monthly Recap, Poetry Joshua Sauvageau

March 2025 Recap!

‘March’ is no one's favorite word…has no comments yet, and is not a valid Scrabble word.

—from my new favorite website, Wordnik!

The first quarter of 2025 is in our rear-view, dear reader. True to form, our upper midwest March oscillated between blizzards and sunny 60-degree days. While one can never be too sure how the weather will change, I took a chance and drove up to Fargo the first weekend of the month, to celebrate the birthdays of my Mom and brother-in-law, Adam.

Mom and me early 1980. Seated left to right, Mom’s Grandpa Ed and Grandma Edna McGough, and her Grandpa Arthur Lemke (whose wife Sadie passed away mere hours before my birth on 1/7).

Dad and buddy Liberty Rose Sauvageau (aka Libbens)

As I’ve been researching and writing about family history lately, Mom shared several pictures and files that she’s collected over the years. Of particular note was a series of articles from the Seattle Star (dated April through September, 1945), detailing the shocking sexual assault and murder of my Grandma Dorothy’s 5-year-old cousin Irma Irene McGough.

from the April 27, 1945 Seattle Star. Grandma’s Uncle James McGough at right

Grandma’s cousin Irma Irene McGough, with her mother, Beulah May Simmons

In going through some old pictures, we also came across an article, which very well may be the genesis of my lifelong desire to write. From the Winter 1983 edition of North Dakota Bowhunters Association quarterly publication is a several-thousand word essay headlined “Manitoba Black, Our Way” — penned by my dad. An excerpt:

“With a single movement, Scott [Lang, Dad’s friend] drew and released a 2117 Gamegetter tipped with a four-bladed Satellite. The [bear] lurched with all the strength she could command, ran a short 60 yards and died peacefully in flight…We were awestruck at the beauty of this fallen animal: it happened so quickly and now it was over. We carefully dressed her with the reverence fitting a forest queen…”

Dad with his “Manitoba Black”

As a boy of 6 or 7, I remember feeling spellbound by this article. My parents encouraged reading from a young age: Mom would regularly take Lacey and me to storytime at the Lisbon Public Library, and Dad would read to us before bed. But seeing my father’s name in a print byline led to the youthful realization of the accessibility, and the potential reach of writing. I was happy to see that Mom and Dad had saved this article, tucked away in a musty photo bin in their garage.

Of course, one of the nicer niceties of living a few hours’ drive to the F-M Valley is getting to hang with my nephew Fischer and niece Selah. A few months ago, as Fischer and I were bonding about baseball cards, I gifted him one of my favorites: a 1988 Topps Tom Lawless card (which, great name, btw). It was a favorite because the 8-year-old me had cut out Tom’s face and replaced it with my own 4th grade school pic.

Well, as Fischer and I were looking through his cards, he handed one to me:

Obviously my heart melted. He told me to keep it, and I almost did, but thinking better of it, asked him to hang onto the card to give to his nephew one day.

Just as I was saying my goodbyes, Selah (age 3.5) came out wearing a beautiful sequined gown, and the morning sunlight streaming into the living room was too good to pass up:

Leah, Churro, and I flew to Arizona for a few days, though our trip was shortened somewhat due to an 8” snow dump in the Twin Cities. We got to see Leah’s Dad and Stepmom’s winter place in Gilbert, hiked a bit, ran (20 miles for her, 15 for me) in the area’s first rainstorm in six months, and spent a half day at the Musical Instrument Museum in Scottsdale. It felt great to get a little sunshine for a few days there.

Leah and I on a hike in Scottsdale (photo by Mike Eggers)

Back at work, I got to engineer the live Before Bach’s Birthday Bash broadcast on YourClassical MPR. You can hear the broadcast in its entirety on the web. As this is Blue Collar Fugue, the March Fugue of the Month is JS Bach’s Fugue in C Major, performed by Samuel Backman here (at 47:55). It also gave me a chance to wear my “I’ll be Bach” Terminator mash-up sweatshirt.

I’ve been reading more this month, and I’d like to highlight a few of my favorites:

  • I can’t quit thinking about this beautiful essay “Make Room for Space” (not only because Alysha is a dear friend). Read it, and then read it again. Follow/Subscribe to her Substack. You will not be disappointed.

  • As March is the “5-year Anniversary of Covid” (as if that’s something we’re supposed to celebrate) I re-read this poignant essay by Chef Gabrielle Hamilton, about one of the many tragedies that unfolded in those early days of the pandemic.

  • A dark, lyric essay by poet Tony Hoagland from the Winter 2019-2020 Ploughshares—“Bent Arrows: On Anticipation of My Approaching Disappearance.”

  • Low: Notes on Trash & Art by Jaydra Johnson, which I immediately ordered upon hearing Johnson’s interview with Brendan O’Meara on the Creative Nonfiction Podcast while out for a long run.

  • A lovely zine titled “Here’s to the Land: The NC State Toast Fanzine” by Erin J. Watson, from the Zine-A-Month Patreon

I took an informative two-hour workshop titled “Shaping Family History into Compelling Stories” by fellow Substacker Annette Gendler.

And I did some writing/revising/editing as well, adding the following pieces to my Substack and here:

  • A poem questioning the pursuit of “success,” starring Ariana Grande and a starling

  • A journal entry from March 2017, one month before Leah and I started dating

  • A piece inspired by a spreadsheet I found from the Pine City (MN) Press

  • A poem I wrote in 2nd grade, which was published in our school-wide chapbook. Kudos to the North Dakota Public School system, circa 1988, and to my Mom for holding onto everything I’ve ever written. I’ll leave you with that poem, which TBH might be one of the better poems I’ve written in 35 years:

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