Cumulus

Let's Make a Deal (or, Don't Quit Your Day Job)

2012-02-01T22:41:00.000-05:00

I made a deal with a customer this afternoon that we'd both write something today. She's a writer; I used to be one. She was encouraging me to get back into it. Not one to renege on a deal, here's mine:

The old dog gets older
every day.

So do I.
But that's o.k.

With age comes wisdom,
so they say.

The dog must be a genius
by now.

"Life Sentence"

2012-01-25T13:08:00.000-05:00

We spent an hour at District Court this morning, supporting a friend. It was fascinating to watch the flow of humanity and pursuit of justice and restitution at its most plebeian. There was one lawyer who inspired in me visions of a television series about a man in his 60s who's been a lawyer for the lost and forgotten all his life, somewhat lost and forgotten himself but robust and brimming over with personality. A booming voice, a thick head of graying hair, a suit off the rack and two ties that he alternates on even and odd days. He might be played by Peter Gerety.

The show would be called "Life Sentence" and would air at 9:00-10:00pm on Thursday nights. All the stock characters would be there (were there this morning): patiently elegant but firm lady judge; sexy female lawyer in miniskirt, spike heels, and plunging neckline; young male public prosecutor, just out of no-name law school and unsure of himself; scruffy just-turned-30 male lawyer who would have moved on from District Court long ago if he'd been able to get out of bed earlier; tough female lawyer in men's pants and a silk blouse; sympathetic female court advocate, brunette with trendy blond highlights and stylish yet sensible clothing; crusty old bird bailiff, tiny but fierce. And Peter Gerety, lawyer with poise and personality big enough for courtrooms three times the size of this one. Plus the whole wide gamut of people who make their way through District Court for a whole wide gamut of reasons. Endless storyline possibilities. All of which illuminate the heights and depths of our common humanity as we support each other through this sentence we call Life. L'chaim. Or as Peter Gerety would say, "Sláinte!"

What She Said!

2011-12-29T23:31:00.000-05:00

My sister, Sandy, has a quilt blog & podcast called "Quilting for the Rest of Us," which has become wildly successful and has followers all over the world. Her latest post includes a very thoughtful and thought-provoking essay on "charity quilts" that I decided to copy directly into my blog because I agree with her wholeheartedly and want to say, "What she said!" And one of the comments she received is also something I want to pass along, so I copied that here, too.

I work in a fabric store and often encounter customers buying cheap materials because "it's for charity." I always want to say to them just what Sandy says:

When did we ever get the idea that we can use our ugliest fabric in the most haphazard way or our blocks that clearly didn't work at all and donate them? It's like donating shirts with tears and stains or electronics that don't work or furniture with broken legs and assuming, "Hey, I don't want this piece of junk in my house anymore but someone else will be grateful for it." Yeah, maybe (although I have my serious doubts), but we're talking quilts here. We talk about quilts symbolizing love and care...so what the heck?

Doesn't everyone deserve beauty in their lives? Especially some of these places we're making donations too--women's shelter's where mothers and children are struggling to put themselves back together; hospitals with families watching loved ones in pain; families who have been burned out of their homes. Why wouldn't I want to give someone in need just as pretty a quilt as I'd give my own child? Sure, maybe I won't do heirloom quality hand-quilting on it, but I sure as heck would want to choose fabrics that will bring pleasure or a bright spot to what may be an otherwise gloomy day. I sure as heck would want to show some care in my design and in my piecing. I would want the person to think I actually thought about them--even if in the abstract, a nameless person that I've never met but I can have some genuine human empathy for. Not just a way to offload ugly fabric. (And although I know one woman's ugly can sometimes be another woman's beauty, I've read enough tips on enough message boards that have quite literally said, "use that ugly fabric in a charity quilt!" to make me steam.)

I also came to the very discomfiting realization that my own attitude changed whenever I worked with those unattractive, often musty-smelling tops. I stopped caring about my own skills. I adopted a very "I don't care, just get 'er done" attitude. Fast and Finished was queen, not Done Right. Which, of course, led to me simply compounding the problem of ugly quilts with shoddy workmanship. And that's to my shame. I'm doing some penance over that one.

People don't necessarily need blankets...they can buy blankets pretty dang cheaply at big-box stores these days. Frankly, if my purpose is to provide a blanket, I'd rather write a check. The reason to make a donation quilt is to go that step beyond, provide someone in need with just a little bit more: the thought that someone else cared enough about them in their situation to sit down and make something by hand. But for pity's sake, please make it pretty.

I vow never to make an ugly quilt for donation again. I vow to never be attached to making ugly quilts for donations again. I will choose to make my own donation projects from my own beautiful fabrics with an attractive design, not some slapdash thing that "someone ought to be grateful for." I will choose to make something that shows someone I cared enough to take the time to think about it, even if it is a simpler pattern, even if it is a slightly faster style...it's still attractive, and thoughtful. And hopefully, will give them a touch of love and care at a time when they need it most.

If I wouldn't want it in my own house, I won't donate it to someone else.

To which Quiltin' Jenny replied...

I agree with you 100% Sandy, EXCEPT to say this: when I was once asked to donate my old shoes when I was buying new ones, I flippantly responded, "No one would want these!" The clerk was serious when he said, "If you believe that, you should come volunteer with me." Now I know shoes aren't the same as quilts. As you said, inexpensive blankets are easy to find. But have you ever heard of UglyQuilts.com, also known as the Sleeping Bag Project? These quilts are purposely ugly because anything that is even remotely attractive is stolen from the homeless people for whom they are intended. (Horrible). I think it's important to know your charity. Obviously if you are making neo-natal quilts for babies who might not survive, you should use the softest, sweetest fabric you have. If you're making pillowcases for kids with cancer, texture is pretty critical. But if you have some ugly fabric that needs a home, don't throw it out. That ugly quilt will keep someone just as warm as a pretty one and hopefully not be stolen. That doesn't mean you don't put your best work into it; just that the print means less than it would on some other projects.

So, if you have some fabric you don't need, be truly generous with it and make it into a purposefully ugly quilt:

THE

UGLY QUILT

EMERGENCY SLEEPING BAG

WHY THE NAME 'UGLY QUILT'

a. The Sleeping Bag is a utility quilt made from clean used or no-cost fabrics.

b. This simple sleeping bag should not have a market value to assure the homeless are beneficiaries.

c. The name indicates the skill level needed for this tied quilt.

d. The Ugly Quilt can be made in less than a day.

e. A group can make one in an hour.

THE OUTER SHELL OF THE SLEEPING BAG IS MADE BY CUTTING SCRAP MATERIAL, BEDSPREADS, DRAPES OR RUMMAGE INTO THE LARGEST SQUARE OR RECTANGLE THE PIECE WILL ALLOW.

1. Sew enough pieces together to form a seven foot by seven foot (7' x 7') square.

2. Sew two, 7' by 7' squares together to form the sleeping bag cover. 7' by 14' finished length.

3. Stitch two sets of three foot straps to a 7' edge, approximately 15 and 30 inches in. Straps are made of neckties, dress belts, etc.

4. On three eight foot (8') church tables, fill one half of the 14' x 7' piece with clean old blankets, mattress pads, fiberfill or light-weight rummage. Leave a three inch (3") seam allowance on the three open edges.

5. Cover with remaining 7' length. 6. Tie knots through all three layers with a double crochet cotton every eight inches (8"), to secure the covers to the fill layer.

7. Lay the 3' straps up onto the tied quilt.

8. Fold the tied 7' x 7' in half, R to L forming a 7' x 3 1/2' sleeping bag shape. * Triple knot with crochet cotton the remaining side and bottom edges every three inches catching only the four cover layers. Raw edges will insulate the seams when turned * The top edge and folded side are finished.

9. Turn right side out.

10. Roll up and tie straps tightly to secure. Feel free to implement your ideas but keep it simple, quick and cost free.

The Commonplace Moon

2011-12-28T16:49:00.000-05:00

Sue Monk Kidd, from the first chapter of her and her daughter Ann Kidd Taylor's book, Traveling with Pomegranates:

Our trip to Greece began as a birthday present to myself and a college graduation gift to Ann. The extravagant idea popped into my head six months earlier as the realization of turning fifty set in and I felt for the first time the overtures of an ending.

Those were the days I stood before the bathroom mirror, examining new lines and sags around my eyes and mouth like a seismologist studying unstable tectonic plates. The days I dug through photo albums in search of images of my mother and grandmother at fifty, scrutinizing their faces and comparing them to my own.

Surely I’m above this sort of thing. I could not be one of those women who clings to the facades of youth. I didn’t understand why I was responding to the prospect of aging with such shallowness and dread, only that there had to be more to it than the etchings of time on my skin. Was I dabbling in the politics of vanity or did I obsess on my face to avoid my soul?

Furthermore, whatever room I happened to be in seemed unnaturally overheated. During the nights I wandered in long, sleepless corridors. At forty-nine my body was engaged in vague, mutinous behaviors.

… Finally, I began to write about becoming an older woman and the trepidation it stirred. The small, telling “betrayals” of my body. The stalled, eerie stillness in my writing, accompanied by an ache for some unlived destiny. I wrote about the raw, unsettled feelings coursing through me, the need to divest and relocate, the urge to radically simplify and distill life into a new, unknown meaning. And why, I asked myself, had I begun to think for the first time about my own mortality? Some days, the thought of dying gouged into my heart to the point I filled up with tears at the sight of the small, ordinary things I would miss.

Charlie Brown, in A Charlie Brown Christmas:

Pantophobia? Not quite. Pantometathesis (or whatever the Greek would be for Change of Everything)?

THAT'S IT!!!

Sue Monk Kidd again, about halfway through the book:

Journeying is the predominant means of developing one's self in this culture, not the habitation of place. It has been true of me. Always the seeker. Yet at this phase of my life, when I look at my house at the edge of a marsh, I want to learn how to be in it. I want to behave like a finder as much as a seeker. The irony is that I had to go on an elaborate journey to figure this out. So much of my growing older seems to be about paradoxes. The reconciliation of opposites. The bringing to balance.

For my fiftieth birthday, Sandy gave me a card with the moon on it. He handed it to me when I got home from Greece. It read: "I am not the same having seen the moon shine on the other side of the world." It's true, I wasn't. Yet the rest of the story is that it's just as possible not to be the same after seeing it over my backyard. At fifty, I want to be a finder of the commonplace moon.

I like that. The commonplace moon. The image glows softly against a glaring lifelong drive to be extraordinary, special, amazing. I wrote a poem in 1985 that remains the defining poem of my life, though the way it defines my life has changed over the years. The image comes from Crockett Johnsons's Harold and the Purple Crayon, one of my favorite childhood stories: Harold gets lost and searches for home, unable to find it until he draws a window around the moon and recognizes his own bedroom. In 1985 I had no idea what I was saying in this poem—

"A Moon in the Window"

There are long halls
with empty walls
and rooms without a moon
in the window,
and lovers go home in the evening
when the tide is out
and the sand is littered with jellyfish.
The birds cry “ma — ma —”
and I take you home
to show you the moon
and the jellyfish,
but I can’t cry, mama,
because I can’t find the tears,
and you’ll never know my fears
of long halls
with empty walls
and rooms without a moon in the window

Over the years I've come to see many things in this poem. The longing to be home. The need to find my home by making it. And now the desire to settle into the bed by the window with the moon it, the commonplace moon, the one that hangs over my own backyard. Sue Monk Kidd and Crockett Johnson both get it right for me. As Charlie Brown says, "That's it!"

Christmas Horror Pageant

2011-12-12T13:38:00.000-05:00

Found in the bottom of a bag of Christmas pageant costumes at church

Santa's evil twin, Chucky Claus?

Ho, Ho, Horror Show!

You Shook Me All Night Long

2011-11-25T10:09:00.000-05:00

Looking for poetry to describe our feast of music on Thanksgiving Eve, the joy I felt surrounded by such a magnitude of musicians, the indescribable feelings that I can't describe myself—I found this poem, by Billy Collins of course, he always seems to get it right:

Questions About Angels

By Billy Collins

Of all the questions you might want to ask

about angels, the only one you ever hear

is how many can dance on the head of a pin.

No curiosity about how they pass the eternal time

besides circling the Throne chanting in Latin

or delivering a crust of bread to a hermit on earth

or guiding a boy and girl across a rickety wooden bridge.

Do they fly through God's body and come out singing?

Do they swing like children from the hinges

of the spirit world saying their names backwards and forwards?

Do they sit alone in little gardens changing colors?

What about their sleeping habits, the fabric of their robes,

their diet of unfiltered divine light?

What goes on inside their luminous heads? Is there a wall

these tall presences can look over and see hell?

If an angel fell off a cloud, would he leave a hole

in a river and would the hole float along endlessly

filled with the silent letters of every angelic word?

If an angel delivered the mail, would he arrive

in a blinding rush of wings or would he just assume

the appearance of the regular mailman and

whistle up the driveway reading the postcards?

No, the medieval theologians control the court.

The only question you ever hear is about

the little dance floor on the head of a pin

where halos are meant to converge and drift invisibly.

It is designed to make us think in millions,

billions, to make us run out of numbers and collapse

into infinity, but perhaps the answer is simply one:

one female angel dancing alone in her stocking feet,

a small jazz combo working in the background.

She sways like a branch in the wind, her beautiful

eyes closed, and the tall thin bassist leans over

to glance at his watch because she has been dancing

forever, and now it is very late, even for musicians.

[photo art by Dianne de Mott]

Premonitions

2011-11-18T23:17:00.000-05:00

I often use the term "strong intuition." "Premonitions" sounds like a bad TV show. Anyway, I had one when I was about 30, during a very difficult time for me in many ways—including economically. The voice of the Strong Intuition said, "The whole economic system is going to collapse before you're 50 years old."

I'm 49.

Occupy Providence, October 2011

Happiness = Muffins

2011-11-11T17:07:00.000-05:00

A week ago I signed up for SparkPeople.com to try to get myself to make a serious, consistent effort to Get Moving—to stop being a helpless victim of my body chemistry and instead try to deal with the hormonal swamp of Chronic Depression + Menopause = Misery with very intentional healthy living. I've fallen out of the habit of physical exercise, a habit I'd always had without having to think much about it. I just always liked to be active. But events of the past 4 years have knocked me flat:

1) Relocating (stressful in itself) to the gray skies of the northeast after 10 years in the sunny southwest
2) Buying a house (and selling the previous one right as the "housing bubble" burst)
3) Starting a new job
4) My husband starting a new job
5) My mother's death
6) Developing Morton's neuromas on both feet
7) A lower back injury
8) Pushing myself way beyond my musical comfort zone to sing with a jazz band (which may not sound like a lot of stress, but believe me, for me it is!)
9) Traveling to Turkey for 10 days with the above-mentioned jazz band (who are a terrific group of people and I loved the trip, but traveling is always high-stress no matter how much fun it is)
10) The full onset of menopause

I could come up with a few more, too, but we'll leave it at that. Enough said. So anyway, I found myself in total despair, feeling like I had to choose between two lousy options to cope with my crummy body chemistry: change antidepressants? or try hormone replacement? Neither, thank you very much. Then I took an honest look at my lifestyle and realized that my activity level had gotten really sporadic and ineffective. Sure, I'm on my feet for several hours straight at work, and not just standing but hustling back and forth to wait on customers and receive shipments and get change for the registers, and etc., etc., etc. But like my chiropractor says, "That's STRESS, not exercise." And doing Pilates once every other week, or walking to work once every other week, just doesn't add up to good health.

I think because I always loved and wanted to be active before, I never had to develop a real habit of it. I just did it. Without much conscious intention. So I'd slid into sedentary lethargy without realizing it, taking for granted I was an Active Person when in reality I've become an Occasionally Active Person. So to take myself in hand and get back into the shape I want and need to be in, I joined SparkPeople because they have good nutrition and fitness trackers and tell me what exercises to do on what days. It's great for my OCD self—to track every nutritional element of everything I eat, and the number of sets of the number of reps of every exercise—To Do lists extraordinaire!

One of the fascinating things I've discovered through this obsessive practice is how low in calories my diet had become, and how out of proportion it was as well. We've been following a South Beach-esque regime for a couple of years, which mostly worked well for me until this past summer when everything went to hell in a gutbucket. So I've decided to add back in some carbs (and calories) and take out some fats (and sodium) to see if it helps me feel better.

And let me tell you, I'll never eat McDonald's Chicken Selects again except as a Very Last Resort! Wow, those are bad for you.

Muffins are probably my favorite food group, so it's great to be able to enjoy them again after a couple years of them being South Beach No-No's. This morning I made a batch loosely based on a recipe from SparkPeople ("Carrot Pumpkin Bars"), so loosely based that it's really a whole different recipe. They still have carrots and pumpkin in them, but they're muffins, not bars, and I substituted a bunch of stuff, and the resulting nutrition info is so different that I just wrote it up as my own recipe: Pumpkin Carrot Muffins, lowfat. They are GOOD! and Good For You, too!

Mostly I'm doing all this for the exercise, not the diet, but it's good to get a new perspective on my nutrition, too. And the permission to eat muffins again.

Providence

2011-10-23T20:55:00.000-04:00

James and I have discovered that we need to get out of town for at least a night or two every 6 weeks or so—otherwise we get tired and cranky, and neither parish ministry nor retail guest service can be done effectively when in a tired and cranky state. So this past weekend we got out of town to Providence, RI, one of our favorite getaway places. It's an easy 2-1/2 hour drive, and it's a great little city. We were blessed this trip with beautiful weather so we were able to do our favorite thing: Walk Around. No plan in mind, we just started out from our hotel and let our feet take us where they pleased. Not surprisingly, our feet first took us to our favorite restaurant there (McCormick & Schmick's), and then to our favorite Providence bookstore (Symposium Books). Really—we had no idea where we were and hadn't gotten oriented yet, when suddenly we turned a corner and there was McCormick & Schmick's. We'd agreed we weren't going to spend the money to eat there this trip, but apparently Providence had other ideas. And the next day we wandered around equally cluelessly and soon found ourselves at Symposium. We definitely have a radar for bookstores!

Friday night we had dinner at the Harvest Buffet (or "Barbecue" as they called it, even though there wasn't a barbecue in sight) as part of the Jack-o-Lantern Spectacular at the Roger Williams Park Zoo. The buffet was terrific, and buffet tickets bestowed upon us VIP status, meaning we got escorted to the head of the Very Long Line for the pumpkin tour—well worth the extra cost even if the food hadn't been as terrific as it was! It was a hoot to be there with hundreds of young families, and the pumpkins were otherworldly. I could see this becoming an annual jaunt…

It was a wonderfully restful day and a half, and we both returned to full workloads this week so the break was perfectly timed. Providential, one might say.

Photos are in the slideshow at the bottom of the page. Links of interest:

Occupy Providence
Grace Episcopal Church
Local 121 pub
First Baptist Church in America
Jack-o-Lantern Spectacular

Memory Loss

2011-09-09T23:11:00.001-04:00

So, raise your hands all you women over 40 who've had this experience:

You're gazing appreciatively at a young 20-something man, perhaps even flirting in your mind, when you suddenly have the crashing realization that when (if) he looks back at you, he won't see the young 20-something woman flirting with him in your mind but the middle-aged woman old enough to be his mother that you momentarily forgot you've become.

Week 2: The Artist's Rule

2011-08-29T13:14:00.000-04:00

"I Am Going to Start Living Like a Mystic," by Edward Hirsch

Today I am pulling on a green wool sweater 

and walking across the park in a dusky snowfall. 



The trees stand like twenty-seven prophets in a field, 

each a station in a pilgrimage—silent, pondering. 



Blue flakes of light falling across their bodies 

are the ciphers of a secret, an occultation. 



I will examine their leaves as pages in a text 

and consider the bookish pigeons, students of winter. 



I will kneel on the track of a vanquished squirrel 

and stare into a blank pond for the figure of Sophia. 



I shall begin scouring the sky for signs 

as if my whole future were constellated upon it. 



I will walk home alone with the deep alone, 

a disciple of shadows, in praise of the mysteries.

from The Artist's Rule, by Christine Valters Paintner:

One of my favorite poetry-writing prompts is to take the title of a poem I love and use it as the starting point for my own poem. The Edward Hirsch poem above speaks to what it means to live as mystic, artist, and monk in the world.

I invite you this week to write a poem with two or three parts. One part begins "I am going to start living like a monk," and the other part beings "I am going to start living like an artist." You might want to add a third part that begins "I am going to start living like a mystic" (or whatever word you might be inspired to engage).

… [T]ake each beginning line as a prompt for writing, and free-write for several minutes on each topic. Write without editing yourself; allow the words to flow onto the page.

… After writing about each topic for several minutes, spend some time crafting the words into a poem and notice what is revealed to you through the experience.

My poem:

Every moment is in and of itself.

It is not me. It is part of me.

I am part of it. You are part of it.

Don't rush me. Don't rush through

the moment to get to somewhere else.

Hold onto my fingers with your fingers.

Look at God.

"I don't know, but I can sing you a few bars..."

2011-08-22T21:06:00.000-04:00

Lifelong Question #1: What is my calling? What have I been called by God to do?

Lifelong Question #2 (which must be answered before Question #1): Who is God? What do I believe about all that? What is my theological Statement of Faith?

Beating my head against this wall again since hearing a young seminarian speak yesterday at church about her calling. And then I figured it out. At least for now.

Answer #1:

Answer #2: I still can't say, but I realized yesterday that I can sing it. Looking back through my kaleidoscopic life (see "The Question-Driven Life" by David Brooks for a good description of my way of being in the world), I see one constant: music. I've played piano and other instruments since I can remember, and I've almost continuously since the age of 7 been part of a choir or vocal ensemble of one sort or another. Music is the one thing I apparently can't live without. And my favorite and most frequent singing and playing is done in church. Once at seminary (where I beat my head against the "What is my calling?" question for 2-1/2 years to no avail) during Advent, I was the cantor for a chapel service—at the end of the service I sang an a capella "Gloria in excelsis deo" benediction, and in the silence following I felt a rush of energy roll over the gathered community from the back of the chapel and crash over me like a Lake Ontario wave. Afterwards, more than one person asked me if I'd felt it, because they had, too.

And numbers of people in churches over the years have told me that I sing "like an angel." I've heard it enough times now to accept that they're telling me something.

So, though I can't define my theology or my calling in this life, I can give you a list of songs I've sung that feel like prayers and that cumulatively add up to my Statement of Faith:

And those are just the songs I've actually sung. I could add a hundred more that I hope to sing someday...

Mom's 80th

2011-08-08T20:42:00.000-04:00

Today would have been my mother's 80th birthday, an event I'd fully expected to celebrate with her and the rest of the family. None of us, including Mom, expected her to die at 78. Sure, she was collecting health issues like everyone does in their 70s, but none of them seemed lethal. So it continues to be a surprise to me that she isn't here anymore.

Since I had the day off from work, I decided to spend it sewing, in honor of Mom, an avid quilter. I'm not avid about quilting, so instead I made a new shoulder bag to replace my old one that's gotten too grotty to carry anymore. And I decided to be brave and venture off without a pattern. It's pretty much just a folded-over rectangle, so it was hard to go too wrong. I did manage to square off the wrong corners (I was so proud of myself for figuring it out! and then I realized it wasn't the bottom of the bag—oops), necessitating a little design change. And my buttonholer messed up and made the hole too small, necessitating a change in button. (But I actually prefer the new button, so that worked out o.k.) And then my bobbin went nuts…

As I was ripping out yet another seam, I thought of my mother, whose internet password for many sites was "Rripit"! My mom was with me when I bought the plaid patchwork fabric—it was on clearance at a fabric store in Tucson and I fell in love with it but was afraid it was "too loud" or too bizarre, that James wouldn't like it, that no one in their right mind would like it. Mom said, "It's great! You like it, so get it!" That was Mom's philosophy when it came to fabric and sewing gadgets: "I like it, so I'm going to get it!" I'm much better now at trusting my own taste, but I owe that particular bright yellow and purple plaid to my mother. The lining was part of her stash that I inherited, and the flap with the birds is a new piece that I found in Keene, NH, last year. So this bag encompasses Mom, me, and Mom-&-me.

Happy Birthday, Mom! Wish you were here.

Asberger's Dream Date

2011-07-25T19:26:00.000-04:00

Take apart old, dead eMac…

…screw by screw by…

…123 screws….

Save the interesting bits…

…and all the copper wire (for future art projects).


Emancipate the slave drive. (Verify that product is past warranty date before embarking.)

Theme for Today: Get Organized!

2011-07-18T12:57:00.000-04:00

Ok, so it's noon:30 and I have barely gotten started, but today's mission is to get my space organized so I can actually use it as intended. Most of the mess happened due to new incoming: new computer, new dishware. Some of the mess is due to old outgoing that never moved out: Christmas decorations, Good Friday stage set. It's the middle of July—I think we can put Christmas and Easter away now.

Old computer—needs to be wiped and recycled.


From computer desk—needs to be sorted.

Accumulated s*** next to computer—needs to be sorted.

Empty new computer boxes don't belong in kitchen.

Keyboard does not belong on couch.

Old dishware—needs to be sorted and put/given away.

Recycling—needs to be put in garage.


Compost—needs to be put in composter.	(ONE JOB DONE!)

Compost bucket being cleaned. (I love how the soap bubbles came up through the holes in the top!)

Accumulated projects in sewing area—need to be sorted and put away.

Rest of the basement—needs to be torched.

Red Purse Society

2011-07-17T14:12:00.000-04:00

In Hartford this past Friday, a woman stopped me on the street and asked eagerly, "Are you a member of the Red Purse Society?" because I was carrying a red woven bag. I just looked dumbly at her and said, "Um, no," and we walked our separate ways. I'm not good at responding to unexpected social encounters, so I didn't think to ask her what the Red Purse Society is. I said to James, "I wonder what signals I'm sending out with this red bag?"

Fortunately, I think I'm sending out signals I'm ok with. An internet search led me to this:

[T]he Red Purse Campaign [was] launched in 1988 to bring attention to pay disparity [for women and minorities vs. white men]. Members initially carried red purses and sent politicians red purses, totes and pins. The promotion was revived in 2004 with the Red Purse Society, which raises funds to support equal pay education, awareness and activities. ("Unhappy Hour raises awareness, not glasses," Waveney Ann Moore, St. Petersburg Times, 23 April 2006)

I can get behind that. Women and people of color, on average, have to work until Tuesday of the following week to make what white men made the week before. So imagine the situation for women of color. It was a woman of color who asked me about my bag in Hartford. I wish I'd known then what I know now—I'd have said, "Yes, I am!" and we'd have discovered our mutual support of each other's value in this still white and male preferential society.

And my red bag makes even more of a statement to that effect, given that it was made by Burmese refugee women to help support themselves. So I carry it boldly now—it's a bag that has a lot to say!

Continuing Education

2011-07-16T12:54:00.000-04:00

I continue to read Turkey's Hürriyet Daily News online, and today's edition included a column by Mustafa Akyol, "My Muslim Case for Liberty." Akyol is a journalist and historian who has written a book that will be released on Monday entitled, Islam Without Extremes: A Muslim Case For Liberty. I've just placed an order for the book; I'll let you know what I think of it after I read it.

Akyol delivered the Lou Church Memorial Lecture in Religion and Economics on March 12 at the Ludwig von Mises Institute in Auburn, Alabama: "The Commercial Heritage and Contribution of Islam." Ostensibly concerning the economic aspects of Islam throughout history, the lecture also included a lot of good general historical interpretation of Islam. I'm reposting the video here because I think it's well worth the 58 minutes of your time:

Making Flowy Mine

2011-07-13T18:13:00.000-04:00

Here is the pattern (top right dress):

Here is the fabric:

The darker blue border will not be on the border.

Imagine...

My Next Pilgrimage

2011-07-12T21:13:00.000-04:00

A friend and I have agreed to work together (long distance) through Julia Cameron's Artist's Way and Vein of Gold this summer. Since I've already done the Artist's Way twice, I'll be doing Vein of Gold, a book I've owned for years and have never used. As Cameron says in the introduction,

"A pilgrimage is a physical process, a process that engages our heart and soul, not merely our well-honed intellect. What this means is that the tools of Vein of Gold will be more deeply felt, and therefore more deeply resisted, than the tools of The Artist's Way.

That's for sure! I think I've started this book at least twice in the 15 years I've owned it but have never persisted beyond the first chapter. So, with my friend's help, I WILL PERSEVERE and complete the pilgrimage this time.

As a reward for myself for even committing to this pilgrimage, I bought fabric today to make the dress inspired by the Orange Dress of Karakoy. It's blue, not orange, but it's gorgeous and has been singing to me like a siren ever since it arrived in the store 2 weeks ago. I've found a pattern in the same style--I'll buy it this weekend when the patterns go on sale, so I can start working on the dress next week at the same time I start working on Vein of Gold.

This past Sunday at the end of the sermon, James had us each write down something we want to throw away, and then actually come up and throw it in a trash can. I decided to throw out, "I'm no good. They're just humoring me." A piece of garbage I've fed myself my whole life. I crumpled up that paper and tossed it definitively in the trash. So now I can't say that anymore. Every time I feel it coming on, I have to stop and shut myself up. And just do it. Whatever I think I'm not really all that good at, that people are just humoring me in, I have to put it out there and believe in it. Thankfully, our jazz band leader, Andy, said he wants me to keep singing with the band, so I'll be able to practice NOT telling myself that I'm no good and they're just humoring me. And get better at it--at singing jazz, and at believing in myself.

And whenever I feel like I'm too fat to wear a flowy orange--or blue--dress, I have to just put it on and enjoy it.

The Orange Dress, and What It Says About Me

2011-07-01T18:05:00.000-04:00

I have this fantasy that I look good in long flowy things. If I ever did, I certainly don't now. And yet my eye is drawn to dresses like this one in a shop window in Karakoy, Istanbul. I refused to go in and try it on, so Sue took a picture of it for me and said, "Maybe you can sew it!" James and I had an hour to kill this afternoon before a wedding rehearsal, so we went to TJMaxx so I could look for a new dress for tomorrow's wedding. James found a great shirt. I tried on 6 dresses that all looked terrible on me. I tell myself the problem is that they all had empire waists, rather than just draping from the neck like this one. They made me look all chest and stomach, with footballer shoulders and stumpy legs. Not the look I was going for. So without the gathered waist, could I carry off a flowy dress like this one? Or would I just look like a tent on legs? (stumpy legs) Perhaps I'll go to a classier store and try on a bunch of flowy dresses and see if it's the waistline or just the whole drapey thing that doesn't work. I hear Stacey and Clinton from "What Not to Wear" saying, "Structure, dear. Structure!" The story of my life. I need structure. When I want to be flowy.

Pictures!

2011-06-24T10:10:00.001-04:00

Tulips, Tiny Cymbals, and Things Overheard

2011-06-19T17:55:00.000-04:00

Tulips: in a traditional tile shop in Iznik today, I picked up a beautiful blue vase with the traditional tulip design interpreted in a contemporary way, and my fingers wouldn't let go of it so I haggled the price down by 30% and bought it (since I don't have my camera cord, I can't post a picture of it here, and I couldn't find anything at all similar via a Google image search, so here's a traditional tulip tile to give you an idea)

Tiny Cymbals: in a percussion shop in Istanbul two days ago, I found a hand-cast set of finger cymbals with a pure, ringing tone and paid the asking price for them because I had to have them no matter what; at our gig in Iznik last night, I used them as a tiny high-hat to help fill out our percussion sound since we couldn't bring the drum set with us (Johnny, the drummer, said, "You're my left foot," so I tapped my tiny high-hat whenever he tapped his left foot)

Things Overheard: "Everybody's got their Virgin" (from a conversation at our dinner table about religion among two Christians and a non-practicing Muslim)

House Party!

2011-06-17T12:02:00.000-04:00

I can hear my bandmates downstairs setting up for a little house party tonight at our apartment. We were supposed to play at a club on the Asian side of Istanbul but it got canceled, so we just called the folks who were planning to meet us there and told them to come here instead. Last night I had the chance to sing with Nadia, a Turkish girl who's just finishing high school and will be auditioning for a place at music schools in Britain. She's beautiful, sings beautifully, and has a beautiful spirit. We did a duet with "Summertime"--it was one of the high points of my trip so far! We're hoping she'll be able to join us tonight.

We just got the news that we can't play past 9 pm here at the apartment, so I guess we're now planning to play until 9 and then go out for dinner. This part of town doesn't really wake up until noon and stays up until 4 am, so 9 pm is about right for dinnertime!

Another of our Turkish friends, Omer, sang "Lullaby of Birdland" with us last night--not an easy song to sing and he was great! He's going to try to get here tonight, too. And the mother and brother of our keyboard player, Benny, just arrived in Istanbul and are heading our way as I write this.

I apologize for the less-than-fluency of this post, but I've had much less sleep than I need this week, and I'm jet-lagging. So putting together a full sentence is about as much as I can manage. Nothing pretty, I'm afraid. And now I need to go down and join the party... (No pictures to post until I get back home since I forgot to bring my camera-to-computer cord.)

from a Turkish point of view

2011-06-11T11:50:00.000-04:00

I've noticed three distinct perceptions of Turkey from friends, family, and even strangers, when I tell them I'm traveling there:

Midnight Express — yes, I've seen it, and no, I'm not going to try to smuggle drugs across the border
Strict Muslim —the Republic of Turkey was founded as a secular state, and those values are still promoted, with a growing tolerance of religious expression (which is not equivalent to Islamic fundamentalism); Istanbul, where we will be for the majority of our stay, is particularly cosmopolitan and culturally progressive; so, no, I don't have to wear a burka (or even a headscarf, except when entering a mosque); and people drink alcohol there, too
Exotic — this is definitely part of the appeal of going to Turkey, because it is different in many ways from the US and Western Europe, but it isn't sheiks with harems, opium dens, belly dancers, or One Thousand and One Nights in living color

Andy, our bandleader, sent us this link to a site that proclaims "50 reasons to love Turkey," and I hope everyone will read it as it shows a perspective on contemporary Turkey from a Turkish point of view. This is the country we're traveling to.

[photo by Salvator Barki]

Reading, reading, and more reading!

2011-06-09T13:04:00.000-04:00

I finally finished my last Turkish cultural study book! I've lost track of everything I've read since we decided last fall to take this trip. Enough for a PhD dissertation! The last two were about modern Turkey since the founding of the republic in 1923. It's staggering how much has happened in that short amount of time. We'll arrive the day after the elections—it looks as though the current administration will be re-elected, but the balance of power remains to be seen. I've been keeping up with current Turkish affairs through two online news sources: Today's Zaman, a more "Islamic" paper, tending to support the Justice and Development party currently in power; and the Hürriyet Daily News and Economic Review, an older paper that tends much more towards the secularist nationalist viewpoint. Reading both gives me as well-rounded a perspective as I can find as a non-Turkish-speaking American looking for news on the internet.

The last two books I read were Turkey Unveiled: A History of Modern Turkey, by Nicole and Hugh Pope; and Crescent & Star: Turkey Between Two Worlds, by Stephen Kinzer. The first is an extensive look at the Turkish republic up until 1997 when the book was published, with a couple of brief chapters at the beginning on pre-republican history (Byzantine and Ottoman empires, etc.). The look is so extensive, in fact, that I skimmed more and more as I went along! But I'm glad I read it because all that sometimes-suffocating detail really gave me a solid grounding in recent and current Turkish events. Crescent & Star is a more interpretive look at the same history by the former New York Times bureau chief in Istanbul. Kinzer's writing style is a little too "Look at me, the great foreign correspondent!" for me at times, but I did find it helpful to hear his perspective on things. Unfortunately, both books were published before September 11, 2001, so there's no insight on how that has affected Turkey as a Muslim nation.

My 8 months of reading has definitely helped me understand better what I read now in the online papers, and I have a better feel for who Turks are as a people. Before my self-education course, I didn't even know for sure where Turkey is, let alone who lives there and what their lives are like! It's such a multidimensional country with a fascinatingly complex history—I feel like a child as an American, with my paltry 300 years of existence...

My Own Private Eucharist

2011-06-08T13:33:00.000-04:00

I had planned to attend the Wednesday midday Eucharist at church, feeling especially in need of a little spiritual renovation during this final week before we leave for Istanbul. But by the time I finished all my morning errands it was too late. I might have made it if the little "I'M OUT OF GAS!" light hadn't gone on in the car, necessitating an unplanned side trip to the gas station. But as it was, I didn't get home until noon, and I had groceries to put away, so it would have been almost 12:30pm by the time I got over to church.

So instead I had my own private eucharist with an icy glass of seltzer water and an ataulfo mango, sitting on the back deck with the dog. He headed for the sunny spot and stretched himself out to get maximum exposure, while I reclined in the shade, marveling at the fantabulous flavor of the mango (the first ataulfo mango I've ever eaten—also known as "honey" or "champagne" mango for good reason!), sipping my cold fizzy seltzer, and drinking in the luscious aroma of lilacs from our late-blooming bush just below the deck. There's another of these lilac bushes by the front porch, so we've been luxuriating in a lilac-scented cross-breeze for the past week.

I gave thanks for the beautiful day, our beautiful home, the funny old dog who has deigned to live with us a bit longer—he's 14 years old, so I appreciate every day he gives us now. And for the allergy meds that allow me to enjoy the outdoors and fresh, lilac-scented breezes, especially during cottonwood fluff season which would otherwise force me to stay huddled miserably in a hermetically sealed house.

And now I'm going to lie down for a brief rest in our air-conditioned bedroom to take a break from the humidity before embarking on my afternoon chores and closing shift at work. It's good to spend an hour taking care of my soul when I'm feeling pressured by how much I have to do before we leave. It seems counter-intuitive to put aside the To-Do List for that hour, rather than get another hour's worth of errands run and chores done. But I know all that running around would just crank up my anxiety another notch and make it that much harder to get everything done! And I need the reminder that finding an eyeglass repair kit is much less important than enjoying and giving thanks for all the blessings of this moment.

The Final Countdown Begins!

2011-06-06T17:44:00.000-04:00

My new favorite restaurant!

2011-05-23T19:16:00.000-04:00

For lunch today, between gigs at elementary schools with the Sister City Jazz Ambassadors (which were a BLAST—the kids were really into it, and we all had a great time!), Andy took us to a tiny little restaurant on the backside of Pittsfield that we would never have found otherwise: Lucia's Latin Kitchen. And it was fabuloso!!! The owner, Lucia, is an Ecuadoran immigrant who creates incredible Latin American food in her shack of a kitchen. We chose to have the set lunch for the day, rather than order from the menu, and ended up with a huge feast for just a few bucks each (served by a lovely woman with the lovely name of Cleopatra). It started with inarguably the best chicken soup ever, followed by a pork and rice dish (also available in steak or chicken versions) with beans and—one of my favorite foods—fried plaintains. All washed down with batidos: fruit smoothies made with your choice of fruits and either milk or water. I chose mango with water. Yum. Everyone should go to Lucia's, both to enjoy the excellent food and to keep her in business so we can keep enjoying it for years to come!

Acting

2011-05-15T20:41:00.000-04:00

The response to my last post, "Telling," has been tremendous—clearly many of us are disturbed to our core by the horrible violence perpetrated against women and children in Congo and elsewhere. I've been doing some online research since that post to find ways to address this horror, beyond the telling. So far I've come up with a couple of leads, places to start at least:

! Enough — The project to end genocide and crimes against humanity [Also on Facebook]
Genocide and war crimes are not inevitable, and we at Enough want to create noise and action both to stop ongoing atrocities and to prevent their recurrence. Our mission is to help people from every walk of life understand the practical actions they can take to make a difference. Our strategy is to energize diverse communities – including students, religious groups, activists, business leaders, celebrities, and Diaspora networks – to ensure that their voices are heard on some of the most pressing foreign policy and moral challenges facing the world today. …
Enough conducts intensive field research in countries plagued by genocide and crimes against humanity, develops practical policies to address these crises, and shares sensible tools to help empower citizens and groups working for change. Our initial work has focused on grave challenges in a number of African countries: Sudan, eastern Congo, northern Uganda, Somalia, Chad and Zimbabwe.

In framing its policy prescriptions, Enough utilizes a “3P” approach: promoting peace, protecting civilians, and punishing perpetrators. Enough also focuses on a fourth and all-encompassing “P,” prevention, and is working to develop the policies, tools, and investments that can best be brought to bear to prevent crimes against humanity and genocide now and in the future.

RAISE Hope for Congo — an ! Enough campaign specific to Congo [Also on Facebook]
The RAISE Hope for Congo campaign aims to build a permanent and diverse constituency of activists who will advocate for the protection and empowerment of Congolese women and girls. … The first step to building a movement is to raise awareness about the crisis in Congo. The campaign provides activists with informative tools to educate themselves and their communities about the conflict in eastern Congo and the epidemic of sexual violence against women and girls.

No matter how much we know or how much we care, we will only succeed if we speak out and demand action from our leaders. The campaign offers a menu of actions that activists can take to raise their voices and call for an end to the conflict and sexual violence in eastern Congo.
Congo Story: War, Women and Rape — Report and share stories in support of the Congolese women, children and families (a CitizenGlobal/Voice of America production) [Also on Facebook ]

[CitizenGlobal:] Content is powerful. We make it even more so.
Right now, there are countless videos being shot and shared but the majority of this user-generated content is without context, relevance or value. … CitizenGlobal is a media company that harnesses the power of this vast sea of visual storytelling for individuals and companies. We connect the collective creativity of people who love to create video with a larger context, whether it's a brand or social cause.
At this site you can watch videos on a variety of topics, including the situation in Congo, as well as contribute video clips to an existing production, or create a video production of your own. "Congo Story" offers a wide variety of informative and inspiring videos.

You can also sign a letter/petition to Secretary of State Clinton at the RAISE Hope site, encouraging her to take the lead in developing "a credible international certification system to ensure that minerals in consumer electronics and other products are not fueling rape and violence in eastern Congo."

I have the beginnings of an idea for a group art project to celebrate the sacred beauty and strength of Congolese women and children, to help lift them from their despair of shame and let them know they are not alone or forgotten. Something akin to the AIDS quilt, perhaps, or a large fabric mural. I have a vision of gathering with a mob of women and men and young ones in the cavernous Fellowship Hall of our church, tables piled with fabrics and trims and what-all from our various stashes, surrounded by photos of women and children of Congo, and just Having At It for a few hours to create a massive communal statement of solidarity. I don't know yet where it goes from there. Somewhere beautiful.

Telling

2011-05-13T16:00:00.000-04:00

Yesterday I sat quietly on the back deck in the sun, reading the NYTimes, drinking ginger ale, and was suddenly confronted with this staggering statistic:

A new study in The American Journal of Public Health, expected to be published Thursday online, estimates that nearly two million women have been raped in the Democratic Republic of Congo, with women victimized at a rate of nearly one every minute.

[In "Congo Study Sets Estimate for Rapes Much Higher," by Jeffrey Gettleman, 5/11/11]

One every minute. In the time it took me to read the article, 2 or 3 women were raped. In the time it will take me to write this blog post, another 20 or more will suffer that crime. Let's put that in the correct frame: In the time it will take me to write this blog post, men will rape another 20 or more women in the Congo. And not just women:

The study’s authors believe the rape problem may be worse than their study suggests. The findings are based on survey results from females of reproductive age, but many reports and witness accounts have shown that armed men often gang-rape young girls—some even toddlers—and women in their 70s and older, in addition to a growing number of men and boys. Also, many rape victims never report being assaulted because of the shame and stigma. In Congo, countless women have been abandoned by their husbands after being raped.

"Armed men often gang-rape young girls—some even toddlers…." I just can't get my head around that. A gang of men attacking a toddler. Why? What do the men involved get out of that inordinate aggression? I am at a loss.

Michael VanRooyen, director of the Harvard Humanitarian Initiative, which has sent doctors to Congo to treat rape victims, said that there were “some limitations in the methodology, such as the sampling methods and the sample sizes” of the new rape study. But he argued that “the important message remains: that rape and sexual slavery have become amazingly commonplace in this region of the D.R.C., and have defined this conflict as a war against women.”

A war against women. Yes, indeed. Again, why? I don't know what to do with this information, besides share it. I'm not sure what use there is in mere consciousness-raising without a plan of action for change, but I also can't simply take in these facts without broadcasting them to the world: THIS IS HAPPENING. RIGHT NOW. ON OUR PLANET. TO WOMEN—WOMEN LIKE ME, LIKE YOU, OR LIKE YOUR MOTHER/SISTER/DAUGHTER/LOVER IF YOU'RE A MAN. I don't at this moment see a way to directly affect the situation in the Congo, but I can't be a part of the not-telling, either. Maybe if everyone tells it enough, we can make it stop.

Focus on the Mission

2011-05-10T17:39:00.000-04:00

In just 34 days I will leave for Istanbul, Turkey, to start the Sister City process with them. That is our purpose in this trip, making initial contact in the interest of joining Pittsfield, MA, with Istanbul as Sister Cities. In preparing for this trip over the past few months, I've had to focus on getting my musical and performance skills up to snuff to hold my own in a highly skilled jazz band. I'm not nearly the musician the rest of them are, especially in the jazz realm, and I don't want to let them down. So I've studied and stewed and practiced and panicked and gotten enough better that I feel fairly confident of carrying my weight in the musical sense.

So then I started to get nervous about the actual travel part: navigating unfamiliar airports; spending several hours confined to a coach seat on a plane, not sleeping (I can't sleep sitting up or in moving vehicles); being in strange surroundings while jet-lagged; having to perform and be engaging while in this foreign, disorienting state. I've known for a long time that I have autistic tendencies (confirmed by my high score on the Autistic Spectrum Quotient test), and those tendencies are aggravated by fatigue, stress, a radical change in environment, and sensory overstimulation. Lack of sleep, jet-lag, foreign city, foreign language, crowds, traffic, loud noises, bright lights—I'm looking at total autistic meltdown! OK, so in my case that's not a severe reaction, not like many who suffer from much more extreme forms of autism. But it's still scary, and embarrassing. I go blank, can't talk, get stupid, hate to be touched, look like a deer in the headlights, withdraw into psychical if not physical isolation. Out of my own vanity and pride, I don't want my bandmates to see me that way. Out of concern for them and our mission in Istanbul, I don't want to let them down by performing poorly and, well, being a total drag.

But I've traveled a number of times in foreign lands and been just fine. And I love to see new places and learn new things and eat new foods (and Turkish food is fabulous!). And I really don't know if my autistic tendencies will be triggered enough to be visible to anyone else (besides James, who recognizes them well after so many years together). So, rather than descend into a morass of anxiety about what MIGHT happen and how frustrating and embarrassing it MIGHT be, for me and everyone with me, I choose now to focus instead on our purpose for going to Istanbul in the first place, a purpose that I'm passionately committed to, committed enough to risk autistic discomfort. Person-to-person peacemaking. Communicating with strangers through the common language of music. Making connections across barriers of geography, culture, politics, and everything else that gets in our way, simply by being with people in a shared experience of joy.

Sister Cities International puts it this way:

Mission Statement
Promote peace through mutual respect, understanding, & cooperation — one individual, one community at a time.

Goals
Sister Cities International is a nonprofit citizen diplomacy network that creates and strengthens partnerships between U.S. and international communities. We strive to build global cooperation at the municipal level, promote cultural understanding and stimulate economic development.

Sister Cities International is a leader for local community development and volunteer action. We motivate and empower private citizens, municipal officials and business leaders to conduct long-term sister city programs. We believe that sister city programs involve two-way communication and should mutually benefit partnering communities.

Our goals are to:
Develop municipal partnerships between U.S. cities, counties, and states and similar jurisdictions in other nations.
Provide opportunities for city officials and citizens to experience and explore other cultures through long-term community partnerships.
Create an atmosphere in which economic and community development can be implemented and strengthened.
Stimulate environments through which communities will creatively learn, work, and solve problems together through reciprocal cultural, educational, municipal, business, professional and technical exchanges and projects.
Collaborate with organizations in the United States and other countries which share similar goals.

The Bible says it like this:

Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for thereby some have entertained angels unawares. (Hebrews 13:2)

That's what it's all about, not whether or not I look like an idiot in the airport or stumble over my words or don't smile enough. It's not about me. It's about hospitality and strangers and angels. I have to have faith that I was invited on this trip for a reason—because I have something to contribute. It's a challenge for me, yes, and it scares me, and I might falter on the job, and I'm taking it on because I don't want to miss the angels. And because apparently the angels want me there.

Detail from the Hagia Sophia mosaic depicting seraphim

A well-aged Christmas present

2011-05-02T22:35:00.001-04:00

James got me this book for Christmas, and I just unearthed it from a pile by my bed last week: For the Time Being, by Annie Dillard. I thought I'd already read it but was happily surprised to find that I hadn't yet—I was in need of fresh reading material and Annie Dillard was just the ticket! She's one of my favorite writers who writes about exactly the sorts of things I would write about if I dedicated myself to writing. My all-time favorite of her books is Teaching a Stone to Talk, with Holy the Firm running a close second, and For the Time Being explores similar territory—the earthy reality of human life in the natural world, in all its wondrous, mystical, spiritual glory.

A couple of my favorite passages from this book:

"Spiritual path" is the hilarious popular term for those night-blind mesas and flayed hills in which people grope, for decades on end, with the goal of knowing the absolute. They discover others spread under the stars and encamped here and there by watch fires, in groups or alone, in the open landscape; they stop for a sleep, or for several years, and move along without knowing toward what or why. They leave whatever they find, picking up each stone, carrying it awhile, and dropping it gratefully and without regret, for it is not the absolute, though they cannot say what is. Their life's fine, impossible goal justifies the term "spiritual." Nothing, however can justify the term "path" for this bewildered and empty stumbling, this blackened vagabondage—except one thing: They don't quit. They stick with it. Year after year they put one foot in front of the other, though they fare nowhere. Year after year they find themselves still feeling with their fingers for lumps in the dark.
The planet turns under their steps like a water wheel rolling; constellations shift without anyone's gaining ground. They are presenting themselves to the unseen gaze of emptiness. Why do they want to do this? They hope to learn how to be useful.

and—

We live in all we seek. The hidden shows up in too-plain sight. It lives captive on the face of the obvious—the people, events, and things of the day—to which we as sophisticated children have long since become oblivious. What a hideout: Holiness lies spread and borne over the surface of time and stuff like color.

Exactly.

Easter reading

2011-04-24T20:07:00.000-04:00

I came across this passage in my bedtime reading last night and found it particularly appropriate for Easter:

But now that [Father Sullivan's] heart had become so shiftless and unreliable, now that he should be sensing the afterlife like a sweet scent drifting in from the garden, he had started to wonder if there was in fact no afterlife at all. Look at all these true believers who wanted only to live, look at himself, clinging onto this life like a squirrel scrambling up the icy pitch of a roof. In suggesting that there may be nothing ahead of them, he in no way meant to diminish the future; instead, Father Sullivan hoped to elevate the present to a state of the divine. It seemed from this moment of repose that God may well have been life itself. God may have been the baseball games, the beautiful cigarette he smoked alone after checking to see that all the bats had been put back behind the closet door. God could have been the masses in which he told people how best to prepare for the glorious life everlasting, the one they couldn't see as opposed to the one they were living at that exact moment in the pews of the church hall, washed over in the stained glass light. How wrongheaded it seemed now to think that the thrill of heartbeat and breath were just a stepping stone to something greater. What could be greater than the armchair, the window, the snow? Life itself had been holy. We had been brought forth from nothing to see the face of God and in his life Father Sullivan had seen it miraculously for eighty-eight years. Why wouldn't it stand to reason that this had been the whole of existence and now he would retreat back to the nothingness he had come from in order to let someone else have their turn at the view? This was not the workings of disbelief. It was instead a final, joyful realization of all he had been given. It would be possible to overlook just about anything if you were trained to constantly strain forward to see the power and the glory that was waiting up ahead. What a shame it would have been to miss God while waiting for Him.

- Ann Patchett, Run

A good time for redemption

2011-04-19T21:31:00.000-04:00

"Please be spring. If nothing else, that. The trees at the entrances to the Métro, where warm air vented from down below, always bloomed first. Yes, said the newspapers, it had been the coldest winter in a hundred years. Privately, more than one person in Paris—and in Prague and in Warsaw and in Copenhagen—thought that God had punished Europe for setting itself on fire, for murdering the innocent, for evil. But then too there was, particularly in that scheme of things, redemption. And now would be a good time for it. The wind still blew, getting out of bed in the morning still hurt, the skin stayed rough and cracked, but the winter was breaking apart, collapsing, exhausted by its valiant effort to kill every last one of them." (The World at Night, by Alan Furst)

When the time is right

2011-04-01T15:04:00.000-04:00

Back in 1983, I took a trip to Eastern Europe, which was then still the Soviet bloc. Upon my return, I put together a slide show presentation (with accompanying music on cassette tape—the cutting-edge technology of the time!) for our church peacebuilding group. During the section with photos from Auschwitz death camp, I played the "Lacrimosa" section of the "Dies Irae" from Benjamin Britten's War Requiem. It's a haunting piece with soprano solo above the mass choir. The melody has lived in my mind ever since, rising up to accompany my darker moments.

Several years ago James started creating contemporary liturgies for Good Friday, using rock-and-roll, blues, country, and popular music with modern art images on PowerPoint (note the advances in technology!) to convey the message of the scriptures for that day. In my mind I heard "Lacrimosa," in a spare, dark tone, and considered creating an arrangement to sing in the Good Friday liturgy. But every year the liturgy took us in other directions without a place for "Lacrimosa," and I never ventured the suggestion, nor did I put the time into writing out the sounds I heard in my mind.

This year during our first conversation with our band, Between the Banks, about where we might go with the Good Friday liturgy, I pushed myself to blurt out, "There's a piece I've wanted to do for years but was never quite brave enough to suggest." When I explained the piece and what it means, both literally (see the lyrics and translation below) and to me personally, everyone was very supportive and encouraged me to work it out. And we found the perfect place for it in the liturgy, between Peter's triple betrayal of Jesus and Judas's suicide. And a good friend and excellent musician (and bandmate in the Sister City Jazz Ambassadors), Andy, agreed to play the contrabass part.

So I've spent the past month scoring it for solo voice and contrabass, keeping Britten's melody line (significantly lowered to a range I can sing it in!) but taking the bass line in the direction I hear it rather than transcribing what the choir and orchestra do in the original. When I listen to the original now, I hear that Britten's version has much more light and hope in it than mine—he changes to major-sounding chords where I keep it more minor and dissonant. As Andy says, "It's SOOO sad."

Obviously this piece has been transformed by my life experience over the past three decades to a more plaintive, despairing lament, probably because of my early association of it with Auschwitz. I felt no hope when we toured Auschwitz. Even the roses at the entrance seemed sad. Follow that with years of un- and undertreated depression and "Lacrimosa" becomes the anthem of dark despair. And yet its beauty always keeps me alive, keeps me hanging on to the thin, pure line of hope in that solo voice. Have mercy on us, O Lord. Have mercy on me.

"Lacrimosa," from "Dies Irae" of Benjamin Britten's War Requiem

Lacrimosa dies illa,

Qua resurget ex favilla,

Judicandus homo reus,

Huic ergo parce Deus.

Tearful will be that day

On which from the ashes will rise

The guilty one for judgment.

So have mercy, O Lord, on this one.

Chanteuse

2011-03-13T18:13:00.003-04:00

Why didn't someone tell me when I was 16 that I would fall in love with French music 32 years later? "Keep up with that French, honey, cuz you'll really want it later on..."

What Would Michael Anna Do?

2011-03-03T12:13:00.001-05:00

Being a jazz singer is a serious challenge for me, not just because my music theory education has been gappy and the idea of improvising or "scatting" sends me into a total panic of ignorance, but also because it requires a certain sexiness, a seductive, flirtatious attitude that makes me really uncomfortable. Chalk it up to my Baptist upbringing, combined with an introverted personality, and mix in some childhood agonies and a father who was dead set against any of his children "turning into brats" by being on stage, and this whole sultry jazz vocalist thing is fraught for me.

I've come up with a couple of ways to help de-fraught it a bit: 1) I put together a funky outfit for each gig, varying the flavors from capris and high-top sneakers to skirts and groovy boots, to help get me in a playful mood and feel less trapped in my plain-jane self; and 2) I have a drink, to help lubricate everything (although my Baptist upbringing creates a little tension there, too, and alcohol tends to put me to sleep, which isn't really what I'm after here!—so I only have one that I nurse through the whole night).

My latest and most effective strategy, however, is to say, "What would Michael Anna do?" whenever I'm feeling constricted or embarrassed to let my "wild side" out. My niece, Michael Anna, is the single most Positive person I've ever known, and since she was born she has had an innate instinct for joy. She's a natural performer who just lights up the place without any sign of embarrassment, phoniness, or diva ego. I wish I had a picture of her one day at about the age of 4 when I offered to take her to the store. She dashed upstairs to "get dressed" and came back down wearing a flowery dress with every accessory in her wardrobe—chains of beads, bracelets, and even a headband tied around her head like a flapper girl. Michael has always had a definitive sense of style!

So at the risk of embarrassing her, let me thank Michael Anna for inspiring me to be publicly joyful, playful, wild, and even, yes, sexy. Here's to you, Michael Anna Banana!

Jazz Brain

2011-02-15T17:14:00.000-05:00

I've been trying to fill in some of the gaps in my music education (which was heavy on technique and pretty light on theory) so that I can hold my own with the jazz band or at least feel a bit more confident up there with all those theory pros who can toss around words like "Dorian mode" and "half-diminished 7th" as though they're talking about their grocery list. Despite a literal lifetime of playing music (as a toddler I sat on my mother's lap while she played piano, and I started tapping out my own tunes on the keys before I was even tall enough to see them or get on the bench by myself), my training has been patchy, to say the least. Some things I discover I do know, but not the terminology for them. Other things I've never been taught—or wasn't paying attention when I was.

Lately I've been working on scale patterns: the intervals used in major, minor, blues, and pentatonic scales. I have a book and CD set I got from the library that I've found really helpful (Music Theory Made Easy, by David Harp), and I sat diligently playing all the scales in every key, studying the intervals on the keyboard, trying to memorize the patterns (I + bIII + IV+bV+V + bVII + I), getting more and more frustrated as I once again couldn't get them in my head. I still carry the burden of watching our piano teacher put gold star after gold star on my sister's scales chart while I lagged far behind and only just managed to get blue or green stars. Partly, no one ever gave me a convincingly good reason to practice my scales, and I think I was born refusing to spend energy without a good reason. If I'd been introduced to all the fascinating mathematics and social history of scales, my imagination might have been captured—even as a small child I loved math and weird history (the flatted 5th interval was banned for a long time because it was considered diabolical)! But partly I also think my brain didn't know how to handle scales.

Last week after I struggled for hours without making much progress, I stopped looking at the keys on the keyboard and the rows of Roman numerals in the book and just played out a scale with my eyes closed, searching for the next interval by ear. Hey, wait a minute! That was easy! I picked another starting note and played its major, minor, blues, and pentatonic scales by ear. A few bobbles but better than when I was trying to "see" the scales. I had the definite sensation of moving from one place in my brain to another, where suddenly things became much clearer. (I've also since discovered that I can sing scales easily in any key, given the starting pitch, "without even thinking about it." Or thinking in a whole different way that feels like not-thinking.)

Later I told my husband about it and found myself pointing to my head—I could physically locate the place I had to turn off (towards the front on the left side) and the place I had to turn on, or move to (further back on the right side). I know that the left side of the brain tends to specialize in linear, sequential thinking while the right side is more holistic, but I was curious as to whether those particular areas have to do in some way with my scales travails. So today I went online to find a map of the left and right sides of the brain, and lo and behold, those two spots are very much in accord with my experience. (I photoshopped a visual aid with the downloaded images.)

In the left brain, the place I felt I had to turn off "takes ideas, actions and words, and puts them into linear sequence." The place in the right brain has to do with music—specifically, "(spatial) harmony" and "intervals." I'd been trying to learn scales as linear sequences, which maybe with enough repetition I could finally embed, but rote memorization has never been my strong suit. When I shifted my approach to the spatial harmonies and intervals and let my ear take over, the music began to flow freely. Pretty amazing that I could point right to those two places! This kind of stuff fascinates me! It certainly makes learning scales more interesting.

My next venture is going to be into all those modes the Greeks came up with ("Dorian" being one of them). I've been reading about them and how Socrates thought all but two should be banned because they have deleterious effects on humanity, etc.—sounds like great stuff!

Jazz in Istanbul Syllabus

2011-01-13T14:46:00.002-05:00

Books I'm currently reading:

Jazz Singer's Handbook: The Artistry and Mastery of Singing Jazz, by Michele Weir (with accompanying practice CD, which I'm also putting on my iPod for practice while driving, shoveling snow, etc.)

I started practicing with this book/CD today and am finding it really helpful—she shows in clear and simple terms what can be done with melody, phrasing, inflection, and everything else in good vocal jazz expression so that it's no longer a magical intimidating mystery but something I can actually do myself, and already do to some degree.

She also busted me on a weakness of mine: "In performance (especially with ballads), it's easy to make the mistake of singing an overabundance of long, drawn-out phrases that direct too much attention to your voice and not enough to the message of the text. … Avoid getting caught up in listening to the loveliness of your own voice; keep the focus on making sure your message is clear to the listener." I was rather abashed to recognize myself in this paragraph.

Reclaiming Beauty for the Good of the World: Muslim & Christian Creativity as Moral Power, by George Dardess & Peggy Rosenthal

I've just started reading this, so I can't review it yet. From the "Preface": "…a concept we felt was too little discussed or appreciated among Christians, and certainly not discussed at all when Christians spoke about Islam. This was the concept of Beauty. Beauty seemed to us to offer both Muslims and Christians an escape from their usually tense, dry, and often hopelessly stalemated interchanges on theology and politics. Beauty elicits joy, an ingredient usually missing from such interchanges. And beauty is central to both religions. All the more is beauty central—and necessary—to their dialogue with each other." This is exactly where I believe in starting with interfaith communication. We hope to bring beauty and joy to the people of Istanbul with our music.

The Museum of Innocence, by Orhan Pamuk

This is a book I've had to commit myself to in the belief that I need to read the whole thing to get the full impact. Right now, about 2/3 of the way through, it's slow-going and often annoying in its obsessive detail and lack of progress, although I know that's the whole point of the story: love is in the accumulation of tiny details. So I'm hopeful that the cumulative effect will be powerful if I stick with it to the end. It also provides an insider's view of Istanbul and Turkey in the 1970s and '80s.

The Crusades through Arab Eyes, by Amin Maalouf

I haven't even started this yet, but it comes with great reviews from my son-in-law (who lent it to me), as well as many others. I'm really looking forward to reading it, once I finish the Orhan Pamuk novel….

Books I've recently finished reading:

Arabesk, and The Ottoman Cage, by Barbara Nadel—mystery novels set in Istanbul (fun mind-candy imbued with Istanbulia)

The Bastard of Istanbul, by Elif Shafak—a novel that started out good but disappointed me by the end; it does provide a glimpse into Turkish-Armenian history and relations, but otherwise I didn't get very much out it

What Jazz Is: An Insider's Guide to Understanding and Listening to Jazz, by Jonny King—a really good beginner's guide to the history and intentions of jazz music

The Jazz Ear: Conversations over Music, by Ben Ratliff—a series of interviews with jazz musicians about other people's music (I turned down lots of page corners in this one to copy out quotes! I'll share them in another post)

Culture and Customs of Turkey, by Rafis Abazov—the English-as-a-second-language writing was a little cumbersome, but this is a good comprehensive survey of Turkish culture and customs (excepting the noticeable lack of discussion of homosexuality, which I guess tells you how it's handled in Turkey)

Remaking Turkey: Globalization, Alternative Modernities, and Democracies, edited by E. Fuat Keyman—a collection of essays on different aspects of modernization as experienced in Turkey (also a challenging read due to the clumsy English, but fascinating in its insiders' view of what it means to be "modern" today in Turkey)

[The last two books on the above list are finds from the Virtual Catalog that lets me request obscure items from obscure libraries throughout Massachusetts. I love it!]

What I Want to Be When I Grow Up

2011-01-01T14:29:00.001-05:00

The first day of the new year, and one of the first things I read is this article in the NYTimes about an artist, Tobi Kahn, who uses his art in much the same sort of way I want to use mine: "Art Intended to Make the End of Life Beautiful" (by Samuel G. Freedman). Or the way I already do use mine, albeit in a more limited way. Art created for others, not for myself. Art that creates a place of beauty and peace, of safety where one can be vulnerable, open to the deepest truths. I've found my outlet so far mostly in liturgical spaces, draping fabrics in sanctuaries, using colors and textures to help people move out of everyday structures into a flowing, unbounded yet protected, spiritual space.

Last night I finished reading Just Kids, by Patti Smith (a Christmas present to James that I appropriated!), a memoir of her early years in NY with Robert Mapplethorpe, both of them struggling to discern their artistic calling. She mentions how her mother used to say that "what you do on New Year's Day will foretell what you'll be doing the rest of the year," or, in her mother's words, "So as today, the rest of the year." To then come upon this article about an artist who is doing "just what I want to do!" first thing January 1, 2011—does this foretell the rest of my year? Will I spend my time creating beautiful, unbounded yet protected, spaces for others to encounter truth?

I'm also reading books on jazz music and listening to jazz classics in preparation for our trip to Istanbul in June. As I write the words "unbounded yet protected," I realize that it's a very good description of jazz music as well. Being forced to grapple with jazz singing, something I've never done before, has forced me to grapple with my classically trained prejudices against it. Jazz musicians have a strong tendency to think of their music as the "hardest," the music that "real" musicians go to when they get "bored" with the rest. That kind of snobbery has always raised my hackles—"Oh yeah? Have you sung Hindemith? Stravinsky? Bach, in German? How about Joni Mitchell? She's no piece of cake, either." OK, so I've spent my life engaged with difficult music as well, music that requires "real" skill and musicality. Let's get over the competition between musical forms. As of January 1, 2011, I am tossing out all preconceived notions about jazz, or any other kind of music, and entering this new study as a journey into a new and different (not harder or easier or anything else but different) way to create beautiful, flowing, unbounded yet protected, spaces for people to connect with themselves, with others, and with the deepest truths of our life together. I know how to infuse other forms of music with my sincere self—now I get to learn how to do that with jazz. More on this to come...

Christmas letter 2010

2010-12-24T06:43:00.002-05:00

Merry Christmas

[This letter was written by James and approved by Dianne.]

It has been quite a year for Dianne and James: a blessed, full and challenging time of love and ministry – and 2011 looks to be just as complicated and wonderful. We hope that this letter finds you all well, rested and in reasonable health as we move from the waiting of Advent to the celebrations of Christmas. Our family will all be together on Christmas Day – Jesse and her husband, Michael, as well as Michal and her husband, Jay – for a time of feasting and reconnecting. And then later in January, we will be with Dianne’s sisters and extended family for a DeMott Christmas, too. In-between, we will head off to NYC to see an art exhibit by Makoto Fujimura, listen to some jazz at the Village Vanguard and wander the city with Jesse and Mike in Brooklyn.

Thinking back through this year brings a host of wonderful memories. James spent time again in NYC at the annual IAM Convocation (International Arts Movement) and camped out with the kids in Brooklyn. (This year Di gets to make the trek, too!) Dianne created some incredible worship/sanctuary tapestries for Easter 2010 that evoked beauty and the joy of Christ’s resurrection. It was a particularly special Easter as we invited all the clergy in the congregation – plus our in-care seminary student – to be a part of the festivities. Interestingly, my predecessor, Rick Floyd, is the father of our seminarian – so when she served him Holy Communion… let’s just say the Body of Christ felt a profound sense of joy.

Other highlights included:• A study of Greg Mortenson’s THREE CUPS OF TEA – that resulted in a special fundraiser in June to support schools for girls in Afghanistan – a clear and creative alternative to the war.

• A Pentecost worship planned by the Congregation that included tongues of fire, LOTS of children and a version of “Message in a Bottle” that rocked the house in honor of God’s loving spirit. (check it out @ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hrg7gaZD0Po)

• In March, we were back in Tucson for a sweet wedding with the Schloss family – and that was a joy. They even got to visit us in early September, too. James got to visit Phil and Julie in San Francisco this spring – and we both hope to get there in February 2011.

• In August, our new friends Peter and Joyce from Thunder Bay, Ontario, spent a few wild and wonderful days with us – including listening to jazz at the Castle Street Grill and grooving to Yoyo Ma and his Silk Road Ensemble at Tanglewood with David and Sue. It was a treat and blessing to have them with us and we hope to see them in the late summer.

• Then we headed out for a road trip to Nova Scotia that was a little bit of heaven and lots of good rest and loving. The International Busker Festival was happening during our journey – street performers from all over the world – and that meant Di and I were experiencing a little bit of heaven on earth. We can’t wait to go back!

• Dianne decided to leave full-time retail work at JoAnn’s in the fall because… life is just too short! She still is there 30+ hours each week but has a little more time for other more creative projects – including some sweet music arranging.

And now we are both playing part-time in Andy Kelly’s jazz band: the Sister City Music Ambassadors. We have dreamed of bringing a people-to=people peacemaking through music trip to a Muslim country – and Andy is helping make it happen. The tickets are purchased for June 13, 2011 – and we are starting to practice and play with the band all over the region.

Church continues to be a blessing as we are three years into our renewal work. We are turning the corner on decline – averaging 80-90 people each week – and have made serious inroads on getting the church finances in order, too. Our little band, Between the Banks, has gone through some changes, too, with Eva leaving for Las Vegas and Sue joining the ranks. But we have found a new groove and are having lots of fun. James now serves on both the Arts Council and Tourism Boards in Pittsfield. Three years after leaving Tucson, it was clearly the right decision to come to the Berkshires, and we give thanks for our new faith community and the costs and joys of being a part of the rebirth of this small city.

To be sure, there are times when we miss the desert sun – and we rejoice every time we go back – but this is now fully home and it feels like it in so many ways. We are even learning to cross-country ski (James for the first time) and rediscover the beauty of winter! We are close to our families – and see our daughters often – which is an unspeakable blessing.

So please know we have a guest room that is almost always available if you would like to head to this very gentle and creative place in the Berkshires. We've included a few pictures to give you another feel for the fullness of 2010.

With all our love,

James and Dianne

Why I'm Not a Pro

2010-12-01T12:13:00.000-05:00

On Monday night, James and I had our first rehearsal with the Pittsfield Sister City Jazz Ambassadors, a group of professional jazz musicians who travel to Pittsfield's sister cities in Ireland, Italy, Nicaragua, and South Korea (although I don't know if they've actually gone to South Korea yet) to promote peace through music. This coming June they're going to Istanbul to begin the process of establishing a sister city relationship, and we've been invited to join them as part of the band. Well, I was fully aware of my lack of jazz vocal skills and music theory, along with my total lack of jazzy personality (I don't have a single hambone in my body—well, maybe one tiny one, somewhere, that enjoys people enjoying my performance, but that's it), but I'm confident of my ability to sing well, on pitch, in tempo, and as part of a group. I just never gravitated towards jazz singing for a reason: it's not who I am. I can put my heart and soul into old Baptist hymns, folk music, indie singer-songwriter pieces, and some rock-and-roll and even country tunes. If I love a piece of music, I can sing the hell out of it. But I can't dress up a tune convincingly for the sake of performance. Which is what a professional singer has to do. Which is why I'm not a pro and have chosen consistently throughout my life not to become one.

In the two days since our rehearsal, I've been searching out why it is I love to sing, what it is I want to do when I sing, how to define why I want to go to Istanbul and how I want to spread peace there through music. The fundamental truth of music for me, I think, is what's inside the music, not the externals. I have always been fervently opposed to paid soloists in church choirs because it does nothing for me to hear someone sing, no matter how technically "beautifully," about something that they don't feel in their heart. And when someone is only there on Sunday and singing that piece of music because we're paying them to be, there's no assurance that they really care about the content of what they're singing or even about whether or not they successfully contribute to the worship experience. I can hear the difference between a technically beautiful performance and a soulfully beautiful gift of song. It's much more meaningful to me to hear someone sing something imperfectly from the depths of their heart. I want sincerity in my music, not technical perfection. My favorite singers don't have the best voices: Randy Newman, Mark Oliver Everett, Johnny Cash—what they have is realness. When I hear them sing a song, it's not about them, it's about the song.

In the past 15 years or so, my journey in music has been to develop the spiritual grounding, along with the musical skills, to put my real self into a song when I sing it. I was terrified to sing solo until I was in seminary and canted a service in chapel one morning. In that setting, it wasn't about me at all, and the music a cantor sings isn't showy so it's not about the externals of the music, either. It's about helping create a place where people can gather to share their human vulnerability. I discovered I had a gift for creating that space with my voice. I still don't really understand why that is—when people tell me they love to hear me sing, I don't know why. I don't hear anything special in my own voice. But I've come to take their word for it since I've heard it consistently now for a number of years. And I've come to know that when people say that to me is when I've sung a song with all my self in it. When it's been all about the music, not about me.

So my vision of our time in Istanbul is using my gift to help create a place where people with vastly different backgrounds, experiences, histories, beliefs, cultures, and just about everything else can stand together and share our souls. Music can be a place beneath all the differences where we can meet each other. Food and music are particularly good for that. So I want to eat with Istanbullus and sing with them and find that place where we aren't so different after all. One of the songs we practiced on Monday night was "Moon River," and I found this video of a young Korean boy, Sungha Jung, playing the song soulfully on his guitar. It expresses so much of what music can do in this world. A South Korean 14-year-old playing a song from a 1961 American movie, beautifully. (I also just discovered another tidbit about this movie and song that makes it even more appropriate for me to sing with the Jazz Ambassadors: according to Wikipedia, "[Audrey Hepburn] herself regarded it as one of her most challenging roles, since she was an introvert required to play an extrovert." Just like me with jazz singing!) Music can truly be a place where our differences—I won't say they disappear or don't matter at all, but they become condiments, not the meal. The music is the main feast.

Soundtrack to a Day Off

2010-11-24T13:42:00.000-05:00

Finally a day I don't have to go to work, make any appointments, do anything I don't want to do. (Until tonight when we'll have our Thanksgiving Eve gig at church, but that's something I want to do and am looking forward to, so that doesn't detract at all from my Day Off.) So my activity of choice at the moment is one of my favorite things to do: stream an independent radio station live on my computer and discover songs I haven't heard before but love at first listen, and then buy them on iTunes. I have a number of radio stations I turn to regularly for this pastime:

KXCI, Tucson, AZ — where I first heard the Eels, along with lots of other now favorites, and who often feature live studio performances and interviews with local Tucson artists, including Leila Lopez, the partner of one of my dear friends, CB. KXCI introduced me to "Growing Native" with Petey Mesquitey, whose 3 CDs I now own, one of them signed by Petey himself!
mvyradio, Martha's Vineyard, MA — good old hippie stuff and "local" (ok, 2+ hours away but more local than Tucson is now) events, mvyradio is a little more commercial than my other favorite stations, but they play good music.
WKZE, Red Hook, NY — another great old hippie station, and less commercial than mvyradio; I found this station while driving to the Wassaic train station to pick up James once and searched it out online when I got home, since it only comes in on the radio in select places between the mountains of the Berkshires and Catskills.
WEXT (Exit 97.7), Troy, NY — the station I'm listening to right now, discovered on a drive back across the NYS Thruway during my mother's final hospitalization, almost comparable to KXCI in Tucson (it'll take a seriously great indie radio station to surpass my love of and loyalty to KXCI!); I just bought a Norah Jones tune, "Wish I Could," after hearing it here, and I'm not even a big Norah Jones fan.

And now I can add a new station to my list, Robin Hood Radio, from the northwest corner of Connecticut, broadcasting to the tri-state region of CT, MA, and NY. One of James's friends and bandmates from high school, Hal Lefferts, has a daily show called WTF (Weekly Tune Fest), at 2:00-4:00pm. I met Hal for the first time last night—he's playing at our Thanksgiving Eve gig tonight. James hadn't seen him since 1973 before last night's rehearsal! (We talked last night about how Facebook has brought old friends back into our lives, including those we weren't really friends with when we were actually together. People change a lot through the years, and those we found alien in high school can now be simpatico. Funny how some things matter a lot less when you're older, and some things matter so much more.) Hal's a fine old hippie who plays fine old hippie music on his show, as well as newer additions to the canon. His show starts in half an hour—I can't wait!

Labor Intensive

2010-11-21T18:24:00.001-05:00

from "Byzantium Preserved," by Patrick Brogan, found in Istanbul: The Collected Traveler, collected by Barrie Kerper:

The lower parts of the walls throughout the [Church of the Savior, or Kariye Camii, in Istanbul], and particularly in the main body, are covered with marble panels of great splendor. … The Byzantine masons would select blocks of stone of striking color and markings, preferring ones with wavy lines across them. They would cut the blocks vertically into very thin slices and then open them like the pages of a book. The right-hand slab would then present a mirror image in perfect symmetry with the left. If the block was smooth enough, the masons could sometimes cut two or even four pairs of slabs, and the pattern ripples in waves across a wide expanse of wall, thus bringing discipline and order to the irregularity of geology. Samuel Pepys, in Restoration London, described how marble was cut, by means of a technique that had not changed since classical times. A groove was chiseled along the top of a block of stone and filled with sand. Two men then cut into it using a cord as though it were a two-handed toothless saw, grinding away the stone with the sand. About two inches of marble a day can be cut this way. Thousands of days' work must have gone into cutting the marble panels at the Church of the Savior.

Imagine.

Hüzün

2010-11-13T21:31:00.001-05:00

Today I met a woman from Istanbul. She came into the store and my colleague asked her where she's from—the accent and headscarf gave her away as a newcomer to these parts. When she said, "Turkey," I turned around (butting into the conversation and interrupting the customer I was waiting on, who was fortunately very gracious about it) and said, "We're traveling there next spring!" "Really?" she exclaimed, her face lighting up. "Where in Turkey are you going?" "Istanbul." "Oh, that's where I lived! I miss it so much." So we exchanged names and phone numbers and she said she'd love to talk with us anytime as we make our plans for the trip.

Now I have a real person to add to the pile of books by my bedside. She's been in the store before—I recognized her, I had just never asked her before where she's from. I'm always afraid it will sound unwelcoming: "Where are you from?" i.e, "You're not from around here, obviously." Add that to my innate shyness and it's a question that I rarely ask anyone. Hearing my colleague ask, however, and seeing how happy the woman was to talk about her former home, makes me realize it's probably not a rude question and would in fact most often be welcomed, and welcoming. So I'll try to ask it more from now on. We actually have quite a number of non-native Pittsfielders who come into the store, including a large contingent from Africa. I don't know where in Africa because I've never asked.

Anyway, as I was saying, I have this pile of books by my bedside now to start giving me some background on Istanbul. I like to read memoirs and fiction novels set in a place to get a feel for it beyond the facts and dates and useful phrases in history books and travel guides. The history books and travel guides are helpful, too, and I'll be reading a pile of those as well. But I started out with a book of collected writings from across the centuries, beginning as early as the 6th century, about some key places in Istanbul: A Traveller's Companion to Istanbul, edited by Laurence Kelly. As Kelly says in the Introduction, "the city's myths, prehistory, and recorded history span twenty-seven or twenty-eight centuries… The sheer weight of history to be summarized would take up the whole Introduction, and in practice duplicate the competent summaries to be found in all guide-books… In any event, this anthology's own extracts cover nearly all the major events in the city's history." The cumulative effect of centuries' worth of commentary on everything from the fall of Constantinople to the treatment of the women in the harem is mesmerizing. And the sources are often first-person accounts, giving the history an intimacy that I just love. One of my favorite tidbits comes from an early 17th-century writer, Robert Withers, regarding the harem: "Now it is not lawful for any one to bring ought in unto them, with which they may comit the deeds of beastly uncleannesse; so that if they have a will to eate Cucumbers, Gourds, or such like meates, they are sent in unto them sliced, to deprive them of the meanes of playing the wantons; for, they being all young, lustie, and lascivious Wenches, and wanting the societie of Men (which would better instruct them) are doubtlesse of themselves inclined to that which is naught, and will be possest with unchast thoughts." I'd guess bananas are out, too.

My next literary venture into Istanbul is Orhan Pamuk's memoir, Istanbul: Memories and the City. Pamuk is the author of the novel Snow, which I read last year and liked very much. He has lived in Istanbul his whole life and is, in fact, back in the same apartment building now where he lived as a child. As he says, "Conrad, Nabokov, Naipaul—these are writers known for having managed to migrate between languages, cultures, countries, continents, even civilizations. Their imaginations were fed by exile, a nourishment drawn not through roots but through rootlessness. My imagination, however, requires that I stay in the same city, on the same street, in the same house, gazing at the same view. Istanbul's fate is my fate. I am attached to this city because it has made me who I am."

One of Pamuk's main themes is hüzün, which he defines as a particular kind of melancholy that is "communal rather than private" which permeates Istanbul. He devotes an entire chapter to hüzün, trying to explain it to those of us who don't know it in our souls as all native Istanbullus do. It has to do with the reality of living in the capital city of a fallen empire, in a place that was once the center of the world and is now almost forgotten. "The city into which I was born," says Pamuk, "was poorer, shabbier, and more isolated than it had ever been before in its two-thousand-year history. For me it has always been a city of ruins and of end-of-empire melancholy. I've spent my life either battling with this melancholy or (like all Istanbullus) making it my own." He gives a 6-page list of examples or expressions of hüzün in Istanbul: "I am speaking of the evenings when the sun sets early, of the fathers under the streetlamps in the back streets returning home carrying plastic bags… of the children who play ball between the cars on cobblestoned streets… of the holy messages spelled out in lights between the minarets of mosques on holidays that are missing letters where the bulbs have burned out…. On cold winter mornings, when the sun suddenly falls on the Bosphorus and that faint vapor begins to rise from the surface, the hüzün is so dense you can almost touch it, almost see it spread like a film over its people and its landscapes."

I am too young and my country is too young for me to have any understanding of hüzün in all its depths. But the beauty in melancholy I do understand. The softness. "Offering no clarity, veiling reality instead, hüzün brings us comfort, softening the view like the condensation on a window when a teakettle has been spouting steam on a winter's day."

Go East, Middle-Aged Woman!

2010-11-01T21:01:00.000-04:00

James and I have recently been given the opportunity to travel to Istanbul with the Pittsfield Sister City Jazz Ambassadors, possibly as early as next May or June. The head of the Sister City Jazz Ambassadors, Andy Kelly, is a go-getter who doesn't diddle around once he decides to do something! So now we're taking a crash course in the history and culture of Istanbul, as well as how to play/sing jazz (a new genre for both of us!), to prepare ourselves to make the most of this trip. Major travel always sets my anxiety motor going, and when I'm anxious, I read and study and make lists and organize facts and background—pretty much do the research for a dissertation on wherever it is I'm headed. Being a student I understand, so whenever my anxiety goes up, I return to my student ways. I've spent the past couple of hours (while James is out teaching a class at church) in the "virtual library" finding books that look intriguing in the wider Massachusetts library system and requesting to have them sent here to the Pittsfield library for me. I love interlibrary loan! Spoken like a true nerd. I actually found one book right here in our very own small-town library (Orhan Pamuk's Istanbul: Memories and the City)—once again proving that I shouldn't underestimate Pittsfield.

Having this new challenge presented to me, I decided to use this blog once again to chronicle my journey towards the journey, much as I did at its outset when we were preparing to leave Tucson for the Berkshires. Writing is sort of like snorkeling for me—it helps me get below the choppy surface to the quiet mysteries that lie beneath.

Keep Your Eyes on the Prize

2010-10-19T10:01:00.000-04:00

Since I woke up early this morning and don't have to be at work until 11:00am, I decided to spend the time getting caught up on James's blog. He's been reflecting on suffering and faith lately, and included a video of Bruce Springsteen singing, "Keep Your Eyes on the Prize." While I'm belting out "Hold on, hold on!" along with Bruce, the phone rings. It's the roofer calling back. We were rejected by their new credit company for financing, so I'd asked for other options. Both James and I spent much of last night fretting about why we were rejected—there's nothing on our credit report that looks bad to us, certainly not what the rejection letter stated as their reasons for turning us down—and about how we are now going to manage the payments. Plus the car failed its inspection yesterday and would cost more to repair than its worth, so we're back to one vehicle, a 1995 pickup with 150,000+ miles on it. As James said, "It's kind of funny to think that our 'good' car is that old truck!" Financial straits always throw James into a fit of anxiety and me into a pit of depression. A great combo!

So there I am, singing, "Hold on, hold on!" and the phone rings and it's the roofer. He says, "Don't sweat it—those applications are usually read by a computer and credit reports are pretty meaningless, really. So we'll just work out another way to pay this off over the next year. It's really not a problem for us." Yay! One financial strait navigated. And we've lived with one car for many years, both in Tucson and for the first couple of years here, so the old truck will be enough—as long as it keeps running—"Hold on, hold on"!

How to Make Diabetic Socks Look Stylish

2010-10-17T12:39:00.000-04:00

or, Suffering for Fashion.

I bought these shoes back before my feet started giving me so much trouble. Next month I have an appointment with a podiatrist to see if we can figure out what's wrong. Based on personal and family history, I'm sure he'll give me custom orthotics to put in my shoes. And tell me I can't wear these sorts of shoes anymore. So I decided to wear them today while I still can. Although "can" is debatable. Footless tights, diabetic socks, and large doses of pain relievers, and still the toes went numb halfway through coffee hour. The drive home was challenging.

But hey, I looked great!

Rain and Creativity

2010-09-30T19:28:00.000-04:00

I finally had a long-awaited extra full day off from work on my new return-to-part-time schedule (I decided last month that the stress of my full-time job wasn't worth the additional income, so as of 2 weeks ago I'm back to part-time work), and we were hit with a tropical storm that brought torrents of rain and steamy humidity to these parts. A perfect day to stay indoors and occupy myself with artsy things! Among my projects today were crocheting, fabric painting, and music transcribing. The crocheting I can't show here yet because it's a gift for someone and is only about 1/8 done anyway; and the fabric painting was just a subtle addition of gold metallic to a leafy print for an autumn altar cloth and I don't think it will show up in a photo. But I can give you a glimpse of the transcribing. I'm such a music geek that I can become completely absorbed for hours on end in this process!

One of our band members at church suggested we try Sarah McLachlan's new song, "Bring on the Wonder," which is gorgeous and extremely complicated harmonically! Actually, the song was written by Susan Enan, who does a much simpler version that has its own beauty, but we want to try to get the richer effect of Sarah McLachlan's cover. And I can't find a score on-line yet. Which means scoring out the parts. After a little more research, I came upon a downloadable software program called Transcribe!

Transcribe! worktop

that promised to make transcription easier and offered a 30-day free trial period. I've done some transcribing, so I know how tedious it can be to keep scrolling back to the point you want to hear, hitting Pause and Play and Pause and Rewind and Play and…you get the picture. True to its word, Transcribe! really does help simplify that process. And it provides an easy way to mark the beats and measures and sections, etc. I managed to get the melody line down and the structure sketched out in just an hour or so of work. I still have 23 days left in my free trial, but I'm sure I'll be happy to shell out the $50 for the program then. Like I said, I love this process, tedious as it is. It's totally engrossing for my brain, which is really restful in an odd way.

The fabric painting was fun, too—I haven't worked with paint in a while, and I've missed it. Crocheting is my sit-on-the-couch-and-watch-TV activity, keeping my mind active enough that I don't get bored or antsy. I just do simple rectangular objects (mostly scarves so far) so I don't have to pay attention to patterns or constantly count stitches. Stripes are as fancy as I get! But again, the simplicity is restful, another perfect thing to do on a rainy day off.

The Benefits of Getting Organized

2010-09-10T22:29:00.000-04:00

My younger sister is probably coming for a visit in a couple of weeks and I've asked her to help me get my sewing/art studio organized. She's a way more organized person than I am, so I'm hopeful that she can make some sort of sense out of all my bins and drawers and piles of stuff. Too ashamed, however, to let her see the total extent of my slobbiness, I spent some time today going through a couple of cartons of art supplies that I hadn't yet unpacked from when we moved 3 years ago. I've just been scrounging through them whenever I needed something, my usual approach to life. A few months ago I even bought a lovely storage cart on wheels with 10 colorful drawers—drawers which have stared longingly at me since then, waiting for my bountiful art supplies to be sorted and stored in them. Today I finally got around to it! Two cartons of paints, pencils, pens, paper ("utilitarian" and "decorative," as I labeled their separate drawers), and other sundry arts-&-crafty items are now settled in their colored homes, complete with electronic label-maker labels (as mentioned above).

Black-Crowned Night Heron

And lo and behold, what did I find lolling about the bottom of the second carton but a sketch I did a decade ago that is still one of my favorites and had gone missing for some time. Well, it was actually in the bottom of that carton for the past 3 years. But I was missing it, due to my incurable slobbiness. I tell myself it's the sign of a true creative mind, the piles of pending projects and "I might be able to use that some time" odd bits (I actually labeled one of my colored drawers "Odd Bits") heaped about in creative abandon. But probably I'm just a slob. And clearly it does pay to clean up once in a while.

What I Did on Summer Vacation

2010-08-24T22:48:00.000-04:00

OK, the pictures from our vacation through Maine to Halifax, Nova Scotia, are finally up! Check them out in the slide show at the bottom of the page...

The Attack of the Eastern Kingbird

2010-06-25T18:13:00.000-04:00

For the past two weeks, we've been dodging the headsnapping attacks of a pair of Eastern Kingbirds, defending a nest they built in the neighbors' rain gutter. I came up with the brilliant Umbrella Tactic, which works quite well unless you have things to carry to or from the car, in which case wielding the umbrella shield gets rather unwieldy. But it's still better than getting your head snapped at by a tiny winged demon.

Cool Facts
The Eastern Kingbird is highly aggressive toward nest predators and larger birds. Hawks and crows are attacked regularly. A kingbird was observed to knock a Blue Jay out of a tree and cause it to hide under bush to escape the attack.

(http://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/Eastern_Kingbird/lifehistory)

Today as we pulled back into the driveway we share with the above-mentioned neighbors, preparing to lug groceries into the house while brandishing the above-mentioned umbrellas, what do we find but our mild-mannered neighbor lady packing a water bazooka loaded for bear! "I'm sorry, but I just can't take being attacked all the time anymore!" she cried desperately, possibly fearing the grim disapproval of a couple of bird-huggers. "We agree!" we shouted, and proceeded to share our common grief over the complexities of bird vs. human. "If we'd caught it sooner, we'd have stopped the nest-building before they finished it," she assured us. "We're having the roof done in a couple of weeks, so they'd better teach those babies to fly before then!"

Which moved us on to talk of roof repairs and other neighborly concerns (we'll be getting our roof done this summer, too). The birds apparently recognized the water gun because they stayed just out of range while we were talking. Hopefully the babies will fledge soon so we can put away the umbrellas and bazookas and have the driveway return to neutral airspace. Don't get me wrong—I am glad to have kingbirds around because they eat lots of flying insects and are beautiful to watch swooping through the air, as long as they aren't swooping at my head.

Sing us out, Kingbird! Eastern Kingbird song

There Is No Question

2010-05-31T21:26:00.000-04:00

Over the weekend I drove to my sister's home in Spencerport, NY—a five-hour drive across the rather boring NYS Thruway. On the way there on Friday, I was still in workaday mode: brain spinning with endless chatter and fretting about things I could do nothing about while sitting in a car on the NYS Thruway, "seeking" new radio stations every few miles when the old ones gave out, tabulating the number of miles to go with each exit sign. On the way home on Sunday, however, I'd had two days to rest, play, talk until too late at night, etc., so my brain had finally wound down and was ready for some good, long thinking. Five hours with nothing to do but follow one thought all the way to the next one, teasing out truths from the chaff of my usual distractedness. I realized how long it's been since I had the chance to do that. I'm a Thinker, and Thinking takes Time. Time without interruptions. My current job requires constant multitasking, and responding to multiple people who constantly interrupt with multiple demands, so I've had to learn to sail lightly on my brain's waters to keep up. And I don't shift gears (to mix a metaphor) very quickly. It took me two days to slow down and sink down again into deeper waters.

What I found there:

For at least the past three decades of my life, I have been unable to find a satisfactory answer to the question, "What is the Point?" Maybe it's only us chronic depressives who even ask that question relentlessly—I don't know. Other people I've talked with about this seem to either come up with answers that work for them, just shrug and go on with life when they can't find an answer, or never ask the question at all. But me, I get stuck. What is the point of making all this effort and going through all this everything if there is no Ultimate Point? What is the Purpose to Existence? I'm using all these potentially annoying capital letters because I'm speaking at a fundamental level. The level of philosophy and theology. Not just, "What's the point?" but, "What's the Point?" And I've studied philosophy and theology to try to find an answer that satisfies me at a fundamental level. I've read poetry, memoirs, spiritual biographies, history; I got a BA in literature and an MA in Religion studying all this to try to find an answer. Yet I've never found one that works for me. And so I find myself back at the same place again and again, stuck in the face of a void of Pointlessness.

It's very hard to feel the fullness of joy in life when underneath you gapes Pointlessness. I want to feel the fullness of joy in life. So I decided on my five-hour drive home that perhaps the reason I've never found an answer to the question, "What is the Point?" is because the question is pointless. Not that the answer is, "It's a Mystery." I've tried that one and it doesn't work for me either. No, it's that the question itself doesn't even exist. It's a false question. Perhaps the reason I can't find an answer is because there is no question. This is where I start to stammer and stumble, trying to figure out how to put this into words. I probably can't. So I won't try. I'll just go on.

I decided to give up the question. I'm going to make myself stop asking it—which I'm sure won't be easy since I've been asking it relentlessly for 30+ years now—and learn to exist without it. I can't quite conceive of existence without that question, but asking it sure hasn't gotten me anywhere yet so I might as well try not asking it. Maybe that won't work either, but it's worth a shot.

Resistance Is Futile

2010-05-25T20:32:00.003-04:00

My mother was an avid quilter.

My younger sister is an avid quilter.

I am not a quilter.

I am not interested in being a quilter.

I WILL NOT BECOME A QUILTER.

I just printed out instructions on how to make continuous bias tape binding.

To use on the vest I'm making with fabric I made by piecing squares of 3 different fabrics together.

But I am not a quilter.

I am not interested in being a quilter.

Really.

Turning Song

2010-05-19T10:04:00.003-04:00

A song I've been singing a lot lately. By Namoli Brennet, from my old hometown of Tucson, AZ. I woke up singing it this morning. (I misspelled her last name on the opening credits—my apologies!)

Another Prizewinner

2010-03-19T20:37:00.004-04:00

Today's most inappropriate song from my great-grandmother's sheet music collection [the views espoused in these lyrics are not shared by the author of this blog!]:

Chong (He Come from Hong Kong) ~ words & music by Harold Weeks (c. 1919)

(verse 1)

Little Allee Fo Chong played all day in an oriental way, In a swell Chinese Café,
But Allee loved his rag the same as you,
And ev'ry evening when his work was thru,
Allee layed his Tom Tom down,
Pretty soon you hear this sound:

(chorus)

'Chong, he come from Hong Kong
Where Chineeman play allee day on a drum,
Chong no likee that song,
Where Chineeman cry 'way up high,
Singee sungay, mungay, chick-a-lick-a-fungay,
Chong, go back to Hong Kong,
I betcha he teachee his China girl how to dance, like in a trance;
Teachee peachee Melican* song,
All day long to his China girl in old Hong Kong.'

(verse 2)

Little Allee Fo Chong sailed away on the liner 'Sakoshay,'
For his home port far away,
He said, 'When I come back I bringee bride,
You see a China maiden by my side,
Allee know she wait for he,
Ev'ry day so patiently.'

(repeat chorus) [if you can stomach it]

*I'm guessing this means "American," said in a xenophobic mock-Chinese accent. I have no idea what "Sakoshay" means.

Climate Change

2010-03-10T08:00:00.004-05:00

Here I was looking forward to not having to get up at the crack of dawn for work today since I'm on the closing shift, and I woke up at the crack of dawn and couldn't go back to sleep. :-(

I'm just too wound up about traveling to Tucson tomorrow! And what the heck to pack to wear... I can't even think in terms of clothing appropriate for southwestern temps in the 70s, stuck here as I am in the lingering drabs of winter in the northeast. The winter has been beautiful lately, as you can see in the slideshow below, so I'm not complaining about the weather. I'm just stumped as to the major wardrobe shift I need to make for the weekend. Perhaps I'll just pack a carry-on and go to Savers thrift store when we get to Tucson and buy some cheap clothes to wear for 3 days and re-donate them when we leave! That's actually not such a bad plan, as I think about it... :-)

John 12:1-8

2010-02-27T11:32:00.007-05:00

Someone came up to me last Sunday and said, "What you did for Advent, with all the drapes of fabric—I think we should do that again for Easter! I loved it! I'll do whatever you need to help—I don't have a lick of creativity in me [her words—I would disagree, but that's for another post], but I can hang things, whatever. Just tell me what to do, and I'll do it." So, since then I've been pondering (obsessing, really—where's the line between creative contemplation and obsession?) what we might do to adorn the sanctuary for Easter. Another artist in the community made a beautiful banner last year that we'll hang again in the chancel area, so we'll want to complement that: it's white doves with gold and yellow accents. My initial approach was to use muslin because it's inexpensive, and dress it up with gold cording, stitching, etc. I even spent an hour or so working with my serger, trying out different things to see what's possible. And I came up with a couple of different approaches that could make simple muslin look festive and more elegant.

And artistically speaking, I like the idea of using plain muslin, something like the material of Jesus's burial shroud, and resurrecting it to be glorious. But still, it's muslin and will look like muslin, albeit with gold cording, etc. And mostly I'd use it because it's cheap.

My soul is saying, "I want to drape the sanctuary in beauty, swathe it in truly glorious fabrics! I want to celebrate the resurrection of Christ like I would celebrate the return to life of my husband if he had died. I want it to be rich and elegant and sumptuous. Overabundant. More than we can afford." I even found a fabric on-line that would fit beautifully what I envision:

But then we come back to cost. This fabric is $27.95/yard. We'd need at least 20 yards of it. How to pay for it? How to justify the money in these times of financial hardship for the church, and for us personally? I'm startled by the vigor of my yearning to go all out for this holiday—Easter has never been a big deal for me, and I tend much more to low-church simplicity and nontraditional decorations. So to feel so strongly drawn to swathe the sanctuary in white and gold silks is really antithetical to me. I'm not sure how to understand it. But I really really really don't want to go cheap this year. I'd rather do nothing than do something cheap because we can't afford what I really want. But I'm morally opposed to spending gobs of money on material things. How to reconcile these truths in me? I don't know. Commit to spending the money on the material, and then instead give the money to a mission project? Spend the money on the material and honor my call to abundant celebration of the resurrection of Jesus Christ, and trust that somehow it's the right thing to do?

I keep going back to the story in John 12 of Mary pouring perfume on Jesus' feet. Shall I be Mary in that story, or Judas? I'd love to find a way to be both! That's always been a tough story for me because I was raised to think like Judas, but I have the soul of Mary. I guess this is what Lent is about for me this year—my perpetual struggle between Judasness and Maryness. Practicality vs. Beauty. If I were independently wealthy, I wouldn't have to choose...

Sheet Music Awards

2010-02-21T18:57:00.012-05:00

I've been playing through a big carton of my grandmother's and great-grandmother's sheet music from the early 20th century that I retrieved from my mother's house last summer. Most of the music is more notable for its cover art than for the songs themselves (they obviously cranked this stuff out by the boxload back in the day, emphasizing quantity over quality), though there is the occasional gem.

Today's trip through the Roaring Teens & Twenties (and the odd Aught or two) netted me the following winners in three categories:

1) Most Over-The-Top Song (And Cover): "The Rosary"; words by Robert Cameron Rogers, music by Georgia B. Welles; published 1903

The hours I spent with thee, dear heart,
Are as a string of pearls to me—
I count them o'er each one apart,
My Rosary, my Rosary.
Each hour a pearl, each pearl a prayer
To still a heart in absence wrung—
I tell each bead unto the end,
And there a cross is hung—
A cross is hung—
Oh memories that bless and burn,
Oh barren gain, Oh bitter loss!
I touch each bead at last to learn
To kiss the Cross, sweetheart,
To kiss the cross, the cross, sweetheart.

[And this is in the collection of my devout Baptist foremothers!]

2) Scariest Cover: "Lullaby Land"; words by Frank Davis, music by M. Prival; published 1919

Runner-Up: "Forever and Ever with You"; words by Benny Davis, music by Joe Burke; published 1925

[This would have won first place in the Scariest Cover category if the Japanese woman(?) were full-size and not just an inset]

3) Songs You Wouldn't Get Away With Today: "In My Harem"; words and music by Irving Berlin (also a winner in the Irving Berlin Songs You've Never Heard Of, For Good Reason category); published 1913

[VERSE 1]
Down in Turkey-urkey, Pat Malone [or Abie Cohen, depending on your ethnic predilection]
Was selling fancy clothes to any one who'd wear 'em.
When the Turks were called away to war,
A Turk asked Patrick [Abie] if he wouldn't watch his Harem;
Patrick [Abie] said, "With pleasure, I will cover ev'ry track,
I'll take care of ev'rything, so don't you hurry back."
Patrick [Abie] then sat down and wrote a note
To all his friends at home, and this is what he wrote,

[CHORUS]
In my Harem, my Harem,
There's Rosie, Josie, Posie,
And there never was a minute King Solomon was in it,
Wives for breakfast, wives for dinner,
Wives for supper time;
Lots of fancy dancing, and it doesn't cost a dime,
In my Harem, my Harem,
There's Fannie, Annie, Jenny,
And the dance they do
Would make you wish that you were in a Harem with Pat Malone [Abie Cohen].

[VERSE 2]
Patrick [Abie] said, "I've got a thousand wives,
And ev'ry one of them has got a perfect figure.
Small ones, tall ones, big as they could be,
There's some as big as that, and some are even bigger.
That young Turk aint coming back until the war is won,
I don't wish him hard luck, but I hope they steal his gun.
I am living many happy lives,
How can a man get lonesome with a thousand wives?

[REPEAT CHORUS]

Winter Retreat

2010-02-06T16:51:00.002-05:00

James and I spent 24 hours in Brattleboro, VT, on Thursday-Friday doing lots of our favorite things: prowling book and record shops, going to a live music show (the first act was terrific, then it went downhill fast so we snuck out to the Tap Room next door), sampling local brews, people-watching (with private commentary), eating good food, walking around, and sleeping. All very restful and just what we needed to lift a bit of the midwinter blues. The rest of the photos I took are in the slideshow at the bottom of the page.

The Snow Bunny Returns!

2010-01-15T17:32:00.005-05:00

Thanks to a wonderfully generous couple at church, James and I now each have a complete set of cross-country skis! (Thank you, Dick & Dana!!!) So we took our first jaunt together today. It was James's second time ever on skis—his first outing was on Monday with some church folks—and it was my first time in YEARS. Somehow my parents managed to afford to buy us all cross-country skis one Christmas when I was about 14 or so, and I fell in love with it and spent lots of time on them for the next several years. I lugged the skis to Tucson where they sat in the garage for a decade, sadly unused. It was a major production to go skiing there—the only snow was up on the mountain, and it was a long, winding drive that James and I rarely had the motivation to undertake. Especially in snow. And I couldn't handle the altitude, anyway.

My old skis made it here to Pittsfield with me, too, but they're the kind you need to wax (which always annoyed me, even though my father insisted that was an integral part of the whole experience—personally I can live without the half-hour of scraping off old wax and then putting on new, only to find that I've chosen poorly and that kind of wax isn't working well on the type of snow on the ground...), so I've been less than eager to get them back on my feet. Plus I needed new boots.

The donated skis are no-wax, and the boots that came with them are exactly my size! And I still have my poles, so my equipment is complete now. It took me a few minutes to get my stride back, but then I relaxed into the glide and whooshed off, feeling vibrantly alive in a way I haven't felt in a long, long time. My body may complain tomorrow, but I can't wait for Sunday when we can go skiing again! I haven't quite figured out how to bring Casey along, since he's too senile to trust off the leash now, and how does one go about holding on to a leashed dog while using ski poles? I took him around the yard with me (unleashed) when we got back from our jaunt to see what he thought of me on skis. He was a little worried at first, but then he's always worried at first when anything new comes into his world. James thinks I'm crazy, but I'm determined to work out the logistics of Casey joining us so he can enjoy the great outdoors in winter with us. I'm loving it!

Natural Disaster

2010-01-13T19:00:00.006-05:00

The earthquake in Haiti has made everything I had thought about writing here today seem ridiculously insignificant. So I'll just share this poem with you from one of my favorite poets, Sharon Olds. I read her poem "True Love" at my wedding in 1995, and another of her poems, "Topography," at my niece's wedding this past summer. She has a way of saying it just so. I was exactly like this when I was 8. I still am, sometimes.

(P.S. Photos from our trip to Boston last weekend are in the slideshow at the bottom of the page.)

[Image: Self-portrait with photo, sketch, and journal entry]

The Talk

In the sunless wooden room at noon
the mother had a talk with her daughter.
The rudeness could not go on, the meanness
to her little brother, the selfishness.
The eight-year-old sat on the bed
in the corner of the room, her irises distilled as
the last drops of something, her firm
face melting, reddening,
silver flashes in her eyes like distant
bodies of water glimpsed through woods.
She took it and took it and broke, crying out
I hate being a person! diving
into the mother
as if
into
a deep pond—and she cannot swim,
the child cannot swim.

Heat Wave

2010-01-02T09:58:00.003-05:00

I've started timing them, just to give me something to do while sweating it out. For the past 3 weeks or so, my body has been stuck in a hot flash loop—I have so many every day and night that I can't even give you a ballpark number for them. Some last about 30 seconds, others go on for 2-3 minutes. I've decided it's best to wear less clothing than is comfortable when I'm not flashing so that it's not totally unbearable when I am. Which means I spend part of the time too cold, and the rest of the time too hot. Nighttime is the most difficult to figure out, given the frigid temperature of our bedroom (located directly over the unheated garage). When I'm not flashing, I need thermal underwear and the electric blanket on to be comfortable. But then the flashes are insufferable. Last night I tried wearing nothing and turning off the electric blanket, based on advice I found on several internet sites to lower the surrounding temperature to prevent triggering hot flashes. But the temperature differential between the sweaty times and the cold winter air was too weird, and I didn't have any fewer flashes. So I'm going to try a light t-shirt tonight—enough to keep the wintry drafts at bay, but hopefully not overly oppressive when my body temperature soars to 100-and-hell degrees.

This past fall the trouble wasn't hot flashes—it was severe mood swings. I'd spend 2 weeks out of every 4 feeling miserable, exhausted, unlikeable and incompetent, hating everything and everyone, and just wanting to be left alone. And then the other 2 weeks I'd bounce around like a happy puppy, loving everything and everyone, manically getting things done, careening down the road towards the next crevasse… I was really beginning to worry that my chronic depression was tilting into bipolar disorder—something I've known in others and dread suffering myself (and making those who love me suffer with me)—so I guess I can be grateful to the hot flashes for proving it to be Just Hormones. Or the lack thereof. The mood swings have ended—for now—and the heat wave has begun. As disruptive as the hot flashes are, I do prefer them to mood swings. As does my husband, I'm sure. Although he hates to be cold, and I keep turning down the heat in the house…

December

2009-12-27T17:58:00.004-05:00

The sun has been out quite a bit this month, unlike last winter when we were buried under snow upon snow upon snow for six long months… A week or so ago I took the dog for a walk in the wetlands behind our house, now frozen and walkable (plus—no ticks!) to enjoy the sunshine, take some photos (see the slideshow at the bottom of the page), and get some fresh air and exercise. While I was distracted by wild turkey tracks, Casey decided to head back towards the house, who knows why. I called to him and clapped my hands, trying to pierce his old-dog deafness. He stopped, looked around blindly, then kept heading for the house. I took off after him, afraid that in his senile dementia he'd run out into the road and get hit by a car, and for a few moments I lost sight of him. Tromping along as fast as I could in my big snow boots, calling and clapping, visions of screeching tires and yowling doggie road-kill in my head, I finally saw Casey—running up the stairs on our back deck, looking to see who was calling him to come home. I pondered as I caught up with him and told him our walk wasn't over yet: be annoyed with him for running away? or happy with him for running home? At least in his dementia he went home when confused. I guess I'll be happy with that. I kept him on the leash for the rest of the walk (which would have made a great comic video, me trying to cope with a dog on a leash while taking photos of turkey tracks and dried milkweed pods).

Casey is as happy as we are today to have Jesse & Mike up for the weekend from Brooklyn. Mike is perhaps Casey's favorite person. Poor Mike woke up this morning to Casey staring him in the face—he'd left their bedroom door ajar and Casey just couldn't wait for him to get up! If his hips weren't so arthritic, I'm sure he'd have climbed into bed with them. He's done it before. And he knows he's not allowed on the furniture. Like many old folks, he uses his age as an excuse to take liberties. Senility comes in handy sometimes.

O Tannenbaum

2009-12-06T17:52:00.003-05:00

For the first time in probably 15 years, James and I went out to cut our own Christmas tree. And we got a blue spruce—my favorite! In Cleveland, after a rather disastrous escapade to cut a tree our first Christmas together, we decided to just buy pre-cut ones from the lumber yard down the street. Much easier on everyone. And then in Tucson it was a major mountain-climbing expedition to cut your own tree, so we settled for the ones trucked in by Northerners and sold in plaza parking lots. Blue spruces were rare and expensive, well out of our financial league. Although we looked forward to being able to cut our own tree again when we moved back to the Northeast, the first 2 Christmases here were way too hectic to find the time. James ended up snagging one of the last few at the nursery down the street the week before Christmas both years...

So on Friday, when the sun decided to shine for once and we had the day off together, I went online and found the one and only tree farm in the Berkshires that has blue spruce and, after dropping the car off at Sears for a new set of tires, we drove the old truck down to Great Barrington and headed out into the boonies to the Seekonk Tree Farm. Fortunately, the owners were willing to bill us for the tree since we didn't think about the fact that they might not take debit cards! And, middle-aged wuss that I've become, I was glad we hadn't had any snow yet so I didn't have to get a faceful while sawing the tree down.

Now the tree is up, the lights and ornaments are on, and I made a Christmas tree skirt this afternoon from some flannel I inherited from my Mom's stash. (Why is it that the part that always takes the longest and is the biggest pain to do is the part that doesn't show anyway? Just something I've noticed.) And we had a beautiful fat snowfall yesterday that made everything picture perfect. The outdoor lights that Jesse & Mike helped James put up last weekend look like a confection covered in snow. Check out the pictures in the slide show below...

Bisbee, AZ : Brattleboro, VT

2009-11-15T16:40:00.005-05:00

I am looking out the window at a spectacular sunset—beautiful even if it is only 4:30pm. We've had another few days' reprieve from the onset of winter, with temperatures in the 50s and maybe even up into the 60s tomorrow. So I spent a couple hours this afternoon raking leaves and dragging them via tarp to the compost heap. Still have a few piles to go, but we're just about done. Last year we raked the leaves into piles and then snow fell on them (in late October, as I recall) before we could get them carted off the lawn, and the snow never left us again until April. I've felt mightily oppressed these past weeks by the thought of another winter starting before fall is even over and lasting until spring is halfway done, so I'm thrilled to have a longer stretch of reasonably warm weather before the onslaught begins this year.

On Friday, James and I took a little overnight trip to Brattleboro, VT, for a little R&R before the Thanksgiving/Advent/Christmas crush is upon us. We'd intended to go last spring, had motel reservations and were packing to leave the next day, when my mother went into the hospital for a persistent fever and suddenly sank into a coma. The doctors said, "She's unresponsive. We don't know why." Unresponsive: is this something you go immediately to her bedside for, or do you go ahead with your vacation plans and see what develops? The doctors just repeated, "She's unresponsive. We don't know why. We can't predict anything." Only later did we learn that "unresponsive" is doctor lingo for "coma." And that Mom went into a coma because of a stroke. When she died two weeks later, James and I were both really glad we'd put off our Brattleboro trip in favor of going immediately to Mom's bedside. But I did get a little superstitiously anxious when we made reservations again in Brattleboro and prepared to leave. Would James's dad, who just got back home after 6 weeks in a rehab center for a dislocated shoulder after a fall, suddenly take a turn for the worse, or fall again? Would some other loved one have a stroke and die? Is Brattleboro a jinx place for us?

Fortunately, the answer is no. Brattleboro is a lovely town that we'll be visiting again many times, I'm sure—and nobody got sick or went into the hospital or died while we were gone. I think it will become our Massachusetts Bisbee, our haven from the day-to-day rush: a hippie town with great bookstores and art and music and food. Laid-back, friendly (the people there are really chatty!), a beautiful place at the end of a beautiful hour-and-a-half drive. Just like Bisbee, AZ. And built on a steep hillside, too, just like Bisbee—another place to keep us in good shape as we hoof it up and down Main St. I can tell we'll be spending a lot of time there.

[Top photo: Brattleboro, VT
Bottom photo: Bisbee, AZ, during a rare blizzard the last time we visited]

Don't You Wish You Had My Job?

2009-10-20T16:05:00.006-04:00

A typical exchange, overheard at work this morning:

[Phone call comes in; manager answers it.]

Manager: Hello, how may I help you?

Caller: (…)

M: Yes, we do.

C: (…)

M: In white and black.

C: (…)

M: About 4 or 5 inches.

C: (…)

M: Puffy? No, they're flat.

C: (…)

M: You want to put them on a poodle?

C: (…)

M: Oh, a poodle skirt…

This Is Not/Trash

2009-10-16T22:50:00.003-04:00

Not a trash can outside a service station in Wellsville, NY. A trash can in a coffee shop in North Adams, MA. Not/Art in Dianne's mind.

[More pictures from our trip today to North Adams, MA, in the slideshow at the bottom of the page.]

The Last Harvest

2009-10-14T19:22:00.004-04:00

Well, except for the parsley and the kale, both of which are loving the cold weather. But with a couple of hard frosts this week, and snow predicted for this weekend, the garden has pretty much given up for the season. I harvested the remainder this afternoon, leaving only the 2 tiny pumpkins which still have a little orange-ing to do (though they may not do it with this wintry weather, in which case we'll pick them half green and be half happy), and the Brussels sprouts which have yet to Brussel. I'm giving them every chance possible to do their thing before I yank them.

So, we've got a mess of swiss chard for supper tonight, and I'll make soup with the 2 dozen carrots and bushels of parsley (that stuff never gives up!). Plus there's another meal's worth of kale—James had pulled up the main kale plants a couple of weeks ago, since we'd been in kale up to our eyebrows all summer and they'd gotten pretty tall and skanky. But I left the "ornamental" ones in the containers at the corners of the garden and forgot all about them. When I went to check on the green peppers (sadly, zapped by the frost), lo and behold, more kale! Our back yard is obviously Kale Heaven. Anyway, we'll eat that tomorrow.

And the bucket of green onions… I dug up the madding crowd of green onions and stuck them bulb-and-roots down into a small metal pail to carry up to the house, then decided to just leave them in the bucket and put some water in it to see how long they'll last that way indoors. When they start to wilt, I'll process them (somehow—make green onion soup?), but we'll see if we can have a supply of fresh ones for a little while longer. And it makes for a lovely Green Onion incense effect throughout the house. Perhaps we'll market it.

In a Mood

2009-09-29T19:19:00.004-04:00

unseasonable outburst

(the words came to me
in the bathtub
this afternoon
after a long and
not terrible but not great either
day at work)

like a blizzard in september
maybe
or a fit over nothing
needy for no good reason

my dog's gas

(should it be
unreasonable outburst?
i thought
well, yes, that makes more sense
in a language-y kind of way

but, no
it's unseasonable
this outburst
i'm having

a little invisible
blizzard
in september
wishing i weren't alone
then calling off a dinner date
with a friend

taking the scissors to my hair
turning lights on and then
off again
sitting in the near dark
by myself [humph, says the dog]
for no reason
to no purpose
just because i'm like that
[whispered unpleasantry from the dog's
backside]
sometimes)

Berbere Misadventure

2009-09-28T19:25:00.005-04:00

We bought a little packet of Ethiopian Berbere spice mix a couple of weeks ago somewhere and I decided to use up the remaining 1/2 pound of hamburger tonight to make a berbere stew. First off, the directions on the packet were less than exacting, so I don't know if they meant hot or sweet "red pepper," but I figured berbere stew is usually a little spicy hot so I minced up the one and only jalapeño pepper that our garden produced this summer and tossed it in. Well, that bite-sized pepper must have contained all the concentrated hotness from all 6 plants that we planted! And little did I know that the seasoning packet contained lots of chile peppers, too. By the time I mixed everything in, it was one fiery stew!!! I barely touched the spoon to taste it and 15 minutes later my lips are still burning.

But, I say to myself, we're game for a little spicy hotness, having spent 10 years in Tucson, AZ, so I went on with the preparations and added a can of diced tomatoes to the mix. Thinking that perhaps a touch of brown sugar would cut a little of the heat, I reached up into the cupboard over the stove to get the sugar and accidentally knocked a small glass dessert cup off the shelf, which fell directly into the berbere pan and broke. And I was unable to locate all of the pieces. Which means there's broken glass in the stew now.

So much for my special dinner for James before he goes out of town tomorrow for 3 days. At least the house smells terrific—we can pretend we're eating Ethiopian berbere stew, whatever it is we end up throwing together. And there's enough spice mix left in the packet to try again another time—and next time I'll know not to add any more hot pepper.

Visual Feast

2009-09-25T22:36:00.003-04:00

Fall has begun in the Berkshires and is as beautiful as always. James and I took a little tour last Friday around our environs, visiting Hilltop Orchards and Furnace Brook Winery in Richmond, and the Project Native seed bank in Great Barrington. Then today the sun was out and the trees in the wetland behind our house were showing off their new fall colors, so I got my camera and took yet more Fall Photos. And later, while resting in my sky chair after mowing half the back yard, I saw the sun on the pumpkin blossoms and couldn't resist getting my camera out again. I've posted the photos in the slide show at the bottom of the page so you can enjoy the view!

Payday

2009-09-04T17:14:00.004-04:00

I got my first full-time paycheck today—actually only half what it will be from now on since I was on vacation the first week of the pay period—and promptly went out and spent most of it! Well, 3/4 of it. Half was on groceries: I've existed on peanut butter, a rotisserie chicken, and leftover rice-and-bean casserole for the past 4 days because James is out of town, I've been wiped out from my first days of full-time work at Jo-Ann's, and I came down with a cold on top of it. So extra-curricular activites like grocery shopping fell by the wayside. But now the cupboards are full again and I have a plethora of options for dinner tonight. James returns tomorrow—YAY!—and my cold is receding. So life is definitely much improving.

The other 1/4 of my check I spent on myself: a few yards of various clearance fabrics on sale half-price this weekend, along with some fall floral things and a couple other odds-and-ends at Jo-Ann's; and two pairs of pants for work, new bath mats for the guest bathroom, two nonstick frying pans, and other sundries from TJMaxx. When considering my "calling," I have never placed full-time middle-management retail work high on the list. But it sure is nice to be able to buy groceries, and still have a little left to spend on frippery like clothes, home decor, and cookware. (Our old "nonstick" frying pans had deteriorated into a sad suggestion of a surface between the burner and the food. Not particularly useful anymore, or appetizing. We've probably been ingesting toxic levels of nonstickery with our eggs for some time now...)

When my boss told me about this full-time job opening and asked me to consider it, my mother had just died. In fact, I was back home for a few days between my mother's death and her memorial service, not in the frame of mind to think about significant shifts in my working life since I had yet to even consume the fact that my mother was gone: GONE. So my first answer was "No." My boss persisted, I told her I'd think about it, and then after my mother's memorial service I came back to work and said "No" again. But she refused to take No for an answer and told me the offer wasn't "off the table" yet! So I wrestled with the pros and cons, talked through scheduling concerns with her, got the clear message from James that the added stress in our lives of me working full-time would be outweighed by the reduced stress of having enough money to pay bills, and finally told my boss "Yes." I realized that the only reason I had for saying No is that I don't want to work full-time. Which seems rather self-indulgent. Not that I don't have good reasons for not wanting to work full-time: I worked full-time the last 5 years we were in Tucson and it was exhausting, given James's job as a pastor that calls on a lot of energy from me as well. And we had very little time to spend together, and the time we did have was usually spent doing all that household errand-type stuff that gets put off until your day off, etc. But still, to say No only because "I don't want to" is pretty childish.

So, the good reasons to take on the extra hours and bring home the extra money: (1) It will help James feel much more secure financially and take a big load off his shoulders. Anything that reduces stress in this family is a big plus! (2) When so many other people are unemployed or underemployed these days, including members of my own family as well as close friends, how can I turn down the offer of going full-time? It just seems wrong in the current economy. (3) I really like the people I work with at the store, and if I didn't take this position we'd have to hire someone from outside and who knows what we'd end up with? (4) I really like the people I work with at the store, and I've found that who (or whom, if you're being a grammatical stickler) I work with matters more to me than the actual work that I do, in terms of how much I enjoy the job vs. how much it drains me. So, even if tracking merchandise and counting out register drawers and answering customer complaints isn't my dream job, I'll have fun with my co-workers and be grateful for the financial stress-reliever. All good reasons to say Yes.

I took Casey in the truck with me today to Jo-Ann's so he wouldn't be stuck in his crate all day again. I left him in the back of the pickup with the little communicating window open a couple of inches to provide cross-ventilation. When I came out of the store, he greeted me from the passenger seat up front—he'd managed to nose the little window all the way open and cram his ancient arthritic body through it to get up in the front seat. Pretty spry when he wants to be! Of course, he's been hobbling around ever since—his old hips really aren't up to these youthful pranks anymore. But I had to give him credit for doggedness.

Our Vacation Show & Tell

2009-08-11T21:22:00.008-04:00

I've posted my photos from our week in Montréal (with one day in Québec City) in the slideshow at the bottom of the page. I whittled it down from over 175 to a mere 121, so it should only take you a couple of hours to look at...

It's clear from the photos I took that our three main foci of the week were: 1) Music; 2) Children; and 3) Food. The usual three for us! Foci 1 & 2 are captured best in this short video that I took one evening at the Francofolies, a week-long festival of French music in Montréal that we frequented:

We were really impressed all week at how many young families there are in Montréal, and how family-friendly the city is. It's one of our favorite things about the place now.

We also went twice to "Upstairs," a jazz bar located down a few stairs from the rue McKay in downtown Montréal. This video is from the first night we went; the second night had an older, more experienced quartet, but these young guys were fun, too:

And then on Sunday, before we left town, we trekked up to Parc du Mont-Royal to check out the Tam Tam, an informal drumming jam session that happens every Sunday afternoon. It's been going on since the late 1970s and has turned into a kind of hippie market and picnic fest:

On our way home we stopped in Burlington, VT, for dinner because I've long wanted to see the city—a small northern city on the shore of Lake Champlain, right up my alley—and I was right: it's a great place! And we just happened to show up the weekend of their Feast of Fools, a street fair with artists and performers, etc. We love that stuff! What a great way to end a great week. And another fabulous noodle bar to boot! What more could a person ask for?

Peanut Butter Dumplings and The Story Sisters

2009-08-10T08:55:00.002-04:00

As I write this, my camera is uploading to my computer 189 pictures that I took last week on our trip to Montreal. I'll get them edited and posted to the slideshow at the bottom of this blog when I get home from work this afternoon. For now I'll just say that we had a great time, ate great food (including peanut butter dumplings at a hole-in-the-wall noodle bar), and got a smidgen better at parlez-ing Français.

I also read a tremendous book while we were there: Alice Hoffman's new novel, The Story Sisters. I've always been a big fan of Alice Hoffman, but this novel is her best so far, I think. I don't know how much a man or someone without a sister would get out of it, but as a woman with 3 sisters, I lived inside that book for a week. There is so much truth in it.

She got a seat and looked out at the trees and thought what a long way it seemed to New York, and how her mother had driven here once in a blinding snowstorm and she had refused to see her. How she'd watched from the window, too prideful to call out to her mother, too young to know how few chances there would be to do so.

I want to give this book to every young person I know, all of us so full of pride and unaware of how short life really is and how few chances we have to love someone. I wish it would make a difference. But I know we all have to learn this lesson ourselves, and no matter how long life is, it's never long enough to love someone as much as we want to. That last chance always comes too soon.

Hey Man! (Now You're Really Living)

2009-07-23T11:26:00.002-04:00

Last night I cried hard for an hour, though not as hard as I really could or probably need to, but it's still just too much to let out in full. After 3 months, the unending reality of my mother's—and father's—GONEness is hitting me in a way that feels like a kick in the stomach. There's a reason it's called "crying your guts out." It's always easier for me to sing my feelings than talk about them or cry about them. So here I am with our church band, Between the Banks, at rehearsal this past week singing "Hey Man, Now You're Really Living," by the Eels.

The Truth of It

2009-07-19T05:56:00.005-04:00

I'm reading a book right now called The Orphaned Adult: Understanding and Coping with Grief and Change After the Death of Our Parents, by Alexander Levy. In my family, we read books to figure things out. My father—a psychology professor, not a carpenter or contractor—built our house himself by, as he told me once, "reading a book about it." His philosophy was that you could pretty much learn anything you want to by reading books. When I was lamenting going to a state college because we couldn't afford anything better, his answer was, "You can learn whatever you want and need to anywhere that has a good library." So, in that tradition, when faced with incomprehensible thoughts, feelings, and even physical reactions to the death of my mother in April, I turn to books. This happens to be a pretty good one, written by a practicing psychologist who has lost both of his parents in recent years. Mostly what I'm learning so far is that I have no real control over how I react to this loss. No matter how many books I read! That's a hard one for me to accept, and it raises really interesting questions. (This is where my mind turns to scientific and philosophic curiosity to avoid feeling unorganizable pain.) Who am "I" if "I" have no control over my thoughts and feelings? What a strange and fascinating conundrum! Who is this person who lives in a continually running film loop of the last two weeks of my mother's life in the hospital in April while "I" go about my daily life in July? And who is the person going about daily life in July while "I" live in a continually running film loop of the last two weeks of my mother's life in April?

I find myself wanting to be in touch with people from my past, wanting to actually touch them, to physically connect with the Me I was when Mom was alive, I guess. Establish a continuous thread of identity. At Mom's memorial service, when I saw my foster sister, Anh, whom I hadn't seen in many years, when we hugged and I felt her living, breathing body sobbing against mine, I could feel the big hole where Mom used to be in our lives together. I need that physical reality of Mom's Gone-ness. My husband the theologian would say that I need to incarnate her death. That is the truth of it. And in doing that I will feel more incarnate myself in the world as it exists for me now. In this World-minus-Mom that I now live in, I feel ghostly. Shadowy. Living in coexistent, parallel, yet disconnected universes where a part of me deals with life today while another part is stuck at my mom's bedside in the Dansville hospital, holding her hand and watching her lips grow parched as she fights to hold on to this thing we know as Living that she loved for no particular reason except that she loved to be Alive. She wants me to be fully alive now, I know, to enjoy what she no longer can—not linger in the shadows of her dying days while Today slips by only half-lived.

A poem by Juan Ramon Jimenez comes to mind right now, a poem I understand—or, really, don't understand—in different ways each time I come back to it:

Yo no soy yo.
Soy este
que va a mi lado sin yo verlo;
que, a veces, voy a ver,
y que, a veces, olvido.
El que calla, sereno, cuando hablo,
el que perdona, dulce, cuando odio,
el que pasea por donde no estoy,
El que quedará en pie cuando yo muera.

As Robert Bly translates it:

I am not I.
I am this one
walking beside me whom I do not see,
whom at times I manage to visit,
and whom at other times I forget;
who remains calm and silent while I talk,
and forgives, gently, when I hate,
who walks where I am not,
who will remain standing when I die.

That is the truth of it, I guess.

Extravagant Beauty: Makoto Fujimura

2009-07-17T11:43:00.009-04:00

If you don't know who Makoto Fujimura is, you would do well to find out. He is a master artist and master thinker about creativity and humanity and God. I met him at an International Arts Movement (IAM) conference in February 2007—he took a group of us on a tour of Ground Zero in New York City, where the World Trade Center once stood. Tall, thin, and quiet, Mako embodies humility and radiates a wise serenity that is at once peaceful and restless, always probing for new depths of truth. I am on the email list for his newsletter and have excerpted this from his most recent essay:

In the famed Joshua Bell experiment at L'Enfant Plaza subway station, The Washington Post had the violin master play as folks rushed to work, to see if anyone would stop and pay attention. Only a few people did (out of 1070), and he "earned" $32.17 in the 43 minutes of experiment, a repertoire that included "Chaconne" from Johann Sebastian Bach's Partita No. 2 in D Minor, and Franz Schubert's "Ave Maria." But one person, a demographer at the Commerce Department, did recognize him: "It was the most astonishing thing I've ever seen in Washington," Furukawa says. "Joshua Bell was standing there playing at rush hour, and people were not stopping, and not even looking, and some were flipping quarters at him! Quarters! I wouldn't do that to anybody. I was thinking, Omigosh, what kind of a city do I live in that this could happen?" Joshua Bell regularly plays for concerts in which the best seats go for over $100 (he played at such an event the previous evening), and yet his playing could not slow folks down, rushing to work. What kind of the city do we live in? Well, it's clear from the experiment that it is not the kind that recognizes beauty, classical or avant-garde, so readily. So, if Joshua Bell with his 3.5 million dollar Stradivarius cannot stop people, none of us who creates music, art or work in iambic pentameters should expect much. But then what good are the arts? Why would artists spend time collaborating, spending days working on something that would not be well paid, or pay nothing at all, without anyone to stop to take it in? But we should note that this wasteful excess is being exercised in many hidden places, in homes where a child protégé plays his violin, on the canvases of self-taught artists, or on a humble square table filled with poetry. They may or may not turn out to be Joshua Bells, or Grandma Moses or Emily Dickinsons, but the prerequisite for the arts never seem to be a guarantee of an audience, or income. Artists are clearly not driven by mere monetary capital, but they are driven by another form of capital - creative and relational capital, the discovery of new ideas and thoughts and cultural geography. But it is worthwhile to ask, "is Joshua Bell's exquisite playing, or Susie [Ibarra]'s quiet percussion, useful for society at all?" Is there a utilitarian reason for valuing their art? The heartbeat of the arts resounds with internal significance that quietly pleads for Art to be more than a mere tool. Art is the "organ of human life," as Tolstoy would have it; co-joined with our deepest humanity. We cannot "use" the arts, any more than we can "use" a human being. This pervasive utilitarian view is a symptom of our greater cultural malaise, a view that can dehumanize the entire river of culture. Artists need to transgress against this truncated reality that views utility above the life of art. Thus, the essence of art needs to be useless, or use-less, because of the intrinsic nature of our excess. What is extravagantly beautiful is a deposit toward a greater fusing of purpose and design of our universe."

Amen.

If you would like to subscribe to Mako's newsletter, go to his website (linked above) and click on "Blog," then on the blog page click on "LINKS TO THIS POST" which will open up a small window for you to enter your email address to "Join the Refractions Mailing List." This is not one of those mailing lists that trigger annoying amounts of emails—Mako is as quiet and humble in his newslettering as he is in the rest of his life.

Once again, Casey the Wonder Dog

2009-07-08T16:34:00.004-04:00

Took our old buddy to the vet today for his hips. He's been having more and more trouble getting up and down the stairs, shifting from one side to the other when lying down, etc. It takes him a bit of maneuvering to stand up or lie down, and he's been increasingly subdued and even surly lately. Clearly the over-the-counter doggie aspirins weren't doing it for him anymore.

Since he's been a reasonably inexpensive companion over the years—no major health problems, excepting a broken nose and a few stitches after a coyote chomped him once (quick on his feet back then, Casey managed to escape further chomping)—I decided to spring for the x-rays to see just what the poor guy is dealing with. Wow! As the vet herself said, I don't know how he's as spry as he is given the amount of calcification on his hip joints! Lots of lumpy bumpy nastiness that would have completely crippled a lesser dog. (The x-ray shown is not Casey's—just one I found on the internet—Casey's was much worse.) And he was his usual jovial self while getting all the tests done, charming all the tech staff and making new friends right and left. You'd never know he ought to be in a doggie wheelchair!

Anyway, he's now on prescription anti-inflammatories/pain relievers and glucosamine. The rest of his bones and joints were clear of any arthritis or other problems, and he passed the blood tests with flying colors. So once the drugs kick in, he should be back to his hoppity-hooper self. For a guy in his 80s, he's doing damn fine! What a great dog, in every possible way.

The Eighth Stage of Grief

2009-06-29T11:36:00.012-04:00

It's time to add an eighth stage to the classic 7 Stages of Grief as they stand now:

1. SHOCK & DENIAL
2. PAIN & GUILT
3. ANGER & BARGAINING
4. "DEPRESSION", REFLECTION, LONELINESS
5. THE UPWARD TURN
6. RECONSTRUCTION & WORKING THROUGH
7. ACCEPTANCE & HOPE

Somewhere around 3.5, maybe:

3.5. DELETING EMAIL CONTACT

I've experienced this stage before with other deaths of friends and loved ones, but this morning it struck me with new and potent force when I realized my mother's address was still on my email contact and chat lists. I almost chose the option to simply "Hide" her because it felt impossibly painful to delete her. To have to click on "Delete"—erase, cancel, remove from existence—is such a stab in the heart. This person is really and truly gone. I can "hide" from that fact, if I want, but I've never been one to hide from reality. Might as well face it—hiding from it doesn't change what is. And Mom is gone. No more emails, no more internet chats with her.

Mom was always frustrating to chat with on the internet because she had an antediluvian dial-up connection that gave her responses a serious time lag effect. It was especially difficult in 3- or 4-way chats with my sisters and Mom, where my sisters and I would already be 3 laps around the conversational track when Mom finally got a comment through. One-on-one chats with her weren't much better: I'd type my comment, send it, then go do something else while waiting for her reply to come back. Conversationus Interruptus.

But however unsatisfying those conversations may have been, they were still contact. Connection, dial-up or otherwise. To actively delete her from my contact list, to face the absolute lack of her in my internet life—in life. period.—split open my heart and brought a gush of new grief to the surface. It is a definite step in the process of grieving. I haven't erased her from my phone directories yet. That comes next. Step 3.75.

Expanding my palette

2009-06-23T17:04:00.002-04:00

We had a break in the rain today, so I spent all morning and most of the afternoon outside doing yard work, taking photos, and just hanging out with the dog. While loitering on the deck, I happened to notice the new growth on the tips of the willow tree—an arresting peachy pink color that looks so pretty next to that leafy green I decided I need to use those two colors together in something sometime soon. I've never liked pink or green. So putting the two together is quite a reach for me! It always reminds me of childhood shopping trips where Mom would persistently pick out pink and green plaid skirts and pants for me, and I would relentlessly retch and refuse to even try them on. And now I'm liking pink and green together?!? I must be getting old.

Monsoon season?

2009-06-17T15:25:00.003-04:00

A sudden heavy rainstorm (I haven't watched the news so I don't know if they've officially designated it as a "microburst," but it fit the description) hit Pittsfield on Monday while I was at work. We all gathered around the front doors and watched the rain and hail crash down and flood the parking lots and streets. Lightning struck nearby and made my whole body tingle like I'd touched an electric fence. Just after I'd said, "I hope kids aren't walking home from school in this," a young co-worker burst in through the door, soaked through, with her flip-flops in her hand. One of them had been ripped off her foot by the raging waters as she dashed from the grocery store to our shop, so she chased it down then ran for cover.

Lifelong Berkshire residents were stunned by the intensity of the storm—I said, "This is what it's like every afternoon in the summer in Tucson." Here it took people by surprise and a number of folks were trapped in their cars (although there are always those few in Tucson who get stuck in flooded areas, too, even though they should know better), and the storm did a lot of damage to roads and property throughout the county. Since I was at work, I wasn't able to get any pictures myself, but here's a video shot by a local photojournalist and friend of ours from church, Ben Garver:

Sunrise

2009-06-13T05:36:00.009-04:00

I've become one of those middle-aged women who sleeps odd hours—3 nights ago almost straight through from 11 p.m. to noon, and last night fitfully from midnight to 4 a.m. Since it gets light so early in June, I decided to just get up and make some coffee at 5:00, after a fruitless hour trying all my tricks (go to the bathroom, eat something, read) to try to fall back to sleep. The birds were already singing, "Hey, it's a new day! Get up and get started on it!" So I did.

Coffee in hand, a small breakfast of crackers with peanut butter and jelly in stomach, I sat down at the computer to check e-mail, etc., and looked up to see the sun make its first appearance on the hill out back. A spectacle of lighting I don't often get to see!

I grabbed my camera and ran out on the deck (tripping over the dog who was sure something exciting must be happening, only to be disappointed when there were no squirrels in view) and took these photos. By the time I got back inside, the clouds had covered the sun again and the lighting display was over. A fleeting moment of beauty. And I can thank my middle-aged hormones for the chance to see it.

Sky-Chair Cam

2009-06-06T15:14:00.005-04:00

The weather has been fine and the gardens are showing it. I've added some photos to the slideshow at the bottom of the page—most of them were taken from my sky chair, looking up into the leaves overhead, or over at the rhododendrons in the side garden, or at Casey who is so happy to sit in soft green grass in the sun at my side. When I first got the chair in Tucson, he loved to jump up in it with me and sit in my lap. But now he's old and lame and can't leverage himself up there anymore, and if I haul him up myself he can't get comfortable and shifts and squirms until we both go nuts and I kick him back out. So now he contents himself with lying nearby. It's a little harder for me to get in and out of this chair now, too! Ten years do tell on a body.

We put some fencing up around the expanded vegetable garden today—it won't keep any really enterprising rabbits out, but they'll at least have to make a little effort now to get to the goodies. And I put the rest of our feeble seedlings in the ground. Next spring I plan to get a good seed-starting set-up so we can maybe finally get enough of a headstart on the short growing season here to produce some real produce!

Near-Death Sushi Experience

2009-06-02T10:11:00.002-04:00

Yesterday when I got home from doing inventory at work--which meant getting up at the crack of dawn and being on my feet for 6 hours then walking home--my blood sugar crashed so I went to the refrigerator and saw sushi rolls that James had apparently bought the day before. Yay, I thought, just the thing to recover from the crash! We always get the veggie rolls with avocado, carrots, & cucumber because I'm deathly allergic to shellfish. So I mixed up the wasabi and soy sauce, dipped a roll in it, and popped it in my mouth. Chew, chew, swallow. Yum! The second roll went into the sauce and then into my mouth when I happened to look at the label on the package and saw...SHRIMP rolls! WHAT??? We never get shrimp rolls!!! I immediately spit the second roll out, rinsed out my mouth a few times, then went into the bathroom and for the first time in my life—and hopefully the last—made myself throw up by sticking my fingers in my throat. (I could never be bulimic.) I then ransacked the house looking for Benadryl, managing to find 2 which I promptly took.

Not knowing whether there was reason to be dramatic about this—I've successfully avoided shellfish since finding out I'm allergic to them, so I don't know how they'll actually affect me now—I called James at church to let him know what had happened just in case my throat started to swell up or whatever. He was in a meeting but the church secretary, when she heard what had happened, dropped the phone and ran down the hall to get him. Also not knowing whether to be dramatic about this, James decided to cut short his meeting and go buy me some more Benadryl and come home to keep an eye on me. He said to his secretary, "I've never gotten shrimp rolls before—and I forgot to tell Dianne I bought them. Damn!"

With a mega-dose of Benadryl in my system, I went to sleep for a couple of hours. When I woke up, I had a spell of severe intestinal cramping, and then was pretty much o.k. except for some respiratory congestion. This morning I woke up with puffy eyes but otherwise fine. The whole episode made me think that perhaps it's time to get an EpiPen, or at least a medical bracelet. I hate melodrama, and EpiPens and bracelets seem so melodramatic—I mean, really, it's just a little shrimp, for cryin' out loud! But it would be even more ridiculous to end up dying from something as stupid as a little shrimp. Would I rather seem foolishly melodramatic, or foolishly dead? Not really any contest there, I guess.

State of Mind

2009-05-30T15:43:00.004-04:00

I didn't know when I got up this morning that I would spend most of today creating the above artwork, "Imminence"—a tribute to my mother's last days when she repeatedly defied doctors and nurses who declared the end of her life "imminent." The text reads, "Imminence is a state of mind," and the photo is one taken in the early 1950s of my mother. The 3 motifs I incorporated into the work are:

1) A bargello quilt design (my mother was an avid quilter)
2) An EKG graph
3) The jester on my mother's skirt

It makes sense that I'd become immersed in this project today since I had another crying dream last night. I seem to be able to cry more in my sleep than I do while awake these days. I guess that's how my psyche is working it out. Dreams and artwork. Not a bad way to grieve.

Stash Inheritance

2009-05-27T19:09:00.005-04:00

I've started cataloguing the binloads of stuff I brought home from my mother's quilting stash, mostly to get a handle on what I actually have now so I don't do redundant buying, but also just to see the amassed abundance of what I've inherited from her. The following list is incomplete—I still have a few bins to go through—but I just had to share with you the emerging "WOW!" (I can't figure out how to indent on this thing, so everything is left-justified—sorry):

STASH INHERITANCE CATALOGUE

I. Notions
A. Fusible web
1. Heat ‘n’ Bond
a) Original: 18” roll x ?? yds
b) Low-temp: 17” x 1 yd (2 pkgs)
2. Steam-A-Seam 2 Double-Stick
a) 1/4” x 40 yds
b) 1/2” x 20 yds
3. Easy-Knit Tape: 10 yds
4. Fusible Fleece: 22” x 1yd
B. Needles
1. Sewing machine needles
a) Assorted Universal (4)
b) Universal 75/11
c) Universal 80/12 (3)
d) Universal 90/14 (3)
e) Assorted + twin (8)
f) Twin with one needle winged
g) Assorted Embroidery (4)
h) Jeans/Denim 70/10 (4)
i) Jeans/Denim 90/14 (3)
j) Jeans/Denim 100/16 (5)
k) Stretch twin 2.5/75
l) Stretch twin 4.0/75
m) Upholstery 100/16 (2) + 110/18 (2)
n) Woven & Knit 80/12 (1 pkg of 5)
o) Topstitch 90/14 (2 pkgs of 5)
C. Buttons & Fasteners
1. 1.5” metal D-rings
2. 1.5” belt clasp
3. Buttons galore!!!
D. Stabilizer (Sulky)
1. Soft Lightweight Tear-Away: 8” 12 yds
2. Self-Stick Tear-Away: 7.5” x 6 yds
3. Sticky Tear-Away: 22.5” x 36”
4. Stiffy Crisp, Firm Tear-Away: 20” x 36”
5. Cut-Away Soft ‘n’ Sheer: 20” x 36”
6. Cut-Away Plus Mid-Weight: 20” x 36”
7. Totally Stable Iron-On Tear-Away: 20” x 36”
8. Heat-Away Brush-Off: 15.5” x 22”
E. Tracing paper
F. White contact paper (matte): 18” x 3 yds
G. Darning eggs
1. Small agate
2. Medium wooden with handle

II. Crochet & Embroidery
A. Embroidery hoop: 8”
B. Small crochet hooks (8)
C. Long wooden crochet hook
D. Assorted floss

III. Cutting & Measuring Tools
A. Scissors
1. Gingher 8” metal shears
2. Gingher pinking shears
3. Gingher lightweight nylon shears
4. 6.5” Spring Cut snips
5. 3.5” for Scherenschnitte
B. Rulers
1. Omnigrid 15” x 15”
2. 2” square with 45˚ & 60˚ angle markings
3. 6” Dressmaker Guide
C. Other
1. Buttonhole cutter & block
2. Quilter’s Memory Curve

IV. Thread

V. Ribbon & Trims

VI. Quilt kits: “Abundance” wall hanging

VII. Fabric
A. Ironing board cover fabric
B. Flannels
C. Wool (that I brought her in 1981 from Scotland—never used!)
D. 1970s psychedelic print
E. Batiks
F. Hand-dyed solids
G. Asian prints
H. Satin & Special Occasion
I. Muslin

VIII. Sewing machines
A. Bernina 2000DE serger
B. Janome Memory Craft 9000

IX. Sundry electronics
A. Sidewinder bobbin winder
B. Lightbox
C. Small Ott desk lamp (missing bulb)

X. Bins & Totes

XI. Miscellaneous: Command Strip removable wall hooks

Sky Chair, and a New Way to Sprout Seeds

2009-05-25T17:09:00.005-04:00

Our first or second Christmas in Tucson, a couple from church who had quickly become our good friends, Debby & Roger, gave us the bestest Christmas present ever—a sky chair! They had one and I'd fallen in love with it, so they got us one of our own. Yay! And then Roger hung it from our back patio ceiling beam for us, taking care to get it to swing gently into the perfect position for a view of the mountains.

When we left Tucson 2 years ago, I made sure to pack the sky chair and it made it to Pittsfield with all its poles and ropes intact. Last summer I never quite got around to hanging it, although I knew just where I wanted it to go—under the little pergola in the southeast corner of the back yard. So this year I was determined to put it up before too much good weather had come and gone! This past weekend our daughter and son-in-law, Jesse & Mike, came up from Brooklyn and I enlisted Mike (pictured taking a well-earned rest in the sky chair after 2 days of graciously donated heavy labor in our yard and garden) to help me install the eye screw (which cost me a big 97¢ at Home Depot) and hang the chair.

There may originally have been a headrest attached to the chair—I don't recall—but if there was it disappeared along the way somewhere sometime. So I whipped together a little pillow with fabric I inherited from my mom's stash and a pillow form I got for $1.50 at Jo-Ann's one day when my boss there was trying to get rid of them. A total of about $2.50 and 10 minutes of combined effort from Mike & I and—voilá! Sky chair!!! My new old favorite place to sit…

I also inadvertently discovered a new way to sprout seeds, one that I wouldn't recommend to other gardeners. During the time my mother was dying and I was driving back and forth to western NY, I hurriedly between trips planted all the vegetable seeds in peat pots that I wanted to start early. I then stuck the packets of herb seeds that I'd be planting later down in an "empty" planter so they wouldn't get lost in the month before it was their time to go in the ground. Well, the "empty" planter was actually full of potting soil, and in my distracted rush I didn't think about what the combination of seeds and soil might cause over the course of 3 weeks. Yesterday when I grabbed the seed packets and pulled them out of the pot, I discovered the results of my unplanned botany experiment (see photo)! I went ahead and planted the sprouted seeds, but I don't know if they'll make it. They may have used up all their sprouting energy already. So before you try this at home, wait to find out if the transplantation was successful.

Spot on!

2009-05-22T17:18:00.006-04:00

I took a "color test" on the Glidden paint website just for kicks, to see what they'd say my color preferences say about me. The first time I was interpreting the color spots, as in, "Well, I tend to like grays and silvers, so I'll choose that one..." and the results were less than accurate. So I took it again, just clicking quickly on the colors that caught my eye without thinking about it and, lo and behold, an "analysis" that seems pretty spot on (click on the image for a larger, more legible view):

Massachusetts Bureaucracy in a Nutshell

2009-05-20T18:06:00.003-04:00

My sister gave us their old car, since they're inheriting my mother's. Because it's a gift from a family member, we don't have to pay Massachusetts sales tax upon registering it here. To claim this exemption, we must submit a form and pay a $25 fee.

We have to pay them to not have to pay them.

Although now as I reread the relevant page on the Mass RMV website, I am confused as to whether we have to pay the $25 fee or not. It's not mentioned in the "Vehicles Transferred from Family Members" but is in the section below, "Vehicles Transferred as a Gift." We are transferring a vehicle from a family member as a gift. ??? This also is Massachusetts bureaucracy in a nutshell:

??? + $$$ = Massachusetts Bureaucracy

I so miss Arizona, the Cowboy State where no one cares what bucket of bolts you put on the road or where you got it from or who's driving it (they hand out driver's licenses like candy—candy that doesn't expire until you're 65 years old)! I knew this part of life in Massachusetts would drive me nuts...

It's About Time!

2009-05-19T14:09:00.002-04:00

Ok, so I finally updated the photo slide show at the bottom of the page. A few sights from my time in western NY over this past month.

Flow Gently Sweet Afton

2009-05-14T22:10:00.002-04:00

Today we drove back home from my sister's house in Western NY, where we spent a few days around my mother's memorial service. It rained all the way home, that steady gray rain that blends with the sky and the road to make the world a single color you try to navigate through without context or boundaries, a frightening blur of potential car accidents...

After miles and miles of blurry gray highway with no rest stops, we finally took the exit for Afton, NY, which promised at least a gas station where we hoped to find restrooms. Afton is one of those exits that sends you off onto a winding rural road with no visible signs of civilization for a mile or two, no signs for the promised gas station, no signs of anything until you're just about to give up, and then you come around the 13th curve in the road and there it is: a Sunoco station. With a restroom, and freshly brewed coffee. There is a God.

So now we're home, and I'm ready to get back to my life. My life in my world. Not that parallel universe I've lived in for the past month, the world of Mother Loss. A world where time is mostly meaningless and sleep doesn't take away the exhaustion. Where siblings find out how much they mean to each other, and which of our peculiar personality traits we've each grown out of (finally!) or still indulge in. Where spouses get to know their in-laws at a depth undiscovered before, and mates either find the support they need from each other, or sadly don't. I found what I needed from James, and hopefully my siblings found what they needed from their mates, too.

It was actually a lovely season in many ways, this season of my mother's dying. I wasn't ready for it; neither was she—she fought it all the way. And the grief rises and falls in me like swells after a storm, when the waves have subsided but the water still moves underneath in a silent sob. But I'm glad to have been given the time to do her dying with her and to be with my sisters and brother in her dying time. It was beautiful in all its sadness. And I'm very glad to be home.

Shirley Bixby DeMott's Obituary

2009-05-04T19:52:00.004-04:00

DeMott, Shirley M. (Bixby)

Geneseo: Died peacefully April 27, 2009. Predeceased by loving husband of 52 years, Dr. Donald W. DeMott. Survived by children, Rod (Lora Lamarre) DeMott, Rev. Laurie DeMott, Rev. Wendy (Mick) Fambro, Dianne DeMott (Rev. Dr. James Lumsden), Rev. Sandra (Chris) Hasenauer; seven grandchildren; and several foster children. Also survived by sisters, Jean Stevens and Virginia Hall; uncle, Lyeth Henderson; nieces, nephews, and a large circle of friends.

Shirley touched many lives through her work and volunteer service. She served as librarian's assistant at Geneseo Central School for many years; was a member of the Basketeers Quilt Guild, and founding member and organizer of the former Big Tree Quilt Conference. In addition to being an active member of her church, especially in her work with the Boys Club, Shirley was also active in refugee resettlement, volunteered for the American Cancer Society and League of Women Voters, and many other organizations.

Memorial service to be held on Monday, May 11, at 4:00 p.m. at Lake Avenue Baptist Church, 70 Ambrose St., Rochester, NY 14607. Memorial gifts in her honor may be made to Lake Avenue Baptist Church.

All Shall Be Well

2009-04-19T20:45:00.004-04:00

My mother had two strokes on Easter Sunday and went into a coma. We traveled to western NY on Monday thinking we would be planning a memorial service. Then the stone was rolled away from the tomb and Mom came out of the coma. They took her off the ventilator on Tuesday and by Wednesday she was talking (though not always clearly), laughing at jokes, sitting up, and even eating. My brother and his wife arrived on Wednesday night from West Virginia and we all (I have three sisters as well as my brother) spent quite a bit of time with her on Thursday. James and I said goodbye to her on Friday and drove back to Pittsfield. She was asleep when we left and I knew there was a real chance it would be the last time I saw her alive. Indeed, the next day she was much less responsive and today, Sunday, they discovered pneumonia in her left lung. The doctor asked again about whether we would respect her Do Not Resuscitate order or put her on a feeding tube to give her another chance to recover. After several phone calls back and forth between all five siblings, we decided to wait until tomorrow to make any further decisions. By then we'll have a better idea what her chances for recovery are now and decide whether to intervene or simply let her body do what it can and will do on its own. The really hard part of it all is that she is still very much aware (when she's awake) and very much herself. When my father had a stroke, he disappeared in the storm and never really returned. My mother, however, is still Mom through and through. When one of my sisters said something to Mom today about me coming back to see her again, Mom frowned and made her "Don't make a fuss" face. She always wants us to just live our lives and not worry about her.

Today during our church service, I sang this song by Yvonne Lyon. People wondered how I could get through it, given my mother's current situation, but singing is my way of organizing my feelings and putting them out beyond my small self, sharing them with all those who have felt or are now feeling the same way. And my mother loves music and the fact that my siblings and I all continue to make music in our lives. So I sang for her, and for me, and for my sisters and brother, and for everyone else out there who needs rest.

Giggle Fits

2009-04-07T11:33:00.006-04:00

Last night I had one of those uncontrollable giggle fits that makes no sense to anyone else—the ultimate "you had to be there" situation where "there" is inside my head—triggered by a sentence I was about to say that suddenly struck me as so funny I couldn't speak. After a few minutes of giggling, wheezing, and snorting, I finally had to write it down (see photo) so my husband could find out what I had been trying to say. Even now, 15 hours later, I start to laugh when I think about saying those words out loud. Why? Who knows. Because I never say things like that. Because I have never before in my life spoken the phrase "took a big crap." Because potty humor still makes that ever-present Junior High me collapse into fits of giggles.

Some bird really did take a big crap on our bedroom window. Probably one of those prehistoric crows that's been hanging around lately. And my husband still doesn't understand why that makes me laugh so hard. The crap itself doesn't make me laugh—actually, that pisses me off because the bedroom window is hard to reach from outside, so it's going to be a major project to wash. But the image of a giant bird shooting a giant crap at our window while flying by, or while perched on the tree nearby… That makes me laugh! And the image of Good Little Girl me, taught to speak properly and politely, using such a crude (yet unsurpassably descriptive, which is why I wanted to say it in the first place) phrase triggers another whole level of giggles.

I once made a tape while driving 4 hours to visit a friend from college with whom I had a long history of giggle fits, recounting all the various giggle fits I'd had in my life that I could think of. I got laughing so hard again my eyes started to water and I had to turn off the tape and recover myself so I could drive. When I got to her place and she listened to the tape, she and I both belly-laughed our way through it one more time. The fit I remember best that Martha and I shared was one day in the student union having lunch together. We had both just noticed that someone had dropped a ketchup packet on the floor when someone else came along right then and stepped on it, causing ketchup to squirt out all over my jeans. The timing was perfect.

Q. What's the secret to a good joke?

My propensity to giggle fits has gotten me in trouble. Besides driving my father nuts when my mom and sisters would all get going so hard we'd be crying, while he had absolutely no idea what we were all laughing about and knew better than to have us try to explain because it for sure wouldn't seem that funny to him—besides that fairly regular occurrence, I once made a friend so angry he refused to speak to me for a while afterwards. On a mid-semester break in seminary, three friends and I traveled to Quebec City together. Sitting in one of those "booths" on the train where two bench seats face each other, snacking on trail mix and peanuts, I looked over and saw something peeking out of the top corner of Peter's pocket. Completely innocently, I intended to ask him, "Is that a peanut in your pocket?" But before I could get it out of my mouth, my brain heard it and thought, "What a ridiculously funny thing to say!" So I started giggling before I managed to produce any words, although I had managed to point at Peter's pocket. Peter said, "What?" and I just kept giggling. Every time I tried to get the words out, they'd strike me as unutterably funny again, and I'd collapse in laughter. Since Peter was sure I was laughing at him, he got more and more upset, which of course just made the whole thing funnier and funnier to me. I'm not sure I ever managed to explain it to him. It turned out to be his train ticket in his pocket, not a peanut. "Is that a ticket in your pocket?" probably wouldn't have made me laugh so hard.

A. Timing

On that same trip, my overcoat was on the rack above our seats and at one point the train heeled around a curve and my coat came flying out, sleeves spread wide, looking just like a person in distress, and landed on Dave's head. Another giggle fit. This time it was the image that got me. I can still see it. It still makes me laugh.

As I mentioned, this sort of thing runs in my family, at least among the women. In that Facebook thing where you list "25 Random Things" about yourself, my sister Wendy wrote:

15. There's nothing more refreshing than a good giggle fit - the kind that make you cry. I once had a giggle fit after Mick [her husband, musician Miché Fambro] hit a ping pong ball that went up into the basement rafters and finally fell out and bounced off my head - the fit lasted so long that he went upstairs, practiced, and came back down to find me still laughing.

My sister Sandy made us all break down one time after looking out the window and saying indignantly, "That bird has its back to me!" She wasn't actually indignant, apparently—it just came out that way. I wonder if she remembers that.

One of my favorite things about Christmas Eve when I was a kid was watching my mom and her two sisters get into giggle fits together while playing trios on the piano. Obviously it comes from my mother's side!

On a stormy day in London, my husband's umbrella flipped up inside out and turned into a bedraggled mass of spikes and nylon. I laughed so hard for so long I fell over.

Caillebotte Casey and Colored Pencils

2009-04-04T12:51:00.007-04:00

James took this picture yesterday of Casey, waiting patiently in the pouring rain while we took pictures of him before letting him in. It reminds me of one of my favorite paintings, Paris Street in Rainy Weather, by 19th-century French painter Gustave Caillebotte. The Brooklyn Museum of Art is having an exhibit right now of Caillebotte paintings that James and I are hoping to see, if we can get ourselves down there between now and July 5. Until then, we have our own little Caillebotte impressionist in the house.

Last year some fabric I'd had my eye on in the store for months finally went to clearance, so I bought up all that was left—almost 6 yards. Originally I planned to use it for curtains in the basement workshop, but I have since decided that keeping that workshop heated in the winter would be too expensive and wasteful of natural resources (although if we're in this house long enough I am going to figure out a way to responsibly winterize that room so we can use it for more than storage). Hence, I had 6 yards of material waiting to be put to use. I didn't want to chop it up into a bunch of small pieces, so I kept rejecting all sorts of ideas until finally, yesterday, I said To Hell With It and cut off about a yard and a half to use as our Easter tablecloth. The fun thing about this fabric is that it's printed to look like old-fashioned "redwork"—red thread embroidered outlines on white linen. A ready-made coloring book! So I put a jar of colored pencils in the center of the table and have already completed one motif, colored during breakfast this morning.

I spent quite a bit of time on-line yesterday trying to figure out how to color it permanently, not wanting to use fabric paint because I'd have to put newspaper or something underneath to keep it from going through onto the table (not that the table is anything special—in fact, it has a scorch mark on it that necessitates perpetual tablecloth coverage—but I'd still rather not have paint all over it) and it would take hours to dry, etc. I did find a couple of ways to make colored pencil permanent on fabric, but they're pretty involved and finally I decided I don't want it to be permanent anyway. Instead, we can color it in this season, then wash it and recolor it next season… Reusable art. I love it.

Spring Training

2009-03-27T18:31:00.004-04:00

For the past month or so, there hasn't been enough snow to require us wielding a shovel or the snowblower, but snow still covered the yard so we couldn't wield any rakes or trowels, either. So, we've gotten soft…

Today we started Spring Training—a beautiful day, following enough warm weather and rain to melt away almost all of the snow, gave us the chance to start cleaning up the yard and getting the garden ready for planting. And, since the Spring Equinox has come and gone, we put in the peas!

Now James is sitting in the rocking chair with a heating pad on his bum shoulder and the massage thing giving his back a shiatsu treatment, Casey is flaked out on the floor, and I'm whipping up this blog posting so I can get dinner started because I'm starving! More raking remains to be done, and we have to wait for the ground to thaw more before doing any more work on the vegetable garden. But our first day out was a good one:

pile of detritus

rakes

more detritus

future peas

Di's work (and Casey insisting on getting in at least one picture)

James's work

Blister prevention

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

2009-03-17T22:35:00.002-04:00

from Casey O'Dog

"Oh, the indignity of it all..."

Hey, I know these people!

2009-03-13T18:57:00.002-04:00

from As It Is in Heaven, a novel by Niall Williams:

"The season was mild and the earth became tender. The soil moistened as it unfroze and released a sweet scent everyone seemed to have forgotten from the year before. Old women warned that good weather should not be trusted and wore their thick coats into the town with the sour wisdom of life's disillusioned. They stood at butcher counters ordering the cheapest cuts of meat, and when the new season potatoes arrived from Israel they looked at them with scornful downturned mouths and went home to enjoy the thick-skinned bitter gnarled potatoes that God had spared them in the shed since last July."

Kids & Cameras photos

2009-03-01T13:53:00.003-05:00

I've posted the best of the kids' photos from our church project on the church's Facebook page. If you'd like to see them (and I encourage you to do so—they're great!), follow this link: Kids & Cameras album.

We'll be making prints available for purchase to raise money for the Kids with Cameras organization at some point in the future. And we'll be doing more photo shoots with the kids. So this is just the beginning!