Pull of the Tides

Close Encounters of the Corvid Kind

2011-10-25T06:38:00.000-04:00

Corvid in the Wind, Point Reyes National Seashore, California, 2011

I have been making a study of crows and ravens, the family of Corvids (from the Latin = Corvus, family Corvidae), all during the summer. I find these birds fascinating because of their clever behavior and ability to use tools. I thought it might be fun to learn a bit more about them in a natural science way, so I am writing a natural science article about crows that live in and around Annapolis and Anne Arundel County for the Jug Bay Wetlands Sanctuary newsletter, Marsh Notes. We have two types of crows here in Maryland, the American Crow (Corvus brachyrhynchos) who is slightly bigger than his relative, the Fish Crow (Corvus ossifragus).

Alongside the incredible scientific studies out their on crows and their raven cousins is the sheer amount of cultural encounters with corvid kind that I have had without even trying very hard. My research into these birds in the natural world has opened up floodgate of mythological, sociological, and poplar culture references.

Something to Crow About, Big Sur, California

Crows are such an important part of language and our mythic psyche that it is difficult to summarize it all. You might have something to "crow" about if you are proud or be forced to "eat crow" for your misdeeds. If you need to get somewhere quickly, you might see how to get there "as the crow flies." If you need a hand, try a "crowbar," a tool which is named for the shape of a crows' beak, but I think it especially apt for a bird who can cleverly use sticks as tools to get at food as scientists have recently discovered. Farmers still put out scarecrows in the fields to ward off blackbirds from their crops, but the scarecrow is more of an artistic convention than a deterrent to these would-be crop-snackers.

Ravens seem to follow me everywhere, from the local football team here in Baltimore to Charm City's admiration for its resident storyteller Edgar Allan Poe, whose most famous poem is "The Raven." Every autumn, I see crows gathering in the farmlands, looking for tasty bits the farmers left behind. And I also see the Raven appear faithfully every October as one of the Halloween images along with ghosts and monsters. Ravens seem associated with portents of doom, and have been part of this cultural association since our ancestors watched them hover around carcasses and carrion. Therein lies the dark side of this bird family's mythology.

Opportunistic eaters like humans, corvids don't let a potential meal go to waste. Crows and ravens haunt the history of Western culture as harbingers of death and decay because they find our killing grounds, road kill, and trash heaps so appealing. I can understand why the angry farmers whose crops have been stolen don't like them, and why watching watching crows pick through garbage may make them seem "dirty" and unappealing to many people. When I look at my own Northern European ancestry, I find many stories that involve corvids seen in a negative light.

My Celtic forebearers, for example, often associated corvids with goddesses of battlefields, death, and devastation like Macha and Badh Catha. Ravens or crows might appear as companions to these angry, hungry goddesses, or in the case of the Morrigan at the time of Irish hero Cuchulainn's death, she might shapeshift into one. This isn't very surprising, since part of the corvids' job is to take one human's tragedy and turn him or her into lunch. But fear is a powerful influence on the mind, and so corvids become associated with war goddesses and prophets of death.

Gods, too, are associated with corvids, including Bran the Blessed (Bendigeidfran, the name means Blessed Raven), whose severed head was said to be buried in the ground at a site upon which the Tower of London was built. Bran's head, and apparently since the reign of King Charles II, modern ravens with clipped wings are there to ward off invasion. The Norse god Odin has a pair of ravens, Hugin (Thought) and Munin (Memory), who fly the world each day on a reconnaisance mission to observe and report back news from Middle Earth.These are but two of the cultures for whom corvids figure widely in myth and legend.

Wherever people live, crows especially have found ways to live close to them. Ravens tend to keep themselves to themselves and seem to be less tolerant to humanity's grasp on the environment. Both crows and ravens, on the other hand, are a great interest to Native American peoples. Corvids vary widely in their character from the malicious Trickster to benevolent helper of humankind in Native myths. My all time favorite depictions of these birds come the art of the Pacific Northwest and Alaskan peoples on bark paintings and wood carvings. So revered are these birds that certain families adopted crows or ravens as their symbols.

There is much to be read on the subject of corvids. For my personal explorations, I chose books that combine scientific and creative approaches. Author Catherine Feher-Elston created a collection of mythic stories and factual essays in her book, Ravensong: A Natural and Fabulous History of Ravens and Crows (Penguin, 2005) that I want to recommend to anyone interested in exploring the folklore, as well as natural history, of corvids in more depth. Likewise, one of the most readable studies from both the natural science and cultural perspective on corvids is by John M. Marzluff and Tony Angell entitled, In the Company of Crows and Ravens (Yale University, 2005). Their book surveys scienists' understanding of corvids without neglecting their long effect on our culture. An artist's gorgeous illustrations accompany all aspects of their guide to corvid culture. And finally, for those deeply interested in ravens and their intelligence, you should not miss the incredible books Ravens in Winter and Mind of the Raven by ornithologist Bernd Heinrich, who is not only a brilliant scientist, but a natural storyteller.

My personal survey of crows and ravens leaves me more enchanted than frightened. I find their black feathers shine in the sunlight and their profiles to fit their obvious intelligence and nobility. Their "caw-caw" and "quork" sounds more like discussion than noise to me. I can't help it, but I find their antics amusing. I can see crows and ravens as tricksters, but not as malevolent beings.

The photos you see above and below are tributes to the corvids I spent time with this summer in California. There was one early morning where we drove up to the northern section of Point Reyes National Seashore and discovered hosts of crows and ravens lining the farmyard fences. As the car came up the hill, hundreds of black wings took flight on both sides of us and in multiple groups, the corvids flew away. They flocked together in groups. (Family groups? I wonder.) Always, they kept eyes on each other and us. Amazing. So much so, that I had to go back another morning to take more photos.

Fly by Wire

Aggressor?

Into the English Countryside

2011-09-24T17:08:00.001-04:00

Civilization = Tea at Avington Park

I admit that I have a romantic view of England and, in particular, of the English Countryside. I grew up guided in my tastes by my mother, who is a devoted Anglophile and who taught me to love my English heritage.

When I think of England, it's often the landscapes I'm dreaming of. The cloud-filled skies that painter John Constable so loved.

On my most recent trip to England, my husband and I spent a lot of our time out in nature and surrounded by gorgeous scenery.

What follows is a photo-documentary of sorts. A sequential view of one late summer day spent walking out from King Alfred's glorious town of Winchester, and roaming into the rolling pastures along River Itchen. To my creative eye, the views of Hampshire that day represent the England of my dreams.

The entrance to Winnall Moors from Winchester

Our plan for the day was to follow the old pilgrimage trail, St. Swithun's Way, out of Winchester on the public footpaths. The Way goes north and east out of the town and heads first along Winnall Moors to the valley of the River Itchen.

It might as well be the country where in a distant fairy tale, The Wind and Willows takes place . . .

Setting out on the public footpath

The River Itchen

August = Ripe Berry Season

Following St. Swithun's Way

Bovine luncheon

St. Swithun's Church, Martyr Worthy

Baa Baa Black Sheep, Have you any wool?

An old mill

The mill race

Avington Park

Edwardian Day at Avington. Observe the vintage bicycles.

The conservatory, where tea is served.

Walking back up the long avenue.

St. Mary's Church, Kings Worthy

Still on the right path . . .

A long dark tunnel of trees

A lone swan on the Itchen

Back in King Alfred's capital city.

Hail, King Alfred, First of His Name

My First Crochet Project

2011-08-21T12:29:00.003-04:00

I learned how to knit in college. A group of us guys and gals used to hang out on Thursday night after class, drink coffee and knit at the local cafe called the Runcible Spoon (a cross between a spoon and fork, called "spork" by some). [Wow! That cafe is still there in Bloomington. I ♥ the Internet!]

I knitted scarves, then increased my difficulty by jumping straight to sweaters with the help of an artist friend, Joe. He's the one who actually taught me to knit, or more accurately, reminded me how to knit, since my Aunt had taught me as a child.

That was many years ago. Every so often I decide to learn a new technique, often by taking a class but sometimes just by choosing a challenging pattern.

This year I decided that it was finally time to learn how to crochet. A friend made several attempts to teach me but I could never wrap my brain around it or stick with it.

So, I signed myself upnfor a three-week, beginners' crochet class at A Tangled Skein, a lovely little yarn shop in Hyattsville.

It is amazing how humble you feel when trying something completely new. I was definitely not the best and brightest of the students. I got it in my head before I could make my fingers actually hold the fabric properly.

But a little practice and awkwardness becomes sucesss.

My circular coaster is done! I think I going to like having this new textile skill to draw on. Not bad for a first project.

"In, As You Say, the Mud"

2011-08-09T06:58:00.004-04:00

[History Channel UK's Mud Men preview]

"In, As You Say, the Mud"*

A friend of mine shared an article on Facebook some time ago that captured my interest in an enthusiast form of archaeology for the masses called "mudlarking."

Mudlarking . . . such a delightfully British word.
Its definition is a verb meaning to scrape about in the mud of a riverbank during low tide with the objective of looking for valuable "trash" deposited in the sediment. Traditionally the mudlark looked for items with monetary value, but in more recent times these treasure hunters are also seeking items with cultural value.

The specific name for this activity has its roots in the nineteenth-century professional mudlarks (or "mudlarkers," I've seen them called both) who were often lower class children or women, digging with the desperation of hunger to find lumps of coal or precious metal items that they could sell or trade for food and other necessities. [Henry Mayhew, London Labour and the London Poor: A Cyclopædia of the Condition and Earnings of Those That Will Work, Those That Cannot Work, And Those That Will Not Work, Volume IV, in four volumes, (London: 1861-1862), p. 366-367, 371.] Charles Dickens likewise wrote a short story, “Young Mr. Nightingale,” about a boxing match between a baker and a mudlark in All The Year Round (November 29, 1873). Some of the period illustrations of nineteenth-century mudlarks are collected by this blog author here.

One article that I read, stated that one can still list "Mudlark" as an official professional title in Britain, but another source claimed the job title went out in the 1900s. Either way, there are still people who can be thought of as professional mudlarks in London today. They are bound in a fraternity known as the Society of Thames Mudlarks, who with metal detectors in hand unearth relics. They differ from their amateur counterparts because they are required to have a license from the Port Authority of London to dig in special areas along the bank. The tongue-in-cheek amusement you may find on the home page of The Thames and Field Metal Detecting Society will turn to amazement when you scroll down the page to see their treasure haul.

Possibly every child who dreamt of buried pirate treasure should admire the discoveries of these excavators in the Thames who have found coins from all time periods since the Romans ruled in Londinium, to antique weapons, jeweled Anglo-Saxon necklaces, to a prize collection of gentleman's cuff links spanning the Capitol's conspicuous consumption from the seventeenth-century to the twentieth. There’s a wonderful homage to mudlarkers and their finds in the pictures on this blog entry. The British public’s recent interest in the phenomena of mudlarking is evident in the UK History Channel's reality TV show called “Mud Men.”

Trash Becomes Cultural Treasure

Two aspects fascinate me most about this subject. First, I have come to think of mudlarking as a form of poplar archaeology; in other words, people are out their consciously seeking old things buried in the banks of waterways for their heritage (and/or monetary) value. Second, that the UK government is opening its eyes to the idea that cultural heritage can be preserved by asking mudlarks (professional and amateur) to record their finds of artifacts. In Britain, the government actually wrote a law in 1996 called The Treasure Act which governs objects at least 300 years old or made of precious metal found in England or Wales (The laws are different in Scotland and Northern Ireland). See information at: http://finds.org.uk/treasure/advice/summary.

Four years ago, The British Museum established a department that focuses solely on Portable Antiquities, and aides in recording cultural artifacts that a member of the public might find on their own property, on public lands, or on the river bank. The folks at the British Museum who administer the Portable Antiquities scheme have several jobs. They monitor for the possible illegal sale of archaeological artifacts and/or treasures at antique shops and online through websites like EBay.com.

I checked the Portable Antiquities Scheme’s online database and already 146 cases of treasure finds have been recorded for 2011 with 53358 objects recorded; last year, there were 233,345 objects recorded throughout England and Wales. Many of these finds are not the result of mudlarking. The Portable Antiquities Scheme website has made it easier for the British public to report archaeological objects that they have found either by accident or by design. The reports and statistics suggest that the legal actions to create a system to record cultural heritage discoveries is actually fueling an interest in public archaeology and of voluntary efforts to record when and where an artifact was discovered. (see a discussion of the release of the 2008 report from the British Museum: http://finds.org.uk/news/stories/article/id/214).

The British Museum’s success with the Portable Antiquities project staged an exhibit called "Buried Treasure" in 2004. (See an online version of major treasure finds that were featured in the exhibit here. Several reviews gave me a feel for this exhibit including a National Geographic article (fall 2004) on Society of Thames Mudlarks and their finds and a review from Archaeology Magazine (Volume 57 Number 2, March/April 2004).

The Museum of London Docklands, likewise, has a children’s gallery area and features educational programs on “Becoming a Mudlark.”

My foray into the history and culture of mudlarking in the past and present has caused me to think about how my own nation deals with artifacts found on public and private property. The mish-mash of state and federal laws in the United States, requires a degree in law to figure out who potential owns a find and likely supports the career of armies of attorneys. My country’s laws are based upon English Common Law from the 18^th century but there is nothing so neatly universal at the The Treasure Act of 1996 here. A lawyer penning an article on this subject for the Archaeological Institute of America in 2000 was quite happy to pronounce the various treasure trove laws in some States dead, writing that “Rejection of the rules that reward finders at the expense of landowners also strengthens anti-looting provisions, and discourages casual, but potentially destructive unplanned searches. Indeed, removal of artifacts from the soil is now recognized in the majority of states either as illegal severance of chattels, trespass, or theft. Modern [U.S.] law has recognized and resolved the problem, leaving no room for royal prerogatives” (online at Archaeology, “Online Features,” February 7, 2000).

In a world so interconnected through information, I think it is important to cherish the artifacts of the past for all of their complexity and cultural meaning. We inherit not only the gold coins and riches from past cultures, but also the refuse of our predecessors’ daily existences, like toothbrushes, pottery jars, and trappings of status. It is the brush with the past and the potential for great stories, if only the objects could talk. If only we would listen.

Here are a three more personal accounts of mudlarking to whet your appetite:
The author of the “Number One London” blog write about an encounter with mudlarks on the Thames. A journalist for the UK newspaper, The Independent, writes about the buried treasure allure of mudlarking in “The Thames: Another tide, another secret” (from 11 September 2005). And, last but not least, a New York Times Magazine correspondent also posted a nicely-illustrated, curious tourist’s guide to mudlarking in this article.

*Title quotation source: Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams (New York : Harmony Books, 1980).

New collage box

2011-07-31T17:23:00.002-04:00

I recently finished a hand-made-from-scratch box which was a birthday gift for a friend who runs marathons.

Personally, I cannot imagine what physical discpline it takes to finish a grueling 26.2 mile race. Anyone who does this is a model of endurance.

So it's no surprise the medals given to those who make it across the finish line are huge.

I give you, Jen's Marathon Bling Box.

Happy Birthday to an amazing hero!

Elephant Seal Sumo Wrestling

2011-07-29T07:19:00.001-04:00

I could not resist posting this series of photographs I took on California's Central Coast a few weeks ago. These are huge Elephant Seals doing battle in the waves for Survival of the Fittest.

I think their version of sumo wrestling is amazing to watch.

Meanwhile on shore, one of the regal and enormous males leans back his head and roars . . .

On land this creatures seem ungainly, but truly they look so powerful and wild.

If you want to know more about these fascinating marine mammals, check out the website of Friends of the Elephant Seal. This organization has created the viewing area on the coast where I took these photographs.

Quork!

2011-07-26T06:58:00.000-04:00

This is a recent photograph of two ravens at Pfeiffer Big Sur State Park to whet your appetite.

I've been slow to post lately because I was traveling in California earlier this month. While I was away, I photographed crows and ravens as part of a personal quest I'm undertaking. I've made it my mission to study my finely black-feathered friends as part of a project that is part artistic and part scholarly.

You will see some of the fruits of my project here on Pull of the Tides in the coming weeks.

In the meantime, I am in the final stages of a draft article on a topic that is proving to be far more interesting than I could possibly have imagined when I began researching it: mudlarking.

If you are wondering what the heck this is, or are curious just what I'm going on about, check out this well-illustrated New York Times article.

More very soon,
~runningwave~

Trying on a "Seasonal Wardrobe"

2011-06-22T07:44:00.021-04:00

A friend of mine told me about artist Michelle Ward, and her online project Green Pepper Press Street Team. Each month, Michelle issues a challenge with a different theme to artists in the blogosphere. Those who choose to participate in that month's challenge simple create a response and post it on their own blog, which is, in turn, linked to the Green Pepper Press Street Team site.

My friend knows that I have an interest in nature and the seasons, so she thought I would enjoy the current challenge which is about the artist's "Seasonal Wardrobe." Michelle asks if the shift in season is reflected in your art, just as you shift your choice of clothing to adjust the change in seasons.

For me, this is certainly true. I tend to shift not only the clothes I wear in the summer to thinner, more breathable fabrics to match the swampy climate of the Chesapeake Bay region. I also change the colors I wear, I find myself favoring lighter colors -- although not typically pastels (not big on pastels, except powder blue, maybe.) In the autumn, my clothing colors are fruitier and richer just like the world outside.

Likewise, the colors I might choose for a mixed media art project also reflect seasonal palettes.

My visual response to this Green Pepper Press Street Team Challenge No. 52 is displayed above; I wanted to capture in mixed media what my summertime palette looks like. (If you like, click on the image twice to make it bigger.)

I started out with four basic colors that said "summer" to me, a mustard yellow, aqua blue, leafy green, and raspberry red. I made a circular element in the center and surrounded it with four arcs. I guess this is a solar motif. Then I added a wave pattern along the bottom. Then I began adding elements, until finally I decided on a fantasy theme with an enchanted walled garden surrounding an exotic palace. Just the sort of Orientalist fairy tale I loved in my youth, in keeping with the mood of summer's sensuous illusions.

This led me to think naturally of One Thousand and One Nights, the famous collection of Middle Eastern and South Asian folktales (also called Arabian Nights by some.}

I own an old child's edition of Arabian Nights that I bought from a used book store on the cheap months ago, with the thought towards cutting quotations from the text for collage elements. I flipped through the book until I found the phrase about the fish of four colors. That sort of jived with the collage fish I had already included and crackle-painted over at the bottom. I actually bought brads in the shape of mini-fishes for the little guys jumping around in the upper left quadrant of the page. The palace illustration is a collage element from the book, that I hand-colored.

Wow! Stepping back, I realize that this is the first time I have done collage or mixed media work in nearly a year. It is rather a relief to find I do have the space in my life to make art again.

Perhaps my image is like a celebratory dance of freedom after leaving a complicated year behind me in the dust. I didn't realize how much I needed to do this again.

Glastonbury: A Pilgrim's Tale

2011-06-03T06:54:00.032-04:00

The day was cloudy, but the wind was gentle, though it whispered that autumn was just around the corner as it blew. I can remember looking up ahead and feeling goosebumps at the sight of the great mound rising in the distance, topped by a slightly leaning tower from a distant age.

I had not seen this sight in more than twenty years, but the last time left a deep impression. Then, as a college student in the 1980s, my trip to this place consisted of a brief bus stop of a few hours on a trek around England's counties of Wiltshire and Salisbury Plain. You may know the tourist routine: Cotswold villages, Bath, Stonehenge, with a brief pause in Glastonbury.

Now, I fully appreciated that the muddy track through rolling hills and at the edge of cultivated fields is the best way to approach Glastonbury Tor. You leave behind the bustling town, tourist buzz, and New Age mecca by turning down a lane. Then you pass by cottages and make your way along the public footpath that sets out towards the pastures.

Setting out to walk the path in a long spiral up the Tor put me in the mind of pilgrims on a journey to a holy site. It's not the 15th century tower on top of the Tor that's "holy". No, what is so magical about this place is that the hill itself seems alive with the memory of human visitors from long before there was an England all the way to the present moment.

Livestock roamed the hillsides and the farm lands felt weighty, holding the promise of the harvest soon to come. Flowers bloomed and the ever-present mist of the English air. Occasionally we climbed over the barriers between the fences to keep the cattle and sheep on one side or the other. My husband and I chatted happily as we walked, but shared long moments of silence as we just admired the beauty of the gracefully climbing landscape before us. I breathed in the rich smell of mud.

At the base of the Tor, we were met by a raven, black as jet, who "Quorked" brusquely at us. This creature was not just any raven, but a very large and apparently sentient Raven. We snickered to ourselves about the sheer Celtic hilarity of encountering this noisy critter at a liminal place where pasture met the Tor. We decided he must be the Gatekeeper and so asked his permission if we could climb. The Raven must have determined we meant no harm, for he stopped "Quorking" and went back to foraging for seeds.

So we climbed and passed through the gate.

Stairs rose and meandered upward along the steep body of the Tor. It is not long before we felt the wind pick up with no trees to arrest its progress. The way became harder as our muscles and breath adjusted themselves to the effort. There are benches for the weary or pensive to sit upon.

Your payoff for the climb of Glastonbury Tor is a stunning vista of three counties reaching in all directions. There is no wonder that this hill is so significant because of its obvious strategic location. The other layer of significance lies in the Tor's folklore and mythology. The Celtic legends about the place mention the Lord of the Underworld and Fairy King, Gwyn ap Nudd, used the Tor as an entrance to his realm, Annwn. Other Britons may have associated Glastonbury Tor with the Isle of Avalon and the legend of their great chieftain, or King Arthur.

The Romans built fortifications on the Tor with their typical practicality; archaeologists have excavated the remains. In Christian centuries, locals built a church to honor the warrior Archangel St. Michael. Only the tower remains of the medieval church, but the austerity of the open stonework can still inspire, by the very fact that it lifts your eyes to the heavens.*

We remained aloft for some time, just absorbing the vista of red roofed cottages, roads, and farm land. But as we began to descend the other side of the Tor, again something unexpected happened.

We knew about the cows.

Glastonbury Tor is a place where cow herds roam freely, because it is grazing land as well as being a tourist attraction. What we did not expect was a Giant Bull, black as midnight, literally barring our path.

I have never been this close to a bull before. And I can say after this experience I would not want to be a bull fighter. It's not that this particular bull was aggressive, but he stared you down and made you feel like he meant business. He was the Guardian of the Descent, just as the Raven had been Gatekeeper of the Ascent.

The Giant Bull took his time moving, such that we and other visitors that morning had to gingerly walk off the path around him. His harem of cows wandered by us blithely grazing not paying us humans any mind at all. The Giant Bull stood his ground as if he owned the place.

We winded onward and downward, back to a more present reality. My heart and mind felt moved by my visit to the Tor that day.

It is a pilgrim's tale, I freely share with you.

*An excellent history of the Tor is written by a Professor of Archaeology, Philip Rahtz, Glastonbury (London: B. T. Batsford Ltd/English Heritage, 1993). Professor Rahtz covers the mythology and folklore of the historic sites of the town, including the Tor and provides a scientific perspective based upon the excavations as well as documentary evidence on the site.

Into the Clearing

2011-05-28T14:32:00.009-04:00

Sometimes you have to clear space in your life for creativity to happen. I've wandered away from serious attempts to write for quite a while. In the past year, I focused more on reading than writing. Plus, I began to experiment with photo collage. I also needed time just to be myself during a year where my job changed suddenly, significantly adding to my responsibility without any warning. Anxiety seems to build in me whenever I have to cope with sudden change.

It took me a while to feel comfortable again.

And I do need to feel a sense of comfort in order to be a writer. Writing is not necessarily very easy for me. I find research much easier than writing.

I have this mental image of being in the middle of a dense thicket, where the path is obscure and there are so many brambles that you need to avoid. Slowly as the trail winds past the last bushes, the way becomes open again. There is a clearing ahead and you are surrounded by a grove of trees stretching upwards, taking your heart and mind with them as they reach skywards.

The picture at the beginning of this entry is a modified photo taken last autumn in Pennsylvania, where I stayed for a weekend among friends. It represents the vision of the clearing that I see before me now.

I feel more at peace now for waiting until I had the energy and calmness to think clearly. No doubt I will continue to wander because it is in my nature. But I now have a sense of purpose and a few solid plans. It has been a long way down the path to reach this grove of trees, but at least I am out of the thicket for the moment.

Perhaps my tendency to have these struggles through the thicket is why I love the quote by J. R. R. Tolkien from The Lord of the Rings so much:

All that is gold does not glitter, not all those who wander are lost; the old that is strong does not wither, deep roots are not reached by the frost. From the ashes a fire shall be woken, a light from the shadows shall spring; renewed shall be blade that was broken, the crownless again shall be king.

I know that change is always going to happen. It is practically impossible to plan for all contingencies. But human beings have the gift of insight and the ability to change their sense of perspective about an idea, a problem, a value. Flexibility of perception is an important aspect of my life that fuels my creativity.

Hazy Days of Summer

2010-08-17T16:08:00.011-04:00

So I am feeling pretty scatter-brained at the moment. This is my first afternoon off, just by myself to do whatever I want in I don't know how long! Almost always when I have a day off I'm a) outside the house doing things with other people or b) traveling. It seems like such a luxury, but I earned it by working extra hours last week. I have lots of projects I have been dabbling at for a while.

A friend had a big celebration (after the fact) for her 50th birthday. She invited a group of us to her farmhouse out in the countryside. Where we celebrated, crafted, and generally had a blast together.

The photo at the top of this post is a view of A's gorgeous stretch of mountain meadowland.

And the next photo shows a friend knitting our collective Great Mother Stole project. This bright red Stole is intended as a gift to A to mark this new phase of her life and to give her strength and warmth from the group. Half a dozen of us donated yarn in not only red, but a few other colors. At the weekend event in the mountains, four of us have variously knitted parts of this pattern based upon one in a juicy book called, The Knitting Goddess by Deborah Bergman.

So in addition to the Stole and a memory book about our country weekend that I'm putting together for A, there are a few other knitting projects in various stages of creation.

A big "Hello" to some crafty ladies gathered at the Society of American Archivists' conference in Washington, D.C. last week. Just to sit, knit, and chat with you was a welcome respite from the total concentration of listening to presentations at the conference. Due to the conference, I am getting rather farther along on my Monterey Bay Sea Lettuce Scarf which you see a picture of here on the right. This Lucy Neatby pattern was a perfect one to take along in my tote bag and grab between sessions.

My great news is that last Sunday, I finally knit my first modular pattern: a simple entrelac design (looks like basket weave). Thanks to Sue at Lovelyarns in Hampden, Baltimore for an excellent class. Here's my first swatch attempt to show you what it looks like.

Don't you love how the dark yarn contrasts with the vibrant red and purple variegated yarn? I think I'm going to get a lot of mileage out of this technique.

Finally, I have dabbled a bit with mixed media projects, my collage-covered boxes. The Spanish Box posted in June is getting additional features and elements added to it. Stay tuned for another post when it's further along and other theme boxes are in progress.

Box Coverage

2010-06-13T20:46:00.019-04:00

In my quest to find something useful to do with my love of collage and mixed media art, I recently took a workshop with Jane Davies. The topic was "Collage In a Box" and I want to give credit both to Jane for a fantastic and well-organized class and to Patti who is the delightful proprietor of The Queen's Ink, who hosted the workshop.

The goal of the workshop is to make a box from scratch and decorate it with mixed media papers and other embellishments. I needed a striking design for the outside, but since the box is for my husband, I didn't want it to be floral or pastel. I selected the blue and turquoise greek key pattern as perfect for him. The design is on wonderful Lokta paper (rice paper, traditional type made in Nepal), which is very easy to bend and wrap, as well as, thick enough to withstand the necessary layer of adhesive used to cover the chipboard.

The box edges are covered with a very thin, hand-painted rice paper. It's a remnant from a stack of the jewel-toned papers by a local artist that I purchased at The Queen's Ink many years ago. The paper is so richly colored you cannot take your eyes off of it. The downside for box collage, is that it is very thin. The adhesive made the paper so wet that I had to be careful not to tear it. It was also tricky to manipulate this paper to cover the edges of the box. It had the tendency to want to fold, crease, and buckle no matter how careful I was. I decided, however, that I was okay with the result because the creases actually make the flecks of metallic paint sparkle.

When you open the box, you'll see one of my scrapbooking papers of vintage travel luggage tags. One of them fortuitously is from Hotel Carlos V in Spain. Marc and I stayed at a hotel of that name in Madrid 11 years ago on our first big trip to Europe together. I laid out my interior paper so that the Carlos V tag was an important visual element, impossible to miss as you open the box.

And with that jazzy pattern on the inside of the box top, I decided the bottom interior covering should be ultra simple. It needed to match the Lokta paper. I had also brought with me several colors of papers that mimicked faux leather; I chose the turquoise color to match the Lokta design on the exterior.

I'm so pleased with how my very first box of this type came out. I will be adding just a few collage elements to the box's top exterior to complete the design. I have some travel tickets that I've stockpiled from travel abroad with which I can experiment.

Power Mantras

2010-06-07T06:52:00.016-04:00

I first learned about practices of meditation when I was at college. I read a great deal about Eastern religion in those days, exploring new forms of spirituality. I really enjoyed reading about Buddhism, but felt quite sure that I couldn't identify with it completely. Yet some of the practices intrigued me. I also learned about the disciplined yogi of India and of their dedication to turning inward for learning deep lessons about life's existence.

Any attempts to actually teach myself meditation usually failed. Even when I attended a group mediation, I found myself feeling foolish and unable to focus on the task of focusing my mind the way the group leader asked me to do. I am a visual thinker by nature, so the only successful forms of meditation for me back then, centered on visualization techniques versus "sitting and breathing" as I thought of it.

It took me a while to realize that I had already encountered visualization techniques at a very young age, when I was 6 or 7 years old. My Mom enrolled me in a children's yoga class at the local YMCA. I remember our yoga teacher instructing us to lie on our mats at the end of class and close our eyes. We had to imagine that we saw a brightly-colored ball, like a bouncing ball we might have played with. Our teacher asked us to think about this ball growing larger and larger until it was so large that we were inside of the ball. This was a way to help us to focus, relax, and refresh. (Not an easy feat with a class of rambunctious children!) In my child's brain, I didn't know I was meditating, but I was.

Visualization remains my most effective tool for mediation, but my thoughts about the practice have changed pretty radically in the recent past. I am beginning to see that the chants really do help me connect with the universe when I am alone or with others collectively when I chant in a group setting. The effect is very similar to what I experienced in years of choral singing. The vibrations and rhythm help bring control and order to my existence.

The word resonate is the one that sticks most with me when I think of mantra.

Grown-up me has finally begun to unlock the potential of mantras. I started taking yoga again about four years ago as a means of stress-relief. I have had some amazing teachers, but my favorite one uses mantra combined with yoga poses (asana) and/or hand gestures (mudra).

One of the first simple mantras I learned in her class is the one she says she taught her two sons, it is a series of four key sounds made in the Sanskrit language of ancient India: SA TA NA MA These four sounds, made with hand gestures translate to mean: "Infinity, life, death, and rebirth."

In another class, my teacher taught a mantra that has become my favorite. It's intended to be a chant to invoke the power of women, the feminine aspects within the universe. It's a hauntingly beautiful chant, but also very raw and energetic. I loved it so much that I found a dance-groove mix recording of it by musician Erin Kamler and her colleagues, performing as Mantra Girl.
The chant is:

ADI SHAKTI, ADI SHAKTI, ADI SHAKTI, NAMO NAMO,
SARAB SHAKTI, SARAB SHAKTI, SARAB SHAKTI, NAMO NAMO,
PRITHUM BHAGAWATI, PRITHUM BHAGAWATI, PRITHUM BHAGAWATI,
NAMO NAMO,
KUNDALINI, MATA SHAKTI, MATA SHAKTI, NAMO, NAMO.

One yoga website describes this ancient mantra as:

The First Shakti Mantra tunes into the frequency of the Divine Mother, and to primal protective, generating energy. Chanting it eliminates fears and fulfils desires. Adi Shakti means the "Primal Power," Sarab Shakti means "All Power", and Prithum Bhagawati means "which creates through God."ation while I was in college.

--quotation from "Kundalini Yoga" website, www.kundaliniyoga.org

Now, thanks to my same teacher, I am learning a new mantra. Along with it come a set of mudra (gestures), and some yoga poses that enhance certain of the words that form the mantra.

I am choosing to learn this mantra because I went through a month of anxiety and sleep-disorder that I had not experienced in many years. The affects of not being able to sleep were so disruptive to my health that I needed something new to get me back into the healthy rhythm of life.

Just as singing a favorite song can lift your heart, mantra can also help raise your spirits. It is intensely focused (unlike some songs) and if you chant the mantra long enough it begins to change you. It doesn't change you on the outside, but it does change you on the inside, where it counts most.

My new mantra combines the Sanskrit words representing the building blocks of all things: Earth, Water, Fire, Air, Ether, and Light.

LAM, VWAM, RAM, YAM, HAM, OM

It may sound weird, and even childish to read the words on the page, but when you chant these words for a long time and make the hand gestures things change.

This post dedicated to Lara and all the brilliant yoga teachers out there

The Shark. A Thank You to Jen O.

2009-09-11T05:42:00.011-04:00

She came down from Cincinnati.
It took her three days on the train.
Lookin' for some peace and quiet;
hoped to see the sun again.
But now she lives down by the ocean.
She's takin' care to look for sharks.
They hang out in the local bars,
And they feed right after dark.
-"Fins" by Jimmy Buffett

I've always been amused by this well-known ditty by legendary singer-songwriter Jimmy Buffett. Maybe because the heroine is from Cincinnati; a lady who decides to go and live by the Ocean. Always traveling, always looking for something new and wanting to see the waves. What she finds, though, are sharks. "You got fins to the left, fins to the right," Buffet sings.

I can relate to that sometimes.

So imagine my surprise when my friend Jen O. gifted me with this precious little memento of our time working together.

I'm really tickled by this little sharky, because Jen O's famous Pièce de résistance was an enormous 5-foot long Papier-mâché shark that she bound to the top of her Honda and drove to Jimmy Buffet concerts. Once, her great shark, draped in leis and surrounded by tropical fruit, became the centerpiece of a staff luau we had one summer on the garden terrace.

Some people know Jen as a very quiet, slightly shy person. But I know her easy laughter and incurable sense of fun. She is also incredibly creative in her everyday life.

I love it that my shark holds a camera and a globe. My obsessions with traveling and capturing the moment are referenced. Not only did Jen make this world-traveler shark for me, but all of the folks she worked closely with at our past employer got one too -- each one customized for the person who received the gift. Now that is something special.

To Jen: I wish you good luck and many great adventures in the Rockies and wherever your travels take you. With or without the shark I won't forget you, count on that.

And you always know you have friends here by the Chesapeake Bay, if ever you decide to "go where it's warm."

Found Objects and Good Karma

2009-08-15T22:58:00.020-04:00

The artist's world is limitless. It can be found anywhere, far from where he lives or a few feet away. It is always on his doorstep.

-Paul Strand, photographer

On my short drive to work a few days ago I received an unexpected phone call. I thought it was maybe my mother, because who would be calling me so early in the day.

To my surprise is was Patti of The Queen's Ink telling me that there was an opening in the Saturday morning class to be taught by Tim Holtz at her shop. I had been third on the wait list for the Saturday class, and fifteenth on the list for one of Tim's Sunday workshops, so at this late date I had thought there was no chance.

This unexpected opportunity led me to a whole day of creativity with collage elements and "found" objects.

Tim Holtz is a rock star of the craft world. He has made a brilliant career out of designing and teaching. I had not realized just how many crafters would be sharing this class when arrived -- about 70! And the morning went like a whirlwind. Tim showed us how to make five pieces of jewelry using provided findings, papers, artifact-charms, and tools. All this in four hours!

My first bonus was that Patti announced that there were a couple of people who had cancelled out of the afternoon workshop on book-making. I raised my hand immediately to indicate I wanted to sign up. So, I finally had the chance to learn how to create a book from scratch. Bind the pages in signatures, create a embossed foil cover, and put it all together to create a work of art that's more like a treasure chest than a plain ole book.

My second bonus was meeting some incredibly warm and friendly crafters. Some of whom are amazing artists. I met a few people who do art for a living and others who make art for the sheer joy of it.

Tim was totally approachable, helpful when you had a question, and very, very adept at teaching for a large crowd. The last is a rare talent to be sure. I have taken workshops from some pretty skilled artists, but Tim and his assistants organized and carefully presented step-by-step processes for putting together these intricate designs. They made it seem effortless, and yet the old event-planner training in me knows just how difficult that is to accomplish.

I am not a newcomer to assemblage and collage techniques like I was a novice at book-binding, but I had been scratching my head about how to jumpstart my stalled mixed media hobby. I spent a total of 8 1/2 hours in the classes. I feel like I've received a big dose of good karma. After a whole day of assemblage workshops, my creative batteries have been recharged.

Of Fireflies and Freedom

2009-08-11T05:56:00.009-04:00

A while ago I asked a group of friends what they most remember about the season of summer. Most of them remembered people, places, or activities from childhood -- no matter that person's current chronological age. There appears to be something about summer that brings a feeling of nostalgia. For me, it is no different.

Summertime for me draws a picture of the long days of summer camps, like the one held by my parent's church deep in the hills of Kentucky called Cathedral Domain. Many summers of my youth included a week spent in the companionship of the green hills and limestone boulders of the gorge near the Kentucky River. My favorite activity of the whole week was always when the counselors --who seemed so much older and wiser although they were teenagers and twenty-somethings -- would wake us up in the predawn hours and call for us to get dressed, leave our cabins, and bring our flashlights.

They led us on a wild trek up into the hills to the high point above our camp grounds. We stumbled through the darkness slowly, relying on flashlights to avoid tree roots. Finally we noticed a hint of lightness to the air as we hiked to the trail's high point.

There, on the rocky outcropping known as Wolf's Pen, we sat huddled in our coats against the damp chill as the Sun began to creep over the mountain.

When the Sun made its grand appearance, I would look out at the vista in front of me and see a Serpent in the shape of mist in the river valley below. As the Sun began to soar in the heavens, the Serpent cloud rolled and woke, twisting and meandering along the river like a great beast of legend.

The whole performance from the dark foothills to the sunrise probably lasted no more than 90 minutes or two hours, but for me the time was Magic. It was a land of enchantment so removed from the normal life I knew that I can vividly recall it now more than thirty years later.

Other summertime memories come to me on a much less mythic scale. They consist of roaming around in the twilight in the alleyway behind my house with a specially-prepared glass jar. The jar would have holes punched in its lid and often a stick or some grass inside. My Quest was to seek the illusive Fireflies and capture one or, maybe, two in my jar.

Once captured, these little fairy creatures continued to glow on and off, calling to mates and kin. I felt compelled to place my jar on the window sill and stare at them until I became too sleepy to remain awake.

I enjoyed the company of my phosphorescent friends until bedtime. Normal procedure was to release the captives the next morning when I awoke, although I always bid them farewell a bit sadly.

I can also remember humid, dreamy summer nights during my teenage years when I went to family picnics at the home of aunts and uncles, or when I visited the "chalet" maintained by the Cincinnati Museum of Natural History in Adams County, Ohio. The Chalet was nothing more than a little house with half-timbered exterior where the members of the Junior Society and their adult leaders bunked down following a day of trail maintenance, day hikes, or explorations with our Nature Conservancy biologist-friend Duke. (I actually don't know Duke's last name. He was simply "Duke" and if you had known him then you would realize the moniker suited him nicely.)

The area is known as The Edge of Appalachia Preserve, and I am relieved to learn that the Nature Conservancy still conserves that land today. I have so many powerful memories about that land, and so many stories to tell that I could fill quite a few blog posts. The Junior Society visited this preserve and stayed at the chalet year-around, so some memories are from different seasons.

On summer evenings, we commonly took a stroll after a team of us washed and put away the dinner dishes. Often the stroll turned into a long hike down the main road into the place. I can remember that the twilight fell on our way back and our favorite thing to do was comment on what we could see as the darkness fell. Our leader, Norma, had taught us to "develop our night vision." We would watch the birds scurry and bats begin their nightly hunt as we returned up the road. At the end of it, Jimmy or one of the other adult leaders would have already lit the fireplace and a warm glow emanated from the Chalet as we approached. We could always see the firelight from a long way off, up ahead of us in the trees. Fireflies happily provided the only light on our way, unless the moon was near to full, and the crickets' chorus filled the air.

My deepest memories of summer related to the edges of twilight: dusk and dawn. These hinges of the day remain the most magical times for me.

I no longer seek to capture fireflies, but I do crave spending time in nature at moments that are like crossroads of time and space.

My adult brain knows the concept of liminality, the state of being at a threshold or of two places at once either in your physical body or in your mind and spirit. I think my truest summer memories are not of the heat, humidity, and cruelty of that season, but of liminal place where reality met dream. In my adult life, I try and recapture that state as often as I can and cherish those moments -- of being in the moment -- much like I used to hold the fireflies in a jar just for one night.

If we shadows have offended,
Think but this, and all is mended,
That you have but slumber'd here
While these visions did appear.
And this weak and idle theme,
No more yielding but a dream . . .
--from A Midsummer Night's Dream by William Shakespeare

A Web of Intellectual Connections

2009-06-27T11:40:00.009-04:00

I just finished listening to a fascinating interview of science and technology historian James Burke by a podcaster named Dan Carlin (who broadcasts Hardcore History). I had not listened to Carlin's podcast before, but was wondering around online hoping to find a new history-related podcast that I could get excited about.

So far the realm of podcasts has not delivered much in the way of "meaty" history that a professional historian who also enjoys mainstream popular culture can get into. Up until now The Napoleon Podcast has been by far my favorite because of the hosts' passion for history and their exploration of its subject on a level anyone with a basic high-school level education could understand. It's entertaining and reflects the type of conversation shared by people who really love to discuss and argue about history for history's sake.

The other day while trolling I-Tunes, one episode of Carlin's Hardcore History caught my eye, "A Fly on James Burke's Wall" (see Show 18 in Carlin's archive) I downloaded it and was instantly transported to a dynamic intellectual exchange between one of my favorite historians, Burke, and an enthusiastic amateur historian, Carlin, with some really thought-provoking insights of his own.

I am one of a generation that grew up learning about history from the likes of James Burke, with his television show Connections, which first broadcast in the US in 1979. I was at an impressionable age, but eager to learn so long as I had fun in doing so. I can remember that I was watching Connections at a time when I actually found the subject of history in school to be quite boring. I was incredibly good at memorizing the names of rulers, places, and dates of events for multiple choice quizzes, but bored to tears with the way it was presented in class by my teachers. Plop me down in front of the Tube, however, and I would watch, and re-watch Connections and its sequels over and over.

What fascinated me most was that Burke's approach appeals to my innate sense of synthesis. My brain is simply wired to draw together ideas quickly. Linear thinking is terribly uninteresting to me. Always was. Destined to be a post-modernist, my wild inclination was to draw two concepts together from different sides of the question and build a theory around them. That's how my fantasy life operated in my child's mind and, later, it's how my scholar's mind turned around sophisticated groups of facts to churn out pages and pages of grad school ramblings. Honed by a youth spent with exploring connections, I understood that history is not simply a string of happenings, but an array of decisions and inventions that might have just as easily gone the other way had circumstances been altered ever so slightly.

Popular scholars and scientists like James Burke, Carl Sagan, and Joseph Campbell showed me that ideas are power and the brain is a tool of exploration. As my education progressed I began to find the voices of scholars who opened up the field of women's history. I can remember being excited by my first readings of "serious" feminist art history in my first year of graduate school. Scholars like Whitney Chadwick and Linda Nochlin raised my awareness of just how much women had been overlooked in the previous views of world history -- not to mention all of the cultures considered "Other" or "Primitive" by First World scholars.

That brings me to the really nifty project that James Burke mentioned in passing during the conversation with Dan Carlin. He's using the Internet as a tool to expand his theories of inter-connectivity among people and moments in history on a website called the Knowledge Web. I encourage you to explore it for yourself. I highly recommend the "Mystery Tours" section which will introduce (or re-introduce) you to Burke's heady style of historic synthesis. My personal favorite tour so far is "Wallpaper to Germ Theory."

My husband and I have often batted around this crazy notion of writing a book together on a certain sub-set of myths about the history of England as filtered down to us from the Victorian era. It's rather crazy on the one hand because we are both really just armchair scholars of the period concerned, but he -- being a scientific/engineering mind with a devotion to folklore -- and I -- with my background in cultural history, archival research, and post-modernist academic training -- might just come up with a perspective on our topic that no one else has ever written. We have between the two of us background, experience, and skills related to intellectual history that combined is actually brilliant (if I do say so myself). The question is: could we produce research that anyone else would care about or want to read? Well, first we have to do the brainstorming and then the research. I'll get back to you on this topic.

I just want to conclude that human knowledge is at a peak. In my culture I am aware of just how fortunate I am to have information almost always at my fingertips. Making it far easier for me to make intellectual leaps than ever before. Its a long way from the paper card catalogues in my elementary school to the high-speed connections of the Internet on my laptop or hand-held device. Almost whenever I have a question, I can within a reasonable amount of time download all kinds of random facts, tidbits, reviews, ramblings, and conspiracy theories about it in a matter of minutes.

Oh, where, I wonder, will the connections lead?

How Do We Know? Or, Thoughts on Learning in the Digital Age

2009-06-07T15:08:00.008-04:00

Learning is a reoccurring theme for me this past week. It has been made abundantly clear that learning is a huge component of my job. In fact, one of the reasons I haven't been updating Pull of the Tides is that I've been expending mental energy to absorb all I need to know about the job I started last summer. This past week I began to learn new software that will enable me to complete some very important assignments during the summer and beyond. I am also learning the larger lessons of how to work within the assigned parameters, whether or not I agree with the methods executives choose to use. And now I'm training two young people for their summer internships, and mentoring has always been a way for me to learn and to grow.

The fact is that I cannot imaging a life without learning. I thrive on it. If my work includes a component that allows me to learn new things and constantly, I'm as happy as a clam. I'm just doing my job to filter through the information, and hopefully the water I output from my shell is clearer than it was before.

I have also encountered the theme of learning in my women's group meeting last Friday. It was one of the dominant themes of an otherwise playful and fun gathering. I remarked on the fact that of the ten women present, nearly all mentioned that they were (or had been) a teacher of some kind or the other. It's remarkable because we came to the meeting from diverse backgrounds and disciplines and lifestyles and, yet, teaching and learning were such common threads that united us and our discussion.

Several women mentioned how the Internet has changed their ways of thinking or processing what they have learned. They talked about how communication and learning walk hand-in-hand and how the Internet brings communities of like-minded people out there together to solve problems or answer questions. The Internet can also be sensory overload -- too much information thrown at you in a small space of time. Like most tools, the Internet becomes a resource and inspiration, but it can also bring on a kind of madness. For me, Facebook has been a fascinating experiment that I have found to be a tool of connection to people in my distant and not so distant past. It's also a site that can play amusing games with the viral method of transmitting fads, mini-games, and trends. Sometimes I find it's traffic so overwhelming I cannot visit it or begin to respond to all of the "pokes" and insistent "requests" from friends. And all because a friend who lives 500-miles distant invited me to join.

In the Digital Age, we see to learn information about events and people in oddly incomplete ways. We may know the latest tragedy or scandal the instant after it happens, but try to find reliable sources for the background on a news story and you really have to use your research skills. It's not easy to find reporters who aren't all quoting the AP wire or a single source or two. This is not to denigrate the work that journalists do, but rather to comment on the fragmented and two-dimensional ways that "easy information" comes to us.

As an archivist who works with primary sources every day at work, I understand all too well how important it is to choose your information sources carefully. A personal letter might tell one side of the story for a family tragedy that results in a court case, while the official record may record very different perspectives and collate a variety of local opinions on the case. Which is true is a question that the scholar has to decide. What case will she make? Whose side will she be one? People write about themselves differently than others may write about them. And what is "Truth" anyway? My graduate education in the humanities has taught me that there is no one version of the Truth. It changes depending upon who you are, what information you have at hand, and the cultural lens with which you see the world.

This brings me to a final way that I've been learning in the past week. Reading is a huge pleasure for me and has been ever since I acquired the skill in early childhood. I read both fiction and non-fiction for fun. At the moment I am reading a book published several years ago by historian Laurel Thatcher Ulrich named for a phrase she had used in a graduate student research paper that she wrote in the 1970s: Well-Behaved Women Seldom Make History. In the book she explores the odd ways in which her "radical" phrase has spread through poplar culture since a reporter quoted it in an article. Women and men have interpreted her phrase to mean quite a different set of values and concepts over the years and Ulrich catalogs many of these uses. To her mind some are quite positive and life-affirming, while other uses of the quote have been negative, destructive, and even copyright infringement.

Yet Ulrich does not stop there. She then selects three literary women who made history: one in the wake of the Renaissance in Europe, one in the years of Suffragette struggle in the United States, and one modernist author very dear to my own heart (and past research). I find it fascinating that Ulrich can find threads of meaning between such distant personalities. I find it thrilling that she explores both their struggle as feminists and their struggles to find their own voices. If you are looking for a radical departure in scholarship, you will not find it in this book. You will find -- if you dare to look -- a sense that history has a way of repeating itself, of moving forward slowly. Some battles have been won, but the very popularity of Ulrich's phrase suggests there are still a few to be fought.

I'm still reading this book and still considering Ulrich's arguments. I am swayed by her argument that historians don't control history. Individuals do have the opportunity to make history themselves. Historians can sway opinion, but often they are the servants of history and their own cultural world-views. You can learn all you want about the past, but the knowledge you gain make teach you as much about the present as it has about history.

Like Wildfire

2008-08-14T05:08:00.008-04:00

If it’s taken me a while to document my June trip to California, it is because I wanted the time and space to ponder this most unusual trip to a countryside normally so familiar. This most recent trip to California was like a journey to another country, an unfamiliar territory so altered is the entire state by the element of Fire.

DAY 1
My husband M and I define a typical week of vacation as time spent doing as much outdoors as we can possibly squeeze into ten days. We flew across the United States sardine between two rows of young children, one of which wailed almost the entire way. I had not slept well for several nights before the flight so needless to say the screaming child lungs made my brain want to dissolve. Plus, I was starving. I had been too tired to remember that gone are the days when meals are provided in-flight. Not even a lousy bag of peanuts anymore. Hah-rumph!

Descending into LAX we discovered a heat wave. Los Angeles was not on fire, but it felt like it at 107-degrees Fahrenheit M drove North into the arid San Joaquin Valley and I blissfully slept through the afternoon, California dreamin’.

When I awoke we were nearing the mid-sized town of Tulare and we stopped to grab a take-out sub for dinner. The radiant heat from the parking lot tarmac was nearly unbearable. But, I thought, It’s a dry heat. (Unlike the semi-tropical Maryland swamp from where I had just come.)

DAY 2
We woke up before the sun rose, still on East Coast time. We were happy to have the early start so that we could walk among the Giant Sequoias in relative peace and quiet before the tour buses arrived. The National Park was some distance from Tulare, so we drove through some of the smaller towns and out into the “salad bowl” region at their outskirts. I saw vast rows of vegetables, soaking up the solar glare, ripening for the mega-market grocers so that they might make it onto American’s dinner plates. Some nice bits of nostalgic Americana can be viewed as you near the park, like the ten-foot high, metal Steer-shaped roaster at a B-B-Q stand.

Soon the road began to wind out of the valley and into the rolling lowlands of the Sierra Nevada Mountains. We were amazed just how much winding we were doing. It didn’t look so winding on the highway map. The vistas of foothill lakes and green hillsides were worth the twisting drive.

We entered Sequoia National Park at the crest of the Sierra. I’d seen photographs of the Sequoias since childhood, but none of the images could prepare you for standing at the foot of a tree that could be one of the oldest living beings on the plant. Walking in a grove of Sequoias might make you believe in J.R.R. Tolkein’s race of Ents or believe in tree spirits. They are so tall and so old; they embody the meaning of word “great” in every way.

For me this experience of touching the Sequoias’ greatness was awe-inspiring. What made the trip all the more poignant was that after we returned back down to the broiling Central Valley we found out on the TV news that 800 fires had been sparked throughout California . Many wildfires resulted from these first sparks, caused by the combination of a land already desperate with drought hit by a rash of dry thunder and lightning storms.

At the time I was watching the news in my safe hotel room, the concept of wildfires seemed somewhat distant. But little did I know that I would be learning more than I ever cared to about the threat of wildfire in California before the end of this vacation.

How to Build an Earth Oven

2008-07-22T04:25:00.009-04:00

Do you remember your teachers asking you on the first week of school what you did for your summer vacation? Well, if I were still in school, this would have been a story to amaze my teacher and classmates.

My friend, TH, is an amazing baker and cook. She is also very wise in the ways of crafts and organizing activities that bring diverse people together.

Her great ambition has been to build and use a wood-fired oven in her own backyard. TH is not someone who merely dreams big -- she builds! She did her homework and found a book by Kiko Denzer called Build Your Own Earth Oven. She also found a website showing a group of masons who built an oven of the type she wanted using Kiko Denzer's model. Here is another website I found of a group of Australian gardeners built a similar oven.

Then she and her dad cooked up a scheme to build a test model in his backyard as a practice version. Her two teenage sons helped their grandad build the test oven. This was very wise since they notice a water-seepage problem because the test oven had no drain. So, they knew they had to make drainage holes in TH's oven.

TH's Dad drew plans up for brick foundations to be built in her backyard over the course of several summer weeks with the help of his grandsons. Then, the next step was to create the inner oven wall, made entirely of cobb, that is, clay from a local source, plus sand, mixed with straw.

And that's where I come into the "Earth Oven Project 2008," because TH invited me and a group of her friends and neighbors to be a part of the oven's creation.

It was an extremely hot (mid 90s F) day in mid-July, but not so humid as Maryland suburbs can be in this season. When I arrived on the scene, the boys were mixing cobb, as the English settlers to North America called it. Cobb is the blend of clay, sand, and straw that forms the bricks to create the earth oven. Here's an image of the boys pounding it out by foot and testing its moisture content.

While the boys were mixing cobb, it was up to the rest of us to prepare the igloo-shaped sand mound around which the inner oven insulation would be formed.

After we made the sand mound (notice the brace we used to prevent sand from rolling off the edge), we covered the sand with wet newspaper, rather like you would a form for papier maché. By the time all hands had covered the sand mound with newspaper, TH's husband G had laid out a delicious spread for a hardy lunch. I had brought the beer and cider and there were copious amounts of herbal infusions and lemonade available for thirsty workers.

The next phase was to cover the entire sand mound with cobb bricks, so we spent the remainder of the afternoon doing just that. A shady yard and a bit of breeze go a long way to making summer's heat bearable. So does telling stories, laughter, and watching the boys rough-housing. We generally had a merry time at it, despite the heat.

Finally, about 5:00 p.m. we neared the home stretch. Only a tiny hole a the top of the insulation layer remained.

It takes something very interesting indeed to get me out on a 90-degree day, but this project was well worth it. I can remember with fondness mushing mudpies in my hands, but this is the most ambitious "mudpie" experiment I have witnessed. It's also very like molding a clay pot on a grand scale. The end result is larger than any typical potter might attempt on her/his own. The very social aspect of building something like the earth oven as part of a group, including several families, several generations is not unlike our pioneer ancestors did when a house frame or community barn needed to be built.

The outer layer of insulation and the final brick housing for TH's oven will be constructed by her, her family and friends next weekend.

I look forward to coming over to her house someday soon to enjoy wood-fired bread or pizza baked in her backyard.

Independence

2008-07-05T04:29:00.010-04:00

I enclose to you a copy of the declaration of independence as agreed to by the House, and also, as originally framed. You will judge whether it is the better or worse for the Critics.

—Thomas Jefferson, Letter, July 8, 1776, to Richard Henry Lee.

(Borrowed image source: Portrait Miniature of Jefferson by John Trumbull, Collection of Monticello. 1788)

I have been living near the Chesapeake Bay now for quite a few years. I have come to think of Maryland as "home" on many levels. The number of years I have lived on the East Coast is growing equal to the number of years I spent growing up in a suburb of Cincinnati, Ohio.

I have loved American history since I was a child. I never did think I would become a scholar of American history at all, but I liked to read stories of America's War for Independence from Britain such as the ride of Paul Revere and the Sons of Liberty who threw tea into Boston Harbor. When I was about 9 or 10, my parents took me on vacation to Colonial Williamsburg where I became entranced with the dirt streets, cobblestones, carriages, fine folks strolling the paths, and craftsmen inviting you to watch their works in progress. I could imagine all the important politicians rushing to meet the Governor or attend the House of Burgesses, while their pretty wives and daughters embroidered or played music in grand parlours. (Now, if you want to take an arm-chair tour of Colonial Williamsburg, you can just visit their "Tour the Town" link. If only I had Internet access as a child!)

I think it was that particular vacation, where my parents took me for the first time to visit the home of a man who I have come to admire among all the so-called "founding fathers," Thomas Jefferson.

Jefferson's home, Monticello, situated on a green ridge-top in Albemarle County, Virginia, enchanted my young mind. The lush trees embrace the river winding through the valley, and you drive up a winding road towards the distant past. When I was young I thought it had been there for centuries.

I had never seen a house like Jefferson's. So stately was its octagonal form balanced right on top of the entrance hall. (I mean, who builds a house with an octagonal dome? How cool is that! ) Inside was a treasure trove, where maps hung on the walls and natural specimens from Lewis and Clark's journey were spread around the room. I was fond of Jefferson's inventions like the Great Clock that tells hours, minutes, seconds, and day of the week, using cannonballs as weights to drive the device. He also had beautiful writing instruments and nifty scientific instruments all over his office and library.

Over the years since that first trip my fascination for Jefferson has only grown more complex and deeper. I find the fact that he was a conflicted slave-owner interesting, but it becomes even more so when you learn that he had a long relationship with his wife's half-sister, the mulatto woman Sally Hemings. (Yes, I believe the DNA research.) He was truly a renaissance man, being a scholar, a traveler, a statesman, an architect, an inventor, a scientist, a amateur fiddle-player, and a lover of the finer things in life.

Yes, I must admit I have fallen under Jefferson's spell a very long time ago. He must have been a charismatic gentleman, if introverted. He strikes me as a man more apt to put pen to paper in response than to speak aloud in passion.

But to think of what he and his compatriots in Philadelphia risked in the two years leading to the Declaration of Independence is beyond me. They risked wealth, reputation, career, life-and-limb for their belief in freedom. True, they put parameters on who could be free in keeping with their own time, but I cannot hold that against them.

We each have to walk our own journey through time and space. What my "culture" is today, will become different with every passing day. That is what history is all about. Finding fragments of time standing still, but we all know time does not stand still.

Each year on Independence Day I celebrate the lives of men who were quite flawed and human, but who nonetheless changed their world, their culture, with a big idea: Liberty, that is, freedom from autocratic government.

How many countless people across this Earth have been caught up in their revolution ever since?

I hold it, that a little rebellion, now and then, is a good thing, and as necessary in the political world as storms in the physical.
—Thomas Jefferson, Letter to James Madison (January 30, 1787); referring to Shays' Rebellion

My Long, Lost Atari 800

2008-06-19T06:42:00.007-04:00

I recently had a conversation with a young lady of nineteen years about computers from the 1980s. "They were bulky, weren't they?" she speculated from accounts she'd heard.

"Bulky" is not the half of it! Compared to computers of today, the Commodore 64s, Ataris, and other PCs of the early 1980s were barely more intelligent and powerful than the a 2008 scientific calculator. And, yes, they were quite clumsy and weighed as much as a pile of my high school textbooks. The typical 21st-century urbanite carries more computing power in her or his mobile phone and iPod, then the computers of the Eighties.

That line of thinking has brought up fond memories of my first personal computer, my long, lost Atari 800. What ever happened to that old thing? I suppose we must have disposed of it when my parents moved to a second-floor apartment while I was in college round about 1989.

I was one of the first kids on my street to have my own computer. I guess I've always been a bit of a geek for new technology. My Atari 800 was all I wanted for Christmas. My parents were not well-off financially compared to many of the kids at my high school, but they understood the educational value of my desire. My father likely foresaw the advantage I would have if I could grasp the power of this new tool at a young age. Even though he preferred to draw by hand, he agreed to shell out his hard-earned commercial artist's cash, probably close to $1000 I now realize, on my one and only Christmas present that year.

I was thirteen years old. I had never had such an incredible toy! I had the mind-swirling video game Asteroids on cartridge and a -- I kid you not -- cassette-tape loading game called Energy Czar. (Those of you who remember the Jimmy Carter years, are probably snickering right about now.) That game took 30-minutes to load from cassette player to the Atari 800's memory chip. The text-based thought game tested your wits against the statistics of population-growth, demand for fossil fuels, and nuclear energy versus solar power. . . Wait a minute! That sounds like 2008, not 1983. My, my. We still exploit the earth's resources. But, I digress.

Rats! I cannot remember the other game that I loved and played so much. It was an Atari cartridge game with the player as a space pilot in a Star Wars-like fighter who must go through hyperspace and chase down all of the bad guys. (Feel free to remind me if you recognize the game I'm describing.)

My big purchase in games during 1984 was an Atari cartridge game, Defender. I loved that one! The graphics seemed so smooth and slick. I liked it even better than the space pilot game for the sound effects and joystick steering.

My Atari 800 was not the first computer I had used, so my desire for a computer of my own was based upon experiences in school. Our gifted-and-talented program classroom had a Radio Shack TRS80. My classmates and I all took turns playing. I learned how to create a simple game in several lines of Basic. Once I got the Atari 800, I was coding all kinds of little games and images using if/then statements preceded by numbers in increments of 10. Learning Basic code seemed so high-tech. I was so proud of myself, my own geek-dom.

By 1985, I bought my first word-processing software and began to draft my school reports electronically, printed out from my dot-matrix printer. For that era my word processor was actually quite sophisticated. I could code diacritical marks, change fonts, the whole nine yards. Some of my teachers actually preferred hand-written papers to printed ones back in those days. I could no longer read my wretched cursive hand (I never really learned cursive script well). I taught myself a half-print, half-cursive style that I still use today just so I could read my own hand-writing. Do they even teach cursive today in public schools? Back then computers were so rare that most scholarship was all long-hand.

My very first serious research paper on "The Wasteland" a poem by T.S. Eliot of seven pages in length with footnotes was drafted by hand, but typed on my Atari. Well, all scholars have got to start somewhere. Little did I know at that time that I would be someday giving academic conference papers on some of T.S. Eliot's friends, artists Roger Fry and Vanessa Bell.

I stored my T.S. Eliot paper and some other assignments on 5-inch floppy diskettes. There was no hard-drive in my Atari 800, so that was the only option other than the cassette-tape drive. I had a modem, too. But never really understood how the bulletin board systems worked in the early days of the Internet. It seemed so weird and the community networking climate was all academic, all scientific lingo. Way over my 14-year-old head.

By the time I graduated from high school, I knew Basic code reasonably well for an arts and humanities student. Never brilliant at mathematics, I wisely chose a liberal arts track while studying abroad in England my freshman year of college funded by a merit-based scholarship. My college in England had only very early IBM computers, so I went back to writing papers by hand for a couple of semesters. I gave up on trying to make their outdated word processor work for me.

It's just amazing to review my own little piece of personal computer history and realize I was part of an technological revolution. A child of the 1980s, I was among the first to experience computers on a daily level. Now that is taken for granted.

And now, of course, my iPod Nano could beat up my long, lost Atari 800.

Tempus fugit

2008-06-15T07:24:00.007-04:00

Can it already be so close to the Summer solstice? I have not written anything here for far too long. The past six months have been a bit of a blur.

I go through periods of time when it is very difficult for me to express myself to others, except to those very few people to whom I always readily open up. At times like this I feel a bit sluggish and reserved sometimes. I seem to take a long time to process new ideas and situations mentally. I don't think these feelings qualify as full on "depression." No, I think that's too strong a word. It's more like a period of hibernation that allows me to dig deeply into myself and learn new truths, even difficult ones. It is a growing process. There is always an ebb and flow to my creative output relative to other factors affecting my life.

My quiet times are as much a part of my creativity as my witty times, when I seem to be full of new energy and exuberance for connecting with the world.

Is all of this normal? I think so. I think that the creative juices cannot always be flowing full tilt. If they did, there is a strong danger of burn-out. Like the tide creativity must necessarily ebb and flow.

When I get away from my writing it is usually because there is an under-current, or thought-process, churning away in the background that needs time to gestate. I am often not consciously aware of why the mental block has appeared. One day it's just there and I accept it for whatever it may bring.

I feel that I'm reaching the end of a long road. Maybe it is best represented by the spreading leaves arching over the pathway that I photographed at the Governor's Palace in Colonial Williamsburg. It appears to be an a-ha moment, when the light of day is seeping back into dusty corners of my mind. New doors are creaking open for me. The creative juices are flowing once again.

Time to begin anew.

Canyonland

2007-12-13T18:19:00.003-05:00

One of the aspects of travel I most love is the opportunity to see how landscapes change as you move across the earth's surface. You begin to see subtle changes in the land as you travel high above it in an airplane, or as you travel past it in car or boat. Seeing earth's rich diversity of color and textures inspires me both aesthetically and emotionally.

My husband and I hopped on a plane Thanksgiving Day and headed for the dessert. We flew to Las Vegas, rented a car, and drove four hours to the northeast, entering canyon country. While he had been to Utah before, it was one state in which I had never set foot into before. I had been on a mission to visit Bryce Canyon for quite some years, and finally now I had the chance.

Thanksgiving weekend was already winter for Bryce, Utah. We stayed at the alternatively touristy, rustic, and charming Ruby's. Everyone who has been to Bryce knows Ruby's -- you literally can't miss it. The first hotel was built by Ruby and his family there in the early 1900s and the rest, as they say, is history. We arrived late Thanksgiving night, having driven down winding and mysterious roads to come there. The high altitude made us sleepy. We awoke to a bright winter morning with temperatures in the single digits Fahrenheit, ate a hardy breakfast, and headed to the edge of the geological feature erroneously known as Bryce Canyon. (I asked a geologist park ranger where the river was. He explained that it's acutally not a canyon because there never was a river. Bryce is a natural ampitheater that was formed by wind, rain, and snow.)

When we drove south a couple days later to Zion Canyon, the climate was different: the weather remained autumnal. The soaring canyon walls had golden sun painting their surfaces and the trees held on to multicolored leaves. The weather was comfortable at this lower altitude. Zion's walls came in a palatte of colors, including white, brown, sand, red, orange, and green with foliage.
This trip expanded my understanding of canyons, which I had once thought all looked much the same, one from the next. (Not many canyons where I grew up in Ohio.)

Cooking Fresh for Fall: The Squash Files

2007-11-07T06:25:00.000-05:00

This post is a follow-up to my article posted back in August, "Cooking Fresh Experiment: Summertime Foods." As summer drew to a close and I became busier at work, I was not able to keep up with the slower cooking ideas. It is so easy when I'm stressed out to fall back on cooking that is very fast. In contrast, it is much harder to find the energy to cook new foods. I did squeeze in a few experimental recipes that my husband pronounced winners, and I'm writing about those dishes here.

Spaghetti Squash is not a food I knew about from home-cooked meals in the Midwest. For me, it's a "new" veggie, but I have tasted it a few times from dishes prepared at the deli counter of my local organic market. It is the oddest vegetable, really. It looks like a big yellow squash on the outside, but when you cook it, it becomes all stringy inside like spaghetti. When I asked my husband what type of autumn meal he wanted me to prepare one weekend, he listed spaghetti squash as one of the approved fall harvest veggies he'd like. Well, thought I, Why not?

My cookbook advised that spaghetti squash may be prepared ahead and then used as a substitute for pasta in any meal. I admit to being a skeptic, but planned an Italian dinner around it. The squash didn't take long to prepare. Following instructions in my cookbook about poking holes in it and microwaving, I set to work. The most time-consuming part for me was separating all of the strings of squash from the skin into a bowl. I selected portobello mushrooms, olives and several fresh herbs such as Thai basil and rosemary. Added dried oregano and parmeasan cheese and sauteed it for five minutes. Presto! This Italian-flavored meal tasted surprisingly good for a main ingredient that was not remotely like pasta. It absorbs the flavors of spices and other vegetables much like another starch.

My other recent experiment involved a soup recipe from my new favorite cookbook by Annie Wayte, Keep it Seasonal: Soups, Salads, and Sandwiches. I adapted her original recipe for Squash Soup with Roasted Chestnuts and Pancetta slightly to accommodate my husband's lack of interest in chestnuts. Instead, I decided to use shallots so we could call this one Squash Soup with Shallots and Pancetta. We both like strong savory and onion flavors, so I guessed it might be a good substitution for the two of us.

Pancetta was also new to me since, unlike my husband, I did not grow up in a place big on Italian deli meats. (My local delis tended towards the Yiddish and Germanic ethnicities.) I actually had to learn how to pronounce "pancetta" in order to be able to ask for it and not sound ignorant: /pan-CHe'-tah/. When I bought the meat, I had to ask for 1/4" thick slices according to the recipe. I didn't know it looked like bacon, so it was a learning curve and instinct which told me three slices would be enough, when the butcher held up the meat.

I worked with organic chicken stock and used a butternut squash for the base. The butternut squash was so mellow and perfectly ripe, proving once again to me that there are great advantages to attempting this type of seasonal cooking. The results were so delicious that the many who is not big on soup got up and helped himself to another bowl before I could finish my first one. I think I've converted him to stews, a very least.

As a side note, I've discovered over the nine years I've known my husband that he is a very talented cook, especially when it comes to fall foods. He gets all excited about the prospect of cooking with cinnamon, ginger, and nutmeg at the time when the leaves start to turn. In fact, his pumpkin dessert dishes are not to be missed. My most often-requested dish is his famous pumpkin mousse. Apparently it was sometimes his job to make the pumpkin pie for Thanksgiving when he was growing up. So ladies, when you set to prepare your Thanksgiving dinner, make sure you give your sons kitchen duties! The way to any woman's heart is a man who can make spectacular desserts.

Summer's End

2007-10-25T04:52:00.000-04:00

Back now to autumn, leaving the ended husk

Of summer that brought them here for Show Saturday

The men with hunters, dog-breeding wool-defined women,

Children all saddle-swank, mugfaced middleaged wives

Glaring at jellies, husbands on leave from the garden

Watchful as weasels, car-tuning curt-haired sons

Back now, all of them, to their local lives....

--Philip Larkin (1922–1986), British poet. “Show Saturday.”

How do I know that the summer has gone?

The humidity in Maryland drops low. Finally, by some time in October, the crisper and golden days of autumn are upon us. Dusk arrives more swiftly, by dinnertime, and the night begins to stretch like a tired worker, yawning and preparing for rest. Pumpkins are ripe for picking and carving. The fields of corn dry into husks and abundant apples, pears, and squashes are juicy flavors for mealtime.

October was my favorite month of the year in the Ohio Valley. As I raked our front yard and sidewalk, I loved piling the richly-colored maple and oak leaves into huge stacks and jumping into them. There would be powerful storm clouds on the horizon as the winds whipped leaves around the playground behind my house. I always loved it when summer came to an end. I greeted the full-on fall with relish. There was delight in the mysteries of shadows and magic of dressing up on Halloween. There was playing outside in the fading sunlight, knowing that winter's frost would soon be draping the sash windows of our Victorian house each morning. I was passionate about burrowing into my covers if I woke up early, in the coldness of dawn. It does not take much for me to be poetic or romantic about this time of year.

And, yet, this misty month of October presents a great quandary for my life today. October is the month where I am scrambling to fulfill my employer's needs in preparation for our largest fund-raiser of the year, which comes every first weekend in November. This is followed by a myriad of autumnal educational programs. I love all of these programs and would enjoy them immensely if it weren't for the sheer weight of days filled with more to do than time to do it.

So for me, summer's end is marked now with frustration, anxiety, and a sense of never completing all of the tasks I need to do within a day. I come home and fall asleep on the couch long before my normal bedtime or arise earlier than I normally must, my brain buzzing like a honeybee. Winter is near, draw in your honey now!

My Celtic ancestors who lived in cold, dark places of the British Isles believed that the beginning of winter was the first of November. For them, the harvest had to be completed by villagers just in time for the cold winds off the North Sea or Irish Sea to set into a permanent chill. The great festivals celebrating the fruits of worker's lives in produce or in craft. As the nights began to extend their reach and shorten the time a person had for her or his day's labor. A new year dawned on November 1st, so on the eve before they celebrated one last time as the sun seemed to leave them and the moon loomed large.

This evening at the end of the old agricultural year, October 31st, has morphed into an important commercial holiday of Halloween. But not too long ago, Halloween was All Hallow's Eve, a night when spirits of the ancestors walked and the doors to the land of the fey opened for mortals. (The Celts believed the fey, fairies, inhabited hollow hillsides). Mysterious and unusual things might happen. The Fey might play tricks. You might carve a turnip with a scary face and leave it on your doorstep to keep the fairies and wicked creatures of the night away from your family. Ancestors, however, were set a place at the dinner table in case they happened to walk by. They were the honored guests of the final feasts of summer. The recently harvested vegetables and fruits and freshly butchered meat was abundant still.

I do think deeply of my ancestors at the end of every October. Lately my grandfather, Walter H. Simpson, has come to my mind often. He passed on to the next world one October day, having already walked this earth ninety years. He was ready to go and had a long, full life behind him. He would probably council me that I work too hard. A hard-working man himself who built successful businesses as a mechanic and electronics repair man, my grandfather knew how to spend time at home doing the things he loved and surrounded by his family.

When he left us, he left me and my cousins and his children parting gifts. My inheritance from his equitably distributed small fortune, bought me out of my graduate school debt, paid for my car loan, funded a dissertation research trip to England, and enabled me to begin a small investment account. I never was able to thank him in life for these gifts of his labor, because I never knew his plan for his estate until a year after he died. So every Summer's End for the last ten since he passed on, I thank him with a candle lit in his honor and a photograph of him standing proudly in front of the gas station he managed on my hearth.

Wally -- which is the name by which I have come to know him through my grandmother's scrapbook -- was a tuba player in a riotous Roaring 'Twenties jazz band in Cincinnati called The Charlestonians. He recalled fondly to me playing "Tiger Rag" at top volume so that the police would not hear the bar fights in the background. (This was during Prohibition, mind you.) He was friendly with the brothers Machnowitz, the Lithuanian Jewish family from down the street. He may have surprised some when he ran off and eloped with an elder Machnowitz daughter. She was Ida, a willowy flapper with a gypsy-gleam in her eyes. A bold act for a pair who were not from the same traditions, at a time when anti-Semitism raged. Their romance of the mid-1920s is documented in her scrapbook, carefully pasted in with that awful acid-laden glue. They are laughing in groups with their friends and her siblings by the poolside or on the street corner. Like all teenagers they have the confidence and swagger of the young, who think they will never grow old. Some of these photos have faded or begun to disappear and pages are torn. Ida and Wally's memories survive, but sooner than me, some of those images will be dust.

These are my thoughts as Summer draws to a close and becomes November, the first month of Winter by Celtic reckoning. Long, cold Winter begins a new year. Ancestors and memories now deepen as shadows. The drawing the darkness around us like a cloak allows us to reflect upon the mysteries of life and of oblivion. Time is fleeting, but it must be faced. Come what may, Summer's end is a time for me to turn and look back over my shoulder to contemplate the long line of time behind me.

We are reformers in spring and summer; in autumn and winter, we stand by the old; reformers in the morning, conservers at night.

-- Ralph Waldo Emerson. “The Conservative,” Nature, Addresses, and Lectures (1849).

Foodways: An Environmental Post for Blog Action Day

2007-10-15T17:41:00.000-04:00

I've decided to participate in Blog Action Day, an opportunity for online authors to unite by posting their thoughts focused on one particular issue. The issue chosen this year is the environment. All I need do is write something relating to this topic and the environment is the topic on which I harbor deep-rooted beliefs and opinions. I have considered myself an environmentalist since sixth grade, the year I began some serious study on solar energy.

Solar energy isn't the topic I'm writing about today, but all life, and therefore, all food comes ultimately from the sun's energy. Back on August 31st I posted about my first foray into cooking fresh and local food. Today's entry continues on a similar theme, with the added information I have learned in the past five weeks.

Foodways is a fairly new word in common usage. Foodways of Austin, Texas website provides a useful definition of this rather academic term:

The term foodways refers to the culinary practices of a people and land, historical and popular. Food plays a defining role in local and national cultures. What people eat and how they eat it reflects numerous factors, such as landscape, societal, spiritual, artistic, psychological, political, economic, and other conditions.

I first heard this term in several cultural history courses back in the early 1990s. Now foodways is becoming a very important branch of humanities scholarship. Today (October 15, 2007) I attended a foodways lecture by culinary scholar Michael Twitty who has been exploring the intersection of West African cooking traditions of his ancestors with Chesapeake cooking techniques favored by enslaved peoples living in Maryland and Virginia. The program I attended at Historic London Town and Gardens was an opportunity for educators and living history interpreters to learn about hearth-cooking practices of African Americans from their earliest arrival as slaves in the British colonies in North America.

You may be asking at this point, how do foodways relate to my topic: the environment? The practices of acquiring, storing, and preparing food and of preserving foodways traditions relates directly to the land and to local practices of agriculture. One of the most fascinating parts of Mr. Twitty's presentation was his summary of the agricultural cycle that followed the seasons. He said that enslaved African Americans kept a "calendar of food dates" in their head, so that they might supplement the meager diet provided by their British masters. They also learned to use their wisdom of hunting, fishing, and gardening as well as their culinary traditions memorized by generations of West Africans. He argues that seasonal food preparation, foraging and cooking were necessities for enslaved peoples to survive the rigors of the oppression underwhich they lived.

Mr. Twitty also responded to a question about daily foodways practices. Again, he has taught himself the wisdom of people who labored hard and long hours by listening to the stories of his grandparents and of their generation and by reading diaries that survive from former slaves. He sees the carry-over of certain foodways from West Africa, such as the men's tradition of roasting and frying. Another West African tradition he observes in Enslaved Maryland culture is the tradition of the elder women preparing stew and hoecakes to be served to farm laborers for lunch and cooking one-pot meals for family dinners when the field hands have returned for the night.

What I find most fascinating about these ideas is their practicality and common sense. It reminds me that even people with Northern European ancestry have forgotten the ways living with the land and with the cycles of nature understood by their ancestors. As someone of likely all Northern European descent, I am on a journey of my own to discover the foodways known by the ancestors who emigrated to the New World.

I'm doing my best to seek as many local and organic foods as possible. I am also learning more about seasonal cooking and food preparation. Does this mean I'm going to start cooking with lard and molasses? No! My clean bill of health from my doctor just proves that cooking with olive oil and watching my sugar and carb intake is the best possible thing for me to be doing if I want to stay healthy long-term. But the point is, that local and organic foods are just better for you and better for the health of our planet as well.

My friend N. shared a news article about the 100-mile diet with me after my August post. I don't think I'm going to go giving up coffee, imported teas, chocolate, etc. and be quite that extreme, but I do believe that patronizing farmer's markets and local farm stands is a great thing to do for the environment. Buying local produce and limiting transportation costs or driving where possible is also something that everyone in the U.S.A. should consider doing more often. I have a good friend who is a member of a farm co-op that harvests local fruits and veggies and splits the harvest share among its investors.

All and all it's been a tough year for farmers and gardeners in much of Maryland. We don't feel the drought as our ancestors might have done who ate only local food, but the drought will have an impact on availability of local produce we like. The more we eat from the land where we live, the more we appreciate the impact we have on our environment through choices we make every single day.

As I tasted Michael Twitty's Cowhorn Okra Soup today, I remembered the goodness of eating foods grown right here in Maryland. {By the way, I'm normally disgusted by okra. But Mr's Twitty's home-grown okra is of an heirloom variety and not the slimy stuff I have come to associate with a nasty, stomach-turning "Ick!"} Mr. Twitty's personal stories and his emphasis on the importance of ancestral cooking traditions reminded me of the culture that surrounds the foods my family always likes to eat at harvest time.

I am in the beginning stages of a project to learn about my own Scots-Irish ancestry and my ancestors who came from the Old World, perhaps sometime back in the mid-18th century. I think that learning about what they ate is almost as important is reading what they wrote. So much of culture is transmitted through the preparation of food. We remember well the home-cooked foods of our families, don't we?

Below are several resources that are helping me to begin the process, and I hope to add more to this list as I continue my research.

What can you do to preserve your own foodways and culinary traditions? Cook a feast for friends or family with local foods. Dig out and prepare your grandmother's or grandfather's best recipes. Or share your thoughts and memories in comments to this post.

Slainte! ("To your health!" in Scottish Gaidhlig)

A Few Resources

Culinary scholar, Michael Twitty's Afro Foodways website.

Kentucky Foodways: Traditional and Modern by Elizabeth Mosby Adler

Our Immigrant and Native Ancestors:Southern food evolved from many ethnic influences, from The Culture of Southern Food website.

There appears to be a new book about Renewing America's Food Traditions that is available for download online. A sustainable living organization is using it to promote it's efforts to preserve heirloom plants and native animal breeds for Americans.

Scraps of Life

2007-10-09T06:59:00.000-04:00

I believe in the power of images to tell stories. Sometimes when a person organizes and selects from images at hand, the images change their meaning, are transformed into a new, private language of symbols.

My mother, who is both a fine artist and professional designer, taught me how to create collages at a very young age, probably as young as four or five years. My first collages included dried beans, macaroni, rice, and buttons stuck to pieces of scrap cardboard with Elmer's glue or paste. My Mom carefully oversaw and encouraged my progress as a mixed media artist. My favorite collage object in the early years was the pasta shaped like spoked wheels or cart wheels!

Time and time again I return to collage techniques and dabble in this artform. I add and embellish my skills and my choice of materials each time. My production in collages and photomontages is not consistent through any one period of my life, but I often fall back on these techniques as handy ways of stirring up new meanings from a cauldron full of images. I most often make these artworks for myself or for a family member's gift or card. When I need to express myself through images, I find collage to be the most powerful tool in my arsenal of creative techniques.

In high school I loved cutting up fashion magazines to make outlandish and subversive symbolism. This phase of my creativity culminated in a three-foot high Stop-sign shaped collage piece made in my freshman year at Harlaxton College for my "fundamentals of art" course. I suspended this collage piece from the ceiling in our gallery area. The Stop sign was divided in half and each half faced a different direction, so that a view could see designs from facing all four compass points. The four surfaces of the sign were covered with collage elements from fashion rags and printed pop media. I was definitely approaching the end of my "Hannah Hoch" phase by the time I completed that year abroad and came back to study commercial photography at an art college in my hometown. Hannah Hoch, for those who don't know her, was a Dadaist artist from Germany who used fashion magazine images to subvert their power as exploitation and crass consumerist propaganda.

In photography school, I made photomontages and assemblages of photographs. The type of photographic assemblages I most often made are often termed "joiners," that is, the art of arranging photographic images in overlapping panoramic scenes to form a natural perspective view of the landscape or scene. This was my "David Hockney" phase, appropriate since Hockney coined the term "joiners" as a art photography technique involving his specific brand of photomontage.

Next, in my late college years and throughout graduate school, I entered into a "cubist phase," which is to say that I was highly influenced by Picasso and Braque and their famous critic and promoter Clement Greenberg, who helped the artists to popularize modern collage techniques. For me, this was a kind of serious "getting back to roots" phase where my collages often followed simply geometry. By this point I was well-trained as an art history scholar, so I knew the artists to look for when I sought inspiration. In addition to Picasso and Braque collages, I found German artist Kurt Schwitter's "merz" collage particularly meaningful. Schwitters picked up refuse off of the sidewalks and incorporated it into his collages. Joseph Cornell's mysterious boxes filled with collage elements impressed me when I first saw them at The Art Institute of Chicago, and later at other museums. Once I actually co-organized a spiritual collage workshop at a church retreat, and everyone who came from ages seven through ninety, had a great time expressing themselves through collage. Collage is everywhere these days with layer upon layer of visual media surrounding us in the urban landscape and cyberspace.

Now I am entering a new exploration in manipulating images for my own expression. In the past month, my collage output has taken an unexpected turn all because my colleague A. introduced me to the world of Victorian die-cut scraps during the summer. She organized two workshops on Victorian holiday ornament-making to help our volunteers plan and prepare for making authentic decorations for the museum's Christmas trees for two late nineteenth-century exhibit spaces. She brought in specialists who collect and reproduce the look of Victorian ornaments to teach us the techniques. Each of the presenters had her own favorite types of ornaments, but both utilized pieces of die-cut printed paper scraps that the average Victorian matron and her children purchased for craft supplies.

Suddenly a whole new world of collage imagery has opened up for me. I have long wanted to make "altered art" books or objects, like the ones I've seen in craft galleries and art shows. Yet I lacked the sense of where I want to begin and of what images to use. These die-cuts, printed to fulfill the needs of Gilded Age crafters provide me with a brilliant spark of ingenuity. I now on a quest to purchase Victorian die-cut examples and wheel in my mind are already turning on the possibilities for collage-making.

I've learned that many people used the die-cuts for paper cards and holiday tree ornaments, but they also applied them to pieces of furniture and other objects. There are many names for this. You might find a term arte povero, "poor man's art" in Italian sources, while it's called lacque pauvre, "poor man's lacquer" in France and jappaning in Britain.

What appeals to me about these printed faces, animals, floral arrangements, and holiday scenes, is their direct link to the cultural past -- to life a century ago -- in a period when printed news media dominated the intellectual culture of the day, as opposed to virtual media. I think I have found the tools to tell history of a period I know well from my art history scholarship as well as from a personal fascination. There is an inherent appeal for all things relating to Victorian antiquarian scholarship. Now that was a culture that appreciated (and exploited) other cultures past and present for their exotic qualities. A large part of my personality can relate to that sense of longing for something different, something other and, perhaps a bit strange and extraordinary.

Resources

Clement Greenberg's legendary essay "Collage" is now free and accessible online.

See some examples of Joseph Cornell's mysterious and wonderful collage boxes from the collection at The National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C.

An online article about "The History of 18th Century Decoupage," by Studio D.

The Victorian Scrap Gallery by Dee Davis and Gail B. Cooper. The contents are featured in Google.com's online book gallery (follow the title hyperlink).

D. Blumchen is a treasure-trove of reproduction Victorian scraps and nifty crafting catalogue.

Time Travel to Mount Vernon

2007-10-01T18:00:00.000-04:00

Have you ever wanted to travel back in time?

I was lucky enough to be able to get as close to time travel this weekend as current technology permits, by becoming a re-enactor at a large colonial-era event taking place at Mount Vernon this past weekend.

The concept of time travel has appealed to me since my childhood. I think a large part of my insatiable interest in history relates to the strong desire to know what it is like to live in a different era of the past or of the future.

I read a lot about time travel in science fiction novels and avidly watched the British TV series Doctor Who, about a race of super-genius beings who harnessed the power to travel in time and space. The fact that the show is the longest-running and most-revived British television programme in the genre of science fiction tells me that there are other people out there who share my wacky hope that hurling through time aboard your TARDIS ship would be the ultimate adventure travel trip.

I had a gifted teacher for advanced placement U.S. history in high school who brought the past to life by having us read Civil War diaries, newspaper entries, court records, etc. All of a sudden history class was far more than merely a boring list of names, dates, and events to memorize in order to regurgitate on an exam. It was a powerful link to real people who lived, breathed, and once walked this earth. I strongly suspected that teacher was a Civil War re-enactor. The idea of re-enacting as a hobby grew in the 1960s and has taken many forms including renaissance faires, ethnic festivals and battle re-creations of many different periods.

All of this exposition is my confession that at last I have finally become what I long wanted to be -- a living historian instead of a book-learned historian. Museum educators who work on interpretation of historic sites like me have a natural edge when it comes to making the transition from academic historian to living history re-enactor. Many living history volunteers with whom I've had the pleasure to work over the past five years have been generous with knowledge and advice about what it takes to become a re-enactor. Members of the First Maryland Regiment have slowly turning my mind around to the possibility. Over time, they have become my friends and have shared their knowledge of eighteenth-century life with me. I have also met other museum professionals and colleagues who believe in the power to make history live through living history interpretation at historic sites.

You cannot imagine how intimidating the idea of becoming a living historian has been for me. You would think that someone who lives and breathes history and who also harbors this desire to become a re-enactor, would find the transition simple. Not so. History courses teach you nothing about how to wear five layers of clothing in summer weather; how to purchase your first set of stays (like a corset); where to go to buy accurate straight-lasted shoes; how to hold your posture differently if you are a common person than if you are a gentlewoman; or to speak like someone from out of the past. No, all of these things are not taught in graduate school.

I am lucky enough to have the benefit of friends from several living history organizations and experienced character interpreters who have provided me with advice and encouragement. They have taught me the practicalities and helped me to feel comfortable wearing historic attire as it is intended to be worn. They take all of my questions seriously and often share much research and re-enactor lore. Fortunately, my Girl Scout training did teach me something of surviving in a camp outdoors and cooking over a hearth. At least I was ready to cook when asked to help prepare the stew and spiced sweet potato and apple dishes.

It is difficult to find words to describe what camping out overnight at George Washington's Mount Vernon is like. Beneath a just-recently full moon, the bustling camp was lit in lantern- and fire-light as we finished putting up our tents on Friday night. The uppermost tower in the house was light all night and the great sword of the constellation Orion the Hunter hung above me as I woke before dawn for a stroll down the hill to the necessaries. The temperature was perfect for autumn camping.

In daylight hours, the encampment was filled to the brim with more 18th-century folk than tourists. Children played hide-and-seek and giggled with each other. Women cooked, baked, washed dishes, gossiped, and had afternoon tea with Lady Washington (Mary Wiseman) on the bowling green. Infantrymen, rifle sharpshooters, and artillery troops drilled and demonstrated their training to all assembled in the valley below camp. On Saturday evening the good folks at Mount Vernon allowed the parent re-enactor organization, The Continental Line, to hold a large party for all re-enactors to celebrate the Line's 20th anniversary. It's difficult to say but there could have been one thousand re-enactors taking part during the weekend's events, certainly from every one of the former 13 colonies. I met a lady from Massachusetts during the hearth-baking class and several folks from a New Jersey unit. All volunteers. All driving to Virginia on their own dime just for the chance to be a part of this event.

For two whole days, you might have stepped into another century as a visitors walking along the plantation's main pathways. You could stroll into camp and talk to folks, watch the military drills or interact with 18th century gentlefolk going for a stroll around the grounds. For two entire days I soaked up every minute of not sitting in front of a computer, not answering phone calls, not watching t.v., but rather just living in the moment. That moment ,with the fight for liberty hanging in the balance, seems all the more real when it's enacted before your eyes and you are part of it.

Be the best, not in, but for the world

2007-09-20T10:08:00.000-04:00

Disclaimer: Normally this blog is not very political. This week's post is. If you don't like my views, read someone else's blog or, better yet, write me a comment and say your peace. Democracy isn't about agreeing with one another, but it is about conversation. . .

The title of today's post comes from a presentation I attended recently. A brand new non-profit organization in my community called enVISIONing Annapolis sponsored the talk. This is an organization dedicated to generating an inclusive dialogue to help our growing community plan for the long-term future. I volunteered to help out at the lecture because I think it's about time my little city begin a dialogue on its growth problems and social problems, and put an end to all of the useless bickering. I hear too many people around me who love to complain and only a few, very dedicated souls who do anything to address our problems. Sadly some of the do-nothings are in our local government; others are businesses. We need a change. We need someone to come in and shake us up and to make us think.

The quote in my title was made by a visionary urban consultant, Charles Landry, who used it to bolster his notion that for a city to survive and be vital, it needs to be creative and to have a creative class of citizens who think altruistically. I had heard of Landry's work before in the media. I love it that his title while he consulted with the city of Perth, Australia was "Thinker-in-Residence." That's simply lovely. Every city should have (and take seriously) a person called a thinker-in-residence. If we cannot afford to keep a thinker-in-residence, than it may be enough to bring one here for a weekend and ask him to tell us what he sees and to show us ways we might re-think our sense of direction.

Landry's approach to urban development is familiar to me. Not because I know a great about him and his work, but because he reminds me of another visionary, who I hold as one of the most influential thinkers of the twentieth-century: R. Buckminster Fuller. Fuller, or "Bucky" as he was known around my house when I was growing up, was my father's design professor in Carbondale, IL back in the early 1960s. My parents knew Bucky and his wife. He came to their parties. What I learned from Bucky Fuller comes from everything my parents taught me about comprehensive design and about solving problems using your creativity. There's a well-known Bucky quote that sums up his creative process:

"When I'm working on a problem, I never think about beauty. I think only how to solve the problem. But when I have finished, if the solution is not beautiful, I know it is wrong."– R. Buckminster Fuller (1895 - 1983), US architect, engineer, and comprehensive thinker

Bucky Fuller was someone who you could truly call a visionary, that is, someone who sees the future just on the horizon and who works toward making that future a brighter, more positive one for the human population as a whole. No problem was too big for Bucky. He thought all of the time about how technology could be utilized for the good of humankind and even predicted the hunger storage many developing countries are experiencing now, in the 21st century. He believed that:

“For the first time in history it is now possible to take care of everybody at a higher standard of living than any have ever known. Only ten years ago the ‘more with less’ technology reached the point where this could be done. All humanity now has the option to become enduringly successful.”– R. Buckminster Fuller, 1980

He said that in 1980, three years before he left us and this planet for good. I don't think Bucky ever stopped believing that technology was the answer to creatively solving humanities problems.

Me, I'm not so sure that technology is the answer, but I know that creativity is. Perhaps this short post is my personal creativity manifesto. If, like Mr. Landry said, my little city of Annapolis decides to "be the best, not in, but for the world," what would "the best for the world" look like? Would Annapolis become a leader in Green Living? Probably not, but I would like to see green space (lots more than we have) in the city center. I would like us to tear up parking lots and put in parks. I want to see recycling containers along major pedestrian areas just like they are doing in Nova Scotia [See my post from July 20, 2007]. I want to see energy-efficient uses of wind and solar power. More sailboats and less motorboats, for the energy crisis that is upon us already. I'd like to see more historic homes have rain gardens around them, not just the few historic sites. Maybe a few "green roofs" would be a good idea, too.

Charles Landry suggested that Annapolis, as you approach it from the water -- the best way to approach our city, by the way -- has a dock area completely abandoned to the automobile. Why do we Americans so worship our cars? Often our entire environment is built around the ease of car travel and not foot/bike travel. I say we should get rid of cars downtown altogether. Yes, that means we'd need parking lots somewhere else, and public transport between these lots and the downtown. However, at least there then might be a downtown where children and adults could safely walk, perform music or pantomime, converse and celebrate. Wouldn't that be a better Annapolis for all?

Annapolis may be laid out in a plan that mirrors European cities, but it is decidedly not a European city in character. European cities have pedestrian-only shopping districts and better public transit. Europeans expect to walk or to ride bikes downtown. Why not think even more creatively than Washington, D.C. or Baltimore about public transit? If Annapolis and its region has so much coastline, then why not build water transit that everyone can afford to use. Let's abandon our cars for environmentally-efficient boats! Wouldn't people from out of town pay to ride in the world's first water-taxi-only downtown corridor? Couldn't we make it easier for tech workers to kayak or canoe to work? The waters are rising folks. Chesapeake Bay Foundation's research on climate change suggests that the sea rise will be as much as 3 or 4 feet by the end of this century.

Well, perhaps I am too naive. I still think our community is much in need of a wake-up call and I'm glad Landry made some of the controversial observations about our city that he did. I would love to see more young artists, scientists, and entrepreneurs living and working downtown. But young people are priced out of the housing market in our downtown. My husband and I are very middle class professionals and yet buying a house in downtown Annapolis (or even a condo) is not possible. We are looking at homes in burbs and rural communities to the south and to the west to lay down permanent roots, as I've almost given up on this city as a place I can truly call a "hometown." It's a sad commentary when we cannot afford to live here, it means there are many more workers in Annapolis with vital skills: school teachers, police officers, restaurant workers, and medical care-givers, who can only dream about living in Annapolis.

I want this city to be a beautiful, living place where there is diversity and harmony. How can that be when so many people feel abandoned and closed-out of the dialogue. I've offered to give my time at future enVISIONing Annapolis lectures in the hopes our efforts might indeed generate some dialogue and the dialogue, some serious action.

Wheels of Time

2007-09-13T03:17:00.000-04:00

Calendar from Webster.com
Etymology: Middle English calender, from Anglo-French or Medieval Latin; Anglo-French kalender, from Medieval Latin kalendarium, from Latin, moneylender's account book, from kalendae calends
1 : a system for fixing the beginning, length, and divisions of the civil year and arranging days and longer divisions of time (as weeks and months) in a definite order -- see MONTH table

Reflections about the way human beings tell time have been with me this week. It began with a news story on BBC News about the country of Ethiopia celebrating their own version of Y2K seven years after the rest of us (cf. Why Ethiopia's Millennium is seven years late, by Elizabeth Blunt BBC News, Addis Ababa). I find it rather interesting that Ethopians so love their way of seeing the world, and believe so fervently in their own Christian traditions dating to ancient Coptic times, that they staunchly refused to celebrate the Millennium on 31 December 1999. Of course, I also know sticklers to the rule in the Western World who wouldn't actually believe we had entered the Third Millennium until 1 January 2001.

I can remember that I had a childhood preoccupation with calendars from many different cultures and studied clocks, watches and timepieces in coffee-table tomes in the library at a fairly early age. It probably began with my love of history and archaeology that I nurtured during those formative years. I had a flirtation with the idea of becoming an Egyptologist or scholar of Ancient Greece back then. My elementary school librarian reminded me a few years ago when we were reintroduced, that I was the little girl in Second Grade who had every book on Egypt, Greece and Rome checked out at some point. (Yes, I was a book nerd even then.) What I was hungry to learn centered around the fact that these cultures had different languages, different ways of viewing the world, different beliefs and religions. Among the array of differences about these ancient peoples I discovered for myself was their methods of telling time. The ancient Romans were very focused on conducting business. Maybe that is why we borrow the etymology for our word "calendar" from their word for the accountant's notebook. [See epigraph above.]

There's a hilarious cartoon about Druids at Stonehenge who are deciding what to do with the standing stone calendar they've just finished constructing by Tom Cheney from The New Yorker. It made me laugh because once human beings create a system, they cannot seem to let well enough allow and enjoy the invention. No, they always make their lives even more complicated by adding extra layers of minutiae, red tape, or rules. Calendars are not simple wheels of time, but rather the starting points for entire philosophies, religions, ways of conducting business, or exchanges of communication.

Case in point: in my working life I am a museum educator for a historic site. Annapolis was founded as Maryland's capital in the late seventeenth century and had it's heyday throughout the eighteenth century up to the War for Independence. England (and, thus it's colonies in the New World) adopted the Gregorian Calendar in 1752 CE due to a parliamentary act known as An Act for Regulating the Commencement of the Year; and for Correcting the Calendar now in Use. That means that anyone born before 1 January 1752, suddenly had a new birthdate thrust upon him/her. The new birthday would depend upon whether or not s/he was born before March 25th, the Christian holiday of the Feast of the Annunciation, which in England was the first day of the Civil (or Legal) Year. Famously, George Washington's birthday moved from 11 February to 22 February due to the change from the Old Style calendar to the New. Confused yet? [See resources below.]

To make matters more confusing, you and I need to decide what heavenly body will be the basis for our calendar. For people living in North America or Europe, the sun is likely the basis for your daily existence and days of conducting business. If you come from India, Jordan, or China, your dates may be based upon lunar cycles. The Feast of Easter, the height of the liturgical year for many Christians, is often calculated as the first Sunday from the full moon on or after the vernal equinox (21 March). This is why the movable feast of Easter dances around. It comes one year in April, but might sometimes appear in late March. If you are a farmer or gardener, you might be more concerned with the lunar calendar like the one in Farmer's Almanac. If you sail, kayak or live near a large body of water like the Chesapeake Bay, then the moon is also important to you because it affects coastal tides.

This is all to suggest that calendars are very arbitrary things by nature. The next time you make a lunch date with a friend or business meeting with an associate, think about the fact that there is a social contract to which you both must agree: not only a date and time, but also upon which calendar you are using.

By the way, Happy New Year today if you are Jewish. It's Rosh Hashanah (09/12/07 or Elul 1, 5767).

Do you have a favorite movable feast? Use a minority calendar? I welcome you to post your comments and ideas here.

Annotated Resources:
Learn more about the Old Style vs. New Style Calendar and how to make sense of dates around the year 1752 CE in a helpful article by Mike Spathaky written for genealogists.
Use Earth Calendar to find out what holidays are celebrated on any given date on the Gregorian Calendar.
See WebExhibits for more about the minutiae of the Western World's calendar: Definitions of Our Year, http://webexhibits.org/calendars/year-definitions.html
If you are interested in the history and archaeology of calendar, I highly recommend the scholarship of Anthony F. Aveni in such books as Empires of Time: Calendars, Clocks and Cultures.
One of my personal favorite books of history and folklore about telling time is by a British history professor from University of Bristol, Ronald Hutton who wrote The Stations of the Sun among many fine scholarly works on rituals and folklore in Great Britain.

Lifeforce

2007-09-06T16:44:00.000-04:00

I am that supreme and fiery force that sends forth all the sparks of life. Death hath no part in me, yet do I allot it, wherefore I am girt about with wisdom as with wings. I am that living and fiery essence of the divine substance that flows in the beauty of the fields. I shine in the water, I burn in the sun and the moon and the stars. Mine is that mysterious force of the invisible wind. I sustain the breath of all living. I breathe in the verdure and in the flowers, and when the waters flows like living things, it is I. I found those columns which support the whole earth . . . I am the force which lies hid in the winds, from me they take their source, and as a man may move because he breathes, so does a fire burn but by my blast. All these live because I am in them and am of their life. I am wisdom. Mine is the blast of the thundered word by which all things were made. I permeate all things that may not die. I am life.

-Hildegard of Bingen, 12th century

My reflections this week are elemental. Not only am I engaged in some private research on the elements, but I am also beginning a course acupuncture treatments for chronic sinusitis, an illness which has plagued my whole life. I found it thrilling, therefore, to find in twelfth-century visionary artist Hildegard von Bingen's writings the epigraph above on the nature of lifeforce.

Our bodies are living organisms with communities of organs working in collaboration and with a network of neurons deciding on courses of action. Our nerves are like the invisible wires that cause mechanical devices like computers to switch on or switch off in a pattern of ones and zeros. If this metaphor holds, then it also stands to reason that sometimes a body's wiring or mechanisms may not function correctly, or might encounter a problem creating an infinite feedback loop. Clearly my immune system has been running poorly and is currently experiencing a breakdown.

Western medical science can perform great miracles. I don't doubt that it is a valid path of restoring health. I do find, however, that after some 34 years of attempting standard Western medical practices: drugs, injections, inhalers, etc., I need a breath of fresh air and a different point-of-view to help solve my systemic problem. It's not just the headaches I often feel, ranging from mild to migraine. It's not just the sore throat, coughing, wheezing and general feeling of listlessness that comes with each infection. It's the constant rash of dry, crackling skin; the insane amount of water I need to drink to prevent dry-mouth; and the pressure on my brain. Sometimes it's also the millisecond of fright that arrives in the morning, wondering if I'll be able to take that first breath of the day through my nose or mouth -- or at all.

That's where the Chinese concept of Qi comes in. Qi, life energy, is a concept that I have known about since I wandered about studying Eastern philosophies during college.

A definition of Qi from Wikipedia.com

Qi, also commonly spelled ch'i (in Wade-Giles romanization) or ki (in romanized Japanese), is a fundamental concept of traditional Chinese culture. Qi is believed to be part of every living thing that exists, as a kind of “life force” or “spiritual energy.” It is frequently translated as “energy flow,” or literally as “air” or “breath.” (For example, tiānqì, literally “sky breath”, is the ordinary Chinese word for "weather). In Mandarin Chinese it is pronounced something like "chee" in English, but the tongue position is different

I now realize that Qi is the same word I've heard people pronounce like /chee/. Some even use a westernized spelling of it: Chi, as in Tai Chi Chuan, a martial art I practiced for a while during graduate school. Personally, I think of Qi as lifeforce, the energy that binds our bodies together and helps them to breathe and move. It's also the energy that makes us aware of ourselves and of our surroundings. It is that which creates our sentience.

Lifeforce is not unknown to the West as Hildegard's poetic writing proves. Many religions hinge around a concept of a life-force or an energy surrounding all things. It is a concept familiar to anyone who knows about the Shinto beliefs in Japan or to the cosmology of Native American peoples. And even if you aren't particularly spiritual you've probably heard of The Force. ("Use The Force, Luke.")

There must be something within my body's energy or lifeforce that is not working as it should. Why should I labor under a near constant state of illness, no matter how slight? It's been so long since I've sought any medical treatment for my sinusitis, and since I last received care for it, the world has changed. Insurance companies now accept the probability that cases like mine can be treated with acupuncture. And that is where I arrive at the Qi concept. I know someone who found great relief from sinus trouble through acupuncture. Other friends of mine have had even more serious illnesses like Crohn's disease treated successful by Chinese medicine and acupuncture.

At last I have found the right combination of willingness to try something new in the hopes of relief from my non-debilitating, yet irritating condition and of ability to afford said treatment. I found my courage and went to my first acupuncture appointment last Thursday.

The first thing I realized was that it was more like going to a massage therapist appointment than like a doctor's office visit. I didn't have to undress and wear a tiny sheet. I didn't feel cold. The room was not lit by harsh fluorescent lighting, but rather dimmed, warm light. There was gentle music playing in the background. My acupuncturist was calm and professional as any medical practitioner might be, but with that hint of empathy you don't often receive from a medical doctor. She feels my case is treatable, but she will need to see me frequently at first to get my wiring to recalibrate itself. The needles, don't hurt, by the way. You hardly feel them at all. In comparison to the years of desensitization injections and antibiotic injections I received as a child, they are a walk in the park. I know well that I will have to wait and see if acupuncture can offer me some relief, but I long for my body to be in harmony with itself.

If you are curious to know more about the relationship of the Chinese concept of Qi to medical health you might want to read an online article on acupuncture and qi or the following paragraph from Wikipedia's article:

Qi in traditional Chinese medicine
Theories of traditional Chinese medicine assert that the body has natural patterns of qi that circulate in channels called meridians in English. Symptoms of various illnesses are often believed to be the product of disrupted, blocked, or unbalanced qi movement (interrupted flow) through the body's meridians, as well as deficiencies or imbalances of qi (homeostatic imbalance) in the various Zang Fu organs. Traditional Chinese medicine often seeks to relieve these imbalances by adjusting the circulation of qi (metabolic energy flow) in the body using a variety of therapeutic techniques. Some of these techniques include herbal medicines, special diets, physical training regimens (Qigong, Tai Chi Chuan, and martial arts training), moxibustion, massage to clear blockages, and acupuncture, which uses small diameter metal needles inserted into the skin and underlying tissues to reroute or balance qi.

Cooking Fresh Experiment: Summertime Foods

2007-08-31T04:06:00.001-04:00

Picture caption: Me in Revolutionary Attire

I came away from my vacation in Nova Scotia with a new mission. I wanted to integrate the natural world even more strongly into my daily life than I had been. Nova Scotians appear to be quite ahead of their U.S. cousins with regards to recycling, organic foods, and environmentalism. It's likely that because they have so much under-populated nature left to preserve that they simply aren't as blase as, say, New Yorkers or Marylanders.

Summer in Maryland is difficult weather for me because I don't feel so well in humid and hot climates. I feel languid and irritable. I needed to seek foods that are refreshing, cooling, and easy to prepare with little energy. As I planned my summer cooking strategy I made a trip to a local library to conduct some research on preparing seasonal recipes -- that is, meals prepared with local produce that is currently fresh and in-season.

I set my goal to make at least one seasonal meal each week, using local and fresh ingredients whenever possible. My experiments have yielded some recipes that I plan to use in summers to come:

Chilled Red Pepper and Tomato Soup with Cucumber Herb Salad by Chef Annie Wayte (see below). I really thought this was very successful and easy as far as soup preparation goes. Delicious and different from gazpacho. At my husband's request and in the interests of shorter prep time, I didn't strain the resulting soup, but left it the consistency of stew.
Fennel Salad with Mustard Dill Dressing by Chef Annie Wayte (see below). I had never seen a fennel bulb before and had to ask the Whole Foods stock clerk where to find it. The bulb is very much like celery and tastes richly anise, even more so than the fennel fronds I'm used to using in recipes.
I asked my mom for her delicious Celery Seed Cole Slaw recipe, which is not the mayonnaise-laden slaw, but a oil and vinegar slaw. It's tastes lighter which is good for humid weather.
I made a huge batch of Salsa Fresca. The gardeners of the historic site where I work said I could help myself to the bumper crop of tomatoes, chili peppers, and jalapenos. (Hey, there have to be some perks when working for a non-profit!) Even after my husband and I wolfed much of the salsa down with southwestern main dishes, I still had almost a full mason-jar's worth left to give the gardeners in thanks for their hard work tilling the soil the eighteenth-century way. I'm currently drying the remaining chilis. I have learned just why people have to can their produce when they have too much of it.

There are several local farmer's stands just south of Annapolis and I can also get some local produce or organic produce at Whole Foods. Rumor has it there's a farmer's market in Edgewater on Thursday evenings, but I still need to investigate. I'm concerned that by the time it might take to drive there after work, won't the best produce be gone by 5:30?

My library had a fabulous cookbook which I highly recommend to anyone else attempting seasonal cooking in North America: it's called Keep It Seasonal: Soups, Salads, and Sandwiches by chef Annie Wayte. What I like about this particular cookbook is that I'm not the kind of cook who likes to spend hours slaving in the kitchen. I rarely have time, especially in the workweek to create labor intensive meals. Plus my charming husband prefers simple foods, particularly sandwiches and often salads. Soups, well that's another matter, he likes the thick "stew" variety whereas I'm more flexible in that regard. I like the ingredients she chose, many of which are easy to come by in my climate. She offers recipes for fresh cooking in four seasons. The winter chapter is especially enlightening, because she focuses on root veggies and beans, plus a range of citrus fruits to keep you feeling sunny even during the darkest months. I find her approach refreshing; the ingredients simple and not difficult to find; the recipes easy to follow; and the variety of foods to try in each season inspiring.

I tried several other cookbooks that claimed seasonal affiliation in the titles, but found the actual list of ingredients to be not precisely seasonal. There are also regional cookbooks for seasonal foods in the Southwestern U.S., California, etc. which would be wonderful resources for folks in those areas. I took a Southwestern cooking class about five years ago at L'Academie de Cuisine from Susan Belsinger. Now I've adopted southwestern cooking my personal speciality. Many of the recipes from Susan's class are classic summertime fare. I also have a particular fondness for Mediterranean cooking and Spanish tapas dishes, so I recently hunted for books with those cooking styles.

My favorite tapas restaurant of all seasons is Jaleo. It's a Washington, D.C. institution by now and it's made Chef Jose Andres well-known. Jaleo's food is really that good, especially the paellas, patatas bravas, gambas al ajillo, and seafood dishes. I've rarely had any tapas there that did not suit my taste buds. Chef Andres also opened other branches of Jaleo in Maryland and Northern Virginia. He also has Cafe Atlantico in DC where I recently dined for DC's Restaurant Week. Scrumptious! Mr. Andres has a cookbook called Tapas: A Taste of Spain in America that I may purchase in the coming months.

The main results of my experiment in the past month has been confirmation that I can, in fact, live more seasonally by eating available local and organic foods. I feel better and am less bothered by the heat when I'm eating fresh, summertime food. I think we spend so much of our time today changing our environment to suit ourselves that we forget that not too long ago people did not have opportunities to consume any foods they desired in any season. The local economy and finances of some meant they needed to grow their own food and eat what was available. Choice has spoiled us. Foods that are cheap, easy, and fattening shorten our lives and expand our waistlines.

I plan to continue my seasonal cooking experiment as fall approaches. That should not be difficult for me, since I love the fall and I love the aromas and flavors of harvest veggies and fruits. I can hardly wait!

Do you have any favorite seasonal recipes? Any favorite summertime comfort foods or cookbooks? Please share your thoughts with me by posting a comment.

Make Sail

2007-08-29T06:57:00.000-04:00

Last Sunday evening I did something that I had only dreamed about in the past.

I cruised on a sailboat and, for a brief few minutes, actually had the opportunity to steer. We were cruising on Schooner Woodwind II on the Chesapeake Bay, approaching the mouth of the Severn River near Annapolis Harbor. I had to use the dome of the State House as my point of reference for keeping the sails steady as she goes.

Under the easy wind conditions and light of remaining dusk, the schooner was not harder to steer than driving a car. It isn't like the tall ships of old, in that it does have a motor and it also has modern steering and components. For a few brief moments, however, I might have been sailing a fishing ship into that well-known harbor at the edge of the Chesapeake Bay.

I asked the Captain, Jen, a very gregarious lady to be sure, if a person had to grow up around sailboats to learn how to sail. "No!" said she. And she even gave me the name of a local sailing school and told me about an Annapolis-based sailing club where you share ownership in a sailboat so that you can take your turn cruising, even if you don't own your own ship. Wow!

I grew up near several large rivers, but in a very landlocked part of south-western Ohio and northern Kentucky. To be behind the wheel of a boat, any boat, is a dream come true. I always dreamed of sailing and sailboats. I think that's what lured me to Annapolis. But I was always too timid to ask people if I could go out on their boats. I supposed that I figured someday my chance would come. Well, thanks to my very generous husband who liked the idea of a Thai Dinner cruise on the Bay, I finally had my wish.

Sailing was even better than kayaking!!!! I just love being out on the water.

Here's a link to a photo of the Woodwind II's sails being raised at the mouth of the Annapolis Harbor. See how low the sun is in the sky?

Here's a link to a photo of our vessel returning to Annapolis Harbor at twilight behind the Harbor Queen. See the Church steeple in the background? That's St. Mary's Cathedral.

Harlaxton College Remembered

2007-08-19T07:34:00.000-04:00

It doesn't seem at all like 20 years have past since my freshman year of college. On this date in 1987 I was packing my two allotted suitcases and bursting with anticipation of spending my freshman year abroad in England.

I had grown up in a small town in Northern Kentucky near Cincinnati, Ohio and I never fit in with 98% of my high school classmates. My 11th grade guidance counselor looked at me as though I sprouted horns when I clearly stated my intention of studying in England for my first year in college. "You mean, you don't want to go to UK [Univ. of Kentucky]?" he asked incredulously. A large percentage of my college-bound classmates were headed there. I was furious with him, but then I was furious and impatient with people in general in those days. So I embarked upon my own mission to find a college program where a freshman could study abroad. My mother and the Cincinnati Public Library's resources helped me in my quest. From the library I found an address for the Council on International Education Exchange. They sent me a 3/4" catalogue of study abroad programs. I narrowed it down to three programs that permitted freshman to enter their program, but one of the three leaped out at me from the page and said something like this:

Study in a stately home built in the 1830s by industrialist Gregory Gregory. Take liberal arts classes taught by British and American faculty in state rooms and live on a manor with 6.5 acre walled garden and formal gardens. . .

When I applied to the University of Evansville for admission to Harlaxton College all those years ago, I had no idea how much it would change my life. For the first time I felt like the world was huge and mine for exploration. I found my profession, art history, there influenced by one of Harlaxton's eminent faculty members, medieval scholar Lady Wedgwood [Dr. Pamela Tudor-Craig]. Even though my parents are professional artists, I had no idea that you could think, talk and write about art as a job before attending Harlaxton and sitting-in on Lady Wedgwood's amazing lectures. I also took four courses in British history and literature, and a wonderful science course on Physical Geography of Great Britain. I absorbed quietly like a little sponge and adored every minute of starring up to a ceiling of gilt Victorian grandeur or stone masonry.

And I traveled. Every weekend I went somewhere, all around the island of Great Britain, including North Wales, Edinburgh, York, Lincoln, the Cotswolds, the Lake District, and of course, many trips to London. Each semester were had two four-day long weekends for travel and so I went to the Ile de France, to Venice, to Rome, and explored the seaside town of Ramsgate where my great grandmother Anne left behind those shores for the New World.

I met some wonderful people art Harlaxton and found myself immersed in diverse cultures. It was truly an international community with students from the UK, Europe, the Middle East all blended together. I went to pubs and imbibed good British cider and bitter. I ate Indian food for the first time. I became friends with students from Chicago, rural Indiana, and Germany. I'll never forget the evening that the Turkish students invited us to share strong coffee and Turkish delight with them. I won't for get the fall evening of the Guy Fawkes Night Bonfire and an evening ramble to explore Harlaxton's creepy gatehouse. My friend AC and I explored the punk clothing stores in Nottingham and played Warhammer role-playing games in the evenings. The American students put together a haunted house for Halloween and a one-mile line of British teens were lined up to go inside (back then, haunted houses were an oddity in England). We rented costumes and enjoyed a fabulous masquerade ball in the great hall each semester.

It would be impossible for me to encompass that entire year into one short essay and do it justice, but I can only hint at the richness I learned by seeing, touching, hearing about things that were far older than any European settlement in the United States. I had such a hunger for anything antique or ancient. The tangible contact with all that history changed me. It grounded my future and raised my awareness to things beyond the tiny, provincial community where I had lived most of my then 18 years.

Now sitting here twenty years later it is difficult for me to separate the strands of my life that were affected by this grand tour experiment of mine in my freshman year. I would be a different person now, if not for Harlaxton. I would venture to guess I am a more interesting and better education person for having been there, too.

Knitting Project Check-in

2007-08-16T20:15:00.000-04:00

I have been keeping a hand-written knitting journal. I spent some time on Sunday afternoon taking stock of all the knitting projects on which I'm currently working or that I plan to begin between now and the winter holidays. My project list is quite daunting at first look, but I decided to divide it into three handy categories:

Small Projects for Me

Big Projects for Me

Projects for Others

There's also a 2007 Holiday Gift Ideas sub-category under "Projects for Others."

Just sitting down to list my current projects and ideas for future projects felt very reassuring. I'm actually not in as over my head as I thought I was. Now I feel ready to divide and conquer! The "Small Projects" include smaller projects that I can easily take on-the-go and those easy patterns don't need to think to hard in order to complete. The "Big Projects" list included a short-sleeve cardigan that is in-progress and a really cool vest pattern kit from Hand Maiden that I saw on vacation, but restrained myself from impulse buying. I will order that vest pattern kit for the holidays.

I managed to complete one of the "Small Projects" on Wednesday night. I'm calling it my "Carnivale Scarf" because the colorway reminded a friend of mine of Mardi Gras. Actually, to me it's also the colors of Carinvale in Venice. This was my first time knitting with viscose, which I finally learned is a synthetic version of silk. The yarn was the Saturn colorway by Mango Moon in 100% Nepalese viscose. I'm very pleased with the way the variegation in the hand-dyed yarn created a diamond pattern. Everyone who has seen it so far has thought it very successful. I'm grateful to my friend A for taking this photo of me this morning.

In the "Projects for Others" category I have several baby gifts to make. I'm making a pair of festive lime green booties with swirly ties for a friend who had a baby in July. The first pair is coming along nicely and I hope to have them complete in time for her third month. They are supposed to be stretchy and warm, but not really for infants who are ready to crawl too far and certainly not for walking. Cute, nonetheless.

I think keeping track of my projects is really going to keep me from having too many going at once. I also is a record to keep me from forgetting wonderful patterns that I want to try out.

Another Annapolis

2007-07-20T07:20:00.000-04:00

It's just after 9:00 p.m. Atlantic Time (8:00 p.m. EST), and I'm sitting at a grand old Victorian roll-top desk typing on a high tech laptop, courtesy of my hosts at Hillsdale House Inn. I'm in another Annapolis, another city named for Queen Anne of England only fifteen years after my own was renamed in her honor, Annapolis Royal, Nova Scotia. The inn is full of charm and the proprietors are generous. King George V stayed here when he was a young prince.

Here are some brief observations I've made over the course of the 28 hours that I have been on the island of Nova Scotia:

People hang their laundry out to dry here and there are recycling bins in every tiny town in the province.
Drivers actually stop to allow pedestrians to cross the road--even when they aren't near a cross walk.
There are rich layers of cultural diversity here from the Native Americans, to French settlers of the 17th century (Acadians), to the Scots, to the English, to the American and African American Loyalists.
Acadians and Cajuns have entirely different cuisines; the Acadian cuisine is very meat and potatoes with little spice, where as their ancestors some of whom became Cajuns borrowed spices and cooking styles from the Caribbean and Spanish.
The local scallops are so incredibly tasty in garlic sauce!
This community of Annapolis Royal has world class walking tours and a compact historic district. The inhabitants are fierce preservationists and very enthusiastic to tell you all about their heritage.
The cemetery by Fort Anne has four centuries of graves; I went on a lantern-lit graveyard tour last night.
The Annapolis River has amazing tidal patterns--the change is over 29 feet between high and low tide. The salt marshes remind me of Maryland, except that huge dikes are used to reclaim the fertile soil from the brackish rivers.
This is one of the most hotly-contested towns between the English and French in the whole New World; the town changed hands seven times and witnessed 13 battles.
No matter how far away you travel in North America, Harry Potter mania is there.
The locals apologized for the "hot weather," which has been roughly low 70s F both days and a bit humid. Compared to 95-degree Maryland swampiness this is cool and comfortable. I don't even mind that it's been overcast the whole time.
Okay, the downside--mosquitoes out in the evenings are every bit as bad here as back home.

I'll post more as I can and eventually formulate my observations into proper paragraphs.
Au revoir!

The Chesapeake Bay: Then and Now

2007-07-14T07:00:00.000-04:00

There are 12 people on a mission to look at the Chesapeake Bay from an unusual perspective. They are retracing the voyage of Captain John Smith on his explorations of the Bay in a 28-foot reconstruction of the shallop Smith and his crew sailed into the Bay 400 years ago. They are sailing and rowing their way to towns and cities, bringing an educational exhibit and recording the state of the Bay from their unplugged points-of-view as a modern-day crew with GPS, high-tech outdoor gear and camp stoves.

Exploring the Bay from Smith's route are a crew comprised of men and women sailors who come from diverse professional backgrounds including engineers, biologists, ecologists, anthropologists, historians and one forensic scientist. I have been reading their online journal this morning and have found some interesting comparisons and contrasts between their experiences on the Bay now and the experiences of the seventeenth-century English explorers recorded in Smith's journals. Native Americans no longer have a thriving culture on the Bay, but the 2007 crew is often relying upon the locals for supplementing their meager stores of food. Smith encountered a number of severe storms that forced him to land and occasionally ran aground. The 2007 crew has had to row quite a bit due to low winds lately, but they have also braved stormy weather and have had to struggle to put the boat back in the water after several groundings.

I do find it very haunting that Smith saw open vistas on the Chesapeake shoreline like this:
30 leagues we sayled more Northwards not finding any inhabitants, leaving all the Easterne shore, lowe Islandes, but overgrowne with wood, as all the Coast beyond them so farre as wee could see: the Westerne shore by which we sayled we found all along well watered, but very mountanous and barren, the vallies very fertill, but extreame thicke of small wood so well as trees, and much frequented with Wolves, Beares, Deere and other wild beasts.

The reconstructed shallop is now at the mid-way point in it's journey and is being celebrated all weekend at the Annapolis City Dock. This morning, the shallop will sail in a boat parade, then the Governor and other dignitaries will make speeches. The shallop will be on display 10-6 both July 14 and 15. I helped to plan an exhibit table for my employer, one of many Annapolis organizations that is welcoming the JS400 crew to Maryland's capital. I'll be helping with set-up today so I may stay downtown for the fanfare. Then tomorrow I work throughout the day helping to the staff the table along with volunteers. After reading the crew's journal I have become more aware of the significance of this recreation. There is something to be learned about the Bay now, as well as something to be taught about its past.

Knitting and Contemplation

2007-07-10T17:09:00.000-04:00

Definition from Webster.com:
contemplation

Main Entry: con·tem·pla·tion Pronunciation: "kän-t&m-'plA-sh&n, -"tem-Function: noun
1 a : concentration on spiritual things as a form of private devotion
b : a state of mystical awareness of God's being
2 : an act of considering with attention : STUDY
3 : the act of regarding steadily
4 : INTENTION, EXPECTATION

It has been six months since I have had the energy to post here in Pull of the Tides, but sometimes the work of a creative mind requires silences and spaces before expression results. Mainly the pause in self-expression on this blog has come from two major sources: from feelings of utter burn-out from work and from my need to ponder what I really want to be spending my waking hours doing. So I have been inside my cocoon for six months, while my mind turned inward in contemplation.

I work for a very small non-profit that is suffering from lack of leadership and a decreasing budget. Organizations like the one I work for often have a high turn-over in staff due to burn-out. There are just enough staff members to keep us running, but not enough to pull off the high rate of activity for too very long before the situation begins to crumble. There were too many 12-hour days this past spring. Many of the things I wanted to do in my personal life suffered from the time I gave to my job.

Like Penelope of Greek myth waiting for her husband Ulysses to return from his voyages, I have carefully unwound my thoughts of anxiety, frustration and uncertainty each night and started afresh with the goal of finding a way to improve my circumstances at work. For a while I experienced great frustration, and felt powerless to change my circumstances or to speak up. In recent weeks things have begun to shift again. There are more "a-ha" moments when I've managed to make a difference. I can now say that I think I have laid the groundwork for a less stressful fall at my job, at least that's what I hope.

I think what has preserved my sanity is that while I was focusing so much attention to work, I was remaining loyal to my desires to be more creative in my daily life. To make things gives me the sense of accomplishment that I often don't feel in my job. Working too hard or too much can create feelings of loneliness. The people around me have helped me to remain grounded to values I hold dear and have freed me to do the creative work I need to do.

So I focused my creative energies these past six months on knitting: knitting alone, knitting with different groups of friends, and making new friends through knitting.

I think this is something akin to what Betsy Greer has labeled "craftivism." I have building community through crafting. It has made a big difference to me that I have had friends with whom I can knit. I have a pair of friends who are voracious textile-makers and they are truly an inspiration to me. They have taught me that I need one big project and one small project (at minimum) so that I can keep the crafting going on at home and on the move. They literally knit anywhere they go. We went on a field trip to the Maryland Sheep and Wool Festival and learned that an afternoon is nice, but you won't be able to look at all of the yarn unless you go both days! Knitting can also be a form of reaching out to new friends. I also gave knitting lessons to a woman I met in yoga class to knit last December, and she is becoming a friend. In the cold months of late winter and into the spring thaw I organized knitting circles with three or four friends at a local tea shop or cafe.

Then, out of the blue just a few weeks ago, I had a long talk with a former co-worker. Somehow the conversation turned to knitting and I was astonished to learn that she loves to knit. It had never come up in the past. Immediately we launched into a conversation on our various projects. She introduced me to a knitting store I hadn't heard about that is about 40-minutes from where I live. It's worth the drive, especially on Wednesday nights when they open up the shop for "Sip 'N Knit" gatherings (wine, snacks and good company). So now my former co-worker and her roommate have introduced me to yet another community of boisterous and happy crafters.

It has taken me a while to realize that these crafty friends have been guiding me through and out of my quiet time of reflection, and have helped me to take action. Knitting a garment takes a lot of time, a lot of courage, in fact. Each stitch is small and laid so closely together with others, that I sometimes find myself surprised at how much fabric I have made during one sitting. Focusing deeply on this work is a form of contemplation. For me, it has almost spiritual, maybe "Zen" properties. Combining that with my love of spending time in good company and of enjoying good conversation has been my way of seeing through the rough patches of my life. As one online friend said, "Knitting is a wonderfully constructive way of using up negative energy."

Those rough patches at my job aren't over, but I have made a lot of progress on my blue cotton cardigan. I'm looking forward to tomorrow evening's Sip 'N Knit with the gals.

A Good Story, Well Told

2006-12-22T08:50:00.000-05:00

I have been reflecting for several months on the art of storytelling lately in both my working and private lives.

In my work, I have been helping to educate my volunteers about historic interpretation as good storytelling. Visitors to our museum do not want to be lectured. They come to learn something about the past to which they can relate to themselves or, at least to which they can compare themselves. They want to feel like they are part of the events that lead young, wealthy men to rebel against their government to form a self-government--a risk not many today in my country would be willing to take, I venture to guess. Or, they want to learn about the domestic life of a colonial gentry household that included slaves and indentured servants. Or, how a gentlewoman entertained her many guests in her fine house.

Often visitors get an interpreter who is enthusiastic about the detailed minutia of history. This is the person who loves telling all the little memories or all of the information collected on a topic over a lifetime of enthusiasm. Not all of the stories are true, but they often sound extremely appealing. It's wonderful to love history and all of its detail. I certainly do. Yet, I also want my interpreters to know the facts. The average visitor is not the connoisseur of historical minutia that the typical interpreter is. They begin to glaze over if you don't capture their imagination right from the beginning of the tour.

The writer and creativity coach, Oriah Mountain Dreamer, puts the importance of storytelling versus rambling or lecturing very succinctly:

An account of a series of events is not a story. A series of
sounds or musical phrases is not a composition. Bits of color or shape, a
string of images or random textures, do not make a piece of art. . . And I
wonder what happened to the editing process, the process by which the raw
material of stories--the words that are chosen, the real or imagined events that
are described, the sensory details of inner responses and outer settings--are
shaped and reshaped until they become something whole and complete."
--What We Ache For: Creativity and the Unfolding of Your Soul, 2005

The editing process is a vital part of storytelling. Without placing emphasis on a critical moment or object or emotion, the listener is lost in what I call the "laundry list" of factoids. It's information overload and their brain has shut down. I don't think history should be taught like peas are fed to children, "because it's good for you." I think that history is storytelling and that the story must be enjoyable and comprehensible to the listener.

The challenge for the interpreter is to assess his or her audience before the story is even begun. There are tales of bards from the Middle Ages who could enter a room and capture an audience with a sweeping gesture and nod towards the crowd. The Bard would calculate timing, cadence, tone of voice, and dramatic movement to propel the story forward and to keep the audience members on the edge of their seats, desperate to hear what happens next.

When I was a pre-teen I went each summer to a camp in the wooded hills of Kentucky. Some of my best friends from my town and neighborhood also went to this camp, but once we were there our lives were filled with new challenges and activities distant from any we did at home.

One of my favorite aspects of this camp was the evening campfires where we watched the sun and our daily life set as the embers of the bonfire began to spark. We sang songs familiar to our teenage counselors--who were children of the late Sixties and taught us folk songs and lighter protest anthems, Scouting songs and even older English or Celtic-inspired ballads. The air temperature grew cold, sometimes the wind picked up and I can still recall the scary tale of Wolf Pen and the native spirits who one of our counselors said inhabited the barren rockscape only three miles hike from where we sat. Storytelling as song and as legend fed my imagination. I think my love of folk music and of being scared by spooky tales comes from these nights in the Kentucky hills.

Later as a graduate student I researched the concept of initiation in West and Central Africa for a paper in an African Art class. It told of the way that pre-teens--girls as well as boys--of a certain age were prepared for adulthood by their separation from their village in a place distant from their homes and families. There they learned--girls with their Elder Ladies or boys with their Elder Menfolk--skills to prepare them for adult lives as women and men. The adults also told them the stories of their people--the mythology, belief-system, and fables that encourage good, proper behavior or quick decision-making. The African stories of the animals and of the Gods become embedded in the young person's mind. For these African pre-teenagers, storytelling and mythology was (is still, in some cases) there to guide them in their daily lives as they approach adulthood. History, mythology and all of the little tales we tell each other and ourselves are somehow an essential part of being human, for all cultures utilize this method of presenting information to each other.

Storytelling is an art that I love to practice especially in the dark months of the year. The wintertime seems the best time to share tales and legends. The darkness feeds the imagination. Creatures can grow. Heroes become larger-than-life. The air holds a sense of mystery and invites you to journey into the Unknown. It's not unlike the dim setting of a movie theater, where moving pictures fuel our desires or nightmares. Even in the summer, the best storytime is after dark. There is something powerful about the memory of sitting round the campfire on sultry June nights that haunts me to this day.

We all have stories to share. Our lives unfold like stories. What is your favorite story?

La llamada (The Call)

2006-10-08T08:23:00.000-04:00

The surrealist Remedios Varo painted a fascinating canvas entitled La llamada (translated most often as The Call), literally meaning "The One Who is Called" in 1961. [You can see this and a number of other images by this artist here.] In the image, a woman glowing with red-orange aura walks down a tight alley surrounded by mysterious figures of men and women whose bodies are attached to the walls of this cramped, urban canyon. Some of these citizens have closed eyes and some look sleepy others are oblivious to the progress of Varo's woman who accepts The Call. The protagonist's fiery hair spirals upward towards a planet which hovers in the night sky like an omniscient Creator. Varo was a dedicated surrealist (with a lower case "s") who never subscribed to the subservient roles assigned her gender by the French Surrealist men. Her works speak of the power women hold as creators and as dreamers, subverting the misogynist message of her male counterparts on the European Continent with whose paintings and philosophies she was well familiar.

My comments on Varo's painting, La llamada, come as the result of a conversations had with two friends yesterday when we were driving through Maryland's Eastern Shore on the way to a festival. That painting burst into my mind as we spoke about the various gifts, talents and skills we have and of how we find the condition of contemporary women's lives difficult (acknowledging that men's roles are also difficult too). So many women like ourselves struggle to be healthy, to find meaning, to nurture creativity in ourselves and in those around us. Instead we find ourselves overworked, underpaid and feeling very unwell and incapable of helping others. Or worse, we give all of our energy to working for others at the expense of our freedom and sense of well-being.

I do believe that our lot is easier than the women of the mid-twentieth century whose struggle to fight for better jobs, better pay and to tamp down on sexual-bias in all areas of live is to be applauded and honored. Here we are, however, in the year 2006 still struggling to fight fires of this nature on a smaller scale: on the home front. Women are indeed an integral part of the modern workplace, yet now the pendulum has swung over to the point where trying to find time to tend to your domestic family life or personal life has become precious. Gone are the days of Mrs. Cleaver housewives only to be replaced by frantic women who have little time to take care of their own health, their loved one's needs, and their own pursuit of happiness.

The three of us conversing in the car concluded that the best way to find a balance between work and home life is to find a job that requires the minimum sacrifice of personal life while providing enough pay to support you, so that the rest of your time can include the activities that make you feel alive and healthy such as spending time with family and friends, supporting those around you in need, and attending to the inner voices of creativity and play.

Remedios Varo was a woman who understood the need for creativity and play. She might be a poster child for the life author Virginia Woolf outlined in the famous essay, "A Room of One's One." Varo was born in Spain at the beginning of the 20th century (1908) and was fortunate to have a good education thanks to her father, a hydraulic engineer. As an adult, her life-course was altered by war: she fled to Paris during the Spanish Civil War in the 1930s and fled the Nazi's assault on Paris to find refuge in Mexico in the 1940s. Surrealist painters in Europe influenced her style, but like the other great Mexican artist of her day, Frida Kahlo, Varo forged a new and personal language from the methods observed in Salvador Dali and his crowd.

Varo was not only a painter who achieved a measure of success in her own lifetime, but also one with a complicated life lived in pursuit of freedom and sense of well-being. She married at age 22 to another painter, but the marriage failed. She had an abortion as a young woman (a choice likely made from hardship due to her unfortunate economic circumstances during the pregnancy) and was thereafter unable to have children. She loved several men and at least one woman, fellow artist Lenora Carrington.

She painted and wrote about the intersection of magic and mysticism with science and technology--in a surrealist style, that to my mind, demonstrates perfect understanding the the contradictions of the era in which she lived. Her paintings most often focus on a central female character. She places her women in a variety of roles: The Traveler, The Musician, The Scientist, The Temptress, etc. Then there are the floating figures of men and women who surround her; they are The Masses, The Crowd, The Unbelievers, The Judges, The Critics. Given the independence of Varo's life, it's not so surprising that these themes emerge. These images are fantasy, but they are allegories for the circumstances the artist herself, and probably her friends too, faced.

La llamada, or The Call, is about a woman who walks without fear down the path of her own choosing because she is called to do so by a Higher Power. That disembodied Voice may come from within her or from the Universe at large, or from Deity, but it is a call that may not be denied. Her path is guarded by the throngs of people who don't hear this voice and who don't even notice her, yet she glides forward on unafraid. Varo was in her fifties when she was working on this painting; she was at the height of her power as a visual storyteller.

I find this painting a comfort whenever I am confronted with critics who don't understand my personal mission in life or the type of life I have chosen to lead. I think of how Varo understood that our hold on the goal is tenuous, that responding to The Call is not a choice everyone could be brave enough to make. But once you have begun to live a life more in balance and listen to the (inner or outer) Voice, you are compelled forward carrying your precious objects, just as Varo's Woman carries symbols of alchemy and of precious liquids. Taking The Call, accepting it, is a risk and one that many people, like the figures affixed to the city walls in Varo's painting, will refuse to hear. Finding one's calling--and for many people today that might mean finding balance--is risky, but there are rewards for success in this journey. The powerful glow of success in Varo's Woman shows that she is gaining and even spreading her light, her energy into the world. She is the candle that spreads light into the corners of her world.

Creativity illuminates if only you will accept The Call.

Re-creation

2006-09-20T07:15:00.000-04:00

From

Webster.com

Athlete

Main Entry: athÂ·lete
Pronunciation: 'ath-"lEt, Ã·'a-th&-"lEt
Function: noun
Etymology: Middle English, from Latin athleta, from Greek athlEtEs, from athlein to contend for a prize, from athlon prize, contest
: a person who is trained or skilled in exercises, sports, or games requiring physical strength, agility, or stamina

For the first time in my life, I am finding an enthusiasm for athletics. I stop to think about why I never liked sports as a child and recall unpleasant moments of being the last kid picked for any team sport and of gym teachers with whistles around their necks yelling at me to do better, try harder. I was never good enough. I was never an athlete. I hated my body as a teenager and grew very fat and very, very depressed.

Not all of my early experiences with sports were unhappy ones. I loved swimming in the pool and learning yoga with a very patient instructor at the local YMCA. I can even remember having fun in gym class during kindergarden and first grade. But after lower elementary school, I suddenly felt inferior based upon my inability to run fast enough, kick or hit the ball well enough, play rough enough to keep up with the neighborhood gang and the kids at school. I wasn't competitive enough. At a certain point, I never even tried anymore. I did the minimum in gym and didn't play on any sports teams until one summer during high school when my best friend's mother found us a softball league which was less high-stakes competition in the town just one over from ours. We played as well as we could. Sometimes we won, and sometimes we lost. I enjoyed playing shortstop, but I wasn't a great hitter. It didn't matter.

But none of the physical activities I did really caught on with me except hiking in the outdoors. I wanted to be in wilderness, away from suburbs and away from the traffic and people. The problem was I wasn't able to go hiking often enough for it to be sufficient exercise. I had a poor diet at school, where I couldn't stand the food and so loaded up on sugar and starches. I didn't much like the healthy foods my mom fixed, but I made my best effort for her sake and snacked heavily in between meals.

That seems like so long ago. In fact it was half my life ago: 18 years. Today I don't even recognize my body when I glimpse myself in the mirror. It's like another person has grown in my place. It's been a five-year struggle, but finally I've managed to become a healthier, happier body as a result of learning how to exercise with weights and machines properly and of experimenting until I've finally found physical activities that I can love, not merely do competently. It helped to have a partner who was not only encouraging, but who actually took the time to show me how to safely use weights and machines and to demonstrate proper stretches.

After I made progress with the weights, abdominal stretches and such, I realized that I wanted to be athletic without the activity being so boring. Last year I began taking yoga after a 30-year hiatus. I actually remembered some of the poses and taking the class dredged up old memories of the young man who taught this YMCA class of five- and six-year olds about forming the poses of animals and trees (Hatha Yoga). I also remembered how much I loved the relaxation at the end, where he would have us imagine a glowing ball of blue light. This man must have been the Pied Piper, or how in the world did he get a class of bouncy preschoolers to lie down and relax?

My latest daring adventure into the world of sports is kayaking. My husband and I have gone out on at least one short kayaking paddle since the beginning of August. We began on our vacation in Central Coast California and have taken weekend trips to local rivers and creeks every weekend since our return. We took a half-day lesson in sea kayaking in Monterey Bay, and recently decided to go for the full one-day basics course. It's now that my muscles are looking toned and I'm beginning to sculpt myself into a real athlete for the first time. I can hardly believe it, but I'm falling in love with this sport. It allows my husband and I to spend time together, while combining our love of the outdoors with the enjoyment of freely moving through the water.

I think the noun "recreation" is a very appropriate word to summarize my feelings about this process. I am re-creating myself and relieving many of the angry feelings I had toward my body. The mind-body connection is so powerful that I feel like I am becoming a whole new "Me."

Ecological Nostalgia

2006-09-09T05:31:00.000-04:00

Ecology was a catchword at the time I was growing up in suburbia. It was the 1970s and all of the teachers were talking about recycling, backyard science, and saving the planet. I did school projects on solar power and learned to identify different types of rocks and minerals. In the summer my Mom gave me general science books like Linda Allison's The Reasons for Seasons, where I learned to think about the Earth as one of many planets moving through space. I could do my own experiments with light bulbs or house plants. Some of the more "way out" teachers even talked about Gaia--the idea that the Earth was a living organism. It was the time of the great gasoline crunch, with cars lined up around the block just to refuel. The anti-pollution ad campaign featuring Chief Iron Eyes Cody made me hate litter.

Is it any wonder that with such an upbringing I was drawn to such deep concern for the environment?

While I discarded my dream of becoming a geologist when I learned that my high school math scores were nowhere-near in the ballpark for getting into a decent college program, I have an abiding need to study and preserve nature.

I wonder where the enthusiasm about environmentalism, so vital in the 1960s and 1970s, has gone. The baby boomers still talk about it as they drive around the gas-gorging SUVs and sip their Starbucks from paper cups. The child in me sometimes feels a bit betrayed that all of those people who cared so much about the Earth have long forgotten what they taught me. The adult in me knows only too well that human nature is what it is. People talk, but they often don't listen--even to themselves.

How to keep that ecological sense alive is the problem I'm turning over in my brain today. How would I teach a generation of kids who only know iPods and downloads to unplug themselves long enough to sit embraced in the roots of a tree or notice the salty smell of the marshes on a summer's day? Sometimes I think the people around me rely so much on technology and on an environment created solely by humans that they forgotten about the real environment. The Earth is the only environment we have. If it goes, no technology will save us.

I'm as fascinated by technology as much as anyone, I suppose. I'm sure that many things I do are harmful to the planet's health. But I often stop to think about what life was like before all of the networking capabilities made it possible to easily shut out the Nature in our lives or to simply pollute without thinking about any cause and effect. It's the lack of consciousness that concerns me most. You can't realize you are doing harm if you are oblivious.

Maybe my problem is that I happened to be naive enough to believe what my teachers taught me in elementary school, even if they didn't believe it themselves.

Thoughts on Workplace Sustainability

2006-08-28T17:48:00.000-04:00

My sister-in-law is involved in a project to help her company become a sustainable workplace. This seems to be the new trend in the business world: the concept that a working environment should encourage good environmental practices; should support employees so that their talents can be valuable to a company for a long time; and should solicit ideas from employees to maintain a more efficient and comfortable environment where they can be more productive and more satisfied. We talked about her project over lunch and I gave her my two-cents on why I think workplace sustainability is a good thing.

As a historian, I take the long view on the sustainability concept. In agriculture-centered societies (ones in the past, such as pre-industrial Europe and also ones in some developing countries today), it is often necessary for community survival and success for everyone in the community work in sustainable ways. Of course some agrarian communities aren't sustainable, but for the ones that are it makes sense that having a high turn-over rate of workers or depleting local resources is very poor policy if you desire the long-term stability.

I found one article on the workplace stability concept on the website of American Institute of Architects. I once worked in a building that had a high degree of people getting cancer due to poor ventilation. The building was overhauled while I was there, but it was alarming to hear stories about all of the past employees who had died of cancer and the current cancer rate was high. I was actually a representative on the committee that was lobbying the management for correcting the "sick building" issue. Even if a building's environment is not that bad, there are still many offices that have poor environmental systems or run through vast amount of waste in a year.

A quick Google search on the topic revealed that Australia seems very progressive about workplace sustainability. But given Australia's isolated location and finite resources it doesn't surprise me that they are ahead of the U.S. They seem to have university programs centered around the concept. Some of the E.U. countries seem also very keen on the idea to a lesser degree. I'm encouraged to learn that the international company where my sister-in-law works [I leave out the name intentionally] is actually exploring the sustainability concept. I have been avoiding the corporate sector in my choice of career and choice of lifestyle, but inevitably in a large consumer culture like mine the culture of corporations has a huge impact on my life--on everyone's life, too, unless they go off and live in cave somewhere.

Do you have any experience with or thoughts on workplace sustainability? Leave a comment.

Mind Maps and Collages of Thoughts

2006-08-18T06:21:00.000-04:00

I'm taking a correspondence course and the current exercise involves creating a mind map of a particular topic, my thoughts about "the earth." Mind-mapping is a method of focused brainstorming that appeals to my right-brained, intuitive brand of logic. It's my way of getting beyond the ease of thinking in a linear fashion. Mind-mapping allows my mind to meander in directions I probably wouldn't go if I was just making a list. The technique makes me realize there are powerful connections which interlace my thoughts.

I learned the term "brainstorming" from the teachers who conducted a gifted and talented class for third- through sixth-graders in my public school system. As a third-grader I thought of brainstorming as a peculiar metaphor. The idea that storm is going on inside your head (at a time in my life when I had few responsibilities or hardships) seemed amusing. I played with the concept and honed my skills to the point where I hardly do any project these days without using some form of brainstorming. It has become second nature to make lists of ideas, to compose rough outlines for an article, or to ask a group to call out ideas before making decisions about the project at hand. I am employing this bag of tricks even before I realize consciously that I'm brainstorming.

Some of the brainstorming techniques I learned back in elementary school tend to emphasize linear patterns of think. Linear thinking is not all bad, but more recently I've needed a method to push the limits of my mental box when confronting a problem. When you make a list, it's easy to discount "weird" ideas that don't seem to belong with the other concepts or judge them unfairly. Mind-mapping, on the other hand, allows for more possibilities and multiple pathways to connect individual thoughts.

There seems to be a host of mind-mapping software on the market, but I have never seen or used any of these products. For me, colored pencils or markets and the physical act of drawing out the connections makes the most sense to me. Yet, words are not the only way to make a mind map.

Some of the very first mind maps I created were made as collages--pasted bits of newsprint or magazine pictures laid out and then glued to a page. I remember doing a very powerful mind-map about my personality for an assignment in 9th grade psychology class. I know it surprised (alarmed?!) my teacher with the sophistication of its themes--very unlike what most of the girls in my class did with their pictures of clothing, hairdressing appliances, favorite bands and movie stars. I wanted to ask my teacher, "What do you expect? I grew up in a household of artists!" My "personality" collage had landscapes. Images of fire and of ice stood beside exotic foreign countries I read about and wanted to visit. And, yes, a picture of my favorite band, too. It really stood out when taped up on the blackboard beside all of the others.

I have used collage to make other mind maps over the years, to the point where the combination of language and image speak in complex metaphors to me. Collage is a medium which many people find easy to learn. I've taught collage to a number of different age groups and found that people take to it because they are well-versed at assigning meaning to images, perhaps more than with words. In the western world's culture of over-stimulated vision, the images of our printed media are icons of consumerism. People find the images that make sense for them instinctively, like when they find something they want in a store at the mall. It's fascinating to see what images draw and speak to us through random collage.

I wonder if any of the authors on mind-mapping have ever considered collage as a technique akin to their own. I suspect that the Cubist artists of the 1900s and Pop artists of the 1960s would have likely seen their works as "mind maps" if such a term was known to them. Perhaps, the Surrealists of the 1920s would have appreciated such an approach even more. Many of the Surrealists held that no thought could be an accident. That the mind always understood the interconnectivity of thought at some primordial level.

On building community

2006-03-02T07:28:00.000-05:00

This week I'm headed into the homestretch of planning for a retreat to be held in the woods of Adelphi, Maryland, in a sanctuary I have always found inviting and friendly from the bright summer day I first walked up to the building in 1998. When I came there, I was a struggling student who felt out of place and who didn't have many friends beyond my life in the Ivory Tower of Academe. I was on a quest for something that I could not describe on that day, but I soon discovered what I most needed was a place to belong, a sense of community.

Now, eight years later, I am bringing the women of the Paint Branch Unitarian Universalist Church congregation together for a retreat-in-place this coming Saturday. I have to laugh and remark how much trouble it is possible to get into by being in a conversation with a number of friends and beginning a sentence with, "You know, I've been wanting to . . ." In my case, I said that "I've been wanting to facilitate a retreat about creativity" and the friends are members of this church. From that conversation late last fall, the fleeting idea has grown into solid reality. One of the main purposes of our retreat is to strengthen community among the women of this church and our guests, and in some ways this has already happened before the retreat has even begun.

It seems to me that women are often naturals at community-building. We can become friends over a snag in one's stocking at a fancy party or in the checkout line at a supermarket. It seems an outgrowth of the roles we play as caregivers to family and friends that we create bonds and bring groups closer together. Not all women are like that, of course, but I view it as a quality I've observed in many women around me. I've witnessed how they focus their energy upon and many make it an important part of their life's work.

It's odd for me to see myself in the role of retreat facilitator when I really reflect about my past. I was a loner as a child. I always felt like I stood apart and didn't want to play the games by my friend's rules. I was a bit of a Tomboy and didn't like the make-up, cute-boy talk and other subjects that seemed to be endlessly fascinating to the neighborhood girls. When I got old enough to leave home for longer periods, I found teen friends more like me who liked to escape to "Downtown" by bus and explore cultures and flavors not found in our insular (and we thought, often narrow-minded) suburb of Cincinnati, Ohio. I thought I would never really fit in as a teenager, and actually relished the idea that I would be a wanderer of the world. I arranged my life so that I could leave the country immediately after high school on scholarship to a collage in England and planned to never settle down. At that time, I would have been hard-pressed to say that I would even choose to marry someone or live in the same state for more than a decade.

Yet, it's strange how the protestations of youth often make 360-degree turns. Not ten years after I left for college I found myself in my sixth year of graduate school in Maryland and wondering just who I was. My life had changed so dramatically, my teenage fantasies were no longer able to hold up to the life I had created for myself.

Slowly over the course of the years I attended graduate school I learned that there were communities of people who hold the values I believe in. There are people who enjoy the quirky culture and intellectual bantering on literature, film, art and international news as I do. And when I met a group of people who attended this wonderful, wooden sanctuary nestled back into a grove of trees along a stream, I found a kind of home. This place became a home like one I hadn't known since childhood, since the world and responsibilities had intruded upon my sense of peace and upon my boundaries. Most of the feeling of belonging came not only from the building itself and from its natural setting, but even more from the people who inhabit it and who make it their spiritual home.

So this weekend I return there, and in a way this retreat is very much a homecoming. I have been able to attend services again and feel a part as we have planned the retreat. Although my life has moved in different directions, and I am no longer a member there, I feel a jubilation in the reunion. I am especially grateful for the opportunity to give something back to this group of people who gave me support in a critical time in my life.

The theme of our retreat is Spring Clearing: Honoring Transistions, Restoring Creativity.

To me it's especially poignant that the women of this church are asking me to help them with this particular task because it is within this community that my skills as a facilitator and leader of spiritual groups blossomed. My participation enables me to fulfill a dream I've had in just the past few years of bringing people together to inspire greater creativity. And now the time is right for me to answer this calling. My tasks were made all the more easy for me by the professional experience I now have as an educator and as an events planner. So the spiritual and the practical roles I play are now nourishing and sustaining each other. It brings me a great feeling of accomplishment. I feel honored and a bit humbled by it all.

Life in the Jungle

2006-02-22T07:18:00.000-05:00

Two photos by Runningwave from her vacation in Costa Rica, February 2006.

From: Webster.com

Main Entry: jun·gle

Pronunciation: 'j&[ng]-g&l

Function: noun

Usage: often attributive

Etymology: Hindi jangal forest, from Sanskrit jangala desert region

1 a : an impenetrable thicket or tangled mass of tropical vegetation b : a tract overgrown with thickets or masses of vegetation
2 : a hobo camp
3 a (1) : a confused or disordered mass of objects : JUMBLE (2) : something that baffles or frustrates by its tangled or complex character : MAZE b : a place of ruthless struggle for survival

Jungle is a word that has very specific connotations to people who grew up in the Western countries of North America and Europe. Jungle is often something "other" to the world we use to describe our orderly, clockwork society: civilization. I find it interesting that Webster's Dictionary list the etymology of the word from Hindu simply meaning "forest." For indeed when I encountered "the jungle" for the first time twelve days ago in Costa Rica, I found it to be simply that: a forest. A tropical rain forest to be precise, yes, but "the jungle" doesn't look all that different up close as some of the forests of my home country. Different and more diverse plants, certainly. Animals of every size and description that were new to me, absolutely. But I wonder if monkeys howling or barking in the trees seem as wild to a Costa Rican native as it did to me? (See the photos of Capuchin and Howler Monkeys I took on the trip above.) Afteall, I have actually seen tourists oo-and-aaah at and then photograph deer in National Parks in the U.S., where I don't view deer as "wildlife" any more since they are so common in Maryland suburbs like squirrels or raccoons.

So the jungle is a bit less mystifying for me now than it once was. In my childhood, I love reading stories about jungles in India and other parts of southeast Asia and in the Americas. I enjoyed Rudyard Kipling's tales and dreamed of becoming an intrepid explorer. One of my favorite stories in English class was Richard Connell's "The Most Dangerous Game," about a big game hunter who becomes the hunted. I reveled in film versions of H. Rider Haggard novels like She and King Solomon's Mines and cinematic and literary images of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's Lost World.

While on my vacation to the rain forests of Costa Rica, I took along a wonderful book entitled Latitude Zero: Tales of the Equator by Gianni Guadalupi. The book divides the narratives of equatorial exploration and conquest by "temperate zone" Westerners by continent and relates the successful and disastrous adventures of explorers from the 15th century through to the Victorians and Edwardians. This reading helped me to frame my own travel with the fantasies I have always had about exploring the unknown. I found myself intrigued and amazed by what the explorers encountered and saddened by the terrible costs in human life and in deforestation that often occurred while these places were forcibly opened to the West.

Yet there is something cathartic about separating the childhood dreams and dark illusions of youth from the real, living and breathing tropics. For me, the treks we made into the jungle opened my mind to the tremendous fertility of the planet, if only we will preserve what's left of these wild spaces. Spending ten days fording rivers; powerboating down canals; elevating ourselves into the forest canopy on a sling; whitewater rafting; and hiking in different microclimates brought us to places where we could encounter all sorts of animals that I found exciting and unusual: from macaws, to lizards, to orb weaver spiders, to troops of coatis (rain forest raccoons), to an anteater, to sloths and to monkeys.

We were able to fly over mountains in small planes to get from the capital of San Jose to the isolated National Parks on the Pacific and Caribbeann coasts and to drive through the mountainous central areas of this tiny tropical nation. Small it may be in land mass but, oh, how much of the wilderness is left in this beautiful country since some Costa Ricans had the foresight to protect what natural resources remain beginning in the 1970s.

I am still not a great fan of the combination of heat and humidity impacting on climate (cool, dry weather for me, when I can get it!), but I am so glad I bore the weather to take this trip, opening up a whole new world for me. I don't think I will ever understand the word jungle in quite the same way.

Into the Unknown: Risk and Creativity

2006-02-08T06:56:00.000-05:00

This week’s post is dedicated to Explorers. Explorers are people who willingly go into the unknown to face whatever the Universe sends them.

As a historian by training, I have had many opportunities to ponder what it would be like to travel into the unknown. Some explorers travel into the unknown on a physical level. The great sailors of the eighteenth-century were such men and women. They had already mapped much of the globe, but did not have the technology to predict storms weeks in advance nor did they know how animals or indigenous peoples would react to their arrival on distant shores. In that world intrepid men like Captain Cook did not always make it home alive.

Other explorers travel into the unknown on a mental plane. I am thinking this time of scholars, scientists and artists, who use their imagination to take them to breakthroughs in their understanding of their field. Those who know me well, know that I spent years researching the experiments of modern artists and designers who found beauty in abstract art of the past and of other cultures and adapted it for their own purposes. I am recalling the image of the 1905 Autumn Salon in France when the Fauves first unleashed their wild colors and violent brushstrokes on an unprepared public. Now I walk down the street of any major city in the U.S.A. or Europe and could see a Fauvist poster hanging in a shop or café and think it unremarkable. But the Fauves caused riots in their day because they broke the boundaries of convention and leaped into a style that transgressed what that culture believed to be “normal.” What a difference one hundred years makes!

Of course, there is another level of journeying into the unknown. It is one that I have been introduced to over the years, but not a type of journeying that I find easy or comfortable yet. I refer to spiritual exploration, where a traveler journeys inward to a place beyond the physical and mental planes to a place that is exists only in the present. I am learning Yoga practice again after a thirty-year lapse from my introduction to it as a young child. My life is very busy and I often feel so over-stimulated by thoughts, sights and sounds of the modern world that I find meditation very difficult. I find slowing down difficult. It may take me many years to become comfortable with journeying inward into transcendence and, perhaps, I will never achieve being fully in the present, but I continue to learn about what others have done in their spiritual practices to find that place.

All three types of encountering the unknown that I have mentioned: physical, mental and spiritual, involve one key factor—risk. And risk is the point at which you decide if your creativity will help you to survive. I think that a healthy person needs some element of risk in her or his life, in order to maintain their “creative muscles,” just as athletes need to use their muscles or fail to improve their skills.

My husband and I are leaving this week to travel by plane to the Central American country of Costa Rica. A professional outfitter with an international reputation and bilingual guides will be taking us to several of the national parks across the country. Costa Rica touches both the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans and features diverse wildlife and many different ecosystems and climate zones. I am trying very hard not to create expectations in my mind of what I will encounter. I want very much to just “be” for a brief time and make this a real retreat from modern life as I know it and learn from the Costa Rican people some new ways of living and existing. I find myself unable to fully suppress the excitement of observing wildlife, but realize that a lot of the very fascinating mammals I would love to see will probably be out avoiding humans by day and lurking in the shadows at nighttime. I also admit to being intimidated by the idea of hiking through the rain forest with 90° F heat and 90% humidity. My mind wanders when I think of the many stories about the jungle I read as a child (and as an adult!). So I am returning to my yoga training and studiously calling my breath and finding balance.

On my expedition into the unknown I hope to find out what shape my creative muscles are in. Would I have had the courage to travel with a physical adventurer like Captain Cook and explore distant lands? Will I observe something in the culture of the people of this land that I could inspire me to adapt my life at home? And will I attain the calm in the center of the fugue of modern life and be able to fully distance myself from all that I leave behind.

Perhaps I will have answers the next time I post to this blog.

I hope if you have read this entry, you will share in the comments something about your own explorations on any level of your life.

Winter Stillness

2006-01-30T08:08:00.000-05:00

One of my greatest sources of creativity is spending time in nature. Often it is necessary to recharge my batteries and look at life without rushing and hurrying. I find that when all the problems, confusion and frustrations of my life are crashing down around me, I can rediscover my calm and balance by spending time in a suburban park, or better yet, hiking in the woods.

My husband and I have found a nature preserve that's about a forty minute drive south from the bustling commercial and sailing hub that is Annapolis, in the farmland and wilds along the Patuxent River. It's called Jug Bay Wetlands Sanctuary and, as the name implies, it is an oasis in the dessert of East Coast congestion, noise and pollution.

We have had unusually mild weather for January and we could not resist the opportunity to be out among the marshlands in search of the elusive critters who inhabit and shape this 1400-acre paradise. We always hope to spot one of the beavers who have constructed some amazing dams in a small run (creek) flowing into Otter Point. But only their handiwork is visible. Nor have we ever been fortunate to spot one of the Point's namesakes, but then the park opens long after sunrise and closes before twilight so the chances for the average visitor to spot river otters are slim. I have spoken with volunteers who conduct scientific research at the park and who assure me that there are otters who live near Otter Point! Someday I'll find the time to volunteer there when I can be present at the edges of the daytime and perhaps spot one of these animal wonders. (Otters are my favorite creatures!)

So we did not see any furry critters about, but in the long silence of a winter afternoon we sat at the bank of the beaver-constructed lake and listened. And listened. And listened some more to the stillness of winter. We heard a woodpecker tapping on the trees in search of meal and saw one of his compatriots guarding a treetop promontory in the lake. Proud little birds, woodpeckers. I am always wondering how it doesn't hurt for them to bang on trees with their beaks. We could feel the light breezes blowing the high tide currents toward the lake and hear the little waterfalls from the beaverdam trickling in the background.

It's fascinating to me how many natural sounds are present when you take away the layers of traffic, machinery, and noises of the modern world. Just listening and breathing in the woods at the edge of the marsh on a 60-degree day is one of my ideas of perfect bliss. Although we spent about three hours hiking around the sanctuary that sunny afternoon, my favorite moments were sitting side-by-side with my husband surrounded by the stillness of life going on around us.

We humans have so altered the planet we dwell upon, but the true beauty often lies in the untouched places.

Time of the Essence: Scheduling for Creativity

2006-01-19T18:39:00.000-05:00

So many people in my circle of friends and in my working life are experiencing signs of being overworked and underpaid. Many of these folks are quite well-educated with advanced degrees and long years of experience in their careers. But somehow they find themselves working so hard, that the anxiety generated by their jobs prevents them from living their dreams and from becoming more creative.

Some people who lead workshops and write about creativity recommend making a "date" with yourself to spend "creative time." Julia Cameron, author of The Arists' Way series of books, advocates "morning pages," a series of exercises to get your creative juices flowing every morning. Other authors have called the practice of regular scheduling of creativity time "artist's dates." I actually like to call this time "Open Space." I believe it's vital for any creative person to get out her/his pen or pencil and mark in her/his calendar the hour or two that s/he will set aside to be free and to pursue creativity. Once "Open Space" is on your schedule, let nothing bar you from meeting that appointment with your own destiny!

Most people to whom creativity is important find themselves saddled with complicated jobs or family situations or volunteer commitments. Afterall, it's common for creative folks to be expressing their creativity by nuturing others or by giving time to the people who they love or to the goals that they value.

Although I am currently working "part-time" in my day-job as an events planner for a non-profit organization, I often find that there aren't enough hours in my schedule to fulfill all of the tasks given to me. Tasks come not only from my supervisor, but also from many other department heads and individuals in the organization. I don't always have a say in how my time is spent. When it comes to my private life, on the other hand, I do have many choices. If I'm asked whether I can stay late at work, I can tell my boss that I have a firm "date" to take a class, or visit a family member out of town, or go to the doctor. So, in the perfect world, I should theoretically be able to be just as firm about my personal schedule for "creative time."

Now, I happen to work for a very enlightened boss, who has long years of experience both in graduate school and post-graduate school of juggling a complex work schedule. She probably works harder than I do on any given day: If I work 110%, she is likely working 125%. She realizes that her staff needs to maintain their morale or we would not be good employees. Not all bosses are that way! Many of them would say "Tough luck!" or "You're fired!" if you tell them you have an appointment with yourself to be on a personal "vision quest," "retreat" or "creativity break."

My advice to those of you who don't have a boss like mine, is to be firm about the fact that you need to make a date with yourself to have time to be creative. Don't allow friends, family members and other social acquaintances to talk you out of your creative time. If you were caring for a sick relative or a young child, you probably wouldn't agree to stay late and work, so why would you sabotage something as precious as your own creativity?

Nuturing your creativity is essential to living a productive life.

Okay. So, say you have managed to find the time for an appointment with yourself to be creative. Does that mean that the inspiration for a new work of art or journal article or theatrical production will automatically come to you?

No. Of course not.

In fact, you need to not only make the appointment with yourself, but to give yourself a "homework" assignment or exercise. There are many wonderful reference books about exercises that will enable you to pursue your creative work. You may only have the time for a quick sketch or a couple of notes, but if you make a consistent time to be creative at a certain time each day or each week, you may discover that the creative thoughts come more easily and more frequently.

Scheduling time for creativity to happen and working through exercises are both huge topics! I will be breaking these up and addressing them separately in future posts to this blog. I do encourage you to think about what system would allow you time and space to be creative and to make a promise to yourself to attempt it. Even if you fail at first, when you actually manifest something and try to make a real change in your schedule, the chances are that eventually it will happen.

Don't be discouraged! Give yourself the break you would give your best friend who's having a hard day.

Please feel free to make comments here on ways that you have found to squeeze some creative time into your daily or weekly schedule.

Some resource books about scheduling creativity and exercises:
Cameron, Julia. The Artist's Way: A Spiritual Path to Higher Creativity. (New York: Jeremy P. Tarcher/Putnam, 1992).

Mountain Dreamer, Oriah. What We Ache For: Creativity and the Unfolding of Your Soul. (San Francisco and New York: Harper San Francisco, a division of Harper Collins Publishers, 2005).

On Being Mindful of Health

2006-01-13T07:08:00.000-05:00

I am prompted to write on this subject because a friend and coworker has been struggling with a severe medical problem that has played havoc with her life for now nearly six weeks. She has had two surgeries in less than a month and has been trying to find time to work and time to be the single parent for her young daughter despite these trials. All I can do is to try and ease her burden at work just a little and to do personal favors for her, such as my offer to cook her dinner some evening--an offer I hope she accepts.

Every January, suddenly the normally, retiring, quiet "self improvement" section of bookstores suddenly leaps out from behind shy shelves and confronts the customer in central aisles and towers that says, "Admit it. You know you came here to buy me." The lure of "New Year's resolutions" is too much for many to resist and all of the morning news shows tell you to to loose those extra holiday-gained pounds, get into shape before you get into your Spring Break beachwear, and how to communicate more effectively with your partner.

I laugh about this phenomenon each year. "Self improvement" has become a way of life for me since I was forced to reckon with the state of my health five years ago at the age of 31. I spent nearly ten months in 2001, dealing with a serious medical problem that forced me to look squarely in the mirror, and face the fact that I had ignored my health for far too long. I had to have invasive abdominal surgery to remove seven rapidly growing tumors, ranging from the size of a pea to one 10 cm in diameter (the size of a grapefruit!). The major concern was that no doctor knew for certainty if the tumors were benign or cancerous until I had the surgery.

Medical researchers are uncertain, based upon current research, whether or not a certain diet, a certain amount of stress, or a lack of exercise are actually direct causes of the condition I have. Many doctors are still convinced that my particular illness is genetic and that I can do little or nothing about it. My mother also had surgery in her forties for similar enlarged tumors. After living with this knowledge for five years, I have come to believe that this "condition" I have may indeed be genetic, but that if I can live a more healthful life, I can slow down or even prevent the tumors from returning.

Two goals I placed upon myself during my long recovery, were losing weight and increasing my strength. As a child I was willowy, but as a teenager I was overweight and not inclined to be involved very much in sports. I did nothing about my weight problems or health for twenty years. I experimented with being vegetarian for several years and initially lost weight, but gained it all back due to the increased amount of starches and sugars I ate or drank. By the time I was thirty, I was back to weighing what I did when I was sixteen, and feeling rather unhappy about my body.

The diagnosed growth of tumors was my wake-up call. Suddenly every day, every meal, made me feel obsessed about my health problems. For the first several months after the discovery of the tumors, I threw caution to the wind because I had an almost fatalistic view that I should "be merry, for tomorrow I may die." Then I received the medical opinion that I must have surgery. I just shut down mentally and became extremely depressed about my health. I ended up calling the minister of my church for help.

He was working from home on the day I called. He invited me to share his lunch and told me something that I will never forget. He told me that in times of great stress and turmoil, he found comfort in the most simple things. He had typed the word "breathe" on a piece of paper and taped it to the dashboard of his car so that whenever he was stuck in traffic and boiling over psychologically about some problem, he would see that word and immediately focus on his breath and, by focusing on his breath, calm down. He also advised me to be mindful of eating, enjoying my food, slowing down to take my meal without rushing. As a person working part-time to support grad school studies, I was always rushing! Finally he also told me to drink more water. Sounds like something a doctor or your mother would say, but I've since read that when you are under stress, drinking clean, pure water instead of soda or juice is the best way to remove the acids in your body that stress produces.

At the time of my meeting with the minister, I was in such a state of panic that I didn't quite get the message. But as I began to be more mindful of what I put into my body, I really did began to calm down or at least tune the stress down a notch or two. No, it didn't cure me or solve my psychological problems, but it did something even better than that. It taught me that we humans living in our world of modern conveniences, cut off from the need to gather and hunt for our own food in Nature; sealed in our hermetic environments with HVAC systems; and living in an age of wonder drugs and long life-expectancies often forget the basics.

Health is really a very fragile state. The assumption of our culture is that if you are unhealthy, you aren't doing your job. You haven't seen the right doctors, haven't jogged enough miles, haven't eaten the right foods or gone on the right diet. It's your fault. Or, it's pure tragedy: "Oh,that poor child," you might hear someone say. "It's just so sad that she got cancer." I say that we are the caretakers of our own health. And if we care for others in our lives, we first need to care for our own state of health.

I am now over 25 pounds lighter than I was before my surgery in 2001, thanks to regular exercise and the South Beach Diet, a nutritional plan that seems to fit my body type and leaves me feeling satisfied after meals. I am also more muscular and stronger than I have ever been in my life because I am now more athletic and I train with weights. I have also recently begun to take yoga, a practice I had first learned at the age of five or six, but had long since given up until just last year. I drink vaster amounts of water and remember to consciously breathe, often remembering that conversation with my minister when I do.

I am a human being. I need air to breathe, water to drink and food to give me energy. When I can be mindful of that, no matter what aches and pains I feel, no matter the state of my chronic sinusitus, I know that I am being mindful of being alive.

Winds of Change are Blowing

2006-01-05T07:28:00.000-05:00

Turn the page of the calendar and welcome 2006.

The New Year has brought with it a mountain of work added to my day-job schedule. I am a part-time (almost full-time) volunteer coordinator and museum programs person for a small non-profit. I deeply believe the organization's missions and goals, but sometimes I feel like the lofty goals are hampered by personal misunderstandings and lack of communication. My coworkers and I are under a great deal of stress to open a new facility in late March of this year. It now looks like it's finally going to happen, but sometimes I wonder "at what cost to our careers and personal lives?" My goals are to keep trying my hardest to help with the volunteer and educational outreach programs. Yet I need to be realistic within the limits placed upon me. I am not paid to be a salaried full-time worker, so I have to try and keep my wits about me as I approach my work in the next few months. There is so much in my personal life that I want to accomplish, that I would be full-hardy to give too much and to not be compensated for it.

In spite of these concerns, I am also feeling the winds of change. Perhaps this year will bring me closer to doing the kind of creative work I feel drawn to do.

So many small opportunities have crossed my path since I've made myself open to them. People have offered me suggestions about where I might teach my creativity workshops and how I might publicize. I know several women with home-based or consulting businesses who have all been supportive of me when I've mentioned the work I'm doing in my own time. People can say what they want to about stereotypes, but women can be incredible at networking and nurturing each other's talents. I am constantly amazed by the number of women who have been not only interested in hearing about my budding creativity facilitatation work, but who have been genuinely enthusiastic.

A friend who is a professional facilitator suggested to me that I might want to become qualified to administer the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, which is a type of psychological assessment that helps people to determine their preferences for working and for comprehending information. (It is useful when people are learning what kind of creativity they excel at and may indicate some psychological stumbling blocks a person may encounter.) I took the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator in a high school psychology class and have since been very interested on it as a useful tool to understand work-habits, leadership styles, and communication styles. The qualifying exam would give me a credential invaluable to my new career. The difficulty will be raising the funds to take the exam and to travel on my meager salary. So I will have to find a way to take it in a city where I can stay with one of my friends or somewhere in the local D.C. or Baltimore area. Fortunately I have several friends who have been through the qualifying exam and who know about several different organizations that officially administer it. Hopefully I'll be able to take the exam later this year and perhaps combine a visit to family or friends.

I also learned about the Creative Education Foundation from the same friend. Each year they host a conference focusing on creative-problem solving. It sounds like it would be a wonderful place for me to learn about creativity and critical thinking. The conference has workshops and training components where I could gain more skills and network. I may not be able to attend this year, but perhaps make it a goal for 2007. I definitely want to learn more about this organization during this year.

There are also some more humble and practical matters I must explore if I'm to succeed in this line of work. I am hoping to get a website up and running before summer 2006. Along with that I will need a doing-business-as bank account, perhaps a Postal Box, and may need to take a class or workshop about running a consulting business. Fortunately, I have been doing my homework and I know from my parents some of the skills needed for owning my own business. Yet the task is daunting from the outside.

The best part about all of this is that I feel like I am making some progress and getting organized. Compared to a year ago when I was still trying to figure out what to do with my life, I am amazed at what I have accomplished at this point.

At the Hinges of the Year

2005-12-27T07:15:00.000-05:00

I find it enough to follow the seasons.
-- Henry David Thoreau

Throughout history, many people have celebrated the last week of the calendar year with special rituals to mark, not only the change of seasons, but also to discard the old and to clear a way for the new. Some cultures, like the classical Romans, marked the year's end with feasting and parties of Saturnalia (seven days at the end of December, the tenth month). One aspect that often prevailed at year-end celebrations was a new set of special rules, demonstrating that the normal patterns of life were briefly suspended. During Saturnalia, Rome's slaves could look their masters in the eyes on equal footing and anyone could comment or satire the rich and powerful without fear of reproach. Later in Europe, during the Middle Ages, Christians spread the idea of celebrating the feast of their Savior's birth during a twelve day period beginning with Christmas and ending on January 6th, Epiphany. Part of the time was sacred time, but much of the Twelve Days of Christmas featured celebrations and feasts where Lords and Ladies provided the bounty harvested in autumn's fields to guests at the winter's table. My colonial ancestors enjoyed much the same patterns of Christmastide as did the folks of the Middle Ages. They set aside the day after Christmas as Boxing Day, a day on which they gave gifts to the enslaved and indentured workers of their households. These small gifts of coins, ribbons, new clothes, shoes or tin whistles demonstrated the colonial sense of charity to those less fortunate. For more details about these and other culture's year-end rituals click here to see this wonderful article by Waverly Fitzgerald.

So in the last few days of the year, it is typical for me to review the past twelve months and to consider what went well in my life, what didn't, and what I might do to change or improve my lot in life.

I should begin this exercise by admitting that, in the recent past, life has been vastly improved over my long, impoverished years as a graduate student living the single life. So much so, that sometimes I think I have very little to complain about compared to many in this world. Compared to many in this world, I have always been blessed and fortunate. And that is truth. However, there are things I want to change, things I must do and things I plan to do in the next year. I believe that it falls to any thinking person to set herself or himself goals and to consider a strategy for achieving them and, then, actually going about it.

I was not keeping this blog at the beginning of 2005 and not all my readers may know me well or know me in real life at all, I will say that a bit more narrative is supplied here than I might give in a conversation with a close friend or in an email home to my family.

One thing is very clear today as I type these words: I have achieved a very important goal that I set for myself nearly a decade ago. That goal is that I have finally arranged my life so that I can, in Henry David Thoreau's apt words in the epigraph above "follow the seasons." The goal I set way back in graduate school was to bring my life more aligned with the cycles of Nature and of the seasons, and this year I finally feel I have accomplished just that.

I was able to accomplish it in several ways. First, I made a conscious effort to be aware of the weather, of the patterns of life out my living room windows or office window, of the suburban animals living near me and of my own feelings about the seasons. Simply the act of writing what the weather is at the top of an email to a good friend, might be a way for me to remind myself to reflect.

Which brings me to the next way that I was able to accomplish my goal. I have been giving myself increasingly more time to write and to use my journaling as reflective time. I'm drawn to the natural world as I have always been, and so my writing is accepted with the shape of my character, with the awareness of natural cycles and things. I have also worked on my digital photography, and my subjects are commonly natural ones, or the relationship between man-made things and those things of nature. I did not spend too much time practicing my sketching, but I did make a few more forays into the world of the hand-drawn arts. Perhaps soon my posts on this public blog will contain images as well as words.

Additionally, I began a course of spiritual study which has enabled me to get into contact with Nature and with my inner self. I have two friends who are engaged in similar pursuits, and the three of us have formed a great bond over the past year in finding seasonal activities to help us feel more awake to the life around us.

Lastly, I have endeavored to shape my working life and my personal life so that I have the time to focus on my need to be out in nature and to share that particularly with my husband. He and I both take great pleasure in being outdoors and in non-competitive sports outdoors such as hiking and paddling. We two are making plans to be even more active in our outdoorsmenship next year, but for now I'm content that our time out in nature we've set aside for ourselves is something very important that we privately share.

This year had also its ebbs and flows for me. I certainly suffered during the three and half long months of 90-degree heat and humidity of the Maryland swamp (as I call it). I do love the beauties of the Chesapeake region, but I really admit to loathing the humid summers. All of my Northern European ancestors seem to groan in sympathy with me when I go out into the sticky, unbreathable weather that seems to me not fit for (wo)man nor beast! Needless to say, the summer was a depressing time for me. I sat a lot indoors, but had the pleasures of escaping into novels, into the internet and into reading books aloud with my husband, trading off chapter by chapter. I did finally dare a new sport in October that may draw me out of my climate-controlled bubble next swampy summer--kayaking. At Hilton Head I went on two kayak trips with naturalists and learned about the natural wonders of those barrier islands. I had so much fun, that I asked my husband if we might take kayak lessons next spring so we can go on more "serious" expeditions in the summer. He has agreed, so that is something I look forward to with relish.

Finally, I am taking a new direction in my professional life that may allow me greater creative freedom in my work. Currently, my job does not give me many opportunities to utilize my abilities as a teacher, an artist or as a writer. It may be a very long time before I am able to establish a career where I can support myself with those activities, but this year I finally took some practical steps toward making my professional life more creative. I decided to call upon several friends who have skills in facilitating groups and in teaching for advice. I have such wonderful friends! They all listened to my questions and in many cases exceeded my hopes for help with a sense of direction. I now have the opportunity to assist in leading a women's retreat. I have several options open to me for teaching classes about creativity and have even had advice on how to market myself and to improve my qualifications as a facilitator. I found a call for articles in a journal I read for years and am writing an article that I will submit for publication next spring. I am developing a website to market my creativity teaching services to the wide world and recently found a graphic designer who knows about online marketing to advise me on its content. I took a workshop on starting my own small business that gave me much to think about and challenged me to articulate just what sort of business I'd like to have. In sum, I made great strides toward opening a new career path for me, relying on skills and ideas that I had harbored for many years.

This year is one that I will celebrate when the calendar rolls around to New Year's Eve. At the hinges of the year, I make my promise to myself to keep my dreams alive and to strive to take my desires for balance and wholeness into the coming months.

If you have any thoughts or stories (anonymous or not) about your year's challenges and successes, I would enjoy reading your comments to this post.

Bright blessings for your winter feasts and celebrations. May the New Year bring you health and joy!

Storytime

2005-12-12T05:07:00.000-05:00

We received our first major snow/ice storm of the season last Friday. While the snow generally doesn't remain on the ground very long in Maryland's Decembers, the cold weather seems to have set in for good.

'Tis the time of the year when I love to read, to listen to, and to tell stories. Something about wintry weather makes me want to find a fireplace to curl up beside while listen to tall tales. Not that I have a fireplace, mind you. Instead I light candles and our Solstice tree lights to give our little apartment by the woods a soft glow. M. and I have made it our tradition in recent years to read each other stories on or about Winter Solstice. We've enjoyed reading aloud to each other in wintertime so much that we even began reading favorite children's books to each other during the ugly part of the summer when both of us felt oppressed by the double-whammy of 90-degree heat and high humidity. We read the entire Harry Potter series to each other, Garth Nix's novel Lirael, and now we are on the second chapter of Nix's most recent novel.

Part of my current spiritual path of studies includes practicing my storytelling skills. I have received some good guidance on how to do this. One technique is to create a "mind map" of the story, remembering scenes that need to be included in your story. Storytelling is an interactive artform. When you tell the story at one time and place, it will never be the same if you tell it again. That is because with each telling, the story's mood, your voice, the audience will be different. Live storytelling is performance art. Props work best when they are few and used only for special dramatic effect. A good storyteller can express the events and describe the scene in such a way so as to transport you into the tale.

At the beginning of November I challenged two of my friends who are also learning to be bards through the same course I am taking. I suggested that each of us select one story and learn to tell it aloud before the next time we meet (which is this upcoming weekend). I stated that the story might be anything real or fantasy of their choosing. It also need not be a very long-winded story, but one that we can tell from the heart. They accepted the challenge.

It took me several weeks to find my story to tell. At first, I did some searching around online for animal tales. I'm very fond of legends and old fables with animals for main characters. Yet the story that emerged in my mind, was not an animal tale. I was driving down the road one evening and all of a sudden began to sing an old Scottish tune that I learned from my music teacher, Mr. Kaplan, in kindergarten, The Skye Boat Song. That song is of Bonnie Prince Charlie's escape from Scotland after the dreadful Battle of Culloden, where the Prince Charles Edward Staurt's army of Jacobites was crushed by the English. Since I've been attempted to learn about my heritage, it occurred to me that my idle singing of this tune had within it the potential for a great story to tell.

I began to read my books on Scottish history and find website relating to the Young Prentender, as Charlie is called. I needed an angle. Then finally I happened to see a link to one of the "minor characters" of the Prince's story on The Scotsman's Heritage and Culture webpage: Flora MacDonald. To my mind, Flora is actually the critical character in the tale of the Bonnie Prince because it is she who smuggles him (dressed as her Irish serving maid, "Betty") across to the Isle of Skye by boat. Flora also paid the price for her actions: the English Government exiled and deported her to North America with her co-conspirator husband. Without Flora's bravery, the Prince might never made it out of Scotland alive. So I have decided that the tale will be at last told from Flora's perspective. Would she judge herself harshly or proudly for having made her decision? Was fully willing and loyal to the Jacobite cause, or did she harbor doubts only partly assuaged by entreaties from her husband and father?

I don't think I will write my version of the tale down just yet. No, I think, I'll keep it as a tale to be told aloud for now. I still have some homework to do this week in order to be ready to tell Flora's story. Perhaps the first telling will not be so good. Yet with each time I tell the story I know I'll get better at it. I can feel that Jacobean lore and literature holds a great many storytelling treasures for me to uncover.

Upcoming: A Spring Retreat

2005-12-07T07:45:00.000-05:00

It's a very snowy, frigid day here in Maryland. The snow blanketed us in powder on Monday night, but it's so cold that it will not melt anytime soon. It did not, however, stick to the roads or sidewalks, but there is lots of "black ice" on the roads this morning according to the news.

Several friends have invited me to work with them in planning a women's retreat at the Paint Branch Unitarian Universalist Church, where I was a congregation member from 1998-2003 until I moved to Annapolis. I'm so happy to be back among old friends and having the opportunity to create a meaningful day of activities for the women of my former church.

We had our first planning meeting this past Sunday. Our plan is to have the retreat in early March 2006. We have decided upon a simple, yet multi-layered theme: Spring Clearing: Honoring Transitions, Restoring Creativity. (Yep. The "creativity" part was my idea! *grin*) We have already brainstormed for the basic outline of activities. We plan to have begin with a social breakfast, with very simple and healthy food options (all vegetarian). By 9:30 AM we will hold a Gathering for all participants. The Gathering Circle is followed by group activities designed to get participants thinking about the retreat's themes: how they can relate to the ideas of transitions and how they view creativity. My friend. T.H. will then provide a splendid pot of vegetarian minestrone soup accompanied by home-baked bread and other side dishes and will need a team of women to help her serve and clean up. Two different afternoon workshop sessions will offer some individual choices and allow each participant to choose or experiment with her own creativity. The final activity in the late afternoon will be a Closing Circle of the whole.

I'm very excited by the great number of ideas and resources we are bringing to this retreat concept. We have some women in the church community who we are going to approach about leading a workshop or a part of the group activities. The theme gives me much to think about and much flexibility. I will need to come up with activities that can be done by large groups and by small groups. I've already begun the first stages of planning these activities.

It came to me that my own afternoon workshop on individual creativity will be a collage workshop. I think that collage is an easy way for people who might be intimidated by painting or sculpture to get involved in making visual art. Plus, I'm an old hand when it comes to collages. I've been making them ever since preschool--not constantly, mind you--but I do frequently use collage in decorating presents and other works of art. Lately, I've begun to use new-fangled glue materials and want to decoupage some small boxes. I just painted a round one with gesso the other night and will soon think about what materials I want to paste onto it.

Knowing I have a finite amount of time to hone my workshop ideas is good for me. Deadlines usually keep me to task, and particularly that's important when my "day job" tends to spill over into other aspects of my life. With this coming women's retreat, my dream of being a facilitator is finally coming to fruition. Runningwave Workshop is becoming a reality.

Runningwave: Water Imagery

2005-12-01T07:29:00.000-05:00

Water and water imagery has a great influence on my life. Whenever I feel my spirits sinking, I try to get away to a place where there is a large body of water. When I'm at home, it's the Chesapeake Bay and its tributaries that have an impact on my emotions and sense of peace.

I am brainstorming about water imagery as I construct a website for my new business venture. The whole "runningwave" concept comes from a poem by Fiona MacLeod (a female pseudonym for English writer William Sharp. S/he wrote a "celtic" blessing in what passed for the "style of the ancient Celts" in early twentieth century Britain:

Deep peace, pure white of the moon to you.
Deep peace, pure green of the grass to you.
Deep peace, pure brown of the earth to you.
Deep peace, pure grey of the dew to you.
Deep peace, pure blue of the sky to you,
Deep peace of the running wave to you,
Deep peace of the flowing air to you,
Deep peace of the quiet earth to you.
Deep peace of the Sun of peace to you.

At least one composer -- inspired by the same Celtic setting as MacLeod -- set this poem to choral music, because I have sung a version of it in a church choir. This poem attracted me so much that I did some research on MacLeod/Sharp and liked the lyrical qualities of the poetry. I decided to honor this poet by choosing my Internet callsign as "runningwave."

For the website, I am attempting to think about all of the ways that "water" can be seen as a metaphor for the action of thinking creatively. Human beings have a large percentage of their bodies as water, so the moon and other planetary bodies have an impact on us, just as the tides are caused by the moon's cycle.

In a webpage rough draft, I came up with the tag line: "Explore the tides of creativity." A friend of mine suggested: "Dive into creativity!" which I like very much. However, my mind finally recalled a stanza from my favorite poem by John Masefield written circa 1900, Sea Fever:

I must down to the seas again, for the call of the running tide
Is a wild call and a clear call that may not be denied;
And all I ask is a windy day with the white clouds flying,
And the flung spray and the blown spume, and the sea-gulls crying.

And I altered the phrase to "Hear the call of the running tides of creativity." Almost there, not quite. That's what brainstorming is about: playing with imagery like the pieces of a puzzle until they fit. And often the piece that fits one time may morph and shift into something that doesn't fit later or into some other shape that's new, and brilliant. I know the Masefield phrase is the key for me now.

If you have any water imagery that you find particularly inspirational, please do send me a comment!

Annealing the metal, forging the sword

2005-11-22T04:53:00.000-05:00

My husband has been helping me craft some language to describe what service I plan to offer on my soon-to-be website for Runningwave Workshop. The Runningwave Workshop is a dream I have had for years of owning my own business and becoming self-employed. My parents own their small business and have kept it afloat for 40 years, so I am well aware of the potential risks as well as the potential gains in this venture. I recently took an introductory workshop given by the county's manager for Small Business Development. I came away from that workshop thinking that I must carefully define the service I will be selling. I think I have hit upon a job title that describes what I will do: creativity facilitator. Very few people on the Internet are using this phrase, but those who are seem to be doing something similar to what I'd like to do for a living. I have had a rush of other thoughts and words about the services I will offer in teaching creativity workshops and seminars and in facilitating creative problem-solving. I already have many of the required skills, it is a matter of knowing how to market them and how to network to sell my services.

M., my husband, is brilliant when it comes to analogies. He always find the most apt imagery to draw upon whenever he must explain a complex process or concept to others. It is one of his true gifts and one of the qualities that makes him a scholar as well as a scientific researcher. M. told me that some cognitive scientists and machine intelligence engineers are now using the verb "to anneal" in order to understand and to describe the human creative thought processes.

From Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary
Main Entry: an·neal
Function: verb Etymology: Middle English anelen to set on fire, from Old English on[AE]lan, from on + [AE]lan to set on fire, burn, from Al fire; akin to Old English [AE]led fire, Old Norse eldr transitive senses
1 a : to heat and then cool (as steel or glass) usually for softening and making less brittle; also : to cool slowly usually in a furnace
b : to heat and then cool (nucleic acid) in order to separate strands and induce combination at lower temperature especially with complementary strands of a different species

This process of annealing thought can be pictured if you imagine what your brain does when you are problem solving. All of the thoughts are static at first, then as you begin to solve the problem you move, organize and "heat" your thoughts with focused energy until a point when you have reached a mental rut or stumbling block. Then often you have to cool down, step back and allow the thoughts to dissapate and relax a bit. Then sometimes, when you've given your brain some rest, a new idea occurs that sends you off in a new direction with renewed purpose.

I am a visual thinker, so while he was describing this analogy I saw in my mind's eye the rugged hands of a metalsmith pounding a hammer onto a piece of glowing metal into a sword. The smith was forming and shaping the sword with sheer physical force until the metal was annealed to the right point to make it supple, into a weapon of great power.

Weyland the Smith is a character featured in myths and legends of the Norse and Saxon people. I have been thinking about him and about the anicent Celtic goddess Brighid, patroness of metalsmithing, poetic inspiration and healing, who later became a Christian saint known as St. Brigit of Kildare, Ireland. I think my Celtic and Northern European ancestors would have appreciated this "annealing of thought" metaphor. Thoughts must be honed and tempered like good steel so that your blade becomes a thing of power and of beauty. I am a very peaceful person by nature, but sometimes the ancient Celt in me lifts her head in defiance of circumstance and fights for what she feels is just. Sometimes you must fight to be creative in a world that wants you to stay inside the proverbial box, filed under the proper label, signed for, and copied in triplicate.

Hmmm. . . Annealing thoughts into powerful tools with sharpened edges. Edward Bulwer Lytton once wrote: "the pen is mightier than the sword." But isn't it the keyboard now that is the weapon of power a creative thinker and writer must wield in cyberspace?

Attunement to the Universe

2005-11-16T08:09:00.000-05:00

My word for this week seems to be "attunement." I might venture a definition for that word as "the state of coming into balance." Balance is a quality I have craved in my life for many years. While it is impossible for anyone to be in balance all of the time, I have been able to practice maintaining my balance by consciously slowing down when I know I'm stressed out by breathing deeply and centering myself. I have also increased my attention to keeping my physical self in tune because I neglected and disliked my body for most of my teenage and early adult years.

Tuesday night I went to a meeting of my women's group to learn about Reiki, pronounced "ree'-key" in American English. Reiki is a Japanese word that translates as something like "universal life force." As my friend K. described it, the "ki" part of the word designates something similar to the Chinese concept of "chi," as in the body movements called Tai Chi Chuan. Reiki is a healing practice for many in the West and some people take it further and consider it as a spiritual practice.

When I came to the gathering, K. took me aside and asked if I had ever had a Reiki Attunement. I didn't even know what an Attunement was. Basically, it's a manner of laying-on-hands to convey healing energy. K. had me sit on a chair outside on the balcony under the brilliant light of the full moon. She asked me to hold my hands together in front of my heart, as if I might bow to someone. She raised my hands upward, then back to my heart, then my hands outward and open like a book, and once again to my heart. She walked behind me and touched my back briefly and then held her hands behind my head, not touching me.

I know many people who find the idea of spiritual energy to be a "crazy hippy concept" or something akin to belief in angels or UFOs. I admit I was skeptical about energy work until about ten years ago, but I what I have learned about it since then has changed my mind. Modern scientists rediscovered what has been known by healers since ancient times: the human body has electrical current flowing through it. Our nervous system is electrical and runs on chemical impulses. The brain is the central computer that sends waves of energy to the appropriate places. If you have a pain, sometimes it feels like pulses are running through the afflicted area--those are your nerves at work. I experienced that kind of pain once when I was diagnosed with sciatica, a type of shooting pain in my legs brought about by a problem with my lower back nerves. Fortunately, medication followed by a program of regular workouts have solved that problem for me. I also know I have experienced the body's electrical power in other more positive ways. When you touch someone with whom you are in love, isn't just possible you actually sense "sparks" as your nervous system responds to another's?

My experiences with energy work are amateur and experimental, but I believe that massage, accupressure, accupuncture, tai chi, yoga and other bodywork healing practices can help smooth and improve the body's electrical system. So as K. lead the meeting she explained more about Reiki and how it works. I can understand the aspects of energy she described. Picture if you will, later that same evening, when she had the whole group of 15 or so fully-clothed women of ages ranging from teenager to grandmother, sitting in a big circle on the floor, with each woman touching the back of the other. The idea was that we would pass our energy to the next person and through the physical connection of touch spread the healing throughout our circle and out into the universe. In other words, once each of the participants felt attuned to the universe, she could pass that healing energy onward to herself and to others. It seems to me like opening a channel to the universe. In fact, K. used the phrase "it's like tuning in to a frequency on the radio dial" to explain what Reiki Attunement does.

Scientists know that atoms bounce around and are attracted together to form chemical bonds and repelled from each other to break the bonds down. I think of it as a dance, where the individuals move and sway to the beat of cosmic time. Movement is energy. The dance of the atoms creates the maple tree, the air you breath, that cat perched on the windowsill and the metals and plastics comprising your car. And You! As Astronomer Carl Sagan used to say, "We are, all of us, made of star-stuff."

Back on earth, it is a stressful week at my place of work. My positive experience at the meeting of women who I like and care about has left me feeling more relaxed and confident. The odd thing is that I have been having stiffness in my lower back when I wake up in the morning lately, but on the morning after that meeting my back was not stiff at all. Perhaps the healing power of energy work is all in my mind, but I am not so certain.

"Memory: Where our vanished days secretly gather"

2005-11-10T08:41:00.000-05:00

The title above comes from a subchapter heading of poet and philosopher John O'Donohue's book Anam Cara . He writes:

Your soul is the place where your memory lives. Since linear time vanishes, everything depends on memory. In other words, our time comes in yesterdays, todays, and tomorrows. Yet there is another place within us that lives in eternal time. That place is called the soul.
--John O'Donohue, Anam Cara (HarperCollins, 1997).

I have been thinking about art as a tool of memory during the past day. My coworker and I were brainstorming about some children's activities we want to organize at our local history museum currently under construction. She told me about an assignment her elementary-aged daughter had to do for homework at her Montessori school. The teacher wanted each child to create a "heritage box." The outside of an old shoebox was to be decorated by the child to represent herself or himself: sports, hobbies, pictures of themselves, things they like, etc. Inside the teacher wanted the child to collect objects, notes, information about her/his parents, grandparents, great-grandparents, etc.

What a wonderful idea! I exclaimed. And I thought to myself, I'd like to do that assignment.

I think the cooler edge of autumn is a natural season to contemplate memory, ancestry and heritage. Many religious traditions hold festivals to honor the departed at this time of year. Recently I brought out the photographs of my grandparents to place in our living-room near the other fall decorations. I do this every autumn with great intent. All of my grandparents have passed beyond the veil of life into what Shakespeare's Hamlet called "the undiscovered country." By bringing out their pictures each year I honor their memory and my heritage. Memory sometimes has a way of easing the wrinkles caused by sorrows and frustrations of the past and making them indistinct.

An Infinite Storm of Beauty

2005-11-08T07:22:00.000-05:00

I went through some old files last night in search of materials that I want to integrate into my art and spirituality workshops. I ran across a file labeled "John Muir." Muir was a Scottish immigrant to the U.S. in the 19th century who became one of our country's leading naturalists. He founded Sierra Club in 1892 and lead the charge to forming the National Park System. It was amazing to me that someone who lived a century ago had such a profound impact on the landscape of the United States of America.

Five years ago, I organized a summer service about John Muir's spirituality of nature at Paint Branch Unitarian Universalist Church entitled "An Infinite Storm of Beauty." This was my very first lay ministry service. The title came from a quote of Muir's which inspires me with it's great love for everything in Nature.

When we contemplate the whole globe as one great dewdrop, striped and dotted with continents and islands, flying through space with other stars, all singing and shining together as one, the whole universe appears as an infinite storm of beauty.
--Travels in Alaska, 1915

In the service, I celebrated John Muir's understanding that the land itself is holy, that we as human beings need to honor the planet which nurtures us. I had several participants read excerpts from Muir's own eloquent words. That day, my goal was to convey something of the deep reverence I feel for Nature and to honor the memory of one person whose words and actions have made a difference for the whole planet. I only hope that more people can be inspired by his example.

Welcome

2005-11-07T05:42:00.000-05:00

Creativity ebbs and flows like the tide. A person's creativity is affected by the cycles of seasons and weather. Creativity is also influenced by the winds of change, turbulence of emotional storms, and feelings of placid calm. Creative balance is difficult to achieve in the fast-paced postmodern world, where everything must be done by the clock and machine. Human beings may do better to live and work by the sun and moon, but we are always overconfident in our desire to outstrip Nature.

More and more I feel the pulling of the creative tide of Nature. More and more I want to shape my life to be in balance with the Earth and the plants and animals which share this planet with us.

This is a journal of my creative life and work.