One Deep Breath: vision

Hopes to visit in peace a farm,
somewhere in Iraq,
on the porch
talking
of
crops.

A year ago, I wrote about climbing the steps to the Lincoln Memorial with my dad and hearing him tell how Dr. King's famous speech affected him. This year, I'm writing about hearing a vision that is not so famous, but is an extremely powerful one. As I have frequently written about here, my father is a National Guardsman who has served twice in Iraq. When I first sat down to write this week's poem, I wasn't sure what I would write. I thought of my dad and of Dr. King.

I think our rememberance of Dr. King has a tendency to oversimplify his message, which was one of justice for *all* people - he spoke not only of the injustice of judging people by the colors of their skin, but also of the injustice of war, the injustice of taking from the Many to further enrich the few, of the ways that violence harms everyone - the person committing violence, the victim, even the person "on the sidelines" is harmed - each has a piece of their humanity taken by the act of violence. And Dr. King said that the way to counter this is not to engage in more violence, but to reclaim our humanity, to act as human beings with compassion and strength, the strength that rises above violence.

And I thought of my dad's return from war each time. I thought of his interpreter in Iraq, who had been a doctor until the war, when he and his family were threatened if he continued to treat people. My dad told me that he hoped to bring his interpreter and the interpreter's family here to the United States. He hopes to take S. to see my grandfather's farm and to meet the family, and he hopes one day to travel again to Iraq, so that he can see S.'s family's farm, sit out on the porch, and talk about something really important - how crops are grown on that land.

Morning tea

Some of y'all will remember that I really love my cups of tea, especially herbal and fruit teas. This morning, one of my coworkers approached me because she'd only recently discovered that I write haiku.

Somewhat out of character for me, I had gotten cocoa instead of tea this morning, and I found myself looking at *her* morning cup of tea, made from loose green tea and red dates...

Red dates float
in morning's cup of tea,
calm, soothing islands.

Okay, that's it. I've got to bring a loose tea canister to work... (probably for my hibiscus tea...)

And she said nice things about my poetry, too. Whee!

Excuse me?

The New York Times has an article on those of us fools and nutcases who would prefer to see less waste over the holidays. It is, of course, presented as those austere green grinches verses the merry traditionalists.

*sigh*

My er... favorite part of the article is the characterization of a "call for less excessive consumption during the holidays" as "un- American". Oy.

For the record, my gifts, mostly homemade, all in reusable bags or containers, are also ones that I think the recipients will enjoy. For those who can't or shouldn't have sweets, I'll be roasting cashews with spices and including a card with the recipe. Frankly, small gifts of handmade candy rarely wind up in the trash. And since I'm putting the effort in, anyway, I can personalize the gifts with little additional work: an initial worked in a crocheted cloth is not difficult, once you've already decided to do the cloth. Nor is choosing colors that the person enjoys to begin with. And I don't think the recipient of that gift will be tossing it, either.

And apparantly, they ran a different version of the same story last year. Come on, people, this isn't difficult. (And just a hint: it's a good idea to turn the thermostat down during parties, because lots of people in a small space generate plenty of heat. It gets warm fast if you don't.)

Simple Pleasures: One Deep Breath

Hot apple cider
Sweet, spicy memories
Auntie's ginger crisps

Wool pulls through my hands,
Familiar texture, rhythm
Joyful creation

Hot day shade, rest
Watching guppies in the crick

Stomp, stomp, crunching leaves.
We are dinosaurs today
Or maybe giants...

Watching bats fly stunts
As evening gathers round
Stars twinkle hello.

Hot soup, with noodles
And toast, all broken up
Just the right way.

Warm springs bath
Muscles stretch, become water
Don't want to get out

Skirts kilted up
Barefoot in the bubbling crick
Sand between my toes

A trip to the warm springs

Well, we day-tripped to the local warm springs, but it turned out to be very hot out today, and that along with an apple butter festival ensured that the town was so crowded, it was difficult to get around. *sigh*

On the other hand:

Apples float downstream,
Lunchtime for turtle and fishes
Warm mountain autumn

Green-gold harvest corn
Sea laps against wooded hills
No wind today.

Warm springs bubble
Children chase the guppies
Summer blows a kiss.

The joys of public transit

My legs ache from the uphill walk to Metro this morning and my shoulders are complaining of the hike last night with a banjo. And if I'd just give in, I could walk a couple of blocks from my office and have a car again while I wait for mine to get out of the shop. Instead I'm considering taking Metro on Thursdays anyway, even once the car is repaired, at least while the weather is so nice.

If that consideration were based solely on my wish to help the environment, it would likely be a tough sell to my aching limbs, I confess, but there are other compensations, even aside from the slow toning my legs are getting.

Yesterday, as I went to pick up the card that would allow me to use the Zipcar system (which I'm enjoying. I use a car when I absolutely have to, but otherwise don't have to worry about it - no getting a guest pass for my building, no looking for parking in my neighborhood. Pure genius.), Craig and I met on a train platform. We emerged from the tunnel into warm late afternoon sunlight. A couple blocks down to the Zipcar office, and I notice that the actual street it's on is closed for a farmer's market. Score! After I get my Zipcard, we began wandering around, looking at the goodies on display.

I wound up with a quart of really *good* yogurt - this stuff reminds me of the yogurt my mom made for me as a kid, some tomatoes, some greens, a block of feta from the yogurt guy, half a boule of really crusty bread - nicely yeasty and chewy, 2 perfect Asian pears, just wanting a day or two, 2 portabellas, with an extra stem thrown in ("It's good for soup - just chop it up real good"), and a head of organically grown garlic. Back down into the Metro, plotting my purchases into a tasty dinner (portabella steaks with chopped garlic and a little white wine on toasted crusty bread, a salad with heirloom tomatoes, feta cheese, and a light dressing. For dessert? Yogurt and honey.), I take a few moments as the train emerges from the tunnel into the light to do a little quick birdwatching - you see, the train comes out behind a shopping center, and where the parking lot ends is a bit of a swampy area, where I sometimes see herons. I saw one on Monday, but not last night.

I think breakfast tomorrow may be mushroom soup with crusty bread, since tonight, a friend is holding a birthday gathering and I've been wanting that soup for nearly a day now. I'm thinking next week of looking at the mixed mushroom boxes, seeing if any cooking greens are looking good (one of the few things that improves mushroom soup is adding a few chopped greens), checking out the mixed grain cider bread (in little loaves), picking up the dried mushroom mix and some more of that amazing yogurt. Maybe even a quart of cider by then... And some green zebra tomatoes, because they're just so nifty looking...

Simplicity: One deep breath

Rainy day book
Cup of herb tea
Simple pleasures

Headed for the Great Outdoors

The car is packed solid. Tent, sleeping bags, extra blankets and pillows, first aid kit, camping mattress, folding water carrier, cooler, extra tarp, extra tentpegs, metal dishes and heavy mugs, rain slickers and hiking sandals, camping chairs, and all the rest of the paraphenalia to set up a comfy campsite, go hiking and swimming, and just hang out at a state park.

The little pocket in the car where I keep music is stocked with campfire music to sing along to on the way there. I've read the weather outlook for the next few days and packed some extra warm clothes since we're likely to have an afternoon thundershower or two while we're out. The banjo is neatly packed away in the gig bag I made, ready for campfire service (though right now, not in the car.)

The water bottles are nestled next to the small bottle of camping suds for the dishes and the liquid castile soap for us. And I'm off soon.

Have a good weekend everybody!

Banjo adventures update

The banjo lessons have resumed after a break for my instructor to go on his summer vacation, and I've improved tremendously during the break. "Skip to My Lou" is playing smoothly and I managed to keep good enough time on it to do a duet with my instructor of "Skip to my Lou" on banjo and guitar. Woot! "Polly Wolly Doodle" is where "Skip to My Lou" was before the break - I've got the notes and the note values, now I need to work on smooth transitions and steady timing. Chord transitions are going better, too, enough so that I'm learning 2 more chords in preparation for learning "Oh, Susannah" perhaps as early as next week. And another chord or two, "just because".

And some of the "tricks" I've been learning as "breaks" from actually concentrating on getting those chord transitions perfect are really shaping up, too. I've got this cool blues slide that I've learned how to do on the banjo, but no song to put it in, which is a serious pity as it sounds so nifty that it's hard to believe that *I* made that happen. And the new chords are minor chords, so I got some musical theory thown into this lesson, which has made practicing my strumming that much more interesting. (And given me a couple of variations on the chords I already knew to play around with. Just messing around with open G can be more entertaining than I'd ever have believed when I first tried strumming out a song.)

The only bad part is that it is really hard to put the banjo down some mornings and get myself to work. I'm really looking forward to this weekend's camping with the banjo along. If the weather is nice, I'll be hiking and paddling about with a cheap pair of binoculars along for wildlife watching. And if we get confined to the lovely new tent, I'll be sitting in the vestibule, watching the rain and playing the banjo.

Just writing that last bit reminded me of the one and only time I've ever been to New Orleans. It was over 10 years ago, and I went there with my mom and my sister, visiting my dad who was on a nearby base. While I am so not a morning person, my sister is and so we found ourselves up and moving rather earlier than I might have chosen by myself. We decided to grab some breakfast at the Cafe du Monde (Menu: coffee, beignets - a sort of flat donutish pastry, and fresh orange juice. Mmmm.)

When we got there, the river was still covered in morning mist and the city wasn't really awake, but the great thing about the Cafe du Monde is that it is basically an open pavillion where you can people watch or whatever, so we sipped our chicory coffee and juice, ate pastries, and watched the French Quarter wake up. About halfway though, rain started to fall. It went from a few tentative drops to a deluge in about 10 seconds, and the next thing we knew, there was a sax player taking refuge under the overhang. And he was *good*. The rain was his personal rhythm section, and he played music that dodged between the raindrops, climbed to the clouds, fell to the ground, and became the mist wrapping us each about. He played the river and the city, the heat and the cool mist, the rain and the warm coffee. When the rain passed again, he began to gather up his case and his hat, but we made sure to get out there in time to leave our contribution to this artist.

Part of me, though, has ever since heard a sax playing bluesy jazz in every good rain storm.

Evening: One Deep Breath

Canoe glides softly
Into evening eddies
Tired.

Last bird calls echo
Crickets begin to sing
Evening in the hills

Mosquito lands
Ripples of water
Trout's dinner

Deck in the woods
Banjo in my hands
Evening whispers

This weekend, I went back to the hills to visit my parents and canoe down the same river I canoed down countless times as a child. I brought my sketchbook, but somehow just didn't even open it, preferring to sit out on the deck with my banjo, sometimes playing softly, but more often just watching the life of the woods around me.

On Saturday, we debated on whether to give up on the canoeing expedition and just go for a walk in the woods, but recommitted to the 7 mile paddle and headed off to the canoe livery, not getting there until the afternoon, and finding ourselves waiting. No problem: we watched the goats in a nearby pen wiggling through to get to the feedbox until our name was called, then headed upriver with a trailer of canoes.

Then we decided to explore a rock formation on public lands partway down the river, and lazily drifted for some of the trip. When we arrived near the end of the trip, I was exhausted, but happy. After my shower, as everyone else got ready for dinner, I again sat with my banjo in the gathering dusk.

Memories of green shade
Soft purple phox trembing in the breeze
That tiptoes between the trees
Tickling the hair on my neck

Moss-covered limestone bones
Hold the prints of ancient years,
Beside the ironwood tree
My resting, hiding, me-place

Deep clay in the valley,
Carved by long-ago glacier waters,
Still holds Johnny Crick,
Cool water for restless feet

Tangled berry brambles,
Long meadow grasses,
Cows gaze in bemusement
As I embrace the summer wind

Banjo progress

In the meantime, I've been working away at learning the banjo. Pretty much I've got the melody lines down for "Skip to My Lou" and "Polly Wolly Doodle" and am working on the chords for accompaniment. *sigh* "Skip to My Lou" is coming along, and would probably come along better if I could sing that song anywhere close to where my banjo is playing. "Polly Wolly Doodle" is kind of chugging along behind.

On the other hand, I've practiced so much that I've worn out my strings, so I learned how to replace them. Woot! It was oddly gratifying to see the wear spots, including a place where I'd basically worn through the winding wire on the low D string. I left the used strings with my instructor, who has been known to use old musical strings in craft projects and other reuses. And the next night realized I wanted the old strings because I spotted a repair project I could have used one in. So it goes.

This weekend, I'm taking the banjo with me when I visit my folks. The place we're staying is pretty isolated, so I can feel reasonably confident that I'm not disturbing anyone when I take the banjo out on the porch to practice those darn chords. And next week, it can come camping.

It's gotten to be a very relaxing thing I do - just pull out the banjo, feel the comfortable feel of the neck in my hand, the light weight resting on my lap, the brackets pressing into my arm, the strap keeping everything in place. Tune. Okay, now tune again. Run a couple scales up and down. Hmmm. Play with the chords a bit. Double check that tuning. (The tuning was better for a while, but new strings need constant tuning, as I am rapidly discovering.) Play with "Skip to My Lou"... Now, the chords. Okay, "Polly Wolly Doodle" melody. (I love doing the "Fare thee well, Fare thee well, Fare thee well, my fairy fay" bit*.) Play around a bit. Chords, right, I should be practicing chords. "Skip to My Lou" chords. Play around a bit... and so forth.

*And I just realized that that's a bit that freaked me out less than a month ago - convinced I wouldn't get the timing or the change to the A note easily. But I did. And now, it's my favorite part of the whole song. There's probably something really deep in that. And the whole "Polly wolly doodle all the day" bit is a lot easier than it looks, too.

Steve Martin is right. It is just about impossible to be totally depressed while playing the banjo. There's something cheering about that ringing sound, even if it does want tuning every 20 minutes.

Happy Birthday, Dad

This morning, I caught the first whiff of honeysuckle for this year. Yum.

And it made me think about my dad. How we used to go on nature hikes, looking at everything. How I first learned to really love camping by going camping with my parents, even as a toddler. (There's just something *about* slightly scorched potatoes dug out of the coals of a campfire, especially when eaten with baked beans and veggie hot dogs.) It made me think of the picture of him letting me hang on to his fingers as I mastered walking across a stream on a log.

Happy birthday, Dad. Come home soon.

The joy of creation

Yesterday, I talked about my first real hurdle in learning the banjo: I have very small hands, which makes some of the fingerings a real stretch. I'm getting around that by changing as I go, but it means my left hand must not only know what my right hand is doing, but keep up with it, doing something else at the same speed. For right now, that means I go slowly. My metronome stays for now set at 40 beats per minute.

What I didn't talk about is what keeps me coming back. And not just to the banjo: I often sew my own clothing, weave, braid, crochet, and knit. I am skilled at the "clean out the fridge" dinner, and have been known to produce pretty good meals out of leftovers, occasionally even cooking from random ingredients someone else has bought. (I have friends who used to do this just to get me to cook such a meal. Oddly enough, I still enjoy doing so every now and again.) With only one exception, all the art in my home is by either me or else artists I know. I like to listen to music made by friends. (And folks, seriously, go check over at Quiet Paths. There's a recording of "Soldier's Joy" on banjo and viola. It was supposed to be a sound check, but is just fabulous.)

I think that all too often, our culture puts us in the position of "recipient" - we eat the food someone else grows, wear the clothing that other people make, listen to other people's music, watch other people's stories. It is a powerful statement today to do things for ourselves, to tell our own stories, dance our own dances, grow and cook our own foods (did you know you could buy pre-made peanut butter and jelly sandwiches?), to make for ourselves.

Yes, we are all interdependent. While I can take freshly sheared wool and take it through every step to make a shawl, I know nothing of raising sheep or of shearing them. But I do know the quiet delight of seeing the work of my hands taking shape. How many are denied the pleasure of seeing the competence of the hands they were born with? And the joy of giving gifts that are handmade? For my husband's grandmother's birthday, I have some lovely fiber that I will be braiding into a necklace, with tassels at the end and polished shell beads interwoven. Her card will be ornamented with origami and handpainted detail. (And will use fewer resources than a traditional card, since the materials I use are environmentally sound - I take materials that would otherwise be headed for a landfill and reuse them.)

I take pride in the job I do when making things, and wish that others could be so encouraged - whether to raise a bit of a garden, or to make their own cards, or to sing their own songs. Although, apparantly, with some folks, we'll have to begin with spreading their own peanut butter.

Sorry, folks. I've been spending a good bit of this week looking for the quiet within, and have begun many posts only to discard them again. I was deeply disturbed on more than one level by the recent tragedy in Blacksburg, but I still think that anything I would say on it would be insufficiently seasoned, so I'm going to lay it aside for now.

And talk about something completely different.

Spring is here and the summer is beginning to beckon, even as my legs are still cold from winter, my mind is on the road already. Perhaps it's because I'm going on my first roadtrip of the season this weekend or perhaps it's because next month Dad will be coming home, hopefully, but I've been thinking about trips for this summer - s'mores and campfire songs. (I can now play the first two bars of "Skip to My Lou") Tentage and packing into the new car. Roadside stops and campgrounds. (I was photographed at a tender age in Yogi's picnic basket. That kind of thing can influence future development, you know.) Farmer's markets and fireman's socials.

Local restaurants with good iced tea and sweet potato fries. Or mushrooms stuffed with homemade boursin. And I'm always a sucker for veggie melts - hold the peppers, please. Watching the stars until midnight has whispered a farewell and is long gone. Picking the raspberries and blackberries from my parents' yard. Batwatching at dusk. Potato packets on a park grill. Yeah, I think I'm ready to get out and about again.

Yesterday, I discovered Zach A's Evolt blog. And was both amused and exasperated by the most recent post. Somewhere out there is a tourist who feels they were fleeced by a tourist destination. You see, there's now a skywalk out over the Grand Canyon. And he'd read that the cost of going to see the skywalk was $25, not including the cost to get onto the reservation where the skywalk sits. Turns out the cost of getting to it is $50 - basically, a tour of the reservation plus lunch, since they don't allow outside cars in. For an additional cost, you don't even need to drive your car to the parking lot, but can arrange for a bus to pick you up and bring you in. Cool.

Anyway, our tourist says fine, and pays the $75 for tour plus skywalk, but has gotten so angry over the whole thing (despite reading the brochure, which I thought explained the situation.) that he's not enjoying any of it, including the skywalk. So he posts a rant about the whole experience, which gets a ton of commenters. Zach asks if this is perhaps because it allows people to cast the whole thing in their minds as "see, those Indians cheated this guy, so we get to ignore how our whole nation has cheated the Indians." And that may be how it's being perceived, except, well, it's so not a rip-off, people!

$75 for a tour plus lunch is standard going, if just a bit low. Anything below that, if you get a lunch at all, you can bet it will be awful, and the vegetarian option won't be much better, if there is a vegetarian option at all. If y'all chose not to just relax and enjoy as much of the tour as you could, that's certainly not the fault of the folks selling the tour. If I were faced with a tour that turned out to be more expensive than I thought, I would either find something else to do with the day or else figure I might as well get my money's worth. As I mentioned in my comment, the horse ride is a serious bargain, by the looks of it, and the overnight accomodations look reasonable to me. I find myself wondering when their off season is.

Last night, I mentioned the tour to a friend of mine and she agreed that we'd have a ton of fun if we went. Mind you, this is the friend whom I've frequently talked into going on tourist adventures with me - hey, look at this, only 4 hours away is a hot spring that was famous just before the Civil War. You can still go bathing in it for $14. Wanna go? And across the street is a historic hotel that was converted from a jail just before the Depression when they hoped to hype the spring again. Reasonable rates, and a shuffleboard court, too. With homemade breakfasts... Or we could stay in a caboose in Pennsylvania, right next to a short line railroad and a train museum...

I love heading to obscure tourist destinations. Local museums, oddments of history, all that kind of thing. A ride on a paddleboat along the Ohio, a train park in West Virginia, camping in state parks, a canoe trip down some river that runs only waist deep in places, and I am so there. Someone's got a tour of an old jukebox factory? Cool! Hey, Rae, check this out...

And yes, I know this isn't obscure. That's why I want to know when the off season is.

Music

I've done it - all three chords, smooth transitions, on rhythm. *happy dance* And now I'm working on making it happen each time. Lots of practice this weekend.

Along with seed catalogs. Am I the only one to love seed catalogs? Hmmm. Yeah, there are flowers, but look! There's a heritage variety of tomatoes... and golden raspberries... and we're far enough south for peaches and pecans, but far enough north for the blueberries... never mind that I live in a tiny apartment with a balcony in partial shade (we do get a couple hours of sun in the late afternoon.)

I don't want a big house, but I do want an orchard and a garden. And an outdoor sheltered kitchen for processing the lot of it. Unfortunately, there were no jobs for me or my husband where we could have afforded the land for that, and here there are jobs, but no land. So I get a seed catalog and try one more time to get some radishes and thumbelina carrots to grow in a windowbox on the balcony.

A lovely evening

Watching the sunset from our balcony and practicing the banjo. Well, my chords still don't sound right to me, but I've finally got the rhythm of strumming. Way cool.

And brie with dinner. Mmmm.

Simple joys when one needs to get better

Caramelized garlic on toast.
(put a small pot filled with peeled garlic cloves on the stove. add water to cover and a thin layer of olive oil - does not need to be extra-virgin, just a decently good olive oil. I use Goya's regular stuff, the kind that comes in the big bottle. Turn the flame to a medium low setting and allow to simmer until you hear the sound of garlic beginning to fry. Turn off the flame and spread the resultant goo on toasted bread - this is not the time for Wonderbread, either. Something chewy and crusty.)

Ratty pajamas. The ones with the bleach stain and the rip in the hem that have worn to a perfect level of comfort. To be worn with the slippers that don't match anything, including each other, but are warm and cozy. Okay, maybe this one is just me.

Tiger tea with licorice
Bengal spice tea, the stuff with cloves and ginger and such - essentially chai without the actual tea leaves and a broken up licorice root in the teapot. Sweeten with honey and a little lemon. If you are so inclined, add whiskey.

Sops.
Broth with toast dipped in. Even better if there are onions and garlic.

Popsicles
(So sue me. I like 'em)

Gelatin
to give a variation to all the liquids. And yes, the vegetarian stuff is better than you probably think it is. Actually, even better are those little seaweed gelatin shots available at the nearest Asian grocery, but the packaging is awful.

Amusing books.
I'm working on Al Franken's Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them (A Fair and Balanced Look at the Right) which is really funny.

Recorded Sacred Harp
I can't even talk, but I can listen to pretty music.