Farmhands

I'm reading Vilhelm Moberg's first novel The Emigrants, the first in a four-book series about Swedes who emigrated to the U.S. and the start of my research for the Story (see my last post). Currently in Moberg's book I'm reading about farmhands in Sweden, who were usually in a year-long contract. Life was brutal.

Reading books about what life was like 150 years ago creates ambivalent feelings in me. On the one hand, I long to be more connected with the earth and daily survival, pre-industrial age. But on the other, I feel grateful for inventions of convenience and human evolution that mean I don't have to spend an entire day doing laundry, or clearing stones or stumps from a field to till it, or suffer persecution because someone who is religiously zealous is spreading rumors about me.

Today Don and I spent time clearing and burning sticks that had fallen in the ice storm, and cutting and stacking wood for the wood stove. Don has a chainsaw, and we only had to do this work for a couple of hours. On the one hand, we got to be connected with the earth and daily survival. And on the other, right now I'm sitting in the family room typing on my laptop with the woodstove supplementing the heat from the gas furnace.

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A story

This is a shawl Lesley wove, and gave to me. Oh bliss.

There is a story to be told, and I'm going to tell it. It might take the rest of my life!

It's the story of four women. My grandmother, who was born to Swedish immigrants in Chicago and became a successful New York artist and designer. My mother, a brainiac New York musician who submitted everything to her minister husband, to Christ and the church. Me . . . hmm, a woman with too many creative outlets. My daughter, a child of punk rock who is becoming a New York designer. Four generations of women with creativity in their genes who face struggles within and of their generations. I started researching Swedish emigration yesterday. It has begun.

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Consciousness

Thanks to this Presence Process life continues to be interesting.

This is week 4, the week we look at pain in our life without covering it up. Physical, emotional or mental pain.

Yesterday was a doozy.

The whole day I had a splitting headache. I rarely have headaches, but when I do, I take an ibuprofen or two, and that takes care of it. In The Presence Process Michael Brown encourages us not to cover up any pain this week, but to focus on it and see it as a messenger, a friend. I obeyed, and without ibuprofen, it was a challenge to get through a day meeting with students and answering emails.

After Don left for work in the morning yesterday, I looked for my car keys for 30 minutes, including through the trash (coffee grounds and all). Nowhere. Where could I have put them? Thankfully Lesley’s car is in the garage, so Don called and re-insured it for the day, and I drove it in to work. Guess what, Don found my keys in his coat pocket at school and doesn’t even recall putting them there.

One more anomalous thing happened yesterday. Online I had ordered wild caught salmon from Alaska night before last. I always order 8 pounds in order to get free shipping. Got an email confirmation yesterday that I had ordered just one pound, and the shipping was $20. I paid far more for shipping than for the salmon. I called Alaska, and it was too late to change the order, it had been shipped!

The amazing thing yesterday is that I did not get upset about any of it. (Maybe my head hurt too much to get upset.) I don’t pat myself on the back. But I feel grateful to teachers like Michael Brown who are sharing what has worked for them to become more present.

I may get upset about something today. I don’t know. But I can feel the habit of responding and not reacting starting to take hold.

Here's a quote from Viktor Frankl: "What is to give light must endure burning."

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Human Exchange

Ok, so if this is about human exchange, why the animals? Read on.

It’s been a tough week for me in some ways. I’m nearing the end of week 2 of something called The Presence Process (a book by Michael Brown) that takes 10 weeks, one week for each session. It’s not a complicated process at all but is meant to help you see how and why you react to things with upset, stalking them and really looking at them to understand yourself and how you react to things out of past experiences. The point is to learn to respond (implies responsibility) instead of react.

Well, just as the author forewarned, things have popped up and seemed exaggerated while going through this process. When you’re really paying attention to the things that get your goat, you realize how uncomfortable you become when your ego is bruised. That woman who was rude to me on the phone, who does she think she is? That comment I left on a blog post seemed to be totally misunderstood – how can I communicate it better, and how could he have thought that of me?

This Thanksgiving week, having a relatively compact house full of 10 adults, one baby and two dogs for four days stretched me to my limits energetically. When others don’t “do it” just the way you do (and why the hell not?), first you get that internal upset, and then you say “and why does this bother me?”

Thankfully we had a gorgeous week with temps in the 50s, very unusual for this time of year. This meant we could go outside and play. Don and the kids played ping pong in the garage, basketball and foursquare on the driveway, and we all went for a lovely walk Friday (but no Lesley, how we missed her). We wandered through the barn (where we found kitty Bishop in her secret hiding place), took Rusty the Brittany Spaniel for a walk through the woods and by the pond. (Above may be one of the last photos of Rusty, a 14-year old who is now blind.)

Animals are consistently faithful, responsive, loving, forgiving. They don’t have egos. They have personalities, but not egos (although some domesticated animals do seem to take on human emotions).

Watching Rusty romp on the path made my heart long to be that free. Free from previous hurts that make me see new experiences through a projecting lens that need not be there.

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You, Darkness

You, Darkness

You, darkness, that I come from

I love you more than all the fires

that fence in the world,

for the fire makes a circle of light for everyone

and then no one outside learns of you.

But the darkness pulls in everything-

shapes and fires, animals and myself,

how easily it gathers them!

-powers and people-

and it is possible a great presence is moving near me.

I have faith in nights.

Original language: German

Rainer Maria Rilke (1875 - 1926 /Germany)

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Snowflake reflections

Snowflakes were 2 inches across today briefly, now it's stopped. Click on image for larger view.

"And may the melting snow drop like tears
From my motionless bronze eyelids,

And the prison pigeons coo above me
And the ships sail slowly down the Neva"

- Anna Akhmatova (1889-1966), excerpt from "Requiem"

Please go to the embedded link "Requiem" and read this poem about Stalinist prison camp life in Russia. This was part of the reality of Akhmatova's world which she did not fear to write about. Her husband was killed in one of the camps. This poem was not published in Russia until after her death, and of course after Stalin's death.

This was part of our world in the 20th century, one of the most horrible centuries in human history.

I don't publish this to depress you or me. I don't live in the past. I just don't want to forget how hard life has been for some.

Be sure to check in at Paris Deconstructed, where I publish a new post once or twice a week. (I had taken a hiatus but decided I couldn't stay away!)

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Fall flavors

Is there anything better than yogurt with:

• blueberries
• black raspberries
• mandarin oranges
• grapefruit
• and just a wee bit of Don's blackberry sauce?

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Crazy Wisdom

Tea Room in the Crazy Wisdom bookstore in Ann Arbor (can you see the snowflakes outside the window? Click on pic to enlarge.)

I played hookie yesterday with my friend Inge. Nothing like the luxury of taking a day off in Ann Arbor:

• Drove the beautiful country roads for an hour each way
• Drank coffee in Crazy Wisdom bookstore second floor tea room, scanning a stack of books for potential puchase (most interesting: The Presence Process by Michael Brown -- thanks Healing Room; 2012: The Return of Quetzalcoatl by Daniel Pinchbeck; Ask Your Guides: Connecting to Your Divine Support System by Sonia Choquette)
• Ate curry and naan at Shalimar Indian restaurant
• Window shopped on Main Street

• Saw "The Queen" with Helen Mirren. I highly recommend it! (photo from NPR web site in link)

And now I still have two days off before going back to work. Mmm, 3-day weekend.

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Where is the sun?

In these gloomy autumn days I have to remember that the sun is always there. I may not see it, but it's there all the same.

Langston Hughes wrote a wonderful poem about the sun (his dream) being blocked by the wall of his black-ness.

As I Grew Older

It was a long time ago.

I have almost forgotten my dream.

But it was there then,

In front of me,

Bright like a sun--

My dream.

And then the wall rose,

Rose slowly,

Slowly,

Between me and my dream.

Rose until it touched the sky--

The wall.

Shadow.

I am black.

I lie down in the shadow.

No longer the light of my dream before me,

Above me.

Only the thick wall.

Only the shadow.

My hands!

My dark hands!

Break through the wall!

Find my dream!

Help me to shatter this darkness,

To smash this night,

To break this shadow

Into a thousand lights of sun,

Into a thousand whirling dreams

Of sun!

- Langston Hughes

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I need Shakespeare

Linda Condlin, left, in black, and Sean Arbuckle in the foreground, with students

Sometimes we need a reminder that our job is great. My job as an academic adviser can get cumbersome, dry, overwhelming, you name the negative description. Just when I needed it, the Stratford Festival partnership with my university happened. Here two actors are doing an acting workshop with the English department's Shakespeare class. It was dynamic and fun, and I could see the humor and drama of Shakespeare's genius being expressed through Laura Condlin and Sean Arbuckle. You can see their artist bios here.

I listened to the Artistic Director of the Stratford Festival, Richard Monette, at a lecture Monday. I loved what he had to say about performing arts: We don't need to justify them or defend their worth of our funding any more than we need to justify eating. We need the arts, we want the arts. It's part of who we are.

There's a new post at Paris Deconstructed.

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Embody peace

"It is difficult for us in the West to trust that we can achieve peace and happiness if we're not doing something active to bring it about, but embodying peace and happiness does bring it about."

- Alberto Villoldo, from The Four Insights: Wisdom, Power and Grace of the Earthkeepers

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Sky pink

This is literally what the sky looked like for about 3 minutes while I was getting ready for work yesterday. Quick, grab the tripod and camera, screw the camera onto the tripod while running out the door and try not to slip on the frosty deck, throw glasses on, run down hill past electric lines, set up tripod, zoom in. It was gone 2 minutes later.

BTW, those are trees, not weeds, silhouetted, the last of the leaves hanging onto the top branches.

Speaking of pink skies, here is part of a poem called "North Woods" by John Tranter. Read the whole (long) poem here.

The imagination babbles forever,
the kitchen light in the cabin always
glowing in the fog ahead where frail ghosts
glimmered, like a gin ad in the ancient forest
then her remedy rattles down from the shelf, the sun
spoking through the lonesome pines and she becomes
as we prayed she would - full of zip,
the sky pink and happy.

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Leaves of gold

For the Laika, there is nothing more important than being true to one's word, so they're very careful about what they say to themselves and others. They believe that to utter a single negative syllable to someone is to cast a curse, and that to say something positive is to give a blessing.

- Alberto Villoldo, from The Four Insights: Wisdom, Power and Grace of the Earthkeepers

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Christmas in October

If you want to see it bigger, click on image

When I brought the Christmas cacti in from the porch in September the decrease in light sent them into blooming mode. So here we are two months early, blooming with the pumpkins. We might be lucky enough to have some abloom a month from now when Don's family comes for Thanksgiving (and Lesley and Peter are home - yay!).

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Looking out a window

Yes, I've been busy keeping a photo posted daily on the East Lansing blog. But that's not the only reason I haven't posted here in a few days. Just feeling pensive, you know? (The photo here is of Don in a building at University College, Cork, in Ireland in July, looking out at the quad.)

Things I'm thinking about:

• the literal nature, or not, of holy scriptures
• the illusion of this world and its forms
• Relaxing my shoulders and wishing I could have a weekly deep tissue massage (Ginnie?)
• the nature of "God"
• saving the planet, or not (thanks to Rauf)
• Tiger baseball and the World Series
• Writing poems, or not
• ego constructs (hopefully not)

Sorry, but I can't help myself.

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Last harvest

Click on image to enlarge

Don gathered the last of the tomatoes and left them on the adirondack in this still life. (And he thinks he's not an artist.)

Don fries up the tastiest green tomatoes EVER. That perfect combo of tender inner sweetness with the savory, crisp crust.

We're back to a typical autumn day after the early snow last week.

Before moving to the farm in November 2003, autumn was my favorite season. But now, living out here, nature is close at hand every day of the year. I get to drive through farmland to work 5 days a week. Each day of each season is observable, touchable, changeable. Even the daily-different clouds are important in the landscape. If you ask what is my favorite season, I might just say "now."

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Happy Birthday, Peter

Click on photo to enlarge

24 years ago today my son Peter was born. Happy day!

Peter, you're a man of character, talent, humor, depth, intelligence, beauty and grace. I bless the day you were born.

This 1983 photo of Peter on my back is in the Redwood Forest in California. I was 26, just two years older than he is now.

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Meridian barn

The drive home from work yesterday was beautiful, with the early snow and autumn leaves still on the trees. Breathtaking contrasts. (When I pulled over to take this photo, a man in a truck passed, then backed up to see if I was all right. I held up my camera, and he apologized. Folks out in the country look out for each other.)

This barn is on the corner of Meridian Road and M-36, in Dansville. This is the actual "Michigan Meridian" but I can't find the number of degrees.

BTW, which version of this photo do you like better, color or sepia/BW? Click on photos to enlarge.

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Pumpkins in snow

What a difference a few days make. Last weekend we were in shirtsleeves at the cottage. Today it’s 31 degrees F (feels like 21 with the wind chill) and was snowing on the way to work. Remember, I posted about pumpkins in fog September 15 . Here is the same pumpkin stand this morning. We’ll be back into the 50s and maybe 60s next week. So it’s just brrrr for today. Until a few weeks from now.

Warmer thoughts go to Orhan Pamuk, the Turkish novelist who won the Nobel Peace Prize today. I wrote about him in one of my first posts. He was on trial this past year in Turkey for criticizing the Armenian and Kurdish massacres. The Turkish government, wanting to be accepted into the European Union, retracted its charges, since the EU believes in freedom of speech. Congratulations to him for being bold and for winning the Nobel!

Visit my new blog (yes, I have aNOther blog): EastLansingDailyPhoto.

Also, there is a new post at Paris Deconstructed.

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Horseshoe Lake

Click on images to see larger views.




Thank you, Lesley, for letting me go out in your kayak! Dad/Don and I loaded it onto our little Chevy Aveo, and you can see they fit well together. Here we are at the cottage!


I did as promised and was on the lake Saturday morning before the sun rose. In fact, I was on the lake before the moon set (above).

Then the sun rose. At this moment (above) in the fog, it was a little freaky. I could hear geese honking all around and above, but I could see nothing. Nothing except the light.

Then as it rose, the sun began to dispel the fog.

I spent 2 hours and paddled around the whole lake. I was alone, except for one fishing boat, and the geese. As you see, the lake was a glass mirror the entire time.

The view below is looking at our cottage. See it up there on the hill nestled in the trees (just to the right of middle)?

I ventured out again in the kayak briefly Saturday evening. I followed this blue heron (below) around for a bit and had him "trapped" on this fallen tree. It got so dark I had to use flash. Poor guy must have wondered what I was. He finally got up the courage to fly away.

This morning, before leaving for home, it was another glorious October day, and I took shots from our cottage on the hill. I think we have the best spot on the lake. Why don't we drive the hour and a half to this place more often? I know there are some in the family who live too far away to go often and would if they lived this close.

We come every 4th of July and New Year's for family gatherings. The place is packed with people, kids laughing and splashing, speedboats and jet skis buzzing, everyone cooking at once in the narrow kitchen. It's heaven.

But it's another version of heaven to be there on a quiet autumn weekend when the geese are stopping off on their journey south, herons are fishing, and the mist sits like feathers on the lake.

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Flower power: blast from the past

As an academic adviser for 1,000 English majors in my university, I'm kept busy.


Besides help with scheduling courses and advice about careers, I like to help students feel part of the department of English community.


So I started having English Teas a couple of years ago. Sometimes I invite a professor to come talk about their own experiences and ideas. Sometimes we have a specific topic. Last night we had an informal talk about applying to graduate school, with six of our newly hired professors chatting with undergraduate students. I learned a lot!


When I started the teas, Lesley, Don and I were shopping in Eastern Market in Detroit and found a vintage shop jam packed full of 1960s and '70s stuff. I bought up every mug they had of this "set," scattered around the shop. I think there are 24, plus some accessories. I keep my eye out on eBay for more. It's important that they stack, so I can store them on my shelf, under the teapots.


The students and professors enjoy drinking from these flower power mugs. I suppose they seem quite wacky for the somber halls of the English department. But that's why I like them.

Our teapots, enough to make tea for 32


My university hall

Remember my mushroom post? See?? This is one of those '60s psychedelic mushrooms I was talking about!

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Getting away

Click on image to enlarge.

unknown kayakers on the 4th of July weekend at "our" lake

Don and I are getting away for the weekend tomorrow after work, heading for my family's cottage. It's about an hour and a half drive away, with a sweet little lake. Lesley says I can borrow her kayak! That will be a first for me, though I've been in many canoes.

The plan is to be on the lake when the sun comes up Saturday. Still water, mist, swans, herons (at least I hope some are left and haven't all migrated).

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My photoblog

Click on photos to view larger size. Or better yet, visit my photoblog.

Last month I started experimenting with a photoblog. I like having the larger format at that site. (If you visit that site, please leave honest feedback about the photographs. Whether you know much about photography or not, you know how a picture makes you feel.)

I keep dreaming and drooling over Canon EOS Digital SLR cameras. The pricetag is enormous, so it won't happen any time soon. Maybe a used one someday.

For now my Olympus 500UZ will have to do. I bought it for work (mostly for the annual trips to Ireland) without doing any research. I didn't know I'd get bitten by the photography bug. I could have spent a couple hundred dollars more and gotten a decent Canon model (though not the ones I really want). When you scan photographs at 100% or 200% (on photoshop, for instance) there are "artifacts" and lots of digital noise at times.

So my challenge is to a) study photography, b) learn to take the best pictures I can with this camera, and c) experiment until I find my own personal eye. (I guess that's what you call it, the way a poet has a voice.)

Learning to live with what is.

I post-processed this photo for graininess in the petals. I like how the flower's center remains clear and focused in spite of the almost posterized graininess of the petals.

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Autumn rust

Click on photos to enlarge.

Don and I found rusted pieces of farm equipment in corners of the barn hanging from nails here and there. Old horseshoes, a gear, hooks of various sizes and shapes.

The purpose is to make a windchime. The JorgDotOrg photo hunt starting tomorrow is "windchime," and we don't have one. So I started brainstorming what I could make one from.

I wrote a poem about it for my poetry group tonight:

Autumn sounds

Small pieces of
rusted farm metal
that once lay nested in corners
or hung on nails
these hundred years

gears and rings,
hooks that look like hairpins
or the number six, discarded
horseshoes, one
with three nails fused in the holes

all
the color of the fallen
leaves softly curled and pinned
beneath them on the deck

where they are
lined up to be assembled
for a new purpose

a windchime

the dong, pling and thrum
that will continue the vibrations
of
the horse’s stomp, the plow’s
jab, the fluid swing
of rope and pulley,
and the clutch and release
of the farmer’s thick fingers
that labored
to his blood’s beat.

- Ruth M.

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New Paris post

Please visit Paris Deconstructed for a photo gallery of Rouge de Paris (red in Paris).

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Morning shadows

Click on photo to enlarge.

This still life isn't a perfect composition. But I couldn't resist the morning shadows on the wall, so I took it as is, dust and all.

The little girl in the photo is my mother, Barbara, born June 26, 1916, passed away March 29, 1997. The photo sits on Lesley's piano, which is still in our house until she gets her own more permanent place. I'm glad because Lesley plays when she comes home. Barbara was a pianist too, among other things.

Above all she was enthusiastic. Do you know the root of "enthusiasm"?

dictionary.com says (my bold):

possession by a god (énthous, var. of éntheos having a god within, -theos god-possessing)

Mom was enthusiastically full of God! (I think everyone is full of God, but that's another subject.)

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Brown bottles and brownfields

I noticed these beer bottles and cans as I headed up the parking ramp this morning. I don’t think I can reach them, but I wish I could recycle them. They can be used in new container, brick and ceramic manufacture. Or, I could just give them to one of two friends who make homemade beer. (I actually find it rather sweet that the drinkers bothered to place them so carefully above their heads, rather than leave them on the parking ramp floor where they'd probably break and then be harder to dispose of. Or, maybe they forgot them, having intended to remove them, but after a few too many, well, you know.)

Speaking of brown things and cleaning up, have you heard of brownfields? I hadn’t until reading about them this morning on our University’s home page. I’ve heard of neighborhoods cleaning up empty lots and turning them into parks, but this is more. Apparently I’m a little slow on the uptake, because according to wiki, the term has been around since 1992 and the first EPA funded project was in 1994.

According to the EPA (Environmental Protection Agency), “Brownfields are real property, the expansion, redevelopment, or reuse of which may be complicated by the presence or potential presence of a hazardous substance, pollutant, or contaminant. Cleaning up and reinvesting in these properties takes development pressures off of undeveloped, open land, and both improves and protects the environment.”

Here at MSU, our Michigan Agricultural Experiment Station, in partnership with DaimlerChrysler, is looking into ways brownfields can grow crops for biofuels. They’re looking into growing oilseed crops like soybeans, sunflower and canola, and other crops such as corn and switchgrass on abandoned industrial sites for use in ethanol or biodiesel fuel production. Many other organizations have been cleaning up brownfields for a while.

I am excited to hear about ways researchers, businesses and communities are cooperating to work smarter to care for our poor abused mother earth.

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