first of May and counting

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For a few years now we've had a family reunion we call Farm Day at the beginning of August. Children ride the red 1941 Farm-All B tractor down the hill to the meadow with Uncle Don; adults sit in a circle of camp chairs in the maple tree shade next to the house and gab - or play badminton, ping pong or croquet; guys pull out guitars in a grass circle; and my brother Jim helps grill brats and burgers. However this year, instead of Farm Day, we'll welcome 150 of our friends and family for our daughter Lesley's Farm Day Wedding: three months from tomorrow.

THREE MONTHS FROM TOMORROW!

Don is fully in gear and has recruited farm hands to help clean up the beds. He only pays them chicken feed, but they are enthusiastic and hard working, though sometimes a tad lippy.

Too bad they can't weed out this grass in the herb bed. Oh well, Don will be digging it up anyway to plant a Three Sisters garden. The herbs, tulips, daffodils, lilies and irises - but hopefully not the persistent grass - will get transplanted to some other as yet un-dug bed. (Peter's the digger.)



Notice all the Don Don Don and they they they and busy busy busy? They - those plucky chickens - clucked at me as I lay around on the ground with my camera, "Woman, you are so lazy, look at these grapevines! Didn't you weed them last year? Look at you lying there making strange noises with that black box. [I make strange noises?] These grapes should have been pruned in March, what a mess! You're a pitiful farmer's wife." Khan brrraughed at them to shut up, or else. He knows who writes the checks.



I was slightly offended and felt guilty, but Bishop showed me how to ignore them as they go about their business. Thanks, Bish, you're a real pal.



The thing is, if I keep taking my cues from Bishop, and all I do is an approval here and there of Lesley's wedding shoes and the restaurant taste test for the rehearsal dinner (yum!), then poor Don will have to rely on these ladies, who I think can't landscape the yard or hold a paintbrush.

Awright, awright, you squawky hens, I'm up, I'm up.

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meeting a blog friend

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How long have you blogged?

Do you communicate with blog friends beyond the blogs - in email or online chats?

Would you meet up with a blog friend? Why or why not?

These were some of the questions a Communication PhD student asked in her research survey, which I had mentioned in my post about writing: supply & demand. I was among 20 blogger participants.

The survey was timely, because my dear blog friend Susan and I had planned to meet up the following weekend.

What if she's a pathological killer? Solution: we brought our body guard husbands along.

What if we feel awkward, or our body guards don't talk to each other? What if one or the other of us deems the other an utter dufus and we don't like each other as much in person? Then afterward it's all online politeness. Yuck.

But after hugs, walking through Ann Arbor and non-stop talking over dinner, all that is moot.

Why did I want to meet Susie? We had discovered so many things in common, it was just a matter of time before we would meet up. Our family histories (one example: I was a Hart and she has Harts in her family), we both have 5-acre-farms, chickens, similar worldview (including politics, religion or lack thereof, the earth and sustainability), musical and artistic taste, and too many more to list. We live in adjoining states, so it wasn't unreasonable to plan it.

The one photo I took was in a gallery where some blown glass chickens were begging to be photographed with Susan's reflection in the box window's glass. (Susan and Don found each other's blogs first because of chickens.) See how sweet she is (wish you could see her gorgeous blue eyes) - and warm, talented, smart, steady, common-sensical, a great cook (though I haven't verified that personally), a home arts specialist, a terrific mom and grandmom, an interesting and entertaining conversationalist (her voice is gentle with a subtle southern lilt), and maybe her best trait is her sense of humor. I'm so glad we've met, and no doubt we'll meet again. It will be our turn to drive to Ohio.

Oh, and our body guards cluck-clucked along with us hens.

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sewing box

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After posting about the Fauchon coffee tins, I got to thinking about this sewing tin I inherited from my mom.

As a teenager, if I needed to replace a button or repair a hem, I'd go into my parents' cool second floor bedroom to find needle and thread. Shaded by an old maple tree on our Michigan town street, the chair by the window where Mom did her mending was the repository for the sewing tin, or else the floor right next to it. I'd lift the loose lid and dig for the right color thread and a needle from her soft round red pincushion. My eyes were good then, and I could thread the needle with ease. Mom taught me to double the thread and knot the end with a lick and a twist.



When we eight children cleaned out our parents' big three-storey house and judiciously distributed their belongings, the dining table was spread with a miscellany of items that had little or no monetary value, and we each took what was of personal value. What was left got tossed. By then, I was sick and tired of STUFF after spending weeks sorting and digging through 50+ years of accumulation, and I was disinterested in the dining table assortment. But Don, bless him, nabbed a few pieces he thought were cool. As time marches on, I am more and more appreciative of what he took for me that day. Every passing year I turn more often to my parents for guidance and connection, for what it means to be human in this world.



Any number of people would have tossed this tin, rusted and misshapen as it was, and impossible to get the lid on tight.

Maybe it originally came filled with cookies - a gift to my mother, or grandmother. Did Grandma Olive empty cookie crumbs, wipe it out and turn it into a sewing tin, and then Mom took it from her New Jersey house when Grandma died in 1960? Had Mom as a girl gone to her mother Olive's sunny bedroom overlooking the garden by the New York Bay and dug for thread and a needle, or a button?



And did she too find comfort?

I keep my sewing tin on the floor under my dresser, or on the sewing machine in the den. I've seen it this week with new eyes and noticed for the first time that Degas' ballerinas at the bar would need the same color thread to repair their tutus as Bonheur's horse rider's jacket: blue ice.

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Paris on the farm

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Just about three years ago this time of year I visited Paris on my own and felt welcomed by a special farm display on Avenue Montaigne (designers row) complete with a designer cow parade, and hay bales and pitchforks at Dolce & Gabbana. These charming fellows are bouncers, which they have at all the designer stores. But even they made me feel welcome.

So I'm returning the favor, with a Parisian display at our Michigan farm. Connecting two dots on the planet on Earth Day, n'est-ce pas?
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I had two tins of coffee from Fauchon food store in Paris that I'd picked up a couple years ago to give to my sister Ginnie. When she came for a visit at the farm after Christmas last year she happily brought them to share with us since she hadn't consumed them yet. Delicious.

The tins are beautiful, and I haven't wanted to throw them away. I didn't know what to do with them, until I saw Design Sponge's post with images of pretty cans as flower vessels.



Cut some chicken wire (we have lots, need some?) and fold and stuff it into the can for holding the flowers up, a makeshift frog (brilliant).



Et voila! Paris at home on the farm. Voulez-vous un café?



Now where is that bouncer of mine?


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Some of you noticed (thank you) that I began a small blog. It's called small and is comment-free. It came to me one night (you know how nights can be - all that silence and dark space), just images of small things. I'd love it if you'd stop by now and then and remember that small things matter.

small gift at the restaurant:

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hellebore: the flower I love but never plant because it's best as a surprise

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The plant that may have been used to poison and kill Alexander the Great before he reached age 33 is a joy to me in early spring since I don't eat it. When daffodils, God bless 'em, are everywhere and looking monotonously prolific, if I see these growing in someone's garden I get excited and bend down close to the ground or sit and get that wet spring bum you see on stupid photographers who forget how much it rained a couple days ago.

Oh it was a long week at the university. I always think universities would be such nice places to work if it weren't for the students.

Just kidding! I love 'em! (The way I love daffodils. Beautiful, sort of different if you look closely, but who planted so dad-blamed many?)

But yes, it was a very tiring week, so after work Friday, seeing as Don had an engagement at school until late, I drove from the office to the horticultural gardens to see if anything had sprouted. It was sunny and warm for the first time this spring.

There was a couple talking intently on the rocks by the lily pad pond. Over in the children's garden a young pop was watching his pink toddler entertained by climbing the little stadium seats with a pacifier in her mouth. Then there was me wandering aimlessly, bored with daffodils, which were everywhere and seemingly the only thing blooming. I could see clippings and weeds lying around not yet tidied up from the slave labor of horticulture students.

But no! Wait! What's this? The grey-chartreuse leaves of one drooping hellebore, next to the grey-maroon of another. Ahh, jackpot. I was down on me bum in a flash, know why? These flowers are a bit melancholy if you take them at non-face value. I mean you can't see their faces if you look down at them. They hang their heads - I should have taken a picture from above to show you. You have to get underneath them to see the sun inside.

Kinda like the twenty-first student who walked through my door Wednesday afternoon. I lifted my face, and she lifted hers, and there it was - the sun!

helleborus orientalis, or lenten rose

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writing: supply & demand

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I advise the students majoring in English at my university - 1,000 of them, about 150 of whom are creative writing majors. (Others focus on literature, film or teaching English.) That number is up from just 50 creative writing majors a couple of years ago, and it's a growing national trend according to this guy. They write poetry, short stories, creative non-fiction, plays and screenplays, and the numbers keep growing. Every week a handful of students meet with me to declare that they want to major in creative writing. I wonder if in a couple of years half our English majors will be creative writers?

Let me tell you it's tricky as an adviser, especially in this economy, to strike a balance between encouraging young people to write with a vengeance, and tempering their expectations to become the next Elizabeth Alexander, Cormac McCarthy, Sofia Coppola or Simon Beaufoy because it takes a rare combination of talent, timing, perseverance and who-you-know to succeed (i.e., make a living, not just get famous). Many want to go on to graduate school for a Masters of Fine Arts in creative writing. $30,000-40,000 later, what will they have? Not a teaching job, those are too few - maybe one for every 300-500 applicants. And they would almost certainly need a PhD to be able to teach at university if they are one of the lucky few to get a job.

Our English department has a subscription to The Writers Chronicle (put out by the AWP - Association of Writers and Writing Programs), and when I have time and inclination, I read a piece that catches my eye on the cover. So I was reading an article titled The Rise of Creative Writing & the New Value of Creativity by Steve Healey in the February 2009 issue, and this line stopped me:

"It's true, of course, that readership for traditional categories of literature, especially poetry, is remarkably small despite the growth of Creative Writing programs."

Does that give you pause as it does me? The number of writers grows; the number of readers shrinks. Yikes.

And I immediately thought about blogs in the same light. As bloggers you and I know new blogs are created every day. In February 2008, the Blog Herald stated that it was tracking nearly 113 million blogs in English alone. Of course there are millions in other languages as well - maybe nearly 100 million in China. Has the number doubled by now?

• Have you been to a bookstore lately? How are books selling in your neck of the woods? For every book that is published, how many copies are sold? I've read that the average number of copies sold of new books is 6,000. (Not if you're President Obama though. His 2008 royalties income from his two books Dreams From My Father and The Audacity of Hope totaled more than $2.4 million.)
  
• Is blogging just a free and easy way to publish for those too lazy or discouraged to get published in print? (Thinking of myself here.)
  
• How many blogs are there? How many are actually read? Ever chance upon a really good blog and see 0 comments for every post?
  
• What led to the rise in creativity, especially among young people?
• With all the new writing out there, new thoughts expressed, who's reading it? Will the gap between new writers and readers keep growing? Will we keep turning to the classics instead?

Every so often I ask myself what the value of blogging is? For me here at synch-ro-ni-zing it is:

• writing practice
• creative expression through photos and design
• a salon for sharing ideas with interesting people

And at my Paris blog:

• exploring a city
  

Each blogger has to decide for her or himself if the value outweighs the effort. For me, the effort is the reward too, if that makes sense. I mean I get a lot of fulfillment from the writing and design. Then getting to know some wonderful people from my backyard and around the world through comments here and through their own blog posts is very gratifying.

By the way, I recently received an email from a PhD Communication student at the University of Kentucky who is researching blogs, asking if she could use mine as part of her research. I agreed, and I'll be getting a survey from her soon. I'll keep you posted. I'd like to hear and share her findings.

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Smyles & Fish - a museum, sort of

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River Allée (1988)

by April Gornik

Oh dear, I had a student coming in for an appointment, but all I wanted was to explore the magazine journal I'd just discovered on the book giveaway table in the hall on my way to get morning coffee. The "WHILE YOU WERE OUT" note below was inside the front cover. Please read it:

Then I leapt immediately onto the Smyles and Fish website.

What can I tell you about Smyles & Fish? It's a gallery of art (including the painting River Allée (1988) by April Gornik at the top of the post, "Love at the Planetarium" by Neil Swaab, and "L.A. Streetcorner" by Nick Weber, below) and writing that is irreverent and sometimes explosive, painfully creative, original, and insightful the way 4-year-olds are insightful.

For an additional, luxurious treat, click on the artists' names below their works to see their galleries. Wow.

"Love at the Planetarium"

by Neil Swaab

"L.A. Streetcorner"
by Nick Weber

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One of the links at their online "lounge" is for lists. Here's one of their lists, for top 100 Celebrity Baby Names, funny!

Top 100 Celebrity Baby Names

By: Shay Azoulay

Ultramodern
progenitors: Zowie Bowie, Maddox Jolie

1. Tek
2. Zapp
3. Syringe
4. Biofuel
5. Zynk
6. HTTP
7. Podcast
8. Blog
9. Tlön Uqbar
10. Orbis Tertius

Earthy
progenitors: Peaches Geldof, Apple Martin-Paltrow

11. Fungus
12. Spring
13. Crevice
14. Emu
15. Opium
16. Gizzard
17. Dingo
18. Saffron
19. Glacier
20. Pineapple

Geographical
progenitors: Brooklyn Beckham, Ireland Baldwin-Basinger

21. Bulgaria
22. Connecticut
23. Iraq
24. Gibraltar
25. Democratic Republic of the Congo
26. North-Northwest
27. Gaza Strip
28. Horizon
29. River Delta
30. Times Square

Classic
progenitors: Dylan Thomas Brosnan, Gabriel Kane Day-Lewis

31. Brandon / Brenda
32. Hamlet / Ophelia
33. Zorba / Zorbina
34. Rumrunner
35. Speakeasy
36. Gilgamesh
37. Muhammad / Muhammadina
38. Titanic
39. Jesus
40. Leopold / Molly Bloom

Tongue-in-cheek
progenitors: Moon-Unit Zappa, America Hoffman

41. Mini Me
42. Snickers^TM
43. Unconditional Love
44. Career Boost
45. Box-Office Gold
46. Mishap
47. Stupid (if parents have shirt "I'm with stupid")
48. Blank Slate
49. Work in progress
50. Tongue-in-cheek

Musical
progenitors: Melody Depp-Paradis, Lark Song Previn

51. Bluegrass
52. Mezzo Soprano
53. Honk
54. Tom-Tom
55. Fender Stratocaster
56. Xylophone
57. A Cappella
58. Punk
59. Tempo
60. Radiohead

Redneck
progenitors: Sean Preston Spears-Federline, Indiana August Affleck

61. Billy Bob
62. Donna Sue
63. Peggy Anne
64. Duke Earl Count
65. Colette Beretta
66. Pearl Opal
67. Dingus Dermot
68. Trevor Cassidy
69. Buffalo Springfield
70. Crosby Stills Nash Young

Sporty
progenitors: Sailor Brinkley-Cook

71. Jog
72. Steroid
73. Dunk
74. Hockey Puck
75. Homerun
76. Taekwon-Jitsu-Shido
77. Ping-Pong
78. Polo
79. Nascar
80. Rugby

Colors
progenitors: Blue Allman, Jade Jagger

81. Maroon
82. Vermilion
83. Aquamarine
84. Beige
85. Violet
86. Off-White
87. Burgundy
88. Turquoise
89. Cyan
90. Khaki

Exotic
progenitors: Shiloh Pitt-Jolie, Suri Cruise

91. Cashmere
92. Angostura
93. Snuffaluffagus
94. Porcini
95. Glubdubdrib
96. Absinth
97. Mango Chutney
98. Tenochtitlan
99. Ozymandias
100. Kuala Lumpur

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Visualize sleekness (and peace)

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Now that winter is over, words like shorts, tank top, and swimsuit spring to mind. Yikes!

Pasty white legs and, you know, extra . . . softness that I was squeezing into winter clothes.

Another spring word: diet. Oh, and: treadmill (or as Susan says: dreadmill).

But wait, I just read one of the best ideas I've heard about getting fit, and it isn't the Zone or Atkins, Weight Watchers or Jenny Craig, macrobiotics or calorie counting. In fact it isn't dieting at all.

It's from the stuff about the law of attraction (such as in the book and film The Secret): What you focus on you attract more of to yourself. Rather than focusing on debt, for instance, focus on abundance. Or if like me, the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and Gaza (etc., etc.) are driving you nuts, instead of focusing on what you hate about war, focus instead on peace. It really is a shift in perspective. And according to the law, you will begin attracting abundance and peace, or whatever it is you focus on. (I so appreciated Loring's post of the peace rally he participated in in Colorado Springs on the anniversary of the start of the Iraq war for how it focused on peace, and the words of MLK Jr: "Hate cannot drive out hate, only love can do that; hate only multiplies hate.") This is going to effect how, or if, I will continue to rant at huffing.

So, back to getting fit, "the first thing to know is that if you focus on losing weight, you will attract back having to lose more weight, so get 'having to lose weight' out of your mind. It's the very reason why diets don't work. Because you are focused on losing weight, you must attract back continually having to lose weight." Here's a whole excerpt on fitness from The Secret. Basically, stop blaming food for how you look. Then decide what is the weight you want to be, and visualize yourself at that weight. Start feeling good about your body, and you'll respect it.

That's what that pretty lady taped to our treadmill is representing: the fit me. I'm never going to be 22 again, or look like her, but I must say this has worked so far. When I suddenly crave a PayDay candy bar mid-afternoon between appointments, if I visualize her, the craving fades. I think: she wouldn't eat that right now, so neither will I. (Well she eats one sometimes.) Now I try to go to work prepared with string cheese and an apple for snacks. And on the treadmill, I straighten and lift my spine. Doesn't she have great posture? So do I, darn it!

Now, what to do about pasty white legs?

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Easter

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In the Christian tradition, Easter Sunday is a happy celebration, when life triumphs over death. Winter gives way to spring. Baby animals are born. Christ rises from the dead. Yet as the calendar brings Easter around, I mostly remember the death part from church days, based on Christ’s words, Take up your cross and follow me.

A couple weeks ago my friend Gayla showed me a book she is reading titled Saving Paradise: How Christianity Traded Love of This World for Crucifixion and Empire “offering a fascinating new lens on the history of Christianity, from its first centuries to the present day, asking how its early vision of beauty evolved into a vision of torture, and what changes in society and theology marked that evolution.” What? In the first centuries Christianity focused on beauty? One part of the book explains that before a certain century (can't recall which) there is no art to be found depicting the crucifixion.

Thankfully I didn't grow up during the Inquisition or anything remotely close to it, but there was the cross before us every day. Daily choices between this and that gave opportunity to sacrifice desires and find instead a chance to serve God, people or a greater cause. In other words: death to self. Or: What I feel doesn't matter as much as what God wants. Understandably the result was that feelings and desires became the enemy.

As a person who scored 50 to zero in the feelings vs. thinking section of the Myers Briggs personality profile - that's 50 on the feelings end of the spectrum and -0- on the thinking end (no comments from the peanut gallery, please) - this teaching that my feelings didn't count for much was painful. I never quite got the hang of it. For instance, I couldn't run on the track team when the coach invited me, because track practice was on Wednesday nights, and we had prayer meeting at church that night. As a preacher's kid, you have to be in church whenever the doors are open, as an example to the congregation. Eventually, questions about the whole ball of wax led me away from church, back to what I had always felt down deep, even as a child: that I wanted the roots of spirituality, the cosmic “laws” undergirding all of Nature, not the human rules interpreted from sacred texts in any one religion, and often used to control people's behavior.

As beautiful as religious celebrations can be, when you stop following, it’s tempting to throw them out because they no longer bear the same weight of meaning, or because they have been co-opted by commercial enterprise to sell the next stack of goods in grocery store aisles. This Easter, I am trying to tune out old mental tapes and mantras and re-discover the essence at the heart of this holiday that reflects the cycles and laws of Nature. Some symbols remain - eggs, a sunrise, a baby chick - because they are Nature's markers for release from the dark of winter and death. Do I sound Pagan and goddess-y? Well maybe you do too if you color Easter eggs or fill baskets with chocolate eggs for your kids, or even use the word “Easter” since that word came from the Pagan goddess of birth and renewal “Oester” (or the Babylonian “Ishtar”). Check out this site about Easter, eggs and bunnies and their Pagan roots.

The point of Easter is: It's a new day. Live it fresh, live it alive, live it in harmony. No enemies allowed.

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design New York

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When I'm with our designer daughter in New York, I recognize my own love of design.

When I made quilts, it was designing them that brought the most joy. Secondary was the feel of the cotton and needle, and the weight of the pile of fabric in my lap. Primary was the juxtaposition of colors and patterns.

Even on the flight out to NYC, it was the patchwork below that pulled on me.



Arriving in her apartment in Queens while she and Brian were at work gave us a chance to snoop around and see how the tight space was stacked for storage. I find it very satisfying.





We got to see her office in Manhattan too, and the relatively small space was efficiently organized, with a human touch.





After her office it was Peking Duck in Chinatown. Talk about patterns and color!



Below is the window of a chopsticks store.




Although we didn't make it to any of the art museums (not yet, ever), we did get to the American Museum of Natural History, which has its own designs on display. Such intricacies in Nature's patterns, such as this python skeleton.



And in Central Park, one day in the rain, and another in the sun, more color and pattern.





And then back home in the Queens neighborhood where there is lots more pattern in small spaces. I had to run out of the restaurant where we were eating brunch to ask these girls' dad if I could take their picture.



Today Lesley's at work half a day, and we're giving Brian time and space to work at home. After we play some Catan tonight we will watch the final game of the NCAA tournament's Final Four, with our beloved MSU playing North Carolina (President Obama's pick to win in his bracket), so keep your fingers crossed for the Spartan GREEN!

After some wonderful time with our daughter and her fiance we head back home to the farm tomorrow (Tuesday) - where Peter will be waiting for us, home from his Caribbean gig. From one joy to another!

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