Place

Reading the Vilhelm Moberg novels about Swedish emigrants in the 1850s has got me thinking about place. And since becoming blog friends with people around the world I’ve had a growing interest in geography. Here are some questions I'm thinking about:

- Why do people relocate? Think of emigrants who have traveled across the Atlantic (or Pacific, or wherever), for weeks or months, risking their lives (think Hmong refugees). There are some obvious reasons, such as poverty, fear of home governments or civil war, religious persecution, etc. But my friend Inge, who moved from Germany in college and stayed here. What made her choose the U.S. over Germany for residence?

- What is there about some places that we connect with on a psychological, even a spiritual level? Like when I went to Paris for the second time, after my parents died, and I felt I found my Self for the first time?

- Why do we choose to live where we live? I mean, why do we stay? What keeps me in this location, now that my parents are gone?

- Growing up with foreign students, and now getting to know blog friends in India, Finland, Hungary, Hawaii, Shanghai, I’ve seen that we are really the same in many ways. But how does our geographical location, our culture, make us different? For instance, living in a very hot climate vs. living in a very cold one. How does heat, or lack of it, affect someone’s psyche?

- How has high speed communication and travel changed how we see ourselves and the world? Why do I feel so connected with the 18th and 19th centuries? Do I long for a time when speed was not part of life?

What I’m most interested in is Place as a character in our lives. As an amateur photographer, I can’t help but notice that other parts of the world are more appealing as a physical backdrop for photographs than where I live. A barn in a Michigan field (above) doesn’t carry the same punch as a barn nestled in the Rockies or the Alps. (I don't have a photo to offer for this one.)

Is beauty a legitimate draw for moving? When Don and I retire, we’d like to move up north to the Traverse City area. Why? What pulls us there? Water of various shades of teal, rolling hills of orchards and stone buildings, tiny towns with old cottages, cliffs overlooking Lake Michigan, woods of pine and spruce, sand dunes, Native American culture. But more than just the beauty, there is also an openness, an artistic perspective where a writer, a painter, a craftsman, can live and feel at home.

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But is that all there is to feeling at home? How do we know we'll feel at rest there? What if we move, settle in, and find that there are other factors that keep us from letting our true selves run free?

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And now I think of it, shouldn't I just feel at home in myself, regardless of location?

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Barn

Do you know how many barns there are in Michigan?

Do you know how many barns there are in the U.S.?

Do you know how many barns there are in the world?

Neither do I.

But I know they are falling down, except when people find thousands of dollars to restore them, or to build a new one, like this one.

We have a tall (40'?) barn that needs its corner, which is barely standing, to be rejuvenated. It doesn't look like this one. But I love it. It's green, not red like most (and this prairie barn in Ingham County is Marilyn Monroe lipstick red, not barn red, excuse me). We'd like to restore our barn and turn one of the lofts into a studio. Lots of light. Painting easel. Don's potter's wheel (that he's going to get; he just got an $1800 kiln for $20.)

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I know loft doors are a feature of prairie barns, for when hay is elevated up to the upper level. But this looks more like our front door. And I don't think they keep hay in this barn. What do you suppose this door is for? Tell me a story.

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(I'm planning a little barn photographing outing in the country this Saturday. Hope I don't freeze.)

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Love day

I'm not waiting for Valentine's Day. You have received your first Valentine of the season (I think)!

BTW, this photo was taken December 6, which is why there's no snow. See, I was thinking of you even then. :)

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Scenes from childhood

Robert Schumann’s Kinderszenen Op.15.No.7 (Scenes from Childhood), specifically Träumeri (Dreaming) is a piece of music that sends me into a happy, quiet place. Turn up the volume, close your eyes, and listen. You’re probably familiar with it.

But it’s quite unlike my own childhood. Mine was a household of movement and bombast. Eight children, and I was the youngest. There was a lot of talking, argument, clearing of dishes, banging of pots and pans.

And not only did we have eight kids. When most had grown up, moved and gone on to lives of their own, we had foreign students live with us. At one time we had nine students from other parts of the world (China, India, Thailand), besides my parents and me. Listening to four Thai boys and one girl chattering away in singsong indecipherable words around the kitchen table was a daily practice. Then there was the 80-year-old PhD student from China. She was a character and a half, but she was quiet.

Mom played the piano at least once a day, usually noisy pieces. Not like this bit of gentleness. You’d think she would have needed the tranquility in the midst of the bombast.

But, on the other hand, maybe her nimble fingers needed to vent. Maybe she wanted to scream! She was a concert pianist who cooked and did laundry for ten people, for goodness sake. And she had been an only child. Was her personal childhood concerto more like Schumann’s? Then as an adult in a house full of noise and confusion, she yelled with her fingers up and down the keys?

In spite of all that noise, or who knows, maybe because of it, I am a pretty quiet person. So maybe this concerto really is fitting for me, if not my childhood. It’s definitely what I want to hear as a 50-year-old woman.

Portrait of my mother as a child that stands on Lesley's piano in our house

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Tell the truth

Wow, I'm suddenly writing more here.

Photo from this web site.

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At the end of one of my favorite movies, “Lost in Translation,” Bill Murray’s character whispers something inaudible into Scarlett Johansson’s character’s ear (pictured here).

After watching it and replaying it a few times, reading his lips, my conclusion is that he whispers “Tell the truth.”

Johansson’s character, Charlotte, is a writer. She graduated with a “useless” degree in Philosophy (not so different from an English degree, I suppose). She’s searching for meaning, a calling. Mostly, she wants to write.

Shakespeare wrote “to thine own self be true,” spoken by Polonius in Hamlet. And actually, Bill Murray played Polonius in Ethan Hawke’s “Hamlet” film, according to Wiki, so it would be a nice connection.

Is there a difference between telling the truth and being true to yourself?

For us who write, telling the truth can mean:

* not sugarcoating it
* writing about what we know, telling our own story
* being bold when necessary
* being original, bucking trends

Is this different from being true to oneself?

* living in reality, not denial
* living out our own story
* being bold about who we are
* being different when necessary

Telling the truth and being true -- both require thought and reflection in a slow cadence, on a daily basis. Everything around us is too crazy, too wild, too fast, too controlling for us NOT to pay attention to our own mind, our own heart. Stop the world, I want to get off! At least for a few minutes, every day.

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A long life

Just got home from a wake for an old friend. Mrs. S. was 92.

Since reading her obituary in last week's paper, I've been reminiscing about the old days at my dad's church, where Mrs. S. was a member. She always smiled, and she was so beautiful.

Everyone at the funeral home today remarked about what a wonderful life she lived. There were no tears! Not from her daughter, nor her grandkids (who were my friends in school). No doubt there have been tears this week. But not today. Not when someone as sweet and happy as Mrs. S. says good-bye. Her husband, who died just a few years ago, would have been 100 this Tuesday, the day after her funeral. Will they have birthday dinner together Tuesday evening?

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Today I saw old girlfriends I didn't recognize, some thinner, some heavier, all getting older, like me. I saw an old boyfriend who looks smaller than I remembered, another old friend, now a doctor, with whom I played an unforgettably funny Bingo game. I saw parents of my teenage friends who are hunched in old age. In each face there is something that stirs my memory. The strange sweetness of my childhood. The familiarity that is no longer familiar.

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These friends, 30 and 40 years since I've seen some of them, are living and dying, and I can't help but wonder, what kind of footprints will each of us leave? Dear Mrs. S., good-bye!

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Change

This photo is of Don and a boatman in Ireland last summer. The inland waters were very low from extreme heat and lack of rain, We had to disembark from the boats so each boatman and a volunteer could navigate the boat through the shallows. Will the "Emerald Isle" become the "Brown Isle"?

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is finalizing its report, confirming that humans have caused the greenhouse gases that are putting too much carbon into the air, and that our temperatures will continue to rise at alarming rates if emissions are not seriously curbed.

I will watch with great interest in the coming days as politicians spin the scientists’ research and conclusions. I believe the scientists. Those who created the report are not paid for their efforts.

But mostly, I want to grab this opportunity to alter my own behavior as needed to align with my view that each one of us can make a difference. Over the centuries we humans have created a separation of ourselves and nature, using up precious resources for our own purposes, giving scarcely a thought to the effects of our gargantuan consumption. I want to do my part to slow down this wildness so my grandkids (future) might have a chance to live on a decent planet.

I already have a car that burns about 35 mpg. What else can I do?

- Drive less: Plan trips ahead so unnecessary travel is eliminated or minimized.

- Recycle more and better: Landfills are a huge source of methane emission.

- Home heating & cooling: Use AC less and keep the winter heat lower. Improve insulation.
Watch for new appliances that don’t use hydroflourocarbons, especially refrigerators. Not yet available in the U.S. due to monopolies by Dupont and others who are trying to convince the regulatory that non-HFC fridges are unsafe, even though they are safe.

- Go “carbon neutral”: This means offsetting the emissions you create by contributing to green technology. For instance, when my airplane flies to Ireland in July, each passenger on the jumbo jet will use 432 kg of fuel and emit a warming equivalent of 4031 kg of CO2. Here’s a web site I’m going to study to find an investment-worthy travel offset program.

Go here to calculate your carbon emissions.

Thanks to the David Sazuki Foundation web site, which offers lots of ideas for making a difference individually.

If I’m educated, I will also be better equipped to keep my government accountable.

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