synch-ro-ni-zing

figs on a plate

figs on a plate

reflections on the 11th of September

The first time I tasted a fig (not counting Fig Newtons) was 20-some years ago when we lived in İstanbul, where there was a fig tree in our yard. I was 30. I remember feeling the luxury of it on my tongue. A fresh fig! Not coated in thick, sticky sweet gel with a few gritty seeds for texture (Fig Newton cookie), but the cool flesh of a fruit that is delicately sweet. In Midwestern U.S. homes like mine when I was growing up in the '60s, fresh figs would have been unheard of. We don't have a fig tree on the farm here in Michigan, obviously. Too bad. Don bought these imported figs at our local grocer's. Rarely do we look past the plastic bags of apples at the more exotic fruits. Wonderful things happen when you open up to new tastes and new ways of looking. Don't be afraid of what you don't know, open up. The real deal might be different than you expect, and maybe you'll find it as delectable as figs on a plate.

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Added at 9:15pm: I did not originally write this part, because I didn't feel like overtly talking about 9/11. But, since it isn't apparent what I'm getting at above, here goes. On this anniversary of 9/11 I am not afraid of more terrorist attacks. I don't even think about it much, until I go through security at an airport. And then I am angry at a few who gave us cause for fear. What happened in 2001 was beyond imagining, so horrible it was. But I refuse to let it close my heart in fear or suspicion of Muslims in general. And now, according to some, there are possibly over a million dead in Iraq since the U.S. attack in 2003. Who should be afraid of whom? This is my point here, that it's too easy to establish a perspective based on insufficient information. We don't understand the vast complexities of another individual, let alone another culture, with thousands of years of history, conflict, wars, arts & culture. I abhor the arrogance of interference we force on the world. I am trying to be open.

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another new gig!

Who is this man snuggling with our daughter?! Clue: he makes her very, very happy.

THIS MAN IS GOING TO BE OUR SON-IN-LAW!

Having him join us as our son and a new brother for Peter makes us very happy too! Brian, welcome to the family! We won't tell anyone about the arrow and the barn (. . . for a long, long time).

Brian proposed to Lesley on a beach at Cape Cod August 30. The wedding will be next summer.

♥

When love opens a new room in your heart, you realize its effortless capacity to increase and multiply.

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The New Deal's new gig

Our son Peter is in a band called Meridian, which I posted about in April. He is also in another band called 'The New Deal,' which plays gigs around the state doing great covers of Bill Withers, Rolling Stones, Motown, Clapton - and others from a wide spectrum of styles. Don and I went to hear them at The Exchange in Lansing for the first time last Saturday. Unfortunately, Mike the vocalist/sax player/keyboardist was away. He's a talented musician - played his sax at the Grammys as a high schooler! It was the first time we heard The New Deal because they start playing at 10, and that's past my bed time. But we went, and I stayed awake! Now I regret not having gone to hear them more often. They are all very talented, and I like how Linsay, Mike and Jeff contribute vocals in turn.

The New Deal: Jeff, Linsay, Mark, Miquel and Peter (Mike was absent) - shot from the balcony at The Exchange (Mark and Peter are both in the band Meridian also.)

Mike got them a gig on a Princess cruise this fall, first leaving NYC up to Nova Scotia and New Brunswick. Then down to the Caribbean. If, like Don and me, you can't take a cruise this fall and hear them in person, give a listen to the nice 6:42 minute promo video, below, from their myspace site.

I left a little huff today at huffing . . .

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evil eye zinnias

Asteraceae, Z. elegans

Native of Mexico, state flower of Indiana.

Fifteenth century Spaniards who came to take the Americas for their king and queen thought zinnias were ugly, so they called them mal de ojos (evil eyes). How's that for the pot calling the kettle black?

Interesting tidbit: When I Googled mal de ojos I found a downloadable font called mal de ojo, which is type scanned from old letterpressed Mexican religious pamphlets. Fascinating. Oh! By the way, back in Roman times a charm to ward off the evil eye '. . . was called fascinum in Latin, from the verb fascinare (the origin of the English word "to fascinate"), "to cast a spell", such as that of the evil eye' (from the site linked in 'Here,' below).

I realized when we lived in İstanbul that I could be considered to have the evil eye because my eyes are green. Here is a very thorough account of the history of the evil eye.

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do I have to increase?

As time marches on, the expectation is out there that our output needs to increase. We're expected to do more in our jobs for one thing, and often with fewer resources. Departments across the university here are expected to increase programs, offer new and inventive courses, expand offerings - even when funding has been cut and keeps getting cut year after year. It's not too bad for me specifically, because I have such a large student case load (1,000 English advisees) no one expects me to do much beyond advising.

I understand wanting to keep discovery alive, and especially at a Research One university that is important. But does new necessarily also mean more?

In the media we're assaulted by images pulling us to buy bigger, better and more (or smaller, better and more nowadays, if you're talking about vehicles). Obviously it's their job to convince us to buy something new, so that makes sense in a nonsensical way.

Don't get me wrong, I want things to change - get greener, more peaceful, more equitable. But the idea of evolution seems to get conflated with productivity and accomplishments. Evolving is good, I like it, I need to evolve. Well, I'm evolving whether I like it or not. But the pressure to become a better person according to someone else's standard, or to learn a new skill, to read 10 more books, or get better at photography, or get a poem published . . . I feel a constant push, from somewhere, where is that Somewhere? Is this a Western phenom? If so, no doubt it is wedging itself into the rest of the Westernizing world.

Every job I've ever applied for, I hear the resume gurus in my head chanting "List accomplishments, show how you increased productivity, how you improved your workplace, etc."

Is this just a natural outcome of survival of the fittest? Are we compelled to 'survive' - meaning not just eating, drinking, sleeping, and not getting hit by a bus, but getting better so we beat someone else out of the survival game? I mean, does my survival necessitate someone else's demise?

Does workplace fervor carry over into our everyday mentality? I remember reading recently that Thoreau spent half his days at Walden sitting in a chair in the doorway looking outside across his little porch. Do you, like me, see that from two sets of eyes? First eyes: it would be heaven! Second eyes: but I couldn't do that because I wouldn't be DOing anything!

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art-felt impact

In March of last year I posted about the brutal and senseless beating death of a local arts hero, Robert Busby, by his handyman, who then took his own life. Robert owned and operated the Creole Gallery where artists, musicians like my son Peter, and poetry readers like me, perform. Beyond accessibility to the arts Robert provided, he also touched people personally with kindness and generosity. Peter will never forget the warm welcome with wine his band received from Robert in his loft apartment above the gallery before their show.

Just the other day, a year and a half after Robert's murder, Henrique Bertulani found the strength to leave a comment on that post about his friend Robert.

Henrique was an Anthropology student at MSU who participated in shows and galleries that Robert promoted. He was especially touched by Robert's brutal death because his own grandfather, a taxi driver, was killed in a similar violent manner in Cuiabá, Brazil, just when Henrique and his family moved from there to Michigan. "The eerie resemblance of their deaths and appearance, broke my heart in such a way that like his family I feel the loss as one of my own."

I went over to MSU's National Superconducting Cyclotron Labratory (we just call it the Cyclotron) to take this photo of Henrique's mural, below, painted when he was an art student here. There is a lot of security in the Cyclotron because of its work with nuclear isotopes, and my camera and I had to be escorted to the atrium where Henrique's mural is. When I told my escort I had heard from the artist, she was very interested. So I asked her, "Oh, do you know Henrique?" "Well, his father worked here," she said. His father is Carlos A. Bertulani, Nuclear Astrophysicist.

I am struck how we leave our mark on the world. When someone takes another person's life, obviously the impact is astonishing, and not just to the person killed. But consider the impact of a fresh and open heart, such as Robert's. And consider the lasting impact of art that fills an atrium on my campus with color and light, painted by Henrique Bertulani who resides far away on another continent, in Rio de Janeiro.

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