out of sorts

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phrases.org says the meaning of "out of sorts" is:

Mildly unwell;
not in one's usual health or state of mind

The origin is:

"Since at least the 17th century 'sorts' has been the name of the letters used by typographers. This usage is referred to in Notes on a Century of Typography at the University Press Oxford 1693–1794 and is nicely defined in Joseph Moxon's Mechanick exercises, or the doctrine of handy-works - printing, 1683:

"The Letters... in every Box of the Case are... called Sorts in Printers and Founders Language; Thus a is a Sort, b is a Sort."

To be 'out of sorts' would clearly be unwelcome to a typesetter. That terminology could be the source of the phrase in its current meaning. The above citations are pre-dated by one from Samuel Ward, which makes no mention of the print trade. That in his The life of faith in death,1621:

"I wonder... to see one... that knowes all must worke for the best, to be at any time out of tune, or out of sorts."

~ ~ ~

Being "out of sorts" offers a chance to observe the elements of your life.

My BIL Joe talked at dinner the other night about the "thinking mind" in Buddhist terms. It's where I keep track of who's got an appointment at 9:45, then 10:30, then 11:15, etc. It's what I use to come up with options to solve a student problem, and it's the reasoning tool I use to get to logical conclusions - whether who to vote for or what dish to contribute to my mother-in-law's Mother's Day dinner.

It's also the potentially annihilating part of my brain where I overthink things. Why did so-and-so say that? What did she mean by it? It's where I get defensive, and it's what works overtime in times of stress going to bed at night. It's where I think I'm the center of the universe and interpret myself through the imagined perceptions of people around me. It's where I think laterally (and literally) and forget to close my eyes and listen.

Joe also talked about the non-thinking part of his brain, the place that is there "behind" thoughts and sorting. Maybe it's another dimension, where artists live in another kind of imagined reality, not one that denies facts but considers possibilities in non-data-like ways.

It's a place of the moment. It's organic. Where what is, is. It's where you get out of the sorted into your own space - empty, open and free.

I'm on vacation at home, and I need to give my thinking mind a rest. Maybe being out of sorts is a good thing. Seeing a tulip lying down on the job or seeing an "a" out of its Sort, lets you really see them outside the box, for their essence. Being that tulip or "a" out of the box could be good too.

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Let's play tag

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California Girl tagged me (and so did another friend I can't for the life of me remember who, can't find a comment, must have deleted an email - rats! tell me who you are please!), and then I think my mom called me in for bed because it got dark, and she'd heard the crickets chirping. Then the next night we played Combat instead, hiding in the shadows of the brick Methodist Church that looked like a Berlin building at night in black and white, and then the next night it was raining. And anyway, I am always the last one It - too slow to catch anyone in the neighborhood.

So, where were we? Oh yes, I'm 52, and we are playing blogger tag - not neighborhood tag. This tag game is to list six unimportant things that make me happy. Well, as one who has a blog called small the point of which is to note small things and their importance, hope you don't mind if I change that to:

6 little (but still important) things
that make me happy on a daily basis
and I don't know why anyone is interested
although I am interested when other people
post them because I can relate to at least some of them

1. the first thing because it's first in the morning is a cup of coffee with vanilla soy cream in this hand thrown mug by an art school classmate of Lesley's. actually i drink 2 cups. the thought of this gets me out of bed.

2. a tree named Cosmo on my drive to work. it's very very big.

3. colorful eggs from the coop. in a few months we'll have some darker brown ones from new layers.

4. photo of an old Chinaman smoking something on the wall by my dressing table.

5. uni-ball pens. every color. shopping for these at Office Max makes me very happy. i usually spend too much $ on them. i like using orange for underlining text that knocks me out.

and 6. Sarah McLachlan singing "Answer."
there are some days on my drive to work i listen to it several times in a row.

So did that interest you? Why? What small things make you happy?

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weekend breakfast

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You think you want something light for breakfast, just a snack, such as beads of dark berries in a tablespoon of plain yogurt, or a half cup of Grape Nuts in milk. When you were a girl you doused Grape Nuts in a whole teaspoon of white sugar, like snow on the Jungfrau. As with global warming and other transformations, your Grape Nuts have lost their snow, but you still like a small breakfast.

But on Saturday, you must be ravenous after sleeping in until 6, because the farmer-farmhand-farmer’s-wife-man has a contractual agreement with the Farm Guild that he will cook you a big, hot breakfast, the kind his Aunt Alvaretta cooked when he bunked a week at her farm as a kid, the kind that requires you to be gurneyed from the table on a farm wagon. Friday evening he gathered 18 eggs from his hens, and in the morning as soon as it was light he found 20 fresh morels in the woods and then punched out a dozen biscuits that smelled up the house like the homes of story books. If the man had his way, you'd also have had pork sausages from pigs he raised, minced with herbs from your herb bed. As it was, a quiche full of ham and veggies just out of the oven was firming up on top of the stove.

You're still learning the Farm Manual and haven't gotten to the part yet about whether throwing scraps of quiche to the chickens contributes to cannibalism, but you just can't eat all this food so early. After 3? Oh yes, you can eat this much and more then.

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mushrooms, mycelium & swine flu

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While trees are popping chartreuse leaves at the end of April, after a couple of rainy days and warm nights, we slide our farm clogs on and head into the two little woods behind us to scour the ground for morel mushrooms.



I have to wear my reading glasses so the dried leaves and mushrooms don't blur into one another. With clear vision, I can see how hideously brain-like they look. To one who detests mushrooms - disgusting! To one who adores them - tantalizing!

Don found these clusters of morels hidden beneath brush Friday;
I had gone over the same spot that morning and missed them.

We have never had the luck of some who fill bags and bags with morels. We know a lady who refuses to eat them but will hunt and pick for hours in her woods to harvest them, then give them away with a smile. The most we've found any given year is around 70. Don found the season's first six last week - the ones in the top photo, the biggest being around 2". Then Friday he found the clusters in the photo above.

The season lasts about two weeks, and there is much lore on where to find them (at the foot of an old apple tree, or around fallen elms among them) and how to pick them and not pick them. The clumps of morels Don found Friday were under the jagged edge of the old fallen apple tree. When we picked them, we broke them off and left the base in the ground so they'll continue to propagate.

You can tell real morels from poisonous imposters by their hollowness.

We soak morels in salty water to float out dirt and bugs, then dip them in milk, dredge in flour, and sauté in a little mixture of oil and butter (oil keeps the butter from burning), tossing on some salt and pepper. They are delicious and rival truffles, which sell for hundreds of dollars a pound. (Part of the problem with truffles is that being so expensive, you only get thrifty bits of them in a dish concocted by a clever chef who spreads them out, otherwise who could afford to eat them? And in such small samples, you don't get to really experience their flavor and texture.)

Did you know there are estimated to be one to two million species of fungi? Only about 150,000 of those form mushrooms. Of those, I don't know how many thousands are edible. And of those, only a fraction are cultivated and sold for consumption.

Like humans, fungi "breathe" oxygen and emit carbon dioxide. In fact animals, including humans of course, are closer to fungi in makeup than to plants, protozoa or bacteria.

Beneath these treasures of the ground is a lacy web of mycelium, the root system of fungi. These webs of fibers lie beneath forests and fields all over the planet, and some of them stretch for miles. The largest known living organism in the world is a fungus called honey mushroom, discovered in Oregon in 2000. It's 2,200 acres, that's 3.5 miles across - about 1,665 football fields, yet only one cell wall thick.

In an interview in The Sun magazine, Paul Stamets, author of Mycelium Running: How Mushrooms Can Help Save the World, and at fungi.com, explains from 30 years of research how mycelia are essential to the survival of our planet.

Stamets explains that mycelia quite naturally clean up pollutants in the soil. They also feed plants. And what is truly remarkable - when coupled with plants, they make them more resistant to heat and erosion. Grasses laced with mycelia are heat resistant up to 160 degrees fahrenheit, whereas without the fungus, they would wither above 120 degrees.

Stamets suggests we should couple mycelia with corn and other crops to make them "naturally" drought resistant, which sounds better than genetically modifying crops, but I wonder. If the fungi and plants aren't naturally coupled, are we messing with something that shouldn't be messed with? Maybe Stamets and other scientists have an answer.



I leave you with an exciting 18-minute YouTube video of Paul Stamets' TED talk almost exactly one year ago on May 8, 2008: 6 Ways Mushrooms can save the world. It is extraordinary and well worth your time to hear about the network of mycelia in the earth beneath you, and how these organisms benefit us, could help clean up our planet and even provide eco-fuel. There is a segment about their use against flu viruses, and I am very curious to find anything on the Internet connecting fungi with the current Swine H1N1 flu outbreak, since he mentions this strain specifically in the video. You'll get the feeling from his rapid speech that he is trying to tell as much as he possibly can about his favorite subject in too short a time.

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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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