Mind, Body & Spirit

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Friday we went to our son Peter's CD release party for his band April to Fall. 

Brian, left center, and my son Peter, right, are April to Fall;

Jeff and Jen contributed considerable vocal talent

to the new album "Straight Line to Your Heart"

Click this link to go to their site where you can listen to clips of the tracks on the album. Their sound is similar to Morrissey, with pleasing strong vocals and acoustic guitar, though in other venues they rock it out when Peter plays his electric guitar. I am not here to sell you anything, but you can figure out at the site how to buy the album on iTunes. I don't know yet how they are selling the CD. At the gallery at the site see photos of Peter and Brian I shot in my studio that Don and Peter converted from a chicken coop. At times I have felt that this studio - l'atelier - where I don't really create anything, except deep sleeping breaths in my hammock chair, is the center of the universe, my kilometer zero, so I'm happy this special place is featured at the center of the CD cover, below. The party was in Rochester, Michigan, which has a homey 100-year-old downtown. (Downtown Rochester photo found here.)

Brian and Peter inside the CD cover -- a photo I took in l'atelier

Besides the big celebratory joy of one of Peter's musical ventures, I was geeked to finally tour and eat in the first-and-only certified organic restaurant in Michigan, Mind, Body & Spirits. The upstairs dining room was the venue for the party. Mike, the owner, is also the one who started the record label (Lazy Day Records) releasing its premier album, April to Fall's "Straight Line to Your Heart". Mike has his entrepreneurial hands in several companies, all of them organic in one way or another.

That's Mike in the middle, with Dennis, my niece Amy's husband, to his left;

I don't know who the gentleman looking at the woman with the camera is - nice smile!

Last October, Mind, Body & Spirits was awarded the Certified Organic Restaurant status (the first and only one in Michigan). Mind, Body & Spirits is one of just thirteen restaurants in the U.S. that not only serves organic and locally grown food, but is also where each and every aspect of the physical building and furnishing is eco-conscious.

I ate certified organic rib-eye steak, though I eat beef only a few times a year;
the finger-length potatoes and Bernaise sauce were YUM;
(I didn't eat it all, there was plenty for lunch the next day)

From their web site:

Mind Body & Spirits was built to inspire and help people…

Mind..

Our 100+ year old building, which was renovated using many of the latest and century old technologies to operate as sustainable as possible, continues to provide a public classroom to progress our children and adults through its education.

Body..

Being a certified Organic restaurant, we only use the purest ingredients for our menu, and as our customers consume our seasonally inspired dishes it will help their bodies on its natural path to wellness without compromising the flavor or your pocket book!

Spirits..

I truly believe that when a person consumes food made with a “conscience” or love, your inner spirit begins to burn stronger….and I will toast to that with a nice glass of organic wine!

My inner spirit was flying around the room as I took pictures. Snapping photos really is a good way to sneak around and nose in and get closer to people you want to get closer to. They don't mind you doing that if you have a camera, at least that's what I've found. I just ate up their smiles.

Everything in the restaurant is made of recycled and/or sustainable materials, from reused and reconstituted brick, to bamboo and cork floors. Every piece of furniture is made from sustainable structural materials and fibers.

 Jeff, Lindsey and Andrea chatting
on furniture made from recycled and sustainable materials

The heating and cooling system is geo-thermal, which means plumbing goes 10 feet deep (3 meters) and water circulates through the earth with its core temperature of 55°F (12.8°C), naturally cooling the building in summer and heating it in winter. There are solar panels on the green roof. Mike would like to get off the electrical grid eventually, with a wind turbine and solar panels providing all the power they need on site.

The roof terrace is covered with tiles made from recycled tires. Vegetables are grown in pots, used for the menu and also for decoration, though the nasturtiums, peppers and tomatoes below are a bit summer-weary now that September is almost done. The tables and chairs on the terrace are manufactured from recycled plastic milk bottles.

 Roof terrace tiles made from recycled tires;
I think maybe a few glasses of wine have dribbled on these tiles

My niece Amy (Ginnie's daughter), next to terrace furniture

made from recycled plastic milk cartons

Potted terrace plants of vegetables, now a little summer-worn

My favorite part of the building is the greenhouse. To go to the restrooms, you have to walk through this space, which is brilliant, since part of Mike's vision is to educate not only the children of Michigan about renewable practices, but also adults. The "wall of water" consists of tubes full of standing water that absorb heat from the sun through the greenhouse windows, then radiate it to keep the greenhouse warm. The solid cement brick wall to the right in this photo absorbs the sun's heat in the winter months when the sun shines lower through the windows. I'd like to go back during the day, for lunch and a daylight tour.

 Wall of water lining the greenhouse

Don stands by the wall of water, which absorbs heat 

from sunlight through the greenhouse windows
for heat in long cold Michigan winters

Herbs and other plants for the restaurant are grown here in the greenhouse.

Amy is standing by the rain water receptacle;
rainwater is used to water the plants.

The quick composter takes 200 pounds of food garbage a day (vegetable and animal matter except bones), then dehydrates it. The water removed is used to water the plants throughout the restaurant, and the dried matter is composted further, since it is still too "hot" to be used by farmers. Restaurant staff set it out every Saturday morning for residents and farmers in the community to help themselves, and compost it for their own use. Have you ever seen a restaurant without a dumpster out back? Mind Body & Spirits has no dumpster. They recycle everything. The restaurant Director of Operations, Ed, along with his dad, take the leftover cooking oil from the restaurant and make bio-diesel for his 1970s Mercedes Benz, which smells like French Fries while he drives.

Quick composter-dehydrater

Dehydrated and composted food ready to take out back 

to the receptacle for pick-up by local residents and farmers

Among the savory food, the groove-inducing music of the band, Peter's musical accomplishment, family from Atlanta and friends from around Michigan, all wrapped in cozy intimacy, and the eco-consciousness of the restaurant, I was energized and stimulated in mind, body and spirit all the way until midnight! Me!

But will I be able to stay up all night for the Willow Ball? Two late nights in one week. Maybe Willow has a sofa, like this one I had my feet up on . . .

And Man created the plastic bag and the tin and aluminum can and the cellophane wrapper and the paper plate, and this was good because Man could then take his automobile and buy all his food in one place and He could save that which was good to eat in the refrigerator and throw away that which had no further use.  And soon the earth was covered with plastic bags and aluminum cans and paper plates and disposable bottles and there was nowhere to sit down or walk, and Man shook his head and cried:  "Look at this Godawful mess."  ~Art Buchwald, 1970

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Last Minute Prep for the Willow Ball Thursday

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Did you get your invitation to the Willow Ball? Willow of the famous Life at Willow Manor, Magpie Tales and all things willow? You didn't? You just have to go pick it up. Everyone's invited. I especially encourage and cajole you men into going, otherwise we women will have to dance with each other when our escorts need a rest. Not that there's anything wrong with dancing with women, but I prefer a man for a partner. On the other hand, my escort may be available several dances while I nap curled up in the corner.

This is the third year for this famous virtual ball, but this is my first! I don't know what I was thinking the last two years. I was a little intimidated by Willow's grandeur, to be honest. But I've discovered she is down to earth and funny. No doubt another reason I didn't leap into Willow's ball was hearing my once Baptist feet whine, "But we don't know how to dance." Add to that my early bedtime and wondering how in God's name I would stay awake until 10, let alone dawn, and . . . zzzzzzzz

Oh! Yes, I was saying . . . 

No more excuses, I'm going! I'm spending all my spare time getting ready. I have my gown picked out, just need the shoes. And I'm waiting to hear from my possible escort, since Don is going to be busy (I think he plans to clean his nails; or did he say he has to clean out the chicken coop? or clean his nails after the coop . . . .? Whatever . . . ).

I found this beginner waltz lesson. Oh dear, I think I'm definitely going to fall asleep before I even get there.




I looked for How to Stay Awake videos, and when I saw this first one, titled "Stay Awake," I got excited! And then I played it. Mary Poppins is going to be no help whatsoever.

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An Interview

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My friend Bonnie at Original Art Studio is an artist, thinker, questioner and writer. Out of her generous spirit, she is unveiling a series of interviews of a few of her blog friends, and I'm the first! I'm so excited. Please visit Bonnie's blog, not just to see how I answered her interesting questions (I really felt like I was on the stage of Inside the Actors Studio), but also to browse her beautiful images and be challenged by her thought-provoking posts, examining how we live. Her aesthetics and sensitivities are really very lovely.

And she even creates word puzzles, like this one:

Bonnie will be interviewing other bloggers in this series, some of whom I already know well, some I know a little, and others I don't know at all. I look forward to getting to know my friends better, and to make new friends.

Thank you so much, Bonnie!

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Ode to Autumn, by John Keats

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John Keats needs no image support for his poem to autumn. I revel in his lines, the hair of autumn soft-lifted by the winnowing wind, as beautiful as any written anywhere. Nothing needs to be said, and my photos aren't necessary. But I also overflow with love for autumn, in Michigan. The images I share below the poem are from previous years, some here at the farm, some on my drive to work, and some at the lake where my family has a cottage. Wherever you are, I hope you enjoy the onset of autumn today (even if in Australia and New Zealand, and you are in spring!).

Ode to Autumn
by John Keats

Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness!
Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;
Conspiring with him how to load and bless
With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eaves run;
To bend with apples the mossed cottage-trees,
And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;
To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells
With a sweet kernel; to set budding more,
And still more, later flowers for the bees,
Until they think warm days will never cease,
For Summer has o'erbrimmed their clammy cells.

Who hath not seen thee oft amid thy store?
Sometimes whoever seeks abroad may find
Thee sitting careless on a granary floor,
Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind;
Or on a half-reaped furrow sound asleep,
Drowsed with the fume of poppies, while thy hook
Spares the next swath and all its twined flowers;
And sometimes like a gleaner thou dost keep
Steady thy laden head across a brook;
Or by a cider-press, with patient look,
Thou watchest the last oozings, hours by hours.

Where are the songs of Spring? Ay, where are they?
Think not of them, thou hast thy music too, -
While barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day
And touch the stubble-plains with rosy hue;
Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn
Among the river sallows, borne aloft
Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies;
And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn;
Hedge-crickets sing, and now with treble soft
The redbreast whistles from a garden-croft;
And gathering swallows twitter in the skies.

A thing of beauty is a joy for ever:
Its loveliness increases; it will never
Pass into nothingness; but still will keep
A bower quiet for us, and a sleep
Full of sweet dreams, and health, and quiet breathing.


~ John Keats, from Endymion

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Oatmeal

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When I was a pixie-haired kid, oatmeal was a gelatinous mass of gray putrescence in a shiny stainless steel serving tray in the breakfast line at camp. I have no memory of eating oatmeal at home. I watched as a smiling, steamed lady behind the counter served up a wedge of gray mush-matter onto the food tray of the camper ahead of me in line. Shudder. Thankfully there were scrambled eggs, triangles of toast and colorful honeycombs of juice glasses filled with orange, grape or apple liquid. Oh, and those one serving size boxes of cereal that you could cut open and eat from the box if you wanted. The oatmeal shudder has colored my memory darkly of that pretty log dining hall with a huge fireplace that crackled us awake while it rained outside. Dark room. Dark memory in an otherwise bright camp.

Leap forward like a grasshopper to now, when oatmeal with dried or fresh fruit, walnuts and vanilla almond milk is one of my most pleasurable meals. Before deciding something is putrid, a person really ought to taste it, in a well prepared and presented state. Steel cut oats are less milled than rolled oats, so they are a better source of fiber. For years we had brought steel cut oats to a boil on the stove the night before, boiled one minute, covered, let sit overnight, then simmered in the morning for 10 minutes, stirring all the while. This method kept me from just going to my overstuffed red leather chair and waking up with a cup of coffee, which is what I really wanted to do. (See those precarious stacks of books in the top left photo below? That's my table, next to said chair, in the family room next to the kitchen.) My sister-in-law Wilma taught us a new quick easy method for cooking steel cut oats. With this slow cooker method, because it isn't cooked on the stove, we even eat it in the summer. In fact, we eat this almost every single day and never tire of it. The amount we make provides leftovers for the two of us for a couple of days. We refrigerate what's left right in the Pyrex bowl, plastic wrapped, then we reheat it in a double boiler.

By the way (post script), we find steel cut oats at the health food store, and at Whole Foods. Those of you outside the U.S., you're on your own! But you can ask for this, and see if they laugh (at my literal translations via an online translator): Spanish: avena de corte de acero; Portuguese: aveia de aço de corte; French: l'avoine en acier de coupure; British English: porridge?)

You’ll need a slow cooker. Ours is a big one.

And a Pyrex-type (heat-proof) bowl. Ours is 2 ½ quarts (2.5 liters).

Before going to bed at night, set the bowl in the slow cooker. Fill the slow cooker, not the bowl, with about 2 inches of water.

Into the Pyrex bowl, pour 2 cups steel cut oats, 6 cups water (any 1-3 ratio), a handful of dried fruit if you wish (we do dried Michigan cherries), and a little salt. Stir.

Cover the slow cooker, and turn it to Low. (Don't forget to plug it in.)

Next morning, you’ll awaken to a house filled with a warm, nutty fragrance, and your delicious oatmeal is ready to serve and eat, though I usually turn it down to Warm and drink two cups of coffee first. Ahhh, time to read the NYTimes Op Eds Nicholas Kristoff and Gail Collins, and some blogs . . .

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On a lighter note . . .

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After NY's Spring 2011 fashion shows (it's just walking art, people), I have sifted through the outrageous and the silly and chosen something I would like to wear next spring.

Is it this one, by Marchesa?

Or maybe this, #2, by Monique Lhullier:

Perhaps this one, #3, by Donna Karan:

Or this ensemble, by Karen Walker:

CLUE: It isn't the top or the bottom one. Are you kidding me? 

TOP: Your worst enemy asked you to be her Maid of Honor.
You said NO.

TWO: Wear it to your son-in-law's
PhD commencement ceremony in May, YES.

THREE: A beee-utiful garden party on the Amalfi Coast,
on a terrace overlooking the Tyrrhenian Sea? YES!

BOTTOM: Um. Didn't I make that in eighth grade Home Economics sewing class? NO.

And here is what some people have thought of fashion:

“Fashion is a form of ugliness so intolerable that we have to alter it every six months.” ~ Oscar Wilde

“On matters of style, swim with the current, on matters of principle, stand like a rock.” 
~ Thomas Jefferson
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“Every generation laughs at the old fashions, but follows religiously the new.”

~ Henry David Thoreau

“Fashion is only the attempt to realize art in living forms and social intercourse.” 
~ Francis Bacon, Sr.
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“Fashion condemns us to many follies; the greatest is to make ourselves its slave” ~ Napoleon Bonaparte

“Above all, remember that the most important thing you can take anywhere is not a Gucci bag or French-cut jeans; it's an open mind.”

~ Gail Ruben Bereny

“To live content with small means; to seek elegance rather than luxury, and refinement rather than fashion; to be worthy, not respectable, and wealthy, not, rich; to listen to stars and birds, babes and sages, with open heart; to study hard; to think quietly, act frankly, talk gently, await occasions, hurry never; in a word, to let the spiritual, unbidden and unconscious, grow up through the common - this is my symphony."
~ William Ellery Channing

Fashion quotes found here.

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synchronicity

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Carl Jung coined the term synchronicity for "meaningful coincidences," or acausal connection of two or more psycho-physic phenomena. Here is the most famous of the stories from his book Synchronicity:

"A young woman I was treating had, at a critical moment, a dream in which she was given a golden scarab. While she was telling me this dream, I sat with my back to the closed window. Suddenly I heard a noise behind me, like a gentle tapping. I turned round and saw a flying insect knocking against the window-pane from the outside. I opened the window and caught the creature in the air as it flew in. It was the nearest analogy to a golden scarab one finds in our latitudes, a scarabaeid beetle, the common rose-chafer, which, contrary to its usual habits had evidently felt the urge to get into a dark room at this particular moment. I must admit that nothing like it ever happened to me before or since."

Carl Jung Resources explains that Dr. Jung developed a treatment for this patient, ". . . this coincidence is not senseless, a simple coincidence. By using the amplification method, Jung associates in connection with the scarab and comes to the concept of death and rebirth from the esoteric philosophy of antiquity, a process that, in a symbolic way, the patient should experience for a renewal and vitalization of her unilateral personality, the cause of the neurosis she was suffering from."

Some are skeptical that coincidences are ever meaningful, and others are ecstatic when events seem to collide with sparks and intrigue. If they aren't meaningful, then so be it. If they are meaningful, what difference does it make?

When my brother Bennett died suddenly in 1996 at the age of 47 of severe arteriosclerosis (all four arteries were blocked), a series of events unfolded in the following weeks and months that could be mere coincidence, but for my family and me, were stunning occasions of conjunction. I want to tell them to you, and I am guessing you want to hear them. I know I have a human curiosity to hear stories that touch on magic and miracle, with a chink of light from beyond the veil of the unknown. The half dozen or so other occasions are eerie and chilling, but I'd like to share two of the quieter, less macabre and dramatic ones, to honor Bennett, who sometimes teased me while he laughed, "Ruthie, I just love how dramatic you are!" Moo, hee? (my mother's exclamation, for Who, me?)

One such moment was when we went to a high school play my nephew was in. The week before the play, a dozen of us were cleaning out my parents' house where Dad had passed away the year before and where Mom no longer lived, having moved to an assisted living home with Alzheimer's. At lunch we calculated that we were going to be one ticket shy of the number needed for our family members attending my nephew's play the following week. Bennett, who went by "Ben" with all his friends, said, I don't need a seat, I'll be video-taping it from the back of the auditorium anyway. That night, in my parents' empty home, Bennett died. Without a lick of furniture to lean on, we mourned and paced and lay on the rose-carpeted floor, in shock. The following weekend, as we sat in the high school auditorium waiting for my nephew's play to start, some sitting, some standing, we were chatting, and I leaned over the as yet unoccupied seat in front of me. I looked down at the dark green cracked leather, worn from decades of student assemblies, and there, scratched in the leather, was I ♥ Ben.

One other of many more such stories (which swell in their cumulative effect) is this. As the executor of my brother's estate, I made arrangements to sell the beautiful country acres he owned, where he had built a log garage and had just received all the materials to build a custom log home, by himself. He had laid out his gardens on grid paper, meticulous to a delicious fault. After Don and I left the property sale closing in September of 1996 with the new owners, and after we'd had a beer with them and raised our glasses to Ben, Don and I knew we had to drive out to the property one last time. It was the place where Don, our kids, Bennett and I had lain under the stars one March night, watching for a meteor shower that never materialized. Bennett was an avid amateur astronomer. I've told you before that he was also a brilliant amateur photographer, and his avatar was this grasshopper he shot somewhere. Don and I walked the property, peeked in the windows of the garage where his memorial service had been held on a very cold February day earlier that year, and we climbed back into the van to leave, windows down on that warm September evening. As Don inched along, both of us reluctant to leave, I happened to look down at the ground. Just at the edge of the tall grass by the drive, on one stalk of timothy grass, perched a lone grasshopper, swaying in the breeze. We stopped then, for a while longer. What are the chances of a grasshopper sitting on a blade of grass in the country on a September night? Probably astronomical. But maybe the chances of me looking right there, right then are a bit less.

What does it mean? I suppose it doesn't have to mean anything. But because we were heavy with shock and loss, all of our attention was riding close to the asphalt of what happened around us. We saw the connections, which felt as if they were more than the average, and more intense. But really, aren't we always connected to everything? If we were but to pay closer attention, and feel the wonder of the miracles in a blade of grass that stands up straight though it's as light as a feather, and bends when a breeze blows, not breaking, would we be amazed? And a grasshopper. Have you seen how far and how high a grasshopper can jump, and land on that exact stalk of grass that just happens to be in the perfect spot, and hold on? Is that not magic?

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