The anger is yellow but not golden like mamaliga.
Mamaliga has mama in it.
Mamaliga can be made into boulz.
The anger is not a delicacy handled by shepherds.
Everything we love has been handled by shepherds. But not anger.
Boulz comes from cheese aged in bark and the sheep mingle their bleetings inside every bite.
July 22nd is yellow and red and orange but nothing is golden.
The jewelry she saved for us has disappeared.
She loved gold but the gold is gone.
|
|
Photo taken by Lydia Stefanescu, June 2015.
Vague: indefinite or indistinct in nature or character. In France, vague implies the ever-shifting contour of an ocean wave. I’ve never met an ocean wave that settled.
Vapid: without liveliness or spirit; dull or tedious. A conversation about the limitless configurations of ocean waves will drift towards tedium.
Vague: the expression of unpillowed morning breath reviewing the one-night stand.
Vapid: phrases like one-night-stand given the unsettled ambiguity of mornings-after.
Vague: a loose line of faces spilling across the city sidewalk promising to wait, the murmur of shuffled feet.
Vapid: how much you like me on Facebook. How ardently I wait for your like.
Vague: directions by compass.
Vapid: a look I left behind, a lost look, the man my lost look makes of you.
[Read the rest of this poem and a few others online at Sophie's lovely Dirty Press.]
|
|
The day before
you would have
turned sixty-seven
is a sterile
waiting room
doused in beige.
The beginning
is a paisley
print. The
feeling is toes
tingling.
The day before
is a red
and black
biohazard sign.
But not like
Stendhal. The
trash inside
is potential
cata strophe.
The day before
is fluorescent
lighting under which
only the black
nurse remains
beautiful.
The day before
is unplanned
by the party
no one will
be having.
Confetti is
a fleck
in the doctor's
pupil. Knuckles
crack like
fireworks.
The day before
is a rubber wheel
skidding across
shiny, waxed floors
while the nurse
draws blood
from beneath
heavy-steepled
eyes.
The day before
your birthday
a color wheel
dies.
|
|
She lounges in a Bucharest park, perhaps 1975.
The Chase credit card company representative was very, very sorry about my mother's death.
She wanted me to know that mom had been "with Chase" for five whole years.
She wanted me to know that Chase, the corporate entity, sincerely mourned "the passing of their family member."
I hung up the phone and stared at the sidewalk. The metal taste of anger corroded my tongue.
There is nothing to say. Nothing I can say to untangle the knots of losing your mother.
I try to read or write and vowels swim like pufferfish in a 50 gallon tank.
I search for analogies and comparisons... I am hoarse and grief is like a pickaxe dancing inside my blood. Grief is like a rope-less boat bobbing in a harbor. Grief is a color we become when unmoored. When nothing holds us in place anymore.
But the clouds whiff past without drizzling a single story.
|
|
I don't believe spirits rest in peace, mom.
I believe you keep on dancing and giggling and getting lost when the sun hits your eyes.
I believe words will make sense again.
I believe there may be something worth saying.
I don't believe I will ever be able to say it all. Even if you had lived for 30 more years, I would never be able to say it all. Even if I knew you were about to die and I had the chance to tell you everything that mattered, I would say the same thing I said to you the day before you lied: "I love you."
And you would respond the same way you responded to my text: "I love you more."
What else, mama? Ce mai?
|
|
The Eldest's organic garden was his final project for the "official school year". As unschoolers, the unofficial year continues through the summer and we digest our experiences, camps, field trips, vacations, and activities as we would digest and discuss an epic tome by Charles Dickens. In a sense, they are equivalent.
Back to the garden, growing veggies organically is a challenge because it requires you to take the right route (as opposed to the easy route) to solve challenges and issues which arise. The wonderful part is that it allows us to study ecology in action- to learn from experience how every input affects the world around us, how every pesticide destroys more than we intended to destroy. The parallels to modern war are endless. The lessons in persistence and also endless- as are the opportunities to learn from more seasoned gardeners and older, wiser neighbors.
The Eldest used Botanical Interests' Bean Bush Pencil Pod Yellow Heirloom Seeds purchased at Manna Grocery in Tuscaloosa. He planted the bush yellow beans early this spring and by late April or early May, they started to flower. Stunning, delicate white hooded flowers.
Delicious Phaseolus vulgaris
Early this week, he harvested a basket of yellow beans (leaving a few bushes untouched because he is "saving seeds" for next year).
Prophet carefully splits open a yellow bean to see the "peas". She was relieved that the colors lined up.
Gnome declares them delicious.
Tossed in salt, olive oil, parsley, and thyme and then broiled at 400 until soft. The Eldest- who likes to say he doesn't eat vegetables- polished off half the bowl of his own-grown beans.
And then today, after brunch with Bunica and Ratpaw, we harvested another handful. I'm thinking about adding them to a summer stew with squash, dill, carrots, and a dollop of sour cream.
|
|
We needed to use concrete in order to stabilize the Funky Little Free Library in the soil. After Hubs and the Eldest mixed a batch, there was enough leftover for a little play.
I poured concrete into old shoebox lids and various objects to which we then added plastic eggs (why not make a concrete change container or catch-all). Then added a few stones and a twig Prophet collected and painted earlier this spring. Plus a pinecone.
This catch-all was poured into a plastic take-out box from Mr. Chen's. If you don't grease the container before pouring in the concrete you will have to use a blade to cut the container from the dried concrete. Grease first. Beeswax or petroleum jelly works great.
A piece of wood whittled by the Eldest made a nice hanging rack in this catch-all container.
A space for worry-dolls, a tealight holder, and an old brass chalice- who knows why things come together in a way that involves other things to make them whole?
Meanwhile, the kids made their own garden stones from various and sundry precious junk found around the house, including shells, marbles, rocks, and, yes, seed cones.
When Mary stopped by later, I was so concrete-crazy that we whipped out the clay. Always a good sport when it comes to crazy, Mary helped pour into ice trays and then we punched holes in the lemons with extra garbage bag closers (which we first greased with beeswax) and left the tacks and the concrete in the tray to harden. Of course there were some experiments as well.....
Venus de Milo XII
In addition to the lemon clay necklace charms which Gnome, Prophet, and Jenna painted, there were some hand-made necklace charms as well.
And a little clay heart poured into leftover Valentine candy holders which now needs to be painted with acrylic and sealed with a lacquer or gloss. I'm waiting for the right words to come.
|
|
Don't miss the exposition of "Accent From The Wound" by Remus Pușcariu and Alice Gancevici (my cousin). Remus and Alice also happen to be Gnome's godparents and I wish she could see their exhibition in person. I console myself with the thought that others will be there to witness and report on how Alice and Remus are expanding on the avant-guarde movements in Romanian theatre and arts.
Alice Gancevici (RO) and Remus Pușcariu (RO) form a collaborative duo. With a background in visual arts and theatre directing, their interest lies mainly in the critical, yet poetic reading of historical artifacts and their contemporary counterparts. They were participants in the MFA program at the Sandberg Institute and are involved in co-running Bucharest AiR, an artists’ residency in Bucharest.
Festival of Choices
Graduation Show of the Sandberg Institute
June 17-21 2015
Opening June 17, 6-9 pm
tegenboschvanvreden is very happy to announce the upcoming presentation of Alice Gancevici and Remus Pușcariu. Their exhibition Accent From The Wound is part of the Festival of Choices, the Graduation Show Master of Fine Arts of the Sandberg Institute, that takes place at different venues in Amsterdam.
Gancevici and Pușcariu focus on theatre, as a carrier of a very particular, rooted set of conventions. Theatre draws much of its cruxes (like any form of fiction) from what two centuries ago was to be named a willing suspension of disbelief — that process by which we ignore any resemblance to reality and allow ourselves to suspend our judgment of the implausibility of what is perceived. Between us and theatre there is something like a treaty by means of which we agree that what is exposed on stage, far from being dangerous, becomes domesticated, thus serving as an instrument of our power to act. As we agree to it, we gain the power to act by way of willful surrender.
The exhibition joins together several works, all dealing in different manners with issues orbiting the notion of control —of self and others— as experienced through the means of theatre and theatrical tropes applied in everyday conduct and decision-making. Present in the show are a deconstruction of obedience training in canines; a document of a re-enactment, pertaining to historically suppressed policies of oppressive regimes and minority population management; electro-activated muscles; and a staging of two actors in a repetitive attempt to escape the theatre by embodying the characters of an alpha and omega dog.
The selection brings forth an abstraction of a broader research into power structures, structures for distribution of control/command or lack thereof, catastrophes (natural or so-called man-made), domestication, usage, conditioning, oppression and obedient matter. It’s purpose— to reflect on the supposedly goal-oriented nature.
|
|
Gnome and Grandma Vicki at Lake Tuscaloosa.
CARLOS CASTANEDA: "The trick of socialization is to convince us that the descriptions we agree upon define the limits of the real world. What we call reality is only one way of seeing the world, a way that is supported by social consensus."
Prophet and the Eldest pose for piano recital photos.
FERNANDO PESSOA:"Civilization consists in giving an inappropriate name to something and then dreaming what results from that. And in fact the false name and the true dream do create a new reality. The object really does become other, because we have made it so.
We manufacture realities. We use the raw materials we always used but the form lent it by art effectively prevents it from remaining the same."
A table made out of pinewood is a pine-tree but it is also a table."
We sit down at the table not at the pine-tree…"
|
|
[from my tarot reading at kentuck]
You are the known way leading always to the unknown,
and you are the known place to which the unknown is always
leading me back. More blessed in you than I know,
I possess nothing worthy to give you, nothing
not belittled by my saying that I possess it.
(Wendell Berry, "The Country of Marriage")
In the country of marriage, the only bureaucrats are persons who cannot bear to share an institution with others who threaten their formulas.
In the country of marriage, citizens wear rings as passports and those who wear rings act like Americans in the customs line.
Americans expect to receive special privileges by nature of their citizenship.
Sometimes I am ashamed to be a citizen of this country of marriage that defines itself by what it keeps out.
The country of marriage is always in motion.
The movements that sustain it are the ones which begin with the cover drawn over two heads. The doors we close against other motions.
A wave is the way a hand moves against time. A wave is the way we wash our goodbye.
But what else is the wave in my eyes? What is a wave except maybe running away fast hoping water is strong enough to stop you?
In the country of marriage, there may be tourists. We may call these tourists "children."
We may believe these tourists owe certain duties to the soil ravaged by their enthusiasm.
But a tourist is a tourist. A tourist is one whose feet seek the feel of foreign lands.
What is a siren except beckoning and warning in the same breath?
What is a breath except the way air moves through one body and then another?
We are native nowhere.
We are the fairy tale that gives rise to a foreign language.
Our love is a lexicon against the world that says we must be this. We must be that.
As if marriage is a country we enter to please the world we are trying to escape.
We are inside the house of looking out for what comes in.
We are inside the country knowing others may wander through without tasting. The words are magic but the weather is common. The weather is nothing we can hold.
|
|
Our first blackberries are popping up near the fence. Last year, when we planted the shrub, the kids were disappointed:
"No blackberries! Not even flowers."
Then then question:
"Why should we water something that isn't making berries?"
Finally, Prophet's accusation:
"I think blackberry bushes are lazy."
Patience, I urged. Patience. To myself as well as them.
This year, the kids were delighted when the blackberry shrub came to life in April. Her fringed leaves emerged a vivid green.
The Eldest used twine to situate her along the fence. I'm not sure how he knew to do it, only that one morning I wandered outside to find the string scaffolding gently supporting our bush.
In the first blush of May, ten delicate white flowers blossomed.
Prophet couldn't believe the lazy blackberry was finally "doing something".
We spent one morning sketching the leaves and blossoms. Before long, the white petals fell into the grass leaving behind stiff, light brown tendrils.
"But mommy, those aren't blackberries," Gnome asserted confidently. "Those are greenberries."
I told her we needed to watch a little longer- to observe and make notes. The blackberries were not finished changing.
She paused and nodded. It made sense to expect the waiting wasn't finished. It made sense to expect more marvels from our little blackberry shrub given the marvels that we'd already witnessed in the span of five weeks.
We wait and watch, our desire for immediate gratification up-ended by the simple marvel of ten blackberries fruiting in the yard. Nature study teaches us how to tend plants and understand ecosystems, but also how to wait for a fruit to ripen. How to silence the buzz of schedules and demands in the face of slower fruitings.
|
|
The annual Cahaba Lily Festival is going on, but we caught the first blooms last week. According to locals, the Cahaba Lily blooms between Mother's Day and Father's day every year. We visited the stands with Heather and Mike on Mother's Day- the earliest moment.
And then again, the next day, with Sanda.
As Sanda and the girls collected shells, I allowed myself to wonder about the rocks- how many years of water flowing in one particular motion left a soft curve in a rock? How many years does it take to fashion a hip from stone?
Pinka watched and yipped. Notice the beautiful shape of the rock to her right.
The remains of some human's feast dried on a rock. I love the heaviness of crustacean coverings. How they resemble bones.
Prophet found several pieces of coal which she used to write her name on the rocks.
Our impulse to leave something behind. A name. A skeleton. The beginnings of a history.
Meanwhile, the fungi grow un-occluded. As with all forms of life, a fungus sprouts under very specific conditions. The context must be ripe.
Gnome used an old plastic egg to collect her shells. She noted the shells were the same kind they gave you in the Indian village at CHOM. And the rocks were the same sort of rocks you rubbed the shells against to make a hole for your necklace.
Prophet's turtle shell.
A bird fishes near a lily stand.
The latest issue of december has a small, short, unnamed poem by Albert Goldbarth on page 89. The poem stuck in my head like a talisman.
The grasses bend
and, cutting them, the man
bends too.
Be careful.
We become what we do.
It's certainly not Goldbarth's usual taste and feel. More Vonnegut or Gary Snyder. But compelling in its brevity and the warning. But sticky. Like sand on the soles of driving barefoot.
We cannot escape the soil which makes us.
|
|
I think the French word for Mary Tylosaur is super.
The band played live at the most recent Kentuck Art Night in downtown Northport. For those unfamiliar with Mary Tylosaur, here's the skeleton as offered in an interview with The Tusk.
D.C. Moon: guitar and vocals, composer and music director
Sandra J. Hunt: lead and backing vocals, percussion and sass
Celesta Riner: bass guitar and attitude
Katie Grayson: keyboards, composer and sex appeal
Robby Roberts: drums, percussion and general wizardry
When asked to describe the band's sound, D.C. Moon said:
Noted author John Shirley had this to say: " ‘My Boyfriend is a Zombie' opens the fun rockin' first album by Mary Tylosaur, kind of B-52s meets The Ramones meets Southern rock, with some Cramps happening, too. And fans of my old friend D.C. Moon will recognize his distinct touch here, too, in guitar, vocals and ... ‘The Communists, The Martians and the CIA' (which is a damned funny song). Some vocals by Moon, most of the lead vocals are by the sexily deep-voiced Sandra Hunt. Check it out."
I think the French word for a hot pink guitar is incroyable.
I think the French word for what my husband kept wanting to do is dance.
I think the French expression for what they did is playing down the sun.
I think I'm not speaking French anymore when I say they rocked the spring night.
Free pinot, free oven-baked pizza, and good live music. A few French subtitles. Husbands who want to dance like robot puppets. Pink. Black. Whatever color comes up.
You can catch your own Mary Tylosaur this Saturday night, 8:00 pm, at Tuscaloosa's favorite place to show up beardy (or post-beardy, or pre-beardy, or recently-seen-with-beardy)- the treasure known as Druid City Brewing Company.
If you haven't spent five hours at the Taproom yet, the weekly schedule includes Live Trivia on Fridays at 8 pm and Open Mic on Sundays at 6 pm. Bo and Bob are the best- good people who brew delicious beer. Oh, and one more thing about Druid City Taproom: the saison never stops.
|
|
Visualizations of Adrienne's words.
Trying to educate my children to think critically about what they consume in our overwhelmingly consumerist culture is like howling at the moon and waiting for a response.
We see the billboards slathered in pencil-thin women with massive breasts and buxom, rubber-ball bottoms. Those of us with curves wish we were skinnier. Those of us who are skinny wish we had curves. The pictures we see show us nothing real or natural. The pictures show us how much money we need to spend to fit the current trends being sold to our children, peers, and lovers. The pictures show us what we will NEVER be without ponying up.
During the second world war and the early ad era, curves were evidence of prosperity. Women rued their skinny bodies and forked out money to purchase Marilyn Monroe curves. My friends tell me how "lucky" I am to be "skinny" but being skinny means I will never have those breasts I see jiggling back from every billboard and mall kiosk. Being skinny means I can only have those breasts with surgical help.
"So if you want them, why not just buy them?" one friend asked.
There are many things I want that are for sale. But sometimes the act of purchasing these things robs me of who I am to myself- this little "me", this self I call mine, the integrity that is the only thing I've worked to leave to my kids.
I cannot buy those breasts because my desire for them is a betrayal of myself. I am not a busty female. I am not well-endowed. My curves are not as steep as mountain roads. I am learning to appreciate my hills. In a sense, I cannot buy those breasts because somewhere in that transaction exists the seed of human slavery. Dissatisfaction with self threatens to make a slave of me.
Notice how this ad sets up envy between females? Creates it as backdrop?
I am tired of seeing sister placed against sister in this competition to be prettiest. Or coolest. Or most powerful. Or most gifted. Or most successful.
My menstrual cycle is not a sickness that I feel the need to hide from men. It is not a contamination that makes me disgusting. Patriarchy begins with such myths.
I will not perpetuate the need to wear super-short shorts during my period in order to entertain a man while hiking (of all things, hiking!).
I won't pretend to like whiskey or football or hunting to play the cool girl. If I liked football, I would not be ashamed to like it, but I don't care who wins the Iron Bowl. I don't care who plays quarterback.
I DO care when a football star assaults a female and the public gets mad that this is reported because "oh my gosh this will ruin his career." A person who assaults others should not be surprised if his/her career is ruined. That's how we learn and grow up.
Or stop cruelty to women in the name of animals.
PETA's ads are annoying. Is there no other way to argue for decent treatment of animals than by dehumanizing females? Do her legs have to glow like butter? Does have Celina have to appeal to a personal fetish in order to make the world a better place? Does supporting PETA implicate us in much more insidious consumerist memes?
Do we have to imagine a blow job in conjunction with a burger? Do my kids have to imagine it as well? Do males have to compensate for penis size with sandwich size? Do males need to be told the lie that size matters?
I don't want my husband or son to ever think such things.
Size only matters in porn.
Size only matters when the goal is to punish.
No, no- I'm not done. Does innocence have to be peddled as sex product? Is the all-hallowed aura of virginity what we're peddling here? Who cares if someone is a virgin or not? Nevermind, misogynists and religious fundamentalists care. Does Christ care? I think the Bible is pretty darn clear on that one.
I want Lifeway Stories to stop selling virginity to my kids and then calling it "Christian." I'm tired of the disgusting cruelties and misogynies perpetuated in the name of a God who came to this world to overturn law and tradition and convention as we know it.
This female looks scared. That is scary.
And I'm soooooo tired of ads that paint sex as something "done to" a female. I'm tired of ads that show fear on a woman's face while suggesting sex. I'm tired of those ads because I'm tired of rape.
I'm also tired of bad sex. Why can't sex feel good? Why can't it be awesome, beautiful, intense, sublime, a loss of self, a discovery of another- the closest thing we come to magic in this life?
I love sex. I have always loved sex but never so much as now when it is mine- and my body is something I share with my partner- two bodies joining to create a landscape that exists only for us when we seek it- and differently every time.
In our house, I am as vocal about loving sex as I am about despising nonconsensual sex. I will never tell my kids to wait until they are married. I will never glorify abstinence. Instead, I will tell them to wait for someone who deserves to explore that world with them- wait for someone who is willing to get lost.
The last thought is our responsibility to be honest and truthful. Where sex is concerned, this means I'm going to be honest. I tell my kids:
Although the sex I've had while married has been the best and most intensely mind-blowing, the sex I had before marriage was also pleasurable. It's not about a wedding ring so much as the other party.... and your relationship.
And there is nothing wrong with pleasure as long as your pleasure does not hurt or damage another life. Perhaps you will discover pleasure is too easy and therefore unsatisfying. Perhaps you will discover you want more than pleasure. Perhaps you will develop an appetite for communion. If so, godspeed.
If all the other voices in your culture- all the ads and billboards and peer groups and maskulinities- speak only for consumption, may you find words to hold in opposition. May you find words for the sacred unspeakably beautiful things. And may the truth of these words keep you free.
|
|
Atop the piano, a pastel by Prophet.
I woke up this morning with a Mother's Day nightmare fresh in my head. The nightmare was simple: it was Mother's Day and nothing the kids could do was fancy, expensive, or complicated enough to gain my approval. For a female who says (and thinks she believes) Mother's Day is not important to her, this was a nightmare from hell, replete with excessive consumerism and passive-aggressive poses.
Apart from being a commercial holiday for which our local Bojangles has a sign reading "Your Mother Would Love Our Heart-Shaped Biscuits", I think Mother's Day is a celebration of the way our world expands by mothering.
In my head, in that perfect land of parenting and partnering, Mother's Day would be any day of the year when you bust into a dance party on the beach with a beloved fellow mother and her saplings.
It would be the instant when I witness all three kids together on the piano bench and Prophet turning pages for the Eldest as he works on a difficult piece. It would three pairs of toes in varying degrees of motion. It would be the beautiful mysterious ways they've devised to cooperate without any suggestions or nagging from the voice that sounds like me.
It would be a poem about little feet padding down the hall at night, each step a succor-seeking syllable. It would be life, and the special part wouldn't cost a card or a penny. Only the kiss just after your eyes careen around the same curve and settle into seeing one another as treasure.
|
|
Gnome samples papanasi, a traditional Romanian food.
Whenever my Aunt Sanda visits, she and Bunica collaborate in the kitchen to create all sorts of Romanian foods that Bunica doesn't cook so much anymore. It's exciting because it reminds me of my childhood, when Romanian recipes were all my mother knew (she hadn't quite learned to cook American yet) and so tripe soup or tongue soup (the dreaded dishes) might pop up any night of the week.
Papanasi can also be eaten as entree without sugar.
A paper bird gifted to us by Bunicu hangs above the dining table.
I sit at the table and write beneath a strange bird.
It's hard for me to get away from the Romanian evocations in my writing- partly because the mist of childhood makes them feel like legends, fairy tales, impossible things once believed as backdrop for everything else around me. Sanda has been teaching the kids Romanian phrases and it's a reminder I should be doing the same- that I shouldn't abandon my first language. Or leave it to history.
I've been inspired so much by Romanian writers, currently including but not limited to Dimitri Tsepeneag, Mircea Cartarescu, and Norman Manea. I love how Manea describes writing in this excellent interview with Norman Manea in American Reader:
“You write in order to redeem yourself partially from the chaos which is around you, you’re trying to find something, meaning, somewhere. Or to invent one, if you don’t find it—and this is what produces art generally: this need of the individual to search for something which is beyond their reality, even if it is sometimes hidden within that reality.”
Portrait of Manea sourced from an interview with The Daily Beast.
He admits to writing for readers in a closed society:
"My language tried to be faithful to a closed society, rather than an open one. The language was coded, sometimes quite obscurely, and differed greatly from the language of newspapers or party slogans. The characters were usually marginalized—people who were foreigners in their own land."
In the same interview, Manea describes America as “the best hotel”. He shies away from claiming a favorite country:
“A hotel is where you come in, you have a place for which you pay, everything functions, nobody asks who you are or what you want. You have an ID, you give the ID, you come, you go, and that’s it. It’s a domicile and it’s a temporary one because we are temporary here on this Earth.”
There is so much to learn from Manea, who survived both the Nazis and the communists as a Jew and a human being. So much to learn from those who refuse to accept the unacceptable and write their way through the lies society asks them to tell.
And there is papanasi- the complicated substance and texture of a minority immigrant childhood- that one girl must describe to placate the dead.
PAPANASI RECIPES TO TRY AT HOME
Papanasi dessert recipe from Artsy Bites
Papanasi recipe from Cooking Without Limits
Papanasi recipe from Bettina's Traditional Romanian Foods blog
|
|
A lady frog pauses: a princess in
disguise. She hears, she hears, she hears.
He is music to whatever she has for ears.
[Russell Rowland, "Sounds Like...."]
there exists a kind of gravity that's sometimes called love.
[Aimee Penna, "At the Museum of Natural Sciences"]
....The footprints
of your last woman still fresh
on the ground around you.
[Francine Witte, "When we meet up at the Parker Avenue Grille"
|
|
Can you see the frog hiding?
Our Isla is taking a voracious two hour nap while Gnome and Prophet chomp at the bit for her to wake up and play. I'm just happy she's sleeping so well and so peacefully. The girls and I discuss gardens and read a book about frogs.
On that note, garden-lovers should mark their calendars....
MAY 16: Organic Gardening 102 (Druid City Garden Project)
They are also hosting an Organic Gardening class on May 16th. Register online- it is open to the public. Druid City Garden Project is looking for summer volunteers. Great opportunity for teens and college students.
MAY 17: Oh Shitake! (Sassafras Center for Arts and Environment)
On May 17th, locals can benefit from Jeremy "Wild Man" Crosby's incredible knowledge of plants, fungi, and natural life by registering for an afternoon workshop on how to grow your own gourmet mushrooms. Tickets sold by the Sassafras Center. Register online today. Incentive? First 25 registrants get to take home an inoculated log from the workshop - up to five years worth of mushrooms!
|
|
The porcelain holding the prayer rope.
As we prepared for church this morning, I heard the sound of breaking glass- a terror in any house with small people. The Eldest sheepishly confessed:
"I was trying to see what was in that porcelain bowl by the chair and it fell off the wall and broke. I'm sorry mom. It was an accident."
But I wasn't in the mood for an accident. Because the thing he wanted to touch was a prayer rope I'd woven from 13 strands of my hair and twine and wooden beads as a gift for my husband in lieu of holy water. In lieu of so many things I want to give but lack.
And so I got upset. Told him sorry wasn't enough. Told him fixing it was needed. Told him this in an unforgiving voice I wish I could erase.
He asked me for forgiveness. What goes around came back to me asking his forgiveness.
We forgive one another in a circle that tastes nothing like poetry. A circle that tastes closer to tawdry plastic trees. But this circle is love, a prayer rope, a mistake I won't stop making. The only freedom comes when I show him what he already sees-- son, I am nothing bigger or better than Thee.
|
|
The music.
The things that touched us on our nature excursions this week.
Wood sorrel.
Another gorgeous roadside creature with which we communed.
Baby wild bunnies born at a friend's house down the street.
The Eldest took a 10-minute video of the bunny with his camera.
Because what could be cooler than bunnies?
Except maybe the secret inside the potting station...
..discovered by the potter himself.
He'd been jotting down notes for the past week or so about bird comings and goings to this oven bird nest and imagine his excitement when he bustled in the house yesterday hooting and hollering about a fledgling in the grass.
This was no ordinary fledging, mind you. By the look on his face, I'd say this was a kindred fledging who resented a world unfolding prior to coffee intake.
But also a precious fledging whom I feared disturbing- a first day out of the nest sort of fledging.
So we journaled about how it might feel to be a fledging on our first day out of the nest. Wove in threads of fact as well as fiction. Added his name to our Knowing Nature notebooks. And then realized how many tiny creatures are experiencing first-day-out in this mindblowingly beautiful season known as spring.
Fancy fungi.
The best things are found in clover right now. Clover and good percussion. Enjoy.
I'll be in clover
I'll be in clover soon
I'll be in clover
I'll be in clover with you
|
|
Last weekend, we motored over to the Alabama Museum of Natural History to sample the sweet conceptual bones of the Innovation Fair. This hovercraft, built by UA students, was among them.
We started at the catapult-making table. The girls were eager to make their own catapults, though Gnome struggled a little to get her launchpad oriented just right.
Prophet crafted a fantastic monster bookmark torn straight from fabulist fiction.
The Eldest and Erin send their rockets for a first flight.
Meanwhile, pet snails Cheddar and Velvet look on from the sidelines. This glass jar is their traveling vehicle. If you have experienced spring rains with homeschooled kids, then you know it is impossible to keep them from collecting snails. In our house, jubilation follows rain- "flowers and snail hunts" the battle cry.
Upstairs, the exhibits included explosions and buzzes and beeps and all sorts of effects but none was quite so intriguing to the kids as the river table.
Gnome and I sat on the stairs and talked about the mososaurus who roamed this land-sea prior to us. What does it say about me if an extinct species is my totem animal?
Small people watch the hovercraft demo rev up its fans and engines outside.
Small people get distracted by presence of an ROTC rope climbing which crazy mom swings upon in her rope-unfriendly skirt and thus inadvertently legitimizes miscreant activity.
Dinosaur teeth are not really primed for popsicles.
Small (brilliant) people suggest that, in fact, ice cream is an innovation on ice crystals and therefore shouldn't we find some to admire with our mouths.
|
|
HIM: I'm not sure where we are at this point sooo I'm going to consult the GPS.
HER: Pull over honey!
HIM: Whu-- Why are you pinching me?
HER: Because you missed it!
HIM: Missed what?
HER: Back up. Right there. That train.
HIM: Where are you going?
HER: I need to get on it. Be right back.
Car door slams and female buries the children's voices calling her name in the background. Clambers aboard rear of train where strange things happen insider her head. Runs back to idling car which is damaging the ozone.
HIM: What was that all about?
HER: Pretending to be a hobo and climbing on the back of the train.
HIM: Is this an anesthesia flashback or something? Have you lost your mind? Why on earth do you need to pinch me, jump out of the car, and run around like a nut for a game of pretend hobo?
HER: [pinches him again, this time because he's being mean] So I know how it feels to climb the back of a train- the gape between the rungs, the distance from the ground, the scent of old metal- you know, hobo stuff.
THE ELDEST: Mom, you're funny!
HIM: Crazy. And the sudden hobo urge was prompted by.....?
HER: A story that keeps bumping around in my head.
HIM: (coughing, incredulous) A story?
HER: A hobo story.
On towards giddyup they go.
|
|
Today, between clouds and sunshine, I'm thinking about Amber laying in a trauma unit at UAB surrounded by machines and people and noises she can't quite process.
I'm thinking about how little I know her... and yet, how effervescent and splendid what I know of her has been.
I'm thinking I don't have the right to think about people I barely know and wish them better.
I'm thinking about the caution we exercise before investing in empathy. Because we do treat it like an investment- not a bloom of fellow feeling but a "should I let myself feel this right now even though there's nothing I can do?".
I'm probing the discomfort we feel before saying we care about people we barely know- whether in our neighborhood or in Nepal. This reticence remains a puzzle to me.
I'm thinking about my own experience after the accident- how words fell apart when I tried to recover their associations. How I will never remember that year of my fifteen-year-old self. How she remains a puzzle to me. And I'm never done trying to solve and re-solve her.
I'm thinking about brain injury and what I can offer- hope, hope, more hope than any heart can hold alone. Hope at beating the odds.
And I'm thinking about not thinking. Or how we encounter a friend, a lover, a mother in a hospital bed. How every little word matters.
Sometimes we think people who are unconscious can't hear us. But what I remember from "waking up" in the hospital are people who visited before I had "woken up".
The first face I remember is Alexandria Combs.
The icon she left in the hospital room hangs by my closet.
I remember light green. I remember beeping noises. I remember the feel of fading colors on my dry itchy skin.
I'm thinking about how intimate the word "fading" became to me then.
I'm thinking we can love people we barely know- and love that seems strange only displays our own discomfort with love in general. Or the hidden belief that love should be limited. Encapsulated. A zero sum pie carefully rationed between family and friends.
I'm thinking Amber will recover because the rest is unthinkable. I'm thinking every cell in her body is working with diligence.
And I'm thinking about honeysuckle. But mostly Amber. And hope.
And the honeysuckles to come.
|
|
Azaleas and easter eggs at Bunica's house.
Bright red eggs.
The kids dyed eggs with Aunt Sanda. After dyeing, they rubbed bacon grease on each egg to give them a glow. The traditional egg-breaking contest left Prophet on top.
Gnome eats her egg with mustard.
And a thought from Marilynne Robinson's When I Was A Child I Read Books that stayed in my head long after my eyes left the page....
What about us was of interest, if we imagine looking at ourselves in retrospect? That we made civilizations, or that we drove them to the ground, reduced them to rubble? I won't pretend that this is a real question. We make wealth, and we destroy it. Our wealth is finally neither more nor less than human well-being. There is no necessary hypothesis; there is no value but what we value. The great temptation of money is that it seems to give us token, markers, by which things and people can be truly said to succeed or fail.
|
|
Rose of Sharon purchased from dear Sue Blackshear at the
Alabama Wildflower Society's annual Native Plant sale.
In my head and notebooks right now...
Hungarian fairies
Henri Barbusse's Hell
Silvina Ocampo in general
the night-life of catalpa trees
the cardinal nesting outside our dining room window
The Eldest's happy bush bean shrubs
rainy day nature journals
Prophet's fascinating "shark tooth"
fuschia: the sound
hellebore, the plant
meeting Madelyn this weekend
half-painted rooms
white as egg shells, the expression
Gnome and Prophet's "Sweet Cedar Club"
the dogwood finale
wilted azalea skirts
blueberry blossoms beginning to fruit
love: the costume
|
|
Without further ado, note that an asterisk marks kid-friendly events. That's not to say kids aren't welcome at all these events but only that kids might be more welcome at some events rather than others.
APRIL 25TH, SATURDAY
Slash Pine Press Writer's Festival
APRIL 26TH, SUNDAY
Innovation Fair at Alabama Museum of Natural History*
APRIL 27, MONDAY
"Love's Labor Lost" film screening at Bama Theatre.
Presented by The Hudson Strode Program
in Renaissance Studies.
APRIL 30, THURSDAY
"13 Paintings" by Marc Burnette
Opening Reception at The Abbey
131 41st Street South in Avondale
Birmingham
|
|
Leather chaps for sale.
My in-laws kept the kids while the King and I escaped to a bed and breakfast in Covington, Georgia. Upon our arrival in this charming small town, we were greeted by loud, incessant revving-up of a biker rally in the square. I considered a pair of leather chaps but decided in favor of a blueberry muffin instead.
Alas, the King could not find a ring in my size.
Wandering back towards the spaceship we witnessed what could only be described as flash mob happening, possibly organized by a coalition of missionaries and Bikers For Jesus. They did a really good job of looking angry and confrontational. Such a good job that I wanted to get away quick before scene went Hamlet.
We checked in to Twelve Oaks, the home that inspired "Twelve Oaks" in the Gone With The Wind film. To show how clueless I can be about all things Scarlett O'Hara, it was the Eldest who made the connection and informed me there was a "Twelve Oaks" in the book by Margaret Mitchell. I looked it up and sure enough-- he was correct. He's never seen the film and I wondering if he's ready to watch it and apply his critical thinking skills against the romantic portrayal of southern antebellum life.
A sitting area in the common area on the third floor.
The common area.
The King found a fridge in the common area where he could leave a bottle of pinot for proper cooling.
Our luxurious Suite Home Alabama bed.
On the first night, we stayed in the Suite Home Alabama on the uppermost floor.
Surveying the writing desk in suite.
It was indescribably relaxing to sit down and write without looking over my shoulder to make sure little ones were doing their assignments or playing safely. To do nothing but let the pen run across the page. There are times when the tension rises between who can run free- words or children- for both require my eyes, my watch, my time. Usually, I choose free children. But it was wonderful to free the words without having to make a choice.
I love the light in the bathroom.
And of course there is nothing like lounging around in a bathrobe that feels like a down comforter. I brushed my teeth at all the recommended hours- a rarity for me.
Breakfast table waits.
Breakfast was delicious: fresh eggs and bacon with home-made strawberry pancakes and whipped cream infused with bourbon and vanilla. The food was wonderful but sitting at a table with friendly strangers was even better. Guests from Portland, California, DC, Germany, and more shared our backgrounds- and our reasons for being here- and wound up leaving the table at 11, two hours after breakfast began.
The sitting area where wine and cheese were served at 5 pm.
Lichen patterns on gravestones..
I was reminded again of how enchanting people can be if you have the time to hear their stories. And I had all the time in the world.
Bankers wear very shiny shoes.
The King had to attend a work-related conference in downtown Atlanta so I had the day to myself. As he shined his shoes, I was reminded how fortunate I am to no longer worry about "work clothes" and business attire and hairstyles- he does the part neither of us particularly admires. It is a birthday gift he gives me every day of our lives in common.
A beautiful and rather serious iris.
I borrowed an umbrella and spent hours walking in the rain without worrying about oncoming traffic and frothy children always tippling, close to spilling into busy streets.
I came across a back alley that led into a large and very old cemetery, so I found a few bricks and sat down to scribble for a spell.
The King is all business in the morning.
Around lunch, I returned to move our luggage into The Salvatore Brothers' Study. Then stole the handful of sunshine hours to sit on a blanket in the backyard and read Robert Musil's journals.
A little chandelier hanging from a trellis in the Twelve Oaks backyard.
Little purple flowers opened their faces towards the sun.
When I brought the King back for a sunset cemetery stroll, the little purple flowers had closed their faces. We are vulnerable to light and dark, wind and rain. Our plant friends have needs as well.
Lo and behold, we stumbled across a house with a Hollywood style marker out front. I felt insufficient for having no idea about "The Vampire Diaries"- what are they and what is the show about?
More beautiful flowers along the way.
|
|
Gardening days... recovering silt.
Reading Neal Postman helps me resist the constant urge to direct my children towards technology. Though I appreciate the technology which enables me to blog-- and to connect to friends who live over the ocean-- I know it is changing my mind, and altering my perception of the world. So I watch it, and myself, with a healthy skepticism.
A few interesting excerpts from Postman's Technopoly: The Surrender of Culture to Technology. We'll start with the underlying (and provocative) premise:
“Technological change is neither additive nor subtractive. It is ecological. I mean “ecological” in the same sense as the word is used by environmental scientists. One significant change generates total change. If you remove the caterpillars from a given habitat, you are not left with the same environment minus caterpillars: you have a new environment, and you have reconstituted the conditions of survival; the same is true if you add caterpillars to an environment that has had none. This is how the ecology of media works as well. A new technology does not add or subtract something. It changes everything.”
"With the rise of Technopoly, one of those thought-worlds disappears. Technopoly eliminates alternatives to itself in precisely the way Aldous Huxley outlined in Brave New World. It does not make them illegal. It does not make them immoral. It does not even make them unpopular. It makes them invisible and therefore irrelevant. And it does so by redefining what we mean by religion, by art, by family, by politics, by history, by truth, by privacy, by intelligence, so that our definitions fit its new requirements. Technopoly, in other words, is totalitarian technocracy.”
“Alfred North Whitehead summed it up best when he remarked that the greatest invention of the nineteenth century was the idea of invention itself. We had learned how to invent things, and the question of why we invent things receded in importance. The idea that if something could be done it should be done was born in the nineteenth century. And along with it, there developed a profound belief in all the principles through which invention succeeds: objectivity, efficiency, expertise, standardization, measurement, and progress. It also came to be believed that the engine of technological progress worked most efficiently when people are conceived of not as children of God or even as citizens but as consumers—that is to say, as markets.”
Dogwood blossoms collage.
".... in Technopoly, all experts are invested with the charisma of priestliness. Some of our priest-experts are called psychiatrists, some psychologists, some sociologists, some statisticians. The god they serve does not speak of righteousness or goodness or mercy or grace. Their god speaks of efficiency, precision, objectivity. And that is why such concepts as sin and evil disappear in Technopoly. They come from a moral universe that is irrelevant to the theology of expertise. And so the priests of Technopoly call sin “social deviance,” which is a statistical concept, and they call evil “psychopathology,” which is a medical concept. Sin and evil disappear because they cannot be measured and objectified, and therefore cannot be dealt with by experts.”
|
|
Believing comes after
there were coverings
who can believe
that we were born without them
he she or it wailing
back the first breath
from a stark reflection
raw and upside-down
early but already
not original
into the last days
and then some way past them
the body that we
are assured is more
than what covers it
is kept covered
out of habit which
is a word for dress
out of custom
which is an alteration
of the older word costume
out of decency
which is handed down
from a word for what
is fitting
apparently we believe
in the words
and through them
but we long beyond them
for what is unseen
what remains out of reach
what is kept covered
with colors and sizes
we hunger
for what is undoubted yet dubious
known to be different
and our fabrics tell
of difference
we dress in difference
calling it ours
[Source: Five Points, 10th Anniversary Issue, Vol. 10]
|
|
While the King was dressing for work this morning, the public radio's annual membership drive drifted over my half-sleeping head. Since April is National Poetry Month- and because I woke up in a world of familiar soft voices- I penned a quick paean to APR which added so much value to my life as a child and continues to inspire my adult version.
sunlight in slivers and slants
golden meanish
geometry of car interiors
glimpsed from a familiar backseat
home between silent scandals
on the morning drive to catholic school
the stories i remember are curious
and calm public radio voices
never at odds with what
sunlight can do if only
we listen
dropped off in a classroom of giggles
and whispers, a baroque brocade
edged with babysitter’s club, barbie talk, who
did what and now the boys don’t like her
now confess: i held the morning drive
against ornate pidgeon voices that made life less
wonder if it's wrong
to believe alabama public radio
enlarged a world that often felt
classroom contra world
too little
To support Alabama Public Radio, take a few minutes to make the call this morning or visit their website. There are so many ways to help. Patronize the local businesses that help keep APR running. Donate your used car. Donate stocks. Or earmark birthday money for grandchildren and join the Leadership Circle. I think it would be such a cool gift to receive as a grandchild- to be a member of the APR Leadership Circle and sustain the radio programs that linger in childhood memory.
|
|
The flower bracts open up.
Last week, the dogwoods began flowering. The flowers themselves are 2 to 3 inches wide, with four bracts. Each bract is notched at the end, leaving the area around the indentation a reddish-brown splash.
What passes for petals are actually bracts, a specialized type of leaf. That said, when we admire dogwood flowers with others, we will generally refer to the bracts as flowers.
The center of what appears to be the flower contains a cluster of the real flowers, small yellow flowers each less than a quarter inch wide. The flowers are monoecious and the cluster size varies from just a few to about two dozen.
|
|
Violet heaven behind the house.
Between polishing, editing, and attacking the Defect/or poetry collection, I steal time for seeds and flowers. It's hard to juggle writing, editing, the foreign country of writing/publishing networks (for which I lack a passport), gardens, homeschooling, social life, reading, travel, etc. etc. but there is not a single one of these moving pieces which I am willing to relinquish. Not even the etc.
Especially not the etc.
So the juggling is a clown show and I think of Norman Manea's writer-as-clown analogies which, pen in one hand and shovel in the other, I am perhaps honing into a local variant.
The year's first grapes-in-the-grass event....
A Sunday afternoon at Lake Nichol.
A windy day on the banks of Lake Nichol where the Gnome secured her first fire ant bites of the year. One lesson I've learned from my nature-hungry kids is that fire ant prevention rarely works. Not with a crew who insists on living and playing at ground level.
MY FIRE ANT REGIMEN.....because every Alabama mom needs one. Here's what works for me.
Beautiful, irrepressible Prophet turns 7.
2015 is not a birthday party year- we alternate years for parties because it keeps them from overwhelming our lives and expectations- and Prophet welcomed her seventh birthday with love letters from family all over the country. Letters and gifts and the feeling of excitement when every package (including the flowers from Bunicu) are delivered for you.
On the morning of her birthday, the kids climbed into bed with me and we talked about how I howled at the moon on the night when she made her appearance in this world. Lunatic. Moon crazy. Crazy for the moon. Moonstruck. All this and more in less than three hours.
Because Prophet was curious, we watched a few videos of puppies giving birth. It was fascinating to compare them with the videos of human female- the same panting, restlessness, and motions as the contractions progressed. Gnome gobbled it up- and both girls wanted to watch again. So we did.
Since the Eldest explained the menstrual cycle to his sisters a few years ago, I've had to settle for second-place in the look-at-what-cool-things-our-bodies-do department. Nevertheless, there was something incredibly tender and sweet about bonding over the story of her birth and reliving with her. It surprised me when she said that was her favorite part of the day- that morning in bed giggling and laughing and talking and sharing.
Prophet craves intimacy, and I love that she can express this without guile or shame. Her presence- this perpetual convergence of head and heart- makes me a better person. Perhaps not always a nicer person.... But more courageous. And happy. Simply happy.
|
|
We spent Friday afternoon in Pinson, Alabama at the amazing Turkey Creek Nature Preserve. Beautiful flora, beautiful people. The Turkey Creek Nature Preserve Manager Charles Yeager made us feel welcome immediately. From the moment we signed the registration form and the Eldest pilfered a yellow notebook, the learning and exploring began.
The Eldest and Erin perch on a rock to wait for fish.
A little history: Turkey Creek Nature Preserve was established through a partnership between Alabama's Forever Wild Program and the Freshwater Land Trust and is co-managed by the Southern Environmental Center (SEC). In late 2008, an agreement was reached with the SEC to setup an environmental education center at the entrance to the preserve.
Spotted dusky salamander
We were impressed by the young, homeschooled herpetologists who found secrets in rock shadows and introduced us to novel forms of amphibian life. The spotted dusky salamander changed colors before our eyes. He was fascinating because his tail was still ridged which the young herpetologist said was related to his unfinished metamorphosis. The salamander had not yet become an adult. We also learned that he was a hard catch because his lifestyle was nocturnal.
Red salamander
Red salamanders have to stay wet in order to survive. We refrained from touching their skin because lotion or perfumes or various chemicals are easily absorbed through their wet skin.
James Bond has nothing on the golden eyes of a red salamander.
Richard Louv, godfather of the Children and Nature Network, has pointed out the importance and value of physical interaction with various species. A sight alone does not forge a relationship-- it is the interaction with other forms of life that nourishes reverence and respect.
The green anole has the amazing capacity to drop its tail in self-defense. Prophet had many questions about this capability so it's on my list of things to learn more about.
Fire pink
Along the rock outcroppings, Zac also pointed out various flowers.
We learned to identify the Sweet meadow beauty by its fine pink lines....
and the Blue phlox by the particular shape of petals which do not spiral.
The Eldest jotted down common names for the life forms he encountered. Part of his assignment involved taking notes and creating a species count/list when we arrived back in Tuscaloosa using only his notes as scaffold. By the time I woke up this morning, he had finished the document below and was very excited to share it with me.
The Eldest used Google Docs to create his list. He's a stickler for fonts.
Amy looks over a shoulder at rue leaves.
Zac showed us how to distinguish rue anemone by its leaves. He also described false anemone.
Rue anemone
The rue anemone flower and its glossy, limpid, duck-foot leaves with a small budding poison ivy plant in the front left quadrant.
This area was protected as a nature preserve. Bioblitzs help identify and educate stewards about the local ecological webs and possible threatened or endangered species.
Fragrant, intoxicating, toxic yellow jessamine blooming in the ecoscape.
Suebee and Pops drove all the way from Atlanta and agreed to meet us at the Bioblitz. I am grateful for the way in which they were 100% troopers-- not a whimper, not a single complaint. We left feeling encouraged, enlightened, excited and inspired-- the words of the stone statue stuck in head like dream shrapnel.
More resources to explore Turkey Creek and Pinson:
Trail map of Turkey Creek Nature Preserve (Forever Wild)
Turkey Creek Nature Preserve Facebook Page
2015 Bioblitz Species Count as typed and compiled by The Eldest
|
|
Two jam jars I saved for dried mint and herbs-- how they insinuate more than the sunlight they swallow.
In Greek, “epiphaneia” meant the appearance of a divinity among mortals or the recognition of a divinity in a male or female mortal form. The epiphany revealed the divine in one morsel of reality. It reduced the distance between sacred and profane.
Generally, the epiphany as recognition is less fabled than the epiphany as appearance, which we know most quickly and accessibly as Christ, the word made flesh.
My affection for thistles and underdog flora.
But the Eldest was sketching epiphanies today which inspired me to spend a little time admiring the light, its refracted returns. A collection of tiny epiphanies in which I discover the material story does not account for my attraction...
The pebble moves in my pocket: a turtle, the first point in a series of ellipses, or the last word, solid and definite.
Blaise Pascal: “Runaway thought, I wanted to write it; instead I wrote that it has run away.."
What I learn from watching its gait, the way it runs suggests second thoughts. And a second thought is perhaps a thought that wants to come back.
In a letter on November 8, 1915, Rilke asks “how are we to approach the god from the space that lies in front of him?”
The pebble, the pocket, the runaway thought returning as a second thought.
Sight is subjective- perpetually un-shareable. But the gaze itself is divine. The gaze divines more than the sight.
My head is thick with thistles and similar prickly charms, saved for later.
|
|
Gnome finds a frame at Railroad Park.
A few weeks back, we wandered around Railroad Park in Birmingham and the kids found so many things to touch, see, and explore. The goofiness was contagious.
Shadows and light.
In 1952, the dearly beloved Dr. Seuss published an essay on writing for children and how it differed from writing for adults. It's brilliant and inspiring and reminder not to regulate laughter. As we know, regulated laughter easily morphs into cynicism or absurdism.
When you were a kid named Willy or Mary the one thing you did better than anything else was laugh. The one thing you got more fun out of than anything else was laughing. Why, I don’t know. Maybe it has to do with juices. And when somebody knew how to stir those juices for you, you really rolled on the floor. Remember? Your sides almost really did split. Remember. You almost went crazy with the pain of having fun. You were a terrible blitz to your family. So what? Your juices were juicing. Your lava was seething. Your humor was spritzing. You really were living.
At that age you saw life through very clear windows. Small windows, of course. But very bright windows.
And, then, what happened?
You know what happened.
The grown-ups began to equip you with shutters. Your parents, your teachers, your everybody-around-you, your all-of-those-people who loved you and adored you * * * they decided your humor was crude and too primitive. You were laughing too loud, too often and too happily. It was time you learned to laugh with a little more restraint.
They began pointing out to you that most of this wonderful giddy nonsense that you laughed at wasn’t, after all, quite as funny as you thought.
“Now why,” they asked, “are you laughing at that? It’s completely pointless and utterly ridiculous.”
“Nonsense,” they told you, “is all right in its place. But it’s time you learned how to keep it in its place. There’s much more in this world than just nonsense.”
Your imagination, they told you, was getting a bit out of hand. Your young unfettered mind, they told you, was taking you on too many wild flights of fancy. It was time your imagination got its feet down on the ground. It was time your version of humor was given a practical, realistic base. They began to teach you their versions of humor. And the process of destroying your spontaneous laughter was under way.
A strange thing called conditioned laughter began to take its place. Now, conditioned laughter doesn’t spring from the juices. It doesn’t even spring. Conditioned laughter germinates, like toadstools on a stump.
And, unless you were a very lucky little Willy or Mary, you soon began to laugh at some very odd things. Your laughs, unfortunately, began to get mixed in with sneers and smirks.
This conditioned laughter the grown-ups taught you depended entirely upontheir conditions. Financial conditions. Political conditions. Racial, religious and social conditions. You began to laugh at people your family feared or despised — people they felt inferior to, or people they felt better than.
If your father said a man named Herbert Hoover was an ass, and asses should be laughed at, you laughed at Herbert Hoover. Or, if you were born across the street, you laughed at Franklin Roosevelt. Who they were, you didn’t know. But the local ground rules said you were to laugh at them. In the same way, you were supposed to guffaw when someone told a story which proved that Swedes are stupid, Scots are tight, Englishmen are stuffy and the Mexicans never wash.
Your laughs were beginning to sound a little tinny. Then you learned it was socially advantageous to laugh at Protestants and/or Catholics. You readily learned, according to your conditions, that you could become the bright boy of the party by harpooning a hook into Jews (or Christians), labor (or capital), or the Turnverein or the Strawberry Festival.
You still laughed for fun, but the fun was getting hemmed in by a world of regulations. You were laughing at subjects according to their listing in the ledger. Every year, as you grew older, the laughs that used to split your sides diminished. The ledger furnished more sophisticated humor. You discovered a new form of humor based on sex. Sex, a taboo subject, called for very specialized laughter. It was a subject that was never considered funny in large gatherings. It was a form of humor you never indulged in at Sunday school. It was a form of humor that was subtle and smart and you learned to restrict it for special friends.
And, by the time you had added that accomplishment to your repertoire, you know what had happened to you, Willy or Mary? Your capacity for healthy, silly, friendly laughter was smothered. You’d really grown up. You’d become adults * * * adults, which is a word that means obsolete children.
Read the rest at Nine Kinds of Pie, Phil Nel's blog.
The Eldest cavorts atop a see-saw.
As for Railroad Park, you should go there. And bring a bike.
|
|
Help save the monarch butterflies with the National Wildlife Foundation's Butterfly Heroes Program. One goofy photo makes a difference.
Upload a photo of you, making the American Sign Language sign for butterfly, as your pledge to help the Monarch butterfly. The sign for butterfly is made by linking your thumbs and crossing your two hands in front of you at the wrists with your palms facing you. After taking the pledge, you will receive a Butterfly Garden Starter Kit, while supplies last. Once you have your kit, learn how to garden and watch your wildlife garden bloom!
|
|
Go where those others went to the dark boundaryfor the golden fleece of nothingness your last prizego upright among those who are on their kneesamong those with their backs turned and those toppled in the dustyou were saved not in order to liveyou have little time you must give testimonybe courageous when the mind deceives you be courageousin the final account only this is importantand let your helpless Anger be like the seawhenever you hear the voice of the insulted and beatenlet your sister Scorn not leave youfor the informers executioners cowards—they will winthey will go to your funeral and with relief will throw a lump of earththe woodborer will write your smoothed-over biographyand do not forgive truly it is not in your powerto forgive in the name of those betrayed at dawnbeware however of unnecessary pridekeep looking at your clown’s face in the mirrorrepeat: I was called—weren’t there better ones than Ibeware of dryness of heart love the morning springthe bird with an unknown name the winter oaklight on a wall the splendour of the skythey don’t need your warm breaththey are there to say: no one will console yoube vigilant—when the light on the mountains gives the sign—arise and goas long as blood turns in the breast your dark starrepeat old incantations of humanity fables and legendsbecause this is how you will attain the good you will not attainrepeat great words repeat them stubbornlylike those crossing the desert who perished in the sandand they will reward you with what they have at handwith the whip of laughter with murder on a garbage heapgo because only in this way will you be admitted to the company of cold skullsto the company of your ancestors: Gilgamesh Hector Rolandthe defenders of the kingdom without limit and the city of ashesBe faithful Go
|
|
The days of rain and clover.
Marrying left your maiden name disused.
Its five light sounds no longer mean your face,
Your voice, and all your variants of grace;
For since you were so thankfully confused
By law with someone else, you cannot be
Semantically the same as that young beauty:
It was of her that these two words were used.
Now it's a phrase applicable to no one,
Lying just where you left it, scattered through
Old lists, old programmes, a school prize or two,
Packets of letters tied with tartan ribbon -
Then is it scentless, weightless, strengthless wholly
Untruthful? Try whispering it slowly.
No, it means you. Or, since your past and gone,
It means what we feel now about you then:
How beautiful you were, and near, and young,
So vivid, you might still be there among
Those first few days, unfingermarked again.
So your old name shelters our faithfulness,
Instead of losing shape and meaning less
With your depreciating luggage laden.
|
|
The self-styled "Edgar Allen Poe" breaking it down at the Tuscaloosa Unitarian Congregation's costume party. Live music by the Bonaires.
Hanging small creations by the household elves who create more than a human could possibly hang...
I am grateful for the honor of being Negative Capability Press' first feature poet. You can see the poem- inspired by local artist Sue Blackshear- on the website for another week or so.
In the sketchbooks: the Gnomes' cross-hatched pebbles.
Exploring the massive magnolia trees on the property of the old Bryce hospital, surrounded by the chorus of red wing blackbirds.
|
|
This coming Saturday, for those who live in the Tuscaloosa area, we will be hosting a bibliophile's book sale from 8 am to 1 pm.
The proceeds will go toward our long-time dream of buying a Little Free Library for the front yard so we can share our books with friends and neighbors. Because how many times have you wanted to share a really good book with anyone who wanted to read a really good book?
I'll post titles and books throughout the week. $1. Oh, and the Eldest has informed me that there might be a fresh iced mint tea stand (made with mint dried from our herb garden) as well for other good causes (which he has yet to spell out).
More details at the Facebook event page. Drop by and pick up some books. Because the world is made truer, richer, and more beautiful for all the books in our minds to help us through the intractable or complicated times.
|
|
And that's all I have to say about Roy Moore and the cruelty of privileging heterosexuals in state-sponsored marriage.
|
|
Our duck tales aren't quite as sadistic or controversial as the primetime variety, but they fill a certain admiring space in the soul-- a space we call "school".
Good-looking folks, I say, even their shadows look handsome and well-feathered.
"Are they asking for food?" This was Gnome's burning question.
Prophet felt certain this vociferous feathered friend was going to nip her. I didn't think it was likely, but I wasn't sure so I decided to wait until we returned to find out if ducks do bite.
The day's learning laid itself out when Prophet expressed fear of being bitten and I couldn't distinguish clearly between geese and ducks, biters or not-biters.
Geese have teeth. Geese are also very territorial. Don't mess with a vocal gander.
Click on the image above to download the
free 3-page duck v. goose learning packet.
|
|
From my sketchbook musings..
Playing with dada and surrealism in my sketchbook and finding new fascinations to exploit, including the "optophone", an extinct early bit of technology with varied symbolic potentials.
The optophone is a device, used by the blind, that scans text and generates time-varying chords of tones to identify letters. It is one of the earliest known applications of sonification. Dr. Edmund Fournier d'Albe of Birmingham University invented the optophone in 1913, which used selenium photosensors to detect black print and convert it into an audible output which could be interpreted by a blind person. (Wikipedia)
The Israeli press describes a new and improved optophone ("Opto-Phone") designed by Zev Zavlesky that allows you to eavesdrop on conversations 100 feet away using laser beams.
I'm so taken in by the old school optophone right now- electrical circuitry and simple lines- that I printed this aged model as a coloring page for the little people. Eager to see how they'll "improve" upon it, perhaps with colors or collages.
|
|
Gnome's 2D and 3D sketchbook exercises.
We started with a lesson the previous day in 2D and 3D shapes. The final product was a mushroom, such an easy thing to draw and demonstrate the difference between dimensions.
Gnome's fantastic bowl of fruit.
Then on to a still life: a bowl of fruit, the simplest sketch exercise ever. But a favorite at the world's smallest, messiest castle.
Gnome added cherries and she couldn't resist from including a mushroom as well-- "even though it's not a fruit, mommy".
Prophet's rainbow bowl of fruit.
Prophet included strawberries alongside her cherries. She worked very hard to cross-hatch the colors. She wanted them the color pencils to "hatch so much they made the paper shiny."
Meanwhile, the Eldest revealed his portrait of Simon the dog. Impressive. The cock of head really gave me a sense of Simon's character, perhaps affable, interested, slightly gooofy, ready to play.
If only school was sketching and creative writing all day every day...
|
|
Bunica and Bunicu both sent flowers for v-day, and we've been watching the tulips open up a little more each day.
It makes for the perfect sketchbook prompt, this slow and steady tulip story.
We played with words as well, adjectives describing the different tulip faces (shy, tender, gallant, curious, delicate, etc.) and verbs to describe how the tulip occupies space in the world (shrug, bend, waver, falter, assert, transfigure, unwind...).
Prophet complained about not being able to hit the right shade of crimson in her sketchbook- not finding "the tulip's hair color"- so I encouraged her to cross-hatch a few shades of red, purple, and orange colored pencils but she was still not pleased with the final result. Perhaps you can get the picture without a picture?
|
|
Stopping along a very windy dirt road along Black Warrior Road, the Eldest bundles up. He spotted an American Kestrel a few minutes after I snapped this photo.
A nodding donkey took a nap nearby.
Our field trip to Sanders Ferry Road was inspired by the Alabama Birding Trails website, a terrific resource for birdwatchers and nature lovers in general. The West Alabama trails map included a myriad of local nature study hideaways but the Sanders Ferry Road inspiration came from a post on the Bird Talk blog.
The afternoon light didn't add red shades to the ashy white palette of the field.
An unidentified bird with a large wing span dipped through the shrubs. Can you see it hiding? Well-camouflaged, isn't it?
Prophet beat the Eldest to the deer track identification. We thought it might be a hind foot.
Imagine the bales.
Late winter colors along Black Warrior Road where a man stood in the road and stared us down until we drove away. Nature study can be quite a risky endeavor in a state where property rights trump human rights every single time.
GPS coordinates for Sanders Ferry Road: 33.1645525 -87.6788507
Plug in, pack the binoculars, and tune out the media out. And here's some interesting local history for the Sanders Ferry Road trip:
News article about Old Sanders Ferry Road six miles south of Coker (Tuscaloosa News, 23 July 1989)
Matthew William Clinton explains how Sanders Ferry Road was involved in Tuscaloosa's earliest recorded history (Tuscaloosa Early Days)
Druid City Bicycle Club rides this way
|
|
As an exercise for the Eldest in percentages and social science, I created a handout listing all the EPA Superfund sites for Tuscaloosa, Alabama and nearby. (Download it below if you'd like to go on this adventure with your kids.)
Superfund Sites as listed in 1997 (PDF)
I explained that the list was compiled in 1997. Our first topic of discussion was what had changed in our community since 1997- new businesses, companies, manufacturing plants, facilities, etc.- and which ones might be added to the new list as a result.
RESEARCH QUESTIONS
Read and note the 2003 Uniform Environmental Covenants Act co-authored by William Henning, a professor at the University of Alabama Law School. How do you think this Act will help reduce or remediate environmental problems in our state? What are its limitations? Why might the drafting authors have agreed to settle for these limitations? Explain.
Warrior Asphalt Company is located in our zip code. According to the EPA website, a rosin spill was discovered in 1981. Review the online timeline of how this hazardous spill was monitored and assessed. In 2013, an administrative order on consent was issued. What does this mean? What might you expect to see next on the timeline? Why? Also why does the website say "NFRAP-Site does not qualify for the NPL based on existing information"? What does this mean?
In 2011, a Tuscaloosa Tornado Response was issued for 3700 KAULOOSA AVENUE and an on-site removal was conducted by Leo Francendese. What chemical or hazardous material was removed? How do you know? How might you find out? Why would this information remain unlisted?
What hazard did KMG Bermuth leave in the community?
Fuels and Chemicals, located in Coaling, Alabama, has an extensive case history with the EPA beginning in 1993 and last updated in 2009. What was the most recent action noted on the website? What was the result?
In 1998, Reliance Steel, located in nearby Cottondale, was added to the active site list. Using the data on the EPA website, provide a two-paragraph summary of the incident, the problem, the company itself, and what is being done to address it.
In 1988, a severe lead-based pollution was recorded at Central Foundry. Unlike other sites, this one is now listed as a federal site. What is currently located at the Central Foundry site (hint: use Google maps to help).
What was the Norfolk Railroad "SH release" in 2002? Do research through online news sources to see if the press covered the incident. Take notes. The incident itself was resolved in just one day. What was the "potentially responsible party emergency removal"?
The Alabama Dept. of Environmental Management is preparing to issue a consent order to Billy Boyd Realty and Construction Company. Why? Study the online document.
|
|
One handmade card for woof-lovers.
Our co-op is having a Valentine's Party and I'm not going to deprive my kids of something they anticipate and enjoy just because 36 years of life has taught me to depreciate Hallmark holidays. That said, there are ways to keep from supporting the consumerist aspect by making our valentine's cards by hand.
SUPPLIES
wax paper
a nature walk in which you collect leaves and petals
dish clothes to dry leaves
an iron
scissors
twine
a hole punch or stapler (I used both)
1. Pick up as many neat leaves, flower petals, and handsome detritus as you can find. Look for leaves that aren't too thick- leaves that hold a lot of water will take longer to dry.
2. Dry them off and flatter. Then arrange on a square of wax paper (make sure no two items are touching as this creates air bubbles. Place another piece of wax paper on top.
3. Set iron on lowing setting to carefully iron over until the wax adheres to itself. Then use a scissor to cut a clean border shape. Try a square, a vase, a circle, a heart- whatever suits your whimsy.
Gnome arranged this one to look like little man using dried rose petals and rose leaves from the backyard bushes. We dried the rose petals last summer...
This one was made from wildflowers dried last spring. So nice to anticipate their blooms again...
|
|
For kids on the autism spectrum, knowing how to ask for help (and how to offer it) is complicated. The Eldest says he's more inclined to step in and "do it for someone" without any explanation. In other words, he's inclined to give help without offering.
Alas, this contributes to misunderstandings and misconstruals so I put together a little activity inspired by an activity I found on the Teaching Tolerance website).
Gnome needed help to cross the ditch. The King lent a hand.
First flipped through recent photos and tried to identify scenes in which someone needed or gave help. Then we flipped through them again and looked for scenes where someone could have used help but the need went unrecognized.
Then we role-played how we might have offered help in those moments.
Finally, the kids filled out their own copies of the activity sheet (I was the Gnome's magic pen who transcribed her words.)
Download your own copy below.
SOMETIMES I HELP ACTIVITY (PDF)
Shhhhhh.... of course it's free. Haven't you figured out that every single worksheet, lesson plan, unit study, coloring page, and feeling on this website is free?
|
|
The Eldest and his best friend, E., wood-burned this sign for the backyard fence. I discovered it a few days ago.
Since there are no fewer than five painted wooden birdhouses in our backyard, I take it the sign refers to the bird houses.
"Uh, sure mom," responds the Eldest when I ask about the sign. The tenor in his voice suggests there are other things which matter more than questions about signs posted to fences.
|
|
| Sun | Mon | Tue | Wed | Thu | Fri | Sat |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | |
| 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 |
| 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 |
| 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 | 27 |
| 28 | 29 | 30 | 31 |
