[Un]Cannery Row

Treatise on Love

2012-02-13T14:45:00.000-08:00

I[heart] you. Blech. Phooey. Let’s not talk about how, on this one day of theyear, we will all pause to remember that we love our girlfriend/boyfriend,spouse, partner, etc. (or that many of us forget it the other 364 days), as westuff our faces with Brach’s mystery chocolates and watch our Wal-Mart roseswilt. Let’s talk about the real deal—the kind of lasting love that takes work,effort, elbow grease. EVERY day is the day for that.

Rayand I have been together for 26 years, married for 23 of those. I don’t think he’dmind me telling you that, like many long-together couples, we are usually somewhere onthe relationship Matterhorn—that roller coaster of ups, downs, occasionalblessed straightaways, twists, and a black-out tunnel every now & then.There are days when Ray doesn’t like me much—I am decidedly unlikeable somedays. There are days when I don’t like him. There are days when we’re bothfuming and retreat to our respective hidey-holes for hours of sizzling silence.But we NEVER stop loving each other, and that’s because we’re both committed tothe work.

Inthe giddy flush of new love, humans somehow become convinced (volcanic brainactivity caused by too much dopamine, I believe) that love is spontaneous,effervescent…that it magically bubbles up as a refreshing, cleansing mist ofgoodness & light from cracks in the earth, or it rains down on us in suddendelightful showers of…oh, I dunno…happy, Smurfy, tickly glitter. And yeah, Itotally LOVED that all-too-brief phase. But PHASE is the key word.

Oncethat dopamine rush levels off, you’d better roll up your sleeves. Becausesuddenly, you’re gonna notice the toilet seat’s up, or he left the space heateron, or she forgot to pay the light bill, or he brought home another strayanimal, or…huh? When did you start living in pink sweats and an old gas stationshirt?

Thereal work is holding ever-present in your mind the notion that you signed onfor the long haul. Yes, you might throw up going down that next roller-coaster freefall,but once you reach the bottom, you will still be alive (and sometimes, with arenewed sense of the thrill). Most of the time, you have to willfully, consciously, remember what you loveabout each other. You have to listen—find out about, and tend to, each other’sneeds, even when you don’t feel like it. Even when you just downloaded a newmystery on your Kindle. You have to stick it out. As my friend LuLu says, thesecret to a lasting marriage is not getting divorced.

Ishould say here that it takes TWO of you working. Sadly, no amount of workingon your own can save love from someone who’s already (mentally, at least)jumped off the ride.

Forthe rest of us, yes, the bloom WILL come off the rose eventually. This willhappen even to those of you deep in the dopamine/endorphin throes, vowingthat YOUR love will always be flame & fireworks.But know that in the coming years, if you do the work—and it’s DAILY work—you’llend up with a more profound sense oftrust, an amazing shared history, and a more peaceful and abiding kind of love than you knew was possible.

AndI know I’m badly mixing metaphors here, but don’t throw out the rose—every bluemoon, it will suddenly, mysteriously burst into full bloom. Just this morning, forexample, I noticed that Ray had scrubbed shiny-clean the glass top stove when Iwasn’t looking. I smiled and thought, “Happy Valentine’s Day.”

Midlife Mayhem: to Hell and Back

2012-01-21T10:57:00.000-08:00

Iknow this topic is taboo for many people ("nice" people don't mention it in public), but I’m pretty sure a reality TV show aboutmenopausal women…let’s call it MidlifeMayhem: to Hell and Back…would be an instant hit and a sponsor'sgoldmine.

Forone thing, it would be educational. Perky, oblivious, it'll-never-happen-to-me younger women need to know what's in store. And men forced to cohabit with midlife womenwould finally make sense of the roilingcauldron their lives have become (some female partners get it but are no less afraid).It would be exciting. Most people would be stunned…enthralled…captivated by the bizarrebehaviors of which midlife women are capable. It would be suspenseful. The physical/emotional/behavioralmidlife roller coaster ride would absolutely thrill viewers with its unbelievabletwists & turns. And special “cliffhanger” episodes could put a bunch of midlife women togetherin one small, enclosed space. These episodes could involve non-stopbaking, wild, uncoordinated hormonal swings, and knitting needles. They could NOT be done live, as they would put a studioaudience in grave danger and present liability headaches for sponsors.

OneMM episode could follow a couple through a single day at home. Our protagonist,let’s call her Eve, is freezing and cranks up the thermostat. Her partnersneaks by and turns it down. They repeat this several times. Then, Eve’s internal blast-furnace suddenly fires up(fluctuating hormones cause her pilot light to go out, flame on, go out, flameon, etc., throughout the day & night). She breaks out in a sweat, until herhair is stuck to her forehead. She strips down to B & B (briefs & bra)and throws her clothes at the dog. She turns the thermostat to "off."Her head snaps around like a hunting raptor’s until she spots her partner,cowering, quaking, in a dark corner of the living room. She smiles and says,“Want some cheesecake, honey?” About an hour later, just as her partner resumesbreathing normally, the cycle begins again.

Infraredcameras will track the couple throughout the night, where the fun continues.Our protagonist alternately hogs all the covers (occasionally adding six downblankets to the pile) and throws all the blankets on the floor on HER side ofthe bed. She curses in her sleep and does NOT wake up to retrieve the covers, ajob that falls to her exhausted partner. This nightmare, by the way, explainswhy most early TV couples, instead of one marital bed, had paired twin beds—thespace between the beds acts as a sort of “safety buffer” for the beleagueredpartner. They didn’t call her Mrs. Cleaver for nothing.

Anotherepisode could involve Eve suddenly taking off one day for the regional zoo.For the entire day, no one knows where she’s gone. Frantic phone calls buzzfrom cell tower to cell tower in an attempt to locate her, while she’s at thezoo, weeping and taking closeup photos of every beastly mother. In betweenshots, she stuffs her face with greasy popcorn. She tries to climb the fence atthe gibbon enclosure. She offers a mother hippo money and a scarf. She tells adrooling tiger about her deep regret at not becoming a ballet dancer. Humanparents quickly steer their strollered children away, giving Eve a wide berth.They report her to zoo officials. By the time numerous reports lead zoosecurity to track her down, she’s driving through McDonald’s forsuper-sized fries and a chocolate shake on her way home.

TheHalloween episode might find Eve's partner hiding all the sharp kitchenutensils, as Eve berates The Entire Planet for its continuing discriminationagainst women. Her partner runs for the basement, as Eve’s tirade turnspersonal, condemning her partner for not vacuuming out the toaster. Eve issuddenly overcome with love & gratitude at the mere idea of decorativemeasuring spoons. She calls sweetly, but her partner mumbles something about“groceries…milk…sedatives…” and makes it out the back door. It’s seven degrees. Eve’s partner is wearing a t-shirt and pajama pants but doesn’t feel the cold. Eve bastes sweet & sour ribs and hums “You Are My Sunshine.”

TheValentine’s Day episode will show the folly of Eve’s partner attempting to saysomething nice. Eve is still unfamiliar with and horrified by her new midlifebody—the carb-inflated monster truck tire around her middle, the thinninguncooperative hair, the wrinkies around her mouth and eyes that make her lookperpetually aghast, the flesh that must now (thanks to half a lifetime ofgravity) be corralled, hoisted, and carefully positioned in clothes that canonly be categorized as “stretchy,” the libido that switches randomly andwithout warning between “You’ve GOT to be kidding me” and “NOW!” and thefailing eyesight that makes her squint like a mole. Through the first half ofthe episode, her partner makes unsuccessful attempts to pay Eve sincere,heartfelt compliments, finally giving up and taking a nap. Through the lasthalf of the episode, Eve cries and throws dishes because no one ever everever says anything nice about her anymore.

I’mtelling you, Midlife Mayhem: to Hell andBack would be a blockbuster. It would have everything: love, sex, food,danger, humor, stuff broken or blown up, and all-out war. It would be an advertisingdream, sandwiched between Dr. Oz's latest midlife “skin recovery” methodand Dr. Ruth's “spice it up” sex advice for folks over 50.

The show would have an instant, enormous Facebook fan club. Women would sport "I {heart} Eve" hoodies. Kitchen knives would come in pink. Vid clip montages of Eve alternately screaming and cooing would go viral on YouTube.

YOU would TOTALLY watch it. I wouldn’t watch it, though—I’m kinda “burnt out” on reality(cue maniacal cackling).

The Winter of Our Discontent

2012-01-16T12:37:00.000-08:00

Thiswinter will certainly go down in the Annals of the Bizarre here on the Row…aconfounding conflagration of calamity…a sheit-storm of Really, Universe?Really?!?

Takethe weather. Last week, on the day of The Great 2012 Tuneup (see previouspost), it was a sun-soaked, record-breaking, 62-degree day in Sioux Falls. Icould have sunbathed in my bikini on the veranda of the Heart Hospital, thoughthat might have been too much (literally & figuratively) for a few too-fragile hearts, scaring them into permanent OFF.

We’ve had very littlesnow so far, and the landscape remains mostly brown and gold. No icy roads, nowhite-out blizzards, no waiting for Tractor Man to dig us out. Corn-fusedpea-boys are out fanning their half-grown tail feathers (they won’t have fullygrown new “trains” until spring) in the faces of bewildered peahens. And Ishould be celebrating Mother Nature’s beneficence, but I recently read that theincidence of depression actually increasesin northern climes during unusually mild winters, since there’s no snow toreflect what little SAD-preventing light we count on up here. Time to breakout the full-spectrum bulbs and vitamin D.

Ortake our peaflock. By mid-summer we had 29 peacocks—18 adults and 11 chicks.Then came The Marauder(s). Over the next few months, peas began to disappear.Or we’d come home to a half-eaten carcass. The first couple grisly scenes madeus think it was a furry predator. Then we woke to a pile of cleanly-plucked feathersbelow a tree branch, which made us thinkit was a raptor or very big owl. Then finding three or four headless butotherwise intact peabodies (I found the most recent headless peahen today) made us think raccoons. I finally decided that alocal thug-critter got word out that the Row is a free, all-you-can-eat pea smorgasbord—apeaffet—and that we’re completely surrounded by predatory wildlife. So I didwhat any rebel farmwife would do: I wrapped the Roosting Tree with blinkingChristmas lights. This strategy worked for a few days, until a squirrel chewedthrough the wire (paid off by the coyote down the road, I’m sure). Anyway,we’re down to 13 adult peacocks--not a single surviving summer chick. Some well-meaning friends suggest that Mother Naturesimply knew I was in way over my head and “helped” me restore balance. Butthat’s a net loss of 16 peas in ONE season! So while I’m not a violent person,I’m now shopping for a patio duck blind/paintball gun combo.

Back to The Great 2012 Tuneup. In addition to Ray’s heart nudge (“attack” sounds so deliberate), my friend’s surgery to remove what she calls a “non-benign visitor”from her colon, and my other friend’s mom ending up as Ray’s roomie down thehall at the Heart Hospital, my oldest brother has had at least three surgerieson his eyeball this winter to repair (and repair and repair) a detached retina.This is unsettling because (1) he’s in Ecuador, where I can’t just pop over tohelp out, (2) he has to spend most of his time face-down and isn’t supposed touse his eye for a while, and (3) he makes his living working mostly as anonline travel writer, which is hard to do if you’re not supposed to LOOK atanything. Then, Mom had to have a couple of teeth pulled. Dangerous, because Iknow a person can only stand so much blended split-pea soup before he or sheloses it completely and starts trying to train his or her little dog to sing“Battle Hymn of the Republic.” Amid all this, Ihad to keep plugging away to get ready for a new semester. Also, since about New Year’s, I’ve had the SouthDakota Respiratory Plague, which means my best friends are Emergen-C, Advil,Puffs, Nyquil, chicken soup and my heating pad.

It's not one stressful event that does us in; it's the pile-up, when we don't have enough time between stressful events to recover or rally. So I’vebeen in a sort of stunned pre-hibernation mode lately. I've been “closing ranks,” as myMom would say. Holing up. Hiding out. Yes, I know there are bigger things going on out there in the Great Wide World and I may be thinking a little too locally. Yes, I know it’s only January. And yes, I know JackBlizzard’s probably in Wessington Springs right now, having a beer and plottingon his bar napkin a trajectory that will lead him directly to our door. But for now, if I don't answer my door or my phone, it's because I'm curled up in a blanket-wrapped ball, knitting peacock chain maille and contemplatingwhat surely will continue to be one mighty strange winter.

Big and Broken Heart

2012-01-08T14:17:00.000-08:00

Back to my “crapshoot” theory of life. Think of any heartattack you’ve ever seen on TV or in films; it probably looked like this: A guysuddenly clutches his chest then drops over dead. As Tim O’Brien’s characterKiowa says, “Boom. Down.” And the guy is usually 150 pounds overweight, and he’seither choking down a ½-pound double bacon cheeseburger at the time, or he’shaving a red-faced screaming match with a mobster, right? Well, once again, Rayand I have been lovingly kicked in the arse as a reminder that real life is notlike the movies.

Ray had his first heart attack ten years ago, at age 50. Rayis not overweight. He’s fit and exercises regularly. Our diet includes verylittle fat (and rarely anything but olive oil), loads of whole grains and vegetables,little red meat, as much organic stuff as we can get here in South Dakota, and Ray has been eating only fresh fruit till noon every day for many years. Weboth drink liters of water daily. Seriously…we couldn’t eat more tofu and tabouli if we tried.

The day of Ray’s first heart attack, he was at work when, mid-morning,he had a bellyache. He thought he had gas, and he felt faint. He called me andsaid he didn’t feel “right.” I told him to eat an aspirin and I’d pick him up.We went to the ER, and sure enough, he was having a heart attack. By the timethe whole adventure was over, he’d had a couple of stents to get some temporaryheart-healing blood flow, then quadruple bypass surgery to get around eightblockages in his coronary arteries.

His second heart attack was last week. He’d been havingoccasional heartburn for a month or more. It woke him up a couple of morningsbut went away if he got up and moved around. Then one morning, it wouldn’t goaway. It was right in the middle of his chest, and he described it as a slightburning sensation—hence, the heartburn—and he said, again, he just didn’t feel“right.” He took an aspirin and we headed to town to see the doc. An ER visit,ambulance ride, and hospitalization later, he now has a new stent in one of theoriginal bypass grafts that had slowly closed down to around 99% blocked.

Ironically, I had been planning to spend the day of Ray’sprocedure with a friend in the waiting room of another hospital, where hiswife, our friend, was having surgery that morning. He and my mom had waited with methrough Ray’s bypass surgery years before, and it had been a great comfort, so I waslooking forward to doing the same for him. Alas, the best laid plans... Itall got even more comical when I discovered another friend’s mom threedoors down from Ray in the same hospital, in to have her heart meds adjusted.So now I’m calling the whole affair The Great 2012 Tuneup. It will be causefor a new party each January—one with heart-healthy red wine and a delightfulassortment of low-fat, high-fiber, organic, flax-encrusted hors d'oeuvres.

Anyway, here’s the thing, people: A heart attack isn’tnecessarily a single, sudden, isolated event. It may sneak up slowly, givinglittle warning signs that most of us would probably ignore. Ray didn’t have ANYof the classical symptoms this time: faintness, shortness of breath, radiatingpain or ache in the arms, back or neck, clamminess, cold sweats, tightness orpressure in the chest. All he had was a little heart burn.

Ray’s home for a week of R & R now, and he’s feeling fine.We’re grateful he didn’t need another bypass re-do (they tell us the average“life” of bypass grafts is ten years, after which some patients need theprocedure re-done. Since it involves cracking the chest and stopping &re-starting the heart, we’d like to avoid that). We’re also grateful for yetanother reminder never to take life—or each other—for granted.

So now we’ll both take aspirin daily. We’ll both carrynitroglycerin in our backpacks. Maybe we’ll institute an evening constitutionalto get in a little more exercise. And we’ll pay close attention to anythingthat doesn’t feel “right.”

I’m puzzled when I see people whose lifestylesor body conditions scream “heart attack!” but who have NOT furnished a wing inthe Heart Hospital, as Ray probably has by now. I'm amazed at the powerful influence of a few crummy genes. I’m befuddled by how crafty,subtle, slow or cleverly disguised a heart attack can be. I’m baffled that itcan happen to lean, fit folks leading healthy lives. But then I remember thelesson Life keeps throwing like an adorable little grenade in our path…it’s alla crapshoot.

Get thee behind me, cookies. (Oh wait...)

2011-12-31T07:12:00.000-08:00

It’s New Year’s Eve, and I’m still in R & R (rest &recovery) mode after Semester kicked my sorry arse to the curb. By earlyNovember, I felt weighted down by concrete debris. By mid-November, I waspraying cadaver dogs would find me under the rubble in time togradegradegrade whilst preparing for Thanksgiving. Then, as soon as I wasbreathing again, it was time to do end-of-semester test writing, student orgwrap-up, anxious student calming, and gradegradegrading, whilst simultaneouslygetting ready for eleven people at the Row for Christmas. This meant alsofinding time to put up the tree, decorate, and tackle my half-finished pileof homemade gifts: Wine to label, knit hats and malas to finish,cookies & granola to bake, and jam jars to wash and wrap in festive holidayfabric.

Whiny, I know. But it’s all just to explain that fromNovember on, stress led me directly to near-total hermitting and my typicalend-of-year CC diet (carbs and coffee). By December, I had a much fluffiersilhouette and mild but alarming tachycardia. Then came the cookies: Chocolate Espresso Spritz, molasses gingersnaps,my mom’s famous sugar cookies, and her delightful cornflake holly cookies (withred hots for berries, of course). Add to that Mom’s gallons of Chex Mix, alittle Bailey’s and eggnog to soothe the nerves, and various kinds of nacho cheesedoodles & chips, and one can see why, since late December, I’ve been gluedto my Lazy-Girl in a carb-induced, heart-skipping near-coma.

To make matters worse, I had a long list of things I’dhoped to accomplish over break. But I’ve mostly been watching Finding Bigfoot or AncientAliens (that guy’s gotta know his hair makes it impossible to take himseriously, right?), mechanically moving Chex Mix from bag to mouth. Just a big‘ole furry blanket-covered slug.

But hope springs eternal. Tonight, whenRay’s band cuts loose at our Little Town watering hole, I’ll be there withbells on—literally. I will not be making resolutions. I will not be turningover any new leaves. I will gratefully be letting go of stress & anxiety bycelebrating, laughing and singing with dear friends. I will be seriouslyshaking my lumpy, ever-expanding money-maker. I will pry loose the evil adiposefrom its home on my thighs and offer it up to the dancing goddess of the NewYear.

Tomorrow? Maybe I'll eat a salad. And I’ll bet there’s an episode of Wicked Attraction I haven’t seen yet…

A Very Untidy Christmas to You All!

2011-12-29T11:29:00.000-08:00

My favorite Christmas tradition is thetotal chaos and disorder I remember from my youth—anxious kids up at dawn, shrieking and cajoling to get started,while bleary-eyed grownups stand around in their pajamas, cups ofcoffee glued to their hands. No breakfast, no ceremony. As soon aseveryone's in the vicinity, it happens—that ancient, mystical ram's horn signal audible only to children—and the mayhem begins.

Imagine a cross between a Braziliansoccer stadium riot and a prairie bison stampede. Paper, ribbon,cards & envelopes shoot like projectile shrapnel across the room.Kids turn into circus contortionists as they climb over each other toget at packages on the other side of the tree. Grownups step furtherand further back from the Circle of Destruction, dumbstruck, stillnot fully comprehending that they're out of bed. And almost assuddenly as it begins, it's over. Each child retreats to her or hisown spot in the living room to pile, sort, stack, count, and startripping open their booty. The grownups, whose still-wrapped presentsnow lie scattered in undignified heaps around the room, retreat tothe kitchen for more coffee.

One Christmas my older brother and Igot up in the middle of the night and pried each of our presentsopen, then carefully re-sealed them. Our fake surprise the nextmorning was Oscar-worthy. (The next year, Mom used her own secretcode on the gift tags and wrapped all our presents in Knox gelatinand saltine boxes. Touché, Mom.)Another Christmas, when I was living in Lincoln, my friend and Idrove to Omaha in the wee hours, then woke my family up at 4 a.m.,singing loud, off-key carols. I'm pretty sure most of them haveforgiven me.

This Christmas, we had a smallishgathering, since none of my brothers—in Kansas, Ohio andEcuador—could make it. Foolishly overconfident due to our smallnumbers, we decided to try polite & tidy. We managed 1½ circuitsof round-robin present opening before the confetti started flying. Itquickly devolved into a 5-minute shredding frenzy that I watched,agog, from a safe distance. When it was over, the house looked likeit had been hit with a Wal-Mart carpet bomb. Perfect! And Ilovedlovedloved the soundtrack—squeals, shrieks of surprise, bellylaughs, oh-my-goshes, a little knife-sharp familial sarcasm, andoccasional spontaneous outbursts of goofy singing.

So as I sit in my quiet, post-Christmascookie & Chex Mix stupor, I can't put into words how grateful Iam. Believe me, I know how lucky we are to have gathered—fourgenerations of us—for another loud, messy celebration overflowing with love--the REAL blessing of this and every season.

Recent Revelations

2011-11-27T13:59:00.001-08:00

New math:
hours needed to grade the current stack of research papers x
pots of coffee ÷
Icy Hot neck patches –
trips outside to scream =
chocolate martinis you get when you're done.
Yes, Mr. Brown; it is STILL a man's world.
Going to bed at dark is a sign that in a beautifully Zen-like way, you've become one with the cycles of the earth and sun. It is a sign of your complete harmony with the cosmos and the enlightened understanding of the non-existence of time. It is a sign of your total surrender to the instinctual Inner You. It is certainly NOT a sign of aging.
It's one of life's little blessings that when I'm doing my best interpretive dance at Ray's gigs, I can't see what the people behind me see.
The venison in my freezer tastes slightly less good since the friend who shot the deer described its size as “Bambi's Mother.”
Your 57 houseplants are NOT your children. They are just another symptom of your aberrant hyper-nurturing gene.
We need to bring back the salon: gatherings in friends' homes, with live music, poetry readings, weighty discussion & debate, no TV, and wine (do you sense my end-of-semester-salvation theme?)
Capitalism has replaced religion as the purveyor of guilt; i.e., you wouldn't seriously consider NOT buying your poor devoted partner/spouse/girlfriend/grandma/sports fan that _____________, would you?
It wouldn't be Thanksgiving without Mom sneaking red hot candies into every dish.
I now regret getting my son a rubber chicken head mask and bacon-flavored toothpicks for his birthday. But only a little.
Knitting IS meditation.
Secret Dream Job: Black backup chick singer, with a body MADE for a red sequined dress and red stilettos.
You can deny the approach of winter & Jack Blizzard all you want, but that stocked wine cellar and that freezer full of fancy pastas, coffee beans, pesto and dark chocolates says you know it's coming.

Academically Adrift: Throw Me a Lifeline, Willya?!?

2011-11-09T07:31:00.000-08:00

Higher Ed in the U.S. is increasingly under scrutinyand attack. And the latest fuel on the fire is a book called Academically Adrift, by Richard Arum,professor of sociology and education at New YorkUniversity, and Josipa Roksa,assistant professor of sociology at the University of Virginia.

Arum and Roksa’s study suggests that college students aren’tmuch better at critical thinking by the time they graduate with a four-yeardegree, than they were as college fresh-persons.

I admit I haven’t read the book. I’ve only read excerpts andsecond-hand articles about the book, many of which cite the study’s mostshocking statistics. The book appears to put most of the blame on academe for havinglow expectations of students and for not being “rigorous” enough.

As a college instructor of mostly first- and second-yearundergrads, I’m wondering if Arum and Roksa factored in the following:

1. The New BusinessModel – Most public higher ed institutions are under the budget knife. Andstudents in seats = $$$. This means that for many instructors, departmentchairs, administrators, etc., the pressure’s on to ensure student recruitingand retention. And the unspoken maxim is that a “happy” student (aka a “customer/consumer,” onewho isn’t asked to do too much, one for whom instructors bend over backwardsand do loads of hand-holding, one whose grades are, perhaps, a wee bit inflated)is more likely to stick around.

2. The Time Crunch– Instructors (and administrators) in this era of budget cutting and “accountability”are increasingly being asked to do more and more with less and less. Forexample, in addition to my normal fairly heavy teaching load (four classes thissemester requiring lesson plans, in-class teaching time, grading), I now managea student organization (my service requirement), manage three on-line “tools” associatedwith my classes (tools that need constant updating), manage my e-gradebooks(more updates), document everything I do in an online faculty evaluation “tool”(more updates), and complete a monthly online “time sheet.” Don’t get me wrong—I love the actual teaching part of my job. But teaching + the additionaldemands = no ttime to improve my teaching skills, to do the researchthat would make my classes more interesting/fulfilling (or more rigorous), orto do my own writing/research. And, at most institutions, class caps creep up yearafter year (more grading, more documenting, more measuring).

3. The StudentContribution – This is the big one for me…where does student accountabilityand responsibility fit into this picture? Arum and Roksa’s study appears to bebased on student surveys and transcripts. If students aren’t finding classes “rigorous,”perhaps it’s because they aren’t taking the rigorous classes. Perhaps they’renot making much of an effort. Perhaps they aren’t going to class. Perhaps they’retexting in class instead of paying attention. Perhaps the rigorous teachers arediscouraged by a growing emphasis on student evaluations, which tend to bash rigorousclasses as “too complicated” or “too demanding”, while bashing rigorousteachers as “uncaring” or “too hard” (comments I’ve seen on my own studentevals). It’s as if students and budget-conscious Boards of Regents share this misconception:that an instructor’s job is to flip the lid on a student’s head and—quickly andmeasurably—dump in a bunch of knowledge. But learning, and even criticalthinking in college, is a collaborative process between students and teachers—bothhave to participate.

My feeling is that higher ed willcontinue to decline (and I do agree with Arum and Roksa that we’re in realtrouble) as long as we keep shifting away from a belief in intrinsic value of liberalarts learning and ever more toward a business model of job-market preparedness—thestudent-as-consumer and instructor-as-service-provider model. It's all about SEATS & SATISFACTION surveys. And if the burgeoning number ofonline “college” degree programs is any indication, I’m pretty sure drive-upwindow diplomas are next.

Check out Arum & Roksa’s book: http://www.amazon.com/Academically-Adrift-Limited-Learning-Campuses/dp/0226028569

Or read about the study here: http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2011/01/18/study_finds_large_numbers_of_college_students_don_t_learn_much#ixzz1dDc6aVja

In a Bristol state of mind...

2011-11-02T12:59:00.000-07:00

Marty Stewart - dig those purple suits

I have stacks of papers to grade, so of course, I’mdaydreaming about music. In September, Ray’s sister and brother-in-law treatedus (and “treated” is putting it mildly) to a trip to Bristol TNfor the Bristol Rhythm & Roots Reunion music festival. Check it out: http://www.bristolrhythm.com

The Greencards

State Street, Bristol TN

I LOVE traveling and couldn’t wait to go, although I’m not afan of bluegrass or “roots” or “Americana” or whatever you wanna call THAT kindof music, so I was sure I’d be people-watching and ignoring the music. Silly,silly me.

Darrell Scott

Our digs at Flo's

Flo's sitting room

We stayed in Bristolat Flo’s Hideaway (http://www.flo-s-hideaway.com),an amazing Victorian B & B run by a Parisian woman and her East Coasthusband, Carl. Our suite was like a doll house museum, and Flo & Carl were theepitome of delightful, welcoming hosts. Breakfast each morning was good strongcoffee, yogurt, fruit, and home-baked croissants or crepes. If we got back inat a decent hour, there was wine and conversation on the back veranda. Seriously,people, I wanted to grab the doorframe and make them DRAG me out when it wastime to leave.

The festival was three days of music, with 20+ venues liningState Streetin Bristol. And yeah, the place was eyeball-deepin fiddles, pedal steel, and twangy gee-tar, but I also heard some of thebest, most fun, interesting and innovative music I’d ever seen gathered in onespot. I had to chew on my misguided preconceptions of THAT kind of music andtry not to embarrass my family by leaping out of my seat in a fit of wildinterpretive South Dakotadance.

crazy NASCAR fan

The trip also included a wonderful afternoon boat ride (and a bat rescue - the bat had been sleeping under the boat tarp), and a trip to the NASCAR track because, well, it's in Bristol, and you just gotta see it.

So THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU to Ray’s kin for theamazing time, the incredible memories, and the tasty, tasty humble pie…

My BRRR faves:

The Greencards – I want to BE this woman - http://www.thegreencards.com/news.html

Red Molly - http://www.redmolly.com

Darrell Scott - http://www.darrellscott.com

Shotgun Party - http://www.shotgunfiesta.com

The Constantly-Breaking Heart

2011-10-19T12:14:00.000-07:00

Becauseof my familial HHN-i (Human Hyper-Nurturer-insoluble) gene (see previous blogpost: http://uncanneryrow.blogspot.com/2011/05/rescue-me.html),I grew up believing that if I mustered enough love, good will, and maybe ahome-cooked pot roast, I could “fix” anyone. I’ve learned this isn’t the case.As Mu Sen Peng said, “We’re ALL walking around with broken hearts…the trick isto keep walking.”

Afew people in my life didn’t keep walking. For example, this past week, Iinadvertently (thanks to FB) learned of my friend Rex’s death. My old highschool BFF’s, Patty and Debbie, have come back from California a couple oftimes so the three of us could cruise our old Omaha stomping grounds. On eachof their trips back, we picked up Rex. Once, we got much of the old gang backtogether for dinner at the Spaghetti Works in the Old Market, then headed toWest O to hear our other friend, George, play some music. Another trip back, wepicked up Rex and the four of us hiked the woods of North Omaha, took pictures,and stopped for ice cream. Each time we saw Rex, it was a joy. He was chatty,laughed, showed us all his favorite woodland photo spots, chauffeured us aroundtown, showed off his home studio (he was an amazing bass player), and wereconnected.

Thelast time we saw Rex was the summer of 2006. I figured he’d always be there—I guesswe all did—and that the next time the BFF’s came back to the Midwest, we’d pickup where we left off. But around Christmas in 2008, Rex killed himself in achurch parking lot.

Therehave been others: Brent (suicide), Ike (suicide), Anthony (shot), Dave(decades-long suicide), and more. Then there’s the long list of family members,an even more intense kind of heartbreak. And until the last decade or so, therewas always the nagging guilt, wondering what I could have done—send mittens?remember birthdays? weekly phone calls? drag them home to my guestroom?intervention?—to keep them walking.

I’mlearning, finally, that people make their own choices. If they reach out, I’llbe right here for them, always. But I know now that my bandaging, cajoling,feeding, hugging, knitting, and boo-boo kissing will not keep someone walkingwho’s decided to stop. And I used to wait for the pain to go away, but I knownow that it never does. Each loss means another hairline fracture. I’m learningto live (LIVE!) with my broken heart, and maybe that’s all any of us can do.

MOVING

forall my friends still walking

Midway along this delicatebranch,

this hard walk,

we balance above a darkgulf,

the branch’s end obscured

and each day a new thorn

to creep around.

There are easier ways to go.

We could take a deep breath,

lean into the fall with eyesclosed.

Or we could hug the branch,stop,

weighed down under

the broken heart of living.

But let’s you and I choose

to inch along with joy

and gratitude so light

it rains like silver glitter

throughthe leaves.

(thanksto the old gang for the happy pics of Rex)

The Perils of Peadom

2011-10-15T09:36:00.000-07:00

It’stough, being a peacock in South Dakota. First of all, in your nativeIndonesia, you'd never have to contend with these brutal winters. Second, in your native forest habitat, you'd have excellent cover from predators. Here on the prairie, when you walk the pasture trails, it's practically a catwalk--the local coyotes, turkey buzzards, and over-eager pheasant hunters might as well be sitting at chipped tables, slurping down gin fizzes, and waving dollar bills.

Life can be pearilous here on the Row. For example, we went into thesummer breeding season with 18 adult peafowl. At the high point of the summer, Icounted 11 new chicks, for a total of 29 birds. Then, in late September, peasstarted disappearing—our neighbor says there's a female coyote living down theroad, someone mentioned rogue mountain lions in South Dakota, ormaybe the turkey buzzards were desperate. Whatever it was, it left two huge piles of pea feathersin the north 40 shelterbelt. So we’re down to 15 adults and 3 chicks.Maybe 18 is the critical mass threshold, the point beyond which the Row can’tsustain the pea-pulation. Maybe you really CAN’T fool Mother Nature.

Ourpeas know the seasons are changing—it dipped below 40 here overnight. The flockis having a harder time finding tender greens under the crunchy leaf carpet, sothey literally huddle on the patio in the mornings, honking & whining,until I go out in my pajamas and toss out a bucket of mixed corn, wild birdseed, and Walmart cat food (while singing “Feed the Birds” from Mary Poppins…gohead…just picture that). I try to feed them only every two or three days (myversion of being a hardass prairie marm), but that pea-pleading breaks mytender heart.

Theflock is still sleeping together in the Roosting Tree in our back yard. Raywill soon put a brooder heat lamp up in the rafters of the open-sided loafingshed (peas won’t sleep on the ground or willingly go inside an enclosedbuilding), but the peas won’t roost in the rafters unless (1) night temps fallto around 10 below zero, (2) a blizzard blows through, or (3) wind speedsexceed 35-40. And I’ll soon start my biweekly ritual of hauling gallons of hotwater out to the bird baths to thaw the ice.

Thisflock, now thoroughly inbred, has been here on this property for at least aquarter-century, long before we got here. They’ve left Indonesia behind. Iworry constantly about them, but they’ve adapted (probably better than we have).They’re Prairie Peacocks. Pavo Crisatus Prairicus. I suspect they run out to the pasture afterbreakfast and roll on their backs, wings folded around their fat bellies, guffawinghysterically at what a rube I am. So Ray and I will head to town today, towatch the Quad State marching band competition, and to pick up 50-lb bags ofcorn, wild bird food, and Walmart cat food. Because as my friend CB likes tosay, “If we don’t take care of them, they’ll die horrible, miserable deaths, right?”

The Great Transition

2011-10-12T10:39:00.000-07:00

My poor, poor blog has suffered neglect during the Great Transition, that time-warp, summer-to-fall plateau when dying tomato vines are replaced by bushels of ripe papers to grade. I usually slip into full-on denial during the GT, furiously, frantically completing summer projects I was sure I’d have plenty of time to finish. It’s also the time we squeeze in all the last-minute fun we can. Our GT adventures this year included a trip to Tennessee for the Bristol Rhythm & Roots festival (more on that later), Ray’s 60^th birthday BBQ/hootenanny (more later), and my trip to Missoula, MT to read poems at the Western Literature Association annual conference with my bonitas compadres, the Girls Spicy (more later).

For much of the GT, however, I’ve been focused on food. I continue in my uneasy relationship with food, a love/hate dance that keeps me Rubenesque and a bit too fluffy. I also have a misguided, almost instinctual belief (thanks, Grandma…) that food = nurturing; this summer’s stray pregnant cat fiasco is ample evidence of my obsessive-compulsive need to nurture.

Back to food. This year’s garden provided asparagus, cukes, hot salsa peppers, green & red bell peppers, sweet corn, gooseberries, mint, rosemary, basil, and tomatoes tomatoes tomatoes. So the GT finds me frequently neglecting my school duties to chop, slice, boil, peel, can, dehydrate, roast and puree tomatoes. We canned and froze so many batches of tomatoes that canning & freezing Colorado peaches in September seemed like a vacation. But one can never have too many tomatoes—South Dakotans MUST maintain a full larder—so we also cut gazillions of cherry tomatoes in half, sprinkled them with course salt, pepper, and minced basil, dehydrated them into tiny savory tomaisins, and popped many bags of these in the freezer. (Splendid Salad: Romaine, grilled chicken, crumbled feta, tomaisins and dried blueberries, sprinkled with olive oil & balsamic vinegar.) In Bristol, I discovered the caprese insalata, a simple salad made by layering thick slices of fresh mozzarella cheese, roasted tomato slices, and fresh basil leaves, sprinkled with olive oil and balsamic vinegar. When I got home and made our own caprese salads, I added a layer of avocado. Heaven, I tells ya.

Alas, the GT wanes, however, and it’s time to get serious about schoolwork...just after I bottle my latest batch of Luna Rossa wine. Because any good prairie person knows that once the first snow flies, only a full larder, a stash of Sumatran coffee beans, a Nerf bat and a well-stocked wine cellar can see one safely through winter.

My Big Fat Bohunk Family Reunion

2011-08-08T13:14:00.000-07:00

(WARNING: photo of roasting pig may be offensive to some. Also, note the striking family resemblance, especially the eyes...)

I recently got back from My Big Fat Bohunk (Bohemian on my father’s side) Family Reunion. It’s an extraordinary annual gathering of relatives – the progeny of my grandpa Adolph and grandma Viola, and their offspring, and their offspring, and now, their offspring. This year, around 57 humans and 9 dogs (including my mom, dad and three brothers - first time we've all been in one place in umpteen years) reconnected at two cabins on a little wooded lot on a gorgeous little lake in Minnesota.

Our family – teachers, writers, visual artists, real estate brokers, a couple of doctors, a yoga instructor, IT geeks, a printer, a chef, a minister, salespeople, an herbalist/botanist/forager and others – are the hardest-working bunch of folks I know. And for a week or two each summer, we play hard, too.

The reunion is a chaotic free-for-all of sun & water fun, excellent food (thanks, Cousins, for taco night, turkey night, cowboy beans, mojitos, and whatever I missed), perpetually-flowing beer, wine and other spirits, boating, fishing, and photo ops. We come from MN, NE, SD, KS, WI, CA, TX and Ecuador, including family members originally from Australia & Chile. Festivities may include a talent show, bellydancing lessons, group yoga, a kids’ quarter toss, a Wednesday trip into town for the Turtle Races, an occasional minor injury, fireworks over the lake, heated religious and/or political debates (the far right, far left, born agains, atheists, and more are represented), late-night cousins' poker games, lake volleyball, and possibly a chat with the sheriff about noise ordinances. We’ve had two weddings on the dock (one couple walked under a cousin-held archway of…yep…peacock feathers). A tent city is established between the two cabins, cabin bedrooms are assigned according to an ancient system of seniority/priority, and some of us wimpier reunitees stay in town at the motel (mere blocks from the coffee shop).

This year, Mom, Ray, my daughter & grandson, and our youngest son piled in MiniPearl (my Toyota minivan), and headed north for four days of Big Fat Bohunk fun, resulting in happy, sunny memories that will surely warm us in the prairie winter ahead, such as…

The Esther Williams Invitational Lake Swim – Collective hysteria, sunstroke, or both, caused 20 family members to set off from the dock one morning to swim across the lake and back. Spotters in boats and on jet skis saw to the safety of the swimmers. All 20 made it, including some who, with their bad hearts, arthritis, or general out-of-shapedness, stunned the rest of us, spectating from the safety of our beach chairs. The swimmers’ return to the dock was celebrated with wild cheers & applause, and yes, a beer toast or two.

First Annual Go Whole Hog Pig Roast – My oldest brother and a cousin orchestrated this feast. Mr. Squeaky McOinker (later renamed “Dinner” when I said I couldn’t eat something we’d named), spent an entire day turning slowly on a spit. At one point, there were a dozen menfolk gathered around the roaster, grunting and chest-beating. Ironically, one entire branch of the family tree is vegetarian, but with sides of tabouli, scalloped potatoes, corn casserole, coleslaw, cucumber salad, and curried beans, all were happy at the end of the day. My apologies to cousin B for someone’s warped sense of humor with the centerpiece – a red-cabbage-lined platter, Dinner’s roasted head in the center, an Italian tomato in his mouth. I’m not sure who fessed up to that.

Beach Towel Yoga – A dozen or more family members took part in morning yoga classes in the neighbor’s yard. Even some less flexible family members got right in there to stretch & sweat (uh…I was…uh…busy…yeah…at the coffee shop in town). After much wee-hours revelry the night before, a yard full of pasty Bohunks doing Downward Facing Dog at sunrise redefines “hung over.”

Common Grounds – Did I mention that this little coffee shop was mere blocks from our motel? I stopped in each morning for my essential triple latte. I swear, celestial rays of heavenly sunlight and a choir of angelic voices singing “Halleluiah” emanated from the building each morning, drawing me, trancelike.

Campfire Hootenanny – While young’uns (and I mean “kids” in their late teens and 20’s) roasted marshmallows, my brother regaled a giant Ring ‘O Bohunks ‘round the campfire with guitar & song. My personal favorite was his emotional rendition of the Randy Newman classic, “Let’s Drop the Big One Now" ("Political Science"). Dang…brought tears to our eyes.

Mom & Dad - reunion Matriarch & Patriarch

These are just some of the highlights, and as you can see, we’re not a quiet family. We don’t have polite reunions where everyone eats a tiny piece of cake off a clean napkin and talks about rain gauges. We’re big & loud. We’re half-dressed, wet & coated with sand most of the week. Except for cousin A and her wardrobe of fashionista bikinis, we mostly wear the same pair of dirty shorts all week. Our humor is often off-color. Some of us may sing drunken show tunes in the middle of the night. But we love each other very much, and we’re all grateful to be part of this amazing Big Fat Bohunk family. We're already scheming for next year, in fact. My idea? A Close Encounters mashed potato volcano contest - prize money for the biggest, loudest, longest eruption...

Peafowl Update

2011-07-26T08:45:00.000-07:00

I have now spotted 12 new peachicks. And this morning, when I fed the flock, I counted 15 adults. Add to that the three hens with chicks (who won't come to feed with the flock until the chicks are bigger), and that makes 18, which means we have another interloper who's arrived from who-knows-where. I'm guessing that there's now an LED sign on I-29 advertising Uncannery Row Peafowl Paradise, and that we're starting to pick up fly-by's.

Peachicks have about a 75-80% mortality rate here at the Row (cats, raccoons, redtail hawks & turkey vultures, negligent moms, storms, etc.). This is proof of Mother Universe's sublime wisdom, because without it, we'd be up to 30 peacocks right now. And that would surely signal a threshold beyond which I begin to tuck peafeathers in my belt, give up human speech in favor of loud honks and screaming calls, drop all my long hair in late summer, and wander the pasture all day, pecking at clover & grasshoppers.

But I'm TOTALLY ordering these tights from modcloth.com...

Prairie Mandala

2011-07-25T10:40:00.000-07:00

We live on seven acres of prairie here at the Row. A couple acres of that is house, outbuildings and lawn. The rest is wild pasture, in which we’ve mowed an elaborate system of walking trails and two tent circles (one large circle, where I hope to someday put a tipi when I’ve save enough for a kit). It’s a beautiful, meditative walk that takes one past the original 1800’s homestead house – now hunched over and leaning toward earth – around the meditation tower & dog pond (dry in the summer), and then along crisscrossing trails through an open field of mixed grasses or in the shade of a shelterbelt. In the summer, when the milkweed blooms, the monarch butterflies dance along the trail, and one can see depressions where the deer have slept the night before.

My ultimate goal is to create by mowing, with hedges or with rocks, a labyrinth big enough to walk. I’m not sure what it is about labyrinths that fascinates me so; maybe it’s the idea of walking toward the center, the heart, which seems a good metaphor for a path I think we should ALL be on – a path toward self-discovery. So I’ve got the pasture labyrinth on my 10-year plan. In the meantime, here’s a labyrinth poem…

MANDALA

Mandala, yantra,

map of the hidden world,

chart of the heart’s constellation,

we are born at your center

and with our first breath scrabble out

to the edges where we navigate emptiness,

pillage and expose to the sweltering sun

the nothing out here, our skin flaking like mica.

We have nowhere to go but in.

Sometimes muscle memory or despair

pulls and we creep back to you, grope

along vine-covered walls on hands and knees,

blood and bone wired together

with coaxial cable and speaker cords,

our pulse digital, our eyes a matrix

of dimming pixels. Again, we get it wrong,

drag with us the din of signals sent or received,

echolocation of fear, manufactured fog

against our own reflection. Somnambular,

paralytic, hollowed-out, we ride shockwaves,

drift away from ourselves away

from the heart's deep metronome away

from the center's pinpoint stillness away

from Love's dark labyrinth away

from the only divine number, One.

Mandala, tantric lens through which

we could finally glimpse ourselves,

we’ve never had anywhere to go but in.

Light the way to your radiant center,

light the way to your angular private rooms

washed in cobalt, saffron, magenta,

light the way to your bed of roses

where, if God is anywhere, It is here.

2009 Marcella Remund

The Perils of Pea-wifery

2011-07-18T06:51:00.000-07:00

This is more than anyone wants to know about peacocks, but... Our flock includes 17 undomesticated adults with free run of our seven acres. We don't pen, corral, catch, vet or mess with them except to throw food out in the backyard every couple of days (okay...Ray might also put a brooding lamp up in the loafing shed rafters in the winter for the most brutally cold nights, when the peas will forsake their Roosting Tree for the less-windy rafters).

Peacock procreation is a delicate art that begins as soon as spring crocus (crocuses? croci? crocii?) peek through the snow. Our four adult males divvied up the farmyard into peadoms: Francois by the north fence, Ramon on the patio, Junior by the south fence, and Zorro, the youngest, in front of the greenhouse windows where he could admire himself. Then the show began: They fanned, thrummed, did the backward dance. You can watch Ramon here...toward the end of the video, you'll hear the vibrating train, a sound like ocean waves: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=31yGZUszW5o

By the first of June, half a dozen hens wandered off to nest. Peahens don’t build nests; they nest on the ground, tamping down a depression in brush or grass tall enough to hide them. They’re absolutely silent on the nest, so we only find nest locations by accident (except for silly young hens who try to nest in window wells).

One day in early June, however, all the nesting hens came back into the yard amid a loud pea-ruckus. For the next three days, the flock hunkered around the greenhouse and wouldn’t go beyond the yard. Clearly, some sort of critter had gotten all the eggs (hens won’t leave eggs except under threat of death), and whatever it was, it had scared the whole flock silly. Our neighbor down the road said he’d been having stare-downs across a field with a female coyote and had heard pups recently, so Coyote Mom could be the culprit. Raccoons will steal eggs if they get a chance, but a protective, unconfined peahen—the size of a wild turkey, with a sharp beak, talons, and horned “spurs” on their legs—can generally scare off a raccoon. Foxes will take eggs, but they’re also small enough to be intimidated by an angry hen. We found a burrow opening in the south pasture, so badger is a possibility. We don’t keep a gun here on Pacifist Acres, so I dumped cayenne in the burrow, gave the invisible critter a good talking-to, and we hoped for the best.

Apparently my scolding worked, because the males put their dancing shoes back on, and around the end of June, the hens bravely headed back out to the pasture to re-nest.

In a typical year, hatching/nestling goes like this: (1) Eggs hatch around the first of July. In the evening of about day 2, Mom goes up a tree and calls the chicks. They stumble, cry, and eventually, fly up into the tree, where Mom clucks until all the chicks are tucked under her wings and invisible to passersby. They roost like this every night for a while. (2) Around the 2^nd week of July, hens begin skirting the outer farmyard fences, trailing fluffy, scurrying chicks (like chicken chicks with long necks). I stand on the patio with binoculars, swatting mosquitos. After a couple days, the hen will let curious non-nester flock members within 10 feet for a look-see before she hurries the chicks back into tall brush. She will take them back to the hatchling roosting tree every night. (3) By the end of July, Mom and chicks are foraging the farmyard, strolling through the yard, and up by the house for the pea banquets provided by She Who Gives Corn, and they’re roosting in a tree within the fenceline now. (4) By mid-August, Mom and chicks have rejoined the flock, and all are now nesting in the communal Roosting Tree 20 feet from our house, within the safe all-night glow of our yard light.

But this is not a typical year. Mystery critter threw everything off. The males are dropping feathers as usual—they drop all long train feathers at once, within a 2-week period as soon as breeding is done; next spring's new train has already started and will grow all winter. But unlike other years, they're still trying in vain to display with scraggly, gapped trains, as if the breeding cycle hasn’t ended. (Note: Like humans, females control breeding, either through invitation/initiation or through snubbery.) And there’s no sign of chicks yet, which means if they hatch now and survive the first two weeks (always the trickiest time), they'll have a rough go packing on the size/weight they’ll need to survive their first South Dakota winter.

I’m trying to see this year as Nature’s wise & patient answer to my meddling. (Note: Regular feedings of corn, sunflower, and Walmart cat food exponentially increase pea-breeding success—there were six peacocks here when we bought the place five years ago.) Even if not a single chick survives this year, our little Row will still have peacocks a’plenty…a plethora of peas…we’ll still be a virtual pea paradise…a peadise, if you will. Or, wait a minute! I could bring the chicks inside, knit them little neckwarmers, feed them couscous and tofu…

Quasi-Annual Women's Campout

2011-06-22T10:35:00.000-07:00

Last week, we had our 10^th anniversary quasi-annual Women’s Campout. Only three of us were able to make it this year (there have been as many as 8 or 9), but we had a fabulous time. Over the past ten years, we’ve camped in Yankton, Ponca, NE, and at a cabin high up in the Black Hills. There’s nothing quite like a passel of midlife women out playing with fire & communing with nature.

I packed the essentials: tent, sleeping bag, pillows, floaties, SPF 7000 sunscreen, coffee, wine, chocolate, Kindle, cell phone, chargers, Advil and bug spray. We were roughing it a bit less than usual this year, with the addition of our friend’s camper. Laugh all you want about cushy camping, but keep this in mind: a clean, handy, middle-of-the-night bathroom.

Day 1 - We made camp: camper (yes, we had a welcome mat, awning and flamingo lights), two tents, and a screen house dining room. We arranged & rearranged the furniture (picnic tables, folding loungers, bag chairs, clothesline, end tables, cooking table) till we had everything just so. Our camp neighbor wandered over to chat, as he would several times more over the next three days – “Do you want this leftover ice?” “Is that cowboy coffee you’re making?” “I sure enjoyed that singing last night.” I think he was trying to figure out why three women were camping alone; each visit, he’d eyeball our camp, as if looking for tell-tale man signs...

Then (Future Funny Story #1), we sat down for a rest and realized we’d locked the camper keys inside the camper. We’d been celebrating our completed compound with a bottle of wine, so we spent a few moments laughing hysterically before we called a locksmith. While we were waiting, I remembered a bazillion old keys I’d been collecting (for the mobile I WILL make someday when I learn to weld) in my van, Mini Pearl. I grabbed the keys, tried every one, and lo & behold, an old pickup topper key opened the camper! We called the locksmith back, piled into Mini, and took off for a look at the dam.

The Army Corps of Engineers has been releasing record amounts of water along the dam system on the Missouri River, supposedly to minimize flooding caused by two unusually wet springs and Montana snow melt. I’m not sure how well the plan is working, though, as many homes, farms, businesses, a power plant or two, and some entire towns are surrounded by, in, or under water. King Water seems dead-set on taking back the Missouri River Basin.

After staring in awe at the river whitecaps and dam waterfalls, and getting soaked to the skin by the spray, we headed back to camp…just as the rain started. We played Boggle under the awning, and then in the camper, till bedtime. (Note: You’ll notice midlife women scanning the sky for the first hint of darkness, when it’s perfectly okay to go straight to bed. They will sometimes go to bed before dark, too, but only if no one else will find out.)

I hustled to my tent in the rain (coming down at a fair clip by then), where I’d already stowed my gear. As I crawled inside (FFS #2), the entire tent buckled & collapsed, sandwiching me inside. It was quite dark by then, so I groped around for my stuff and made a dash for the camper, where I slept comfortably on a bench bunk only millimeters wider than my child-birthin’, midlife-spreadin’ hips.

Day 2 – We made our morning fire and had camp-stove coffee in our jammies…for a very long time. Eventually, we made our way to the beach. The water was too rough and full of upriver tree shrapnel to swim, so we sunbathed until my lobster-pink skin was sufficiently dotted with new freckles and just short of blistering.

In the afternoon, four friends joined us at camp. We all went over to look at the dam, then one friend went birding whilst the rest of us prepared a campout BBQ. For dessert, we made s’mores (one friend made gourmet s’mores – s’mourmets, if you will – with giant marshmallows, Nutella, and Ghirardelli chocolate). After dinner, we had a campfire hootenanny complete with 3 guitars, a tambourine, and a choir of women's voices, that continued well past dark. We had a grand time, our company headed back to town, my friend with the Amazon height and long arms fixed my tent, and we hit the hay.

Day 3 – Leisurely coffee in our jammies, then we packed up and broke camp in stages punctuated by more coffee & lounge chair reading. By early afternoon, we were headed back to civilization.

I spent most of this week thoroughly exhausted. I’m now on the hunt for a teardrop camper or a pop-up motorcycle camper that I could pull with Ray’s VW bug and keep stocked for camping. Because it’s not the camping that’s hard – it’s the three days of packing and three days of unpacking, laundry & recovery that’ll do you in.

It's a dirty job, but...

2011-06-06T07:03:00.000-07:00

I teach college composition, literature, creative writing and honor’s English at a state university. But I was never one of those kids on a clear, determined trajectory along a carefully considered career path. I was more the aimless wanderer who happened on my career fairly late in the game. Along the way, I’ve had some weird jobs, for which I’m grateful, because I learned important life lessons from every one…

1. Car hop at A & W. This was my first job at 14. I learned two valuable lessons: (a) It’s not okay to throw 50 cents in small change back in someone’s car and yell, “You need this worse than I do!” (b) If a pimp in a lime green suit, all kinds of high, jumps the parking curb and drives THROUGH the plate-glass storefront up to the counter, then leans out his window and orders a chicken dinner, get him chicken dinner. Now.

2. Nursing Assistant. I did this twice, once at 15 and again at 24. Two things happened that fundamentally changed me as a human being. First, a sharp but frail old man not allowed to live on the same floor with his non-ambulatory wife, hunted me down in the hallway and slipped a quarter in my hand. He thanked me for being nice to his wife. A frustrated NA had told her God didn’t love her for being such a bother. I had found her crying, so I’d brushed her hair and sat with her a bit. Nothing noble – just simple human decency – for which her husband felt he had to PAY. Second, a youngish man with cerebral palsy – Cletus Stalnaker – motioned with his head one day toward his dresser. Through a series of my questions and his nods, he directed me to a notebook in a drawer he wanted me to read. I sat in a chair beside his bed and cried as I read a notebook full of poetry he’d typed with his head, using an electric typewriter and a stylus attached to a headband.

3. Janitor. I cleaned dental offices at night. I learned I’d rather use old railroad spikes for toothpicks than EVER go to the dentist again.

4. Food service truck driver. I was 17. I had to wear an adorable little outfit (very French maid, though I didn’t realize that at the time), and drive a deli truck to industrial/factory sites, park, open up a side window, and serve food for coffee & lunch breaks. I felt like a lamb cornered by rabid wolves and lasted only a week. Plusses: I got to cruise Omaha driving a big-ass truck, and, as a redhead, I loved that the company was called Red Top Food Service.

5. Bronco’s Drive-In. I was 15. I learned you can eat a lot of fries in the time it takes you to save up for an Ovation guitar. Too many fries, really. Plus: My name was Prescher then, and my boss, Johnny, called me “Precious.” Cool.

6. Maximum Security bank teller. I worked for First National Bank, in the basement vault. I learned that a smart, skilled young woman may be forced to train a dull ex-UNL football player with only rudimentary head-butting skills, who will then move upstairs into a management position and make at least five times the money paid to the smart young woman who trained him. This was an invaluable lesson that I would re-learn again and again, in one way or another, in almost every job I’ve had since.

7. Taco Bell. I worked there one hour. I went in for my first day, put on my uniform, watched the boss spoon grease over and over the taco meat for 20 minutes while he talked, said I had to get something out of my car, and drove off in my uniform.

8. Drive-up bank teller. I learned that if your female co-worker wears pleated miniskirts and exaggerates her movements as she stretches up to reach the capsule in the vacuum tube, your male boss will give her a raise. I also learned that if you, in your smart & sensible pantsuits, threaten to quit if he doesn’t also give you a raise, you’d better be prepared to quit.

9. Residential Care Assistant. I learned about the incredible power of drugs. The organization I worked for provided care for folks with mental (and often physical) disabilities in neighborhood group homes. I took care of one woman who swore, screamed, stuck her finger in her eye, and constantly stripped and crawled around the house naked. After a year or so, the organization hired a new oversight physician, who reviewed & changed her meds. The last time I saw the woman I had cared for, she was calm, fully clothed, and clearing the dinner table.

10. Cocktail waitress in a hotel bar. I learned that RAF pilots who drop room keys on your tray have NOT mistakenly given you a key instead of a tip, you poor naïve girl. The key IS your tip. Drop the key in the hotel pool.

11. Ad agency copywriter. I learned that (a) Less. Really. Is. More. (b) Grammar is subjective when it comes to advertising. (c) There are only so many ways one can say “We care” before one comes around to, “We could care less,” and (d) ad agency people, unlike many academics, have senses of humor.

All of these experiences have made me a more patient, compassionate, light-hearted and sometimes cautious teacher. And above all, they remind me that what my students learn outside the classroom will ultimately be waaaay more important than my third (or thirteenth) lesson on the evils, of, comma, splices.

All Hail the King: WATER

2011-05-28T13:57:00.000-07:00

“Water is King,” I says to Ray. “Yes,” says Ray, head bowed in reverence. “Yes it is.” Then we pull down our face masks, cross our arms over our chests, and fall backwards off the steps into the depths of the…basement. But let’s back up a minute.

I used to think nicotine was king, the way it can twist you around its little finger practically before you’ve even met. But this spring on the Row has taught me that nicotine is just the naughty playboy prince. Water – covering about 71% of the earth’s surface and making up 65% of YOUR body – reigns supreme. So yeah, go ahead and redirect rivers to build your sweet little farms, but just don’t get too comfy; any time he feels like it, the King can take it all back.

Last spring and summer on the Row were unusually wet and cool. This past winter, we were buried in snow. And so far, this spring has been a delightful mix of rain, thunderstorms, wind, and more rain. The upshot is saturated ground. The water table is, oh, maybe a bazillion feet above ground level with nowhere to go. Creeks (cricks is what you get in your neck when you play Rise of Atlantis for four hours straight), streams, and rivers are brimming or overflowing. Closer to home, the dog pond out by our meditation tower has spilled into the tower yard. The shelter belt and half the pasture to the south are under water. I slog around in a daze of ancestral muscle memories of the primordial bog. I’m driven to root for cattail tubers. And we live on HIGH ground. Below and a few miles to the west of us, in the pre-dam-system river valley, the iconic Midwestern “sea of corn” is now literally the sea, whitecaps and all.

So when we got home from a lovely, restful trip to Minneapolis last weekend, we had a new basement swimming pool. Our basement isn’t finished; we use it for storage and Ray’s workshop (and storage for all our kids’ stuff, "just for a little while, honest, Mom"). There’s no sump pump – we’ve never needed one. But the King welcomed us home with about 4” of water when he discovered he could rally his troops in the flooded old stone windmill well at the east edge of the property, march along the ancient unused underground iron pipe from the well to the house, then storm – drip by gurgle by drip – our basement. (“He” is appropriate here – only a snooty monarch would do this to a woman’s sacred canning & wine cellars.) We’ve spent this past week digging a sump hole and installing a pump, burning waterlogged cardboard and elevating stuff. But thanks to Ray’s BFH (big frickin’ Thor hammer), my new boyfriends (the Campbell’s Supply & sump pump sucker guys), the tireless work of our youngest son, and our good friend who had the bad luck to stop by mid-bailing, we’ve arrived at a truce punctuated by thrice-daily wet-vac’ing.

We know it's temporary. We know the King wants his stuff back. The forecast calls for more rain. I’m sewing sequins on my Esther Williams outfit, and we’re growing gills (a plus for underwater mowing). But the iris, alium, and coral bells are gorgeous. We planted tomatoes, hot peppers and corn during a brief 2-hour sun window, and the peacocks are learning to quack. And the King has spared us the unbelievable rath dealt to Missouri, Mississippi, Minneapolis, even Pierre in South Dakota, and so many others. Some folks have lost everything. People are missing. Many have died.

We’re lucky. So we won’t whine or complain. We’ll spend this holiday weekend memorializing the dry years, wet-vac’ing in shifts, emptying dehumidifiers, and moving fans around. We’ll count our blessings and lotion up our webbed toes. We’ll pay our tithes to the King, trusting he’ll soon be distracted by that steamy vamp, Summer.

The "Crapshoot Theory" of Parenting

2011-05-16T08:59:00.000-07:00

I had the best Mother’s Day ever this year. Mom farm/critter-sat so Ray and I could road-trip to the Black Hills, where we got to hang with my oldest kid and his family. He had a gig at the Dahl Arts Center in Rapid City, a benefit for the Americana Music Festival. He was on the bill with other friends of ours – Boyd Bristow & Kenny Putnam, Hank Harris & Jami Lynn, and others. At the end of Ryan’s set, he announced that he didn’t usually do un-original music, but he wanted to do a song that was a poem by his favorite poet – his mom – he’d set to music. And he said his mom was in the audience, so he’d “better not screw it up.” It was a total surprise to me, so of course, Ray and I both sat there crying like the babies we are. And before the night was through, I also got to sit in on a couple songs, singing with a stage full of jamming musicians. Could I BE any luckier?!?

On the drive back, our youngest son called just to wish me a Happy Mother’s Day – just a cheerful, non-emergency thinking-of-you call. While we were gone, my daughter and her family went out to the farm to spend Mother’s Day with Mom, and when we got back home that night, my daughter’s beautiful, delicious pink champagne cupcakes were waiting for us.

I’d like to take credit for the amazing adults our kids are becoming. I’d like to say I have wise parental advice. But I know the truth: it’s a crapshoot. I learned this important life lesson back when Ray had a heart attack and quadruple bypass surgery at age 50. He’s a fit, lean, non-smoking, tofu-eating, hard-working man. One evening during his recovery, we were sitting in Ray’s room at the Heart Hospital when a man walked past his door, looking for a friend he meant to visit. The guy was 60-ish, had a belly like a full laundry sack dangling and swaying over his belt, smelled like bad cigars, and – seriously – was eating a cheeseburger. He was strolling around the HH in his devil-may-care oblivion, while Ray had just been cut, probed, stuck, sliced, power-sawed, and cracked open like a walnut. Ray and I looked at each other for a long minute as the guy went by, and that’s when the Crapshoot Theory hit us.

The Crapshoot Theory, as it applies to parenting, accounts for crack moms whose kids grow up to be volunteer dentists with Doctors Without Borders or theoretical physicists whose kids grow up to be serial 7-11 stickup men. We can talk about nurturing, nutrition, good karma, guidance, education and the rest all we want, but there’s simply no clear reason why some kids grow up good, some go astray, and some end up Wall Street grifters.

All I can say about my own parenting is that I did the best I could. I made LOADS of mistakes. I had TONS of help, including my mom and grandmother – the Super Women – and Ray’s patient love, tolerance, and quiet determination (crucial balance to my hyper-parenting style). I was sometimes waaaaay too intense. I was overprotective. Or I was completely in the dark.

I pushed inner stuff over outer stuff. I didn’t drive my kids to get straight A’s, dedicate themselves to sports, or go to church every Sunday. Maybe as a result of this (or planetary alignments, barometric pressure, Universal whim…), none of my kids was interested in college. They’re all artists – in music, with cakes, or on skateboards (maybe I should have drilled in some sort of ‘make a decent living’ lesson…).

Instead, I pushed (nagged, harangued, harped on) my kids to trust in family, love, and peace; to write thank-you cards; to see everyone – even big meanies – as part of the Big Community; to be grateful for the richness of their lives (even back when we were on Food Stamps & living on Kraft macaroni & cheese); and to be aware of others’ suffering. And yes, you should be visualizing me in a peasant blouse and a tiara of daisies right now, with “Get Together” playing in your head. And maybe as a result of this (or more likely the Crapshoot Theory), our kids have all become kind-hearted, affectionate, generous, compassionate human beings. And THAT’S a pretty incredible roll of the dice.

Here's the poem my son set to music...

Old Family Photo

This is the grandmother.

You see how she has dressed

the daughter in dark broadcloth,

eyelet at the sleeves, each fold pressed.

The sons on either side,

smooth and starched,

circles of cropped hair shining,

form the beginning and end of the arch.

You see how the grandfather

looms black and white

above them all, unsmiling,

hands hidden, small eyes glaring, frightened.

The seated grandmother

spreads her flowering hands,

touches them all.

Below the waist, she melts into shadow.

Rescue Me

2011-05-14T12:55:00.000-07:00

I’ve recently been diagnosed with an anomalous gene mutation – the HHN-i (Human Hyper-Nurturer-insoluble) gene. It appears to be a dominant mutation passed along familial female lines, causing an overdeveloped nurturing instinct. Carriers typically take in strays (animal and human), cook in stadium-sized quantities, cut other peoples’ food into bite-sized morsels, and tell other adults what not to wear in public. Another effect of the mutation is an invisible aura emanating from carriers – a sort of magnetic beacon – that sucks in like a wormhole any passing life form the carrier thinks would benefit from tuna casserole and a fluffed pillow. The diagnosis came as no surprise to us here at Uncannery Row Convalescent Care Facility & Home for Wayward Creatures – the evidence is everywhere.

For example, we just picked up Rickie Lee, a 7 or 8-year-old spayed, declawed cat we “inherited” from our son, from the vet. She had a $300 tumor removed from her leg. While we wait for lab results to decide on our next move, she sulks around the house in her brand new Elizabethan collar, and I try to follow an impressive list of post-operative instructions that include “no jumping or stair climbing” (she’s a CAT…they knew that, right?).

In the onion-domed dog house just outside our back door, Kitty Wells, a tiny stray calico cat someone dumped at the Row a few weeks back, tends to four 2-week-old kittens while we tend to her – organic cat food, goat’s milk, and flannel sheets to line her kitten box. I spent yesterday making a nice new box the kittens couldn’t crawl out of, and drawing up an extensive application for those brave enough to offer a home for one of the kittens – 2 orange tabbies, a grey calico, and a black “skunk” kitty with white nose & paws. Home inspections are mandatory.

Our 10-year-old Australian Shepherd, Jada (a Humane Society rescue), is now on a daily aspirin & glucosamine regimen, and our 3-year-old Schnoodle, Yogi (the dog version of Denise-the-Menace), has been bringing baby bunnies back from the pasture – lovely little offerings on the back porch, which I mourn and Kitty Wells steals.

I’ve also been baking parrot bread – organic corn meal, chopped nuts, vegetable puree and organic eggs – which I cut into little squares and freeze in weekly portions. Triggered by the longer spring days, our rescued Lilac Crown Amazon parrot, Polly Hester (she’s between 15-20), does daily rainforest calls at mind-numbing volume. Meanwhile, about the time Kitty showed up, Stella Faye, our 13-year-old African grey parrot, began incessantly calling “Sophie!” followed by the whistle we use to call the dogs. Sophie, a cat we had when Stella was a baby, has been gone for 10 years or more. Spooky.

Then there are the peacocks, of course. We’re heading into nesting season with 16 adults. Our 6 adult males have been doing their loudest “HELP! HELP!” mating calls for weeks now, starting just after dawn, bless their hearts. Four hens have already gone to nest out in the tall pasture grass, and a couple younger hens are eyeing the window wells, so I need to get out there with screen. The nesting hens do a “fly in” each evening to snub the boys and to check out the buffet, which I keep stocked with corn, black oil sunflower, and a little Wal-Mart cat food for nesting calcium & protein.

Our newest victim of my HHN-i beacon is Jeremiah the invisible frog, who’s bad sense of direction led him to tunnel through the dirt and come up not out by the frog pond, but under our greenhouse boardwalk. We’ve never seen him, but his intermittent soft croaking adds to the crazy Row symphony.

There’s no shutting down the HHN-i gene (in her 70’s, my mom is STILL taking in foundlings). So the best I can do is hide inside, hoping our metal roof temporarily blocks the beacon, while Ray calculates the lumber we’ll need to build a corn crib and add on a cat wing…

The Mother of All Days

2011-05-07T09:49:00.000-07:00

Mother’s Day Shmother’s Day. What about the other 364 days? There’s nothing tricky or particularly noble about springing for a last-minute garden gnome or potted geranium one day a year to thank your mom for…oh, I dunno…willingly pushing your bowling ball head through her own tiny, delicate passageway so she can suffer & toil through the next 20, 30, 40 or more years of this experiment that is your life. Just ask me. I KNOW what I was like as a teen (O lord), and I got my mom a garden statue for Mother’s Day this year…

I’ll try to contain my rant about how women are (as John Lennon suggested more controversially), the slaves of the world. Or how moms who work outside the home are STILL expected (often in unspoken but well-understood language) to also provide the bulk of child rearing, home care, meal planning & prep, laundry & sheet-changing, wifery and other essential services. Or how moms (because they’re typically the primary child care givers) so often bear the brunt of tantrums, ER visits, serious sass, disgusting petrified socks in the back of a closet, broken hearts, and torturous years of brooding teen angst—not to mention frangi-pangi incense and bad electric guitar. Or how Mother’s Day dinner often involves Mom in the kitchen again, sweating through another hot flash, looking for 6” of free counter space amid the piles of dirty dishes she’ll wash later, as she tries to perfectly time your baked lasagna and broccoli au gratin. And then she’d better come to the table smiling, dammit. Yikes…did I say I’d try to contain all that? Silly me.

One of the many things I love about being a midlife woman is that I now have a strange panoramic vision that lets me view at once my children, grandchildren, the Grand Matriarch (my mom), and ghost images of my grandmother. And because I can now clearly see from each of these perspectives what my mom endured, I slam my head against the fridge several times a day in penance. And I’m probably a baaad person for secretly grinning, now that I have grandkids, whenever my children run smack-dab into their own karmic dirty socks.

So this Mother’s Day, I offer a poem for my mom. And EVERY day, I honor the difficulty, sacrifices, power, sorrow and continuing beauty of her life. I offer my gratitude to the Universe that she’s still here, still patiently teaching me (clearly, I have MUCH more to learn). I apologize to her for, well, 1961 through 1985. And I bestow whatever blessings I can on my daughter, my daughter-in-law, my sisters-in-law and my granddaughter—to all mothers and mothers-in-the-making. And for those of you moms expected to cook a Mother’s Day dinner, remember that a boatload of cayenne pepper in the sauce livens up the party, and you won’t be hungry by the time it’s all on the table, anyway…

INVOCATION

If you were any more alive in me, Mother,

my heart would burst, split open

like a ripe peach soaked in holy water.

Whisper from every corner of this clapboard

cathedral, Our Lady of Perpetual Chores,

your small and powerful prayers:

white coral bells

itsy bitsy spider

battle hymn of the republic

Chant caramel pudding and corn casserole

recipes, ancient sacred texts handed down

from your own mother, that dark marble saint

atop the bell tower, one arm wrapped around

a gilded laundry basket, a silver pressure cooker

cradled in the other. Her heart, too, burst open.

Keep me, I ask, in your blessing of trying, failing,

laughing about failure. Grant me the grace

of history, repeated mistakes, and promise.

Look down on me with love when they raise you

to the bell tower, at the way I sing your praises

off-key, from behind my daughter’s stove.

St. Dymphna, keep our heads on straight...

2011-04-30T07:11:00.000-07:00

Though I’m not Catholic, I can probably thank my 11^th-grade total immersion in Catholic doctrine by the nuns of Notre Dame Academy for Girls in Omaha for my obsession with saints. I’m fascinated with how sainted individuals, especially women, might have seen their own lives, as opposed to the romantic re-writing of history that seems to come with canonization.

Dymphna, according to legend, was the 13th-century daughter of an Irish pagan chieftain. She converted to Christianity at the age of 10 or 11, shortly before her mother died. Her father, crazy with “grief” (I’m biting my tongue here), tried to bed his daughter because she looked so much like his late wife. Dymphna and a priest, Gerebernus, fled, taking refuge in a chapel. Alas, her father found them, had his minions kill the priest, and chopped off his own daughter’s head for disobeying.

I always feel a wee bit closer to St. Dymphna, patron saint of the mentally ill, at the end of the semester, when my own mental health is in desperate need of a blessing. So on this last day of National Poetry Month, here’s my petition to the determined Irish lass. (For more info on the sile na gigh mentioned in the poem, see http://www.sheelanagig.org.)

ST. DYMPHNA

patron of the mentally ill

In fitful dreams I find you shivering

in rowan and ferns along the Blackwater

river, wreathed in St. John’s wort

& anointed with yellow-rattle,

half-starved and wrapped in a celtar

cinched at the waist with an oak rosary,

humming strains of your mother’s brief

lullaby. But your father was a chieftain

and knew the magic, found you anyway.

Grief or madness drove him to finger

your small bones for signs of her

in the curve of your emerging breasts,

the winged cup of your pelvis, your

silky down, and you a fugitive

child with courage enough to keep locked

that garden gate, though he found you

again, sealed the gate forever. Forsaken

daughter, in my own trembling delusion

I am your Síle na Gigh, we offer up

a novena to our Mother and for nine days

I give you this blessing too—my stone lap

cushioned with heather & moss, pillow

for your bruised and worried brow.

(Amen.)

"Mala," an April holidays poem

2011-04-22T11:34:00.000-07:00

It’s Easter weekend on the Row, and I’ve just come off of three days straight of 40 productive, rewarding, but exhausting back-to-back student conferences over literary research papers. By Thursday, Day 3, I was doing a lot of thinking about death and resurrection, believe me. I’ve also been thinking about the American commercialization of Easter – coordinated outfit/handbag shopping, forced childhood scavenging for outdoor-contaminated candy, mutant egg-laying bunnies, and a lust for patent leather shoes. The fact that so many people live comfortably with the bizarre commingling of a high holy day and a shopping holiday is a testament to our flexibility, I guess.

There are loads of other commemorative days being celebrated in April, too, like Hindu Ramayana, traditional Chinese Qingming, Jewish Pesach, Baha’i Ridvan, Theravadin Buddhist new year, Earth Day, Cosmonaut’s Day, and probably many more. And, it’s National Poetry Month, for Pete’s sake! So here’s another poem, this one long. I wanted to see if I could (1) write a poem that sounded like a “universalist” chant; (2) write it in 9-line stanzas to represent the multiples of 9 beads commonly found in Buddhist malas, Islamic tasbih, and other kinds of prayer beads, and (3) incorporate John Lennon’s mantra, “Love is all you need.”

Happy holidays, whichever ones you observe…

MALA

In the beginning

was the breath

inspiration exhalation illumination.

It was and was not, stirring

pale light, salt, clay

in a deep cauldron of stars

pitched to one side

spilling gaseous invocations

into thin air—

ohm mane padme hum

ohm namah shivaya

our father our mother

Saturnian retrograde yin yang

nameless spirit unified heart and mind

mitakuye oyasin tanzih tashbih

St. Jude thin ray of hope

grandfather grandmother

Jahveh I Am That I Am

and the breath shaped its perfect

full mouth around the Word

formed us from three elements

set us down in the fourth, fire of the Word,

let us play and burn for ten-thousand years

making oblations in the fire

tears wine sperm tears blood

let us tease spark from vein

and hold it against our skin

until cinders worked their way beneath our nailbeds

until flame licked the bone

until spark curled up in the belly

until the only heat was in the belly

until the air was cool and dry

until the ground went cold

until we understood flame and ash

until we sat naked and shivering

until the rain fell.

Pools formed in indentations

footprints of wandering gods

and on the slick surface of the water

we saw ourselves, clumsy, too fat or thin,

aching and wounded

we saw each other only in that rippled mirror

eyes cast down and fixed

on an image of our own bluing upturned hands

so delicate so hypnotic that we

would not cross the water with a poultice

would not set the bone

would not speak the Word

and darkness fell. In the blackness

silhouettes against a pocked moon

we pushed and pulled the muck

into mountains snowcapped and treacherous

until fenced in, we came to adore

the dark and silvered mirrors

distorted images of bent knees, sloping backs,

small breasts, muscled thighs.

We formed our small trembling mouths

into awkward shapes

stood half-erect with heads tilted

filled our lungs with air

filled the air with only hoarse wavering

grunts and hisses

could not fit our mouths around the Word.

The earth, this pool, is the cracked mirror

in which we are still caught as

ten thousand planets heat and cool

ten thousand stars blink to life

scatter, explode in the watery night

while we shiver, naked,

dim shadows against a cave wall, mouthing

the Word that would release us

the Word we clamp behind our teeth.

In the dark, in the cold

in crags or on sudden plateaus we strike

blindly at rocks, dig at the root

but always make our way back to the water

back to our selves

rippled and silver in brief glints of fog or moon

broken when the breath moves the Word

across the surface of the water

where we lean in, locked in a long gaze.

And sometimes we hear it,

the perfect Word skimming the water, pushing up

along rock faces, drifting into gaps with a sigh

a beautiful sad tremolo

that clashes in dissonant chords

with cries from across

a distant mirrored pool

brackish now, encircled in a white salt ring,

our temporary crust of light.

ohm mane padme hum

ohm namah shivaya

our father our mother

Saturnian retrograde yin yang

nameless spirit unified heart and mind

mitakuye oyasin tanzih tashbih

St. Jude thin ray of hope

grandfather grandmother

Jahveh I Am That I Am

make my jaws unclench

make my fists uncurl

make my heart split open like a ripe plum

make my arms reach out over the water

make my eyes look up from this illusion

make my silver blood pour out over the ground

make my lungs fill to bursting, my mouth round,

help me make the sound, the only prayer, the Word—

Love

Wine, song, poetry and...gee-tar.

2011-04-16T07:09:00.000-07:00

April is National Poetry Month. It’s also International Guitar Month--no kidding. And since the Nickorettes (an acoustic trio my two friends and I are putting together) are playing for our friend’s daughter’s wedding today, and since I’ve been scheming a summer poetry project, my head is a’whirl with verse & song. So I offer up this little poem. It’s the result of two things that had been floating around in my head back then: (1) Christopher Dewdney’s amazing list poem, “Grid Erectile” (see him read it in an excerpt from the incredible 1983 beat-poets video, Poetry in Motion, at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CN3AaYp_kyY); (2) a concert I’d been to, where the then 20-something Kaki King (before this bit on Letterman http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=shYdqbJgQdc&feature=related) did something only one or two people in my entire life have been able to do: left me speechless. So the poem is for Dewdney, who gave me reasons without argument, and for King, who stunned me into silence…

PRAYER TO A YOUNG GIRL PLAYING GUITAR

            The world has become
                  a spectacle of absence,
                  a radiant inventory.

Christopher Dewdney

Because your pinafore is an alder guitar body shaped like a woman

Because your ringlets are shining rows of phosphor bronze

Because your hands are pale long-legged spiders dancing

Because your wrist bends back like the curl of a garden snail

Because your voice is small and high like a chipping sparrow

Because you call up Earth’s low hum and it echoes in my ribs

Because you can disappear at will in a fog of sound or silence

Because you weave blue & silver chords into sheer electric fabric

Because your vibrato is a flame that trips nerves along my spine

Because you find a labyrinth of bright rooms in a glass bottleneck

Because you trick harmonics and women’s fists unfurl, breath slows

Because old men cry and children stop fidgeting

Because ash settles lightly in the hearts of jealous men

Because these notes are elemental, a baptism

Because you are hollow, a conduit radiating multitonal effusion

Because when you stop there is only absence

Because 5000 people are fed, soothed, rocked to sleep

Because this is the sound a weeping fig must make

Because there was stillness and expectation and now this

Because somewhere in the desert tremors have begun underground

Because water bubbles up from hairline cracks in baked clay

Because yucca flowers open to nocturnal white moths

Because I can only breathe, swallow, blink, wait

Facebook Loves Me, It Loves Me Not...

2011-04-02T17:49:00.000-07:00

Facebook (Crackbook, as some of my more addicted friends call it) isn’t just for kids anymore. According to a 2009 report on cnet.com, from January to July of 2009 alone—6 short months—the number of users 55 and over grew by 513.7%. Some of us aren’t just FB friends with our kids; we’re on-line friends with our grandkids, too.

Check out TIME’s 2009 article about why FB is for old folks: http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1879169,00.html

Here’s my own handy-dandy list of reasons why I both HATE & LOVE Facebook…

Love: I’ve reconnected with friends from school I’d lost track of over the years. Some of them I hadn’t heard from since elementary school (back in the days when we shivered on the stoop, barefoot in a driving blizzard, with nothing but old flour sacks for coats, waiting for the covered-wagon school bus).

Hate: FB made me remember WHY I’d lost track of some folks over the years, and I’m sure they’re now thinking the same thing about me.

Love: I take guilty voyeuristic pleasure in knowing what folks are up to—their travels, their treks down to the river or up Spirit Mound, new recipes they’ve tried, events they’re hosting/attending/promoting, bathrooms they're remodeling, the ingenious way they got black shoe polish out of a beige linen dress. It’s like "Hints from Heloise", Hell’s Kitchen, Wild Kingdom, and National Geographic mixed together and chopped into tiny, tasty bits.

Hate: I love you, but unless you're my son or daughter, I don’t want to know—ever—when your period starts, when you go back on your psych meds, when you have ANY kind of cramps, what pain killers you’re taking for those cramps, when you’re throwing up, the color of the freakish discharge from your nose, or what nasty, gross, or evil thing you did to your girl/boyfriend for breakup revenge. And I don’t think I’m alone here. I don’t think your other 3472 BFF’s want to know, either. Before you post something on FB, how about you take a moment to imagine yourself on stage, standing at the mic, in a cozy theatre that seats…say…a million people (if you count how much of your FB stuff has leaked/seeped out into the ether in spite of your “privacy” settings). Would you announce to those people, face-to-face, eyeball-to-eyeball, that thing you’re about to post on FB? Really? Call me a puritan (you’d be the first), but I believe some things ARE too personal for FB.

Love: I love seeing pictures of people I haven’t seen for ages. This can sometimes make me believe I’m aging gracefully and still have that plucky Pippi Longstocking impishness.

Hate: Seeing pictures of other old friends can send me into a nosedive of hopeless surrender, where I dig through the pantry for Little Debbie Crème Pies and marshmallow sauce and take to my La-Z-Girl; Ray will find me days later with a marshmallow mustache, wrapped in a fuzzy blankie, rocking, and humming “The Battle Hymn of the Republic.”

Love: I love that I can eavesdrop on the lives of my family & friends, and instantly share in their joys, celebrations, and accomplishments.

Hate: There’s already a syndrome called “Facebook Depression” (http://www.baltimoresun.com/health/kdaf-facebook-depression-story,0,4742055.story) that afflicts folks (mostly kids) who spend too much time on FB. They develop depression or anxiety—sometimes severe—as a result of comparing their lives to the lives of others. I know people my age who've left FB because they're sick of hearing about other people's "perfect" lives. Seriously?!? You think these people with the "perfect" lives aren't posting selectively? (FB is, after all, the ultimate personal marketing tool.) Anyway, no matter what you see on FB, here's the real deal: Everyone’s life is hard.

Hate: that FB is the narcissist’s playground, where one can chronicle every gritty detail of one’s daily life.

Love: that FB is the narcissist’s playground, where one can chronicle every gritty detail of one’s daily life.

Spring...spring me, please!

2011-03-18T09:35:00.000-07:00

I’m buried in work. I do NOT know how I manage to do this to myself every semester. Anyway, one lovely spring evening this week I was in the middle of grading Stack 6 of 7 folders, and my brain was all, “You degenerate slacker…when are you gonna get this done so you can do the posters for those 2 events, put that literary journal together, read that Honor’s thesis, blahblahnagnagblah…” Bad timing, then, for Ray to suggest, with a big smile on his face, that we take a walk, it was so warm and sunny outside. I went postal, I admit. I shouted something unintelligible (the new official U.S. language, according to the Onion). Poor Ray looked at me like I bit off his arm and beat him over the head with it. So it might be time to take a deeeeeep breath & do some healthy procrastinating…

It IS a lovely burgeoning spring at the Row. Our snow is almost melted, the iris and crocus are up, the robins and grackles are back, and the peacocks are in non-stop show mode. The randy males have resumed their “Help! Help!” mating calls, and the fanning/thrumming/rattling/drumming of their incredible train feathers makes the yard look like a Kipling painting and sound like a Robert Bly man-bonding campout. The hens stroll about, playing extremely hard to get and teasing with dainty tailfeather shakes. They’ll be playing these singles-bar games now until late April, when the pasture grass is tall enough to provide groundcover and the hens go to nest. Then by early June, we’ll have new peachicks.

A couple days ago, our Australian Shepherd, Jada, discovered a wee little calico cat in the yard. They were happily sniffing each other when Yogi, the Schnoodle Dennis-the-Menace of dogs, treed the poor thing. There was a nasty scramble to get the dogs inside, and when the cat climbed down, she ran right to the back porch and rubbed against my leg. This tells me that the cat is (a) not afraid of dogs, (b) very tame, and (c) probably dumped (a la “Uh…they’re ANIMAL people…let’s dump it there!”). Sadly, Yogi will not tolerate cats in the yard (all of our barn cats have moved on to greener, more cat-friendly pastures). So if you’re looking for a sweet, friendly, adorable kitty, give me a call—I’ll deliver the kitty to your doorstep.

I have three human friends right now expecting babies, too. Two are “more mature” women, closer to my age. I love that a person my age is no longer a generation removed from the new babies. Babies aren’t just for babies anymore, or something like that.

So on this gorgeous spring Friday, I could knit a bushel of silly little baby hats & make a poster to find a home for Little Bit (the calico kitty), or I could get back to work…hehehehehehe…

The Ides (and dangers) of March

2011-03-15T06:25:00.000-07:00

THE IDES OF MARCH

The seer was right to warn us,
beware the ides of March.

It’s a dangerous time, peering

through iced windows at the jeweled

tease of crocus and daffodil.

We've weathered another season

of deep-freeze, locked up tight

in muscle and mind. We're tired

of winter’s grey and gritty leftovers.

But this is no time to get careless,

toss a floorboard heater through

the beveled glass and go out,

where Spring flashes her flannel petticoat

embroidered in pinks and greens,

leaves us gaping, breathless,

in air still cold as a knife blade,

stripping off the down.

Marcella Remund

Poetry & the Pope

2011-03-06T11:53:00.000-08:00

I’ve been thinking about poetry a lot lately. I’ve been teaching poetry and the writing of literary essays about poetry in my lit classes, and my creative writing students have been working on their own poetry. I’ve been struggling, trying to explain why poetry matters, how it’s different from any other form of writing, where poets come up with the subjects of their poems & why they bother. I have loads of teacherly answers to these questions, and I love to listen to the discussion these questions can generate in a classroom. But honestly, I don’t know. Not ANY of it. And I’m not being evasive, or snobbish (as in, I know but can’t possibly tell YOU), or falsely self-deprecating—the befuddled writer who’s secretly in Stage 4 of Buddhahood. I seriously just don’t know.

Here’s a good example. At the same time Pope John Paul II was on his deathbed, I was down for the count with a brutal case of bronchitis. I lay in a recliner, wrapped in a sleeping bag, watching CNN’s 24/7 coverage of the Pope’s eminent demise. For three days (seriously…THREE days), I wandered in & out of a fever delirium, waking occasionally in a hazy fog, with some tidbit of news about the Pope drifting into my brain like a dream. At one point, I woke briefly to hear a physician commentator explain why the Pope was having difficulty breathing (I was a symphony of bronchial wheezing & coughing myself at that time) and I KNEW in that momentary, cosmic way of delirium, that the Pope and I were ONE…united in a crazy Vulcan mind (and pulmonary) meld. He drifted in & out of my consciousness after that, in a surreal, fever-induced slideshow.

But here’s the really weird part: my fever & brain fog finally broke when the Pope died. I’m not Catholic, and I hadn’t given ANY Pope a second thought before then. Still, this feeling stuck with me—the feeling that my buddy John Paul and I had had a moment. It stewed for a few months, and then this poem spilled out, nearly complete...

MARCH 31, 2005: MEDITATIONS IN EIGHT

Midway through a 104-degree

delirium I wake briefly

in sudden profound joy

to the certainty

that John Paul and I

bed-bound feverish brethren

are steeped in a mind meld—

I drift off again.

Illuminated in scarlet

weightless now

we pirouette

in a breathless dervish

lungs laboring in thick air

above a blue fog chasm

that separates the living

from the dead.

Stunned by the

silence, the grace

of this dance, my clever

thoughts hang in blue blue blue

air, like a useless bridge.

I grin my schoolgirl grin

and he names me

Only Love.

Two days later the fever breaks

he whirls on without me

I click back into clever

and must not speak of this

how I know I’ve been sick

how I know I’ve been cured

above a foggy precipice

by love, only love.

So there it is. I know what got the ball rolling, but I still don’t know where the poem came from, why, what it all means, whether or not it matters. It's all a big fat mystery to me. And I’m fine not knowing.

As a side note, I learned long after his death that the Pope had been a poet in his younger years. Go figure…

Poetry Goes [re]Public

2011-02-27T07:15:00.000-08:00

The student literary organization I help out with at Little Town U. just pulled off its annual Poetry Festival. It’s a single jam-packed day of poetry slendiforousness. This year, we brought in three amazing visiting poets – Patrick Hicks from Sioux Falls, Sarah McKinstry-Brown from Omaha, and Elliot Harmon from San Francisco. The day includes poetry writing workshops, readings, and an evening poetry slam. The readings and slam are free, and the workshops range in price from $3 - $15.

We had over 150 people total attending the 5 events, which is awesome for a late February event in the upper Midwest, where people are tired of sliding into town on a sheet of ice. But VERY few people participated in the workshops. I wondered why someone wouldn’t want to work one-to-one with a brilliant, published poet, in an intimate setting, where no poetry writing experience is needed, and I decided it’s the fear factor…

People seem split into two broad camps where poetry’s concerned: Camp A – poetry is Shel Silverstein, Hallmark cards, and Dr. Suess. It’s fluffy, rhymy, and often silly. If it doesn’t fit this image, it isn’t poetry. Camp B – poetry belongs in the dark, musty graduate classrooms of academe. It’s erudite, impenetrable, precious & private, and we can’t know what it means. These people are terrified of poetry.

One reason for the misconceptions about poetry may be that few people are exposed to poetry during their K-12 education. At most, they get a week-long poetry “overview” that starts with one Robert Frost or Emily Dickenson poem (rhyming, metered) and ends with writing a haiku about their goldfish.

Maybe we need to yank poetry out of its cozy hideout in dusty lit textbooks and toss it, naked & screaming, back into the streets from whence it came. Poetry was MEANT to be public, utilitarian. It dates back to 3000-4000 BCE, predating EVERY other kind of literature. Here’s a link to a cheesy Wikipedia history: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_poetry

Poetry was originally sung or recited in town squares—to spread news, honor achievements, collect and distribute a community’s history. It was an integral part of life-events such as births, weddings, funerals. We need poetry on park benches, sides of buildings, sidewalks. We need to sneak it onto menus, into public restrooms, onto MLB hotdog wrappers. New shoes & handbags should be stuffed with poems printed on tissue paper. Skywriters?

Poetry is the perfect literary form for the Newest Age, too. The rapidly-diminishing attention span of the average adult is now about 15-20 minutes – much too short for a play, novel, or even a short story, but ideal for a poem. And c’mon…what could be more perfect for a 140-word Tweet?

I’d like to strap some electrodes on modernist poet Ezra Pound’s poetic triad and raise it from the dead: logopoeia (what a poem means), phanopoeia (how it looks on the page), and melopoeia (how it sounds), in order to remind the world that poetry was never meant to be locked in books read only by grad students and other poets. It was meant to be picked at, examined, touched, seen, heard, spread around…read & written by YOU.

And here’s a little poem of mine for the Newest Age…

You Will Want to Watch This Poem

First, I’ll slap you hard with a scream—alarming volume.

Next, I’ll stand nearly naked in a funky plastic fountain,

golden arches on my head like fat dead bunny ears,

my skin painted shimmering cathode-grey;

the glow will be visible from any window.

I’ll leave my breasts untouched,

the color of skim milk; it will do you good.

Droplets of sugary cola will rain down,

meet the cleft of my navel, make you thirsty.

Some movements I’ll exaggerate. Others, I won’t.

I’ll hold a placard in bridge-black spray paint:

Will work for whole-grain flakes

fat free

lightly frosted on one side.

The letters will be large, visible at high speeds,

but you! You’ll be right here, chin dropped,

breathing through your mouth.

I’ll lull you with the universal mantra—

my lips pouty, full, red,

wrapped around six sultry iambs:

webringgoodthingstolife

You’ll be frozen rock hard,

dripping sweat.

You’ll want more.

Then, when you’re fixed and grinning,

I’ll plug in, turn on, burn

for one uncomfortable moment &

go up in a quick, sizzling, electric

poof!

of smoke and cinder

that settles finally

on the oil-slick cola surface.

now you will listen

Offerings on the coffee altar...

2011-02-12T13:05:00.000-08:00

Cleo Coyle is my newest Zen master. I’m on book 4 or 5, Decaffeinated Corpse, in Coyle’s series of light-hearted murder mysteries (“cozies”) called the Coffeehouse Mysteries. They’re set in or around a Manhattan coffee shop and feature a female protagonist (resident expert barista), who runs the shop with her swarthy, international coffee-buyer ex. I like cozies as a kind of “tai chi” for the brain—focused but gentle movement, predictable but meditative—compared to the “calisthenics” of the more analytical, 4-color-highlighter reading I do for school throughout the semester.

I like this series in particular because the novels center around one of my favorite rituals—the making & drinking of coffee. And interspersed with a character’s occasional swan dive off a balcony, “accidental” stumble in front of an oncoming subway train, or trip down a flight of stairs, the books offer coffee lore, history, tips, recipes and fun facts. Like, did you know you can tell if coffee’s fresh when you add milk or cream? If the milk “blooms” (rises and spreads across the surface of coffee) immediately, the coffee’s fresh. Or, did you know you should store bulk coffee beans in the fridge, with about a week’s worth of daily beans in an opaque container on the counter—not in the fridge or freezer? That’s because taking beans in & out of the cold daily causes condensation inside the container, which can spoil the beans. And seriously, who DOESN’T wanna know how to make a perfect Frangelico Latte? We have so much to learn, Grasshoppers…

Ray indulges my cafetheism; for our anniversary, he bought me the new Keurig Mini Brew for my office. It’s a departure from my staunch Chemex/French press/Bialetti purist snobbery, with its new-fangled, drop-in coffee “pods” (he even bought me extra bold, fair trade, organic coffee pods). And I haven’t tried it yet, so the jury’s still out on the all-important aroma & taste. Still, I like the idea of a fresh, hot, instant oneness with the java gods in the middle of the day—a tiny little epiphany between triplicate form-filing and panicky student consultations.

So don’t tell my prairie neighbors there’s no Folgers or Mr. Coffee in the house. Don’t tell them I cross myself with a dab of fresh brew, leave a bean in Buddha’s dish, smudge the kitchen with smoldering coffee leaves, toss glass coffee mugs over my left shoulder, kneel toward Brazil (ahem…the only country with seasonal snow that produces Arabica beans)—they wouldn’t understand these stones on my path to coffee nirvana.

And when they ask about the chanting…mochajavakenyasumatra…ohm…ohm…ohm…just tell them it must be the hum of the brooding lamps in the barn.

French Kisses & Kismet

2011-02-07T10:47:00.000-08:00

A rare convergence of celestial forces must be taking place. Last week, I foresaw a somewhat open weekend coming, Mom was willing and able to farm/dog/cat/parrot/fish/peacock sit, and our grandson had an upcoming soccer tournament in Spearfish, where our good friends live. So Ray and I, in as spontaneous a move as we make these days, decided to drive to the Black Hills for the weekend.

Friday’s drive across the state on I-90 west was blissfully uneventful. We ambled out late morning and rocked our way to the Hills by early evening, thanks to Ray’s 16K-song iPod.

We ended up in Deadwood, where friends were playing music for an Adams House Museum benefit that night. So we hung out at the Deadwood Social Club, above the No. 10 Saloon. I got to sit in on a couple of songs (my gratitude to the boys for that much-needed Song Therapy), we passed bruschetta and artichoke dip, Wildman Ray sampled the French Kiss martini, and we caught up with more old friends.

The evening was yet another mystical confluence of kismet. February 18 is our anniversary (22 years), and we got to spend that Friday night of our anniversary month (1) with the minister who married us, (2) with one of the folks who sang at our wedding, (3) with Ray’s best man, (4) in the town where we had our preemptive honeymoon. AND, we will have a full moon on the 18th. Bam. Completely cosmic.

On Saturday, we lollygagged around Spearfish with our son and his family, where we also got to watch 2 of our grandson’s games in the SD Indoor Soccer Tournament. I’d made everyone “Official Fan Club” t-shirts with the poor kid’s name & photo on them because, well, if a grandma can’t totally embarrass an 11-year-old kid, who can? His team ended up winning their division championship, thanks to those good-luck shirts. Okay, the team’s talent, hard work and sportsmanship may have helped a little. But it was mostly the shirts.

We’re back home now. And IF the Universe is truly aligning in an unprecedented configuration designed to release me from daily burdens, honor our anniversary, and remind me that there is goodness in the world, then these to-do piles I ignored over the weekend will go up in a quick puff of magical smoke any minute now...

Groundhog Day

2011-02-02T08:40:00.000-08:00

According to Punxsutawney Phil and his missing shadow, we’ll have an early spring. I wonder what Phil’s been sniffing down in that den, ‘cause I think his shadow was just too freakin’ cold to show. It’s 11 below on the Row today (wind chill of -33), and we’ve been snowed in for two days. And like the Bill Murray movie, it just keeps happening over and over and over...

This round of snow started last Sunday, then the drifting and brutal cold set in Monday afternoon. By Tuesday morning, our driveway looked like the rolling hills on the Arctic tundra. Tractor Fairy, our neighbor down the road, drove his Monster Cruncher up this morning—a snow-shooting tractor with a toothy chopping drum on the front straight out of a B horror film—and plowed out our driveway. But while Monster Cruncher can get down the road on its tires the size of small wading pools, our wimpy little VW bug and MiniPearl aren’t going anywhere until the county plow scrapes the road. And he doesn’t go by until he’s good & ready. So if it’s windy, too cold, or he has chicken-fried steak and mashed potatoes waiting at home, we may as well hunker down.

We lost a peahen somewhere along this winter way, so we’re down to 17. And for the past two days, the flock hasn’t left the loafing shed rafters. This means I’ll be trucking out to the shed today with corn. Word must be getting around about the cat food (the peacock version of Butterfingers) I sometimes toss out on the patio, because rabbits, a feral cat, and a few pheasants have been spooking around the house. The dogs won’t go farther than the bottom of the back porch steps, and our resident cat, Rickie Lee, won’t go out at all. I’m keeping the bird feeders in the yard full, so a raucous gang of bluejays, a bazillion juncos, sparrows, a pair of cardinals, downy and hairy woodpeckers, and one fat black crow have been keeping us company. We have a possum perpetually curled up in the hay trough of the barn. I’m starting to feel like Twisted Cinderella, in that scene where all the little eyelashy, smiley animals gather around her to sing pretty songs, except we’re all mange, broken feathers and pointy teeth, and we’re singing whiny blues.

We have two batches of homemade wine fermenting, Australian Shiraz and German apfelwine made from our own fresh-pressed organic apple juice, and it’s probably a good thing the wine isn’t ready to bottle, or Ray and I would be stuporous, drool running down our chins as we stare at another lousy made-for-TV vampire movie. I’ve knit, oh, maybe a dozen silly hats, and I’ve read two James Burch novels. My arse is now shaped exactly like the seat of my Laz-y-Girl, and my skin is the color and texture of butcher paper. It’s probably a blessing I can’t get to the store to stock up on Doritos.

So if spring doesn’t come soon, you can bet Ray and I will be chopping up fenceposts for firewood, so we can slow-roast a hope-dashing, lying little groundhog…

Missing the Yo-Yo Man

2011-01-22T08:28:00.000-08:00

I grew up in north Omaha in the 1950-1970’s, in an area called Florence. We (three and sometimes four generations of us) lived in a 17-room house known as the Tucker Hotel on Tucker Street. Before it was swallowed up by the Blob (Omaha), Florence was a town, and my great-great-grandfather Freeman Tucker, whose family ran the hotel, was mayor; hence, the street name. Thinking about Florence lately scares up some ghostly images from my youth. Like the time Maureen and I, twelve years old, took the #6 bus downtown to Woolworth’s and bought “Flower Power” PEZ (a beatnik dispenser with candy that tasted like nasty perfume). Here are a few more spooks…

The doll hospital. I can’t remember exactly where this was, maybe around Miller Park. Mom took me there with my talking Chatty Cathy doll, which had crashed to the floor from Mom’s bed (I most certainly was NOT jumping on the bed) and now only made raspy grunting sounds. The doll hospital man checked her in at the front desk, tenderly, like a patient, putting her in a little doll bed. We went back a few days later to pick her up. We FIXED broken stuff then and kept using it….wow.

The balloon man. Okay, this is a little creepy looking back. But there was this guy who roamed Florence, maybe in a clown suit (I can’t quite remember), stopping kids on the street to make balloon animals for them. He might have worked for Wonder Bread; this was before mass-marketing/advertising, so companies often had people go out on foot and spread the word about their products. Consider Duncan YoYo’s.

The YoYo man. Duncan YoYo’s advertising consisted of occasional magazine ads and itinerate demonstrators who fanned out across the country. Once in a while, the YoYo man would come to Koebler Drug in Florence (with a real soda fountain). We’d crowd around the guy outside the store, and he’d walk his dog or go over the moon. Then we’d all run inside, buy yoyo’s, whack each other in the shin or ear trying to copy his tricks, give up by nightfall and toss the yoyo’s in the milkbox.

The milkman. We had a milkbox on our front porch. Mom or Grandma would put empty glass milk bottles in it, and the Greystone Dairy milkman would collect the bottles and leave filled ones. For a while, our milkman was our neighbor, Dave Donahue. I asked him to marry me when I was five. I also once put Debbie Lechner’s tennis shoes in our milkbox, sat on it and crossed my arms & legs, and wouldn’t give the shoes back till poor Debbie ran home crying. That’s some baaad milkbox karma…

Florence grocery. My grandma worked there. The wood floors were worn smooth & shiny. There was one register in front. In the back was the meat counter, and behind that, through the swinging doors, was the room where they butchered. Man, I can still smell that place—sawdust, bread, sweat, Pine-Sol, fresh air from the open back door, and blood.

Chicken blood. My grandpa hunted & fished (we were a few blocks from the Missouri, near the Mormon Bridge). He raised hunting beagles in a kennel in our back yard. He kept his fishing gear on the back porch, including little tubs of dough bait and dried chicken blood. My grandpa would mix the blood, a dark, almost black powder, into his bait. My grandma would sometimes sprinkle it around the garden to keep rabbits out. I used to trick my friends into opening the tub and smelling that rank dried blood (hmm…I’m sensing a pattern of brattiness…).

Florence School. When I was in first grade, our entire school went on a march from the old Florence School (a block from my house) to the modern new school building, just under a mile away, and a couple blocks from Notre Dame Academy for Girls, where I would end up for my sophomore year.

Zesto. It was a block from my house. Footlong chili dogs were 89 cents. Brown crowns (chocolate dipped cones) were 29 cents. Enough said.

Florence Pioneer Days. Every year, the carnival would roll into town in the middle of the night and take over the ballpark a block from our house. They’d take a day or two to set up, and packs of us kids would hang out, hauling water from the pump for the horses, fetching tools, or running errands for the carnies. Funny… that sweet, sweet memory suddenly sounds like child labor…

There are many more ghosts, of course. But some of these—like milkmen, YoYo men, soda fountains, doll hospitals—are thinning into vapor. I like that I can still conjure them now & then. And when I do, I swear I feel 29 cents burning a hole through my pocket.

Pictures Top to Bottom: Duncan Yo-Yo Man, Tucker Hotel 1882, Prescher kids on old Florence School Bell after move to new school, Tucker Hotel 1927, old Florence School on 31st & Tucker, Notre Dame Academy for Girls, Zesto)

Ho, Ho (Really?), Ho

2010-12-29T13:15:00.000-08:00

The 2010 holidays find the Universe, in Her infinite, unfathomable wisdom, sorely testing my will to optimism.

First, ¾ of our kids were away for Christmas. I frequently joke about how much I adore the “empty nest,” but I must fess up--I missed the Christmas morning chaos. There’s something just so wrong about a quiet Christmas. If I’m half the domineering, controlling, guilt-dishing mother I think I am, this will never happen again.

Then, on Christmas day, my back went out. No, I don’t think it was a psychosomatic attempt to rally the troops. I think it was the culmination of physical self-abuse that started with careless interpretive dance at my friend’s October wedding that resulted in a slipped hip, then a complete lack of exercise and the internalizing of mountains of end-of-semester stress, then a marathon 5 days hunched over a table grading final papers, then 2 days of leaning over the dining room table with a hot iron pressing haiku transfers onto t-shirts for Christmas presents. So by early this week, I was no longer able to pick the dog dishes up off the floor. And I have a healthy new appreciation for the muscle groups involved in wiping one’s own arse. I made it in to the chiropractor yesterday, and I had her give me acupuncture for anxiety & stress, just for good measure. I expect to be flexible and euphoric any minute now…

Early this week, because I wasn’t having ENOUGH fun, our kitchen drains stopped draining. Ray spent two days on plungers & Drano, and $40 on various length snakes, all to no avail. So today we gave in and called the plumber, who, after several hours, declared the problem a “mystery” and said he’d have to consult his boss. He assured me a fix was possible but would likely involve tearing stuff up, re-routing, cutting into old pipes, installing new pipes, etc. It was, of course, impossible to estimate the costs, he said. So I’ve been doing dishes all day (because dishwashers/drains only stop working once every dish in the house is dirty), one bowlful at a time, then I shuffle, stooped over like some old Grimm Brothers hag, to the bathroom to dump the used dishwater in the toilet (which IS still draining, because the Universe knows better than to REALLY test me).

Did I mention the ice maker stopped working? And I was so counting on the medicinal properties of Bailey’s & eggnog to help straighten up my spine and my sense of humour...

And now Jack Blizzard threatens to blast us with another round of ice, snow and gale-force winds--our third blizzard of the winter so far. If I get snowed in, disrupting my plans to celebrate New Year’s Eve listening to Ray’s band & kissing this foul year good riddance with a pint of Guinness, things could get ugly. But for now, I’m still my usual effervescent Pollyanna self, still filled to brimming with holiday cheer & good will, dammit.

Blizzard Survival Kit

2010-12-12T09:44:00.000-08:00

Jack Blizzard had his first major tantrum of the season yesterday. It hit South Dakota, Minnesota, Iowa and Nebraska. It’s a gen-you-whine snow-in on the Row, with an impossible 7’ drift running the length of our long driveway. While we’re waiting for a kind-hearted tractor neighbor and/or county road crew, I thought I’d offer my essential Blizzard Survival Kit…

1. Coffee. You’ll need a couple pounds stored in an opaque, airtight container in the fridge. Then you’ll need another couple pounds stored in airtight bags in the freezer. You might consider ½-decaf if you’ll be snowed in with another human; you wouldn’t want to be too jumpy. But even worse—for all concerned—would be running out.

2. A larder. Out here on the prairie, you want a fully-stocked pantry at all times. Some people, I won’t mention names, have a pantry full of rice noodles, canned oysters, maple syrup, palm fruit pulp, pad thai sauce, canned tomatoes, refried beans, six kinds of crackers, microwave popcorn, and enough pickled jalapenos to stock every Taco Bell in the U.S. So maybe they don’t think in practical, menu-driven terms, but don’t judge; have you ever tried rice noodles with maple syrup and jalapenos? Yeah, I didn’t think so. They might also have a roasting hen, 5 lbs of tilapia, two boxes of henna, a bazillion wonton skins, a dozen candles, half a carrot cake, 3 lbs of coffee (see #1), an old bag of tater tots, 25 lbs of parrot food, a pound of dried parsley and 25 lbs of venison in the freezer.

3. Woolies. You may think you’re too cool for long underwear, but when the snow blows horizontally in a 50 mph wind, you’ll think again. Without the woolies, pale pink prairie skin looks like red cellophane after a 3-minute walk to the loafing shed.

4. A loafing shed. This is for your peacocks. They’ll want somewhere to roost out of the wind, preferably with a snow-free dirt floor below, where you can leave them cat food and black oil sunflower seeds, daily, at 10 a.m. sharp. A flock of 18 hungry peacocks marching toward your back door at 10:05 is a scary sight. Imagine the Skeksies in Dark Crystal, only leaner & meaner.

5. Chocolate. Four kinds of dark chocolate – with ginger, panko breadcrumbs, sea salt, and cayenne. Chocolate contains phenylethylamine, which causes the brain to release dopamine and oxytocin – chemicals involved in falling in love, relaxation, nurturing and orgasm. Avoid chocolate if you’re snowed in with relatives and/or ex’es.

6. Empty carbs. You’ll need Doritos, mashed potatoes, white bread with butter & sugar, and plenty of pasta with butter and parmie. These become especially important from Day 3 on in the event of a snow-in. The semi-comatose carb sedation will help prevent domestic unrest once the chocolate runs out.

7. Layered outerwear. You’ll want flannel-lined jeans and a sweatshirt, insulated coveralls, parka with a fur-lined hood, knee-high snow boots, a wool hat, insulated waterproof gloves, and a wool scarf to wrap around your face. You won’t be able to breathe, see or move, so you may as well stay inside…skip #7.

8. Dish TV. In the midst of a blizzard, all of your self-righteous pontificating about the evils of Bridezillas, Hell’s Kitchen, the golf channel and Nick Jr. goes out the window along with your heat. Trust me – you’ll be happy to stumble across that Petticoat Junction marathon.

9. Paper books and flashlights with fresh batteries. Your power WILL eventually go out. Books will help you survive the TV/Internet DT’s, which set in about 20 minutes after your power goes out.

10. Knitting. A good yarn stash and a 4-day snow-in could net you at least half a dozen adorable Christmas presents. Search the Web for fast, easy knitting patterns on Day 1, before you lose power. Remember, knitting needles are NOT weapons.

11. A wood stove. Have an ample supply of cut wood, dry and in the house. Have a folding Army cot or two near the stove. When the power goes out, pretend you’re camping in the Himalayas, on your way to meet the Dalai Lama. Chanting ohm nama shivaya ohm helps with the shivering.

12. Wine & Bailey’s. Ditto the importance of the semi-coma mentioned in #6.

13. Board/Bored games. On Days 1-2, these will help pass the time and create the illusion of an old-fashioned farm holiday season. On Days 3-4, they come in handy as non-lethal projectiles.

14. Binoculars. From Day 3 on, you’ll need these in order to stare longingly at the Interstate traffic ½-mile away. This will remind you to keep bathing, shaving your legs, and getting dressed in the morning—life is going on somewhere, and someday, you’ll be part of it again.

15. A comfy bed (if the heat is still on). If you’re not dug out by Day 4, take to your bed. Load up with carbs first for heavy, uninterrupted sleep. Pile on the down quilts. Know that when they dig you out, a kindly social worker will arrive to do a “well person” check called in by your mother. She will wake you to make sure you’re still breathing. Tell her you’ll get up as soon as the coffee’s ready.

Slow Slide into Winter

2010-12-05T06:36:00.000-08:00

It’s early December on the Row, which means I’ve been sucked into the Cluster of Doom—that convergence of Winter’s onset, the end of the semester at Little Town U, and the holidays.

I’m currently mired in the grading swamp—60+ literary research essays, Icy Hot neck patches, avoidance blogging, and a bottomless pot of French Roast. It’s a special level of Dante’s Hell for people who won’t give up the delusion that teaching is “noble.”

Meanwhile, the landscape has taken on an unbroken beige pallor, the prairie wind and morning frost turn prayer flags into ice sculptures, and the peas honk at the back porch for She Who Brings Corn. We know it’s coming, but it still takes us by surprise. For a while, we walk around with a stunned raccoon-in-the-headlights look, mouths agape, hauling in pots of basil or geraniums that only froze “a little” in the bone-chilling 20-below wind chill. Some of us, in spite of massive Vitamin D supplements, slide into a blue funk we won’t pull out of until late March. We watch CNN, wear Snuggies, drink too much eggnog and brandy, sleep a lot, and hoard Puffs tissues. Some of us lose our summer freckles and binge on empty carbs, until cheeks inflate around dark, beady eyes. By mid-December, we look like Stay-Puft Marshmallow men.

There are occasional reprieves from the oppression, though. Ray’s 1970’s band, Little Henry, played in the Big City in November, so I got in a much-needed dose of vibrational healing—relaxing with good friends and doing some “chick-singer” therapy.

We had a pre-Thanksgiving gathering with Ray’s family, always a warm, welcome treat, with a bonus visit from old family friends and the arrival of Ray’s sister & BIL from Tennessee.

Then, we were absolutely blessed to host my extended family of 21+ at the Row on Thanksgiving day: Mom, all 4 siblings and 4 sib-spouses (coming from Kansas, Texas, and Mexico), all 4 of our kids, 2 kid-spouses, 3 grandkids, a niece & nephew, a good friend, and 4 dogs. It was a grand potluck buffet, including a turkey finished with a coffee-ginger glaze. I adore our frenetic, loud, laughing, yelling family gatherings, and at this one, we also celebrated 5 December birthdays, including the new baby grandson’s 1^st. The next night, Ray’s band played at our fave Little Town watering hole, so many of us from both families went out for a night of exceptional music, more chick-singer therapy, and hip-slipping interpretive dance.

On Friday this week, our family welcomed its newest member, Khloe. She's my niece's first, making my baby bro a first-time grandpa. We're calling him Grandpa Thunder after his "Trailer-Trash Jell-O Salad" shopping debacle over Thanksgiving (Dr. Thunder is NOT the same as Dr. Pepper).

Today, as Winter cracks the tree branches outside, I’m headed back to the greenhouse for another round of grading. But it’s okay. I have my full-spectrum lamp, my space heater, and a bottle of Bailey’s for my bottomless cup ‘o joe.

Why I Bite & Snap

2010-11-12T13:26:00.000-08:00

The weather is dreary in eastern South Dakota this week. It’s not bad for November, I guess—40-degree days, 20-degree nights. But after a bright, mild beginning to November, the last couple days have been grey and drizzly. There’s a damp chill in air that smells a lot like winter. Our neighbors are almost done harvesting, which means the landscape is mostly brown & beige. Toss stupid daylight savings time into the mix, and my circadian rhythms are playing “Wipe Out.”

Seriously. I crawl out at 5:30 a.m. in total darkness, desperate for coffee. I drag myself through the day, staying conscious with various combinations of more coffee, dark chocolate, jumping jacks (yes, sometimes in the middle of a class) and FOX news (my incredulity at the stuff they say keeps my heart pounding). Then, around 5:30 p.m., when the peacocks head for their backyard roosting tree because it’s already dark again, I’m either drifting off in my Lazy Girl, slumped over & drooling on a stack of essays I should be grading, or waking with a start to the thud of my Kindle on the floor. These cold, wet, dark-to-dark days are like half all gas-lampy Little House on the Prairie, and half 30 Days of Night. I’m sprouting fangs…and a bonnet.

I hauled the houseplants back in for the winter, and the greenhouse is packed to the gills. I’m hoping the extra oxygen will keep me from slipping into a two-shallow-breaths-a-minute coma. When I can stay awake, I’ve been knitting cowls, comforted by the idea of pulling something warm & fuzzy up over my face to shield my pasty skin and pale Gollum eyes from the light.

The pheasant hunters are out in force, which means the peaflock (final count this year is 18) sticks close to the house and whines for corn. I regularly stop hunters to explain how similar peafowl and wild turkeys can look from a distance. And in spite of our attempts at aversion therapy, the flock has decided that yes, Virginia, there IS a Santa Clause, and he came early to leave a lovely new pergola perch.

I’ve been working like a dawg this semester (maybe it only SEEMS harder due to my autumnal lethargy), and I'm a little overwhelmed by the upcoming convergence of the end of the semester and the holidays. The prospect makes me even more desperate to fatten up on blueberries, floured honey biscuits and bison jerky and “take to my bed” until spring. I’ll gladly be a front-runner in the evolutionary adaptation for human hibernation in climates with changing seasons; I’m pretty sure living off fat stores for a couple months would be totally worth the deep, peaceful, sensory-deprived sleep.

Halloween & Housebound

2010-10-30T10:23:00.000-07:00

It’s Halloween on the Row. The peacocks are dressed as Oriental fan dancers, the dogs are dressed as lazy wolf cubs, the cat is a ferocious jungle panther, and the parrots are caged birds (that sing). Ray’s costume this year is hermit musicologist/archivist (he’s STILL transferring his entire, very impressive album collection to CD then to iTunes, and he’s doing some musical archiving for our friend Ina, whose brain is in fine shape after her recent fall & surgery, praise Shiva. Ina’s payments of mouthwatering banana bread are helping us lay on some pre-winter fat

My oldest brother, The Suave Southern Host, was home from Mexico this month. We had good family visits, and my brother got to introduce baby Clyde to his first taste of apple pie. Then Ray and I went with TSSH to Omaha, where he played a 25^th-anniversary reunion gig with the Omaha ska/NE range/reggae/dance band, the Linoma Mashers. It was pretty amazing watching those old farts (he’s two years older than me) kick some musical arse, and even more amazing to watch the packed house scream in unison on “Surfin’ Lake McConaughy.”

Then last weekend, my friend Linda Orbatch and I road-tripped to MN State U to read poems, along with another Little U. colleague, at the 29^th annual Women and Spirituality Conference. Akasha Hull delivered a stunning keynote address on the intersection of spirituality and sexuality to 300-ish women and a few brave men, and there were 25-30 simultaneous panels running during each of four sessions. We could choose from topics like Eastern religions, shamanism, tarot, drum circles, spontaneous singing, kabbalah, laughter yoga and much more. The highlight for me was having my aura photographed because, well, you just gotta. According to the aura reader, I’m completely relaxed and not at all stressed. It must be true, right?

The Row is settling now under a thick blanket of leaves. Ray cleaned up the garden, and the mums are slumped over with morning frost. After planning it in his head for a couple of years, Ray took a weekend recently and built a pergola over the back sidewalk. We’re trying to convince the peas it’s not a giant pea-perch, and next spring we’ll plant hearty wisteria on both sides. It, like practically everything else on the Row, is draped in blue solar lights. Out here on the dark prairie, we have our own little solar system at night.

My Halloween costume this year is harried, housebound, decaying schoolmarm. Once again, as the days grow longer and I spend increasing periods bent over piles and piles and piles of essays and midterm exams, I’m losing my summer freckles and donning my winter Casper-white glow, nicely accented by big dark circles under my eyes, a coffee mustache, and a ring of Doritos cheese around my mouth. My new essential foundation garment is an Icy Hot patch on the back of my neck. (Note to students: Bless you for trying, but “LMAO” and “Even a total tool knows that…” isn’t really objective academic writing.) A couple of colleagues and I chuckled a while back over our collective wish to be just sick enough to be hospitalized for a few days so we could (a) sleep and (2) get caught up with our grading. Maybe an exotic, non-lethal parasite would be nice...and I could scarf down even more Doritos and banana bread…

Then & Now: Weddings Edition

2010-10-13T10:34:00.000-07:00

My friend got married recently, and halfway through the reception, as I was trying desperately to breathe while mopping sweat off my forehead and trying to find the sandals I'd kicked off before hitting the dance floor, it occured to me that weddings in midlife are nothing like the weddings of our youth. So I've put together this retrospective, an amalgamation of all the weddings I've been to (and a few I've been in) over the years...

Then: You get married at 17 because you’re bored and there’s nothing on TV.

Now: You get married at 54 because you’ve miraculously found someone whose emotional sensibilities complement yours and whose only goal in life is to be your life partner.

Then: You’ve been planning every teensy detail of your wedding since you were 13. You have it cataloged in several 3-ring binders.

Now: A couple weeks before the big day, you find a place to get married and a bigger place to have a party. You’re pretty sure you have something in the back of your closet you can wear.

Then: Your mom sells a car to pay for your invitations, engraved with fluttering doves and an excerpt from Jonathan Livingston Seagull. You send the invitations out to everyone you’ve ever known, six months before the wedding.

Now: You make 50 invitations in Word on your home computer a month before the wedding, then you forget them in a grocery bag in the back seat of your car, thinking you’ve already mailed them.

Then: You compose a set of 8 linked sonnets as your wedding vows, and you ask the minister for a homily on fidelity, marital effort & trust, which he’s to keep under an hour.

Now: You compose your 8-line vows from your favorite self-help book, and you ask the minister for any homily with the word “love” that stays under 5 minutes.

Then: You get married in the Cathedral.

Now: You get married in a small university chapel that doubles as a classroom.

Then: You have a string quartet play background music before the processional, which is played—majestically, triumphantly—on the Cathedral’s floor-to-ceiling pipe organ. The recessional is played by a small brass ensemble.

Now: Three chicks with guitars sing an old rock & roll song for your processional, and an old married couple with guitars sings another old rock & roll song for your recessional. The groom’s toddler granddaughter dances in the aisle and claps.

Then: You have a champagne reception in an art museum gallery, with petit fours, imported liver pate, and ricotta cheesecake bites with candied raspberry sauce.

Now: You have an open-bar hootenanny in a barn converted into a dance hall. You serve roast pork, green beans, potatoes and carrot cake.

Then: You have a sweet little folk band playing at the reception.

Now: You have a kick-ass country swing band at the reception, with incredibly hot chick singers, and you shove all the front tables back to get at the dance floor.

Then: Your new husband kneels at your feet as you sit in a brocade and ribbon-covered throne on a small gallery stage. He carefully takes off your $100 beaded silk garter with his teeth.

Now: Your garter, an old blue bandanna strapped to your thigh, comes untied and falls off somewhere between the chapel and the dance hall.

Then: All through the reception, your friend babysits the stoic Presbyterian minister’s three small children.

Now: All through the reception, your friend dances like a whirling dervish with the gregarious ex-Catholic-priest minister.

Then: You do the chicken dance, the alligator, the hokey-pokey, and a dollar dance that goes on for 127 minutes.

Now: You do a couple waltzes and a slow dance with the groom, but mostly you do Laugh-In-ish interpretive go-go dancing with your girlfriends. Your friend’s hip goes out.

Then: You get toasters, crystal, china, hand-embroidered linens, and casserole dishes.

Now: You get money and wine. And wine glasses. And more wine. And good coffee.

Then: The groomsmen outfit the wedding limo with streamers, dried flowers and bells in your theme colors.

Now: Your daughter and her friends wrap your new husband's car with crime scene tape.

Then: You slip out of the reception at 10:30 to make your midnight flight to Fiji.

Now: You slip out of the reception at midnight, because you’re exhausted and you have to work tomorrow.

Ina's Clever Trick: Mobilizing the Village

2010-09-15T12:20:00.000-07:00

It’s been a while. And it’s been an action-packed month. The new school year is underway at Little Town U, and this always means an unpredictable schedule and long hours. For me, it also means a fairly predictable temporary funk – anxiety about being ready for classes, grief for the waning summer, frustration as I try and bounce too many balls at once, and a hint of dread for the inevitable South Dakota winter. Eventually, I buck up, and everything’s fine again.

(I’m almost there.)

One of the last big events of the summer was the August Sisters of Perpetual Disorder dinner. We were 21 women this time, with an astounding spread of potluck dishes and plenty of wine. What made this particular gathering so memorable, though, was Ina’s clever trick. Ina is the Grand Matriarch and originator of the SOPD dinners (who doesn’t drink – ‘cause you would have been wondering in a minute…). As the dinner wrapped up, Ina was walking down a few small back steps carrying a light but awkward cardboard box, when she tripped and went straight down. That would have been bad enough, but she hit her head on the corner of a brick on her way down.

The ensuing scene was, in some ways completely surreal, and in other ways like a bad TV movie. But mostly, it was a testament to the incredible power of women. So there was Ina, lying on the sidewalk between the garden and steps, disoriented, maybe momentarily unconscious, and moaning in pain. And from under her head, a small pool of blood oozed into a steadily growing pool (hence, the bad TV movie). This all happened in a split second, followed by maybe one or two more split seconds of stunned silence.

But then, a fascinating thing happened. Twenty-one women moved swiftly into Full Rescue Mode. No panick. No confusion. Just considered, deliberate, quiet action. Several women told Ina not to move, and she obeyed. One woman called 911. Another carefully slid a damp washcloth under Ina’s head to stem the bleeding. Another put a bit of bug spray on her hands, then carefully dabbed the unhurt parts of Ina’s face to ward off the vicious mosquitos. Several moved parked cars to make room for the ambulance. One woman scolded a first-on-the-scene policeman when he looked like he would try and move Ina’s head to get a curious look at her head wound. Except for that first brief disorientation, Ina was alert and responsive throughout.

Once the ambulance loaded Ina up and left the scene, several women went on to the hospital, and we even barged into the exam room and circled Ina’s gurney to keep her awake & talking while she waited for the MRI machine (that’s us in the picture – we’ve shoved the ER medical personnel out of our way, and we’re fussing around Ina). One of us went back to the hostess house and helped with clean-up. One eventually drove up to the Big City and spent the night there when Ina’s MRI looked fishy and she was life-flighted to a larger hospital.

Ina was in the hospital for the next few days, following surgery to remove several small bone fragments from her skull. Rescue Mode continued even then. We took turns visiting the hospital in two’s or three’s, while people brought food to Ina’s son, who had come from western South Dakota to stay near his mother. A couple of women took turns making sure Ina’s dog was let in & out.

One day, while Ina was still in the hospital, a contingent of women spent a day doing yard work at her house, tending to overgrown raspberries and her sprawling tomato garden, so she’d have clear paths and little outside work to do once she got back home. And when she did come home, Rescue Mode continued with a two-week schedule of food deliveries to Ina and her other son, who’d come from Florida.

Ina’s okay now – praise be. What little memory gaps she had about the accident have filled in. And, with typical Ina humor, she says it will be hard for us to top the entertainment value of her mishap at future SOPD dinners. She sees the resulting lighter workload (she’s a baker) as a positive outcome of the fall. And at our favorite Little Town watering hole not long ago, with Ina making her first post-accident appearance and grinning from ear to ear, the boys in the band sang, “Ina…is there anyone finah…in the state of Carolina…” to wild cheers & applause.

I am completely, unspeakably grateful to be part of this amazing community of women. In the very best sense of the word, the Sisters of Perpetual Disorder are a beautiful village. Hillary was right – it really does take a village. And you'd better hope your village has a bunch of level-headed women in it.

(Okay, I think I’m there now.)

Aversion Therapy & Home Industry

2010-08-12T08:37:00.000-07:00

I’m easing into my post-fun summer penance now (and avoiding my new school year prep) by catching up on some home industry. I built a cage around my hearty wisteria, because the peacocks recently discovered it’s a delightful pea-dessert, and they ate the bottom half of the vine down to sticks in a single day. I remind the flock daily now that in Indonesia, peacocks are FOOD.

I’m doing a little aversion therapy with the peas, too. Peacocks mostly eat grasses and vegetation, but what they really love is cat food. So it didn’t take them long to discover that our adopted outside cat, Rickie Lee, has food on the back porch ledge. In fact, Zorro, our only black peacock and a flock hoodlum, is obsessed with Rickie’s food. He’s taken to hanging out on the back patio, and I’ve caught him several times on the ledge, polishing off the food in Rickie’s dish. I tried a billowy prayer flag pea-barricade, but the darn birds realized they could fly. So now when I feed Rickie, I stand by with a squirt bottle of water and zap Zorro (or the wayward girls he influences) whenever he makes a move for the cat food. This is what I’ve come to…shooing peacocks off my back porch. Who’d’a thunk…

In spite of serious, persistent spring and summer flooding in South Dakota (two main thoroughfares between our house and Little Town are still closed & under water), and the resulting constant buzzing clouds of bazillions of mosquitoes the likes of which I’ve never seen in all my years here, I’ve been picking, cooking and preserving our garden bounty: gooseberries, acorn squash, yellow squash, cucumbers, tomatoes and the sweet corn a friend gave us. I’ve stocked the freezer with whole grain blueberry muffins and bison mini-meatloaves, and we’ll have apples and wild plums to deal with soon.

Have I mentioned before that I love red wine? So Ray got me a winemaking kit last Christmas, and early this summer I turned the lower level of the greenhouse into my own little winery. I have my second batch of wine going now, a Chilean Malbec. I was encouraged to make another batch when I discovered (at our family reunion) that my first batch, The Damn Merlot (have you not seen Sideways yet?!?), is AWESOME!

I’ve also been knitting up a storm in accordance with a basic mathematical principle: Knitting + Discovery Channel = I’m not a slacker. I think I have several felted bags and 5 pairs of fingerless gloves now (not to spill the beans about what all my kids will be getting for Christmas).

I can also allay my slacker guilt knowing that I worked all summer doing freelance copywriting for the ad agency where I worked a few years back. Creative writing and copywriting are two extremes on the writing spectrum, so it was good exercise for me to strip things down to “Your Community Partner.” I wrote a couple video scripts, a few 30-second TV spots, some poster/banner copy, and lots of ads. Best of all, I got to hang with my old friends, who are a light-hearted, zany bunch of mad[wo]men.

Today I’m baking blueberry scones and blueberry buckle in preparation for a wild women’s weekend. I’m having a Row henna party Saturday, then when we’re all henna’d up, we’ll head to Little Town for another night of dancing when Ray’s band plays at our fave watering hole. Then on Sunday, I’m off to another Sisters of Perpetual Disorder women’s dinner, with a “picnic” theme this time.

Then I promise I’ll get to that school prep. Right after I organize my PEZ dispenser collection and re-grout the tub…

Play Now, Pay Later

2010-08-09T07:07:00.000-07:00

I’ve had waaaaay too much fun this summer. In June, my friend Gail and I went to a Buddhist meditation retreat in CO. It was a transformative event, resulting in my current daily meditation practice, a new meditation blog (www.pomheart.blogspot.com), and a much improved sense of Self (or non-Self).

Then in late July my two oldest grandkids, Syd, 10, and Alia, 12, came sans parents to spend a week at the Row. It’s tough entertaining e-generation kids, but we kept them busy with help from Gigi (great-grandma), trail-hiking, a family BBQ, skateboarding, duck feeding, a day with their aunt at a motel pool, and, of course, a trip to Barnes & Noble - Alia and I each read The Golden Compass at bedtime. Both kids have cell phones, and I swear, their parents (who’ve never spent a night away from the kids) called them 15 times a day. And I now know everything there is to know about Sponge Bob and iCarly. Welcome to life totally plugged in.

As soon as the kids left, Mom and I drove to Longville MN for a family reunion. It’s held annually at a lake cabin my paternal grandparents bought in the 1950’s. There are two cabins now, a tent city, and a week of swimming, boating, jet-skiing, tubing, eating, catching up, s’moring, laughing, and drinking. We're a boisterous Bohemian bunch, and this year there were 39 of us – 4 generations – plus 9 dogs, 2 potbelly pigs and a cockatoo. We even had a mosquito cake (my daughter's artistry). The highlight was the surprise dock wedding of my cousin’s son to his sweet Chilean girlfriend, with my minister cousin presiding. The dock was decorated with streamers, balloons, wildflowers and – yep – peacock feathers. We all wore our white 2010 family reunion t-shirts (thanks to my brother). It was a beautiful, happy ceremony and a joyous reunion.

The fun continued when Ray’s band played a benefit last weekend at our favorite Little Town watering hole for our friend, Ed, who had a stroke recently. It was so good to see, once again, the way our little community rallies when someone needs a hand. All the wild women (and plenty of wild men) were there, and I'm still feeling the aftereffects of our raucous interpretive dancing.

Some people think fun & recreation are their reward for hard work. Maybe it’s my Presbyterian/Catholic indoctrination, but I'm a glutton for festivities, friendship & fun, and I tend to see hard work as my penance for it. So with only 3 weeks left before the new semester, I know I'll have to pay dearly for this Summer of Love. I know I’d better get busy. Yeah. And I will, honest. Right after our trip to the Cities next weekend to see a Saints game and the Dead Sea Scrolls exhibit…

Summer of Sound

2010-07-22T09:52:00.000-07:00

It’s been a symphony of hoots & harmonies for residents of the Row this summer. First there’s happy hour at our watering hole in Little Town, where we’re treated to the region’s most exceptional fiddle, gee-tar, bass & sax every Friday. One Friday, my friends Gail and Laurie and I got to sing with the boys in the band, surprising our friend Ina on her birthday with a Libby Roderick song, “Bones,” she’d asked us to learn many months before. The surprised, delighted look on her face when we started singing was priceless.

Then, over the 4^th, we got to hear Stevie Winwood and Santana in the park in South City, and last weekend we heard Marcia Ball, Trombone Shorty, Davina & the Vagabonds, and Los Lobos at the park in North City.

Then we got to hear Ray play drums with a super-group of area musicians – drums, 3 fiddles, 3 guitar players, and 2 bass players – at a fundraiser for the Honor Flights for WWII vets (http://www.honorflightsd.org).

Add to that the usual “Help! Help!” calls of peacocks competing for mates, the honking of peahens whose eggs are hatching, and the soft woodblock cluck-clucking of hens teaching chicks to find food. Throw in the backporch mewing of the Row’s newest resident cat Rickie Lee, the songs of orioles, pigeons, swallows & sparrows, and the rhythm section – bullfrogs, crickets, cicadas. It’s a regular summer soundfest.

The summer storms have added to the orchestration, too, like the sustained heaving thunder during last night’s storm. We got 3-5” of rain out of it, adding to the already extremely wet spring & summer that drowned many newly-planted corn and bean fields (and tragically, many farmers' hopes for the season). The result at the Row has been positively tropical greenery. We’ve been harvesting gooseberries, yellow squash and cucumbers. The peas ate the raspberries as fast as they set on, so a fence is in order there (their little peabrains don’t realize peacocks could fly over fences). The trees are heavy with wild plums and apples, and if I was inclined to pick & sort lambsquarters (which taste like spinach and have equal nutritional value), we’d be iron-fortified for the rest of the summer.

The peacount is around 24 now, which includes the summer’s 8 new babies. We’re pretty sure we had a badger in the pasture, which would explain the low baby count (at least 4 hens went to nest x 4 babies each, and you can see the potential) and the lateness of some babies – 4 brand new ones showed up in the yard just yesterday, quite late in the summer for new chicks that need a good start before winter. But peas who lose eggs or chicks early in the summer will breed again and try to get another clutch in before fall. O, the will to perpetuate...

We made our first batch of wine this summer, Merlot, and we’re starting our second batch tonight, Chilean Malbec. These are kits, an easy start to winemaking as I learn the ropes in preparation for homemade wild plum wine.I've dubbed our production "Naughty Girl Whinery," though I rarely whine and am most certainly never naughty.

So it’s been a peaceful, musical, delightful summer at the Row so far. Now, if I could just get someone to pay me to stay home and garden, make wine, knit, blog and host small gatherings of family & friends, life would be absolutely perfect.

Concerts in the Park: Then & Now

2010-07-03T06:56:00.000-07:00

I’m headed to the City today, for a free concert in the park. There will be bands all day and night, with fireworks after. We’re timing it so we can see Steve Winwood, followed by Santana. Going to an outdoor concert in my midlife years isn’t quite the same as going in my distant youth…

Then: Throw on a broomstick skirt, a halter top, and my ratty old Birkies.

Now: Change outfits at least five times. Settle on my usual bermudas and a t-shirt, with coordinating Chacos.

Then: Throw sunflower seeds, a doobie, and a bottle of Boones Farm in a backpack.

Now: Carefully pack a bag with SPF 150 sunscreen, bug spray, chapstick, ID, a health insurance card, emergency contact info in case I’m unconscious from the heat, a book to read while the bands change gear, money for bottomless lemonade, Benadryl for the bugs that get through my spray shield, pistachios, and a small plastic bag with two frozen bottles of water and some chocolate covered espresso beans, so I can stay awake.

Then: Wander the park making new friends, stop to chat with small children, play music under a shade tree with some guy named “Renegade,” get my hair braided by “Willow” in exchange for a backrub.

Now: Stay on the blanket, in the territory claimed earlier in the day by friends. Don’t leave the blanket except to (a) get a blooming onion or more lemonade, (b) make one of many, many trips to the port-a-potty, or (c) shove my way down to the stage to take several blurry, unrecognizable pics of the bands. Read.

Then: Stay till long after the last band is halfway to Kansas City. Maybe head for western Nebraska to spend a few days with Renegade.

Now: Hope my ride will be ready to leave ten minutes before Santana’s done, in order to avoid traffic congestion. Be home, slathered with aloe and asleep, by 11.

Summer Deluge

2010-06-27T08:29:00.000-07:00

We’re between thunderstorms on the Row. It’s The Deluge here in southeast South Dakota. The two main roads I take into Little Town have been intermittently closed, each precariously balanced between growing lakes – great fields of corn or soybeans flooded by the escaped James and Vermillion rivers. Trees, flowers, pasture, lawn, weeds…the Row’s greenery is lush, tropical, growing at an alarming rainforest rate.

The constant wetness has also resulted in record-breaking clouds of mosquitos, which my friend K swears are the size of helicopters. The flooded pond out by the meditation tower, the dense plum thickets, and the tall wet grass of the south 40 make ideal ‘skeeto nurseries. We try to live as organically as possible (we take out small loans every time we buy organic dog & cat food for the kids), but we can’t go outside right now without showering in DEET first. Ray wears a mosquito-net hat just to get to his car in the morning. When I envisioned Ray and I in our rural retreat – sipping juleps under the market umbrella, prayer flags billowing in the soft summer breeze, peacocks in all their puffery atop the rail fence – I didn’t quite see the full-body mosquito armor. I’m almost desperate enough to spray the yard. Almost.

I made a mozzarella-basil salad for the Sisters of Perpetual Disorder dinner last night – thirteen women, an amazing buffet of potluck dishes, a little singing, and lots of wine & coffee. What a gift, to have this community of strong, intelligent, hilarious women. We celebrated our friend C’s presence a year or so after her double-lung transplant (still, after all she’s been through, the most positive, life-affirming person I know). We celebrated our friend M’s engagement (and her Liz Taylor rock) to a kindhearted man who adores her. We celebrated the lovely blending of women’s voices, when friends G & L and I sang an old Jesse Winchester song that turned into a singalong. We celebrated 30-year friendships and younger women coming “into the fold” with each semi-monthly dinner. Why, the sheer continuity of it all makes me break out in an ear-splitting, quavering version of “The Circle of Life” from the Lion King! (Thank heaven we don’t have neighbors.)

I started a new blog last week – meditations on meditation. It’s a way for me to hold onto the feeling of “rightness” I had at Shambhala, and to keep myself going back to the cushion for daily practice. It’s a pretty boring blog unless you’re interested in meditation, but you’re welcome to check it out at www.pomheart.blogspot.com.

Today, the heat and unbearable humidity of the past couple of days broke, so I checked on my batch of Merlot, finished a video script for Ad Agency, pulled a few weeds, and got most of the Row mowed. Mowing out on the trails, I found a fresh varmint hole, maybe 10" across, and I figure that's why we haven't seen more peachicks. So I did what any proud plainswoman with an ounce of ingenuity (and no gun or poison) would do; I dumped half a jar of pickled jalapenos down the hole. Sure, you're laughing now...but just you wait till Sham-wow guy's doing my infomercials and I'm chillin' in the lap of luxury. Won't be so funny then, will it...

Life in a petting zoo...

2010-06-20T07:55:00.000-07:00

It’s Father’s Day on the Row, Summer Solstice tomorrow. It’s been an incredibly wet spring so far, and it looks like more rain today. Our gardens are thriving, though we humans could use a bit more sun. By the time it’s dry enough to mow, we’ll need a jungle brush-clearer to do it.

Our two adult male peacocks are still rattling their train feathers in showy displays and vibrating primary wing feathers like castanets, in spite of the fact that the four adult hens are long past breeding for the season. Four peahens nested this year; two have already made appearances in the yard with four chicks each (bringing our “those crazy peacock people” flock count up to 24), and the other two hens should be showing up any day, toddlers in tow. The young girls completely ignore the old geezers’ parading. Four yearling males are also fanning and strutting and mid-air sparring, but the hens won’t even roll their eyes at the hapless boys until next spring, when the hooligans finally get their first long trains.

We took on a new Row resident this spring. Our son’s cat, Rickie Lee, came to live on the farm after she turned up her nose at a new brand of kitty litter, then at litter boxes in general. So she’s learning to be an outdoor cat, although she spends a good deal of time curled up on the rug by the back door. If she sees us peeking out the window, wild meowing ensues, and each trip outside means an extended kitty-petting session on the patio. We’d rather she had a home where she could be an indoor cat again, re-learning her lost litter box skills and curling up in someone’s lap in the evening, but she can’t be an inside cat here, because we also live with…

Stella Faye and Polly Hester. Stella, the African Grey, is 12 this year, and Polly, the Lilac Crown Amazon, is around 17 we think. Stella keeps us entertained with long unintelligible conversations in a perfectly mimicked Ray tone & inflection, punctuated with laughs, coughs, sneezes, and occasional microwave beeps. She calls for water when her dish runs low. Polly doesn’t speak English, but she’s picked up a few parroty-English – penglish – sounds. She adores Ray. If I give Polly an almond, she’ll drop it, then call incessantly till Ray comes with another one.

Meanwhile, our two canine companions, 2-year-old Schnoodle Yogi, and rescued 9-year-old Aussie Jada, are obsessing over the new kitty on the porch. Yogi, in his obnoxious schnauzerly way, nips at the patient kitty, trying to get her to play. Jada desperately, compulsively, tries to herd Rickie onto the porch ledge.

So life is good at the Row petting zoo, although we may have to start holding fundraisers to keep the peas in corn (bad veggie humor). Stella could sing the Popeye theme…Yogi could do Schnauzer spins…I could sew little sequined gowns for the peahens…

A Meditation on Meditation

2010-06-14T12:01:00.000-07:00

I’ve played with meditation for a few decades, since my 20’s, but always half-heartedly, and always with a vaporous, quasi-spiritual, otherworldly desire – until recently. My friend G and I got back last week from a 3-day “Learn to Meditate” retreat at the Shambhala Mountain Center near Fort Collins, CO, and the experience changed my thinking about and approach to the practice of meditation.

On the first day, we were given practical advice for dealing with the altitude (we were at about 8000 feet). Then we were taught a good sitting posture, fairly comfortable from the start even for stiff middle-aged westerners. We tried it out that first night with a brief (10-minute) sitting meditation, but mostly, we were introduced to the intention of shamatha (Shambhala) meditation – to focus attention on the breath. That’s it. No mantras, no contemplating the nature of the universe, no Buddhist dogma, no reaching out for alternate realities – just the practice of keeping one’s attention on the breath. And not thinking about the breath – just experiencing it, being aware of it, in the present moment, as it’s happening.

Shambhala, according to their center in Minneapolis, “incorporates the teachings of the Kagyu and Nyingma traditions of Tibetan Buddhism, with the Shambhala vision of living an uplifted life, fully engaged with the world. According to the Shambhala tradition, there is inherent goodness and sanity in all human beings. This potential can be recognized and developed through…meditation. Its simplest form is rooted in the sitting practice of meditation where one works with the breath. We call this mindfulness/awareness meditation. Developing mindfulness cultivates a mind that rests calmly, and developing awareness cultivates a mind that sees clearly."

Over the course of the next day and half, we practiced sitting and walking meditations several times a day, interspersed with shamatha yoga postures, talks, and readings from Shambhala spiritual leader Sakyong Mipham Rinpoche’s book, Turning the Mind Into an Ally.

The highlight of the weekend was a 20-minute hike up the mountain to the Great Stupa of Dharmakaya. Stupas are traditionally memorials to great teachers and their teachings, as well as reliquaries (safekeeping for relics, usually bones, of such teachers). The Great Stupa is the only one in North America, and it’s a breathtaking 3-story work of art, both inside and out, with carved statues, marble pomegranates and lotus blossoms in the floors, gilded wall carvings. We got to do a walking meditation around the outside of the Stupa and a sitting meditation inside, in front of a 30-foot golden Buddha. And later, when G and I walked back up and no one was around, I sang in the Stupa, where the notes echoed and hung in the air of that amazing circular space.

Over the years, I’ve spent time around the Catholic church, Presbyterian church, and the Holy Order of Mans (a 70’s San Fran-based group with communities in Omaha and Lincoln, NE). I’ve studied and taught as literature the sacred texts of Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Hinduism and Buddhism. Though I’ve never found a spiritual “home” in any one tradition, I’ve always felt that meditation is the key to unlocking direct experience – to knowing. And I believe that no matter what goes on out here in the world, it will ultimately be meaningless without some attention to my own spiritual center. So I’m grateful that I was able to give myself the gift of this retreat.

I know I’ve only peeked through the Shambhala/Buddhism door, and that the mansion goes on forever. But what I love about Buddhism is its philosophy of non-judgmental, compassionate detachment. Detachment isn’t cold ambivalence or indifference – it’s loving and objective. And what draws me to the Shambhala meditation practice is its practical, non-dogmatic “this is a path, not a destination” approach. So I’ve made a little meditation shrine of my own, and I’m delighting in my daily practice. Interestingly (maybe only to me), it’s not a big leap from meditation to poetry – poetry is a practiced craft, not a product. Likewise, meditation is not the answer – not the finished poem. But it is, I believe, the heart of good, hard work that for the present, at least, is moving me forward.

Pre-Roadtrip Prep

2010-06-02T06:54:00.000-07:00

I’m re-doing the henna on my hands and packing today. My friend G and I are leaving tomorrow on a road trip. We’re headed across Nebraska, down through Cheyenne, WY, and into Colorado northwest of Fort Collins, CO, where we’ll spend three glorious days at 8000 ft at a meditation retreat. ‘Cause that’s what stalwart prairie people do – henna their hands and go on meditation retreats.

We’re planning to tent it one night going out, and one or two nights coming back. We don’t know where – we’re winging it, and that’s about as carefree as we get at our age. In the olden days, in spite of Grandma’s warnings about clean underwear, my road trip packing would include a gee-tar, an extra broom skirt and halter top, a bag of sunflower seeds, and a bottle of Boone’s Farm. But I’m middle-aged now. Fear and Caution are my sad and constant companions. So my dining room table is covered with stuff to take along, anticipating every possible contingency.

I have quite a list of things to get done before I go, too. I started my first batch of homemade wine Monday, with the help of Miss V., my WS (wine sponsor). It’ll make six gallons of “that damn Merlot” (if you haven’t seen Sideways yet, and you ever drink wine, see it now). In vintner parlay, my bung is bubbling. That sounds obscene, I know, but it means the yeast is doing its thing. I made this batch from a kit, learning the ropes as I work my way toward wine made from our wild plums. Before I leave in the morning, I’ll need to instruct Ray to watch my bung bubble while I’m gone.

I have a meeting in the Big City today, gearing up for some summer copywriting work for the ad agency I used to work for. Ad agency folks have an unusual kind of dark collective humor that I’ve really missed, so I’m excited to get back at it for a while. Then I’ll run errands in the City to pick up the first-aid kit necessities I’m missing and a “thief” for testing my wine once I get back.

Then I’ll clean parrot cages, water plants, feed outside birds, peacocks and barn cats, weed, mulch, and pack, pack, pack. By the time I get everything done, drive to Colorado, unload, we’re comfy on our meditation cushions, and I’m in the throes of caffeine withdrawal, I’m just hoping I can stay awake long enough to meditate…

(pics of teacher Sakyong Mipham Rinpoche and the Great Stupa of Darmakaya from www.shambhalamountain.org)

Pathological Nesting

2010-05-28T09:11:00.000-07:00

I come from a long line of serious nesters. Not hoarders, not collectors, not agoraphobes. Nesters. My home is lined from top to bottom with shiny, downy, or odd found objects. I have baby teeth, baby hair, notes to the tooth fairy, graduation tassels, love notes, chunks of rock, single earrings and other treasures stowed in every conceivable cubbyhole. I’m like a European magpie or bowerbird, dragging interesting stuff back to my nest and weaving the tidbits into the warp & weft. Unlike my feathered cousins, I don’t adorn my nest as part of a mating ritual (though, come to think of it, Ray does love the eclectic hippie-museum-esque décor, so maybe…). I do it mostly because each object is like a snapshot of a moment in my 50+ years. My grandma, my mom, me, and now my daughter…we’re not happy unless we’re living in one gigantic scrapbook.

So after an amazing little thunderstorm plowed its way through the Row a few nights ago, I felt compelled to check on the Row’s other nesters – my kindred spirits. Walking the yard, I found a little pin-feathered mourning dove, which I scooped up and put in the crook of a pine tree bough, out of the wind and the puppy path. (It’s an old wives’ tale that mother birds will “smell” human touch and abandon handled young; most birds have a terrible sense of smell, and if the baby’s strong enough to chirp and the mom can hear it, she’ll try to keep feeding it, wherever it is.) The swallow nests are tucked up under the greenhouse eaves, so they were all okay, and the pigeons have their comfy barn. I don’t know where the bats roost, or I would have checked on them, too.

Two chipping sparrows have built a nest in a bird feeder I neglected to close tight. The nest is a work of art, lined with twigs, leaves, and brushed-out dog and human hair we put out for them. The 65 mpg gusts had blown the plastic side off the birdfeeder, but the nest inside is so tightly constructed that it kept its shape. A baby was on the ground, though, so I popped him back in the nest.

A peahen, Isetta (formerly Ike) is sitting on eight eggs in the middle of a flower garden, as if we planted it just for her. Another peahen managed to work the grate off a window well and has at least 3 eggs in it now. Two more hens are nesting somewhere out in the pasture grass. In bad weather, the hens hunker down around their eggs, tuck their heads to avoid the worst of the rain, wind or hail, and sit tight. Even in the most driving thunderstorm, I doubt the eggs even get damp. So Isetta was wet but fine, and window well hen’s nest is safe under an eave on the most protected side of the house.

One interesting facet of powerful genetic nestiness is a reluctance to leave home. My friend G and I are hitting the road next week for a meditation retreat in Colorado. And though I adore road trips, and though flying off means evolution & adventure, it also means leaving the nest. So I’m comforting myself by remembering that Ray is as much a nester as I am and will tend things with great love & care, and by imagining all the amazing Rocky Mountain treasures I’ll find, to work into the nooks & crannies of our Big Nest on the prairie.

City Mouse, Country Mouse

2010-05-20T09:01:00.003-07:00

I chopped off all my hair recently, partly to foil the wood ticks (the down-side of our south-40 walking trail), and partly to prove to myself that I’m still a sophisticated, unflappable, urbane city girl. I mean, I grew up in Omaha, right? I went to three different high schools….I slept in the grass at Memorial Park amid all-night rallies or parties…I took city busses through the projects to get to the downtown bank where I worked…I zoomed around in my 1971 VW bug (with a moon roof and maple leaves airbrushed on the hood…suh-weet) like a NASCAR queen...I was car-hopping at A & W the night the pimp in the orange and green suit drove through the plate glass storefront, for Pete's sake.

But I don’t think my haircut's fooling anyone, least of all me. Last weekend, when Ray and I took a road trip to Minneapolis/St. Paul to hang for a couple of days with Ray’s son, it became instantly clear that we’re now almost completely pasture-ized (not to be corn-fused with pasteurized, which involves boiling, and which, on summer prairie days, might also fit).

Because we now live by the moon & stars here on the Row, making us constitutionally unable to hurry, we ambled up county and state highways and crawled onto the Cities beltway at rush hour on Friday. Oh. Dear. God. I’m pretty sure we both stopped breathing several times. By the time we made it to the hotel parking lot, we both needed (a) a cigarette; (b) a shot of whisky; and (c) a defibrillator. Then, as soon as we checked in and dropped off our stuff, it was time to back onto the deathway…er…beltway to go to Jesse’s. My hands remain white and curved, claw-like, as if still gripping a car doorframe.

Another sign of my de-citification? As we ran hither & yon around the Cities for the next couple of days, I realized that the quirky fashion statements I made in my youth have devolved into barely audible, mostly beige, whispers. I am a pasty prairie wallflower compared to the City-folk and their penchant for le couture horreur. Like the middle-aged man with the bad bleach-blonde perm and the seriously skin-tight hotpants and cowboy boots (and that was ALL he had on), or the boy with the dreads and the tea saucers in his ear lobes, or the guy dressed like Jack Sparrow for no apparent reason, or the girl in all yellow except for her purple tights, into which she’d torn several large holes (prairie people are too steeped in Lutheran/Catholic guilt to intentionally damage something). I even caught myself, for a split second, trying to figure out what sort of fashion statement the clerk in the Tibet Shop was making – the Tibetan monk clerk.

Ray and I also discovered that we’re not so much countrified as we are country-fried. But one can eat out in the city every night with nary a meal that’s chicken-fried, breaded & boiled in oil, super-sized or slathered in mayo. In the big city, we indulged Cuban grilled plantain with black beans and rice; Mexican tacos al pastor and horchata; Thai som dtam salad and green curry chicken; and Chinese noodle and bok choy soup. I loaded up on supplies at United Noodle, a huge Asian market, which will henceforth be known as The United Church of the Divine Noodle, and where I will worship each time I go to the Cities.

I might have been feeling just a twinge of my old city instincts by the time we had to head back home. But a sure sign of our progressive prairieness was our collective sigh pulling into the Row yard, with peacocks trumpeting, dandelions exploding, and that beautiful prairie darkness (except for the gazillion solar lights in our gardens). So I’m glad to be home again. I’m almost done knitting another pair of fingerless gloves, and today I’m tattooing my gnarled hands with henna, then later this afternoon I’ll sip wine on the patio to set the henna in the sun while I watch the peas’ courtship shenanigans, listen to the orioles, and toss a tennis ball for the dogs. Something about the bustle, flashes of color, and anonymity of the city still calls to me, but gimme a straw hat and call me Flannery…the city just can’t beat this calm, this space, this hermitage. Home again, home again, jiggity jig.

Mother's Day Meditations

2010-05-09T10:33:00.000-07:00

It’s Mother’s Day on Uncannery Row, and motherhood abounds. The peahens are playing hard-to-get with honking, fanning, thrumming peacocks, who’ve divided up the acreage into tiny little kingdoms. A house sparrow has taken over a wooden bird feeder, stuffing it full of leaves and peafowl down in which to lay her first clutch of eggs. The swallows are constructing their muddy teacup nests under greenhouse eaves. We have a new female cat, Rickie Lee, who’s taken over the pyramid building and calls each night for food & scratches. She’s my son’s cat, who at 5 or 6 years refuses to be litterbox trained, so she’s come home to Mama’s House of Permanent Retirement here on the farm. Even the hen & chicks are spreading out in profound fecundity across the flower garden.

I’m so grateful, this day and every day, to have been raised in a home with both my mother and grandmother. Though in occasional dark moments I brood over growing up essentially fatherless, I know that at least one result of my femalecentric upbringing is a sense of my own sufficiency and ability. Another result is that I have the mothering instincts of a lioness—hurt my offspring, and I’ll eat you. This intense parenting gene can be burdensome to others, because I have a natural tendency to [s]mother my husband, friends, co-workers, students, mail carrier, UPS guy and complete strangers. The upside is that in spite of my many, many mistakes, I was (and am…you can’t shake that gene) a dedicated and ever-present parent. And the most amazing thing has happened now that two of our four children have children of their own—they’re incredibly devoted, conscientious parents themselves.

I’d also like to say a word today about step-parenting, which slips through the Mother’s Day cracks. Maybe because of the lioness gene, I never felt differently about Ray’s son than I did about my own. Though intellectually I know I’m not his mom, and I have no urge to dethrone his mom, emotionally and instinctually, he’s one of my cubs; I scold, cajole, comfort, support and box his ears when I have to, as I do all the kids. We tend to think of step-parents as once-removed somehow, but that’s just symantics when a kid needs a bandaid and a hug.

So here’s my Mother’s Day poem, a poem about continuity, with gratitude for moms, step-moms, adoptive moms, foster moms, surrogate moms—we’re all part of the same flea-bitten pride…

INVOCATION

If you were any more alive in me, Mother,

my heart would burst, split open

like a ripe peach soaked in holy water.

Whisper from every corner of this clapboard

cathedral, Our Lady of Perpetual Chores,

your small and powerful prayers:

    white coral bells
    itsy bitsy spider
    battle hymn of the republic

Chant caramel pudding and corn casserole

recipes, ancient sacred texts handed down

from your own mother, that dark marble saint

atop the bell tower, one arm wrapped around

a gilded laundry basket, a silver pressure cooker

cradled in the other. Her heart, too, burst open.

Keep me, I ask, in your blessing of trying, failing,

laughing about failure. Grant me the grace

of history, repeated mistakes, promises.

Look down on me with love when they raise you

to the bell tower, at the way I sing your praises

off-key, from behind my daughter’s stove.

Don't quit your day job, but...

2010-05-08T15:24:00.000-07:00

In early April, I got to read poems at the Scissortail Creative Writing Festival in Ada, Oklahoma. Then in late April, I got to sit in with Ray’s reunion band, Little Henry, at a gig in Sioux Falls. Giving readings and singing on stage are more alike than one might think—same performance aspect, same musical rhythms, crescendos, syncopation, and for me, the same mystery in the bones.

I’d rather sing & give readings than just about anything else I can think of. And I’m not alone. I’ve been hanging around musicians for a few decades now. Ray, and most other musicians I know, will take gigs without regard to anything else—holidays, anniversaries, family vacation plans, surgery, pending childbirth—anything. They’ll drive through blizzards, over treacherous ice-covered roads, in a high-profile used school bus with no windows and 250 zillion miles on it, to get to a gig. They’ll face the wrath of significant others left home to rearrange lives and pick up the slack. And all of this in order to drive long distances, haul & set up heavy equipment, play 3 hours, tear down & pack up equipment, and drive back home, for wages that haven’t really changed since 1975. And it’s not like they’re playing to 300,000 screaming fans. Often, it’s a tiny pub or dive-y bar with 20 chatty texting “beautiful people” (or 10 loud, obnoxious drunks) who think of the band as little more than an animated jukebox.

When I watch Ray play, I know he feels it too, that mystery, though he doesn’t feel compelled to examine it the way some overly analytical, can’t-leave-well-enough-alone woman might. Me, I got a million theories…

…like the standard psychological stuff: need for attention, compensation for lack of attention, need for approval, compensation for unmet emotional needs, delusions of grandeur, etc. etc. I’m not too proud to admit these all figure in. But I’m smart enough not to quit my day job. There’s no money in live music, not unless you sell your soul for stardom (uh...Mellencamp, Neil Diamond, Helen Reddy?). And there’s certainly no money in poetry unless we revive the wealthy benefactor system; that’s right, I’d do private readings in a corset, push-up bra and powdered wig if it paid a handsome monthly salary and included a velvet settee.

…like the need for an audience. I know folks think performers just want people to look at them. But if that were the case, I’d write rhymy, Hallmarky, funny or overly sentimental poems, because these are the poems people want to hear. Or I’d sing only Tammy Wynette, Patsy Cline or Aretha Franklin (sorry, Aretha) songs, because these are the songs people expect women to sing. Who wants to hear a poem about the burning of Joan of Arc or listen to an obscure song by Jane Siberry? It’s like wearing your lime green and yellow plaid jumper in junior high when everyone knows neutral solids are in. Everyone. Duh.

…like the fact that I’ve been performing since I could first form words. Singing “White Coral Bells” or “Row Your Boat” in rounds with Mom and my brothers was SOP for backyard work, family gatherings, dinner table. One of my earliest memories of my dad is him crooning “Autumn Leaves” or “Fly Me to the Moon” in the car, and us trying to sing along. And the closest I got to a religious experience at Twin Brooks Bible Camp (what were those counselors doing after lights-out, up over the hill?) was my teary daily wailing of “Old Rugged Cross” in the chapel.

…like it’s a healing thing, a vibrational thing. It’s chakras popping open. Sometimes when I’m singing, a little tremor starts in my sacrum, rumbles up my spine, lights up my solar plexus, shivers my brainstem, swirls around in my cranium for a nanosecond, then pours out my mouth like holy water. Don’t get me wrong—I’m not saying it’s so gorgeous that people in the audience are spontaneously baptized or grow extra fingers. In fact, sometimes it’s off-key, dragging behind the beat, and croaking like frog calls. Even then, though, it trembles in my bones and makes me feel blessed. In those moments, it’s just me & the waves. It can literally make me cry, it feels so good.

…like it’s pure physiology. Singing and reading aloud stimulate the frontal cortex in the brain. Therapists use them to ease stuttering. Some innovators are even using singing, “Melodic Intonation Therapy,” to re-wire the brains of stroke patients so they can regain lost speech. Singing, according to neurology prof Gottfried Schlaug, fosters deeper connections and new pathways between brain hemispheres. See http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/8526699.stm. So maybe I just like that wiry whole-brain supercharge.

But really, in the end, I think it's about release, about letting go. We take SO much in: responsibilities, obligations, frustrations, work, worry, sorrow, anxiety, disappointments, fear. Singing, and to a lesser degree reading poems, is an outpouring. When I close my eyes and sing, I can breathe. Seems ironic, I know, since singing actually requires more breath. But once the anticipation jitters are gone—almost the instant the song starts—everything else is gone and I’m as relaxed as I can get while upright and awake. Singing at home doesn’t get me there, either; part of me is just too aware that I can stop at any moment to put the wet clothes in the dryer, start the dishwasher, grade another paper. And the awareness causes tension. At a gig, though, there’s nowhere else to go, nothing else to do except let it out. No phones. No work. No worries. Often, no audience. Just those notes, the rhythm vibrating in the soles of my feet, the humming in my rib cage, the song. The beautiful, beautiful breath. Ah[ohm].