Curse of the Poetry Festival

Wonderland in white.

-->

Uncle! [slapping the mat] Aunt! I give!

Poetry curse: 1. Me: 0.

My friends B, L and I just got back last weekend from a 2 ½-day retreat in Minnesota. Most of the 35 women at the retreat had been coming to the annual event for 25+ years. L and I were invited to give poetry workshops as part of the event, a yearly gathering to celebrate women and art. In addition to our poetry workshops, the weekend also included meditative drawing, acrylic painting, and interpretive movement. B spent her afternoons birding in the MN woods. We all had a lovely time and made many new friends, but it was NOT a poetry festival. You’ll see in a minute why that matters.

Under this sugar coating is a layer of ice.

My plan yesterday was to drive with another guest poet to a poetry festival in Aberdeen, about 3-4 hours northwest of here. Two other poets would drive in from Sioux Falls and MN. When I checked safetravelusa.com early yesterday morning, the northbound leg of our route was designated “No travel advised.” The westerly leg of our route was “ice and snow covered; slippery,” with continuing snow showers. So we scrapped the drive for the day and hoped that by this morning, the plow fairies would have swept it all away.

I think I’ve mentioned that each time my friend P invites me to Aberdeen to do workshops & readings, I run into freakish weather (see http://uncanneryrow.blogspot.com/2008/08/hackers-really-raise-my-hackles.html for gory details of one of these trips). But what I haven’t mentioned is that each year in February, when I organize the annual one-day-only student poetry festival at our own Little Town U, something BIG gums up the works. One year, we had a blizzard the day before the festival. Another year, we had an ice storm the morning of the festival. And one year, on the morning of the festival (and because winter wouldn’t cooperate that year, I guess), Ray was sideswiped on the interstate by a distracted driver, flipped, and rolled his pickup into a ditch. He was okay, but of course I was a short-circuiting bundle of jangled nerves the entire day.

Time to refill the bird feeders!

So you can see why my first reaction when P called yesterday to cancel the festival was hysterical laughter. I’d been smacked down again by the dreaded poetry curse!

It’s true…I’m relieved not to have to fishtail across the frozen north. And the farmyard is a breathtaking wonderland in white (if you don’t have to go anywhere). And I cancelled classes today expecting to be gone, so I’ll have a nice long, snowy weekend to grade papers and knit (there’s no un-cancelling classes—30 seconds after cancelling a class, students have already made 30 other plans).

Still, I’ll miss hanging out with P, sampling Aberdeen martinis, and reading & writing poetry. And I LOVE road trips.

Brigid, in your shawl of snow, protect us.

I’m starting to think that me + poetry festivals = psychic disturbance in the Universe. But I won’t give up, dammit. Somehow, I will lift this curse. I will burn sage over my Yeats books. I will speak in trochaic tetrameter. I will knit bookmarks. I will memorize Christopher Dewdney’s “Grid Erectile” (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CN3AaYp_kyY). I will stockpile magnetic poetry kits. And next year, when plans are afoot for Little Town U’s poetry festival or another trip to Aberdeen, I will not reveal my intentions aloud, lest the Universe hear. As the goddess Brigid is my witness, one day poetry festivals everywhere will be able to raise their faces to the sun and shout out their slant rhymes, curse-free and unafraid.

Jack Blizzard's Last Hurrah

glazed chairs in spring colors

I am planning & packing to go do a poetry workshop and reading in Aberdeen, South Dakota. I’ve gone to Aberdeen several times before for workshops and readings, and each time I go, Jack Blizzard has a nasty little tantrum. It doesn’t matter if it’s February, March, or April—I’ve gone in each of these months before—there’s a freakish winter storm.

farmyard dressed in white

I’m supposed to head out tomorrow, so yesterday, of course, we had an ice storm. It glazed everything with a ¼” of treacherous crystal. I crawled home from an early evening meeting by driving 20 miles on gravel at 25 mph. By the time I got home, my hands were permanently molded into white-knuckle-grip claws. All of this, in spite of the fact that the day before, the temp in Little Town was 73 degrees and female students were sashaying to & from classes in their Daisy Duke cutoffs.

pergola's ice fringe

But remember, we’re hearty prairie stock. Jack can’t ruffle our feathers. Under this crusty layer of white, the farmyard grass is green and growing again. The allium, tulips, and crocus are up, and the robins are busy building nests. I’m already itching to get out the garden sculptures. Ray is finding progressively more “outside work” to do—rake up honey locust pods, tune up the lawn tractor, take down an old barbed-wire fence, tie up new prayer flags.

So maybe it's brain damage from the stroke, but by golly, I will pack my car, load up the emergency winter car kit, stock my backpack with water and beef jerky, and charge my phone. If I have to, I will crawl gravel roads across the frozen tundra, all the way to Aberdeen. My children taught me not to give in. They taught me that the best way to stop Jack Blizzard’s tantrum is to completely ignore it. Stay calm, hum “Battle Hymn of the Republic,” head down, plow forward.

hundreds of snow geese take a roadside rest

A Mochajava State of Mind

Today, most of the northern half of South Dakota is hunkered down mid-blizzard. I-29 is closed from Watertown north, into North Dakota. It’s the last day of February—practically spring already—and I guess Jack Blizzard wanted to make this leap day extra special, lest we let down our prairie guard too soon. Here in the southeast corner of the state, we have only a little dusting of snow, but the 35-mph winds whip it into the air, turning our little farmyard all grey and blizzardy. I have a pile of papers to grade, but thankfully, I don’t have to leave home today, so it’s a delicious, woodstove-fired, coffee-fueled, tucked-in day. 

And speaking of coffee, part of my utter joy at staying home stems from long, lingering, pajama’ed coffee mornings. You can read about the coffee origin myth, and my own re-discovery of the magic brew during my college years, on this previous blog post: http://uncanneryrow.blogspot.com/2008/10/blog-post.html

But my obsession with coffee goes back much further. When I was in 3^rd grade at Florence School in Omaha, Al Vaccaro dared me to eat a whole clove of raw garlic. I felt compelled to take the dare, both because Al was my boyfriend and often brought me snapdragons to school (making Lori Boonstra, my arch nemesis, gloriously jealous), and because, well, I’ve been a rebel from the get-go. It didn’t take Mrs. Lindsay, my teacher, long to discover the shenanigans. She marched me to the cafeteria, where the Evil Lunch Lady made me chew up a few…my life will all make sense to you now…coffee beans! 

Lunch Lady’s evil deed was designed to override my garlic-breath, but what it actually did was to set me on a path that would eventually become my passion. My kitchen is decorated in "coffee kitsch;" I own every kind of coffee apparati made (Bunn auto drip, Moka espresso pot, French presses, Melitta, etc.); I have a potted Arabica plant in my greenhouse; I collect coffee cookbooks; my anniversary present from Ray was a burr coffee grinder, for which he scored major partner points; my entire wardrobe is various shades of brown and black. As the song goes, “I love the java jive, and it loves me.”

So I’m settling in today with my second pot of elixir, and I thought I’d offer a bit more coffee lore to warm up this snowy South Dakota day…

Today, nearly half of the coffee plants in existence are the progeny of one tree that was smuggled into Martinique by a French soldier in the 18^th century. 

The coffee beans we know & adore are the pits of a cherry-like fruit that grow on evergreen trees. Coffee trees (cultivated to grow only 10 feet high for easier picking) cannot tolerate frost, and they prefer volcanic soil, indirect sunlight, and high altitude. The higher the altitude, the better the coffee. The annual yield of a coffee tree is about a pound of beans.  

There are only two species of coffee, Arabica and Robusta. Arabica is the stuff most of us drink. Robusta is generally lower in flavor acids and higher in caffeine but is sometimes mixed with Arabica to give the brew an extra caffeine kick.  

Contrary to popular belief, the darker the roast, the less caffeine, since caffeine is broken down in the roasting process. Espresso roasts have the least caffeine.  

Coffee is the second most widely used product in the world after oil. We drink 1400 million cups per day, and it’s the world’s most popular drink after water.  

Coffee was declared illegal 3 times by 3 different cultures: (1) In Mecca during the 16th century; (2) By Charles the II in Europe; (3) By Fredrick the Great of Germany in 1677.  

Medicinal Benefits – People who drink coffee have less colon cancer, Type II diabetes, Parkinson’s disease, gallstones, and cirrhosis of the liver. Coffee can protect your teeth from cavities, and it can help manage asthma and help stop an asthma attack in progress if no meds are available. People who smoke or drink alcohol and also drink coffee get some protection from liver and heart problems.

Other Coffee Uses – sprinkle used coffee grounds around your garden plants to stop snails and slugs, and to keep cats away from the garden. Coarsely ground coffee makes a good exfoliating facial scrub. Greasy pans can be cleaned with the leftover ground beans you used to scrub your face. Rubbing coffee beans between your hands for a few seconds will get rid of food prep odors, and you can suck on a coffee bean to freshen your breath (or chew a few, if you’re a daredevil 3^rd-grader).

Blizzard Survival Kit

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.

Look Who's Looking...

I’m all for overturning the Patriot Act. Weighing the potential useful information Big Brother might get from eavesdropping on Joe Schmoe’s phone calls to Aunt Rhoda or LuLu Librarian’s Internet dating progress, against Americans’ rights to speak, write, worship, talk, correspond, and assemble, & gripe freely & unmonitored, I’ll take freedom. I heard that’s what America is supposed to be all about—freedom—although I’m not naïve enough to believe this is as true in practice as it might be in principle.

But this IS true: People DIE on the prairie in weather like we’re having today, and Big Brother can sometimes be the only savior.

Yesterday, it was in the upper 30’s and Ray, Mom and I fought city traffic in search of last-minute holiday bargains. Today, the wind chill is -20, and a steady haze of snows blows in from the corn field to the west, on a north wind that could peel away your skin in no time. The peacocks are huddled in the loafing shed rafters, as close as they can get to the brooder lamp without setting feathers aflame. There is no figuring the sudden shift, short of the plains waking up in a seriously foul mood.

Our nature here is to slip into that same bad temper and complain about the weather, and I do. But I also appreciate the raw power of the north wind to strip the linden pods in a shower of thready black, and the willingness of barn cats to tolerate my presence if it means Wal-Mart cat food on a makeshift ledge, out of the icy blast.

I’m not sure folks from more temperate climates really get the gravity of inside/outside. Days like this can make going outside, even a simple trip to town for groceries, unbearable. And if you get to town, the truck with all that glorious California (or Mexico, Brazil, Argentina, etc.) produce may have stalled out near Kadoka, or Bessie may have frozen to a fencepost overnight. So most of us stay inside, happy enough with a hearty “freezer stew” and powdered milk.

I remember a couple winters ago, a woman traveling alone on South Dakota highways got caught in a blizzard. She was missing for 2 or 3 days, her car buried somewhere in a drift. They finally found her, alive, by homing in on her cell phone. So when Jack Blizzard unleashes his shenanigans in the Heartland, I try to curb my railing against Big Brother’s constant nosing into my business, because given a choice between BB’s buttinsky meddling, and having someone find a Marlene-sicle on a gravel road near Irene, I’m glad to be trackable.

So if you have to venture out and Jack’s afoot, remember to wear clean underwear in case you high-center on a snowbank in the hinderland. But pay a little attention, too, to your hair & makeup—you’ll wanna look your best in the satellite video, which will most likely be on YouTube by midweek, doctored to look like you’re lip-syncing “I’m Dreaming of a White Christmas.”