The recent anniversary of Woodstock made me all dreamy-eyed. I fondly remember my halter tops and jeans with paisley wedges sewn in the seams…my long hair in braids laced with flowers…the experiments in expanded consciousness/enlightenment (TM, Sufism, the Bible, Catholic ritual, wicca, psychedelic music, mandalas, yoga, various herbal, chemical, or psychological shortcuts, poetry, etc.)…bumming around the country with musicians, waking up one morning in an artist’s studio in Taos, NM, where I found an invitation to a party being hosted by Joni Mitchell and Ry Cooder (I’m still kicking myself for not crashing that party)…living in an old school bus in a state park with two little long-haired toddlers…leaving all parts of my body unshaved…meeting Timothy Leary and feeling an overwhelming urge to kiss his ring.
Not long ago, my friend Paige said of someone who seemed locked in 1960, “Yeah, he never really crossed over.” That was a great way to put it. Drugs, war, or post-adolescent social anxiety took a few folks I knew right off the planet before they ever got a chance to decide. The rest of us, it seems, crossed, didn’t cross, or are still feeling our way along. Of course it’s completely anti-hippie to pigeonhole, but we do seem to have ended up in some interesting groups…
Fence Straddlers – I’m probably in this bunch. We crossed about halfway over and can’t decide if we want to go the rest of the way. One day I shaved my legs. One day I bought a TV. One day I got a full-time job. One day I rented a house and bought a bookshelf. One day I zoned out on refined carbs and CNN…oh wait…that was today.
Evolved Hippies – These folks crossed over, taking the best of the lovebead days with them. They’re still following an enlightened, slightly modified hippie path, growing their own food, not buying into the consumer imperative, being dedicated, loving stewards of both their nuclear and global families and of the earth. They’re gardeners and activists. They catch rain in barrels. They recycle. They go to town meetings. Some may even light up a joint out by the garage twice a year. They shop at the Civic Council. I both admire these people and aspire to be more like them.
Throwbacks – These folks chose not to cross. They’re stuck in 1960, living in a perpetual state of nostalgia. They have an uncann[er]y knack of working stories of their “free love days” into conversations about dietary fiber or retirement planning. They don’t have any stories dated later than 1973.
Lost Souls – A few folks, “lost souls,” never made it across because they took too many chances. They sizzled (and some continue to sizzle) brilliant minds, spending increasing amounts of time now in free clinics, bars, rehab, public defenders’ offices, or local food pantries. You’d like to help, but they’re too far back to reach.
Fence Burners – As sad as the lost souls are, it’s just as sad to see those who crossed over so completely that no trace of that hippie idealism remains. They burned the fence behind them. They’re stuck now in a quagmire of money-making, clicks, beeps, scheduling, texts and stock market updates. “Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers,” as Wordsworth said.
It’s playful romanticism to pretend I’m still all love-is-all-you-need as I type away, in my tie-dye and Birkies, burning Frankincense I bought from the Franciscans. But I’m typing on one of our two computers, while my “Le Femmes” iPod playlist songs waft through our house sound system (speakers in the living room, kitchen, and greenhouse). And I work more than full time in academia (in many ways one of the most rigid, “up tight” systems The Man ever dreamed up), so that I can keep myself in glorious materialistic comfort. Genuine silk underthings. Joseph Sibel shoes. HD 42” flat screen. Mmmm.
Pretty soon, though, I’m gonna get back to my braids & beads & roots and mow a labyrinth in the south pasture, where Ray and I will cosmically center ourselves each sunrise. Maybe I’ll throw away the TV and grow me some peaches, like John Prine suggested. Yeah…I’m gonna do that as soon as I comparison shop on line for a self-propelled electric mower, while streaming Neil Young wannabes on YouTube, while sending Facebook updates via my smart phone.
In the meantime…peace, man.
Time is running out on summer here at Uncannery Row. It’s already dark when I get up in the morning, and it’s been cool enough at night to close a few windows. Weird. And it’s the middle of August, but the tomatoes and wild plums STILL aren’t ripe, corn-fused by the frequent rain and lack of heat. That means eventually juggling four classes at Little Town U and marathon canning of salsa and jam. Yikes & yum.
Although classes won’t start for another week, the workshops and meetings are already underway. I’ve been keeping my anxiety in check with copious carbs and frantic knitting. My newest knitting binge is a series of hoods—so you know what you’ll be getting for Christmas—called “Lyra Hoods,” named after the hood worn by the main character, Lyra, in The Golden Compass. Our Australian Shepherd Jada reluctantly models an unfinished hood in the picture. The hoods knit up fast and allow me to use up my chunky yar
n stash, especially the bumpy wools I’ve spun up over the last couple of years. I still have at least two huge Rubbermaid tubs of wool and silk to spin up...I wonder how my brothers will look in Lyra hoods?
In an interesting development at the Row, all four peahen mothers still have all their babies. That’s 14 peachicks darting around the yard—the Chicklettes, the Raylettes, the Popcorn Triplets, and the Quints. Little Edgar (Winter) is the only white chick of the bunch. Usually by this time, we’ve lost a few chicks to predators, but either these well-fed peas—27 in all now—have better defenses this year, or the sheer numbers wilt the confidence of even the hungriest raccoons & redtail hawks. 
Yogi, our Schnoodle, discovered two kittens in the barn recently. We knew we had an all-white mama cat and an all-black tom spooking around, and now we’ve got one each white kitty and black. I’ve also spotted—twice now—a wild turkey hen and three chicks out by the meditation tower. I figure word’s getting around the neighborhood about our corn and catfood bird buffet. Gossipy peacocks!
The flower gardens have had to fend for themselves this year, so they’re tangled beds of
blanket flowers, lavender, baptisia, bachelor buttons and lilies, struggling up through lambsquarters and bindweed. Ray and I did manage to wrap the windmill tower partway up with chicken wire, and we planted a dozen trumpet vines in three colors along the fence. So next year, we hope to have one gigantic hummingbird feeder out in the yard.
I really should be hard at work on syllabi, schedules and lesson plans for Comp, Lit, Honor’s English and College Reading, but the mower, a ball of brown tweed wool, and a box of Triscuits are calling my name…
A psychic once told me that in a past life in China around 1000 BCE, I starved to death giving away every last morsel of food I had to those in need. I’m sure I had a death wish and wasn’t really that altruistic, but I like “starved to death in a past life” as a rationale for my unnatural relationship with food in THIS life. A good past-life excuse sure lets you off the hook…
Some part of me thinks that food is at the root of all happiness. Think about it. Wars are fought over land (where food is produced), resources (food), or political ideals (if you’re not a democracy, you might take our food). Relationships, as complex as we like to make them, are really just about who's providing & preparing food for whom. And sex? Well, animals (including human animals) squabble less and reproduce more when the food supply is up.
It seems to me that food = happiness because we suffer from one or more fundamental delusions: (1) When the nacho cheese Doritos bag is empty and you have that pumpkin-colored ring around your mouth, you’re rewarded with carb-induced euphoria, at least until the ex-Catholic schoolgirl guilt sets in; (2) Family and friendship ties & loyalties have always been and must continue to be cemented with mashed potatoes; (3) The way to a man’s/woman’s heart really IS through the stomach, just ask anyone on Lipitor for the rest of her/his life; (4) You must figuratively hunt down a wild boar and stock the larder if you hope to survive the winter; and (5) You suspect you’re desperately alone in this world except for your non-judgmental, unconditionally-loving BFF, Food.
Some folks luck out and are only plagued by one or two of these misconceptions. Me, I’ve got ‘em all, leading me to obsessively hoard, prepare, consume, and foist food. My pantry shelves are jam-packed (literally…I made 32 jars of jam last week) and really, how many cans of chipotle chiles in adobo sauce, capers, and artichoke hearts does one family need? I can only cook for 20, and there are only 2 of us at home now. I’ve got no time to work, play, or exerci
se, because I must devote that time to eating all this angel hair pasta with a good basil pesto. And, as my friend Sunbeem says, if we don't overnurture (with food of course) every living thing on the planet, they will all DIE horrible anguished deaths, and it will be our fault (see ex-Catholic schoolgirl guilt above).
I need professional help, I know. My twisted relationship with food is the reason for the 22 tomato plants in our garden. It’s the reason for the peacock population explosion (from 6 three years ago when we inherited the tiny flock, to this summer’s waddling, corn-fed, follow-the-CornWoman 27). It’s the reason I must now peel, grate, and freeze 82 of the biggest zucchinis you’ve ever seen, then spend hours on-line looking for zucchini recipes. It’s the reason I’m a Weight Watchers “don’t give up” poster girl. And, it’s the reason I must now stop this silly blogging and frantically search the cupboards for my only true friend, my exceptional listener, my devoted paramour, Mr. Twinkie.
I’m tenaciously clinging to summer, in spite of days that smell like back-to-school and 50-degree temps at night. I have a bit less than a month before the fall semester starts at Little Town U, and I have miles to go before I’m even ready to get ready.
Every year around this time, my anxiety level ratchets up. It’s partly school starting, with its attendant meetings, book orders, syllabi & schedule devising, juggling, balancing, tapdancing, impending gradinggradinggrading, and the possibility that if I don’t have everything perfectly prepared and exquisitely executed, I’ll be outted for the sniveling, insecure fraud I surely am. Ratchet.
It’s also a late-summer social calendar that would drag any self-respecting midlife woman through the mire—Jazz Fest, Folk Fest, open mic night downtown, Sisters of Perpetual Disorder dinners, family gatherings, road trips, etc. Because I don’t do much except work while the semester’s on, I have a desperate (probably pathological) need to cram as much fun & frolicking as possible into every single hour of every day, right up to the minute I walk into the classroom on that first day. Ratchet ratchet.
My oldest son, his beautiful wife, and my two superhumanly gorgeous & gifted grandkids have been here for the past week, visiting from WA. And because I don’t get to see them more than once or twice a year, I can’t possibly sacrifice a moment of that time for school prep or house cleaning, causing that nasty procrastination devil to whisper in my ear, “Put…ratchet…it…ratchet…off…ratchet…”
And what about all those handmade Christmas presents I was gonna get started on early this year? What kind of no-good slacker am I not to take my knitting to the Folk Fest so I could work on that alpaca baby sweater while I swill dark beer in my lawn chair? Hear that ratchety sound just under those fiddles?
And although school is still almost a month away, school-related emails have been trickling in for several weeks now, forewarning the unmanageable flood that will soon let loose. Cl-i-i-i-i-i-ck.
Luckily, I have a built-in, self-preserving (bad canning pun) mechanism that kicks in when anxiety reaches critical mass—OCJ (Obsessive-Compulsive Jamming). That’s right, I clear everyone out of the kitchen, crank XM’s “Deep Tracks” over the kitchen speakers, and I jam, man.
Over the past week, I’ve made 32 jars of jelly and jam, starting with grape jelly I made with grapes given to me by a neighbor, which I’ve had in the freezer for 12 years and two moves now (the grapes, not the neighbor, and I see you wincing, but I sampled the grapes and didn’t die, and you boil the stuff hard, twice, in the jam-making process). Digging out the grapes from the freezer, I found black raspberries (probably in there as long), so black raspberry jam was next. Finally, I made strawberry-rhubarb jam, “rhuberry,” after coming across rhubarb in the freezer, too. I wonder if I could make jam out of cornmeal, pesto, and old candles, ‘cause I have loads of that stuff in the freezer, too.
OCJ is a lot like covering your ears with your hands and singing “lalalalala” when someone says they need your syllabi on file ASAP—it doesn’t really work in the long run, but you can live in blissful ignorance for as long as you can keep singing. And, with OCJ, you can sing with your mouth full of sweet, jam-laden toast.
So if you get jelly or jam by the bucketload for Christmas this year from Ray & Marlene, just know that indirectly, at least, you’ve helped me survive late-summer high anxiety. And if you could do something about global climate change and El Niño weather patterns long enough for my wild plums to ripen, I’m sure those book orders will wait a while longer...
The Sisters of Perpetual Disorder met Saturday night at Uncannery Row. This group of middle-aged women gathers semi-monthly (or as often as we can pull it off), rotating to each others’ homes, for themed potluck dinners. We eat, laugh, gossip, exchange stories about our lives, polish off a few bottles of wine, slug down after-dinner coffee, divvy up the leftovers into yogurt containers, and go home stuffed & contented. Since Mom and I had recently returned from our trek across the Yucatan, the theme this month was Mexican.
Ray worked like a dog helping me clean house in preparation for the dinner. When I brought the card table up from the basement, he suggested I seat several women at the old formica diner table down in the greenhouse, and the rest in the dining room. I explained that women like to be all in one bunch where they can talk over & around each other, finish each others’ sentences, embellish each others’ stories, and bust out all together in infectious laughter. This seems to me in contrast to a group of men, who speak in fits & starts (note to self: add “fits & starts” to Grandma’s list of extinct expressions), take polite turns speaking, and leave pregnant (harhar) pauses between speakers.
When the guests arrived, Ray retreated to his anti-estrogen fortress, his upstairs music room, and spent the evening working on CD’s—he’s transferring an enormous, lifelong collection of vinyl to CD then to iPod—appearing only occasionally to fill a plate.
Typically, women start showing up for Sisters’ dinners around 5, and it can take an hour or more for all of us to straggle in. Then there’s often cooling, carving, re-heating or finish-baking to do while we greet, catch up, and sip apertifs. When all the potluck dishes are finally spread out on kitchen counters, they represent the most amazing labor of love and an unbelievable work of art. In this case, “Still Life with Sombrero.”
Themes are loosely interpreted, and the menu is always as eclectic as the group of women themselves. This month’s dinner included two kinds of enchiladas, posole (a wonderfully spicy pork soup), tacos al pastor (pork & pineapple tacos), quesadillas, salsa ribs, fresh mozzarella with tomatoes, basil & olive oil, sopapilla cheesecake, key lime pie, cherry popsicles, and after-dinner sips, “para digestión,” of xtabentun (anise/honey liqueur we brought back from Mexico) and licor de cacao (also lugged back from Mexico—you can’t have a women’s dinner without some sort of chocolate).
As usual, the dinner conversation was a rambling patchwork of relationships, travel, surgeries, kids, and Bohunk grandmas who swore like sailors (September’s dinner theme will be Czech/Serbian). But what I love most about the Sisters of Perpetual Disorder dinners is that for a while, disorder is okay. The dinners are a blessed break from trying to juggle & closely manage (as women are wont to do) work, family, global issues, retirement planning, and the particular menopausal mêlée of forgetfulness, hot flashes, night sweats, sags, bags, wrinkies, and midriff poundage. For a while at least, we can all let our thinning hair down and do the things women our age love to do best: enjoy each others’ company and eat.
Then: You hike all day and half the night through Fontanelle Forest, barefoot, in a spaghetti-strap sundress, following the creek and eating wild berries. Mosquitoes follow you but don’t bite, and you’re sure they’re humming “Kum Bah Ya.”
Now: You walk out to the garden in your mosquito-netting hat, long sleeve workshirt, stretchy long pants, and steel-toed work boots. You’re dripping Deep Woods Off and SPF 100 sunscreen. You’re out only long enough to pick a cucumber.
Then: You’re attracted to artists and musicians named “Jupiter” or “Cloud,” who spook around folk festivals, look like they could be homeless, have hair to their waists, and who carry Boone’s Farm Strawberry Hill wine and a week’s supply of sunflower seeds in their backpacks.
Now: You’re attracted to artists and musicians who have day jobs, homes, hair, and comprehensive health & dental plans.
Then: You and seven friends take an impromptu cross-state road trip, and you sleep naked that night in a farmer’s field in the middle of Nebraska, your jean shorts & halter tops hung on cornstalks. You have earth for bed & pillow, and you have each other for blanket.
Now: You spend three months planning a camping trip to a State Park, where you made a reservation six months earlier. You take three more months to pack your supplies, which include an impenetrable tent, an inflatable bed, enough bedding to stock a Girl Scout troop, and a campfire espresso maker. You sit by the fire at night, playing your guitar and being “spontaneous.” When you get home, you take three months to unload, de-bug, and launder everything, and you don’t camp again for two years.
Then: You drive a 1971 VW bug with a crank sunroof, two windows held in place with duct tape, a roach clip hanging from the rearview mirror, old wool horse blankets where the backseat used to be, and blue and purple maple leaves airbrushed on the hood. You can drive for a week on $1.50.
Now: You drive a [insert current year] Toyota minivan with front & side airbags, a hair clip hanging from the rearview mirror, clean folded blankets and neck-massaging travel pillows on the back seats, a toolbox and first-aid kit in the cargo area, and an AAA sticker on the back bumper. You need TARP money to fill the tank.
Then: You sometimes wish you were older, you can be unkind or thoughtless and you take things for granted, believing you have all the time in the world and you’ll get it right next time.
Now: You appreciate the “cycle of life” business that brought you kicking & screaming to retirement planning, hot flashes, clicking knees, night sweats, cellulite, and a constant craving for Twinkies, but you sometimes wish you were younger. You try to be kind, thoughtful, and not take a single thing for granted, because you finally know you don’t have all the time in the world—you have only NOW to get it right.
Breathe…breathe…breathe. This lovely post-Mexico summer life lazes on. We’re in the magic, brief lull between the end of summer teaching and the pre-fall semester rush, when we try to cram in enough travel, sun, friends, family and music to keep us warm through the cold to come.
Here on the Row, Francoise, Ramon, and Junior (our three adult male peacocks) are dropping train feathers, which will last another week or two. We go on daily feather-collecting walks. The hens gather at the birdbath for coffee, rolling their eyes at the boys, who still prance vainly about with scraggly gapped trains that look like silly grins with missing teeth. Two of the three nesting hens have chicks, three each. Wanda has already abandoned caution to sun with her brood on the back porch in the morning. I’m thinking we’ll need a government loan—let’s call it a P-ail out—to keep the peaflock in corn all winter.
It’s been an unusually wet summer. The dog pond is full, the frogs sing a groovy guttural chorus at night, flowers that should be long gone by now are still blooming, and the acreage needs mowing about every 24 hours. It’s a wild plum year, but the plums are late ripening due to the cool, wet weather. I’m getting antsy for jam day—three or four women in an all-day marathon jam production line, Little Feat blasting from all six speakers while we laugh hysterically, gossip, drink wine, and fling fire & molten jam in a rush to get jars sealed. Who says we don’t live dangerously in South Dakota?
I finally got the garden weeded and found my basil, doing well in spite of me. I also found parsley, rosemary, thyme, curry and dill that I forgot I’d planted. We had a bumper crop of asparagus, we’ve eaten the first of the cucumbers, and we’re waiting on the tomatoes and hot peppers. The gooseberries are ready to pick (gooseberry pie!), and we put in black raspberry and blueberry bushes this year. We’ll plant grape vines next spring along the old cow fence. How about Peacock Panacea for a new South Dakota red wine?
Happily, the void that would otherwise be my post-vacation funk is filled with friends & music this summer. Friday we went downtown to hear our favorite Happy Hour trio at our favorite Little Town bar, then on to the Beagles’ Club to hear Ray’s band suffer through a wedding reception dollar dance ad infinitum. My friends Gardenia and Lulu and I got to be the chick backup singers, always an amazing gift for me.
Saturday night Ray and the band played an outdoor gig for the Gayville, South Dakota H
ay Days. Meanwhile, Mathilda, Gardenia and I were swooning like weak-kneed schoolgirls for Keb Mo at JazzFest, a free outdoor 2-day concert series in Sioux Falls. I probably made a fool of myself ogling and crowding in on the stage, but that wasn’t me who shot the granny panties at Keb, I swear.
Yesterday, Ray and I painted the kitchen. We wanted to get it done before this weekend’s flurry of company & activity. The quasi-monthly Sisters of Perpetual Disorder dinner is here at the Row this weekend, my Kansas brother & family are blowing through on their way to the family reunion in MN, and my oldest son & family are coming from Washington to visit and wax nostalgic in Little Town for a week or so.
Ray has to play again tonight in Sioux Falls, so while the house is quiet, I’ll sew new curtains for the kitchen cupboards (remember old farm kitchens with cupboard curtains? We have some with doors, some with curtains) to match the new color. I got batik fabric that’s all the colors of the Caribbean, and glass bead trim to sew along the bottom. I guess I STILL have Mexico on the brain, so our kitchen will be an eclectic, hippie-esque, Yuca-Prairie blend. Designed to Sell (or any HG network show) would be mortified, but I know it will be a constant reminder, especially when we're under Jack Blizzard’s thumb in December, of the sweet, drifty, dreamy summer.
The recent anniversary of Woodstock made me all dreamy-eyed. I fondly remember my halter tops and jeans with paisley wedges sewn in the seams…my long hair in braids laced with flowers…the experiments in expanded consciousness/enlightenment (TM, Sufism, the Bible, Catholic ritual, wicca, psychedelic music, mandalas, yoga, various herbal, chemical, or psychological shortcuts, poetry, etc.)…bumming around the country with musicians, waking up one morning in an artist’s studio in Taos, NM, where I found an invitation to a party being hosted by Joni Mitchell and Ry Cooder (I’m still kicking myself for not crashing that party)…living in an old school bus in a state park with two little long-haired toddlers…leaving all parts of my body unshaved…meeting Timothy Leary and feeling an overwhelming urge to kiss his ring.
