The Great Transition

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

(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

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

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

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

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...

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.