you should be very afraid - but of whom?

me, John, Jim, Bennett, Nancy, Ginnie, Susan, Nelson

Sometime in this past week's accelerating and terrifying dance into fascism* I remembered an episode from childhood when I was faced with fear.

Like all pre-school children, I had been drilled on the danger of getting into the car of a stranger. What would actually happen if I did so was not spelled out. It was just fused in my brain: Never ever get into a vehicle with a stranger.

I was the last of eight children in my family to start kindergarten. My brother John, a fourth grader, walked me to school that first exciting day. If you saw the grid of streets in my home town, you'd see how the streets that run parallel to the river suddenly angle in a new direction after a few streets. My path to school was not 'go straight, turn left, turn right and you're there' but angled confusingly at a couple of junctures. So can you blame me that as a five-year-old (just - I had turned 5 the month before school began), after half-day kindergarten, I lost my way walking back home, alone?

There I stood on the sidewalk, facing a 5-way intersection in a residential neighborhood, utterly confused about which way to turn, crying. A strange (as in unknown, not strange) man in a pickup truck pulled up next to me on the street. He asked me if I was lost. I nodded. He told me he would give me a ride home.

How did this five-year-old face her conflicting fears? A. I am lost; I am alone; I will never get home again. B. A strange man is offering me a ride in his truck; I've been told never ever get in a vehicle with a stranger, but what exactly am I supposed to be afraid of? What could happen?

I got into the truck. He drove the maze of blocks to my house. I got out of his truck and ran inside to my mom. I don't remember what happened after that. Did Mom see my tear-stained face and hug me? Did my parents lecture me, or spank me, for getting in the truck of a stranger? Did they even know?

There wasn't really all that much wrong with the street layout in Grand Ledge. I just didn't know how to maneuver it. Someone I trusted should have shown me the way. We've trusted our leaders for decades that a free market system would work, and that it would somehow guide our economy safely along. As Winter Patriot says, it actually ran our government, but we were taught to ignore that and call it 'democracy.' Now that the free market system is a mile-high roller coaster whose tresses and pillars are crumbling, we are giving one of the guys who built the faulty roller coaster the contract to fix it. It's tantamount to giving a very bad stranger keys to a truck and asking him to go pick up your kid who is lost. And he ain't gonna take her home, folks.

*If you think this isn't starting to look like fascism (I added the italicized words after Loring's comment, since I agree that we are heading into it, and who can say how fast?), here's the Random House definition:

1. a governmental system led by a dictator having complete power, forcibly suppressing opposition and criticism, regimenting all industry, commerce, etc., and emphasizing an aggressive nationalism and often racism.

collecting chairs

Next Farm Day will be Farm Wedding Day, when Lesley and Brian get married late summer 2009 here at the farm, yay!

Lesley is a designer, and when she and Brian started discussing the outdoor orchard 'room' being set up with chairs under a tent, she confessed how much she dislikes those white plastic folding chairs you rent. Their pocked, stained surfaces and flimsy construction got us thinking what else we could do. I agree with her, so I suggested collecting wood chairs via Freecycle. Lesley loved imagining mismatched wooden chairs lined up in rows for the wedding ceremony, then moved to tables for the reception and PAR-TAY.

We already had about 10 wood chairs at the farm we can use. (I'm still kicking myself for not picking this one up from someone's curbside last year. Duh! But I'm not the trash picker in the family, ahem, so I didn't think of it, until someone said, "why didn't you put the chair in your car?" Silent stupor. "The chair's value to me was the photograph, it never occurred to me to take it - the chair that is.") So far through Freecycle we've picked up another 18. (This feels much better than trash picking to me. I don't object to someone else trash picking, as long as I can slither down in the car and be invisible to passers-by.) Only about another 125 to go! I'm not sure the barn will hold that many though. And my goodness, are some of them HEAVY.

I asked Don how hard it would be to spray paint them all white, and he looked at me like I was possessed. I'm glad, because I think all those eclectic chairs as they are will be homey. Oh, and they'll be covered with tarps until The Day - we don't want no bat poo on dem chairs.

glory

This was our first year with morning glories, although they should always be a staple at a farm if you ask me. Now as summer softens into autumn and before cold nights make the silk of these blooms wither, I want to publish this gallery.

We have at least a half dozen varieties all mixed together in our 'polka-star' drape of morning glories.

This bloom has two varieties mixed in itself!

When sweet Lesley planted the seeds under the picket fence Memorial Day weekend, we didn't envision that the skilfull tendrils would grow up over the two posts, and meet and weave in the middle into a perfect "M" - for our last name. (That white tank visible behind the "M" is our propane tank, for our furnace. We supplement with a wood burning stove.)

Below is Lesley's foot on Memorial Day weekend. In her jammies she drank coffee with her papa in the Adirondack chairs, after she had picked some honeysuckle for me, and before she planted morning glory seeds, and also radish and carrot seeds in the veggie garden. Her jammies fabric looks like morning glories wove it. Ahh - she's the best morning glory of all.





















Here is a blossom before opening. Don't worry, those wrinkles and crinkles will iron themselves out smooth in the sun, just like laundry on the line.

The delicacy and spiky leaves of this magenta variety astonished me the other day. I've never seen those before.

Lesley minored in fibers at art school, but I don't think she studied how to make a draped curtain of morning glories, although she did make dye from poke berries for one of her projects. I'll tell you about that another day.

morning glory

Ipomoea

atumnal equinox tomorrow

On this last day of summer, I'm sharing a poem I wrote in 1994 at the same time of year. It's strange to remember how it was when the kids were home, at the start of a new school year.

-

Also, today is the International Day of Peace. See my sidebar and click for more information.

Tomatoes

The tomatoes are sagging to the ground,
red and accusing.
I already had to refrigerate
some overripe ones that stared
at me red-eyed
for a week from the formica.
It is a sin to refrigerate tomatoes
and worse
to allow them to putrefy
on the vine.

For a few brilliant weeks of August
I did my duty to Italian and Mexican sauces,
to Turkish village salad with cucumber
and tomato cubes, onions, parsley, olive oil and lemon juice,
to warm tortillas with scallions,
tomatoes, mushrooms and cheese.
They didn’t ripen quickly enough.
And hadn’t I waited all winter,
spring and summer for this?

But now it is mid-September.
The slanting sun is curling the leaves
of the six tomato plants up
to the sky
like Sunday School children
raising hands for recognition,
not subtly, but nonetheless
ignored in a corner
of the backyard fence.

Today, Saturday, after
a 40-hour week in the office,
the sun insists with all its
clear forgiveness
that I should sit outside,
not out front with the neighbors,
but out back inside the cedar fence
under the mesh umbrella with my back
to the tomatoes.

September is a strangely mixed
month of re-boxing routines
of work, school buses, piano lessons and doctor appointments
into calendar squares
while the air outside is wearing
amber, as if, like honey
it would slow down
the process
if it could.
Flowers are full, better really
than they were all summer when we kept them in order.
And the heavy disarray of ripe tomatoes begs
for indolent days
when stuffing manicotti shells
might fill a morning.

I wonder why someone
would even grow tomatoes
without the permission of Italian, Greek,
Mexican or Turkish time.
Tomatoes aren’t meant
to be rushed
in ripening,
in cooking,
in eating. They are
intended for moussaka and lasagna
and paste that is stored
in a gallon jar under the sink
without a chance of molding:
fresh paste is spooned off every day for a recipe
and a new layer exposed to the air.
In a month the jar is empty.

I deposited six little plants
in June, hoping for a taste, a return
to the old country.
Any old country.
I forgot that behind every taste
hides a little woman or man with shiny red round
fingers.
The old fruit is bursting the skin
and I am not watching.

- Ruth M. 1994

my salvation

I'm nursing a head cold. Time to make ginger tea (chukku coffee and tea in India I found out from rauf when I posted this recipe in February 2007). On his way home from school Wednesday Don rescued me by picking up fresh ginger.

Ginger Tea

3-4 thin slices fresh ginger (unpeeled is fine)
juice of 1/2 - 1 full lemon
1 garlic clove, peeled and cut into 2-3 chunks (optional)
1 dried red pepper (optional)
honey to taste
hot water

Garlic has healing properties, and I love the taste, but leave it out if you don't like it. Dried red pepper helps clear congestion, but again, just ginger, lemon and honey are wonderful. Lemon with its vitamin C is great for a cold (maybe helps the cold end more quickly, well probably not in this small dose - but it can't hurt, and it tastes good!), honey is soothing on the throat, and ginger is nice on the tummy when you get all that yucky drainage. Lesley introduced me to this tea as a cold remedy last winter, and I fell in love with the flavor, even when I didn't have a cold. Now that colder temps and cold viruses are upon us (well, not in Australia, Letitia), it's time to share the comfort again.

home

What is home?

Is it a structure? Is home the building you live in now, or one you lived in at another time in your life?

Is it what you put into the structure, in the individual rooms? Does being surrounded by lovingly worn objects passed down to you from your parents or grandparents give you a sense of stability? Maybe something your father gave your mother in a moment of celebration, or gifts or art children made with small hands and gave you as they were growing up. Or maybe special books you've thumbed time and again, wearing the edges to threads?

Is home a place? The way the light bounces off water, or how it is filtered through leaves in a certain landscape? Does waking up to mountains on the horizon, or hearing a car pull onto your gravel driveway make you feel at home? Do you prefer a cityscape with crowds, lights and street noises?

Is home family, or certain loved ones? (Ohh, I see we need a new family picture with Brian included. This one was taken in 2005 by my nephew Mark - Ginnie's son - on the frozen lake. That's our family cottage to the left of Peter's head in the photo, up on the hill. That place really feels like home to me, because of all the family memories. Also, it is the closest we have to a homestead since my parents passed away, and our big extended family still gathers there twice a year.)

And how do you know it's home? Is it a feeling of warmth in a place that puts you at ease with yourself more than anywhere else?

I have never felt more at home than here at the farm, where we have lived less than five years. Our children also seem to feel a sense of home here unlike any of the eleven (that's 11, yes, 10 + 1) houses they've lived in, even though Lesley never lived here and Peter only lived here a few months in college. To answer my questions, I feel at home anywhere with my loving husband, and that grows stronger when the kids are home. I feel at home here at the farm because of the outdoor space - the way the trees are situated, the way the house windows face the land and old buildings, how the land slopes down to the meadow and woods, and the way the rustling poplar leaves in a strong wind are audible all the way to the house porch. I also feel at home with the heirlooms I grew up with, and seeing my children's art on the walls and Lesley's fabric projects draped on furniture.

If all this were taken from me, and I had to live with a minimum, I would hope for:

• a pen, a pad of paper, books on a wooden table, a comfortable chair, something beautiful to look at (art, photograph, fabric, a piece of pottery), something old that belonged to someone I love/d, and a view to the outdoors

I'd love to hear what makes you feel a sense of home.

Freedom? David Foster Wallace 1962-2008

David Foster Wallace 1962-2008

Writer DFW was found dead September 12 at age 46. He wrote what some have called one of the best 100 books of American fiction at age 33: Infinite Jest. I haven't read it. I haven't read anything of his, except some quotes. But his death is a sting anyway. I was impressed with his thoughts, some of which I've copied below. Strangely, he spoke of suicide in this commencement address, which makes me wonder if that is something he always struggled with. Friday his wife found him in their home where he'd hung himself. Today's NYT appraisal here.

DFW said this in a 2005 commencement address at Kenyon College:

The point here is that I think this is one part of what teaching me how to think is really supposed to mean. To be just a little less arrogant. To have just a little critical awareness about myself and my certainties. Because a huge percentage of the stuff that I tend to be automatically certain of is, it turns out, totally wrong and deluded. I have learned this the hard way, as I predict you graduates will, too. . . .

-
Here is just one example of the total wrongness of something I tend to be automatically sure of: everything in my own immediate experience supports my deep belief that I am the absolute center of the universe; the realest, most vivid and important person in existence. We rarely think about this sort of natural, basic self-centeredness because it's so socially repulsive. But it's pretty much the same for all of us. It is our default setting, hard-wired into our boards at birth. Think about it: there is no experience you have had that you are not the absolute center of. The world as you experience it is there in front of YOU or behind YOU, to the left or right of YOU, on YOUR TV or YOUR monitor. And so on. Other people's thoughts and feelings have to be communicated to you somehow, but your own are so immediate, urgent, real. . . .

-

This, like many clichés, so lame and unexciting on the surface, actually expresses a great and terrible truth. It is not the least bit coincidental that adults who commit suicide with firearms almost always shoot themselves in: the head. They shoot the terrible master. And the truth is that most of these suicides are actually dead long before they pull the trigger. . . .

-

And the so-called real world will not discourage you from operating on your default settings, because the so-called real world of men and money and power hums merrily along in a pool of fear and anger and frustration and craving and worship of self. Our own present culture has harnessed these forces in ways that have yielded extraordinary wealth and comfort and personal freedom. The freedom to be lords of our tiny skull-sized kingdoms, alone at the center of all creation. This kind of freedom has much to recommend it. But of course there are all different kinds of freedom, and the kind that is most precious you will not hear much talk about much in the great outside world of wanting and achieving and [unintelligible -- sounds like "displayal"]. The really important kind of freedom involves attention and awareness and discipline, and being able truly to care about other people and to sacrifice for them over and over in myriad petty, unsexy ways every day. . . .

-

That is real freedom. That is being educated, and understanding how to think. The alternative is unconsciousness, the default setting. . . .

-

The capital-T Truth is about life BEFORE death.

Beans

Intelligent. Discreet and modest.

Quietly alert, determined.

Pensive. Sincere. Decent.

Tolerant. Sensitive and clever.

Brave. Exuberant. Cheeky. Dangerous.

Beans: a prince, or maybe a god. Except when our niece Kaeley conquers him. Then he is a ragdoll.

* - * - * - * - * - * - * - * - * - * - * - * - * - * - * - * - * - * - * - *

figs on a plate

figs on a plate

reflections on the 11th of September

The first time I tasted a fig (not counting Fig Newtons) was 20-some years ago when we lived in İstanbul, where there was a fig tree in our yard. I was 30. I remember feeling the luxury of it on my tongue. A fresh fig! Not coated in thick, sticky sweet gel with a few gritty seeds for texture (Fig Newton cookie), but the cool flesh of a fruit that is delicately sweet. In Midwestern U.S. homes like mine when I was growing up in the '60s, fresh figs would have been unheard of. We don't have a fig tree on the farm here in Michigan, obviously. Too bad. Don bought these imported figs at our local grocer's. Rarely do we look past the plastic bags of apples at the more exotic fruits. Wonderful things happen when you open up to new tastes and new ways of looking. Don't be afraid of what you don't know, open up. The real deal might be different than you expect, and maybe you'll find it as delectable as figs on a plate.

* * * *

Added at 9:15pm: I did not originally write this part, because I didn't feel like overtly talking about 9/11. But, since it isn't apparent what I'm getting at above, here goes. On this anniversary of 9/11 I am not afraid of more terrorist attacks. I don't even think about it much, until I go through security at an airport. And then I am angry at a few who gave us cause for fear. What happened in 2001 was beyond imagining, so horrible it was. But I refuse to let it close my heart in fear or suspicion of Muslims in general. And now, according to some, there are possibly over a million dead in Iraq since the U.S. attack in 2003. Who should be afraid of whom? This is my point here, that it's too easy to establish a perspective based on insufficient information. We don't understand the vast complexities of another individual, let alone another culture, with thousands of years of history, conflict, wars, arts & culture. I abhor the arrogance of interference we force on the world. I am trying to be open.

another new gig!

Who is this man snuggling with our daughter?! Clue: he makes her very, very happy.

THIS MAN IS GOING TO BE OUR SON-IN-LAW!

Having him join us as our son and a new brother for Peter makes us very happy too! Brian, welcome to the family! We won't tell anyone about the arrow and the barn (. . . for a long, long time).

Brian proposed to Lesley on a beach at Cape Cod August 30. The wedding will be next summer.

♥

When love opens a new room in your heart, you realize its effortless capacity to increase and multiply.

The New Deal's new gig

Our son Peter is in a band called Meridian, which I posted about in April. He is also in another band called 'The New Deal,' which plays gigs around the state doing great covers of Bill Withers, Rolling Stones, Motown, Clapton - and others from a wide spectrum of styles. Don and I went to hear them at The Exchange in Lansing for the first time last Saturday. Unfortunately, Mike the vocalist/sax player/keyboardist was away. He's a talented musician - played his sax at the Grammys as a high schooler! It was the first time we heard The New Deal because they start playing at 10, and that's past my bed time. But we went, and I stayed awake! Now I regret not having gone to hear them more often. They are all very talented, and I like how Linsay, Mike and Jeff contribute vocals in turn.



The New Deal: Jeff, Linsay, Mark, Miquel and Peter (Mike was absent) - shot from the balcony at The Exchange (Mark and Peter are both in the band Meridian also.)

Mike got them a gig on a Princess cruise this fall, first leaving NYC up to Nova Scotia and New Brunswick. Then down to the Caribbean. If, like Don and me, you can't take a cruise this fall and hear them in person, give a listen to the nice 6:42 minute promo video, below, from their myspace site.

I left a little huff today at huffing . . .

evil eye zinnias

Asteraceae, Z. elegans

Native of Mexico, state flower of Indiana.

Fifteenth century Spaniards who came to take the Americas for their king and queen thought zinnias were ugly, so they called them mal de ojos (evil eyes). How's that for the pot calling the kettle black?

Interesting tidbit: When I Googled mal de ojos I found a downloadable font called mal de ojo, which is type scanned from old letterpressed Mexican religious pamphlets. Fascinating. Oh! By the way, back in Roman times a charm to ward off the evil eye '. . . was called fascinum in Latin, from the verb fascinare (the origin of the English word "to fascinate"), "to cast a spell", such as that of the evil eye' (from the site linked in 'Here,' below).

I realized when we lived in İstanbul that I could be considered to have the evil eye because my eyes are green. Here is a very thorough account of the history of the evil eye.