How I Named My Blog Day

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I haven't used the handheld in a while, so now with its dead battery it looks lifeless and cold.

It feels like years but has really only been 2 1/2 weeks since I woke up in a berserk middle-of-the-night frenzy and offered a reward - I mean award - to my favorite post for How I Named My Blog day, and then in the rational light of day withdrew the award, because I don't like "winners and losers" or awards of any kind! In spite of being browbeaten with exclamation points, several friends nicely agreed to post their blog naming story today, and you can find their links below. It's almost December 1, and soon I'll be trotting off to see if they remembered, and read them. Who knows, there may be others joining this grand event who aren't on the list!

Here's mine.

synch-ro-ni-zing

Why "synch-ro-ni-zing" and is it the same as "synchronicity"?

Thank you for asking. Oh, wait, I asked.

When I began blogging almost four years ago in January 2006, I had just gotten a new Dell laptop as my primary work computer, with a port for easy connections, and a cute little handheld electronic planner - yes the one in the photo above. It used to be so vibrant and alive! With friends and colleagues I felt both urbane and sheepish whipping it out to see if I was free on a certain date. But it really was handy. At the end of the work day, I inserted the handheld into its stand, and a box popped up on my monitor screen that said "synchronizing" - and the information was exchanged.

Starting my blog at that time, I liked how the concept was like writing poetry: linking things that might not seem alike at first view. So, synch-ro-ni-zing is synchronized with synchronizing. Cool.

The only blogger I knew then was my sister, Ginnie. Hers is called In Soul where she shows her comings and goings and the soulfulness within them. I don't think she's explaining hers today, because she's too busy packing up and moving to Amsterdam this week, a supremely soulful event for her. I had not considered starting a blog myself.

Until one white winter day I took Don's camera outside and suddenly thought how fun it would be to publish a photograph of our Adirondack chairs in the snow.

TO THE CREW BEHIND THE CURTAIN:
Oh dear! I just saw that all the comments at my old posts are GONE! I wonder how far back they've disappeared?

I went to Blogger because Ginnie used it and taught me a lot, and I've been with them ever since, but wow does my blog look different today than it did then. I think I've gone through at least two Minima templates with a couple of different color schemes before settling on this simple white room.

TO THE CREW again:
For over a week now I haven't been able to edit posts here st synch-ro-ni-zing; I still can't delete that duplicate Thanksgiving post. I've told your superiors about this! Hey, I can call my dear friends Larry Page's parents who live next door practically. Who are they, you ask? You don't know the founder of Google's parents?

But for the most part, Blogger has been super easy and offers flexibility and helpful tools. Ginnie taught me to create a non-public "test blog" that looks identical to this one, where I write drafts, upload photos, tweak, pinch and squeeze before copying and pasting the HTML into a synch-ro-ni-zing post. Even though I can't edit synch-ro-ni-zing posts right now, I can still edit posts at my test blog, thankfully.

To synchronize means to bring things into the same moment, like when you synchronize watches. Synchronicity is slightly different - though from the same root -

(dictionary.com says: 1615–25; Gk synchronízein to be contemporary with, equiv. to sýnchron(os))

- and has a deeper meaning in the "acausal coincidence of occurances," a la Carl Jung. The link in his name explains the story when "synchronicity" began, about a patient at an impasse in treatment who dreamt of a golden scarab, then during their session the next day a rare golden scarab knocked against Dr. Jung's window screen. You can read more there on what he did with the coincidence. I love it when other bloggers post similar topics the same day (like today! I MADE synchronicity happen; I synchronized synchronicity), or comment that they just had an experience related to mine. That used to happen a lot with Letty at freefalling in Australia, as if we were freefalling through a worm hole from opposite sides of the planet toward each other. I like feeling connected with Letty and other friends around the world like that, but I'd need Dr. Jung to explain what it means.

synch-ro-ni-zing's topics are all over the place, but when I sit down to a new post, I bring a couple of things together in a moment. I think I added the hyphens to give a little hint that it isn't the same as synchronicity, but as I said, I like it when synchronicity happens too.

Here are the other How I Named My Blog participants who so agreeably agreed to tell their story, in the order they signed on. What will we find? Freefalling worm holes? I get inspired every day by other bloggers. Thanks to you all!

soeurs du jour
(Margie & Kath - are they really soeurs?)

The Cul-de-sac Chronicles
(Bella Rum - does she live on one?)

Bug's Eye View
(Dana - is she extra short?)

The Marmelade Gypsy
(Jeanie - is that all she eats?)

Amuse Me
(M - is her life sadly lacking entertainment?)

What I Really Mean
(Carolyn - is she often misunderstood?)

Beetle's humour
(Babs - no mystery, she is funny)

CottageGirl
(CG - on a lake?)

Icono-Curmudgeon-Clast - Loring Wirbel's Rants
(Loring - did he make up that word?)

Turning Iwatean
(Kanmuri - what is an Iwat?)

Peter's Paris
(Peter - really, I thought it was mine?)

Split in Two
(Judy - which one is blogging?)

Annieland
(Annie - is that a village, a metropolis or a country?)

An Explorer's View of Life
(Barry - like Lewis & Clark?)

where there are no chickadees
(Purest Green - oh that's sad!)

On the edge of the chair of literature
(Gayle - mmm, read to me)

Bear Swamp Reflections
(Susan - Lions and tigers and bears, oh my!)

Picturing the Year
(Oliag - what does a year look like?)

bluebirds living in the meadow
(Jean - oh I could have named mine that too!)

Imagine
(Kenju - ok!)

LIVING IN THE EASTERN WOODLANDS
(Linda - is there a house?)

future of my past
(Anna MR - is she playing with my mind?)

The Task at Hand
(Linda - she is clever if this is about varnishing boats!)

LIFE IN THE SECOND HALF
(Nancy - is this Judy's other half?)

Going Out on a Limb
(Trudi - to blog, or not to blog?)

be yourself . . . everyone else is taken
(Beth - is she talking to herself?)

Pink Graffiti
(Lesley - teehee, that's her in the pink plaid pajamas
Thanksgiving weekend, synchronizing with a chicken)

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Happy Thanksgiving

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NOTE: Blogger is having trouble, and I wanted to come back and enable comments at this post, but editing posts is not working for the moment. So I am posting this entire post again. I'll delete the other one (with comments disabled, which I later thought better of) when Blogger fixes this problem.
Harika! On December 9, 2009, at last I am able to edit posts. Duplicate deleted.

All the days gather forward
to this.

We survived another year.

We were held close.
We lost, we gained.

What winds and storms battered
and tattered and made us turn our heads,
- and oh - see something new?

There was good reading - those essays and short stories!
Movies moved and disturbed us.

There were visits and visitations.
Good-byes,
setbacks, illness and pain.
Jobs lost.
There were shocking funerals!
There was emptiness, disappointment and longing.
Frustration, loneliness, confusion and fear.

And there were weddings and engagements!
Births and hatchings and
new friends!
Surprising raises and sales of houses.

As things got worse all around,
writers turned words to the heart,
artists applied paint and clay outward to a cause of love,
musicians supported the hungry and desperate,
playing tim-tim-tim-tee-tim.

Friends and strangers alike
paid more attention and helped more.
People paused longer in the hall at the office to talk.
Strangers passed
cash forward in the checkout line at the store.

I feel all this
in my
heart
mind
and soul
in health, compassion,
deeper sadness and broader joy.

All the days gather forward
to this
Gratitude.

Happy Thanksgiving.

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in appreciation of men

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Dissing men is popular, fashionable, humorous and politically correct. It has been so these past four or five decades since women's lib in the sixties. White men. Black men. Rich white men. Rich white male politicians. Rich white radiodiots (say it: ray-dee-yoh-dee-yachts = rightwing radical ranters). Cock-a-doodle-doos.
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Put all that aside for a bit, please.



Most of my blog friends are women. If you get into the techno-blogs and political blogs, and other categories, you’ll see more men. But in the genre of Here is My Life and You’re Welcome to It – it’s a lot of us Hens. I like that the men we hang out with here are cool about that.

So here is a list of random things I appreciate about men. A feminatzi could have a heyday with me. That’s ok. This is not a PC list. It's not exhaustive - I keep thinking of more. I'll add them to comments and you can too. I'm not saying women can't do some of the things I list. It’s just one hen's point of view. Argue all you want. You should.

• In the 34 years I have known my husband, he has never walked through a door ahead of me.
• When I needed my car's headlight replaced, it wasn’t me who did it. And it wasn’t a woman.
• Since Blogland, the men I’ve met here have been men who like women, are not threatened by women's strength and intelligence, and they encourage our discoveries, expression and power.
• Aside from some exceptional women (Queen Vishpla, biblical Deborah, the Amazons, Thyra Queen of Denmark, Joan of Arc, other warrior women who fought disguised as men, then in the 20th century in gradually increasing numbers and acceptance like the 12,000 women who fought in the Israeli war of independence in 1948, and of course the thousands of women who serve now) – as I say, aside from them, for the most part, down through the history of war - men may have started them – but other men had to fight them - protecting their families, tribes and nations as warriors through the battles. If I were a man of age during a draft, that would suck.
• I liked it when I was studying in London when I was 19 and I went to see Jimmy Stewart in the play "Harvey" alone, and when I came out of the theater after dark a tall skinny fellow student named Cal was waiting outside to walk me back to the dorm. He must have heard me say I was going, though I didn't remember that. No, he didn't put any moves on me. He just wanted me safe.
  
• Men like sports, so I don't have to. They can watch it, talk about it, and I can do something I'd rather do, like blog, and not feel guilty.
• I like that they have upper body strength. I can't carry 50-lb. water softener bags two at a time to the basement.
• Strong, thick eyebrows, especially black mixed with gray. That's a weird word - say it a few times. eyebrows. حاجب. 眉毛. obrva. obočí øjenbryn Augenbraue φρύδι ceja kulmakarva sourcil obrva sopracciglio 眉 눈썹 wenkbrauw øyenbryn brew sobrancelha бровь ögonbryn คิ้ว kaş lông mày 眉毛 . øjenbryn Augenbraue φρύδι ceja kulmakarva sourcil obrva sopracciglio 眉 눈썹 wenkbrauw øyenbryn brew sobrancelha бровь ögonbryn คิ้ว kaş lông mày 眉毛 . sobrancelha. kaş lông mày 眉毛 . Think Walter Cronkite.
• They like mowing the lawn, especially if they're on a green motorized riding toy that happens to have synchronized blades.
• They make me think harder when we have conversations. Don does it every day. And like when my father-in-law and I argue about the Bible, or my son asks me why I didn't like "No Country for Old Men," they don't let me just make a statement without supporting evidence. The men I've met in Blogland have stretched my mind beyond what I thought possible. I didn't know how much I didn't know. Men have helped me sharpen my mind.
• They don't cry a lot. They hardly cry at all. We wouldn't want too many people in the house crying. But they know when it's a good time to cry, because they look over at you to see if you're crying at certain touching moments in movies.
• Rumi. Philip Seymour Hoffman. Carl Jung. Jesus. Leonard Cohen. Wendell Berry. Vincent van Gogh. James Taylor. Ed Ingraham. John Lindus. Martin Luther King, Jr. Bill Murray. Russell Brand. Jimmie Elsie. David Gray. Edgar Degas. Benjamin Franklin. Bennett Hart. M.A. Rauf. GI Gurdjieff. Luciano Pavarotti. Barack Obama. Walt Whitman. Rainer Maria Rilke. Mahatma Gandhi. Henry David Thoreau. Loring Wirbel. Charles Dickens. Leonardo da Vinci. Albert Einstein. Nelson Mandela. Peter Olson. Noam Chomsky. Barry. Montag. Honore de Balzac. I like lists. But this list is very bad because it doesn't include all the men I want to include but don't want to bore you, or all the ones I'll think of later. So. Please close your eyes and think of men and what you appreciate. Nice, isn't it? If you're a man, also think about yourself and feel how good you are.
  

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early bird

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5:30am

It's Monday, and you slept in an hour because you have no student appointments today. The only thing calling you to the university is answering emails. You shower so your hair can start air drying and in your long heavy gray winter robe you pour your first cup of coffee, add vanilla soy and a blip of half and half. Stir with a long thin sturdy plastic spoon from Ireland because plastic is quieter than steel against the ceramic, important when someone else is sleeping.

You add a log to the wood stove and open the vent. It will take a few minutes for the orange embers to burst into flame and be visible through the creosote dimmed door. You hear a tick-tick-ticking just before the log ignites. It won't be light outside for another hour and a half, you see two or three stars shimmering between clouds. There is just one dim table lamp on. You wonder when you first began to like getting up so early, feeling robbed if it is already light when you awake. Your mother who got up early too would by now have already prayed on her knees for every world country's leader by name in her morning routine. With the smell of coffee and wood fire in your nostrils, you plop into your chilly red leather chair, covering your lap with a fleece blanket, and your laptop.

6:30am

You pour your second cup of coffee, and a cup for Don who is now up. Where did that hour go? Oh yes - besides gmail, a little quiet music, Facebook and blog comments, you also read some news stories, especially the one about hating Obama - that if you do you are likely to be white. Thank goodness your mother and father taught you not to hate blacks. The family room is toasty.

7:30am

Don has left for school, and it's light now - though gray and wintry, a light breeze bobbing the yellow tipped bamboo. This makes you think of President Obama again, because he's in China today (or is it tomorrow? he was just in Japan, when does he sleep?), where there is apparently deep cultural prejudice against blacks. After an essay by Ann Claycomb* about feeling like a terrible mother, you open the latest digital New Yorker - more palatable than the hard copy sitting on the kitchen table because you can read it without holding anything but your coffee cup. (You would not be able to read it online if you didn't have that subscribed copy on the table though. Ironic.) You used to think that people who got up early were the ultimate non-lazy people - industrious and worm-catching. You've changed your mind, and you realize your mother has flown up somewhere into the stratosphere of your esteem.

You read the article on the Michelin restaurant rating system from start to finish as hungrily as if you were eating a meal at a 3-star restaurant in Paris, which you've done thrice, unbelievably. The Michelin restaurant inspectors are anonymous and work long days, not paid too well, but wouldn't that be a great job, except for those long forms you have to complete after each meal, taking an hour. You know you are nowhere close to high society, you live on a farm with rustic outbuildings and chickens running in the yard, you and your husband have modest salaries in your thank-goodness jobs, and yet you have been served the food of the gods - once at Taillevent and twice at Le Grand Véfour. You contemplate blogging about those experiences and think better of it. Too much work to fire up the Paris blog again with old photos to process, and so many beggars in Mumbai and mine victims in Kabul with one leg or arm lurking in the vestibule. That would take more energy, better writing and less conscience than you feel capable of today.

9:30 am

You are still on your arse, with a warm machine bringing heat and information from around the globe onto your lap. Half-way through the Michelin article you have seven additional Internet tabs open: one on force feeding ducks for foie gras, the second the Michelin site Famously Anonymous, the third a list of 138 of Jean-Georges Vongerichten's recipes (if you were industrious you could attack those the way Julie did in "Julia & Julie"), the fourth - wikipedia.org open to the word Kairos after Montag mentioned it at his blog (the man must read incessantly) - meaning among other things "the time when God acts," the fifth - Facebook where you had to post the salon.com article you read about Obama hatred from the rightwingnuts (not that anyone will read it), the sixth a Huffington Post piece about the irony of Sarah Palin's new book title Going Rogue, and the seventh is your work email because you just decided you're going to stay home by the fire and answer emails here today. This is after you already spent two perfectly good weekend days at home with nowhere to go.

You convince yourself that because you want to write about what you take in, and this morning's worms were too plump, tasty and plentiful to leave for another morning, you need a whole day just to digest them. And that deserves 3 stars.

* This post was inspired by the form Ann Claycomb used in her piece at brevity titled WQED, Channel 13: Programming Guide. I was so taken with her form, that I imitated it. Thanks to Montag whose comment triggered the conviction that I should rightfully link it here - not that he was guilting me!
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taming a wild dragon

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'Flying Dragon' Hardy Orange (Poncirus trifoliata) at Beal Gardens

I should have taken her picture. (I want to get bolder snapping people.) The college student kneeling at the foot of the Flying Dragon Hardy Orange tree is one of the "slave laborers" in the Horticulture program, and weeding campus gardens is part of her curriculum. When the weather entices, Inge and I head out Fridays at lunch to sit on a bench by a fountain or walk one of the most beautiful campuses in the world. I watched the kneeling student's gloved hands picking at leaves and tiny weeds in black soil and recognized my garden clippers sticking out her back jeans pocket. She flashed us a smile, obviously enjoying her work.

I learn best from watching and imitating, and the student tidying those beds inspired me to put our own beds in order at the farm before winter. In July before the wedding my niece Jennifer worked long, hard - and she said "enjoyable" - hours on the veggie and flower beds to shape and beautify them: ha, wedding weeding. It would be a shame to let them run too far amuck.

Fighting the grass whose roots are bound with my poor iris rhizomes will never end (photo below). I was too lethargic to tend to these ruffley pale iris in their previous bed, and the grass did what grass does, shooting roots far and wide under the iris, herbs and daylilies. Now I pay the price, like I did Saturday in another weekend of warm sun, tediously pulling thin blades and roots, making my carpal tunnel weakened wrists ache.

But yikes, I won't get carried away and manicure the farm with its rustic barns to look like Versailles. I don't just love tended iris, tulips, peonies, columbine, sedum, black-eyed Susans, coneflowers and the like. The wild natural beauty of goldenrod, Timothy grass, Queen Anne's lace and sumak in the meadow - maybe not quite as wild as a flying dragon! - is where I go sit to soak in Nature. One day if the whole farm becomes naturalized, will it be by choice, or because of my laziness?

Nature never stops working - it's the ultimate example. But my hat's off to two women of a younger generation for motivating me to get off my butt and take care of all those sweet plants that I depend on in the spring to pull me out of the dormancy of winter.




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Ok, no award, just share your blog name's story December 1st

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That was a fun little rip and rant, phew! Thank you to those who agreed to participate in my How I Named My Blog invitation.

After a couple days of sobriety, and some chillier November air, I've decided to keep on despising and shunning awards of any kind! If you'd like to tell the story of how you chose your blog name on December 1st, please do! But there will be NO MAJOR AWARD! You can leave a comment in this or the previous post if you'd like to participate, and I'll add you blog to the list. If you already told me you would, I've got you on my list for that day's post. If you want to withdraw now that the pulchritudinous award is just a pretty face on my last post, let me know, teehee.

(It is very hard to resist an exclamation point now, let me tell you. There, I left a big period. That feels a little better.)

I don't like "winners" and "losers" (I was rarely chosen to be on anyone's team) - but I am curious about some of those blog names out there. You can use me as an excuse: "Ruth asked, so I'm telling . . ."

I mean even a name like "Peter's Paris" - how did Swedish Peter come to live in Paris?
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A Major Blog Award!

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Dear Bloggy Friend!

How did you name your blog? Was it a no brainer, easy as pie? Or was it obscure, esoteric and deep - only you could understand it? Did you choose from five stellar names - or struggle to think of one?? Do you ever regret your blog name? Wish you'd called it something like "The Daily Life of Cindy Jones" because you get tired of explaining what "Les écritures d'une nymphe des bois*" means incessantly? Or vice versa?? Inquiring minds want to know!!!! Namely, mine!!!!

Why not take a break from travel, food, music, book or movie reviews, photos of your grandchildren, your cat, your dog, the chickens, your garden, city, nature, politics, art and poetry and tell the fascinating story of how you came to choose your blog name?!!! Maybe your blog naming story IS about your cat or dog - all the better!!!! What hidden truths about yourself lie within that moniker? And is your profile name a pseudonym??? Completely different from your blog name?? How intriguing, how delightfully freeing to choose a name when you couldn't name yourself at birth!!! A blog is a wondrous playground!!!!

On December 1, publish your own "How I Named My Blog" (echo echo echo) post!!!! Participate with THOUSANDS - perhaps TENS of THOUSANDS - of Bloggers around the world in this first time ever highly anticipated truly GLOBAL event!!!!

But wait, there's MORE!!!! Like my dear friend Al Pacino, I despise and shun awards of any kind!!! But I am going to bestow a Major Blog Award to ONE blogger for "How I Named My Blog" (echo echo echo, and henceforth)!!!! What could be more thrilling?!!!

Did you choose a straightforward name of small proportions and your story will impress me with simplicity, subtlety, nuance and grace? Or will you take your ordinary name of "Nathan's New York" and unfold a titillating and seductive tale - fiction or non-fiction??? Ah - will you transform your blog naming narrative into poetic form - a haiku, a limerick or maybe an epic??? (God be pleased, NO EPICS.) Will you try to make me laugh? How well do you know me? That is the allure for this Major Blog Award - YOU CAN'T KNOW for sure!!!! Maybe I'll lay them all before the chickens and let them "peck" one!!!! I might just give the Major Blog Award to my BBF**!!!!! Or maybe I'll give it to myself - even though I despise and shun awards of any kind - since I myself will explain how I named synch-ro-ni-zing on December 1st!!!! There are no rules or criteria (except NO EPICS)!!!! All bloggers are welcome!!!! You don't even have to have a Blogger blog!!!! WordPress or any other weird site will do!!!! Will I choose the story with the most exclamation points???? The most words in BOLD???? The most embedded LINKS???? Who knows!!!!!!!!!

Just tell me in a comment at this post that you are going to participate in posting your very own story of "How I Named My Blog" on December 1st, give me the URL for the blog where you will post it, and I will list and link to your blog that day!!!!! Then I will read every last one of the posts posted by posting participants and choose a WINNER!!!! Mark your calendar!! (Did you notice that only two "!!" was such a letdown?!!!!) Don't miss out on this FIRST-EVER CHANCE to participate in this unique and major Major Blog Event!!!! Are you going to be away December 1st?? No worries!!!! You can schedule a post ahead of time!!!! Just click on "Post Options" at the bottom of your Compose box!!!! I will announce the WINNER in my first post after December 1st!!!! (If I get the THOUSANDS - PERHAPS TENS OF THOUSANDS - I expect, I'll see you sometime next year!!!!!)

If you get weak at the knees thinking of increased traffic at your site, participate!!!!!! If you get sweaty palms thinking about winning such a Major Blog Award and a traffic jam in front of your blog, or the drama of paparazzi camped out on one side of your lawn and protesters with placards on the other, consider long and hard, my friends!!!!! I am IRRESPONSIBLE!!!!! Any damages are not my problem!!!!

The lucky winner of this prestigious Major Blog Award will get to post on their own site the pulchritudinous award above of an elegant woman christening her blogship!!!!! Imagine how it will look on your site!!!! But don't worry, if you have always been like me and my good friend Al Pacino and despise and shun awards of any kind, and you WIN - post your story anyway, and just don't show up for the award, it's simple!!!!!! Even if you don't WIN the coveted Major Blog Award, you will have gotten that marvelous story down in the annals of blogdom and participated in this highly anticipated Major Blog Event!!!!

I know you are unused to this kind of hysterical buzz at such a serious and sober blog as mine!!! But I couldn't be more serious or sober - even if a little delirious and dervishy!!!! Don't delay, sign up TODAY!!!!!

Now sing along with my close friends Dick Van Dyke and Julie Andrews as Bert and Mary Poppins as they sing, "It's a bloggy holiday with you, Ruth!!!!!"

Sincerely, soberly and ecstatically yours -
Ruth





*Les écritures d'une nymphe des bois = Writings of a Woodland Nymph

**BBF=Best Blog Friend - (You thought you'd find out who this is down here???)

Note: Emily Dickinson said a poet has license to use one exclamation point in their entire oeuvre. I'm sorry, but I have used all of yours and mine up for this global cause.

Note2: Again I apologize, this was written between 1 and 3 in the morning one night when I couldn't sleep. We can only pray it won't happen again, and this blog will return to its state of peace and tranquility.

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a rare November weekend

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Autumn sun and a light wind from the south carried the weekend up to seventy degrees (21ºC) and blue skies after a few weeks of cold weather (30ºF, around 0ºC). Towels whipped in the wind. The last of the garden peppers went into white chili (with turkey Don raised, white beans, onion, garlic, cumin, homemade chili powder from our neighbor's friend (we'd run out - thank goodness! wow was this good stuff), cilantro, lime juice and chicken broth, no tomatoes - save those for red chili).

Rosemary and parsley puffed out like it was August.



Beverly and Berta wondered where the cold went.



Don even let the turkeys wander outside their fence a while, but it didn't last long. He remembered how dumb they are, worried they'd head toward the road and penned them back up.

Floozie found a rock and wanted to brood. Wow, she looks big all of a sudden, as fluffy as the parsley. She used to be such a skinny squirt. A nosy one. (See sidebar toward the bottom.)



Spearmint, peppermint, ever-ready strawberries and frost-flattened rhubarb kept two other garden beds alive and green with red trim. Don had transplanted the foundering rhubarb here where it looks to be thriving now. I tasted a chunk of pink rhubarb stalk, thinking I'd make pie, but it was tasteless. I used to eat rhubarb raw when I was a kid from a patch in my parents' backyard - crisp, gritty, juicy and SOUR. We will have to wait until spring for this plant to grow fresh tasty stalks. Save room for warm strawberry-rhubarb pie a la mode in June. Something in the pairing with strawberries eliminates rhubarb's gritty feel on your teeth.



The lumberjack chain-sawed dead wood by the pond, which I later stacked in the corncrib. So far the forced air furnace has hardly kicked on in spite of cold weather the last few weeks because the wood stove is efficient and keeps us cozy. It will be cold again soon enough.



What can be said - except Hallelujah, Praise the Lord and pass the sour cream (for the chili), and butter and honey (for the cornbread)!



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statue

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photo "Statue" used with permission of photographer Carl C

Move Within

Keep walking, though there's no place to get to.
Don't try to see through the distances.
That's not for human beings. Move within,
but don't move the way fear makes you move.

.............................................................- Rumi
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friendship in a mobius strip

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The best most amazingly wonderful boss I ever had was a mathematics professor named Ed. Once he tore off a strip of paper, twisted it and then joined the ends to show me what a mobius (or moebius, or moëbius) strip is. In case you don't know, as I didn't, it's a surface with only one side. That's right, if you run your finger along any surface, you'll see that there is only one. It is one of those deliciously annoying impossibilities that tells me I can't be a scientist. I just can't get my head around it, and that bothers me. If I couldn't get my head around it and it didn't bother me, I might be scientist material. (You scientists are going to correct me now.) A mobius strip is also a non-orientable surface. If you want to understand that physical concept, try this. "Orientability is a mathematical property of surfaces in Euclidian space measuring whether or not it is possible to make a consistent choice of surface normal vector at every point dot dot dot"



Whatever. So this is a mobius strip bangle.

I have this friend, a person in authority and power. This is her bracelet, which I admired on her wrist. One day many months later, she publicly scolded me very vehemently over something I thought trivial, and I didn't deserve it. After that I had to seriously consider whether I wanted her to remain in my life as a friend. It took several days and a mini vision quest of sorts to really search out my heart about her and what had happened. I decided I did want her in my life, in spite of her sometimes abrasive ways. There are many things I love about her and our relationship, so I talked with her about it, we patched things up better than before, and a few months later she came for a gathering at my house on my birthday. She handed me a gift box, and when I opened it there was the bracelet. The significance of its twisting and single surface touched me as a symbol of our friendship, one that was pliable enough to go on after a rift that almost tore us apart.

I love it so much that if a fire broke out I would grab it with the photo albums, camera and the external hard drive with all my photographs - after making sure Don is out ok.



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The Year of Yes

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Vessel made by Beatrice Wood

My disappointment in the outcome felt like a hollow dirty blue plastic molded bed pan. I felt sick, like throwing up into it. After all, I had invested my time, energy and love into someone who was desperately hurting, and what happened thereafter? Within just a couple of weeks, we were right back where we started. I wanted to scoop her up in my arms and just let the bad things spin away from us.

Feeling thus the other morning, hugging my hand thrown pottery mug full of fresh hot coffee (not the chalice made by Beatrice Wood in the photo above), I opened Google Reader, scrolling down through the words and images miraculously appearing on my laptop screen from my friends' worlds. What a wonder.

And then there was a poem. Called The Year of Yes. I read, and the words released the sickness in me. Instead of throwing up, I cried - a cleansing sob. The ugly blue plastic morphed into a glazed earthen cup ready to be filled again.

Shaista wrote the poem and posted it at her blog Lupus in Flight. This is what she has written about herself in her About Me.

I live a meditative life in a green village in England. I was diagnosed with Lupus when I was 18 and much of my poetry writes itself in response to living with such a peculiar, demanding and life-altering illness. I write about love and longing and hope. I have lived half my life in India and the other half in England. I was born into two religions in a country of a myriad faiths. I have been writing since I can remember holding a pen, a crayon, paper, anything that comes to hand...

The illness Shaista lives with is "a chronic inflammatory disease that can affect various parts of the body, especially the skin, joints, blood, and kidneys," as the Lupus Foundation site says. I didn't know much about it until reading her blog posts, which sometimes talk about her regular hospitalizations for treatment.

Just from Shaista's blog title Lupus in Flight you understand how she lives with illness. Her story is about letting something from within her experience of incessant pain, ache and disruptive hospital treatments surface and be expressed in poetry. Well, her About Me above says it far better. Here is Shaista's poem.

The Year of Yes

- for Victoria and Perveen,
dearest, patient girlfriends
who nonetheless went off to Bury Farm
without me
and inspired this poem

I wish I had said Yes!

beloved

When you asked me out to walk

among the leaves

the turning leaves

You were offering me

the sound of dreams,

And I turned you down

politely.

Not today, I smiled

Perhaps,

Maybe, tomorrow?

But I wish I had said Yes!

beloved

I wish we had shared this light.

Next time don't ask

Just take me!

Order me to dress!

I am going to need your help

beloved

To begin the Year of Yes.
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