Catalogue of Potions

Wildgoose

2012-01-23T13:03:00.000-08:00

Olivia's 1st grade class is writing poetry. It's been a beautiful and humbling process to witness. I feign nonchalance as I walk past her sitting in the dining room, her elbows on the table, pencil eraser tapping her chin. I can't resist throwing a glance at her work in progress. What turn of phrase will pass through her pencil? And how does it come so easily for her when I wrestle with every word choice? Her freedom inspires.

Today she came home with a poem she wrote about her experience at the Wildgoose Festival last June. This festival on justice, spirituality, art, and music included three days of rich conversation for all of us, and we hope to go back in the future. But there is no question that, over the past 7 months, the children have brought it up more than Brett and me. Here's Olivia's take on the festival, in verse:

Wildgoose

fun and great
tweet, tweet goes the bird
I snuggle, I cuddle with my mom
I hear the bands
I snuggle in the tent
in the tent I cuddle
in the tent
some nights, sit by the lantern
some nights by the band

-Olivia Wiley

Merry Christmas

2011-12-26T19:11:00.000-08:00

“Are our sensibilities / too blunt to be assaulted / with spatial power-plays and far-out / proclamations of peace? Sterile, / skeptic, yet we may be broken / to his slow silent birth / (new-torn, new- / born ourselves at his / beginning new in us.) His bigness may still burst / our self-containment / to tell us—without angels’ mouths— / fear not.” — Luci Shaw

Dear Family and Friends,

We hope this letter finds you and yours enjoying this season of Christmas. As is often the case, we’ve traveled much of the past month away. We were able to join Brett’s family in Chicago for Thanksgiving, and now we’re enjoying time with my family in Nashville. The break from our daily routine certainly brings it’s challenges, but more so, I believe it tends to offer clarity as we’re able to step outside of our everyday ways and look at them with a fresh perspective.

Olivia, now six, has really grown into her role as the older sister. She, more than any of us, is ready to jump into Mae’s imaginary world of play. For Olivia, I sense this world is often more familiar and comfortable than the 1st grade world she maneuvers so gracefully each school day. We continue to marvel at her desire and ability to learn new things. This year she’s successfully tackled the scooter, the written word, the Lego manual, the bike (she calls it the two-wheeler), the piano, and just this past week, the knitting needles.

I recently learned that our neighbors like to refer to Mae as “the little woodland creature.” This is an apt description as I watch her spritely form sing and dance around me with her crazy hair and make-shift costumes. I sense this is exactly what a three-year-old girl should be doing. For our family, she is the great communicator. She lets us know, in her gentle way, when our family dynamic isn’t quite right and when more is right than we recognize.

Brett continues to appreciate the significance of the opportunities made available to him through his work at MVNU. This past spring he was given the President‘s Award for Excellence in Teaching; he is grateful for his employment at a university that appreciates his contributions. He continues to write and present in his areas of interest.

I still teach a course or two at MVNU and write when the schedule allows. My work with the art program at our church continues to be a substantial combination of challenge and blessing. I’m constantly enriched by the witness of both the volunteers and the children as, each week, we engage in the humbling opportunity to create together. I’ve also enjoyed more time to delve into the rituals of home, discovering the value of slowing down and fully engaging in everyday domestic tasks.

And of course, mixed within warm moments like these have been the rushed episodes where we allow our supposed needs—to be on time or to get out the door—to excuse our shortness with each other. We let our consideration for each other fall to the floor so we can hold up our expectations of perfection to one another. Or we let temporary ownership of a particular possession (insert name of toy here) take precedence over sharing freely. Add to this an unusual season of sickness for our family--colds, fevers, and beyond-- and we become keenly aware of the fragility of our broken, mortal form.

This is where I take great comfort in the angels’ proclamation, “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, and good will toward men.” Of all the phrases to utter, of all the “threads of speech” to snap so that we could understand, these are the words they chose. No doubt a host of angels filling the sky would be a fantastic sight to behold, but I believe the display was only to give further weight to the words chosen to accompany Christ’s arrival. Through his birth, peace and good will come to men. As self-contained as we’d like to be, it’s not possible, thank the Lord. And so we pray for the proclamation of his birth to burst into our days, to make its way through our blunt sensibilities, that we may receive the message and in turn, offer peace and good will to each other.

Glory to God in the highest,
Brett, Elizabeth, Olivia, and Mae Wiley

We Moved Christmas, and the Weather Obliged

2011-12-17T11:29:00.001-08:00

As we're travelling to be with family far away for Christmas Day, we opted to have our own Christmas here at home this morning, December 17th. It's been lovely. We're even enjoying our first real snow of the year. Mary Oliver's poem is apropos. Here you go:

First Snow

The snow
began here
this morning and all day
continued, its white
rhetoric everywhere
calling us back to why, how,
whence such beauty and what
the meaning; such
an oracular fever! flowing
past windows, an energy it seemed
would never ebb, never settle
less than lovely! and only now,
deep into night,
it has finally ended.
The silence
is immense,
and the heavens still hold
a million candles, nowhere
the familiar things:
stars, the moon,
the darkness we expect
and nightly turn from. Trees
glitter like castles
of ribbons, the broad fields
smolder with light, a passing
creekbed lies
heaped with shining hills;
and though the questions
that have assailed us all day
remain — not a single
answer has been found –
walking out now
into the silence and the light
under the trees,
and through the fields,
feels like one.

~Mary Oliver~

Merry Christmas.

Over lunch

2011-11-17T09:27:00.001-08:00

Mom: "So Mae, what would you like for Christmas?"

Mae: "A present."

Mom: "What kind of present?"

Mae: "A present I can give to Olivia."

Mom: "And what kind of present would you like to receive?"

Mae: "Maybe a cheeto to eat. And a pirate toy."

Mom: "Why do you want a pirate toy?"

Mae: "So I can be a pirate."

When All You Have Left Is the Dark Night Sky...

2011-10-15T10:10:00.001-07:00

A wise young woman once said,

"When all you have left is the dark night sky...

...you begin separating the men from the monsters...

...and the pogo sticks from the puppy dogs."

Quiet Giants

2011-08-26T10:41:00.000-07:00

I was just thinking of Alan Jacobs yesterday. Today, Image Journal brought this to my facebook feed. Allow me to suggest finding a quiet half hour, preparing your beverage of choice, and slowly flipping through the Gospel of the Trees. I think you'll come away refreshed.

Here's a peak at what you'll find:

Photo (yes, photo) by Franz Lanting

Trees

To be a giant and keep quiet about it, 
To stay in one’s own place;
 To stand for the constant presence of process
 And always to seem the same;
 To be steady as a rock and always trembling,
 Having the hard appearance of death
 With the soft, fluent nature of growth,
 One’s Being deceptively armored, 
One’s Becoming deceptively vulnerable,
 To be so tough, and take the light so well,
 Freely providing forbidden knowledge 
Of so many things about heaven and earth
 For which we should otherwise have no word— 
Poems or people are rarely so lovely, 
And even when they have great qualities
 They tend to tell you rather then exemplify 
What they believe themselves to be about,
 While from the moving silence of trees, 
Whether in storm or calm, in leaf and naked,
 Night or day, we draw conclusions of our own,
 Sustaining and unnoticed as our breath, 
And perilous also—though there has never been
 A critical tree—about the nature of things.

— Howard Nemerov

There's A Place

2011-08-25T10:27:00.000-07:00

I've been drawn to this song these past few days as I consider the tremendous energy my daughter Olivia musters to work through all that is encompassed in what we call "1st grade." But beyond that, it seems it might offer a timely word for so many-- right now. Ladies and gentlemen, Peter Gabriel.

(I debated whether to post this live version with Paula Cole or the video with Kate Bush. As you see, the live version won, as I just can't seem to receive the message while watching an awkward 6 minute hug).

Do NOT eat at the Upstairs Cafe

2011-07-05T10:55:00.000-07:00

Brett was already seated when I came in, but even as I approached our table, I read his nonverbal cues that I should run out while I still could. Unfortunately, my curiosity made me sit down. Where to begin...
-- the music was way too loud
-- all the food was hard, like plastic, even Brett's spaghetti-- how do you mess up spaghetti?
-- when Brett asked for a fresher order, they brought him sliced pickles covered in cheese-- without a plate
-- I did receive the corn I ordered, but it was in an unopened can, plopped down in front of me
-- when I ordered a doughnut, the chef told me to get my own doughnut
-- the waitress took our order sitting on our table while the chef crawled under our table to retrieve some dropped food
-- the chef squirted mustard all over our utensils, and then when we asked for new ones, the chef and waitress proceeded to lick them clean and then give them back to us

BUT, they do offer free flu shots and storytime at the end of each meal, so I suppose that counts for something. Actually, we'll probably go back again, and again, and again.

Farm

2011-05-25T10:38:00.000-07:00

I grew up in a beautiful, suburban neighborhood of ranch houses just south of downtown Nashville. Before it had been such a neighborhood, it had been rolling fields, pastures, and farmland. The area's past still tells its story through the tree lines that once served as property lines. I just missed this landscape by a few decades.

As a child I experienced echoes of the farm life when I'd go to my grandparents' house in west Tennessee. I played in barn lofts and gathered a few eggs, I named a farm cat or two, but I was too young to pick up on all the intricacies of the farming schedule, and most of my grandparents' farming days were in the past. My education to this "way" of life was done through the retelling of stories more than it was through actually witnessing the day to day routine of a farm.

Unknowingly, I grew up assuming working farms were pretty much a thing of the past and were only still happening in tiny pockets of our country. I wrongly assumed most of America was urban or suburban, even though I'm sure I correctly answered a question or two from a map on a standardized test telling me otherwise.

Now we live in a small Ohio town, and I'm never more than a mile or two from a contemporary, working farm. I can buy all our meat and chicken and dairy from any number of these farms (though, financially, I'm still trying to figure out how to swing this), and from May to October I'm less than a 5-block walk to a farmer's market any given Saturday morning. To get to the nearest urban center, I spend 30 minutes on highways surrounded by working farms. My education continues.

In our little backyard, I'm trying to reclaim some of the practices of my grandparents, and frequently, as I'm thinning out the vegetables or wondering what's wrong with my squash, I regret that this wasn't a regular part of my own upbringing, that so much skill and knowledge was lost in the span of just one generation. I hope my girls grow up with an internal awareness of the seasons in a way I didn't. I hope they recognize that their outdoor chores are determined by the patterns of nature, that the changing of seasons doesn't just affect their clothing options. I want them to recognize this cycle as valuable and worth their notice, not oppressive and backwards.

When I first saw the cover of Elisha Cooper's Farm, I was pretty sure this would be a good text to supplement our family's everyday experiences. I'm always happy to find books to enrich our family's story with the stories of others, and this one looked like it might give a bigger picture to the one we're trying to create in our home. Farm follows a year in the life of a family farm, from sowing to harvesting. It goes beyond naming the animals and their sounds to explaining the everyday workings of a farm in a very poetic and intriguing manner.

The tiller turns the soil, "and the fields change from the color of milk chocolate to the color of dark chocolate."

The combine harvester eats the corn: "It bites stalks, pulls them into its mouth, separates kernel from cob in the the thresher inside its belly, burps out husks."

The children return to school and a rooster goes missing: "Did a fox get it? September shows that some things are not forever."

And the pictures are spot on. I'm grateful that these scenes aren't as foreign to my girls as they would have been to me.

My grandparents' farm is still standing, but barely. The animals are long gone, as are most of the family members. There is very little about the farm that I would call "working," but when my 98 year old grandmother looks out the window of her house, the same house in which she was born, I imagine her mind sees moments like the ones Cooper captures in his book. Fortunately, these scenes and the realities they represent are more prevalent in America than my younger self had thought.

Happy Easter

2011-04-24T03:51:00.000-07:00

I thank You God for most this amazing

i thank You God for most this amazing
day: for the leaping greenly spirits of trees
and a blue true dream of sky;and for everything
which is natural which is infinite which is yes

(i who have died am alive again today,
and this is the sun's birthday;this is the birth
day of life and love and wings:and of the gay
great happening illimitably earth)

how should tasting touching hearing seeing
breathing any-lifted from the no
of all nothing-human merely being
doubt unimaginable You?

(now the ears of my ears awake and
now the eyes of my eyes are opened)

e.e. cummings

Happy Epiphany

2011-01-21T18:21:00.001-08:00

I am not concerned with gifts given in spite or fear, nor those gifts we accept out of servility or obligation; my concern is the gift we long for, the gift that, when it comes, speaks commandingly to the soul and irresistibly moves us."
- Lewis Hyde, “The Gift”

Dear Family and Friends,

This year’s letter is being written on the twelfth day of Christmas, The Feast of the Epiphany. Lots of wonderful busyness kept us from getting to it earlier, but, as we’re enjoying a heightened awareness of the church calendar, this seemed a perfect day for some reflection, a day to celebrate Christ’s divinity made manifest and acknowledged here on Earth. A number of these revelatory moments occurred in his early life, but the one I hear referenced most frequently is the visit of the magi, coming with gifts.

Beyond our recent Christmas morning, birthdays, and other celebratory occasions, the language of gifts, both tangible and intangible, has very much been a part of our home this year. We’ve received many, given some, discovered even more, and our hope is to be always moving through the day with an awareness of the gifts in motion around us, most often made manifest through each other in small, unforseen moments--epiphanies, if you will.

Brett’s work continues to be a gift for him. He’s engaging in rich conversations, creating new courses, and writing on topics of interest. This June, he’ll take a group of students to NYC for a summer course on the literature and culture of New York City. I enjoyed teaching two courses this past fall, one methods course and one writing. Watching my students discover their own gifts for writing was extremely rewarding, as was delving into the details of the craft with them. Now I’m directing a children’s after-school art program at our church, and I look forward to receiving the gift of art with the children of our community.

Olivia and Mae’s gifts are daily revelations for us. Olivia’s life-long fascination with books has now evolved into her reading them. Watching her crack that code has been sheer magic for us, and I’m humbled as I think about how she will use this gift of literacy. She’s also taken a great interest in the piano, regularly asking me to write out a particular song so she can add it to her repertoire.

Mae’s verbal development amazes us. Her ability to communicate has come so rapidly that it seems I’m regularly mistaking a comment from her as one from Olivia. And as has been the case since her beginnings two years ago, her general delight with life picks us all up several times a day. Her big sister has passed on to her the gift of song and dance, and now Mae can turn almost any item into a microphone and the slightest slip into a pirouette.

It’s been an exciting year. A lot has happened. Many opportunities have come our way. But at the end of this day, I recognize our most revelatory moments have happened not in the out of the ordinary, unusual moments, but in the most likely of occurances, when the common is transformed into something saturated with significance, and once again Christ is revealed.

Epiphany is a gift. It is the gift we long for, and when it’s received, really received, as Lewis Hyde explains, “it speaks commandingly to the soul and irresistably moves us.” We hope you will note your own epiphanies as well and treat them as James Joyce would have you treat them--“with extreme care, seeing that they themselves are the most delicate and evanescent of moments."

Happy Epiphany and Happy New Year.

Brett, Elizabeth, Olivia, and Mae Wiley

an unseen reality

2011-01-19T11:27:00.000-08:00

I’m listening to On Being this afternoon. Today I’ve chosen the show, "Quarks and Creation" and am really enjoying Krista’s conversation with physicist and theologian John Polkinghorne. I’m also happy to learn the scientific term “quark” was borrowed from a line in James’s Joyce’s Finnigan’s Wake. Here’s a comment from Polkinghorne I found especially encouraging as I looked at the semi-ordely chaos that is my dining room table:

“There's a very interesting scientific insight which says that regions where real novelty occurs, where really new things happen that you haven't seen before, are always regions which are at the edge of chaos. They are regions where cloudiness and clearness, order and disorder, interlace each other. If you're too much on the orderly side of that borderline, everything is so rigid that nothing really new happens. You just get rearrangements. If you're too far on the haphazard side, nothing persists, everything just falls apart. It's these ambiguous areas, where order and disorder interlace, where really new things happen, where the action is, if you like. And I think that reflects itself both in the development of life and in many, many human decisions.”

One such as this...

2011-01-10T05:41:00.000-08:00

"This triviality made him think of collecting many such moments together in a book of epiphanies. By an epiphany he meant ' a sudden spiritual manifestation, whether in the vulgarity of speech or of gesture or in a memorable phase of the mind itself. He believed that it was for the man of letters to record these epiphanies with extreme care, seeing that they themselves are the most delicate and evanescent of moments."
James Joyce, Stephen Hero (Ch. 25)

The Christmas Story

2010-12-18T07:25:00.000-08:00

...the thing with feathers...

2010-12-11T19:27:00.000-08:00

Celebrating my brother Joel's wedding today.
And wanting to share the poem Cary selected for the occasion.

Hope

Hope is the thing with feathers
That perches in the soul,
And sings the tune-- without the words,
And never stops at all,

And sweetest in the gale is heard;
And sore must be the storm
That could abash the little bird
That kept so many warm.

I've heard it in the chillest land,
And on the strangest sea;
Yet, never, in extremity,
It asked a crumb of me.

-Emily Dickinson

tell it slant

2010-11-29T17:34:00.000-08:00

"Tell All the Truth but tell it slant"

Tell all the Truth but tell it slant--
Success in Circuit lies
Too bright for our infirm Delight
The Truth's superb surprise

As Lightening to the Children eased
With explanation kind
The Truth must dazzle gradually
Or every man be blind--

- Emily Dickinson

"Hey Liv, you wanna come in and help me with dinner?"

2010-11-11T18:33:00.000-08:00

"No thanks, Mom. I'm kinda busy right now."

12 years ago...

2010-09-19T19:57:00.001-07:00

If I remember correctly, Brett was supposed to look pensive and I was supposed to be looking at him dotingly. We never pulled it off, but this has always been my favorite shot from the occasion.

for your reading pleasure

2010-08-23T10:51:00.000-07:00

Reading with Olivia has been a lot of fun this summer. I could listen to her reading Hop On Pop all day long, her laughing after every reading of, "NO! PAT! NO! Don't sit on that!" And though she loves her new skill, she still prefers us on the couch reading to her. Much like a conversation between Olivia the pig and her mother, our version goes something like this:

"Only one book tonight, Olivia."

"Four?"

"One."

"Three?"

"Olivia."

"Two?"

"Oh, alright, two."

Four favorites of late:

A Balloon for Isabel, by Deborah Underwood

I shared our love for Underwood's Quiet Book a few months ago, and she's charmed us again with this one. Isabel the porcupine wants to get a balloon for class graduation, just like everyone else in her class, but because of the quills, she and her porcupine friend Walter have to settle for bookmarks. My absolute favorite passage:

Isabel gazed out the window. "Sally told me that when you first get it, a balloon can bounce
on the ceiling. If you pull the string and then let go, it makes a soft, thumpy sound," she said.

"I heard that after a few days, a balloon floats halfway between the ceiling and the floor," said
Walter. "It just hangs there like a ghost."

Isabel's determination to figure out a way to solve the problem is inspiring, and it very much reminds me of a couple of other strong-willed girls I know quite well.

The Sandwich Swap by Her Majesty Queen Rania Al Abdullah

Salma and Lily are best friends who do everything together, but they let their different tastes in sandwiches drive a wedge into their friendship. What started as confusion and hurt feelings turns into anger. This is a great book about celebrating our differences, and it took me back to a high school lunch period when hummus first entered my world through the coaxing of my friend Amy.

Willow's Whispers, by Lana Button

Olivia took to this one immediately. I think it spoke to her anxiety about the start of kindergarten (tomorrow!). Willow has a lot she wants to say, but she hasn't yet found her voice, and so she's often misunderstood. Who among us can't relate to that? She seems to gain the necessary strength from a tender moment with her father at bedtime:

But Dad was an expert at hearing Willow's whispers. He never said "What?" or "Pardon?" or
"Who?" He just wrapped Willow tight in a big bear hug and whispered right back...

Bridget's Beret, by Tom Lichtenheld

This one came across our path this summer just as Olivia's own interest in drawing was taking off. Bridget is "drawn to drawing," but only if she's wearing her beret. When her beret gets lost, she experiences artist's block, but ultimately the artist within triumphs. I really liked Lichtenheld's short sidebar with suggestions to cure artist's block:

1. Make up a funny animal
2. Draw people with funny hair
3. Draw something REALLY BIG!
4. Make a scribble, then turn it into something.

These were all found at our local library. Perhaps they'd be at yours, too. If you've come across a favorite, please share.

... but I digress

2010-08-12T20:19:00.000-07:00

"Digressions, incontestably, are the sunshine; -- they are the life, the soul of reading."
-Tristam Shandy

I've recently learned that the use of the timeline as we know it is just a little over 250 years old. Apparently, until the mid 18th century, chronologists (one whose name happened to be Joannes Temporarius!) had used tables, charts and matrices of varying forms to convey the passing of time with a visual image, but were admittedly stumped as to how to create a "common visual vocabulary for time maps."

And just as a fellow named Joseph Priestley and his chronologist buddies were playing around with the idea of the timeline, Laurence Sterne was publishing his satirical novel, The Life and Opinions of Tristam Shandy, Gentlemen, in which Tristam, the main character digresses throughout his entire narration. In Sterne's novel, Tristam offers this wonderful diagram, similar to a timeline, to illustrate his pattern of digression.

My brother Joel, the best and most effective digressor I know, will arrive here tomorrow for a weekend visit. I've always held that my passing the World and U.S. History portion of the PRAXIS test had more to do with my regular exposure to his offshoots in conversation than any formal history instruction I ever received. The content of his digressions is always worth hearing, and I'm looking forward to a weekend filled with them. His late birthday present from me will be Cartographies of Time: A History of the Timeline, by Daniel Rosenburg and Anthony Grafton. In our family, we have the habit of enjoying the presents we choose before actually giving them to the recipient, and I've been enjoying this one immensely. Here are a few of my favorite images from the book:

Jacques Barbeu-Dubourg's Chronographie universelle. He referred to it as a "time machine." It actually folds up.

Emma Willard's Temple of Time.

The Long Now Foundation's comparative time scale of the concept of the long now.

In the "nowadays" it's become increasingly difficult to work out schedules and find time for trips to see loved ones, and living so far from those who know me best, I am very happy that my brother is coming to visit with us here, and "now."

The Evolution of the Signs of Friendship

2010-08-09T04:48:00.000-07:00

In the beginning (early 80's) were friendship beads. The less sense they made, the better.

Then came the friendship bracelets. Actually, they came before the beads, but I didn't really know about them until my friends and I were old enough to master the art of making them. They were handmade and took a lot of time, the level of difficulty in the pattern conveying the depth of the friendship. To honor the hard work of it's maker, the recipient was expected to wear it until it fell off naturally, and even then, it was usually displayed on an overcrowded bulletin board in the recipient's bedroom.

And now we have the aptly named "silly bands." No labor required, except perhaps to untangle them. I'm not sure what this suggests about the quality of young friendships these days, but I think Lewis Hyde would have a thing or two to say on this subject.

Yesterday at the pool, Olivia gave away two and came back with three, one of which broke before the end of the day. And today I'm not sure that she'd be able to tell me the names of any of the children involved in the exchange. They're cute, but I think it's time to pull out the beads and the yarn.

Happy Birthday, Mr. Berry

2010-08-05T11:31:00.000-07:00

"There are, it seems, two muses: the Muse of Inspiration, who gives us inarticulate visions and desires, and the Muse of Realization, who returns again and again to say 'It is yet more difficult than you thought.' This is the muse of form.
[...]
It may be, then, that form serves us best when it works as an obstruction, to baffle us and deflect our intended course. It may be that when we no longer know what to do we have come to our real work and that when we no longer know which way to go we have begun our real journey. The mind that is not baffled is not employed. The impeded stream is the one that sings" (96, 97).

- Wendell Berry, "Poetry in Marriage," Standing By Words

... the worth of my words ...

2010-07-28T17:31:00.000-07:00

I wondered what would be the worth of my words in the world
if i write them and then recite them are they worth being heard
just because i like them does that mean i should mic them
and see what might unfurl

i think of the significance of my opinions here
is it significant to be giving them does anybody care
just because i’m into this does that mean i should live like it
and really do i dare

art, art i want you
art you make it pretty hard not too
and my heart is trying hard here to follow you
but i can’t always tell if i ought to

so i pondered the point of my art in this life
if i make it will someone take it and think it’s genuine
will they be glad that i did ’cause they got something good out of it
will they leave me and be any more inspired

i question the outcome of the outpouring of myself
if i tell everyone my stories will this keep me healthy and well
will it give me purpose, to this world some sort of service
is it worth it, how can i tell

art, art…

– by Tanya Davis

Visions of Visions

2010-07-26T08:42:00.000-07:00

It's hard to know what to do with the awe we feel toward our children--so much wonder to absorb. Then we want to share it with the world, but the "how" gets tricky. I love what this lady has come up with. Please Enjoy!
And go here for more.

Poetry 101: First, untie it.

2010-07-13T10:30:00.000-07:00

While in Kentucky earlier this summer, Brett was able to attend a poetry reading by Billy Collins. Good man that he is, Brett brought back for me a signed copy of The Trouble with Poetry: And Other Poems which begins, "The birds are in their trees, the toast is in the toaster, and the poets are at their windows."

Now, as I prepare to share with my students (future teachers) how to teach poetry and incorporate it into their English/ Language Arts classroom, I return to Collins and the idea behind his Poetry 180 project which, simply put, exposes students to a poem a day for the entire school year. Here is the poem he starts with, one of his own:

Introduction to Poetry

I ask them to take a poem
and hold it up to the light
like a color slide

or press an ear against its hive.

I say drop a mouse into a poem
and watch him probe his way out,

or walk inside the poem's room
and feel the walls for a light switch.

I want them to waterski
across the surface of a poem
waving at the author's name on the shore.

But all they want to do
is tie the poem to a chair with rope
and torture a confession out of it.

They begin beating it with a hose
to find out what it really means.

five

2010-07-02T19:06:00.000-07:00

This time five years ago, we lived in Athens, GA. I was going through a Jolie Holland phase and was trying to read The Economist cover to cover every week. I craved corn dogs frequently and napped a lot. And on this particular day five years ago, one of those daytime naps was abruptly interrupted by a sign. It was the clearest message Olivia had sent to me up to that point. She was ready.

Now we live in Mount Vernon, Ohio. I still enjoy Jolie Holland, among others, but my own Little Bird with her pretty songs prefers Paul Simon. The Economist subscription expired long ago. I'll pick it up again one of these days, but for now it's all things E.B. White.

In my own reading time I often choose poetry. I'm finally starting to get it, and I credit her for that too. It's been in her message to me every day of her life. She is poetry in motion, and this weekend she turns five.

...all the ingredients are here...

2010-06-22T04:10:00.000-07:00

Over the years, my mother has acquired some wonderful books of poetry which are now strewn about her house-- on the coffee table, on the side table, on the desk-- easy access for someone like me trying to keep up with a roaming toddler. Certainly some of my richest moments during our recent visit to her house involved recognizing the poetry at play in the motions and conversations of our visit, an awareness which was heightened by a quick but lingering glance at words like these:

Messenger
By Mary Oliver

My work is loving the world.
Here the sunflowers, there the hummingbird—
equal seekers of sweetness.
Here the quickening yeast; there the blue plums.
Here the clam deep in the speckled sand.

Are my boots old? Is my coat torn?
Am I no longer young, and still half-perfect? Let me
keep my mind on what matters,
which is my work,

which is mostly standing still and learning to be
astonished.
The phoebe, the delphinium.
The sheep in the pasture, and the pasture.
Which is mostly rejoicing, since all the ingredients are here,

which is gratitude, to be given a mind and a heart
and these body-clothes,
a mouth with which to give shouts of joy
to the moth and the wren, to the sleepy dug-up clam,
telling them all, over and over, how it is
that we live forever.

the imagination, which dwells apart...

2010-06-13T16:00:00.000-07:00

"Grace Psalm" from Images of Grace - Charis
by Makoto Fujimura

"But is it not rather that art rescues nature from the weary and sated regards of our senses, and the degrading injustice of our anxious everyday life, and, appealing to the imagination, which dwells apart, reveals Nature in some degree as she really is, and as she represents herself to the eye of the child, whose every-day life, fearless and unambitious, meets the true import of the wonder-teeming world around him, and rejoices therein without questioning?"

- George MacDonald, Phantastes

A Public Service Announcement

2010-06-09T10:04:00.000-07:00

"Listening is a leaning towards others, the opening of ourselves in a receptive attitude toward the reality around us; it is only the capacity to listen that prevents us from revolving around ourselves."

- Sofia Cavalletti

Cracking the Code

2010-05-19T07:24:00.000-07:00

The fact that any of us figure out how to read completely astounds me. Watching my 4-year-old master this skill makes her even more mysterious to me. And that her first book would be about a robot riding on an elephant, well that part makes perfect sense.

a better plan

2010-05-11T19:04:00.000-07:00

cozy PJ’s? check!

girls asleep? check!

a warm bowl of my neighbor’s blackberry cobbler? check!

a tall glass of milk? check!

a new episode of Lost? check!

Ok, we’re in the past. In the WAY past. There’s Allison Janney. On Lost. Interesting! I bet she’s the original smoke monster....And this other girl. She’s pregnant. Perhaps with Jacob? Ok, J.J.Abrams, where are you going to take me this hour? I’m ready.

but wait...

rain? check.

lightning? check.

thunder? .......... check ... and...

“MOMMY!!” check.

Ok, change of plans. We’re in the present. The actual, real world present. Here’s Olivia. In my bed. With me. It’s just a stage. One day I’ll long for the days I could comfort her during a storm. Lucky for me she’s requested the glow of the computer screen.
No biggy. Tomorrow evening Brett and I will be able to watch Lost together in its entirety. And really the best thing about this evening is that tomorrow morning I’ll wake up to the wondrous, fill-me-up feeling of my 4-year-old daughter draped over my back. Or if she awakens first, I’ll slowly re-enter consciousness as a tiny hand gently tickles my neck.

Good night? check.

... (silence) ...

2010-04-29T07:45:00.000-07:00

These days are rather crazy. Lots of fast and loud to take in. Most of it's good but also exhausting. Laughter, song, and play with occasional meltdowns and time-outs. So the quiet becomes very important. A chance to reset, recharge, remember. And The Quiet Book (by Deborah Underwood), with it's simple statements and soft images, serves as an invitation to embrace the "many kinds of quiet" that so kindly sneak into our days.

Some of our favorites:
- don't scare the robin quiet
- coloring in the lines quiet
- swimming underwater quiet
- lollipop quiet
- sleeping sister quiet

"... we're not able to receive it for thinking we already know what it says ..."

2010-04-26T11:13:00.000-07:00

Ladies and Gentlemen, I give you ... my brother:

David Dark at Downtown Presbyterian (April 25, 2010) from Geoff Little on Vimeo.

The Story of Stuff

2010-04-22T10:59:00.001-07:00

Happy Earth Day! Celebrate with me by watching Annie Leonard's The Story of Stuff video that explores the life cycle of our material goods. I'm posting it to draw attention not so much to the corporate character, "those guys" illustrated as bloated men with dollar signs on their bellies, but rather to the consumer character, the "me," as shown above- also a bloated man carrying as many shopping bags as he can. "My" story begins somewhere around 40 seconds into minute 8. And the bit on "perceived obsolescence" convicts me. I can remove the golden arrow's perception filter in any number of ways. My niece Dorothy taught me one such way with her practice of walking down the toy isle pointing to things saying, "I don't need you, I don't need you, I don't need you." I suppose her mantra is a good place to start.

Twinkle, Twinkle...

2010-04-13T08:07:00.001-07:00

"...ye lights of evening, find a voice..."

The Rosette Nebula, a stellar nursery

(thanks to Elizabeth Streight for bringing this to my attention)

2010-04-12T11:47:00.000-07:00

"Spring has returned. The Earth is like a child that knows poetry."
-Rainer Maria Rilke

The opposite of faith is not doubt...

2010-04-07T08:51:00.000-07:00

"When I was a little kid, nine years old, I remember a rainy Sunday afternoon and you couldn't go out to play and you were stuck in the house. And my mom came out with a deck of cards and dealt them out and we played rummy together. Now, my mom can beat me in cards because I'm nine years old. That wasn't the point of the game. The point of the game was this was her way of telling me she loved me, in a way that she couldn't just say, you know, "Son, I love you," because I'm nine years old. I'm going to squirm and go, "Aw, Mom," and run away. In a way, being able to do science and come to an intimate knowledge of creation is God's way of playing with us. And it's that kind of play that is one way that God tells us how he loves us."

- Brother Guy Consolmagno, Jesuit astronomer in a great conversation with Krista Tippett and Father George Coyne (Asteroids, Stars, and the Love of God)

...perhaps my favorite Speaking of Faith show thus far...

The title of this post comes from Brother Consolmagno paraphrasing Anne Lamott, "The oppposite of faith is not doubt. The opposite of faith is certainty."

And it all seems to go nicely with this photo from the Hubblesite....each speck is a different galaxy.

Daily

2010-04-02T14:34:00.000-07:00

"With ominous frequency, I can't think of a right word. I know there is a word; I can visualize the exact shape it occupies in the jigsaw puzzle of the English language. But the word itself, with its precise edges and unique tint of meaning, hangs on the misty rim of consciousness. Eventually, with shamefaced recourse to my well-thumbed thesaurus or to a germane encyclopedia article, I may pin the word down, only to discover that it unfortunately rhymes with the adjoining word of the sentence. Meanwhile, I have lost the rhythm and syntax of the thought I was shaping up, and the paragraph has skidded off (like this one) in an unforseen direction."

-John Updike, The Writer in Winter, from AARP Magazine (that's right)

Thanks again, John Updike.

2010-03-31T07:37:00.000-07:00

This , posted last year, continues to be the most beneficial tool of meditation for me during this holy week. Perhaps, as you reflect on the resurrection, you also find yourself coming back to an inspired work. If so, please share.

farewell, bommyknockers

2010-03-25T08:07:00.000-07:00

To celebrate our first walk home from school this spring, Olivia wanted to find a memento from our 3- block journey to put on display in our house. She frequently celebrates the changes of the seasons by bringing the outside in. It's nice. Soon we'll harvest daffodils and lilac, come winter we'll have pine cones, but just now, as we wait for spring buds to bloom, our pickings are slim.

Her first choice this time was a bommyknocker, the spikey ball that falls from a sweet gum tree. They are also called gumballs or conkleberries, but bommyknockers are clearly the best choice of name, don't you think? She actually chose four of these-- one for each member of the family. I wasn't appropriately thrilled about decorating the house with spikey gumballs, but it turns out I didn't need to worry.

As we crossed a busy street, all four bommyknockers fell out of her hands. We watched from the safety of the sidewalk as they were conklecrushed by a U-haul truck. Judging by Olivia's reaction, you would have thought she'd just witnessed the death of a beloved pet. Her mourning period lasted the entire walk home until she discovered this fragil floral bundle of translucent petals skipping in the wind just as we turned into our alley. I don't even know what it's called (anyone?), but it was a godsend. Olivia set her mind that it was a bommyknocker all grown up. I suggested otherwise but didn't push it too much.

It looks completely dried to me, somehow perfectly preserved despite the elements, but Olivia wanted it to have water. She also wanted her pet caterpillar (thank you Mendy and the Franklin Conservatory) to be able to enjoy it before he/she disappeared into his/her chrysalis. The chrysalis is now hanging in a box. In a short time it will become a painted lady butterfly. And hopefully by then, there will be more colors, textures, and scents outside to select for home decor. In the meantime, I think this is quite lovely.

Aside from dodging the pinches...

2010-03-17T07:35:00.001-07:00

... another reason to wear the green, from Thomas Cahill via the New York Times.
Happy Saint Patrick's Day.

Found...

2010-03-15T11:04:00.001-07:00

Christoph Niemann

2010-03-14T18:50:00.000-07:00

While my husband is finishing up our taxes online, I'm passing the time exploring the art of Christoph Niemann. Clever fellow. I'm now a fan. Officially. I just took a few seconds to click a few buttons on Facebook to make it so. Here, you can enjoy one of my favorites thus far, his history with coffee. I can especially relate to his third and fourth napkins. And here is another one about why it can be so hard to get a good night's sleep.

"production polish"

2010-03-07T17:49:00.001-08:00

Inspiration can be found in the most rotio of places. Maybe what I am about to share is an indication that my writer's block has hit a completely new level of lihintle, but over the past few months I've noticed lots of creative chuies coming at me from word verification requests. I click to post a comment on a friend's blog, or I am about to attach a link to my facebook profile when I'll be asked to type little jewels like "ambushed yesterdays" or "confusion walked." Boom. Unexpected poetry. Mine for the taking. Or I'll be asked to type singular non-words like "ducalker" or "unhug," so nicely constructed that I want to assign them a meaning just so I can pariad them.

After my encounter with "commander klondike" and "his peanut," I decided to start a list of these lovely phowns, determined that one day I'd steant them all together in some crazy narrative form, like a mad lib of sorts. My own version of a Jabberwocky, I suppose. Crybaby what? You'll notice some of these are easier to incorporate than others.

But who do I thank? Who do I cite as I use these? Some of them are just too cursh to be random words or word combinations generated by a computer. They can't be. It's just not poldstoc. Then I made a calsine discovery, a carpenter's tate if you will (thank you). These random words and word pairs have a name. They're called CAPTCHA's (Completely Automated Turing Test To Tell Computers and Humans Apart). And a number of them, particularly the word pairs, come from a service called reCaptcha, which uses their "anti-bot" system to digitize books. In the process of digitizing books, computers will come across illegible words or passages. reCaptcha takes one of these unknown words, pairs it with a word the computer can read, and then creates a CAPTCHA. When we, as pickies, type in these words, we're helping verify what the word is. If enough users recognize the word to be the same word, reCAPTCHA can then confirm the word, pholy it away, and folch on with book digitization. By typing these words when requested, we're not just preventing spam, we are actually participating in a giant community service project. So carry on with the word verifications, and give yourself a pat on the gorchap. You're helping with the preservation of the written word.

This still doesn't explain the brilliant word combinations. And I'm still not convinced that they're random. I want to hold on to the idea that there is an actual person, a bearded sortie, in a room somewhere, creating these rhomies for me. But if there is no area commoner, if my agenda ouster is simply a computer, so be it. I will extend my gratitude to artificial intelligence, but my fascination with the code that gives me "inhuman island" and "eject names" will continue. Thanks Hal, or do you prefer "mister minicams"? Much deref to you.

All the World

2010-03-03T08:15:00.001-08:00

To celebrate what some are calling World Read Aloud Day, I give you some favorite lines from All the World, by Liz Garton Scanlon.

...Road, street, track, path
ship, boat, wooden raft
Nest, bird, feather, fly
All the world has got its sky...

...Spreading shadows, setting sun
crickets, curtains, day is done
A fire takes away the chill
All the world can hold quite still...

...Nanas, papas, cousins, kin,
Piano, harp, and violin
Babies passed from neck to knee
All the world is you and me...

And if you want some more, read aloud, here...

To the motion be true

2010-02-28T15:37:00.000-08:00

Today is sort of my birthday. As usual I've been treated with a care and appreciation that I can't begin to deserve, and the gifts, in all their varying forms, have been abundant and surprisingly perfect, despite my own belief that I'm pretty hard to shop for. I have amazing friends and family, I know that. This year, before the birthday celebrations began, even before Olivia, my 4-year-old, started her anxious attempts to keep the secrets yet give appropriate clues (these started weeks ago), my mind was already mulling over this practice of gift-giving.

A few posts ago, I tried my hand at public wishing for a second time. Hardly a week later my wish was granted. Many thanks to my personal genie, Jenn who arranged for The Trumpet Child Songbook to be waiting for me on my front porch one Saturday afternoon. I'd already spent the first part of this particular Saturday involved in a significant fender bender (no one injured), and I was resolved to embrace defeat for the rest of the day. Then I spotted Jenn's package. Hers was the gift I needed to shake me back into grateful humility. I love you, Jenn.

Another gift I've more recently received, one that seems to reinforce the significance of the gift from Jenn, came from my husband. It's a book, appropriately entitled The Gift, by Lewis Hyde. No doubt I will share a number of quotes from this work here in the near future.

I've only just started it, but Hyde's exploration into the tradition of gift giving and the cultural value of creativity has already enriched my own understanding and practice. And his study of gift economies, their potential to strengthen our connections with one another, is vision casting to say the least. According to Hyde, the gift (tangible or intangible), in order to remain a gift, must always be moving, It's essence must remain in circulation. The flow can't stop.

He writes in his introduction,
"...a work of art is a gift, not a commodity. Or, to state the modern case with more precision, works of art exist simultaneously in two 'economies,' a market economy and a gift economy. Only one of these is essential, however: a work of art can survive without the market, but where there is no gift there is no art."

and then later,
"I have hoped to write an economy of the creative spirit: to speak of the inner gift that we accept as the object of our labor, and the outer gift that has become a vehicle of culture. I am not concerned with gifts given in spite or fear, nor those gifts we accept out of servility or obligation; my concern is the gift we long for, the gift that, when it comes, speaks commandingly to the soul and irresistibly moves us."

I find I've been on the receiving end of these types of gifts lately. And I want to continue to receive with faithfulness. So for now, and in the spirit of keeping these things flowing, I'll leave you with another gift: Bruce Cockburn's lyrics to his song entitled, that's right, The Gift:

These shoes have walked some strange streets
Stranger still to come
Sometimes the prayers of strangers
Are all that keeps them from
Trying to stay static
Something even death can't do
Everything is motion
To the motion be true

In this cold commodity culture
Where you lay your money down
It's hard to even notice
That all this earth is hallowed ground
Harder still to feel it
Basic as a breath
Love is stronger than darkness
Love is stronger than death

The gift
Keeps moving
Never know
Where it's going to land
You must stand
Back and let it
Keep on changing hands

Hackles rise in anger
Heat waves rise in sex
The gift moves on regardless
Tying this world to the next

May you never tire of waiting
Never feel that life is cheap
May your life be filled with light
Except for when you're trying to sleep

The gift
Keeps moving
Never know
Where it's going to land
You must stand
Back and let it
Keep on changing hands

-Bruce Cockburn, The Gift

Receive with me...

2010-02-26T07:35:00.000-08:00

If only holiness were measured by the volume of our incessant chatter, we would be universally praised as the most holy nation on earth. But in our fretful, theatrical piety, we have come to mistake noisiness for holiness, and we have presumed to know, with a clarity and certitude that not even the angels dared claim, the divine will for the world. We have organized our needs with the confidence that God is on our side, now and always, whether we feed the poor or corral them into ghettos.

To a nation filled with intense religious fervor, the Hebrew prophet Amos said: You are not the holy people you imagine yourselves to be. Though the land is filled with festivals and assemblies, with songs and melodies, and with so much pious talk, these are not sounds and sights that are pleasing to the Lord. "Take away from me the noise of your congregations," Amos says, "you who have turned justice into poison."

-Charles Marsh

Paying Attention

2010-02-24T08:10:00.000-08:00

I took Mae, my 16-month-old, for a morning walk in the snow earlier today.
She lets me know its time for a stroll by putting a mitten on her foot or carrying a boot as she follows me around the house,
locking her gaze on me until I get a clue.
This morning she enjoyed determining our route.
She was delighted by the occasional bird sighting and would try to mimic the song.
I secretly hoped that a later walker might take some joy in the trail of tiny footprints she was leaving behind.
At one point she stopped in the middle of the sidewalk and started "woof woof"ing at a quiet house.
Not five seconds later the house started "woof woof"ing back at her.
She doesn't know the name of the street or the income bracket indicated by the structure,
but she knows the house where the dog lives.

Writing is Collaborative

2010-02-11T06:54:00.000-08:00

A couple of weeks ago, I was doing some research online and found a quote that rang true. A voice in my head said, "Take note! Take note!" And I did, for about 3 minutes. Then I went back to my initial search and research. Today I wanted it back, but I couldn't remember where I'd found it. I looked in all my usual spots, clicked on links, clicked on boxes, to no avail. The I remembered some key words, "collective being" and "Goethe." Here it is, so next time I'll know where to find it:

"What am I then...? Everything that I have seen, heard, and observed I have collected and exploited. My works have been nourished by countless different individuals, by innocent and wise ones, people of intelligence and dunces. Childhood, maturity, and old age all have brought me their thoughts,... their perspectives on life. I have often reaped what others have sowed. My work is the work of a collective being that bears the name of Goethe."

-Goethe

When kids make things less scary

2010-02-08T07:42:00.000-08:00

Many thanks to Cary for sharing this, which she found at The Daily Dish. I love everything about it.

Love Songs

2010-01-19T11:36:00.000-08:00

A few months back, I posted here about the one item on my own personal Christmas wish list; a copy of Webster's Pictorial Dictionary done by John Carrera at Quercus Press, going for somewhere around $4600 with finger tabs.

Today I'm happy to report that, thanks to brother Joel and sister-in-law-to-be, Cary, pictured here in all their adorable goodness, and thanks to Chronicle Books for putting out an affordable trade edition, my Christmas wish came true. Now, said dictionary resides on the coffee table in our front room, where I can pick it up whenever I please and receive immediate inspiration, or simply another way to visualize a common word or idea. Some favorites of late: dead bird, cusp, Leviathan, and the Four Nelsons.

Since that post worked so nicely in my favor, I thought I'd throw out another gift wish, conveniently appropriate for all the sentiments and feelings wrapped up in the tradition of our up and coming Valentine's Day. Here it is:

The Trumpet Child Deluxe Songbook from Over the Rhine.
In addition to the songs from their Trumpet Child album, this songbook includes photos from photographer Michael Wilson, and an essay or two written by Linford Detweiler.

I've wanted a collection of OTR's sheet music for years, and up to this point I've made do with what they've made available, which until now, consisted of sheet music for two songs they had up on their website once upon a time. My family has been very patient listening to me play Run Dark Olive and Little Genius over and over again for the past six years, and I'm sure Olivia knows Little Genuis to include my regular mistakes, as I need a hand span just maybe a fourth of an inch wider to really nail some of Linford's chords of choice. But it's time for more. A few Christmases ago, I attempted to pick out their version of It Came Upon A Midnight Clear by ear, and I got pretty far, but I didn't write any of it down. I'd forgotten most of it by the time the next Christmas rolled around. But now, if I get this book, I'll just need a few evenings with my piano and I'll be able to add new music like this to the sounds of our home.... Now, if I could just get Karen's voice for my birthday...

I Want to Write Something So Simply

2010-01-16T11:16:00.000-08:00

I want to write something
so simply
about love
or about pain
that even
as you are reading
you feel it
and as you read
you keep feeling it
and though it be my story
it will be common,
though it be singular
it will be known to you
so that by the end
you will think-
no, you will realize-
that it was all the while
yourself arranging the words,
that it was all the time
words that you yourself,
out of your own heart
had been saying.

-Mary Oliver, Evidence

(Can you tell I received some Mary Oliver books for Christmas?)

The Divine Genuis

2010-01-11T08:10:00.000-08:00

I'm always hesitant when a book becomes a bestseller, and I'll admit I have yet to read a line of anything written by Elizabeth Gilbert other than articles and interviews, but as her new book Committed is making its debut, this talk of hers from Ted.com (which came out in February of last year) has come up in multiple conversations over the past few days. It has encouraged me enough to share. Hope you enjoy:

An aid in understanding my little girls...

2010-01-10T18:29:00.000-08:00

...and everyone else's for that matter:

"Signs are small measurable things, but interpretations are illimitable, and in girls of sweet, ardent nature, every sign is apt to conjure up wonder, hope, belief, vast as a sky, and coloured by a diffused thimbleful of matter in the shape of knowledge."

George Eliot, Middlemarch

Today, some Mary Oliver

2010-01-07T11:55:00.000-08:00

Mysteries, Yes

Truly, we live with mysteries too marvelous
to be understood.

How grass can be nourishing in the
mouths of the lambs.
How rivers and stones are forever
in allegiance with gravity
while we ourselves dream of rising.
How two hands touch and the bonds
will never be broken.
How people come, from delight or the
scars of damage,
to the comfort of a poem.

Let me keep my distance, always, from those
who think they have the answers.

Let me keep company always with those who say
"Look!" and laugh in astonishment,
and bow their heads.

~ Mary Oliver ~

Merry Christmas

2009-12-25T07:31:00.000-08:00

“[Mystery] can hold truth, compassion, and open possibility in relationship. This relationship could redeem our otherwise hopelessly literalistic, triumphalist civic and religious debates. We could disagree passionately with each other and also better remember the limits of our own knowledge. If mystery is real, even more real than what we can touch with our own five senses, uncertainty and ambiguity are blessed. We have to live with that, and struggle with its implications together. Mystery acknowledged is, paradoxically, humanizing ... Introduce mystery into any conversation and the conversation gentles; reality doesn’t lose its sharp edges, but the sharp edges are not all, not the end.”
-Krista Tippett, Speaking of Faith

Our plans to spend a few days before Christmas with Brett’s family in North Carolina were quickly altered when we found ourselves spending eight hours stuck on an interstate tangled up in the mountains of West Virginia with hundreds of other motorists, all of us watching helplessly as the snow, 18 or more inches of it, accumulated on and around us. Though the “bright side” isn’t necessarily our initial point of view in such conditions, we eventually opted to seize the opportunity that had presented itself to finally start working on that yearly ritual of a thing called the Christmas letter.

Sitting together as a family in a cold, dark van in the middle of what feels like nowhere, the question of “what’s new” seems irrelevant. Perhaps it would have been easier to answer at the beginning of the traffic jam, when we were preparing ourselves for a 30 minute wait, but when that turns into three hours and then four, we begin to wonder about our dropping gas needle, the freezing temperatures outside, the well-being of our two little girls in the backseat, and how many blankets, jackets, sweaters we could pull out of the luggage. When six hours turns into seven, we accept our circumstances as indefinite in length, resolve to get the girls to sleep, and decide to keep our car turned off until there is movement up ahead. It’s eerie to experience the silence and witness the pitch-blackness of a major interstate packed with vehicles fast turning into igloos. The feeling of complete helplessness is very real; the harsh reality of the circumstances is clear enough, but there’s a strange relief in knowing that everyone is in it together. There is mystery here, and it is comforting. Different questions rise to the surface. Who exactly are all these people? What are their stories? Who are they becoming? What are they bringing to the moment?

We can only speak for our van. Olivia, now asleep on the floorboard and covered in a pile of coats, has become our family prophet, poet, and sage. She’s fascinated by everything from outer space, to idioms, to alarms, to human behavior. She is a student of the everyday, exploring, investigating, asking questions, and processing all that she takes in. Mae, strapped in her car seat and not quite ready to give up wakefulness if it means I’ll quit tickling her face, is now 14 months old. She reveals a bit more of herself to us everyday. I think she enjoys shocking us with glimpses of what she seems to have known all along. She takes every chance we give her to communicate that she gets our family-ness and is ready to join in. Brett, in the driver’s seat (wearing his daughter’s scarf, I must note), is bringing his calm wisdom and perfectly timed humor to the situation. When he’s not stranded on the top of a mountain, he enjoys the normalcy that comes with being in the 2nd year of a good job, and this past one has been particularly rewarding as the days of dissertation pressure are long over and a number of exciting, professional development opportunities have come his way. I’m the one climbing over the seats to retrieve dropped binkies, dig out more sweaters, or tickle arms and faces. I have taken great pleasure in creating a home in Mount Vernon this past year. I have also enjoyed working on a few writing projects both in our community and at our church, and this fall I had the opportunity to teach an English/Education methods class at the university. It’s been refreshing to be back in the classroom, particularly with such an ideal course load (one) and class size (nine).

Those are some of our stories. I don’t know the stories of the people in the vehicles around me. I know later we’ll select some favorites to share with one another in the warmth of our hotel lobby. But how exactly did we all get ourselves into this current mess? What possible solution could get us out of it? And how can we dare to hold out hope that this story could have a happy ending?

It’s somewhere between the 7th or 8th hour that Christ’s birth finally comes to mind. As sleep proves elusive, I determine to take captive my runaway thoughts—the ones that would have me frantically reaching in the back to unwrap and search for advice in my niece’s Christmas present, the Worst Case Scenario Handbook, and instead, ponder what is perhaps the most mysterious entry on our timeline universal. God became a baby. Or, as Annie Dillard describes it, he became “helpless, our baby to bear, self-abandoned on the doorstep of time, wondered at by cattle and oxen.” Why did He do that? I can give a “nice” answer with as much ease as I can answer “what’s new.” And I believe it, as much as I possibly can, but that doesn’t remove the mystery. It’s a mystery “more real than what we can touch with our own five senses.” It’s more real than the actual details of our past year, more real than our current predicament, thank God. And I pray we continue living in and hoping in the paradox it brings for the rest of this journey; the one in front of us tonight as well as the one we’ll be on tomorrow, and the next day, and the next.

Merry Christmas.
Elizabeth, Brett, Olivia, and Mae Wiley

A manuscript

2009-12-03T10:17:00.000-08:00

Here are a few of the pages from Charles Dickens' original manuscript for A Christmas Carol. Original manuscripts are fascinating. Seeing the penmanship, noting the revisions and stray markings offers us some insight into the mind of the writer. And today, thanks to the New York Times' little interactive exercise, Dickens' manuscript is helping me avoid the stack of papers on the table-- the stack containing my students' work, in all of it's Times New Roman, 12-point font, spell-checked glory. And if you're interested, here is another article about the manuscript and it's history at the Morgan Library and Museum. Meanwhile, I'm going to search and discover with what ease or difficulty Dickens' brain conversed with his hand to express this one:
"There are some upon this earth of yours," returned the Spirit, "who lay claim to know us, and who do their deeds of passion, pride, ill-will, hatred, envy, bigotry, and selfishness in our name, who are as strange to us and all out kith and kin, as if they had never lived. Remember that, and charge their doings on themselves, not us."

The Best Way to Start Any December

2009-11-29T22:04:00.000-08:00

The First Noel by Over the Rhine on Huffduffer
Over the Rhine, The First Noel

Giving Thanks in Seattle

2009-11-29T21:32:00.000-08:00

I wish I could share all the takes that came before and after this photo-- all the result of propping the camera on a shelf, pressing the timer, and then running. Some have eyes closed, some have people squatting way lower than their actual height, others have fake smiles in denial of fatigue, my favorites have a few faces about to pop from holding in laughter. None of them are perfect, but all of them contain the faces of a delightful group that I get to call family. We live in three different regions of the country, but we were able to come together in Seattle this year. It was a very good Thanksgiving.

Marilynne Robinson

2009-11-21T21:11:00.001-08:00

Not long after a friend suggested I read Gilead, Marilynne Robinson became one of my favorite American authors. One day, I'd like to write about her in more detail, but for now I will direct you here, to the words of A.O. Scott who reviewed her book Home for the New York Times just a little over a year ago. It seemed an appropriate read as we prepare to enter this week of Thanksgiving.

Thanks for Thanksgiving

2009-11-21T06:42:00.000-08:00

It's been awhile since I've included a children's book in this catalogue, but this week I've been reminded of my love for this one. We bought it 3 years ago while living on Martha's Vineyard, and though no particular setting is suggested, it might as well be the Vineyard. The rustic home, the casual dress, the free spirits, the embracing of the elements, it all could have been lifted from some home at the end of any gravel path on Lamberts Cove Road. Marke's simple statements and Barrette's rich illustrations are refreshing. I try to keep it out or on the top of Olivia's book pile so that I'm given an excuse to read it to her at least once a day.

Moans and Groans

2009-11-13T07:14:00.001-08:00

We're down to one car this week. This has added a little craziness to our morning routine as we all bundle up, coats over PJ's, to pack in the car and deliver Brett to his work. He would bike, but our tire pump ran away after it was transformed into a robot with an air-blowing leg (as seen here).
So each morning has required at least one member of the family to wait, and it's usually Olivia. This morning she stood ready by the door, hand on knob, while I guided Mae's wriggling arms into her oversized puffy coat and Brett collected his papers.
Olivia: "I don't like to wait."
Me: "Well, it' an important skill you'll get to practice your whole life."
Olivia: "Why?"
Me: "We just have to wait a lot. Like waiting in lines, waiting for the mail, waiting for birthdays..."
Olivia: "Like waiting for heaven?"
Precisely.

All I Want for Christmas...

2009-11-11T06:50:00.000-08:00

...is one of these. Unbelievable.

Pictorial Webster's: Inspiration to Completion from John Carrera on Vimeo.

Be sure to take note of the baby. He probably gets a free copy just for putting up with the whole process. Lucky kid.

Practically Perfect In Every Way

2009-11-07T19:51:00.001-08:00

Some of you already know this, but I was raised by Mary Poppins. It's true. And I'm so grateful that she occasionally descends upon our house to work some of her magic on my family.

Germs

2009-11-07T12:46:00.000-08:00

My friend Jenn and I are holding each other to some blog goals for the month of November. She's writing every day, I'm getting away with just twice a week, but the first week ends in a few hours so I've got some work to do.
November welcomed us with a nice case of "The Flu Which Shall Not Be Named," or so two doctors tell us. So, with the exception of trips to the clinic, the ER, the drug store, and the university (just twice, to teach my class), we've been under a self-imposed quarantine all week.
I did make a quick trip to the library midweek, but that was a mistake. Olivia wanted a couple of DVD's and I had an election yard sign to return. It was actually our first ever election yard sign-- for a library levy. When I'd initially picked it up, the person handing them out had asked that I return it to the library after November 3rd, when the election was over. Being quarantined, I've really had no concept of days, so I pulled the sign out of our yard ON election day and then walked into the library, practically waving it and completely oblivious to the fact that I'd just walked into a voting area holding my large campaign sign. An election official kindly asked me to return the sign to my car, as I had certainly stepped well into the "no campaigning" zone. I was happy to oblige and even happier to get back to the safety of my germ-infested home.
I wish I could say I got stir crazy this past week. There were certainly times, but what the week actually did was make me want to stay home even more. I think I've become a very content home body. I love our home, even when it's wild and crazy with two sick little girls hopped up on meds. It's comfortable, it's cozy, its got some good views, and lots of live entertainment. It feels safe. After the fevers broke, I decided to give each girl 24 hours before letting them re-enter the world. Then I decided they probably could do with 24 more hours after that. Finally last night, we ventured out to a playground and then a Subway for dinner. But there was lots of sanitizing throughout the evening and a number of choppy reminders, "Liv, don't lean on the glass case- it has other people's germs."
We might venture to church tomorrow, Olivia will probably go to preschool on Monday, but each excursion will be with hesitation on my part. I don't want another afternoon spent holding my fevered child in my lap while she coughs behind a flimsy face mask, a mask that came from the same box as the 12 other face masks being adorned by sick people in the waiting room. I don't want another morning spent rocking my lethargic baby who isn't sleeping, but doesn't have the energy to open her eyes. She would have cried except that the coughing and the crying hurt her throat too much. So the warm tears from the closed eyes would just trickle onto my shirt sleeve. I don't want anything out "there" to inflict this kind of pain on my daughters ever again. I could make a fairly convincing argument that everything they need can be given to them in this house, by me and my husband, and that it's my parental duty to protect them from all those contaminants out there. It's very tempting, this kind of control, this kind of power.
But we're sick too. They probably got this most recent bug from us. We're coughing and inhaling the same germs they are. Extended isolation is a bad idea. A lot happened out there this week, and we missed it. There were elections, there was a world series, some birthdays and battles, some conflicts and conversations, lots and lots of sickness, but lots and lots of healing as well. So we've got to chance it. We have to put them out there to mingle with the world, to spread and share "germs". I'm convinced that, in the long run, they'll be healthier for it. But no doubt I'll always fight, and not always resist, the urge to impose another quarantine every now and then.

"Change for Sam"

2009-10-04T06:44:00.000-07:00

I've been working on my first book for the past 3.5 years. Olivia finished hers, illustrations and all, in a morning. I'll note that she came up with the title before writing the book:

"Change for Sam"
by Olivia Wiley

(for Carly Haas, nursery worker at church)

Sam was a little boy, and he lived with his mother in the woods.

Sam did not know where his friends were. When he'd meet them he'd say mean things.

Armies of soldiers came all around him to block him in a deep, deep dungeon with a large cage.

Sam's mother came to rescue him. She had turned into a fairy.

Sam said, "I think I'm going to be nice now."

And now Sam has all kinds of friends. They are pink, green, pink, pink, and purple.

today, anyway

2009-09-26T09:28:00.001-07:00

"You don't know what it is to stay a whole day with your head in your hands trying to squeeze your unfortunate brain so as to find a word."

- Gustave Flaubert

"Language is very difficult to put into words."

-Voltaire

Audience

2009-09-09T11:47:00.000-07:00

(Painting by Kathy Farabi)

A nice and unexpected teaching gig has been occupying much of my "free" time these past few weeks, but I've been meaning to at least share this passage from Annie Dillard's The Writing Life. I frequently get caught up in the issue of audience, so much so that at times it completely paralyzes me (maybe that's been the case this past month). So this was a nice reminder that the "audience" is not always mine to choose or understand:

"I was too far removed from the world. My work was too obscure, too symbolic, too intellectual. It was not available to people. Recently I had published a complex narrative essay about a moth's flying into a candle, which no one had understood but a Yale critic, and he had understood it exactly. I myself was a trained critic. I was a critic writing for critics: was this what I had in mind?
One day, full of such thoughts, I tried to work and failed. After eight hours of watching helplessly while my own inane, manneristic doodlings overstepped their margins and covered the pages I was supposed to be writing, I gave up. I decided to hate myself, to make popcorn and read. I had just sunk into the couch, the bowl of popcorn beside me, when I heard footsteps outside. It was two little neighborhood boys, Brad and Brian, who were seven and six. "Smells good in here," Brian said. So we ate the bowl of popcorn on the floor and talked. They played the harmonica; they played the recorder; they played the ukulele.
Then Brian got up and stood by my desk, on which there happened to be a pen drawing of a burning candle.
Brian said, "Is that the candle the moth flew into?"
I looked at him: WHAT?
He said, and I quote exactly, "Is that the candle the moth flew into, and his abdomen got stuck, and his head caught fire?"
WHAT? I said. WHAT? These little blue-jeaned kids were in the first grade. They came up to my pockets. Brad, on the floor, piped up, "I liked that story." Why if I was sincere in anything, did it seem to console me to repeat myself, "Oh well, he's older"?
Later, before they left, Brian made certain I understood that whatever sphere of discourse I fancied I shared with any interlocutor, I was wrong. Brian said (admiringly, I thought), "Did you write that story?" I started to answer, when he continued, "Or did you type it?"

-Annie Dillard, The Writing Life

If I were President Barack Obama...

2009-08-09T19:05:00.001-07:00

Rumor has it that our president will be taking a family vacation to Martha's Vineyard toward the end of August. First, I'd like to congratulate him on his choice of location. Well done. Second, I want to thank him for giving me an excuse to finally write about the place I called home for two years--certainly not long enough to be called a local, forever just a wash-ashore, but long enough to let it significantly alter my cultural imagination. And I've been away from it long enough to recognize a gap in my mental images where its landscapes used to be. I envy those year-round residents. They've got a good thing going and they know it, and they hold it close like a secret, very reluctant to share it with "mainlanders." But for two years they permitted me to "play" islander, and I think I made some progress in cracking their code. I witnessed and tried to embody their pace, their patience, their high standard for quality, and what I found had very little to do with Chappy Reds, Lilly Pulitzer patterns, or t-shirts with black dogs on them. No Vineyard Vines ties, really nothing that would suggest any exclusive connections to fame or money. Rather, I found that the code, the secret had more to do with the island mentality that keeps you from honking rudely or yelling at another driver because it's highly probable that the driver will later hold the door for you at the grocery or help you carry a large package to your car at the post office.

We went back to the island for a few days this past May, and I've been wanting to write about it ever since. Granted, most of my suggestions can only be experienced by folks able to blend in with their surroundings, probably not possible for the President of the United States. But the Obamas have been to the island before, and if they can escape the vacationers, if they can find the places where only the locals gather, they might actually be allowed some sense of normalcy. Much of my own warmth for the island comes from the relationships I made with the people who live there, but that's not something I can recreate for the First Family, so here I'll stick to the locations, the places, the establishments, the scenes where wonderful things, quality commerce, significant dialogues, or general epiphanies are likely to occur. At least they did for me.

First on the agenda, ditch the airplane and take the ferry. To my mind, the only way to go to and from the island is on the ferry. It never got old for me. I'd actually look forward to going to my off-island dentist because it would give me a chance to ride the ferry. Forty-five minutes of floating, thinking, reading. The best way to commute. I'm sure it gets old for the folks who have to do it everyday, but for me it's the epitome of island life. Experience your distance from the mainland in real time. Come and go by ferry.

And when you arrive, don't rush off to your motorcade, find a waterfront bench and sit for a bit. Have someone bring you a coffee from Black Dog or Beetlebung, and soak in your surroundings. It's a different perspective when you can separate yourself from the scene. Watch the travelers, note the activity on the docked boats, hear the maritime sounds, smell and feel the briny breeze. Then after 15 or 20 minutes, proceed to your temporary home, and enjoy it. But don't spend much time there. That's not the island experience. Very little "island experience" can penetrate the walls of a carefully decorated, well-secured vacation spot. Get out and experience at least some of the following:

Ocean Park (or "Goose Poop Park," if you ask my niece Dorothy)-- located in Oak Bluffs, this is the perfect place to sit some more. Fly a kite, take a picnic, lay down and read. This is an essential spot. This is where Olivia first perfected her walking skills, it's where we spent a lovely August evening with friends watching fireworks and listening to the Vineyard Haven Band, and it's where we've spent countless hours just enjoying the surroundings. It's also within walking distance to the Gingerbread Houses and our favorite date night destination, Slice of Life (I strongly recommend the Slice Salad).

Also, if you're in Oak Bluffs late at night, go to Back Door Donuts. Go around to the back door of the Gourmet Cafe and Bakery between 9-12PM and score a hot, delicious donut. By far the best I've ever had.

Also in Oak Bluffs, you'll find the Book Den (East), a rare and used book store located in a garage behind a house on New York Avenue. It keeps strange hours, and as President you might be tempted to make special arrangements to assure you get in, but resist. Just go. And if it's closed, accept the circumstances as another indication that you are experiencing one of the many idiosyncracies of real island life. If I could, I'd place you at the Book Den in the dead of winter, where the hours are even stranger, and the majority of the rooms are without heat. You'd keep your mittens, hats, and scarves on while you perused, and you'd see your breath while flipping through the pages of a potential find.

I'll mention a couple of other places to peruse the pages, both in Vineyard Haven.

Bunch of Grapes-- Last summer, a large fire from a neighboring business forced this independent bookstore to spend the last year operating out of a tiny room off the beaten path. But now it's back in its original location on Main Street. Regular island patrons include the likes of Geraldine Brooks, David McCullough, Judy Bloom, or, as was the case during my May visit to the temporary location, Carly Simon. And I understand the Clintons stop in when they can. You need to leave your presidential presence here as well. Everything about this place is appealing, from its architectural details to the carefully selected inventory which, I think, speaks to the well-read island customers who support it so faithfully. And please note the stained glass wagon wheel window, with its red, blue, and yellow pie pieces, still prominently located on the landing of the double set of stairs leading up to my daughter's favorite stacks, the children's section. She can still recall this particular window in great detail.

Riley's Reads- Apply all the charm your mind can muster when I say "tucked away in a corner off main," and you might come close to imagining a portion of the good spewing out of this children's bookstore. Malia and Sasha could certainly find a book or two for their personal libraries in this place. The owner, Zoe Pechter, has done a phenomenal job creating a warm space brimming with excellent displays and the best selection of children's books I have ever come across. I felt I'd found a kindred spirit when I noted all the Charlie and Lola books she had in stock, and then later she introduced me to Mo Willems and his amazing characters; Knufflebunny, the Pigeon, and Piggy and Elephant. Remember Meg Ryan's character's bookstore, The Shop Around the Corner in You've Got Mail? This is it, but in real life.

Even with a number of bookstores to support with a few purchases, make sure you spend some time at the West Tisbury Public Library. Though the Vineyard is fairly small, it supports six public libraries, one in each town. Especially during the cold, dreary winter months we often frequented three different libraries a week, but none as regularly as West Tisbury's. And once I was able to convince them I really was a permanent resident, not just a tourist, they permitted me to have a library card. I will keep it longer than my Black Dog t-shirt. Their periodical section is nice, their biography section is fantastic, but make sure to spend some time in their two-story kids' section. I'm remembering all the treasures Olivia first discovered there. That's also where she first grasped the concept of puzzles. And if you don't know what you're looking for, ask for Nelia. She's phenomenal and so good at remembering kids' names.

Before you leave, let Sasha and Malia have some time in the field and playhouse back behind the library. There's lots of room for the imagination to run wild. Back there, in our imaginary world, we opened a flower shop, ran a successful bank, built any number of restaurants, cafes, and coffee shops, and prepared Thanksgiving dinners. It's also a nice, private place to have a picnic. I didn't even realize this area was back there until our second year of living on the island. If the front porch swing at Alley's General Store is occupied, this is the place to have a snack break.

But don't let that keep you from going to Alley's. It's the island's oldest operating retail business, and it's located just across the street from the library. If you do get a spot in the coveted swing on the front porch, linger there for awhile. Sip their coffee, and try to catch pieces of conversation coming from the locals standing around their cars just out front. They'll pop in and out just to get their mail (there's a post office inside) or grab a coffee, maybe a couple of groceries. And more than likely, they'll run into another local, and that's where you'll hear what's really happening on the island.

You should also bring the family for a Saturday morning stroll through the Farmers' Market at West Tisbury's Grange Hall, just down the street from Alley's. The set up is great, each stand representing a family or business with a fascinating story to tell. And the produce is divine, but what I remember most are the flowers. Buy a bouquet or two, and watch as they remove your flowers from the recycled tomato cans and secure them in newspaper for you to carry home. Also look for Daniel Water's stand. He has some beautiful linoleum-block prints, many inspired by scenes from the island.

Morning Glory Farm will have a stand at the Farmers' Market, but you really need to plan a family trip to their store, located in Edgartown, to know what they're about. They have great produce, but I'm most fond of their baked goods, especially their muffins and quiche. Upon our last visit we discovered that the family who started the farm put together a book: Morning Glory Farm and the family that feeds an island. The book also includes a number of yummy, seasonal recipes. And the photos, by an island photographer, Alison Shaw, are fantastic. Yes, you can buy it on Amazon, but I'd suggest purchasing it at the farm.

Another "sweet" stop off the beaten path is Chilmark Chocolates on State Road. This tiny chocolate shop, located in a converted barn, employs a number of people with disabilities and trains them to create quality chocolate that will leave you wishing you'd bought a few more boxes before your island departure. I have to confess that, on more than one occasion, I bought boxes to give as gifts which never made it to the intended recipients.

Also on State Road, back in West Tisbury, look for a little sign reading "Eileen Blake's Pies and Otherwise." This little roadside gazebo is where I found my favorite pies of all time. In fact, I wasn't a pie eater until I tried Eileen's. I was sorry to find out that Eileen passed away last summer, but I'm hoping her husband and her well-trained staff is still there, making those delicious pies in her home located just off the road behind the gazebo.

While in West Tisbury, take a little hike to Lambert's Cove Beach. To me it beats South Beach, hands down. But honestly that speaks more to my memories there than the actual quality or popularity of either beach. Lambert's Cove Beach is a private beach for residents only. We never needed the coveted car sticker to indicate legal access because we could walk there from our home. For me, this was the location for many a Melville moment, "Meditation and water are wedded forever." And I think I can safely guarantee that your girls are much more likely to find some pretty pieces of sea glass here than on South Beach, particularly if you plan your short hike to the beach early in the morning.

I'm getting long winded, and you're a busy man, so I'll just highlight a few more island treasures.

Art Cliff Diner (Vineyard Haven)-- In my opinion, it's the best place for breakfast on the island. It's small, so you'll probably have to wave your presidential wand to make sure there's room for your family and your necessary entourage. Of course, the wait might allow you some time with the other customers, some handshaking, some photo-ops, easily wrapped up when your tables are ready.

Net Result (Vineyard Haven)-- This is my favorite place to take visitors for fresh seafood. I believe it's supposed to be more like a seafood market, but we would always buy lunch and eat outside. My favorite meal there (as seen below): a fish dog, a cup of clam chowder, and a Nantucket Nectar (Half and Half).

Scottish Bakehouse (on State Rd between Vineyard Haven and West Tisbury)-- Get at least three sesame cookies for every family member. They also have great sandwiches.

Rainy Day (Vineyard Haven)-- So pleasing to the eye. The perfect spot to pick up some gifts. This is where I did most of my gift shopping for the ladies in my life, also where I would frequently splurge on myself.

Mocha Mott's (Vineyard Haven, though I think the Oak Bluffs location was the first)-- Go early in the morning and listen to the scruffy fishermen's conversations. This (along with the post offices) is one of those places where real island politics are being discussed everyday. This is also where I've occasionally spotted Willy Mason, a singer/songwriter who quickly became our favorite, local, island musician. In my opinion, his songs and lyrics flow right along with that "cultural imagination" that could only be cultivated through a lifetime of island dwelling.

One last suggestion. I'd encourage a somber stroll through a few island graveyards, my favorite being the one located just up from and behind downtown Vineyard Haven. I never visited with any kind of notable frequency, but I will always remember one visit just a few weeks before we moved away. My husband and daughter were playing at the nearby school playground, and I'd wandered away to have a few moments alone. We were expecting our second daughter, and I was searching the tombstones for a nice name. I found "Adel" early on, and continued the walk, wondering if future daughter could ever really appreciate that she was named after an unknown deceased, that her name for life was discovered etched on a tombstone marking another's death. I decided the idea was just a little too morbid (we eventually settled on "Martha"). But I was also moved by the sheer volume of islanders around me, family lines that went far back in the island's history. Long before this was a famous vacation spot for the famous, the rich, and the powerful, it was their home. Where they toiled and labored, loved and lost, where they also sat, listened, smelled, felt, watched. So sit with the powerful, visit the obvious, but don't miss this other layer of the island: the real, the worn, the weathered, because it's this deeper, thicker layer that holds the island's essence, and once it's gotten inside of you, you'll want it to stay with you long after your return to the mainland.

Pete and Repeat

2009-08-04T09:15:00.001-07:00

This was possibly the first joke I ever learned. My Granddaddy Sharp taught it to me. It might have been one of my earliest lessons in accepting that sometimes the joke's on me. But once I learned it, I was always frustrated that there wasn't a way out, neither for the joker nor the joked upon.

Apparently this has bothered Olivia as well. We taught the joke to her yesterday, and this morning, she had this to offer me:

Olivia: Hey Mom, Pete and Repeat were sitting on a fence. Pete fell off. Who was left?

Me: Repeat

Olivia: Pete and Repeat were sitting on a fence. Repeat fell off. Who was left?

Me: Well, that would be Pete.

Olivia: Nope. I tricked ya. There were two Repeats.

May the shades of gray continue to sweeten the deal.

Summer Reading

2009-07-20T11:34:00.001-07:00

"What we're reading, or listening to, or rather, what we're getting into lately is in some sense the most profound question we can ask each other. It's all seamlessly related to the question of how we're doing, and what it is that has hold of us, and how our passions might be channeled in a redemptive direction (and be good for something) rather than being tossed to and fro by the powers of passionate distraction."

-David Dark, The Sacredness of Questioning Everything

I'm borrowing this idea from my friend Katie's blog. And it seemed to fit nicely with the above quote I grabbed from my brother David's book.

So here they are, the books I'm spending some time with these days:

1. Coming to You from the Blue Room by Loranne Marsh Temple- this is the thin one on the top. And sadly, it's the only fiction in my bunch. I always wish I was more drawn to fiction. This one was written by my neighbor who lives three doors down. We're getting to know each other.

2. Standing By Words by Wendell Berry- we just bought this one on our trip to Michigan. I haven't opened it yet except to look at the contents, but I try to always have some Berry flowing into my brain.

3.The Sacredness of Questioning Everything by David Dark- my brother's latest. Possibly my favorite of his thus far. It's completely engaging, but I'm taking my time--sort of my way of making it last as long as possible.

4. Spinning Straw Into Gold by Joan Gould- I finished this one a few years ago. It explores how women's connections with certain fairy tales can point to particular transformations in their own lives. I'm addressing a few of her observations in some of my own writing, so currently this book has a constant presence on my desk.

5. Through the Children's Gate by Adam Gopnik- I'm a fan of Gopnik's. One of the essays in here, Bumping Into Mr. Ravioli, played a large part in helping me think through my current, and thus far most consistent, writing project.

6. Even In Quiet Places by William Stafford- My most recent attempt to prime the poetry pump. I actually bought this to give to some friends but thought I'd read through it first. My favorite Stafford poem thus far, A Ritual To Read To Each Other, is not in this collection but would be worth a "look up" in your spare time.

7. Keeping the Sabbath Wholly by Marva Dawn- Another purchase from our recent trip to Michigan. I actually wanted to purchase a different book of hers, Talking the Walk: Letting the Christian Language Live Again, but it wasn't on sale. So I grabbed this one. I really like Marva Dawn. Her book, Is It A Lost Cause: Having the Heart of God for the Church's Children, had a tremendous impact on me a number of years back.

8. The Writing Life by Annie Dillard- my daily devotional for writing. Chicken soup for the writing soul. It will always have a place in my reading cycle of books by writers about writing.

So? What have you been reading lately?

Excellent Orchestration

2009-07-16T06:32:00.000-07:00

Following directions can often lead to good things...
(found through Amanda Maciel Antunes)

Work Ice Cream

2009-07-13T04:49:00.000-07:00

Our summer has been a bit too busy thus far. It's all good stuff--good trips to see good people and enjoy good places, but it's not quite the schedule of lazy days with lots of writing time that I'd pictured. Hopefully, these next two weeks at home will provide a little bit of that.
As of today I'm back to my morning writing routine, so that's something.
We started this schedule earlier in the year, and it was picturesque. I'd rise early, sneak downstairs, start the coffee and get the breakfast items ready for Brett and the girls, then I'd hide away in the basement to get in a couple of hours of work before the rest of the house began to stir.
If I look up to the ceiling from my desk in the basement I see an old air vent that leads into our dining room. Many years ago I'm sure it was functional, but now it serves as my muffled speaker, giving me a nice muted version of the family show happening just above my head.
The morning program would usually start with Olivia's energetic footsteps hitting the bottom of the upstairs steps in the entrance hallway and then running over to the vent.
"Hi Mom. How's it going down there?"
I'd look up and see her little fingers clinging to the vent's grate and then her mess of morning hair falling all around her face.
"Good Liv. How'd you sleep?"
"Good. Well, bye Mom, I gotta eat."
What would usually follow was a perfect melody: sweet A.M. conversations between Olivia and Brett, delightful babbling from Mae, drawers and cabinet doors closing, cereal hitting the bowls, spoons clanking ceramic-- general morning pleasantries and silliness. And it was the perfect viewpoint for me, an onlistener, as I tried to stream together the words of an onlooker for various scenes on paper.
But now Olivia is rising earlier, and she knows I'm down here. In her little 4-year-old mind, there is nothing wrong with her being down here with me, as long as she stays in her "playing" area and doesn't bother me in my "office" area. And in my idealistic morning mind, this should work. We do have a really big basement. But even with the best of intentions coming from the both of us, interruptions happen, and frequently.
Just within my first hour of writing this morning, I've also built a spaceship out of a cardboard box, purchased two ice cream treats from a musical push toy turned ice cream truck, and I've helped decorate for a princess wedding with wrapping paper scraps. And all the while, I was putting my "foot down," really.
Finally, the vent began broadcasting the morning show with Brett and Mae, and Olivia went up to join them. I was sure the interruptions were over. But soon I heard the clankle-de-clink of the ice cream truck making another detour down the basement steps.
"Olivia, really. I have to write."
"But Mom, I have something special just for you."
"No, Olivia. I'll enjoy it later. I have to get some work done now."
"But it will help with your work."
"Later Olivia. Go eat breakfast."
"But Mom, it's a special work ice cream!"
"....Really?"
"Yes! It has paper, pencils, and words mixed in. And I put it in a cup, just the way you like it. And it's free!"
"... wow... Thanks Liv, I really need this..."
"I know, Mom. I love you. Bye."

...bent as double as the living body can be bent...

2009-05-07T11:08:00.000-07:00

My friend lost her nine-year-old son Michael just before this past Easter weekend. She'd kissed him good bye, gone to work, and then received the call from his school.
I do not know what all transpires in the human body after a call like that. I don't know how the hand remembers to put the phone down and grab the car keys or how the feet know to move faster than has ever been required of them before. But I do know that the heart breaks, the soul cries out, and the brain goes to an even deeper, more intricate level of comprehension. New processing mechanisms expand and old filters completely disappear. And somehow this new, different understanding of reality has to interact with the old, the day to day, the common.
This can't be right.
Life's rudest interruption.
All things normal now held in contempt.
Daily planning now replaced with attempts at remembering.
Remembering correctly, adequately, responsibly, desperately.
What are we supposed to do with our commitment, our relationship with a person when they are gone? It certainly doesn't go away. It's significance is the most focused picture our minds can muster. And how long will we be allowed to keep everything else blurry?
How can we begin to comprehend what grief may require of us?
I turn to stories. For good or bad, they frequently become my coping mechanism of choice. And here I'll include two places for such stories:
The first is Anton Chekhov's story, Misery. It follows a man and his interactions with strangers the week after his son has unexpectedly passed away. I've spent a few weeks thinking through different passages to include here, but as grief is one of those things that should not be interrupted, I don't want to interrupt the story's flow or remove any details. It's not long. I'd suggest you read it all at least once.
And the second is my friend's blog. Since her son's death, she has been faithfully remembering his life as well as her honest struggles to cope with his absence. The moments she shares with us are deeper than beautiful-- his library books she can't bring herself to return, the articles of clothing now absent from her laundry, attempts at normalcy with trips to the grocery or trying to laugh at funny movies. Her commitment to capturing his life and sharing it with everyone is a challenge toward reverence for all of us to accept. I'd suggest you read it frequently.

Allegro con brio

2009-05-05T19:01:00.000-07:00

(Please note the aforementioned lilac-- I really have put it everywhere)

When I was a teenager I thought like a teenager, and so my piano teachers selected my pieces for me. Left to my own devices, I would have only played Bach and Debussy, and never very well. My repertoire would have consisted of technical pieces played with no emotion or dramatic pieces that seeped of "woes is me, nobody understands."
Fortunately, my teachers knew that and were more committed than me to the piano becoming a life-long companion of mine, ready and able to help me further express and make sense of whatever was going on in my life/head at various times.
After a fifteen year period without a piano in my life, I was finally able to purchase one a couple of months ago. It's acquisition is a story that delights me to no end, but that's for another day. It's been fulfilling to introduce my now family to the sounds and mistakes that were pounded into the ears of my original family members. And it has been extremely satisfying to find that the technique which was lying dormant for so many years is still there. For the first few weeks, every sit down at the bench was a practice in remembering. But now, with the exception of a few fingering patterns I've yet to nail, it's all back.
And I'm venturing out to select new pieces on my own. I've never really done that before. There's no one around to play the first few measures for me, so I fumble my way through, trying to decide if the particular piece is something I want to devote hours to mastering. But for any number of reasons, one being my limited time at the bench before someone under 3 feet tall is calling me away or wanting my attention, I usually choose to go back to the old pieces. It has become interesting to note which ones I choose to play. Unless there is a spoken request-- Olivia's current favorite is Scott Joplin's Cascades, which she insists on calling Cattails-- I select pieces that reflect my general state-of-being at that moment in time.
And so this past week the piece that I've found to best express my most frequent mode or tempo is Haydn's Sonata in D Major. Specifically the first movement.
In the mornings, if I awaken before everyone else, there is silence, a blank sheet of composition paper. If there are any notes on my page they are in the tempo of those found in the piece's second movement, Largo e sostenuto. I will be intentionally slow for as long as I'm allowed because as soon as Olivia bursts onto the scene, there's no ritardando, no diminuendo. She's allegro con brio from the get go. 6 requests, 5 questions, 4 observations, 3 songs, 2 activities, all occurring in 1 tempo. My largo e sostenuto has a choice to make. I can squelch her and insist on my pace, or I can join in, skip in, hop in, spin in. It might take a cup of coffee, or three, but I eventually acknowledge that there's only one way to go. For these particular days, while the opportunity still presents itself, we'll play together, allegro con brio.

An Image

2009-05-05T17:05:00.000-07:00

I've been thinking a good bit about my blog this week, what it should look like, what I should include, how I should organize it, etc. And more than figuring out what I want it to be, I've figured out what I don't want it to be....

Below, you see some clippings from one of our backyard lilac trees. Until a friend suggested the obvious, it did not even occur to me that I could bring their sweet scent indoors. Now these little vases of lilacs are scattered throughout our rooms, making much of the mundane a little more enjoyable.

But this picture is deceiving you. I laughed at myself as soon as I'd taken it. I went to great lengths (and probably ten or so takes) to suggest that these lilacs hold a prominent place in my sparsely and tastefully decorated dining room.

Here is what I didn't include in the picture:

And this is actually neater than usual because we had people over last night, but please notice:
-Mae's high chair that you can't really see, but it's cushion was removed because she "had an accident" in it yesterday
-Mae's ridiculously large and very pink bouncy seat with lots of gadgetry-- we refer to it as the "space station"
- two piles of neglected mail with a dirty pacifier between them
- a drawing of a bunch of hearts that Olivia pulls out anytime she sees me doing paperwork so she can claim to be doing the same--there's a dirty burp cloth on top of it
- assorted plastic ware I didn't put away after last night's gathering, and apparently I'd rather put my laptop at risk of falling off the table than move the plastic ware even an inch
- the remains of my lunch- leftover chicken salad-- I didn't take the time to spread it on some yummy bread, I just ate it out of the plastic bowl
- a teether on top of an insurance card on top of my billfold on top of a notebook on top of my calendar

While I'm sure I'll continue to clean things up a little here (editing is generally a very good and considerate idea), I promise I'll always try to stay as honest as possible.

Olivia-isms of the week

2009-05-01T11:20:00.000-07:00

"My (imaginary) friend Dee Dee has square pupils."

"Nothing doesn't exist."

"I have a couple of things to say to Chuck E. Cheese."

"The things you remember are important."

"I'll let you sleep in my room in heaven....but first I'll have to ask Jesus."

"Mom, I believe louder than you do."

Fight the Inner Once-ler

2009-04-22T04:15:00.000-07:00

Happy Earth Day.
Enjoy, and feel free to follow instructions to see the other segments. Also, check out The Lorax at your local library.
An aside, Ted Geisel's (Dr. Seuss's) nephew was one of my Sociology professors in college. Unfortunately, he rarely spoke with as much rhyme or rhythm.

Long Distance Relationships

2009-03-31T17:41:00.001-07:00

I constantly agonize over how to make it all work, and Olivia solves it in a matter of seconds.

Resurrection Body

2009-03-05T11:02:00.000-08:00

Seven Stanzas at Easter
By John Updike

Make no mistake: if He rose at all
it was as His body;
if the cells' dissolution did not reverse, the molecules
reknit, the amino acids rekindle,
the Church will fall.

It was not as the flowers,
each soft Spring recurrent;
it was not as His Spirit in the mouths and fuddled
eyes of the eleven apostles;
it was as His Flesh: ours.

The same hinged thumbs and toes,
the same valved heart
that — pierced — died, withered, paused, and then
regathered out of enduring Might
new strength to enclose.

Let us not mock God with metaphor,
analogy, sidestepping transcendence;
making of the event a parable, a sign painted in the
faded credulity of earlier ages:
let us walk through the door.

The stone is rolled back, not papier-mache,
not a stone in a story,
but the vast rock of materiality that in the slow
grinding of time will eclipse for each of us
the wide light of day.

And if we will have an angel at the tomb,
make it a real angel,
weighty with Max Planck's quanta, vivid with hair,
opaque in the dawn light, robed in real linen
spun on a definite loom.

Let us not seek to make it less monstrous,
for our own convenience, our own sense of beauty,
lest, awakened in one unthinkable hour, we are
embarrassed by the miracle,
and crushed by remonstrance.

The Sacredness of Questioning Everything

2009-03-04T11:59:00.000-08:00

An unapologetic advertisement for my brother's new book. You know you're interested. Don't resist. Check it out and pre-order here, or maybe here, or somewhere else.

Speechless

2009-02-20T11:08:00.001-08:00

Olivia never runs out of things to say.

She's creating new worlds the moment she wakes up.

She's singing new songs until her eyes shut at night.

But when her father walked in with a flower for her,

she was speechless.

She wandered around the house aimlessly

with flower in hand, her mouth shut.

Finally she came back to her father and said,

"Thanks Dad. I've never had my own bouquet before."

Design by the Book

2009-02-17T12:43:00.000-08:00

A nice visual narrative on finding inspiration.
These folks paired some Brooklyn artists with a research librarian at the New York Public Library. If you like the idea of old, forgotten sources being remembered and used to create something new, here ya go.
This video is one of four, I think. You can find the other ones if you follow the links on youtube.
Enjoy.

Beauty is in the eye...

2009-01-30T11:14:00.000-08:00

Both girls are finally asleep for their afternoon naps, I'm indulging in the moment with a cup of hot chocolate bubbling over with marshmallows, I'm sitting down for "just 5 minutes" on the internet which I know will turn into half an hour if I'm not interrupted, and I find this from the Image Journal blog page. Short, edifying, perfect. My favorite line,"But there’s something, still, about that willingness to offer the imperfect body as an enveloping source of comfort."

Niebur and Love

2009-01-29T11:22:00.000-08:00

Nothing that is worth doing can be achieved in our lifetime; therefore, we must be saved by hope. Nothing which is true, or beautiful, or good, makes complete sense in any immediate context of history; therefore, we must be saved by faith. Nothing we do, however virtuous, could be accomplished alone; therefore, we must be saved by love. No virtuous act is quite as virtuous from the standpoint of our friend or foe as it is from our own standpoint; therefore, we must be saved by the final form of love, which is forgiveness.

Reinhld Niebur, from The Irony of American History

On This Day...

2009-01-20T17:06:00.000-08:00

On the day Barack H. Obama was inaugurated as our 44th president, I:
- made monkey muffins for Olivia to take to her preschool's summer birthdays celebration.
- bought a cup of coffee before dropping Olivia off at preschool.
- took Mae to the health clinic to get her shots.
- left the TV on CNN in the den and the radio on NPR in the kitchen pretty much all day.
- beamed when I picked Olivia up from preschool. She was wearing a half-birthday crown and carrying a coloring sheet of Barack Obama. She'd colored him blue.
- lunched on potato soup with Olivia while we watched Obama take his oath of office. Mae patiently sat in her car seat for most of the time.
- took pictures of the TV and made some videos of Olivia and Mae watching the Inauguration. I felt pretty dumb while doing it, but figured they might thank me one day.
- only wore one earring for most of the day.
- had some friends over for a playdate with Olivia. Kelly and I watched more Inauguration coverage most of the time.
- ran for the 1st time since Mae was born.
- smiled as Brett prayed for our new president before dinner.

(I promise I don't usually let her stand this close to the TV. It was just for the photo op.)

I might have liked math if...

2009-01-14T11:04:00.000-08:00

...if this had been around when I was in school.

Crayon Physics Deluxe from Petri Purho on Vimeo.

See more here.

Still thinking about Christmas

2008-12-30T08:44:00.000-08:00

Faith would be that God is self-limited utterly by his creation- a contraction of the scope of his will; that he bound himself to time and its hazards and haps as a man would lash himself to a tree for love. That God's works are as good as we make them. That God is helpless, our baby to bear, self-abandoned on the doorstep of time, wondered at by cattle and oxen. . . . Faith would be, in short, that God has any willful connection with time whatsoever, and with us. For I know it as given that whatever he touches has meaning, if only in his mysterious terms, the which I readily grant. Then question is, then, whether God touches anything. Is anything firm, or is time on the loose?

Annie Dillard, Holy The Firm

Light and Longing

2008-12-21T19:27:00.000-08:00

"The sky had here and there a star;/The earth had a single light afar,/
A flickering, human pathetic light,/That was maintained against the night”
– Robert Frost, "On the Heart's Beginning to Cloud the Mind"

Over Thanksgiving, I found myself sitting where I'd sat a thousand times before. I was at the kitchen table of my childhood home, looking out the window to the small, rolling hills just a little over two miles away. As a kid I'd sit there and look at the lights in the distance and imagine the homes from which they came. I was too far away to see any specifics, but I'd fill in the details: families sitting down together for dinner, siblings playing the piano, children doing homework, loved ones conversing. I’d imagine all these activities taking place within that warm, welcoming glow, an element of their evening in which I was allowed to be a part. Maybe these were just street lights or porch lights, but to me these were lights that lit up human activity – appealing, warm human activity. You'd think that my imaginings would imply that those activities weren't occurring in my own home, but they were. In fact, if someone up on one of those hills were imagining the light from my house illuminating these things they'd be correct. I don't know why I was so fascinated by these lights or what I was longing to see, but they would continue to entrance me for years. I can’t explain it. There’s a German word, “Sehnsucht,” that means "a longing for who knows what." Sehnsucht is the closest I’ve been able to come to placing a term to this unreachable imagining.

This year we're settling into a different house, an unknown town, and an unfamiliar state. It's been nice. We arrived in Mount Vernon, Ohio in June. Brett, having completed his Ph.D., started his new job at Mount Vernon Nazarene University in August. Olivia quickly adjusted and dove right into her new adventures including preschool and dance class. And sweet Mae joined our family at the end of October. I'm not working for the first time in a long time and have enjoyed soaking everything in. At night, if someone were to drive by, they'd notice a glow coming from our house, lighting up our pastimes: talking, cooking, eating, feeding, playing (lots of playing), a little reading, very little sitting, and even less sleeping.

On the first Christmas, some shepherds noticed the glow of a faraway light, also illuminating some new human activity. They followed the glow and found Christ. From an even greater distance we now imagine that scene, and it's usually lit up. I'm guessing the stable was probably a lot darker than we think and not very warm or cozy. I don't think the little Lord Jesus exuded some super human glow or warmth. His lower lip probably quivered when he cried, he probably drew up his legs into the fetal position with the feet folding one on top of each other, longing for the warmth and peace of the womb. Without an angel's proclamation, anyone passing by that dark stable on that night would never have imagined the significance of the perfect light within. Whether from a distance of yards or years, things often are not as they appear. O Holy Night.

This Christmas if you find yourself in a warm-lit place, a recipient of a welcoming glow, may you recognize Christ bearing light to the moment. And if you find yourself grasping for that warm-lit scenario, looking for hints of it in the distance, longing for who knows what, remember where there is no apparent light, where very little warmth can be detected, Christ is born. And where He appears, the soul feels its worth.

Merry Christmas.

Advent Readings

2008-12-07T15:32:00.000-08:00

I don't know this guy Charlie. He's a friend of a friend of my family's....
But he's put together an advent poetry blog.
Quite good for a little daily reflection.

She gets it.

2008-10-12T11:24:00.000-07:00

(A post originally intended for the Halloween season, but giving birth has postponed it until now...more to come soon.)
For almost a year now, Olivia, my 3-year-old has had an unwelcomed obsession with monsters. I think we first noticed it one night when she came into our bedroom and said, "Jesus is bringing me monsters." Her exposure to said creatures has been limited. The most reoccurring ones appear to be ogres, giants, and wolves.
Olivia brought this monster home from preschool a couple of weeks ago. Based on the other monster pictures I saw coming out of the classroom, the mouth was probably supposed to be a smile, but she gets it. Monsters are unhappy. They show up in her nightmares. For any number of reasons, they are a rejected species. Shows like the Muppets or Sesame Street, even the movie Monsters Inc. are trying to redefine monsters for us, take away the scariness, but it doesn't really work. What you end up with aren't monsters at all. Monsters are never really happy, just ask Olivia.

The Novel

2008-10-10T05:51:00.000-07:00

"...I think we have to continue to read novels. Because I think that the novel is a very good means to question the current world without having an answer that is too schematic, too automatic. The novelist, he’s not a philosopher, not a technician of spoken language. He’s someone who writes, above all, and through the novel asks questions.”

Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clézio, French novelist, won the 2008 Nobel Prize in Literature yesterday

Better than Oxygen

2008-10-08T13:55:00.001-07:00

I intentionally try to vary my mediums of influence, but music wins out time and time again. And again, it's Willy Mason's lyrics that are having an extended visit in this household. These days Brett and I play his songs as we're getting ready for the day or for a meal. Olivia sings her versions as she plays with her cars under our dining room table.
Maybe he's a seasonal association for us. We thrived during the autumns on Martha's Vineyard. But it's also this talk of "crisis," the election, the mood, the "heavy" that's bringing me back to his words. Now it's his song, Oxygen, perhaps best heard outside, under the trees next to Seth's Pond where Tom and Warren rig a killer sound system. But I'm sure something significant can still be conveyed if you just listen to it on your laptop. I've added a visual this time, which I'm quite certain was shot entirely on Martha's Vineyard.

"Oxygen" by Willy Mason

I wanna be better than oxygen
So you can breathe when you're drowning and weak in the knees
I wanna speak louder than Ritalin
For all the children who think that they've got a disease
I wanna be cooler than t.v.
For all the kids that are wondering what they are going to be
We can be stronger than bombs
If you're singing along and you know that you really believe
We can be richer than industry
As long as we know that there's things that we don't really need
We can speak louder than ignorance
Cause we speak in silence every time our eyes meet.

On and on, and on it goes
The world it just keeps spinning
Until i'm dizzy, time to breathe
So close my eyes and start again anew.

I wanna see through all the lies of society
To the reality, happiness is at stake
I wanna hold up my head with dignity
Proud of a life where to give means more than to take
I wan't to live beyond the modern mentality
Where paper is all that you're really taught to create
Do you remember the forgotten America?
Justice, equality, freedom to every race?
Just need to get past all the lies and hypocrisy
Make up and hair to the truth behind every face
That look around to all the people you see,
How many of them are happy and free?
I know it sounds like a dream
But it's the only thing that can get me to sleep at night
I know it's hard to believe
But it's easy to see that something here isn't right
I know the future looks dark
But it's there that the kids of today must carry the light.

If i'm afraid to catch a dream
I weave your baskets and i'll float them down the river stream
Each one i weave with words i speak to carry love to your relief.

It's a Hard Hand to Hold...

2008-10-04T09:37:00.000-07:00

One of the joys of living on Martha's Vineyard for two years was being exposed to the music of local artist, Willy Mason. He's 24 going on 60. I'm really not sure how he can write with such truth and insight, but it's there and I'd love for everyone I know to be in a room together for a Willy Mason listening party (preferably back at Tom and Julie Willett's house).
I'm sure I'll cite him again one day, but the discourse and feel of things around our country as of late has me coming back to some of his lyrics. The first time I heard "Hard Hand to Hold", I was riding in a car with Lindsey Czechowicz and Kay Zittrer. It was just over a year ago. We were on our way to Oak Bluffs. The windows were down, and they insisted on turning it up and playing it over and over again. Thanks girls, it's haunted me ever since.
So here it is, in full. Thanks for reading.

"Hard Hand to Hold" by Willy Mason

Look him in the eyes
There's no need to be scared
He's as powerless as you and me,
Though his face is well worn
And his clothes a bit torn
That don't mean that you shouldn't believe,
When he asks you your name
Says 'brother we're all here in the same game'
But you shrink back like he's a disease,
Yeah you shake and you moan
You say 'oh please take me home'
And the homeless all sing the reprise.

It's a hard hand to hold
That is looking for control
It is tempting to fight
When you know that you're right,
It's hard to lie down
When you don't trust the ground
It's hard to hold on,
It's hard to hold on.

Walking home again
There comes a battle with the wind
As it teases your provisions against shame,
Like all that wax in your hair
It becomes painfully clear
That as long as it's a fight, you'll never win,
And when you get to the door
You're still so busy fighting wars
That you can't look upon your lady as a friend,
You're trying so hard to be right
You miss the love in that first sight
And your lover feels alone once again.

It's a hard hand to hold
That is looking for control
It is tempting to fight
When you know that you're right,
It's hard to lie down
When you don't trust the ground
It's hard to hold on,
It's hard to hold on.

Entering the liquor store
You try your hardest to ignore
That street sleeper on your left there all alone,
And the young man on your right
With unchained souls and love of night
You look so scared they laugh and wonder if your stoned,
But somewhere deep inside
They feel the pain they've learned to hide
Because that same fear has brought much trouble on their homes,
And they know you won't feel safe
Until that cop car wins its race
And another life is driven off its road.

It's a hard hand to hold
That is looking for control
It is tempting to fight
When you know that you're right,
It's hard to lie down
When you don't trust the ground
It's hard to hold on,
It's hard to hold on.

It's a hard hand to hold
That is looking for control
It is tempting to fight
When you know that you're right,
It's hard to lie down
When you don't trust the ground
It's hard to hold on,
It's hard to hold on

From Bono

2008-09-30T08:04:00.000-07:00

"I am not qualified to comment on what has happened in the last week where this city has changed shape, certainly psychologically, and in terms of some people's wallets. And I'm not qualified to comment on the interventions that have been put forth. I presume these people know what they're doing. But it is extraordinary to me that you can find $700 billion to save Wall Street and the entire G8 can't find $25 billion to save 25,000 children who die every day of preventable, treatable disease and hunger."

http://www.atu2.com/

The Book Loft

2008-09-27T17:47:00.000-07:00

If you ever find yourself with an afternoon in Columbus, OH, get a map and make your way down to the Book Loft in the German Village area. I've only been to a handful of bookstores that so successfully capture the pleasure of browsing. We spent Saturday afternoon here, and we'd just purchased a new camera, so I had a good time.

The 32 cluttered rooms, packed from floor to ceiling, are arranged by topic with the music in each room catering to the authors housed there. Occasionally, two rooms will be so small and close to each other that the music clashes. While this was annoying at first, we eventually commented on the feeling that the books themselves were speaking, almost trying to be heard over one another. So the Poozies might get an audience with someone camped in the sci-fi room while John Williams might gain a fan perusing the Celtic nook. And if you stand in the juxtaposition long enough, you have to consider that perhaps there's a connection between the Irish experience and outer space travel.

Some rooms are more organized than others, but in the extensive maze that makes this independent bookstore so charming and such a tourist attraction, I can only imagine it's staffed primarily by a handful of part-timers. For them to stay on top of shelving would be a full time job for at least 4 people. And I found some satisfaction in doing my part sorting out and organizing the works of my own favorite authors. If I lived closer, I think I'd probably volunteer a Saturday out of every month just to walk through and correct the shelves.

We will come here again. If you ever visit us and are a lover of books, we'll be sure to bring you here as well.

Speaking of Faith...

2008-09-23T07:54:00.000-07:00

"To summon the kingdom of heaven as Jesus described it is not to call down perfection on an imperfect world, but to bring recurring, overriding virtues of the Gospel- love, mercy, and redemption- to moments that will probably not make the headlines."

Krista Tippett
Speaking of Faith

Pajama Reading

2008-09-06T08:33:00.000-07:00

In a Blue Room by Jim Averbeck, illustrated by Tricia Tusa
Olivia and I found this treasure at the library. I don't know which I like better- the words or the illustrations, but together they take my mind off of busy days, politics, conflicts, general issues of a temporary nature, and lift my gaze to the big, the pure, the good....and not in a "forget the rest" kind of way, but rather with a calmy whispered "remember this."

Can't you just hear the thinking?

2008-08-19T11:20:00.000-07:00

The Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris, France, from Diane Asséo Griliche's book, Library: The Drama Within

Jump, Jump

2008-08-16T15:41:00.000-07:00

I don't think I ever played hopscotch as a kid. I'm not even sure what a hopscotch game is supposed to look like, but Olivia loves to jump and we needed something to entertain while we did some yard work this afternoon. So I drew this on the sidewalk in front of our house and proceeded to pull the weeds. After awhile we abandoned the yard and the game to go in for a break.
We live just a few blocks from downtown, and our sidewalk sees a lot of pedestrian traffic through the course of a day. And to my unexpected delight, more than not, most passersby felt inclined to take advantage of our hopscotch diagram-mostly teens, but a number of seniors as well. In fact, I only saw one lone woman resist the temptation to jump.
Enough for now, I must get back to my post by the window.