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As quickly as it began, it ended.  

A ship in harbor is safe, but that is not what ships are built for. 
--J.A. Shedd

And here we are.  Once again in a routine workaday schedule.  It is a relief.  I like having a little more structure than I've had recently.  And yet, it all happened so fast that I didn't have time to create a sense of closure around what I've been doing for the last year and some odd months.  As quickly as it began, it ended.  

I promise my brain will return to me. But not tonight.  In the meantime, Marge has some words of wisdom.
 

To be of use

By Marge Piercy

The people I love the best
jump into work head first
without dallying in the shallows
and swim off with sure strokes almost out of sight.
They seem to become natives of that element,
the black sleek heads of seals
bouncing like half-submerged balls.

I love people who harness themselves, an ox to a heavy cart,
who pull like water buffalo, with massive patience,
who strain in the mud and the muck to move things forward,
who do what has to be done, again and again.

I want to be with people who submerge
in the task, who go into the fields to harvest
and work in a row and pass the bags along,
who are not parlor generals and field deserters
but move in a common rhythm
when the food must come in or the fire be put out.

The work of the world is common as mud.
Botched, it smears the hands, crumbles to dust.
But the thing worth doing well done
has a shape that satisfies, clean and evident.
Greek amphoras for wine or oil,
Hopi vases that held corn, are put in museums
but you know they were made to be used.
The pitcher cries for water to carry
and a person for work that is real.

With love and curiosity,
--Susan 

Music and Old Friends

And on to music - another good friend (HI FRIEND!) asked my my opinion on some musical matters that we share a history with going way back.  A little of that history is perhaps in order to make sense of the rest of the story.  

All music is folk music. I ain't never heard a horse sing a song.
-- Louis Armstrong

This week started out in the best way possible -- I got to spend the weekend with lovely friends doing things I enjoy, and then I came home and got to see a long time friend and we just spent the day catching up, talking about All The Things as if we'd never been apart a day, and (watching M2) pulling owl pellets apart, because that's who we are as people.  

It makes me realize what a treasure are people who know and accept me all the way through for exactly who and what I am in my entirety.  If you have people in your life like this, you must be good to them, they're hard to come by!

And on to music - another good friend (HI FRIEND!) asked my my opinion on some musical matters that we share a history with going way back.  A little of that history is perhaps in order to make sense of the rest of the story.

E and I met when we were 16 at camp (e doesn't use gendered terms, so instead of he/she, etc, e uses e/em/eir or the singular they).  We were then staff together and have remained good friends since. Part of our bonding was trying to figure out the rubric of what made for an acceptable camp song after singing some songs that are well known folk songs that were really no different in content than songs we already were singing... except they were new and apparently therefore "inappropriate".  Our crowning moment of glory pointing this out was to create an amalgam song of all the accepted songs and veer off into another song right as we got to a part that would have gotten us in hot water had the song not already been institutional canon.  Eventually e became one in an illustrious string of camp music directors and is also on the board.

Fast forward *cough*cough*a*lot*of*years*cough*, and e is taking part of a review of the camp repertoire of songs for 'cultural competency.'  Which, given our difficulties navigating the rubric by which things were deemed acceptable and unacceptable, is fascinating to me.  So a whole bunch of this is stolen from and maybe modified a bit from the email I sent em earlier this evening.  Because it's a topic I can happily ramble on for a long time. :D

Music is historical and political (hence the sticker on Woodie Guthrie's guitar that said "this machine kills fascists" and the writing on Pete Seeger's banjo that said, "this machine surrounds hate and forces it to surrender." In the uproar around Ice-T's Cop Killer, I was very much into Dick Gaughan and the opening track on what is still my favorite album by him is Erin-Go-Bragh. You're all clever enough to catch the gist of what's going on here through the Scots - http://www.dickgaughan.co.uk/songs/texts/eringobr.html. Or you can just play the song in the background because it's really a good song!  Spoiler alert, totally traditional song, and a highlands Scots fellow is mistaken for Irish while in 'Auld Reekie' - or Edinburgh - by the police, words are said, things escalate and he kills the officer, 'paid stock and interest for Erin-Go-Bragh' and that basically leave the Irish alone, it's none of your business why they might be in Edinburgh. That both songs were in my awareness that same summer drew some alignment of music as carrying our histories, and Ice-T was singing an age old song with new melody and words, but a very old story.

One of the songs I sang that was frowned upon was a variant on the Whistling Gypsy of sorts. I have a bit of a pet peeve around Whistling Gypsy vs. Maddie Groves. Not to mention that gypsy is a slur on par with... Well, all the other slurs... (and to be honest, I'm sort of uncomfortable even using it here and in context).  But the reaction to what I thought was merely a variant on a song we knew and sang all the time, was also the pivotal learning point for me that blind tradition carries a lot of weight with it. I was never entirely sure how another friend's version of the Handsome Cabin Boy (who ends up pregnant to the immense surprise of various people) was so adored when she sang it. I mean... I guess no one *died*, but.... ??? It's a difficult rubric to work with, especially if you don't quite fit in! I always assumed that she got away with it because she was likable and normal and pretty and appropriate in a bunch of ways I was not, even when I tried. Like... there are clearly rules about things I didn't get and still don't, like a regular conversation I have with people is to check *again* that there isn't some owner's manual for being human and another for having feelings that maybe I just didn't get.  If anyone reading has that manual/s, please send along to me forthwith!  Although I may be too old to change my ways now, lol!

The question I turned over as I read and pondered eir email was whether they all were looking at the repertoire with an eye toward cultural competency... was the end goal to remove and/or Bowdlerize or add in additional layers of songs from affected cultures? I like the latter idea a lot because more folk songs is always my favorite answer! I'm not really a fan of Bowdlerizing, because I think we should not whitewash history and make it appear "clean" to sooth our discomfort with our own history. I believe we need to feel and own that discomfort and the wrongness of some of the events that happened, even when it makes for great music. I DO think contextualization is critical.  One of eir pointed exercises was to follow the thread of British Colonialism through the camp songbook and point out all of the different areas on a map where colonialism stretched to, called  "The Sun Never Sets on the British Empire" exercise.  I really love this kind of education through music, tongue-in-cheek though it may have been, as the kind of contextualization and music education that we *should* be providing when we teach kids (and adults!) folk music. It doesn't have to be serious and academic, especially at camp, but providing some context in a memorable way is important. If it's such a good song that Bowdlerizing is what people want to do, I feel like that brings up the question for me of masking the more obvious racism/sexism without actually addressing it, and functionally creating "dog whistles" where we have "cleaned it up" but pretty much everyone still gets what the song is about... Or doesn't and then you can send two different messages to two different audiences. One knows and gets the reference, while the other doesn't which is pretty terrible ethically.

I think one time I saw the camp handle music education well that really stood out for me, and done in a good way on kind of a serious matter was that as kids will, we started getting kind of goofy with Dona (a song from the 40s and Jewish/Yiddish theatre, here's Joan Baez's version, called Donna Donna), and in particular adding a HAHAHA! after 'oh the winds are laughing' and the music director at the time was like hey, that's not really appropriate with this song, here's the deal, it came out of a culture where literally the people were being led to slaughter and this song is about human rights. There was some grumbling of course because teenagers having fun, but having that added context provided *way* more meaning in return, at least for me, and I think others as well than 'this is just a song that's fun to sing.'   

And then on the other side of the equation, fitting the song to the audience is a thing that definitely happens in folk music and folk tales alike.  I tend to think that 'cleaning up' music is different than sharing what the audience is developmentally able to process.  And then to add another layer, there's also the time honored artist's interpretation.  So many different angles to parse all this from.

When my folks were at camp (and I know because guess who has their song books!) there were a number of civil rights songs that faded out in the 70's, replaced by some singer-song writer folk-ish stuff (thanks to one of my cousins for always asking me if we sang that song or that song), which in turn were phased out as different people brought in their own interest in music (o hai Camp Deadwester when we had music staff that was super into the Grateful Dead). 

I had an Irish boss a few years back and I was telling him of my horror of being at an early Black 47 concert while all the Northern Ireland stuff was continuing to go on, and the lead singer just being so passionate about James Connelly (Irish hero from 1916, just... here's another song to listen to) and... the dumb frat boys who were mixing orange and green and didn't really know either side of the history and were being really disrespectful while thinking they were celebrating Irishness... He told me about himself at about the same time and age growing up in Dublin and the border being only about an hour away and he and his buddies thought they'd go to N. Ireland on a lark and they got to the border and it was literally a militarized war zone, and they came away feeling very very somber and a little shaken, realizing for the first time that history was still in progress.

Relaxing and singing together is such a powerfully bonding experience... And it provides such an amazing vocabulary of expression of the human experience. We sang/sing at lunch and dinner, then around the campfire... And as morale boosters/just for fun hiking, sea shanties trying to get back from this small island or that, against the tide or in a storm, or... Square dancing with and without music in the lodge, waiting at ferry docks... Spontaneously on an alpine hike because it's fun...

And too, music carries the full weight of the memories of our human shared history - good and not so good. I can't listen to the PJ Harvey album about WWI except rarely because it makes me cry (time for another song?). 

Another thing that comes to mind around the inclusion of colonialized and other cultures and music is the question of appropriation. This is a constant struggle for me and I feel like sometimes we walk right up to the edge of it at camp for various reasons, but this is also tricky layer of the rubric to navigate. When is something culturally Not Yours to use and share?  Recently this came up when we had some questions around using a song Harry Belafonte popularized... and what resolved it for us was that we had all learned the song from him appearing on the Muppets, which made it feel ok as it was pretty widely recognized as popular culture and shareable. I think generally the folks doing this have some pretty solid expertise in knowing which side of the line to stay on... And I guess that's why we're doing this with adult hindsight and a whole lot of care and different perspectives...

And just because music: a totally appropriate song about working in industrialized conditions and weaving - Poverty Knock. 

In the end, there is so much amazing music to pick from.  Really it comes down to - why are we doing this?  What do we want to get out of the experience?  And what is it that we're trying to pass on?  And I'm sure I'll come back to this time and time again, further refining my thoughts on it all.  Because I am now totally down the rabbit hole into youtubing old songs and listening to them and I've rambled on long enough for tonight.  In lieu of an endless Virginia Reel, here's Pata Pata & the Milk Bucket Boogie.  Neither of which are traditional, but we took the dance associated with Pata Pata and sped it up for the Milk Bucket Boogie.  And some of us tripped over our feet a lot more than some others...

In musical curiosity,
--Susan

And a bonus track from the rabbit hole, Diamonds & Rust...

Owls & Odds & Sods

I think this is the first year I've heard an owl.  They're very distinctively different sounding from the rock doves that we also have a flock of.  Sometimes I almost swear I hear a raven croaking, but I'm pretty sure it's one of the neighborhood crows.

O you virtuous owle, The wise Minerva's only fowle.
~ Sir Philip Sidney 

It should not surprise you that I don't write these Friday morning, surely.  So then it should not be a surprise when I say, as I was sitting down to write this, the neighborhood owl started hooting.  I think this is the first year I've heard an owl.  They're very distinctively different sounding from the rock doves that we also have a flock of.  Sometimes I almost swear I hear a raven croaking, but I'm pretty sure it's one of the neighborhood crows.  I have seen ravens in the islands, but not in an area with this much human population.  I have NOT however seen the neighborhood owl.  

So what have I been thinking about this week?  I'm thinking it feels like this year is flying past.  How did it get to be mid-March already?  It seems the years go faster every year!  

I've also been thinking about this app called Countable, I've linked to the website which is actually where I use it the most. From their website: 

Countable makes it quick and easy to understand the laws Congress is considering. We also streamline the process of contacting your lawmaker, so you can tell them how you want them to vote on bills under consideration.

You can use Countable to:Read clear and succinct summaries of upcoming and active legislation.Directly tell your lawmakers how to vote on those bills by clicking “Yea” or “Nay”.Follow up on how your elected officials voted on bills, so you can hold them accountable in the next election cycle.

You can also ask that they respond to you when you contact them.  I've gotten several emails, though generally I tell them I don't need a response.  It really simplifies the process of getting involved and sharing my opinion.  Because the mango mussolini and the gross old party are bearing down and becoming more horrible by the day.  Making sure that at least my congresswomen are hearing from me, even if I know the resident troglodyte and his administration discount any opinion I might have, is important, still.  Countable makes it really easy to go through once a week (or more), and see what's coming up  and how my people are voting.  Countable sends me an email when my people have voted on things that I've sent them something on too, so I can go in and see.  And I can see how far things have progressed.  It's actually... very engaging.  I'm quite pleased to have found it!  I have the app on my iPad as well. It's available for both IOS & Android. 

The weather is finally turning, sort of, to spring.  I think it's probably safe for me to take my lemon plant and carnivorous garden (pitcher plant, sundew, and flytrap) back outside.  My flytrap is looking very sad.  It doesn't do well inside -- it needs the direct sunlight to really thrive.  Mild winters, it's perfectly happy outside.  This year, not as much.  I have bought a little plant light to shine on it for a bit to see if I can revive it.  If not, I'm afraid I'll need to get another one.  This one has survived a couple years though, so I'm getting better at the appropriate level of benign neglect for them.  

It's also that time of year when I want to go outside and garden.  Generally in the middle of the night is when I'm most inspired... possibly because with as dark as the yard is, my ability to actually do anything effective in the yard is virtually nil.  The day dreaming is the best part? I don't know . But I do have some ideas that are trying to solidify.  Last year I cleared out half the blackberry vines in back.  This year I need to go through, beat back the ever encroaching ivy again, and do the other half of the yard's blackberry vines.  Then rake.  A lot of raking.  And we lost a surprising number of pretty large branches this year.  I guess it's been one of the less mild years in recent years, so I suppose I shouldn't be surprised but there you go.

... We appear to have two owls!?  They are talking to each other!  One is quite close, and one is further away...  Just went outside - apparently we have an entire parliament of owls in our neighborhood!  They've moved in!  Plenty of mice for them to eat.  They were all so hilarious out there!  They sound like they're barred owls.  They are!  This is what our neighborhood sounds like tonight. 

The last big thing I've been thinking about is... wow. Did I forget in the excitement of having a whole parliament of owls chattering on?  Wait - there it is.  I've been doing a lot of baking lately.  Experimenting with whole wheat flour.  It gets sweeter when you let the dough rest overnight.  I have tried and failed miserably to make crackers.  They turn out tough and kind of chewy... and I can't stop eating them.  They're weirdly good.  Tonight I'm making some hearth breads to take to some friends this weekend.  Last weekend I made a couple kalamata ciabattas.  So tasty!  In the midst of all of this, we've taken my oldest off of dairy, and as of today, wheat as well. So, I will probably stop with the bread for a bit now.  It's been a long time since I read food labels.  We generally buy pretty straightforward products, but it's always interesting to find that the cheddar rice chips are just cheddar flavored and therefore safe, while one package of tater tots is safe, and the other has lactic acid and sour cream in them.  I bought wheat and gluten-free bagels today and got home and thought... oh, what is she going to put on them?  No butter, no cream cheese... Hmmm.  I told her I got wheat and gluten free bagels for her and she got really excited about putting avocado and hummus on them!  She's not really a fan of rice, and when I told her I was making curry for dinner, she asked if she could have hers over polenta and... ok, that's weird but sure! So I made a big ol' batch of polenta squares for her, refrigerated them, and now there's one more thing that she can do something with.  I am, at the moment, hopeful that this helps with what's ailing her.  We shall see. On the upside, I know so many people who are wheat intolerant at this point that we have a lot of resources and super tasty recipes.  

The thing I haven't been thinking about is the fact that as you all read this, it's St. Patrick's Day.  So for that, today's St. Patrick's Day trivia is that your odds of finding a four-leaf clover are approximately 1:10,000.  

May the leprechauns and fairies be kind to you, and may you not get pinched too much today.

With a whole lot of hoo-hoo-hu-hooooooing & curiosity,
--Susan 

Rain and Rainbows

It's been raining enough here that the ground is super saturated.  As we were outside briefly at the local high school tonight, the planted grass between the main building and the theater building was drowning in puddles -- nowhere for the water to escape to, and the ground beneath it had absorbed all that it could.

“Dare to love yourself
as if you were a rainbow
with gold at both ends.” 
― Aberjhani, Journey through the Power of the Rainbow: Quotations from a Life Made Out of Poetry

Some days are just like that, you know?  

And on days like this, sometimes you learn that the Greeks had a goddess of rainbows - Iris.  She was Hera's messenger, like Zeus had Hermes.  And sometimes you learn that Iris has a fraternal twin sister, Arke, who is the messenger for the Titans, like Hermes and Iris are for the Olympians.  Arke is also said to represent the fainter second rainbow that you sometimes see when the light is just right.  It's always nice to learn something new in a day!

After a meeting in the morning, I decided that today was the day I was going to get the warp I set up last week on to the loom.  It's going to be sort of an experiment.  I was quite happy with the scarf I wove a few months ago, so I'm trying something closer to shawl/wrap size.  And plaid.  Because apparently that's a thing that needs to happen.  After a little bit of figuring out how to discreetly start/end the weft as the colors shift, I discovered something quite clever that I think will look decent.  It's a loose weave, so I can't just double an end in without it being kind of apparent, but if I take a crochet hook and wrap it back around itself and then through the middle of the strand, it blends right in quite nicely.  We'll see how it looks when I'm done.  Here's what it looks like so far...

Once it comes off the loom, it will not have so many spaces.  It's always vaguely alarming looking on the loom when I'm doing something like this, and then once the tension is off, the yarn relaxes and floofs out and fills in some of the spaces.  Yes.  I am virtually positive that surely 'floof' is a highly technical fiber-working term!  

One of the advantages about approaching fiber-work as an experiment is that it's just an experiment and I can kind of fiddle until I'm happy with it.  

It's a lesson I try to take with me into other things.  Sometimes I'm more successful than other times with that line of thought.  I've never been much good at following recipes or patterns.  I'm in the middle of knitting a hat, it's black angora and very shiny and it does not photograph well at all... Anyway, I was knitting along and I decided that instead of repeating a pattern three times that I was only going to do the middle pattern part because black and very shiny doesn't show the pattern strongly unless there's something to differentiate it from.  As I was talking myself through how this was all going to flow, M1 says to me, "MOM.  Mom.  You're doing it again.  You really can't just follow the instructions ever, can you!?  You do the same thing when you're cooking too!"  Which.  Ahhh.  Yes.  About that.  No.  Sort of. I mean, if the instructions serve my purpose, I can follow them very well, but sometimes (and let's be honest here, a LOT of the time) the instructions aren't actually what I think needs to happen and then I do have a tendency to take a certain... creative license... with things.  

So, with all that said -- look for the rainbows, and the double rainbows, and, if I may quote Jack Sparrow, "The code is more like... guidelines... than rules..."  Substitute recipe or pattern, or instructions, etc for "code" as you desire.  

With love and curiosity,

--Susan 

March

As I'm out and about, I see evidence that maybe winter will end.  My crocuses are coming up.  The daffodils are getting there. My daphne is about to bloom, I see all sorts of little buds on things that look like they're not quite ready to get on with the business of spring.

You exist as the stars exist,
participating in their stillness, their immensity.
― Louise Glück

I guess what I'll say about anyone not liking Pi is... All the more for us.

I guess what else that means this year is that some people are celebrating Lent. Everyone got their Fat Tuesday on the last possible day of February, then we started off March with Ash Wednesday. I guess that's one way to start one of the longer months of the year!

As I'm out and about, I see evidence that maybe winter will end.  My crocuses are coming up.  The daffodils are getting there. My daphne is about to bloom, I see all sorts of little buds on things that look like they're not quite ready to get on with the business of spring.  

It's always this time of year that I come up with grand plans for the yard. We have a tendency to get yards that are somewhat unruly, and that's no different here.  We also have a tendency to get houses that have one "clever" "crafts" man. This house has a less than ideally created brick terracing in front.  It's interesting to have a bunch of larger and smaller plots in which to think about arranging things.  Unfortunately, about a foot, foot and a half down it's gravel for drainage, so some things we might like to put in, wouldn't do well at all.  Bit by bit though, we're figuring out what grows well where. 

Besides continuing to work on that space, there's so many other places to work on.  Last year I got half the backyard's blackberries pulled out.  This year I need to do the other half.  And go through and pull all the ivy that's invading from our neighbors' yards.  Again.  I really like ivy as a house plant.  I really hate ivy in my yard.  It's a terribly terrible invasive monster of a plant, even worse than the Himalayan blackberries, which at least provide a tasty fruit, though I don't let the ones in my yard get to that point because no.

And last year we didn't rake up the maple leaves in the back.  Or... the year before that.  There's no lawn to destroy, so that's not so much of a worry, but maple leaves, piled down with fir needles also don't make the best compost for anything else but weeds.  Still, bit by bit, we'll get it cleaned up and then we can figure out what to do with it, space by space.

Some of that will take remediation.  We are dug into a clay hill.  In our last house we had two rosemary bushes that I dug into gravel.  They thrived, ridiculously so.  Here, I've put them in actually relatively ok dirt, and they're... not thriving.  They're still alive, but not growing nearly as fast as I would have expected, so more compost or something for them.  I do love a good rosemary bush!

I look at the beautiful things on Pinterest and have so many ideas... and I want a beautiful yard now!  But chipping away at it, by bit will have to be how it goes.  
By the time the winter and early spring storms have passed, maybe I'll have settled on something specific to do in the yard this year.  Then again, we may just work randomly on things and see what comes of it all eventually.  

In the meantime, I enjoy things as they appear. :)

Looking forward to spring with curiosity,

--Susan

Change

It's the only constant.  Whatever is now, will evolve and change and become something new.  From the ashes of the phoenix rises a phoenix, the same and yet not the same.  

Courage doesn’t always roar. Sometimes courage is the little voice at the end of the day that says, "I’ll try again tomorrow.”
– Mary Anne Radmacher

Sometimes the hardest part is waiting for the cycle to wheel around again.  In the I Ching, hexagram 24 is "Return."  The message of this is that the primary obstacle has been overcome, and now the seeds of change have been sown.  Like seeds though, there is a time where nothing seems to be happening.  You can't force seeds to grow any faster than they grow, you can only make sure that you are providing the right environment for them to do their thing.  The anticipation is hard -- you don't know until you know if anything will result of the work you put into creating the environment.  In a similar way - it is coldest not right before the sun rises again, but right after.  The temperature continues to drop for a bit because the earth is still cooling from the darkness and while it takes time to start warming up, the heat is still escaping out into the atmosphere.  But eventually it does, indeed, warm up for the new day.  

All stories are stories of change.  There is a beginning, a middle, and an end (that is sometimes a new beginning).  Some stories are more complex and have more changes, more evolutions, calls, challenges, rejections, acceptances, journeys, descents, ascents, resolutions.

When I was getting my Masters, I had the fortune to take a storytelling class taught by the wonderful Margaret Read MacDonald (I think I've mentioned this before, but it always bears repeating).  One of the stories I learned for this class was an Estonian folktale, of course, also told wonderfully by Margaret herself (I aspire some day to be such a good teller!).  
 

Mikku & the Trees

Once upon a time, the trees talked to us.  Once upon a time, there was also a boy.  He went into the woods to find some firewood.  

Aha, he said as he stood at the foot of one of the trees -- this tree will make fine firewood, and just as he raised his ax to cut it down, the tree said to him, wait!  What are you doing!?  Mikku said to the tree, I need firewood, so I am going to chop you down!  The tree said, oh no, that will never do!  I am an apple tree!  I provide sweet apples for you that last from fall until spring again, sweet fruit all winter long, surely you don't want to cut me down!  And Mikku said, oh, you are right, that would be no good at all.  The tree said, yes, Mikku -- you take care of us, and we will take care of you!

So Mikku continued walking through the forest until he came upon another tree that looked like it might make good firewood.  As he raised his ax and prepared to chop the tree down, the tree said wait, wait, Mikku, what are you doing!?  And Mikku said, I am looking for firewood and you look like a fine tree to make firewood out of!  The tree said to Mikku, but Mikku, I am a maple tree!  If you cut me down, no syrup for your pancakes!  Mikku said -- ohhh, that would be terrible!  I love syrup on my pancakes!  You are right, I will not cut you down!  The maple tree said, thank you Mikku -- remember, if you take care of us, we will take care of you!

So Mikku continued walking through the forest, and lo and behold, another tree appeared that looked like it would be wonderful firewood and Mikku went to chop it down, lifting his ax and the tree said, Mikku wait, what are you doing!  And Mikku, starting to get a sense of how this conversation was going to go, said, well, I was going to... I was thinking you looked like... well... maybe firewood but... and the tree said to Mikku, but Mikku -- I am a walnut tree!  You love to crack walnuts and eat them, especially roasted.  And Mikku agreed that was true and agreed that he should not chop down walnut tree.  Walnut reminded Mikku, if you take care of us, we'll take care of you!

So Mikku kept walking, but slower, and slower and finally he sat down because every tree had a use, and he didn't want to chop any of them down!  He needed a solution, whatever was he going to do?  
As he was sitting there, he saw pine cones and branches on the forest floor all over the place!  A solution!  So he stood up and started collecting the branches and pinecones, and suddenly a tiny elf appeared and said Mikku!  What are you doing!?  It was all Mikku could do not to stare -- a stranger little being you cannot imagine, wearing clothing of many layers, textures, and colors, almost shimmering in the light!

Mikku said, I am gathering branches and pinecones off the forest floor because all the trees have uses and I can't cut them down!  The elf said, very good Mikku -- if you take care of the trees, they will take care of you!  As a reward for recognizing this, here is a wand -- if you ever have need of anything, lift your wand and ask for it.  BUT -- you must never, ever ask for anything that goes against nature for that would be very very bad.

So Mikku lifted his wand and said, I would love some honey!  And the bees brought him honey.  Hmmm, that worked really nicely!  He tried again and lifted his wand and said, birds, I would love some berries!  And the birds brought him bushels of berries.

Mikku took his branches and pinecones, honey and berries home with him and never wanted a day in his life.  When he needed his fields plowed, he raised his wand and moles plowed his fields.  When he needed to sow his field, he said little bugs, please sow my fields, and they carried away the seeds and sowed his fields.  Because he took care of the trees, they and all the creatures that relied on them, took care of Mikku.

In this way, Mikku became rich and lazy.  One day in the middle of winter, it was cold and rainy, and Mikku wished for it to be warm and sunny.  In his laziness, he lifted his wand, and said Sun!  Make it hot, hot, hot!  Forgetting all about the elf's warning.  And the sun focused all it's heat and light onto Mikku and his wand and burnt them both to a crisp.  Since that day, the trees have never spoken to another human being, but to this day you can hear them whispering as the wind blows through their leaves, you take care of us... we take care of you...  you take care of us... we take care of you... you take care of us... we take care of you...

(Based on Mikku and the Trees as told by Margaret Read MacDonald and appearing in Earth Care: World Folktales to Talk About. Linnet: North Haven, Conn., 1999, but with some storyteller liberties taken.)

Changes.  We learn, we grow, we sometimes become lazy and forget.  Sometimes we get opportunities to learn again, other times, not so much!  May we all have many learning times ahead of us, and not so many forgetting and lazy times!  Snip, snap, snout, this tale is told out!

With evolving love and curiosity (and a good tale now and again),
--Susan

Evidence of Spring

This week has been one where I'm starting to look at the yard and thinking 'I really ought to do something about that...'  As a result, the roses got pruned, the wisteria got chopped way back, the dead daisy stalks and some other plant material composted.  The first crocus is blooming in the yard, and the wild roses at the park (and the ones I pruned at home) are all showing buds getting ready for the upcoming spring.  

“If people did not love one another, I really don't see
what use there would be in having any spring.”
-- Victor Hugo, Les Misérables

For the most part this time of year around here, things are still looking sort of dark season of the year, but if you look closely, the daffodils are emerging, as are irises and some of the other bulbed plants. It dawns on me that maybe there's a place for me to plant sweet peas -- now is the time for them to go in... but where?  

So that's what I did when it wasn't dumping buckets of rain outside.  Last night the rain was torrential.  It was so loud on the roof.  I love listening to the rain on our roof!  Last night was a pretty spectacular show.  

We got a little snow, now it's time to turn towards the changing of seasons.  And Tibetan New Years (Losar)!  

Some day I want to compile a calendar of New Years dates throughout the year.  There's the Gregorian calendar New Year.  There's the Chinese New Year (new moon between January 21st & February 20th), Losar (Tibetan New Year, dates vary but often the new moon after Chinese New Year), Taagaan Sar (Mongolian New Year, also a month after Chinese New Year), Hindu New Year (March 28th this year), Kha b' Nissan (Assyrian New Year, April 1).... Rosh Hashanah (Jewish New Year, September 20th, Hijri (Islamic New Year, September 22nd), Samhain (Celtic, pronounced sowen, October 31), etc. 

There's something refreshing about being able to wipe a year clean and welcome a new year.  It's not quite the same as a new month or a new week.  New months are great for starting new projects, but they don't tend to have quite the same celebratory feeling of the new year.  You know?

So, that was a tangent!  The seasons are clearly starting their slow change towards spring and with that it will be interesting to see what other changes come, change after all being the only consistent.

With anticipation of new green things & curiosity,
--Susan

A Brave Fahrenheit 1984

... I read a lot of books when I was younger...

So M2 is preparing for a Socratic seminar in her English class.  They're reading Fahrenheit 451. She came out and needed to talk through the book with someone and wanted to know if I'd ever read it.  Which yes, I have, but it was a long time ago.

We're going to meet a lot of lonely people in the next week and the next month and the next year. And when they ask us what we're doing, you can say, We're remembering. That's where we'll win out in the long run. -- Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451

When I was in 7th & 8th grade I read one to two books a day.  Sometimes I'd pick out a book, have it read by lunch time, pick up a second book & bring it back in the morning.  Sometimes it was just picking up a book in the morning and then reading it all overnight.  So easily between 150 & 300 books in a year.  Fiction. Non-fiction. It didn't really matter.  Weirdly, now that I think of it, I think my middle school library had Le Morte d'Arthur by Sir Thomas Malory classified as non-fiction early British history.  That was definitely the history section - lol!

Anyway. One of the results of reading so voraciously is that sometimes I conflate one title with another (can you tell where I'm going with this now?).  In the process of refreshing my memory about Fahrenheit 451, I had the rather sudden realization that for years I've been conflating the storyline not only with 1984, but also A Brave New World.  These three stories flow so well into each other that in retrospect, it sort of makes sense.  Though by that standard it seems weird that I didn't at all mix up Arthur C. Clarke and Isaac Asimov, or Jules Verne & H.G. Wells... ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Most of the time my retention was actually pretty good.  Which was nice later in school when the class was discussing MacBeth in 10th grade and I was busy reading King Lear or The Brothers Karamozov or something & my teacher trying to catch me not paying attention to the matter at hand asked me a question which I answered correctly to his rather evident surprise.  So then he felt obligated to say, 'ok, so you got that right, but please pay attention now.'  Which I may or may not have actually done. I seem to recall successfully answering at least one other 'gotcha,' that period.

Which of course has nothing to do with conflated dystopic political science fictions.  Kiddo needed to prepare three questions about what was applicable from this book that was going on presently.  She didn't want to bring politics into it.  She said it was too upsetting.  So sweetie, about that... she came up with some good questions though. And periodically she'd ask a question and I'd just say, "about that" and she'd groan and keep going.  

It's been one of those weeks for her. Earlier this week she had to write an argumentative essay on gun control and she spent a fair amount of time spluttering about that as she found other countries' statistics.  

I didn't have a point in mind when I started out with this, this evening.  It was just such a surprising realization to find that I'd conflated these three titles that I thought I'd share with people who might, possibly, have also done something similar in the past. 

WIth love & curiosity,

--Susan