The Prince of Peace?

Many of my readers are current or past English teachers, English majors in college, and generally well-read individuals. For that reason, I feel pretty comfortable that you are familiar with Orwell’s 1984 and Animal Farm, Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale, Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 and the genre of dystopian novels in general.  Knowledge of these novels may equip us well for the Trumpocalypse that awaits us.

I was particularly struck by the Christmas message released by soon-to-be-White House Chief of Staff, Reince Priebus and his RNC Co-Chair Sharon Day.  (By the way, what ever happened to "i" before “e” except after “c” or when sounded as “a” as in neighbor or weigh?) The first paragraph reads:

“Merry Christmas to all! Over two millennia ago, a new hope was born into the world, a Savior who would offer the promise of salvation to all mankind. Just as the three wise men did on that night, this Christmas heralds a time to celebrate the good news of a new King. We hope Americans celebrating Christmas today will enjoy a day of festivities and a renewed closeness with family and friends.”

I think it’s very hard to misinterpret who they mean by “a new King.”  The twitterverse lit up with disbelief over this tweet, and I, myself, said several times out loud, “No, they didn’t say that. What were they thinking?”  I didn’t have to wonder for long, because soon-to-be-White House Press Secretary, Sean Spicer, rode up on his camel to clarify the message for those of us foolish enough to be picturing a crown on the orange man, saying: the reference didn’t have anything to do with Trump and “Christ is the King in the Christian faith.” Spicer later said that it was “sad and disappointing you are politicizing such a holy day.” (www.foxnews.com/politics/2016/12/26/rnc) Who actually did the politicizing?

Words matter, and most of us, for good or for ill, interpret words in the conventional sense, not as part of some Orwellian doublespeak.  For my part, I suspect that Reince has secretly printed new business cards, “Prince Priebus,” because, you know, alliteration. I’m sure Mr. Spicer stands ready to interpret this for us.

Michael Andor Brodeur had a new interpretation in today’s “Thing Tank” column in the Boston Globe:  He thought that possibly “‘good news of a new King’ could have just been voice recognition screwing up “good news of a nuking.” No question but what Mr. Spicer will be busy in the New Year creating new meanings for tweets we thought we understood.

What's Wrong With This Picture?

What’s Wrong With This Picture?

A glamorous woman dressed in what appears to be a down filled strapless dress is lying on her back, arms akimbo, knit scarf carefully thrown around her shoulders and across her neck on a bed of snow-covered leaves.  Her left leg seems to be in full stride and her back leg or boot is thrust backward.  In the orientation of the photo as it appeared in a half-page ad in today’s Boston Globe, her head is down, giving the impression that she is upside down on the page.

What is Moncler Boston at Copley Place advertising here? My first guess would be lipstick, as her bright red lips are the first thing to catch my eye.  Moncler, however, doesn’t make cosmetics. Is she wearing a dress or a jumpsuit?  Is it down-filled?  A search of the Moncler web site (www.moncler.com) doesn’t produce a garment that looks remotely like what she is wearing, though the company, which first produced sleeping bags for climbers, still makes down-filled outer garments, in prices hovering around $1000.00 up to $3000.00.  By process of elimination, then, they must be advertising the scarf, though I can’t find a white one like this on the web site either.

Aside from whatever the product may be, what is also being conveyed in this picture? In the post-truth, post-factual, post-feminist era of president-elect Trump, where women have been demeaned and objectified and sexual harassment has been portrayed as “boys being boys,” this picture returns us to the world of the 1970s or earlier in its depiction of women in advertising.

We see here a woman who looks as if she has just become the victim of an assault. Her right arm is up in a defensive posture and her lower body is twisted in such a way as to suggest she is, or was, trying to run away from her assailant who is looking down at her.  She is in an extremely vulnerable pose, and is lying helpless on the ground in a wooded landscape, far from help.  Her scarf, which might have kept her warm, is now available to strangle her.

For those who think my imagination has run away from me, what other story can be told by this photo? Who in her right mind would be voluntarily lying down in an expensive strapless dress on snow-covered woods? I’ve tried a number of scenarios, but I’m sorry to say, I can’t come up with any plausible plot line other than the one I have suggested above.

In case you missed it, which apparently the advertising execs at Moncler Boston at Copley Place did, and the Advertising Editor at the Boston Globe did, Jean Kilbourne in a remarkable talk turned documentary film “Killing Us Softly,” revealed the violence, objectification, and demeaning of women ROUTINELY employed by advertisers in the media.  The first documentary came out in 1979 and it has been revised four times since then, and sadly, not much has changed, as witness this morning’s ad. 

As the cliche goes, a picture is worth a thousand words. The story this one tells is, in one word, horrifying.

Curiouser and Curiouser

In the words of Alice in Wonderland, the world continues to get "curiouser and curiouser."  I could be writing about politics, and I could be writing about the climate, but instead, I'm going to write about the mail I opened today.  It didn't all come today, but as is my bad habit, anything that is apparently "junque," I leave unopened on the kitchen table until I can't stand the mess.....usually a couple of days or so.

Today's opening brought me a most eclectic selection and a host of guilt.  Each item includes a "free gift," and a return envelope to defray the cost of the "free gift" and provide a donation to the sending organization. Where to begin?

Let's start with the glossy map of the world:  The World of Smiles with said map on one side and on the other side, heartbreaking photos of 4 month old children with cleft palates and the same children after surgery. A second, smaller map on the side with the photos is color-coded to show how many surgeries have been performed in various locations around the world.  Of course the U.S. has 0 to 100.  Some countries have had as many as 100,000. Hard to toss this into the recycling bin - see guilt, above.

Next up:  4 blank greeting cards and envelopes produced from banana leaves, (no, I didn't make that up) created by hand by Rwandan women to earn income for their families.  This is a fundraiser for Women for Women International. Another worthy cause.  The envelopes have butterflies (of hope?) on them.  Considering that I wrote only 1 note this past year, this could supply me for four years.

Having obtained this supply of greeting cards, I was overcome by the next envelope filled with 5 more blank greeting cards AND matching address labels from Disabled American Veterans.  All but one card feature prominently displayed American flags, making these cards useful as possible Fourth of July cards, if one were to send Fourth of July cards. (see previous paragraph).

In a smaller, thinner envelope came another set of address labels, this time from the NH SPCA, saying "Every animal deserves a home."  They must have been reading my mind as I have been scanning the shelters for an adoptable dog.  The dogs and cats on the labels look very cute and soulful.  It occurs to me, however, that between these and the DAV labels, I now have a 2 year supply of address labels since I mostly pay my bills online.....and we know that I don't write cards or letters
any more.

I knew what was in the next envelope with Hillary Clinton's name emblazoned on the outside, but what is in the envelope from Michelle Obama? Well, to end the suspense, Michelle has written to ask me to contribute to the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee (DSCC) to help ensure that we elect a Democratic Senate to help "preserve the progress we've made."  No address labels or greeting cards, just the ask for money. Furthermore, if I affix a stamp over the "No postage necessary if mailed in the U.S." square on the envelope my 49 cents will go toward electing a Democratic Senate.

The biggest surprise of the day was a letter from Kelly Ayotte, Republican Senator from NH asking me to join her "Leadership Team" and help her re-election bid.  Since Kelly and I share no philosophical, political or moral positions, it will be a cold day in Hell when I send money to her campaign.  Reading her letter practically sent me into apoplectic shock. It may, however, be the only piece of mail I actually respond to, using the envelope she so kindly enclosed, because I think she needs to know that she is pursuing a dead end with me and that she can take me off her mailing list.  I'll be sure to use an address label from the Disabled Vets, in case she questions my patriotism.

I'd love to be able to help provide surgery for the kids with cleft palates, food for the homeless dogs and cats and help for the disabled vets.  I would like to show my support for the candidates I support. But I am horrified by the amount of money spent on these unsolicited mailings, the cards, the labels, the use of trees to make the paper (or maybe banana leaves) and the huge amount of "stuff" that ultimately ends up either recycled or in the landfill.  If this were a one time occurrence at my house, it wouldn't be so bad, but I could write this same blog post over and over and over. Maybe I can try writing "return to sender" on the unopened envelopes and see if the P.O. will send them back their point of origin.

Airstream #2

Airstream #2

In the studio at Mass MoCA, early morning sun strikes the Airstream, so bright it causes me to see small suns when I look away.  Something makes me picture this trailer abandoned in the desert, the black markings IAO 128 visible from far away. A marker of some sort in the shimmering heat. The yellow post-it referred to “black with scratches,” perhaps the person who inhabited my apartment room also inhabited this studio.



Footsteps on the floor above and the sound of a small motor echoing through the concrete and brick below prevent my mirage from continuing; I move my gaze to the rusting steel girders and two orange clamps holding the Airstream in place fifty feet in the air. Out of its element, it appears to be a trolley car waiting, waiting for passengers that never arrive.

Wally Byam had a dream, a dream to build a travel trailer that would move like a stream of air, be light enough to be towed by a car, and create first-class accommodations anywhere.  I doubt he would have imagined this location for one of his beloved trailers.

On the other hand, in 1931 when he began designing his dream trailer, he probably didn’t imagine that in 1969, when NASA landed men on the moon, one of his trailers would be located on the deck of the USS Hornet, to become a place to quarantine Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins when they returned from their epic trip. No one knew if they would bring germs of new diseases back with them. 1969 was also the year Wally conducted a major re-design, adding a foot in length and creating the longer, rounder shape of this 1973 version, which the history web site refers to as “a more distinct bullet shape,” a description I resist.

Watching the trailer, waiting for something to happen, I am startled by a sudden flock of pigeons, their coverts flashing silver, swooping over the Airstream to land on the roof ridge of a building nearby. The quarantine is over, life arrives in this otherwise lifeless landscape.

Airstream #1

    Through the week of the Mass MoCA residency, all of my new writing focused on the Airstream trailer which was my studio view. I freely admitted I became obsessed by the trailer and photographed it once or twice a day, capturing different light, different sky, the play of shadows on the bricks on either side.  Part of my writing tried to unravel why I was so obsessed, but deep in my heart, I already knew why. 
    The Airstream represented my studio. The only studio I’ve ever had. It was my companion on this Visiting Artist adventure. It didn’t move; it provided interesting beauty and it greeted me every day, with it’s shiny body and mysterious black letters and numbers on its side. 
    I connected it, somehow to the gold post-it note that I found folded under a jar of sunflowers, chrysanthemums and strawflowers on my windowsill in the apartment bedroom which was also mine for the week.  The post-it said:
        So black with
        scratches
        maybe some
        writing too?
No one else in the apartment had flowers in her room; no one else found a mysterious note, and almost no one else had the Airstream. Almost, because one of my apartment mates shared the studio with me, but she had a different window, different view, and she didn’t seem to be obsessed with it the way I was. She was actually writing, not gazing out the window!
    This is my photograph on the first morning I spent time in the studio. I instinctively photograph the view from my window whenever I’m in a new place, and at this point, I did it out of habit and because I was intrigued with this industrial landscape which, for a week, would replace my usual view out to flowers, shrubs, an old willow tree and birds at my feeder. I also noticed the clouds, the water flowing below in the canal and loved the bright touch of yellow on the side rails of the bridge across which many small maintenance vehicles and occasional cars would drive throughout the day.
    This was my view. I was hooked.

poem

Migratory Birds

On the list serve,
a birder posts the sighting
of a yellow-headed

female blackbird
the same one, he says,
sighted last week.

How did he know it was the same?
This is a fact not in evidence
false on its face,

ipso facto and BOOM,
you might as well
be in the room, domineering

as in the old days -
shades up, not down
take the truck, not the car

click through the channels
never watch one show -
Why ask if you don’t

intend to listen?
Then the assertion,
1277 double-crested

cormorants in flocks
of 30 to 60. Was the passenger
pigeon flying too?

Managing life or living it?

I’ve always been a list-maker of tasks I have to do. When life grows busy, the list is a way to have control over what threatens to become chaos. While I was teaching, I would have multiple lists: a “to-do” list for each of my five classes; a list of household tasks that needed accomplishing; and eventually, a list of needs to take care of for my parents. I found great satisfaction in crossing items off these lists, but an equal amount of angst in the items I didn’t finish and didn’t cross off. Like Toad in the the book Frog and Toad Together, I would even add and cross off something on a list that I had completed but which wasn’t originally on the list, just to make myself feel more” accomplishful,” a word often used in my family.

Sometimes lists hung around for a long, long time, with one persnickety item that I just couldn’t get done. I would not transfer that item to a new list, because it signified some degree of incompetence or procrastination that I didn’t want to acknowledge. I realize I come by this list-making honestly from my father, who carried a small spiral notebook in his shirt pocket with lists of things to do. His lists, and mine, helped to organize our lives and were necessary stays against confusion and lack of control.

I still make lists, and love the satisfaction of doing all the things that I’ve set out to do and crossing off items one by one. But I have also realized that there is a certain tyranny in a list that constrains life and may even prevent the pursuit of a more spontaneous, creative life. Who, for example, would write down “watch the birds” on a to-do list? Or “become absorbed in a good book and read all day?” Or “decide to write a blog post?” Because I don’t write things like these on lists, when I end up doing them, I feel guilty, somehow, that they weren’t “on the list” of things to do that day. I’m guessing there are others who experience this same feeling, because when I posted on facebook the other day that I had accomplished very little but had read a lot, more people “liked” that post than just about anything else I have ever posted.

So in talking to myself about my life as a retired person, and trying to be more present in the moment, I have decided to stop thinking of my lists as “to-do lists” and to start thinking of them as simply a list of “possibilities” for the day. In a way, this actually helps me to feel less overwhelmed by any of the many “to-dos” that a single individual needs to carry out in order to keep some semblance of order inside and outside the house. It also frees me up to do whatever I feel like doing in the moment, without feeling hugely guilty about other things on the list which are going undone.

In the story “The List,” Toad is paralyzed when his list blows away and he can’t remember what else was on his list of things to do. I don’t want to be that person (that Toad?) I will still be the person who makes a list for the day, but whether I choose to do one thing or no thing from that list, at the end of the day, I will be grateful for the way that life unfolds, offering surprises and accomplishments, things I can cross off and things that I can’t.

Holding on to Winter

I have been my usual vociferous self when lamenting this long, cold, snowy winter. Today, it seems as if Spring really is coming. The signs are everywhere: receding snowbanks, snow that has lost it's gleam and looks shopworn, the emerging brown of dead grass overlaid with a tangle of whip-size willow branches pruned by the wind. I should be feeling a sense of glorious anticipation. Instead, I find myself wondering if I'm really ready for Spring.

Am I ready to trade the hours I have indoors to write and think, edit and imagine for the work of raking, cleaning out flower beds and cutting back last year's dead foliage? Am I ready for the achy muscles, the quandaries over what to plant, where and when? Today, I seem caught between two seasons, not exactly wanting winter to go on, or God forbid, the arrival of more snow, but not yet ready to fully embrace all that comes with the change of seasons.

The Apple Doesn't Fall Far From The Tree, or Does It?

An article in today's NY Times titled "Your Ancestors, Your Fate," offered an interesting analysis of how our social mobility hasn't changed much over time, and that our overall chances of success can be predicted from as far back as our great, great, great grandparents. Hmmmm. I'm definitely beginning to see that as I delve into the two centuries of family letters I have. I would, however, like to be in the same room with the author of this study and go into much more depth than he was able to in the article, as I have many questions about his methodology and just exactly what he means when he talks about "elite" names, and using registries of doctors and lawyers to draw his conclusions.

Actually, though, it caused me to think about some recent discoveries I made from a box of "stuff" I found at Christmas time when I pulled the boxes of decorations out of the storage area. I thought it was a box of my junque as it had some framed photographs from my life on the top, along with the Super 8 movie camera. Surprise! Below the first layer it turned out to be a box of my father's memorabilia. I have no memory of this box or when it came into my possession, nor had I ever looked into it.

When I first looked at it about 3 weeks ago, I really almost threw up my hands in despair. It needs major sorting, some pitching out, and some saving of stuff. Two things I found that intrigued me were a report card from Dartmouth, where I always assumed he had done very well academically (but realize now that I don't believe we ever talked about that)and discovered a rather average report - grades of C, even. I also found two letters from the President of Dartmouth, Ernest Hopkins written to dad and one letter from dad to Pres. Hopkins after he had graduated. They seemed to have a fairly close relationship, and I surmise that is because dad was President of the Inter-Fraternity Council, and probably had a lot of dealings with the administration. There apparently were some deaths at Dartmouth that year, and I haven't discovered what caused them, but part of the correspondence has to do with prevention of same, going forward.

The other day, I walked past the box again, and grabbed a handful of photographs, a small photo album and found two more discoveries. A rubber band held 4 letters together written by dad to his parents. Three of them were written while he was "courting" my mother, and for the first time I get to see dad's perspective on her family and how he felt he had found "the right girl." The other letter in the packet was written after my oldest brother Rob was born, and he describes in some detail the lead-up to mom going to the hospital. Each time I find something pertaining to my dad, I realize how little I knew him and how much I wish I had known of the existence of these letters during his lifetime and could have talked to him about them.

The other discovery was a small red leather diary which I first assumed was a small address book. It turned out to belong to my brother Rob, and was kept in 1951, the year we left Manchester, VT and moved to California. He was 12 at the time. There was a small wooden pencil stuck in the spine which said Charles Letts & Co. London. The space for entries was only about 5 tiny lines, but I read through all of them. (Many pages were blank).

I was quite surprised that he actually mentioned me in one entry, and it was something I had completely forgotten about: August 9, 1951 ". . . Kay started Baton twirling." We moved to California on August 26th, according to his diary, so my baton twirling lessons were short-lived. I do remember someone (dad?) had made me a baton out of a large-sized dowel and it had something like the rubber end of a cane at one end. Later, in California, I think, I had a real baton with a shiny silver shaft and I can remember practicing twirling it, but I was never destined for glory as a twirler in a marching band. Probably not in the genes I inherited from my great, great, great, grandmothers.

The Universe of the Back Yard

As another storm approaches, this is a set of scenes I will see again tomorrow, or possibly the next day, depending on the timing of the storm.

Snowscapes

Wind banked snow against the house
blew crystals into ripples
across the back yard,
each a thin shadow,
as if winter fairies
had etched the landscape.
Look away, look back,
squirrel tracks stamp,
circle the bird feeders
make spokes to forsythia,
clothesline post, willow tree,
a white on white mandala
the birds will fill
with black-oil sunflower,
yellow seed corn, peanut shells.

Drama in the back yard

As is my habit when I arrive in the morning kitchen, I check the temperature (a balmy 62 inside and 33 outside) and then put the shade up on the big window over the sink. I scan the back yard for birds, tracks, snow depth (about 3 feet) and anything unusual.

Today, some movement just on the far side of the forsythia bushes down on the snow caught my eye. Grabbing my trusty binoculars, I could see a mouse-like critter apparently chasing its tail around and around. It had a tail like a mouse, but was rounder than I think a mouse is and didn’t seem to have quite such an elongated face as I picture on a mouse.

The behavior continued as I watched, and I saw a small red squirrel run along the boundary line and a larger gray squirrel venture out of a tree and up into the forsythia and then to the top of the clothesline post where it seemed to watch the small critter below and then dart down and over to the base of the bird feeders in case there were any seeds on the ground.

Was the little guy trying to stay warm? Was it trying to find its home? Was it rabid? I’ll never know. It continued its frantic skittering on the ice-glazed snow, leaving a yellow stain on the territory it traversed, finally coming to rest on its side, about a foot from where it started. If I had been 10 minutes later coming downstairs, I would have missed this drama. I heard Pete Seeger singing:

“To every thing, turn, turn, turn/ there is a season, turn, turn turn,/and a time for every purpose, under Heaven.”

Good friends, good times

I mentioned in an earlier post my love of all things fabric-related, and I think it's clear also how much I love being outdoors. Today combined the best of all worlds for me, and I wish I had photos to illustrate. Some things, though, can't be photographed easily. Start with friendship. I am spending the weekend with my college roommate and her husband on beautiful Lake Kanasatka in Moultonborough, NH. How do you photograph 49 years of friendship??? Certainly plenty of photos exist of us over the years, but the intangibles are what I'm talking about. The ability to talk about anything and everything; the shared history; the love of sewing, quilting and fabrics; the knowledge that whatever difficult situation you may be in, the other person is there to support you - these are things that can't be photographed.

Had I thought about it in advance, though, I could have photographed our cross-country skiing on the lake this afternoon, past makeshift bob houses (i.e. tents) and "open air" fishing by folks participating in the Lake Winnipesaukee Fishing Derby (but on Lake Kanasatka) and I could have photographed our trip to Keepsake Quilting this afternoon, where, for once, I was the person buying and not the person watching. But maybe it's a good thing that I wasn't busy trying to photograph all of this, I was just enjoying it, being present in these moments of activities I love with people I love. Enough said!

The day after snowfall

Even though I am sick of snow and cold, I still enjoy the day after a storm when the sun comes out and the landscape is once again refurbished and shiny. Today was one of those days with around a foot of new, rather powdery snow glittering in the morning light. Shadows of bare bushes stood out in sharp contrast to the white background, as if etched with a finepoint stylus.

A squirrel made his morning run from the willow (out of sight on the right) under the back side of the bushes to make sure all was right in his world. No other tracks revealed the presence of another living creature until . . . . . some feathered visitor landed under the bird feeder and hopped around it, wondering where all the fallen sunflower seeds had gone.

As morning lengthens toward noon, another critter left his tracery on the way back part of the yard - too small to be a squirrel, but too extensive to be another bird: You have to look carefully to see a widespread Vee-shape which looks like the bottom of a valentine heart and then a squiggly line which heads back toward the compost bins, which makes me wonder if it is a mouse or a vole perhaps enjoying the layers of leaves and grass clippings I thoughtfully provided for him this winter.

By tomorrow morning, the kaleidoscope will have rotated and the beauty of today will be replaced by changing patterns of light and shadow, imprints of animals, birds and humans and the shifting winds of the universe.

Free Your Voice

Last Saturday I had the rare opportunity to participate in a two-hour yoga, meditation and chanting workshop led by my daughter. I thought I might be out of my element, possibly the only non-singer in the room, and potentially not able to do all of the yoga. Fortunately, none of that turned out to be true and I settled in for two very enjoyable and fascinating hours.

Some who know me might wonder why I even cared to "free my voice." And I'll bet there are plenty of people who think I've always freely spoken my mind and have had no trouble speaking in public, or even singing in public. Even the name of this blog suggests that I am a pretty opinionated person who feels free to share what I think in this public forum.

That may be who I am on one level, but there is a "but" to all of that, and it has to do with the fact that in my poetry, I haven't quite gotten "there" in freeing my emotional voice, hence, my poems may be well-crafted, but not, perhaps, evocative or spoken in my authentic "heart-voice," as I would name it. And I know I tend to avoid writing about anything emotionally difficult for me. I think that the workshop on Saturday started me on the path to trying to fathom how I can get past my rational self to find my heart center and then, express it. A big thank you to Sarah for all her help in unlocking the creative process for me through this wonderful afternoon, and earlier in January in her e-course Renew Your Creative Voice.

Wonderment

In 1989 I began serious research in order to edit a collection of 19th century letters written between my great grandmother and my great, great grandmother. I read books, traveled to Brooklyn, Chicago, Keokuk, Iowa, Topsfield, MA and various libraries and historical societies in NH. My big purchase to aid in my research was the first laptop made by Apple which came out right around 1991 or 92. The battery lasted a very short time and most often I didn't have a cord long enough to reach the closest plug. It was (and probably still is) a time when the Chicago Historical Society made you wear white gloves in order to handle documents in their archives. I loved all of that travel and research and finally in 1996, the book was published by the University of Iowa Press.

Fast forward to 2014. I have just finished transcribing the letters of my great, great, great Uncle Cyrus, who was born in 1793. His letters begin in 1818 and conclude in 1836. There are 19 of them. If I proceeded to conduct research in the same way, I would be traveling to Mumbai (which was Bombay when he went there as a missionary in 1827) and to various locations all over the state of Massachusetts. Whereas it is true that I am not going to write/edit a book similar to the one I did before, I still need to educate myself on the context of his letters and discover as much as I can about his life. You are no doubt wondering how any of this connects to the title of this post.

Here it is: I have not budged from my house, but because of the vast difference in the internet and the digitization of books, magazines, and archives, I have read the articles he wrote that were published in the Missionary Herald; have found his second wife's journal which was published in 1876 by their son and digitized by Google, and found citations about him in many different sources online. He was not a famous person, which makes it seem all the more remarkable to me that so much information is available. Gone is the laborious note-taking - I can just download or bookmark these items and refer to them at will while I have multiple documents open on my laptop.

The one thing that remains constant from my experience from 1989 to now, is the importance of people in this whole process. My good friend and colleague, Kathy Kentner investigated online and sent me in the direction of Google Books, where I found Cyrus's second wife, Abigail Stone's journal. The archivists at both Andover-Newton Seminary where he received a divinity degree, and at what is now Kimball Union Academy, where he studied for a year and a half before going to Dartmouth, both responded immediately to email requests with excellent information, and in the case of KUA, we have discovered that our fathers both taught at KUA at the same time, and because it was an all boys school then, her brothers were able to attend KUA, but she was sent to Gould Academy and because my father moved to an all-boys school in California to teach, my two brothers went there to school while I attended the local public schools. These serendipitous, and somewhat extraneous coincidences bring me great delight. One source the KUA archivist sent me today revealed that Uncle Cyrus and his first wife sailed to Bombay on the ship "Emerald" out of Salem. Now that made my day.

Who Put the Plastic in Plastic Surgery?

Going to the plastic surgeon for a consult this morning (no, I'm not getting a facelift), I found myself experiencing a doctor's office unlike any I'd ever been in before. First of all, I was surprised that the door was locked when I arrived at 8:15 for my 8:30 appointment. What doctor's office doesn't ask you to be there ahead of time to fill out paperwork?? Since it was about 10 degrees outside, I walked into the office next door, an MRI Imaging place. The receptionist was quite welcoming and alerted me to the fact that the folks in plastic next door wouldn't open until 8:30 on the dot. This office was warm and comfortable and offered coffee. I had to force myself to walk back out into the cold when 8:30 rolled around.

When I walked through the door into the spa... I mean doctor's office, I thought I had walked into a beauty salon. Well, I guess, in a way, I had. Glass showcases elegantly arranged featured different lotions and skin creams and the whole decor was elegant and fit for a queen. Or someone not exactly me. I only had about five minutes to observe my surroundings before I was called in to my appointment, but in that time, I was horrified by the video playing on a huge flat screen t.v., featuring the best way to get rid of the muffin top fat around your waist. It started with a woman wearing shorts and a jogbra in a doctor's office and the doctor (at least he was wearing a doctor's white coat) squeezing her fat between his fingers. This was bad enough, but then it went to a picture of all the little fat cells swarming around inside the fat. Fade to treatment, where she was sitting in a lovely reclining spa chair with a wide belt around her waist and some metal contraption pressing down on the flabby muffin top. At the same time it was lowering the temperature of the area - killing fat cells?? Not sure. The next scene showed how svelte her body was as she jogged off with her boyfriend (or maybe it was the doctor in his jogging shorts?) and on the screen it flashed "Get your swagger back."

Fortunately, I was called in to my appointment to find out the details of having a squamous cell cancer removed from my face. The nurses were all impeccably made up, and the doctor seemed like an ordinary guy, making gobs of bucks off of people like me who actually have something wrong, and others, who have been convinced by the culture that they have something wrong because they don't look a certain way. It was on my way out that I wondered why all of this is called "plastic" surgery. Is it because they are producing people who look like they've come out of a plastic mold? (I couldn't help thinking about Barbie dolls made of plastic.) Is it because back in the beginning of the specialty they were using real plastic as breast implants? Or, more likely, because what they do is so costly, most people have to pay for it using their plastic.

I am grateful for their expertise, but I am genuinely puzzled by their name. Please leave your own understanding of this specialty in the comments!

The power of music

Hearing the news of Pete Seeger's death gave me my moment for today. I learned to play the guitar with some of his most famous songs: This Land is Your Land, If I Had a Hammer, and Where Have All the Flowers Gone, to name some. I can still see the multi-record boxed set of long-playing records featuring the great early folk and blues singers in my brother's apartment where he gave me my first guitar and taught me the basic chords needed to play these songs. I had fallen in love with the whole folk music scene, and even ironed my semi-wavy long hair to try to achieve long straight hair that would swing back and forth like Mary Travers' hair when I played. Hearing those songs can transport me to college and early adulthood in a way that no other music can. Thinking about the power of the music of those years and how it accompanied the major social movements of two decades makes me wonder if there is music today that could fill that role. The world could once again use music that helps achieve social justice, the end of war, and brings people together to lift their voices in common cause.

Sunset

When I walked into the kitchen late this afternoon, this is the sight that greeted me. The phrase "rosy-fingered dawn" flew into my head, but of course, this wasn't dawn. More like flaming fingers of night, not dawn. Whatever it was, it was the most beautiful sunset I have observed in recent days and I decided that to try to capture it I would have to brave the cold and go outside to take the photo, not try to shoot through the grimy kitchen window.

Tonight, I googled the phrase, "rosy-fingered dawn," which I thought came from Shakespeare. Shows you what I know, or don't know; it is from Book XII of The Odyssey: "Then, when the child of morning, rosy-fingered Dawn, appeared, I sent some men to Circe's house to fetch the body of Elpenor.” Homer!! Huh, I thought. How about "Red sky at night/Sailors delight/Red sky in the morning/Sailors take warning. Delight, indeed. In seconds, the brilliant red disappeared into the graying end of the day, waiting a few more moments for the black cloak of night.

Practicing Yoga

I have managed to do yoga for five of the last six days, and I find that the 45 minutes or so that I am doing yoga are the most mindful of the day. Quieting my brain is one of the hardest challenges for me, and I think it's paying attention to my breath and coordinating breathing with movement that causes me to abandon conscious thought and just "be" in the moment with my breathing and the awareness of the position of my body. There is a particular CD of "yoga music" that I play, and like Pavlov's dog, when that music starts, I click into yoga mode. My mat faces the east, and I have the empty sky to look at, though most of the time my eyes are closed. On the days that I do yoga, I find that I have a much better attitude about life and I am more willing to adopt an optimistic approach to problems I may be facing. Yoga makes me feel so good, in fact, that I can never understand how and why I let myself fall out of the habit of doing it each day.

The fabric of my life

My moment today occurred in the fabric store where I was looking for a lining fabric for a jacket I am about to make. I could spend hours in a fabric store, and have been known to, on occasion. The colors, the patterns, the textures all reach out to me. I have to touch every bolt. I was in the slippery fabrics, letting them slide through my fingers, holding pieces up to the light, matching it to the scrap of wool I carried with me.

In the peak of my sewing career, when the kids were small, I made down jackets, snow pants, turtlenecks, overalls, pjs for them and for me. I accumulated a LOT of fabric and even more remnants. When we moved out of the house in Littleton and down to Durham, the hardest part for me was going through all the fabric and thinking about the memories each piece evoked, and needing to get rid of most of it (fabric, not memories).

A few days, I unearthed one of the pieces of wool I kept and found a tag on it from the Dorr Woolen Mill in Claremont, which means I probably bought it about 35 years ago. I paid $3.50 a yard for 3 1/2 yards. I have no idea what I planned to make - perhaps I had no plan, I just loved the color and the feel of it. Of course it had moth holes in the outer layer, but inside, at least 2 yards was still good, and so I'm going to make the jacket I mentioned above. All this is in preparation for making a jacket out of some Italian wool I bought in Rome in 2008 (I'm determined that fabric won't sit for 30 years). The Italian wool will be lined by a piece of silk brought back for me by Todd from one of his China trips.

Fabric is not just fabric to me. It is bound up in memories of learning to sew on my mother's treadle machine; of the breathtaking delight of owning my own machine and of the many hours spent happily browsing fabric and imagining and eventually executing various projects. In doing some family research, I discovered that my paternal grandmother's maiden name, Sherer, comes from the Middle English scherare which meant “one who dresses the pile of cloth; a shearer." In Latin this was rendered by cissor or scissore. This could explain my love of all things fabric-related. The first photo is the old wool; second photo is the Italian.