Impermanence, and what endures

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The tavern in the middle of our town looked like one of those windowless bars I rode by when I was a kid in the back of the station wagon on trips when for apparently moral reasons we couldn’t use the neon sign’s “Q” in “Liquor” for the alphabet game. Covered windows or no windows at all, I envisioned those bars dark, dirty and mysteriously bad inside, with men hunched under the roof around brown bottles of beer, like trolls under a bridge around unspeakable loot.

Don and I have lived a few years on a country road two miles from a town where a tavern has presided over its comings and goings for decades. Every weekday I drive through the village's eclectic row of houses and the four corners of downtown on my way to and from work. There is an alternate route I could take, but the town reassures me, with its thousand people who know each other and on summer evenings buy ice cream cones at the general store across from the tavern, leaning on posts while they lick Rocky Road, or lounging on the store steps smoking cigarettes. I fill up my gas tank on the third corner at the BP, deciding to support a business in town even as I support a company that administered a disaster. Maybe my gas money will help someone get compensation for the oil spill too. I can hope.

The tavern across from the general store is in a building that is 150 years old. That's when the Civil War began. We got to know the tavern, where neighbors and friends ate pizza and drank beer, Harley bikers stopped for breakfast on their smooth Sunday rides across the state, and cyclists by the dozen stopped for lunch and a rest. On Memorial Day the end of May, the owner sold barbecued ribs and chicken from his trailer in the parking lot during the parade. Once a month or so we got a booth in the smoky old joint and ate bar burgers or all you can eat Friday fish fries when we didn’t feel like cooking.

The tavern burned Wednesday in the middle of the night, no one hurt thankfully. Workers pulled down the hollow brick walls the next day when the fire had been put out by firefighters from all over. When I drove home Thursday, sort of forgetting that the tavern was gone, I turned the corner onto Jackson Street between the square of charred piles of bricks of the tavern and the general store, and suddenly I had to stop. I was in the midst of a crowd of hundreds of residents (half the town) who were standing in a vigil in the middle of the street gathered around the tavern’s owner standing by his pickup, letting him know they love him and want him to rebuild. Hands were held high with cell phones snapping pictures as friends stepped forward to hug him one by one. There I was, driving my little Aveo through the crowd (it was impossible to go back the way I’d come) dividing it like Moses parting the Red Sea, with the sea of people closing in together behind me. I may not know anybody in this town (I'm fine with that, we have good friends and big families), but I felt bolstered by their group hug that surrounded me like a living piece of cloth being unzipped and rezipped by me in my car and all that love.

The "trolls":
our son's friend Stephen and our son Peter

when we took Stephen, a world traveling
cruise ship videographer, to the town tavern
when he visited from Vancouver last year 

 Photo from the Lansing State Journal

Don snapped this pic with his cell phone;

what's left of the building in this shot

was pulled down the next day

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Acorn season

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Nineteen of us, including babies, headed to the family cottage for the fall clean-up Saturday. We took out screens on the porch and washed the storm windows before putting them up. We cleaned behind the stove and fridge. We raked leaves. We raked and raked and raked. We piled leaves on tarps and dragged them into the woods.

There's a lot to rake, all the way around, down the hill to the lake, and down the driveway.

Our cottage sits on a hill, the highest point on the lake, except for the state-owned woods next door, which we don't have to rake, thankfully. If you know about feng shui, our cottage has a pretty good feng shui position with its hill at the back and side, and facing water.

This is the view of the place from the lake.

It takes a big investment of energy and funds from our individual selves to maintain this place and keep it in the family, now that Mom and Dad are gone. Sometimes Don and I think of the vacations we could take somewhere every year with our share if we didn't have this place to keep up.

And then we gather with our family at one of the spring or fall work days, or the 4th of July, or New Year's, and we realize again that we have something very special. We have a home where our tribe can go, and keep our love alive.

I wasn't even going to post about the cottage clean-up this year, and then when I viewed my pictures I had to show you the acorn harvest and what I learned.

For hours, the kids picked cleaned up acorns. (Their work was important.) There was a bumper crop this year! I asked Audrey if she thought they could pick them ALL up. She said with complete assurance: Yes. Of course it became a competition between the girls and the boys. But when I asked Audrey if they were going to count them all, and she said, No, I said, well how will you know who wins? That stumped her. She and Lydia stored theirs in the playhouse oven. Eli and Johnny stored theirs in the plastic dock owl. I don't know who won. I don't even know if they know who won. I do know that not all the acorns got picked up, but don't tell them.

The icing on the acorn cake was when Casey (in the next to the last photo, below) decided she was going to make acorn cakes. (You can see the ball of acorn dough in her right hand in that photo; that's a lot of acorns.) I asked her if acorns are edible, she just shrugged her shoulders and smiled big with her gorgeous white teeth just released from their cages (braces). I told her I was not about to sample her acorn cake until I knew they were not poisonous (where was my sick-at-home husband when I needed him?). Someone googled it on their iPhone and we decided we were safe. You know what? Acorn cakes are not bad. She just added flour and water. I could survive with Casey if we were stranded near oak trees.

Of course when I got home and asked the sick [smarty-pants] husband about eating acorns, he coughed and sneezed out a fine lecture on the Native Americans, especially those in California, who made breads and mush with nutritious acorns, soaking them first in water to remove the tannins. They used the tannin water to tan animal hides. Read this beautiful history in our National Archives of the California Indian Acorn Culture. You know what I just remembered? I think Casey's mom has Native American heritage. Casey was not taught this by a relative though. It was in her somewhere, waiting for acorn season when the acorns called.

In the photo above, you can see a number of things: The original structure, on the right, built in the 1920s with its tin roof that is wonderful to fall asleep under in our beds at night when there is a rainfall lullaby (but alarming under acornfall!) and badly needs replacing; at the left, the addition my father built in the 1960s (after my grandpa bought the place for my mom) to accommodate the ten of us, and eventually many, many more; and most importantly for this post, notice the little green sandbox lid at the bottom left behind the woodshed where Casey and Sydney stashed their acorn collection, which ended up in the acorn cake, below. (Oh! Casey and Sydney won!) In the first picture, Gary (visiting from Guatemala, next to Rachel from Brazil), is smelling the acorn dough.

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In Detroit

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We finally watched Gran Torino last night, Clint Eastwood's 2008 film, set in Highland Park, a suburb of Detroit where Walt (Eastwood) lives, a retired Ford factory worker. It reflects the changes happening in urban areas worldwide, where people are migrating from their homes to new homes in foreign places. It is about figuring out who you are, what you want. This is not a movie review, but a small notice about a tender film that touched me deeply. It's hard enough to understand yourself, let alone another person. Mix into that another culture, and it takes a great deal of listening and walking in another's shoes to begin to see. I watched more movies this weekend than I have in many months, another was The Fog of War, an amazing and also tender film, a documentary that touched me at my center. Robert McNamara emotes, and expresses in hindsight why we should not kill people and destroy nations, for how do we begin to understand one another -- enough to talk, let alone annihilate the other?

Anyway, when Gran Torino was over, and the credits rolled, and this song came on, the first of the film, it was one of those moments when characters and plot came together in perfect emotional release, and satisfaction. Please have a listen to this beautiful song written by Clint Eastwood, Jamie Cullum, Kyle Eastwood and Michael Stevens. Embedding of the YouTube video has been disabled, so you'll need to click here for it.

Gran Torino

[*Sung By Clint Eastwood*]
So tenderly your story is
nothing more than what you see
or what you've done or will become
standing strong do you belong
in your skin; just wondering

gentle now the tender breeze blows
whispers through my Gran Torino
whistling another tired song

engine humms and bitter dreams grow
heart locked in a Gran Torino
it beats a lonely rhythm all night long
it beats a lonely rhythm all night long
it beats a lonely rhythm all night long

[*sung by Jamie Cullum*]
Realign all the stars above my head
Warning signs travel far
I drink instead on my own Oh! how I've known
the battle scars and worn out beds

gentle now a tender breeze blows
whispers through a Gran Torino
whistling another tired song

engines humm and bitter dreams grow
heart locked in a Gran Torino
it beats a lonely rhythm all night long

these streets are old they shine
with the things I've known
and breaks through the trees
their sparkling

your world is nothing more than all the tiny things you've left behind

So tenderly your story is
nothing more than what you see
or what you've done or will become
standing strong do you belong
in your skin; just wondering

gentle now a tender breeze blows
whispers through the Gran Torino
whistling another tired song
engines humm and bitter dreams grow
a heart locked in a Gran Torino
it beats a lonely rhythm all night long

may I be so bold and stay
I need someone to hold
that shudders my skin
their sparkling

your world is nothing more than all the tiny things you've left behind

so realign all the stars above my head
warning signs travel far
i drink instead on my own oh how ive known
the battle scars and worn out beds

gentle now a tender breeze blows
whispers through the Gran Torino
whistling another tired song
engines humm and better dreams grow
heart locked in a Gran Torino
it beats a lonely rhythm all night long
it beats a lonely rhythm all night long
it beats a lonely rhythm all night long

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travel, transience, transition

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I have been thinking that we are now living in an age of change, so rapid that it is hard to keep up, and that this is sort of new. Change is so prevalent, we're wired for it. Before the latest iPhone is released, we're anticipating the next version. But the truth is, everything is transitory. It always has been.

There is a way of living that is called wabi-sabi and looks at the transitory nature of things. My friend George has been talking about the wabi-sabi way. His excellent posts are here and here. I also wrote about it back in April 2008. It's hard to sum up wabi-sabi, as George says -- a world view that has been around thousands of years, but this is what I'm focusing on in this post: it emphasizes the beauty of things imperfect, impermanent, and incomplete.

My friend Tracy is moving soon, transitioning, traveling from her temporary home in Australia, back to Texas. She sent me a poem she'd heard the other day, which made her think of me, because it's about Michigan. I told her I'd posted it back in 2008, accompanied by this temporary map collage of Michigan I laid out with some significant Michigan symbols. (See that post for good comments about them.)

The map of Michigan existed for an hour or so in June 2008, then I put everything away. But the photo is still here for us to see. Think of photographs, and how they last and last, making us feel that things are permanent. They make us think we can hold on to something. As Susan Sontag said, on top of the already overwhelming happenings in the world, we also have photographs of them, adding to the weight of what we "know." Somehow by seeing those images, we think we understand, or think we should understand.

So. Things change, evolve, wear out. Funnily enough, I have a preference for material things that do change. Patinas that evolve. Not chrome. Not plastic. I love organic things. Wood. Leather. Paper. Natural fibers. Have you noticed that for the most part, organic materials age gracefully, but man made materials do not? A wool carpet is better after decades of foot falls. A wooden door frame gets polished with oil from hands. The marble floor of a cathedral begins to lie less perfectly flat after centuries of scuffling feet, in beautiful subtle waves. But a chrome fender is less attractive after a few decades of spreading rust. Plastic just looks dirty over time, with embedded grime in those artificial textures that factory molds create. Do you think it's an accident that my laptop made of steel and plastic is called Apple. And I named mine Apple Blossom?

It's time for another temporary collage -- this time, of me. Ruth. Featherhead. I have already been dismantled and elements put away. What is doesn't stay is for long.

But guess what. Sometimes things stay constant too. A little synchronicity I just found, post script: the tiny striped feather slipping down off the Upper Peninsula in the Michigan map collage is the same feather in the me collage below, in the middle of my forehead. Post post script: 2 more items in both collages, I just noticed -- two petals of the orange flower in Michigan became my lips, and the shell near Lake Michigan became my nose. EEEEEE.

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People, by Peter Spier

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When Peter Spier wrote and illustrated People in 1980, there were over 4 billion people in the world. Now, thirty years later, there are more than six and a half billion people.

This is one of many illustrated books given to Lesley and Peter by my mom. I have a stash of them, extravagantly different-sized and worn, in the guest room book case, waiting for Lesley&Brian-children and Peter&?-children one of these days. I try so hard to be patient. At Christmas I should post from Peter Spier's book Christmas, one of our favorite items to unwrap from the Christmas tubs. It's nothing but an illustrated account of one family's Christmas experience, before, during and after. We also have Rain.

Peter Spier was born in Amsterdam, and later moved to the U.S. He is a prolific illustrator and award winner. He won the Caldecott for Noah's Ark two years before this book. For People, Spier won the Christopher award, for "affirming the highest values of the human spirit." Peter's father, Jo Spier was also an illustrator, and a Jew. Peter was interned at Villa Bouchina near Amsterdam during WWII, a holding place for Jews, and then was moved to the concentration camp Theresienstadt, also known as Terezin. Is there anything more beautiful than someone emerging from an experience like that and birthing creations like this? To still see beauty in people of all types. To be this open.

 This inscription is on the page opposite the title page.

Here are a few pages from People.

"Not nearly all of the world's people can read and

write, yet there are almost one hundred different

ways of doing it."

"But imagine how dreadfully dull this world of

ours would be if everybody would look, think, eat, 

dress, and act the same!"

"Now, isn't it wonderful that each and every one

of us is unlike any other?"

In 1980, it had been 35 years since the end of WWII, which exposed people directly and indirectly to other parts of the world. Now, thirty years since 1980, we see other places and people (some just down the road) beyond what we can hold, let alone absorb or understand.

I agree with what Menander said in the inscription. Knowing other people, from other parts of the world, and other walks of life, was a privilege I had in my home from when I was small. We had wards of the court live with us, kids who did not have safe homes of their own. Some of them brought danger to me, and loss. Into our home my parents also invited international students from China, Thailand, Korea and India to live with us or visit regularly, and we went to their houses too. I remember the overwhelming smell of curry in one tiny university apartment. Now, since I began blogging at the start of 2006, I have found friends in places that I knew little of, and as a result I know them, and myself better.

I just began reading our One Book, One Community book, Zeitoun, about a Syrian man who moved to the U.S., started a family, and lived through Katrina. Since our incoming first year students are expected to read the book, I figure it's time I read one with them this summer. One value for me reading it is that with my laptop open, I look at maps of Syria, Lebanon, Cyprus and Egypt where Zeitoun's family is from, as well as New Orelans, the coasts of Louisiana and Mississippi, wiki histories and find out a little more than I knew - about other people in the world, including my own country. You would not believe how much I don't know.

Do you think we've achieved greater acceptance of people unlike ourselves since Peter Spier's book?

Check out how Sy Safransky saved the 4th of July.

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I♥NY & The Most Interesting Man in the World

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I am a second-rate wife. I went to NYC without Don, visited our daughter and her husband, lived large, and all I brought home to The Most Interesting Man in the World was this t-shirt from the Laguardia airport gift shop for losers like me who didn't purchase a more $ignificant gift on 5th Avenue. Don really is very interesting (ok, stupid understatement, there is nothing the man has not attempted to do in his lifetime), but calling him The Most Interesting Man in the World is what our son started, because Don resembles the man from the Dos Equis XX beer ads. If you go to that link in the last sentence, you can watch videos of the ads. I ♥ them. The narrator makes statements about The Most Interesting man, such as,

XX His charm is so contagious, vaccines have been created for it.

XX He is the only man to ever ace the Rorschach test.

XX Alien abductors have asked him to probe them.

XX Even his enemies list him as their emergency contact number.

To illustrate the resemblance, Don is here in the top photo, below, at Lesley & Brian's wedding last summer, and the other World's Most Interesting Man below him. (The actor is Jonathan Goldsmith, but he looks a little like another interesting man, Maximilian Schell, don't you think?)

The police often question him, just because they find him interesting.

"Stay thirsty, my friends."

Maximilian Schell: "It's your most endearing quality." - Topkapi

But the real point of this post was supposed to be an even more successful ad campaign.

I ♥ N Y

Maybe I am not such a big loser for buying Don this t-shirt, because after I got back from NY I started following the Sartorialist blog, which is chic and cool, and he posted a pic of a trendy guy in a I♥NY t-shirt in his May 21 post on Moscow Men. Basically I don't think this tourism promo logo has gone out of style ever since it was created by Milton Glaser for the failing, flailing state of NY in 1977. I started wondering if I♥NY was the start of the whole "I ♥" thing. It was. Thanks to Google I found other stuff:

♥ This logo is a rebus. A rebus is a word puzzle using pictures to represent words, or parts of words. It was gr8 to find that out.
♥ The type face is a slab serif called American Typewriter. Is that the same as courier?
♥ Milton Glaser also designed the famous psychedelic Bob Dylan poster for CBS records in 1966.
♥ Milton Glaser co-founded New York Magazine with Clay Felker in 1968.
♥ The Director of the New York Department of Commerce, William S. Doyle hired ad agency Wells Rich Greene to help rejuvenate New York's damaged image in 1977. But then, Doyle got the great designer Milton Glaser to design the logo, which he didn't think was any big deal, and he did it for free. We're talking about maybe the most successful and imitated logo in the history of advertising.
♥ The state of New York is currently in such a crisis financially that they are begging ad agencies for free 30-second ads to rekindle the I LOVE NEW YORK campaign.
♥ Milton Glaser modified the logo after 9/11, like this:

Question: When you see I ♥ N Y do you say "I love NY" ? Or do you say "I heart NY"? I say "I love NY".

The Most Interesting Man in the World does not love NY, or heart NY. He might feel relatively neutral about NY. In fact, it's probably more like -





Info found at:
Wiki
Gotham Gazette
ragnewyork
ezinearticles.com