To love life

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Inge and me after walking in the Making Strides event

This is my best friend, Inge. She is a breast cancer survivor. Today we walked a 5K from our state capitol for Making Strides Against Breast Cancer.

Inge. (Please say it in your mind's voice with a soft g, as in flying.) Inge is faithful, and disciplined; she loves language and reads voraciously when she isn't working too hard; she also loves numbers and being organized. She is fascinated by memory and why we remember some things, and not others. She has artistic, intelligent hand writing. Inge is a poet; she is German, with a steel-trap mind; her English is more proficient than many Americans I know. She has beautiful, dewy skin; she adores her 16-year-old son Piet; she is golden, with a golden heart. When we sit together, it's as if we are one person, with two sets of eyes. At lunch today after the walk Inge shared David Brooks' recent column "The Flock Comedies" describing friendship, saying that this passage quoting C.S. Lewis is how she sees ours. I agree:

Most essayistic celebrations of friendship have also been about the deep and total commitment that can exist between one person and another. In his book, “The Four Loves,” C.S. Lewis paints a wonderful picture of such an ideal: “It seems no wonder if our ancestors regarded Friendship as something that raised us almost above humanity. This love, free from instinct, free from all duties but those which love has freely assumed, almost wholly free from jealousy, and free without qualification from the need to be needed, is eminently spiritual. It is the sort of love one can imagine between angels.”

Warning: Mixed metaphors follow.

Seven years ago, Inge told me she had a malignant tumor. That "cosmic two-by-four," as she calls it, smacked her into an intense journey of chemo, radiation, and exploration of the soul. Shortly after the diagnosis, over lunch out of Bento boxes, she described her session that morning with an esoteric healer who was helping her go beyond medical treatment, toward inner wholeness. Hearing about it I practically jumped over the table into her lap with excitement. The moment was full, and I was eager, recognizing instantly that we would be doing this work together. I could feel an unseen world of mystery and beauty ready to flood us with its light, if we could just get the curtains open. For a couple of years we devoured every book that leapt off the shelf at us, starting with Eckhart Tolle's Power of Now, and on into meticulous inner excavations with Don Miguel Ruiz, Michael Brown, Osho, Krishnamurti, Rumi, Thomas Moore, John Hillman, Ken Wilber, Carl Jung, G. I. Gurdjieff, Rainer Maria Rilke, Mary Oliver, and others in snippets, poems and synchronicities. Even a mother beech tree in Ireland and a Scotch pine in a back yard were our teachers. We dug, scraped, chipped, whittled and brushed off caked-on layers of bad habits we'd accumulated, such as resentment, fear, judgment, dependence and jealousy. No matter where we looked, everything in every direction was vibrating: . . . Life! . . . Love! All seemed simultaneously more . . . and less important. An apple, a leaf or a bird were the center of the universe. The present moment was the only one, and it was eternal. Our conversations flowed with enthusiasm, discovery, and hunger for more. As frightening as Inge's cancer was (thank God I didn't lose her), I am grateful that it was the wrecking ball that knocked down my shabby, haphazard scaffolding, revealing a spare, quiet sunlit meadow of peace at the center of myself. The ugly scaffolding isn't gone completely, but the work isn't as aggressive now. It seems to happen on its own, like a hummingbird whose wings are moving, but almost imperceptibly, as if on a different plane.

Life keeps happening. We are healthy (I too, survived melanoma), but death hovers all around, through distant stories, and sometimes close to home. A couple of weeks ago, there was a terrible car wreck here. In one car three teenagers, and in the second car two grandparents lost their lives. One of the teenagers was a friend of Inge's son's and a former 4th grade student in my husband's class. There isn't much to say about such unthinkable sorrows. But a few days later, a rare morning when I failed to read my Writer's Almanac poem, Inge emailed it to me and said, Read this. Sometimes poems transcend the inadequacy of words, cutting right to your core. Love and life become a choice. This was the poem that day:

The Thing Is

by Ellen Bass

to love life, to love it even

when you have no stomach for it

and everything you've held dear

crumbles like burnt paper in your hands,

your throat filled with the silt of it.

When grief sits with you, its tropical heat

thickening the air, heavy as water

more fit for gills than lungs;

when grief weights you like your own flesh

only more of it, an obesity of grief,

you think, How can a body withstand this?

Then you hold life like a face

between your palms, a plain face,

no charming smile, no violet eyes,

and you say, yes, I will take you

I will love you, again.

"The Thing Is" by Ellen Bass, from Mules of Love. © BOA Editions, Ltd., 2002.

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haricots verts - be still, my heart

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I nearly fainted when I saw a large package of haricots verts at the store
- French green beans, thinner than our green bean varieties here.
I get more delirious over haricots verts
than I do over clothes, shoes or jewelry.
Their consistency and flavor are more delicate
in a firm, fresh way, than larger, meatier beans,
their stature like the thinnest, highest stiletto heel to a shoe lover.

When I'm in Paris, at the end of a long day out walking
and a big meal at noon,
I cook them up for supper,
with just cheese, baguette and red wine.
It's comforting to know haricots verts, like all green beans,
are a great source of Vitamins A, C,
potassium, magnesium, folate and riboflavin,
because those nutrients are so good for the heart,
which is important when it's beating hard with excitement
from food. It balances itself out.

This time I blanched them two minutes
with some equally swoon-worthy young asparagus
- asperges in French, doesn't that sound beautiful -
makes me want to sing, or better, listen to "Je t'aime".
Then I rinsed them in cold water and dried them,
stir-fried them in olive oil in the wok until just tender,
in the last half minute adding
a couple tablespoons of fresh minced garlic,
a tiny amount of minced ginger, a couple tablespoons of soy sauce,
and a few dashes of balsamic vinegar.
They're topped with broken walnuts.

When you can't get to Paris in the spring,
you can taste Paris in the spring, right on the farm.
Everything is starting to vibrate.
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the bell rings for health

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Come in, please sit down, don't mind the bell, I'll tell you about it in a minute. Here, put this cushion behind your back. Now, let me introduce you to my friend Barry.

I first saw a crowd gathered around this fellow in January last year and moved in close to see what all the hubbub was about. Everyone was jostling and humming and then all around people started shushing. So we hushed. Then Barry told a story. After he was done, I thought, how'd he do that? His story was ordinary, just something about living in Toronto, or maybe it was some mystery in the woods he and his cutey black dog Lindsay found on their walk, or something smart his painter wife Linda said. I don't remember. But it really doesn't matter what the story was about. It was the man's charm, his humble view of himself as a sort of funny ordinary guy who faces life squarely and dutifully, that made me go back regularly with the crowd on the bluff and find something true, and lovely.

A couple months after I joined the Barry-listening crowd, we were all dealt a whammy blow. Barry was diagnosed with esophageal cancer. His narrative changed, but his humility, charm and humor strengthened - or maybe it was just that his true character was more exposed. We listened with hands to open mouths and welled up eyes as he told about scans and tests showing that his cancer had metastasized from the esophagus to his hip, ribs and spine. Even cancer cells crowded around, as if to listen for how his story would unfold. But everything in him and in us the crowd said No to that army. Barry has pulled out chemo, meditation, relaxation, a healthy diet - whatever he can to prolong his story telling days, and we offered him the best advice we'd heard too. He was willing to try almost anything, because after all, he loves the Living thing.

He's an explorer of life, this Barry. These last months he got to examine the deep dark side, and we got to listen, cry, pray, meditate and walk alongside him for his health. Thursday, this very week Thursday, February 18, Barry completes his chemo treatment at Princess Margaret Hospital in Toronto at 2 o'clock. There is a bell there. When Barry completes that last chemo treatment, he will ring the bell loud and steady, and throughout Princess Margaret Hospital people will cheer, applaud, whoop! That global crowd listening to Barry's story? We'll be ringing bells around the world and cheering and whooping too. At 2pm Thursday my cell phone alarm will ring in my university office. I'll stop what I'm doing - maybe a student will be sitting there, wondering what happened - and I'll close my eyes, thank the Universe for Barry, for his survival, for my friend Inge beating breast cancer, for my own life after melanoma, for all our loved ones who suffer through illness and disease, and ask if we could please be allowed to explore the world with Barry a while longer.

There is a little sign near that bell at Princess Margaret Hospital with a quote by Ralph Waldo Emerson:

"What lies behind us, and what lies before us,
are tiny matters compared to what lies within us."

Read Barry's plan for ringing the bell here. If you join the crowd and ring yours, it will be like D-Day. And oh, I have a story Mom told me about that. On the 6th of June in 1944, Mom and Dad lived in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia. They were working in the tobacco fields to supplement my dad's pay as itinerant preacher. Suddenly on that warm sixth of June, bells began ringing all across the valley. Their neighbor came running out, "What happened, what happened?" My dad replied, "It's D-Day, the Allies have invaded Normandy!" The farmer retorted, "Oh, is that all, I thought the pigs had got out!"

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out of sorts

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phrases.org says the meaning of "out of sorts" is:

Mildly unwell;
not in one's usual health or state of mind

The origin is:

"Since at least the 17th century 'sorts' has been the name of the letters used by typographers. This usage is referred to in Notes on a Century of Typography at the University Press Oxford 1693–1794 and is nicely defined in Joseph Moxon's Mechanick exercises, or the doctrine of handy-works - printing, 1683:

"The Letters... in every Box of the Case are... called Sorts in Printers and Founders Language; Thus a is a Sort, b is a Sort."

To be 'out of sorts' would clearly be unwelcome to a typesetter. That terminology could be the source of the phrase in its current meaning. The above citations are pre-dated by one from Samuel Ward, which makes no mention of the print trade. That in his The life of faith in death,1621:

"I wonder... to see one... that knowes all must worke for the best, to be at any time out of tune, or out of sorts."

~ ~ ~

Being "out of sorts" offers a chance to observe the elements of your life.

My BIL Joe talked at dinner the other night about the "thinking mind" in Buddhist terms. It's where I keep track of who's got an appointment at 9:45, then 10:30, then 11:15, etc. It's what I use to come up with options to solve a student problem, and it's the reasoning tool I use to get to logical conclusions - whether who to vote for or what dish to contribute to my mother-in-law's Mother's Day dinner.

It's also the potentially annihilating part of my brain where I overthink things. Why did so-and-so say that? What did she mean by it? It's where I get defensive, and it's what works overtime in times of stress going to bed at night. It's where I think I'm the center of the universe and interpret myself through the imagined perceptions of people around me. It's where I think laterally (and literally) and forget to close my eyes and listen.

Joe also talked about the non-thinking part of his brain, the place that is there "behind" thoughts and sorting. Maybe it's another dimension, where artists live in another kind of imagined reality, not one that denies facts but considers possibilities in non-data-like ways.

It's a place of the moment. It's organic. Where what is, is. It's where you get out of the sorted into your own space - empty, open and free.

I'm on vacation at home, and I need to give my thinking mind a rest. Maybe being out of sorts is a good thing. Seeing a tulip lying down on the job or seeing an "a" out of its Sort, lets you really see them outside the box, for their essence. Being that tulip or "a" out of the box could be good too.

mushrooms, mycelium & swine flu

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While trees are popping chartreuse leaves at the end of April, after a couple of rainy days and warm nights, we slide our farm clogs on and head into the two little woods behind us to scour the ground for morel mushrooms.



I have to wear my reading glasses so the dried leaves and mushrooms don't blur into one another. With clear vision, I can see how hideously brain-like they look. To one who detests mushrooms - disgusting! To one who adores them - tantalizing!

Don found these clusters of morels hidden beneath brush Friday;
I had gone over the same spot that morning and missed them.

We have never had the luck of some who fill bags and bags with morels. We know a lady who refuses to eat them but will hunt and pick for hours in her woods to harvest them, then give them away with a smile. The most we've found any given year is around 70. Don found the season's first six last week - the ones in the top photo, the biggest being around 2". Then Friday he found the clusters in the photo above.

The season lasts about two weeks, and there is much lore on where to find them (at the foot of an old apple tree, or around fallen elms among them) and how to pick them and not pick them. The clumps of morels Don found Friday were under the jagged edge of the old fallen apple tree. When we picked them, we broke them off and left the base in the ground so they'll continue to propagate.

You can tell real morels from poisonous imposters by their hollowness.

We soak morels in salty water to float out dirt and bugs, then dip them in milk, dredge in flour, and sauté in a little mixture of oil and butter (oil keeps the butter from burning), tossing on some salt and pepper. They are delicious and rival truffles, which sell for hundreds of dollars a pound. (Part of the problem with truffles is that being so expensive, you only get thrifty bits of them in a dish concocted by a clever chef who spreads them out, otherwise who could afford to eat them? And in such small samples, you don't get to really experience their flavor and texture.)

Did you know there are estimated to be one to two million species of fungi? Only about 150,000 of those form mushrooms. Of those, I don't know how many thousands are edible. And of those, only a fraction are cultivated and sold for consumption.

Like humans, fungi "breathe" oxygen and emit carbon dioxide. In fact animals, including humans of course, are closer to fungi in makeup than to plants, protozoa or bacteria.

Beneath these treasures of the ground is a lacy web of mycelium, the root system of fungi. These webs of fibers lie beneath forests and fields all over the planet, and some of them stretch for miles. The largest known living organism in the world is a fungus called honey mushroom, discovered in Oregon in 2000. It's 2,200 acres, that's 3.5 miles across - about 1,665 football fields, yet only one cell wall thick.

In an interview in The Sun magazine, Paul Stamets, author of Mycelium Running: How Mushrooms Can Help Save the World, and at fungi.com, explains from 30 years of research how mycelia are essential to the survival of our planet.

Stamets explains that mycelia quite naturally clean up pollutants in the soil. They also feed plants. And what is truly remarkable - when coupled with plants, they make them more resistant to heat and erosion. Grasses laced with mycelia are heat resistant up to 160 degrees fahrenheit, whereas without the fungus, they would wither above 120 degrees.

Stamets suggests we should couple mycelia with corn and other crops to make them "naturally" drought resistant, which sounds better than genetically modifying crops, but I wonder. If the fungi and plants aren't naturally coupled, are we messing with something that shouldn't be messed with? Maybe Stamets and other scientists have an answer.



I leave you with an exciting 18-minute YouTube video of Paul Stamets' TED talk almost exactly one year ago on May 8, 2008: 6 Ways Mushrooms can save the world. It is extraordinary and well worth your time to hear about the network of mycelia in the earth beneath you, and how these organisms benefit us, could help clean up our planet and even provide eco-fuel. There is a segment about their use against flu viruses, and I am very curious to find anything on the Internet connecting fungi with the current Swine H1N1 flu outbreak, since he mentions this strain specifically in the video. You'll get the feeling from his rapid speech that he is trying to tell as much as he possibly can about his favorite subject in too short a time.

Visualize sleekness (and peace)

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Now that winter is over, words like shorts, tank top, and swimsuit spring to mind. Yikes!

Pasty white legs and, you know, extra . . . softness that I was squeezing into winter clothes.

Another spring word: diet. Oh, and: treadmill (or as Susan says: dreadmill).

But wait, I just read one of the best ideas I've heard about getting fit, and it isn't the Zone or Atkins, Weight Watchers or Jenny Craig, macrobiotics or calorie counting. In fact it isn't dieting at all.

It's from the stuff about the law of attraction (such as in the book and film The Secret): What you focus on you attract more of to yourself. Rather than focusing on debt, for instance, focus on abundance. Or if like me, the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and Gaza (etc., etc.) are driving you nuts, instead of focusing on what you hate about war, focus instead on peace. It really is a shift in perspective. And according to the law, you will begin attracting abundance and peace, or whatever it is you focus on. (I so appreciated Loring's post of the peace rally he participated in in Colorado Springs on the anniversary of the start of the Iraq war for how it focused on peace, and the words of MLK Jr: "Hate cannot drive out hate, only love can do that; hate only multiplies hate.") This is going to effect how, or if, I will continue to rant at huffing.

So, back to getting fit, "the first thing to know is that if you focus on losing weight, you will attract back having to lose more weight, so get 'having to lose weight' out of your mind. It's the very reason why diets don't work. Because you are focused on losing weight, you must attract back continually having to lose weight." Here's a whole excerpt on fitness from The Secret. Basically, stop blaming food for how you look. Then decide what is the weight you want to be, and visualize yourself at that weight. Start feeling good about your body, and you'll respect it.

That's what that pretty lady taped to our treadmill is representing: the fit me. I'm never going to be 22 again, or look like her, but I must say this has worked so far. When I suddenly crave a PayDay candy bar mid-afternoon between appointments, if I visualize her, the craving fades. I think: she wouldn't eat that right now, so neither will I. (Well she eats one sometimes.) Now I try to go to work prepared with string cheese and an apple for snacks. And on the treadmill, I straighten and lift my spine. Doesn't she have great posture? So do I, darn it!

Now, what to do about pasty white legs?

flaxination

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After months of bundling up, it's comforting to look ahead to summer when I'll be skipping to the laundry line in loose linen clothes. I know, I know, I've been posting lots of winter praise, but I confess my shoulders ache with tension from bracing for the outdoors. This is my Filene's Basement $7 linen skirt, which I wore hanging laundry last summer for Peter to shoot a laundry line series on my first Holga film roll.

The linen for those summer clothes is made from flax of course. I didn't realize what a labor intensive process flax-to-linen is until I read about pulling, stacking, swingling, rippling, retting, scutching, heckling, spinning and weaving here. It's done mostly by machine now, but you can see Egyptians in these images growing and processing flax for linen. Do you suppose they ironed their linen garments? That would be an interesting frame added to these Egyptian collages.

We will be using another product made from flax when we install old fashioned linoleum squares in our bathroom. What appealed to us about linoleum (unlike vinyl) is that it is made from linseed - flax - and is natural and biodegradable.

Ingesting flax is good for you too. I take flax seed oil supplements for their high levels of lignans (chemicals that act as antioxidants) and Omega 3 fatty acids. There are wide-ranging health benefits against diabetes, heart disease, cancer and maybe Crohn's disease.

I was surprised to read about the "This Way" bike at boingboing. It's made from flax, but it looks like wood. I can just see myself riding this Big Wheel for adults on country roads to work. Nice thought actually.

I am humbled by new technologies as well as ancient processes that I know nothing about from experience. Friends like Gwen have sheered sheep and spun the fleece into wool, then knitted it into garments. She would not surprise me at all if she told me she has processed flax into linen.

Hands, hands, what are you doing? I think I live too much in my head.

my salvation

I'm nursing a head cold. Time to make ginger tea (chukku coffee and tea in India I found out from rauf when I posted this recipe in February 2007). On his way home from school Wednesday Don rescued me by picking up fresh ginger.

Ginger Tea

3-4 thin slices fresh ginger (unpeeled is fine)
juice of 1/2 - 1 full lemon
1 garlic clove, peeled and cut into 2-3 chunks (optional)
1 dried red pepper (optional)
honey to taste
hot water

Garlic has healing properties, and I love the taste, but leave it out if you don't like it. Dried red pepper helps clear congestion, but again, just ginger, lemon and honey are wonderful. Lemon with its vitamin C is great for a cold (maybe helps the cold end more quickly, well probably not in this small dose - but it can't hurt, and it tastes good!), honey is soothing on the throat, and ginger is nice on the tummy when you get all that yucky drainage. Lesley introduced me to this tea as a cold remedy last winter, and I fell in love with the flavor, even when I didn't have a cold. Now that colder temps and cold viruses are upon us (well, not in Australia, Letitia), it's time to share the comfort again.

Ode

In a glass.

In a leaf.



We'd die without it.





Cloud.







Rain.






Snow. Ice.

River.

Vapor.

Lake.

Ocean.

Groundwater.
Aquifer.
Water table.

It's free.

It's priceless.

(No plastic water bottles please.)

radical & poo-free

Arthur Dove's 'Clouds and Water' at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in NYC

Daughter Lesley told me recently about a blog site she found of a small crafty businesswoman who posted a bunch of helpful tips for simple, green cleaning.

I haven't read about house cleaning there yet, but I will. I still have some Clorox Green cleaner to use up.

I did adopt the tips for facial care and shampoo-free hair care. She recommends this site for instructions on the poo-free hair care thing, and this site for the facial care thing.

Facial care:

I'll let you read the particulars at those sites if you're interested, but basically the facial care is merely cleansing your skin with equal parts olive oil and castor oil. Like she says, why would I put anything on my skin I wouldn't put in my mouth? I massage the oil onto my face at the end of the day, then lay a hot washcloth on it for a little facial. When the washcloth begins to cool, I gently clean and rub my face. It feels very soft when I'm done. I used to have flakiness around my chin and nose. Since cleaning my face with these oils, I have none.

Hair care:

The hair cleaning part is a little trickier, and I'm still figuring it out since we all have different hair types, lengths, etc. But since I already only washed my hair every 3 days before this, I was a good candidate to try it, since some people find that it takes a couple of weeks for their hair to adjust and stop generating extra oil, making their hair look greasy. Anyway, one tablespoon baking soda dissolved in warm water, massage into scalp and let sit a minute. Then rinse with a cup or so of water with a tablespoon or two of apple cider vinegar in it. I've done this twice now, and both times my hair was soft, bouncy and shiny. And it did not get the greasiness, thankfully. Please do look at those instructions for answers to questions. It does take some getting used to not having any lather. But that is just a psychological ploy someone taught us, that we need lather and suds to get things clean! Thems are chemicals that create that illusion - SLS and SLFS (sodium lauryl sulfate, sodium laureth sulfate) - YUCK.

As the woman at this site says, shampoo got introduced in the 20th century, it's a detergent, and it strips our hair of natural oils. So, conditioner had to be invented to put the oil back in. Pretty ridiculous, and pretty typical of much of our oh-so-modern world, la-di-da! (who said in a movie "la-di-frickin-da"? Was that Shirley MacLaine in "Terms of Endearment"? Oh! No! It was Chris Farley in "Saturday Night Live.")

It's funny how this feels so radical and new when it's not. I love that.

Corn update

Click image for larger view

Back on June 7 I posted a corn update. The corn plants were about 12 inches high then, 2 1/2 weeks ago.

Yesterday, we stopped to measure how tall the corn has gotten, because we're a week away from the 4th of July and the famous almaniacal adage that the corn is usually "knee-high by the 4th of July." It looked quite high -- waist-high for me, maybe?

Well, even with a week to go, the corn is to Don's hips (he is 6 feet tall). In mid-Michigan we've had the perfect combination of rain and sun this season to make all the flora prolific! More raspberries and blackberries ripening than ever. Lush, lush, lush!

If you live in Michigan (or not) click here to see how to find locally grown organic foods via MOFFA (Michigan Organic Food and Farm Alliance). I hope more and more farmers will realize what a market there is (I think!) for locally grown organic produce and start selling it!

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