Expanding

So my little job copy editing for Travels in Paradise is growing. Not only is there plan for more content to be edited but now I am getting to write reviews of women's clothing. The publisher has also given me a "soapbox", their version of an editorial where I can put pieces that fit with our mission of "Exposing enlightened products, places and people"

It feels good to know that there are people out there who think what I have to say is worth sharing. I know it is just a small site, but it is still my voice out there helping to make change. Starting out I am going to rewrite some of the stuff I've worked on here. I will link to it any time I have a new article out.

A Poem for Alder

A riot of colors
he fills the room or
field or heart.
Feeling his way through
as only he
can with smiles and tugs,
until everything tumbles
onto him.
There he will sit
among the pieces he has collected
tasting everything
to learn its essence
the stuff behind the shape
or use.

Up again
going
going
where is the up that
he can reach?
To find
more parts of his world
to taste
until he is full of textures
and shapes.

With tears
he drifts away from
some of his collection
that
has not been stored
in memory through the tips
of his fingers
and the width of his tongue.

A Day of Rest

I have been reading lately about Sabbaths and days of rest. In the book "To Life" by Harold Kushner he points out that on a Sabbath day one not only should leave work but also the problems and issues that fill your mind. Not only is it out of respect (for the earth, god, goddess, or whatever) but it is a way to be more useful and whole (my word) for the other six days of the week.

Whether or not observing the Sabbath is a religious activity isn't really the point for me. The idea of stopping and putting aside what fills your mind for the other six days to spend it with family or solo is what I find so natural.

While we strive to create a life that is focused on spending time as a family, not rushed, the realities of Kevin's school and having a baby do not work in a Sabbath's favor. Yet the days we do take the time to leave the rest of our worries and books behind are the ones that strengthen us as a family. It isn't a sacrifice for us to spend a day hiking together because afterwards we are all rejuvenated and ready to get on with the important things.

Sabbath II 1983 by Wendell Berry
The year relent, and free
Of work, I climb again
To where the old tree waits,
Time out of mind. I hear
Traffic down the road,
Engines high overhead.
And then a quiet comes,
A cleft in time, silence
Of metal moved by fire;
The air holds little voices,
Titmice and chickadees,
Feeding through the treetops
Among the new small leaves,
Calling again to mind
The grace of circumstance,
Sabbath economy
In which all thought is song,
All labor is a dance.
The world is made at rest,
In ease of gravity.
I hear the ancient theme
In low world-shaping song
Sung by the falling stream.
Here where a rotting log
Has slowed the flow: a shelf
Of dark soil, level laid
Above the tumbled stone.
Roots fasten it in place.
It will be here a while;
What holds it here decays.
A richness from above,
Brought down, is held, and holds
A little while in flow.
Stem and leaf grow from it.
At cost of death, it has
A life, Thus falling founds,
Unmaking makes the world.

Family Weekend

Our family weekend started with a foggy drive to see Kevin's parents in Salida Saturday night. The picture above is of our hubcaps when we stopped half way there. For being mud and ice covered hubcaps these were beautiful.

It was a full house when we woke up on Sunday, both Kevin's sister and brother with his family were there, ten of us in total.

Everyone except our smaller family unit went to church for Easter service. Kevin said that he felt weird going to a Seder on Tuesday and then a church on Sunday. So we enjoyed a family cuddle on the couch while they were gone.

The rest of the day was a blur of eating watching movies and more eating. My mother in law made so many different foods for brunch and dinner that I never got to taste everything. Not only was there meals but there was also lots of chocolate to be had.

Our niece and nephew had fun setting up easter egg hunts for the adults. The first one was easy but later in the day they did a second one that had all of us down on our hands and knees searching. It occurred to me as we hunted that since they were still small (5 and 8) that the hunt was only half as difficult as it could have been since they only hid the eggs within their reach and not above.

After dinner Kevin's brother and family left and the rest of us went to the hot springs. It is only the second time that Kevin has been swimming with Alder and he would not share. I got him a few times but he was having too much fun with him that I mainly just watched the two of them.

Kevin gets this look come across his face when he is completely engrossed with Alder that fills me to my toes with love for him. It is the same look he had the first night when he held Alder still covered with vermix.

I fall in love again every time I catch him at it.

Bath Time

BATH TIME
Alder came and found me after his nap. He just crawled across the house and announce the end of his nap. When I came over and gave him a hug and put more soy milk in his bottle he happily went off for a while. He is such an independent soul.

Since we are seeing Grandma and Grandpa and other assorted family tomorrow it seemed a good time to bathe him. Water is his place, he was born in the water, loves to be in the water, especially when we join him. Of course the sinks too small so he had to content himself with a soap bottle and the sprayer hose.

Afterwards, he found his favorite spatula. Life is good when you have your favorite kitchen utensil in hand.

I should learn from him to be so easily joyous. To experience each thing completely before going on to the next. I have so much to learn from my son.

Snow and Poetry

Our delicious spring was interrupted with the usual but always unexpected April snow. Alder and I have been cuddling and playing on the couch all day. He's sleeping now.

From: 1945-1985: Poem for the Anniversary
by Mary Oliver


Sometimes,
walking for hours through the wood,
I don't know what I'm looking for,
maybe for something
shy and beautiful to come
frisking out of the undergrowth.

Once a fawn did just that.
My dog didn't know
what dogs usually do.
And the fawn didn't know.

For as a doe, she was probably
down in Round Pond, swizzling up
the sweet marsh grass and dreaming
that everything was fine.

<><><><><>

The way I'd like to go on living in this world
wouldn't hurt anything, I'd just go on
walking uphill and downhill, looking around,
and so what if half the time I don't know
what for-

so what if it doesn't come
to a hill of beans-

so what if I voted liberal,

and am Jewish,
or Lutheran-

or a game warden-

or a bingo addict-

and smoke a pipe?

<><><><>

In the films of Dachau and Auschwitz and Bergen-Belsen
the dead rise from the earth
and are piled in front of us, the starved
stare across forty years,
and lush, green musical Germany
shows again its iron claw, which won't

ever be forgotten, which won't
ever be understood, but which did,
slowly, for years, scrape across Europe

<><><><>

while the rest of the world
did nothing.

This poem stirred my soul yesterday.

Cardamom

I have a recipe for cardamom rice that I have been making for a while. But it wasn't until I found a recipe for a great bread that has cardamom in it that I discovered that the green seeds I was using were not the actual cardamom seeds. The first time I made the bread the recipe called for breaking the pod and removing the seeds. I expected to find a few narrow seeds life fennel or bulkier like sunflower seeds. Instead the seeds that I found were many and ancient looking. The experience of opening the pod was like walking into a store front and finding a medieval cathedral inside, and that is just the visual. When I separated the seeds their aroma spread through out the kitchen.

Cardamom comes from southern India and Sri Lanka. It is grown in monsoon forests and until the 19th century it was not cultivated. It's history is long, the first written mention of it was in the 2nd century BCE where it was mention in an Ayurvedic medical text. Like coffee, tea and other spices cardamom was traded for centuries along the silk road. It is highly valued, only out priced by saffron and vanilla. It's cultivation came during England's colonization of India, part of the immense plantations for coffee and tea of the era.

There is a lot more information about Cardamom here: http://www.plantcultures.org.uk/plants/cardamom_landing.html

Yesterday I made both the bread and the rice. The house still smells of cardamom. I imagine that it is a scent that has been filling kitchens and tents for thousands of years.