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Not so random thoughts on a Saturday morning

I had a great time in Asheville. I do think it was the best vacation I have taken in a long time, and I was very relaxed. In fact, it probably would have served me well to stay a few days longer, and that is a big change. Just last year I was struggling with staying away more than 2 to 3 days; feeling antsy and like I needed to get home, and then not quite feeling settled when I was at home.

Perhaps that is the key, feeling settled. I feel settled and happy. Perhaps it is easier to go away because I am more settled when I come home. Perhaps being settled isn't as much about a place as it is a state of mind, of learning to accept that sometimes the world goes as we wish and sometime it doesn't, of learning to acknowledge our feelings and respect them, but then to let them go and not let them drag us into depression or anger in some situations, or into frustration or endless yearning for more or better. We never regain what we fear we lost and striving for more doesn't make us happier; often all we accomplish is creating more pain, pain in others we love. We all experience sadness, fear, anger, but how we deal with them is our own choice. Perhaps happiness is just that, acceptance. Happiness comes in embracing joy, acknowledging sadness, and living with the sure knowledge that both will come again.

Perhaps there is more to it than that. At any rate, in my brief time away I've accepted some new insights into the ways I do and do not always handle stress well. I will leave it mostly at that, simply stating that there are still things I internalize too much.

But then, I've also come to think that contradiction and struggle between striving and accepting is part of what it means to be human in much the same way we struggle between wanting to be independent and yet needing others, between creativity and safety. At time life seems to be a long lesson in finding ways to accept and let go. Sometimes we need to step aside, get away and clear our heads.

So I am happy and settled in my new house. But it really isn't about the house, although the house is not irrelevant. Part of my time in Asheville was spent at a craft fair and in galleries. The craft fair was all about things, and I suppose so is a gallery, but they can also be about seeing things differently. I was torn between not needing or wanting more things, and yet at the same time, sometimes wanting. More struggle. I am not about to disparage things in general, things can be fun, they just aren't the be all and end all.    In some ways going to craft fairs and galleries reminded me not to buy, and perhaps that inclination is worth a post of its own. But I did buy a couple of small things, one of which is pictured above. It is a necklace made of automotive springs, part of a line of jewelry made by an artist in Germany. The necklace is light, and springy, and I think it is really cool.

I bought the necklace because I simply think it is neat and interesting and pretty. But I wonder if wearing a necklace made of springs can remind me to spring back and let go.   I wonder if buying a necklace when I am thinking about being tightly wound, a necklace made of springs, can act as a talisman of sorts. I am probably just attaching too much meaning to the thing, but I suspect that even a thing can be a gateway. If, when I wear a sweater I knit I am always reminded of where I was when I was knitting, why can't something I purchased take on equal significance? The danger comes when the things become more important than the memories or ideas they represent, when the gateway becomes more important than the destination, when our talismans become more important than our connections and communities, when our small safe room becomes more important than the village that supports and nurtures us, the village that allowed us to create that room in the first place.

July 29, 2017
Word-Less Wednesday

The other daylily bloomed. The photo was taken in the reflective glow of mid-day sun. This particular plant is also recovering from its questionable beginnings, so I am sure it will survive.

The remaining photos are from my trip to Asheville last week. I loved Asheville and will go back. Most of these photos are snippets and small details from my morning walks. As usual, I am not very good at photos that give a sense of the entire place, but of the little bits that draw my eyes, such as these grates in a building Tikka and I walked around every morning and evening. These small details made me smile every time I saw them.

I suppose this is not surprising. When I was 7 my parents took us to the Alhambra. All I remembered of that palace was the detail of one particular tile floor. When I returned as an adult, I saw and admired much more, but I did not feel that I had truly returned to the Alhambra until I found the floor that had haunted my memory for decades.

Art was everywhere, not just in galleries.

Here, I love not only the mural, but the sculpture of cats on the wall. Art of the everyday.

Tikka and I walked through here every morning, and often again in the evening. During the day the stands are populated with artists selling prints, etchings, jewelry, and tie-dyed baby clothes. Both in the early morning silence and during the daily hustle and bustle, it reminded me of many walks in Madrid, of similar venues, and similar gatherings of dawdlers, buyers, and sellers. It felt like home to me in an odd way.

I have an iron just like this, but of course on a more useable scale.

But it wasn't all art and frivolity. I appreciated the availability of trash and recycling receptacles. Attractively designed as well.

The craft fair was fun. Walking around the downtown area, exploring galleries and shops, eating very well, and watching people was also fun. The glass scissors above are by Rick Beck. They are very large, although I don't really give you any references except that they rest upon a table. From my favorite gallery, Blue Sprial 1, where I walked around in a happy daze. Apparently my taste leans more toward studio craft as art, and perhaps the avant-garde.

Or I just like giant scissors and irons.

July 26, 2017
Five Things Friday

1. In June I went to the Daylilly Festival at Oakes Daylilies with friends. It poured almost the entire time we were there or I might have shared the adventure with you. Even though I have basically said that I am not planting, at least not planting perennials I did come home with a couple of medium to short daylilies, which I new would happily fit in a couple of bare areas in the front, areas the previous owner had filled with annuals.   Two of those daylilies have put out buds, one of them bloomed Wednesday.

Oddly the two daylilies that seem determined to bloom are the two that did not look like they were adapting well. We have had a lot of rain, at least through the first week of July, and these areas were perhaps a little more waterlogged than daylilies prefer.    Then again, perhaps it is not odd, a plant, I suppose, like any living thing, wants to reproduce. I wonder if the plant has enough gumption left for me to transplant it, or given that we are currently in a dry period, if it is best to leave it where it is to recover, waiting to transplant in the early fall, before the rains probably recommence.

2. Tikka and I are out on adventure. The contractors have been busy working at my house since yesterday morning. Due to the nature of the work being done, we were asked to vacate for a couple of days, so we have wandered over to Asheville. North Carolina. Tikka is a pretty good travel companion, happy to rest quietly in a hotel room, as long as we stick more or less to our normal routine of meals and walks, which is not difficult to do, and even though summer camp is fun, I think she'd rather go than be left behind.

3. Yesterday evening, the plan had been that I would walk Tikka and then go back out for dinner, but downtown Asheville seems to be a pretty dog-friendly place. Tikka is a very social girl, mostly well-behaved, but social nonetheless, and she loved the opportunity to meet her four-legged compatriots, as well as to stop and say hello to anyone who said "hello cutie" and asked if they could pet her. We were out for a while and somehow ended up stopping at a place with a lovely shaded patio and some nearby musicians. I stayed for dinner without taking Tikka home first. She got her water bowl and settled happily under the table, while our menus were brought out. Yes, our menus, as there was a doggie menu as well. Alas Tikka had already dined, although she might well have preferred a bison burger with quinoa.

4. We had arrived in the early afternoon, after spending an extra hour and a half on the freeway due to an accident in the middle of a construction site, and I was tired and hungry. I found a tapas bar, where I had a lovely glass of chilled Albariño, and a couple of small plates, one of which was the lovely, and delicious, plate of sardines shown above.

5. Sated, and probably foolish, I meandered back to the hotel.   I passed a store filled with looms and yarn and fibers for knitting and felting, basket making supplies, dyestuffs, and all kinds of fabulous things. I don't have my own studio set up yet, or my loom, but I am eager to learn and play. I wandered around, contented to let myself remain dazed. I'm not ready for more supplies, I just needed to observe the riches. I kind of like this jumbled photo of multiple looms, looking outward onto the street because it captures my sense of dazed abundance, exactly what I wanted to remember from that first visit.

My midday walk was foolish because I neglected to apply sunscreen when Ileft the hotel to go to lunch, and although I probably only spent about 15 minutes or so in the sun, and another 20-30 following my meal, (already after 3) I did get a sunburn. I had applied sunscreen before leaving Knoxville, since I have a history of melanoma, but that had been hours before, and the altituide is higher as well, although I do not know if it is enough to make a difference. It may be. I recognize that I have been growing more lax over the years with sunscreen, and I do struggle with the issues of burning, vs UVA (more likely implicated in melanoma), vs vitamin D absorption. Although I haven't burnt in day to day activities, I've noticed that even though I apply a broad spectrum sunscreen daily, and wear a sun protective shirt if I work I the yard during the hours when the sun is high, I have gotten a little more color than usual on my arms and chest just from day to day short-term exposure. I've bee lax, and this is a reminder that I need to improve.

July 21, 2017
Sanctuary

Relaxation.

Is the sign of being fully settled the ability to kick back and fully relax? Perhaps so. I might have said I was settled a month ago, and it was true, in that the major items needed for functioning were unpacked, that this house felt like home, that I was content. But even as I said that I wasn't fully settled. Home was not yet quite my sanctuary. We are not all seekers of sanctuary; I am sure there are those of who do not, at least overtly, see the need. But I am a homebody and always have been. I love to go, love to travel, and I love to come home.   I am home.

The other night I was home, sitting in the living room, listening to Bartok string quartets and just enjoying that sense of presence and of place. I was looking at the most recent issue of American Craft magazine, which had somehow gotten shoved into a pile when it arrived. Dinner was simmering slowly on the stove. I was making an Indonesian-style curry, or at least that is how it began, with an idea, and a recipe, but it evolved to accommodate the two large squashes given to me by a friend, the contents of my 'fridge, the lack of something, the addition of something else, my mood.

I picked up my knitting. It has been a long time since I could contentedly sit and knit without fretting about other things that needed doing — either my own always too long list of things to be accomplished or some general sense of unrest in the world. It had been a long time since I felt that sense of sanctuary, that place where I didn't need to either actively busy myself, or intentionally seek silence and meditation to find peace.

Sanctuary.

You know our sanctuaries are where we make them, where we allow them to grow. And it is often we ourselves who hinder our own ability to find peace. It is easier to blame circumstances or others or the weather, than to admit that peace is there if we will simply drop our guard, simply accept that it was here all along.

Near me, near where I at on the sofa, the music washing over me, I looked at the round painted table that had belonged to my grandmother, a table purchased when she and my grandfather lived in either Peru or Columbia, I don't actually remember which.  Where the table is from is less important than the fact of its own history from making through generations of use. The table has traveled with me for years, in my mid-century modern house in Hyde Park, where it probably didn't fit, the first house in Knoxville, and now here. In fact it took a while for that table to find its own space here in this house as it is right now, to find its corner, to accumulate its pile of memories and artifacts. That table looks more comfortable than it has in years, just as I perhaps feel more comfortable than I have in years. But I don't believe I would have ever anticipated that I would create such a crowded vignette on an already busy table in an old house. I would have told you I wanted simple open spaces and minimalism. How little we know ourselves.

Yes, I'll repeat that. How little we know ourselves. I do not believe I am unique in this. We all think we know ourselves until something, and it may be something minor, uproots that sense of confidence or complacence. And we are reminded once again of how delightfully complex we humans are, how maddeningly inconsistent, of how much we coast by on surfaces and little we plumb the depths, our own or those of others.

I sit on the sofa, knitting on my lap, my grandmother's table beside me, and think we have both found our place in this moment, here in Knoxville TN. A handmade, hand-painted table from Latin America, a Kiddush cup from somewhere in the Austro-Hungarian empire, an African basket, a pot made by a native-American artist, a small sculpture given me by my daughter (heart-daughter, step-daughter, are the designations truly useful?), the artifacts of histories and families and lives well-lived. Perhaps our sanctuaries are simply where we can be ourselves, where all our bumps and lumps and out of place bits can hang out without judgement.   But to remain sanctuaries they cannot become memory-chalet's, they must be open to the new, the out-of-place, the uncomfortable, because that is, indeed what it means to be a sanctuary, a place of welcome, lumps and all.

Home is my sanctuary. To remain a sanctuary it must never become a prison, a place of exclusion, a place that locks out the world. All are welcome.

July 18, 2017
Reading in the Afternoon, Thoughts on Two Books

The past few days, I have, when given the opportunity, spent a few happy hours in the afternoon or early evening in the western sunroom, the one I tend to think of as the afternoon room. It is actually lovely most of the day, although perhaps slightly less so in the earliest morning hours, when I tend to prefer the light in the eastern sunroom. Actually, I use both rooms throughout the day, depending on mood and purpose, and their presence played a not-insignificant role in my attraction to this house.

Anyway, for a long while the western sunroom, which remains somewhat devoid of furniture, was the room in which the as-yet-unpacked boxes resided. As such, although I had a chair, and my desk had initially been situated in this room before being moved upstairs, it was not a room in which I could comfortably settle and while away happy hours. The unpacked boxes stood towering over me in remonstrance. But now the boxes are gone, their contents settled around the house, the packing detritus safely sent to recycleville, and I can sit in peace. Eventually a sofa will reside where the pillows are piled haphazardly, and there might well be a table under that lamp as well, but the emptiness does not plague me. It is more a promise as yet unfulfilled.

This room has perfect light for needlework and it is here that my needlework chair resides. I can sit here, enjoying the light, listening to music or a book on tape, happily stitching. Or I can sit with an actual book in my hand, although I do miss having an ottoman, or perhaps a table situated so that I can easily jot down a note or two. Although the needlework chair is comfortable, I suspect that sunroom reading will become more regular once there is a sofa and a table or two.

Nonetheless, it is in this room that I recently finished rereading Upton Sinclair's first Lanny Budd novel, World's End. I would never state that Sinclair is a writer of the highest sort, and although there are beautiful paragraphs here and there, there are also tedious sections, contrived plots, and a lot of history. In fact there are times when the novel reads more like a history book than a novel. But this is my third reading, first in my teens, then in my 30's, and now, closing out my 50's I find I still enjoy reading this book.

The series begins when Lanny is 13 and this volume extends through the end of the first World War, when Lanny is 19. Yes, at times it is a stretch, but Sinclair has positioned his protagonist well: a young American who will grow up with the 20th century, a thoughtful, privileged American with artistic sensibilities who is connected to both conservative American power and liberal European culture, a young man who can bridge cultures and finds himself in contact with the people and forces that shaped history. Through Lanny's eyes, at this point the eyes of a sincere, thoughtful teenager, Sinclair explores the forces and human impulses that shaped 20th century history. I'll probably slowly work my way through the whole series again, as each time I read it I see more, see the story in a different light. Sinclair was a socialist, and this is evident in the telling of the story, but he has a good handle on history and the reader gets a good sense of the human context of the period. In terms of actual characters and events, Sinclair's analysis is on point more often than he is in the weeds, and I find Sinclair's ability to combine history with fiction in a mostly coherent and insightful way quite enjoyable. In fact, even thought I know far more about both early 20th century history and human nature than I did at 16, I still find the story both gripping and thought provoking. Perhaps I am too willing to escape into other worlds, perhaps I get so invested in the every day, that I need to be repeatedly distracted and reminded of the capriciousness of human nature and history, even through fiction. Perhaps more so, more personally, through fiction. So much for clearing up space in the bookcases.



When I started reading World's End I was not yet finished with my previous novel, Lincoln in the Bardo, by George Saunders, mostly because although I loved that book, it was at times incredibly intense and I just needed a good story to fall back on. I didn't quite realize (or remember) how the books would in fact reinforce each other even though they are radically different. Saunders has taken a moment in the life of Abraham Lincoln, the death of his son Willie, and created an intense and fascinating novel full of compassion. Physically the novel is set in a cemetery on the day Lincoln buried his son. But aside from the Lincoln, most of the characters in this book are not the living — the bardo being a Tibetan term for the period between death and rebirth. The voices of the "sick" (dead) overlap and crowd around the reader, reminding me mostly of the role of the chorus in Greek Tragedy. In fact this novel works very well if one reads it at least in part as if one is reading a play, letting the voices wrap over one simultaneously even though we must read them sequentially.   But again perhaps this comparison was also brought home to me because my volumes of Aeschylus are right next to my upstairs reading chair, perhaps influencing my understanding. Now I simply want to reread Aeschylus.

So, this is a novel that is several things simultaneously. It is a novel about the afterlife, about the things we hold on to, perhaps too tightly, and how they shape and limit and constrain us. It is also about Mr. Lincoln; Lincoln the man and Lincoln the President. The author alternates the voices (chorus) from the Bardo, with quotes about the death of Willie Lincoln, comments about the war, comments, both scathing and kind about Lincoln the President and Lincoln the man — quotes both from actual texts but also fictional quotes. It is about a man who is suffering, but who, through his suffering learns that his own life and his own suffering is just a microcosm of the suffering others, and that suffering cannot be avoided, cannot be avoided without causing more suffering. In this sense there is a very Buddhist subtext to this novel, a subtext of suffering and sorrow, but also the idea that much of living, that our ability to successfully navigate life depends on our ability to enter into the suffering and sorrow of others.

I think I will be thinking about Lincoln In The Bardo for a long time, and I'll probably reread it. It is a novel that strikes me as being about more than it appears to be. On the surface there is at times a flippancy, and almost carnival atmosphere, to the novel, and it can be read as such. But this is just the surface fog, a gloss that does not hide, but in fact slowly reveals greater allegorical depths, and I do think this novel shows great depth.  The pain, the humor, the grotesqueries, the carnival atmosphere, the anger and angst and fear and denial, all point to something essential about the human condition. I'm not sure it is a novel for everyone and it may seem overly pretentious and manipulative; yet I increasingly think it may be brilliant and I need to read it again, perhaps soon, then perhaps again in a few years.

In the end that is always my test. What will I think of this book when I read it again in 10 or 15 years. Don't expect anything profound, but then we never do know where our relationships are heading do we? We never know, when we open a book, whether it will be a passing fancy, or if and how the words may speak to us. This is the gift a writer brings, the gift of relationship the ability to form a relationship with the reader through words, words that connect us to our fellow humans and through these words, to further relationships with ourselves and humanity. We never know quite what will be revealed.

July 11, 2017
Two Small Highlights from the Week Past

It has been a wet and stormy summer here in Knoxville. Some mornings my walks begin with the gathering up of fallen branches and this past week I've often walked past this large fallen limb. My photo doesn't really capture it well. There is a creatureliness to the way I see the branch in the early morning light that I have not managed to capture on my phone. Nonetheless it always makes me smile. Somehow I think of a giant insect or perhaps a dragon and am reminded both of the way there is a mystery to our world that we often miss in our day to day rush, and the way that this mystery fuels imagination and the building of imaginary worlds. Somehow this simple branch puts me in mind of rereading the Lord of the Rings, perhaps because it reminds me of my youthful imaginings of that world (long before there was a movie version), but it makes me think of the novels of Charles Williams as well, and do not remember strange mythical creatures in Williams's novels, so perhaps this is just a trick of the imagination. Or perhaps I am reminded of Williams simply through his connection to Tolkien through the Inklings, and am reminded that it has been many years since I have reread Williams. I was excited to learn however that my grandson is now reading The Hobbit, his required reading before entering the sixth grade this fall.

I also finished unpacking the last box in the main living part of the house last week. That doesn't mean everything is put away. There are some storage and furniture issues that will be worked out over time, but I feel comfortably settled and I use every room in the house, which was not the case in my former abode.

The last box I unpacked was a box labeled "small items", and it was a wonderland of treasures and a few useless items that went promptly to the donation pile. One of the last things I unpacked was Gumby Doc. I really hadn't thought about him at all, but once I found him I knew I was home. He is still sitting in the spot pictured above although the bowl and the brass pharmacy mortar have been moved. Doc might move as well, depending on what I store in the cabinet, and how often I need to open the door beneath his feet, but for now I am happy with him exactly where he is.

July 8, 2017
A Few Rain-Kissed Garden Photos

On the fourth of July, 1776, the delegates of the thirteen colonies that became the United States, adopted the Declaration of Independence. This date has been a day of celebration ever since. It is a day of joyousness and exuberance, a day we honor our birth as a nation, but also a day we honor those who stood for what they believed to be right.

On this particular Independence Day, I have few words. Instead I shall share a few photos from my new garden. It is mostly a quiet garden, a garden which has not yet revealed all its secrets, but a garden I look forward to enjoying and sharing.

There are few sun-loving flowers in my garden at the moment, mostly because I did not replace the early spring annuals before moving in. But I enjoy the few bright spots.

But also love the softness of colors in the shade garden.

And the joys of greenery in all its forms.

Even a few surprises. Lovely as they are, I've spent more times ripping out invasive vines that choke out other living things. But today I can simply enjoy an occasional flower.

Have a lovely day.

July 4, 2017
Adventures in Cooking

By the time I moved I was ready to cook. I'd been eating out for most of a month, and frankly, although I had needed to cook in order to eat when I was packing up the old house, most of that cooking was extremely basic. It had been months since I had cooked just for the sake of cooking and I was ready to play.

My cookbook collection was unpacked early on, along with the kitchen, and although there were lots of old favorites I could have made, I was also eager to try something new. I wasn't quite sure where to start however, and I was feeling, rather oddly, unsure of myself in the kitchen. I read about the Food52 cookbook club somewhere, and since their June cookbook would be any of the works by Yotam Ottolenghi, books I already own, I thought that joining would be just the inspiration I needed.

And participating in the group did give me the push I needed, at least initially. I started off making the Cucumber and Poppy Seed Salad from Ottolenghi: The Cookbook. I really liked the salad. I altered the recipe slightly, using sweet-hot peppadew peppers rather than the ones called for simply because I had them on hand and needed to use them up. I've made the recipe several times since, both as written and with the peppadews, and think I prefer the peppadew version. It is a nice alternative from my usual Thai-style cucumber salad.

Then I floundered a bit. Mostly this was just the repercussions of cooking for one. Most recipes are written for 4 to 6 servings, leaving me with leftovers. I also hadn't really stocked my pantry yet, having intentionally run the cupboards bare before moving, and having this idea that I would simply restock as I needed items. But shopping every time you want to cook gets to be a bit of a drag as well, and there were days that, by the time I drove around locating ingredients, I was too tired to cook.  The result was less culinary experimentation than I had hoped. Still, I was determined to continue trying new things.

I had purchased My French Family Table by Béatrice Peltre on a bit of a whim; I don't, after all, need more cookbooks but this one looked really appealing. I baked the rolls I posted earlier in the month.   After purchasing couple of bunches of radishes at the farmer's market, I made Peltre's radish greens soup. I love radishes and hate to waste edible food, but hadn't found a way to cook the greens that I consistently loved.  The soup was delicious but a little heavy on the potato for my taste. The second time around I increased the proportion of radish greens relative to potato slightly, not so much that I lost the silkiness of the finished soup, and liked the soup much better. Perhaps I went a little overboard on the sliced radish garnish in the photo above. It is difficult not to get carried away with the delicacy of spring radishes after all, and since this had been a rather wet spring and early summer, the radishes have been exceptional.

My next adventure was with a dish from Ottolenghi's newest book, Nopi. I had seen fresh soft-shell crabs in one of the markets, and was excited as I usually see pre-cleaned crabs which are none too fresh. That was one of my first shocks moving to Knoxville, it never occurred to me that a soft shell crab, even if cleaned, wouldn't be absolutely fresh. Of course I didn't ask either. But anyway, onward.

I tried a more ambitious dish called Soft Shell Crab with Sweet Black Pepper Sauce, Okra, and Cinnamon Pickled Cucumber. It wasn't actually that difficult as the pepper sauce and cucumber can be made ahead, and the preparation for the crab is fairly simple. The problem was that it was a lot of work for a dish that I wasn't all that thrilled with. Mostly I didn't like the crab, and I should have known better. The recipe calls for the crab to be dredged in cornstarch and then fried. I know from experience, and should have remembered, that I don't really like fried soft-shell crab unless it is dredged in cornmeal. I like the contrast of the crunchy cornmeal and the soft crab. Whether that is a New England thing, related to my living in the Northeast for so long, or related to my love of cornmeal crusted fried catfish from my Texas childhood, I don't know. But I've tried various alternative techniques before, and I've always been disappointed.

Then there were the sides. The okra was fabulous and I will make it again. The technique is much like the one used for cooking pimientos de padron, simple and brilliant. The flavor on the cinnamon picked cucumber was also good; it was flavored with a syrup made with cinnamon and star anise, a little sweeter than I usually prefer, but quite wonderful. I didn't feel the long ribbons of cucumber worked well, although it is possible that I simply made them too thin. But I made the pickle again, using a mandolin to make thin slices, and was happier with the results, but I didn't take another picture. As much as I enjoyed the cinnamon cucumbers, I'm not sure how often I will go to the trouble to make them when I am just as happy with simple sliced cucumbers.

The other problem was with the Sweet Black Pepper Sauce. My sauce really had no real sweetness to it; in fact it was rather salty and overpowering compared to the delicacy of the crab. Now, although I followed the recipe exactly, this may have been at least partially due to the quality of the ingredients I used. I try to get the best I can, but there were several things which may not be the same in gluten-free versions. But I had extra sauce and I wondered if it would work well with other dishes.

In the long run the sauce surprised me. It is the one dish that may eventually end up being a staple in my kitchen. After 24 hours it had mellowed substantially, and the flavor softened and developed a rich subtle umami which continued to develop over time.   I think it would be good on several different kinds of meat, but this month, in the flurry of unpacking and work and sometimes general tiredness, I found it worked wonderfully on a simple burger. I've used up that first batch of (still not so sweet) Sweet Black Pepper Sauce. I probably need to make another batch.

So the failed crab dish put me off experimentation for a little bit, and I was trying to use up groceries anyway. The next time I was inspired to cook, I was once again leaning toward Peltre. I wanted to try her Chicken Drumsticks with Spices and Coconut Milk. I am always looking for a good drumstick recipe. Drumsticks are not necessarily my favorite part of the chicken, but at the same time I feel strongly that if we are going to be conscientious about living on this earth, and caring for its resources, we need to encourage nose-to-tail (or leaf-to-root, in the case of radishes) eating. That means if I'm going to eat chicken I can't just eat the breasts and the thighs.

When the two local farms from which I buy chickens have birds I buy whole birds. I often cut them up, which means the drumsticks accumulate, as I use the breasts and thighs more routinely, and the backs and wings often go into my chicken stock, as do chicken feet when I can get them.  In late May and early June there were no local chickens so I bought packaged organic chicken. Just buying packaged chicken is no excuse, at least for me, for avoiding the less desirable parts.   Anyway, I bought drumsticks, organic drumsticks and tried Peltre's recipe; it was fabulous.

So there you have it, a month's experimentation. Some things I will make again: radish greens soup, chicken drumsticks, perhaps black pepper sauce. Some things, like the quinoa rolls and the two cucumber salads will be made less often, partially because I consider them treats, but also because they are really dishes that need to be shared. I have no regrets, but I also need to get a little more settled. Cooking is fun, but it is most fun when you are feeding others. That is the next step.



June 29, 2017
Connecting A Few Dots Through Reading

Disparate bits sometimes float through our lives, something we read here, an encounter there, and occasionally they bind together in unexpected ways.

Nearly a month ago I was in Chicago for a short, roughly 25-hour, jaunt. I went to my appointment, had dinner with a friend I had missed during my previous visit to Chicago, and slept for 10 hours; none of these events offered up a defining moment. And yet there was one, a brief feeling of disquiet, of unmooring, that I initially dismissed, but which has proven to have more significant repercussions, reverberating both through my understanding of myself, but also of the world around me.

As I walked through O'Hare, roughly mid-day on a Friday, I felt distinctly lost. I was not lost in any physical sense; I knew exactly where I was going, exactly how to get there. There was nothing unfamiliar in the scenario, and yet it felt unfamiliar. I had been reading a novel on the plane, and I was deeply engaged with the story and the characters. I wondered if I was simply still in that liminal space between story and reality. I also wondered if I was simply tired. I was tired. I dismissed my thoughts, got my bearings, and moved on.

A couple of weeks ago, I stumbled across this abstract:

Among young adults, we show that refugees that enter the U.S. before age 14 graduate high school and enter college at the same rate as natives. Refugees that enter as older teenagers have lower attainment with much of the difference attributable to language barriers and because many in this group are not accompanied by a parent to the U.S. Among refugees that entered the U.S. at ages 18-45, we follow respondents’ outcomes over a 20-year period in a synthetic cohort. Refugees have much lower levels of education and poorer language skills than natives and outcomes are initially poor with low employment, high welfare use and low earnings. Outcomes improve considerably as refugees age. After 6 years in the country, these refugees work at higher rates than natives but they never attain the earning levels of U.S.-born respondents. Using the NBER TAXSIM program, we estimate that refugees pay $21,000 more in taxes than they receive in benefits over their first 20 years in the U.S. ¹

The last two sentences are the ones that roil around in my brain. I can usually quote all kinds of statistics about how influx of immigrants into a community actually raises the standard of living and the job prospects of the native-born residents already in that community. It has also long been known that children under the age of 14 pick up language and social skills much more adeptly than older children and adults. But I am also aware that we are in a period of great unrest and that immigrants get more than their fair share of the attention, unfairly because the issues are really not about the immigrants, and they have not really done anything to warrant our attention or feelings of ill-will. The roots of the issues are different, but are deeply buried in places we aren't sure we want to go.  Immigrants make good scapegoats.¹

Despite this outburst, this is not really a political blog.  Yet, in my mind at least, these two things are related. They are related through the novel I was reading at the time of my trip to Chicago, Mr and Mrs. Doctor, by Julie Iromuanya, a novel I have actually been rereading as thoughts swirled around in my brain. The simple story is that the novel is about Job and Ifi, a Nigerian couple who have come to live in the United States. It is a complicated story about leaving one's culture, trying to fit into another, and never quite succeeding. It is a story based on lies, the lies the characters tell each other and the lies they tell themselves, a fiction based on fiction. And yet it is also a story about the way we all dance around the truth in order to protect ourselves and others, and the ways change and hope come in the ways one might least expect.

It is not the easiest book. At the times the plot seems to be only partially assembled, much like Job and Ifi's plans in America.  The primary characters are not particularly likeable by the standards of polite, educated, American Society, and the Americans they encounter are not, for the most part, the kind of Americans we are proud to call our own. And yet the characters are richly developed, and there is a sense that their story is told with love and empathy, an empathy that is fully available to the reader who is willing to push past initial discomforts and stereotypes.

Pulled into the story and the lives of the characters, I felt disoriented in O'Hare that day in early June. But the truth is that I am also perhaps more likely to feel that sense of disorientation, as this experience also made me realize how much I tend towards feelings of isolation in large crowds.  There are those who are agitated in large crowds, those who thrive on them, and I am sure that I am not the only person who feels increasingly cut off and out of touch in very large groups. The larger the crowd, the more isolated I feel, and I am sure that this is some variation on my basic introversion. And yet this character trait also helped me feel in microcosm, the smallest sense of what it could feel like to live in a world that is in many ways the antithesis of everything you believe to be true and right, to walk through the world, knowing where you are going and doing what you think is right, only to have the world swirl on around you in incomprehensible ways.

And how does that second quote apply? It may be obvious. Job came to this country as a college student but he flunked out of college; his entire life is built around a lie, a lie that he cannot admit, even to himself. Job is man who is, in many ways, quite simple. There is much he doesn't understand, doesn't seek to understand, and he can be oblivious to that which seems obvious to the world around him. But do not think that makes him any less complexly human. His simplicity, his confusion, and his complexity are all apparent in the opening pages of the novel, but the depth of Jobs own self deception, and the extent to which he has closed himself in on himself does not become apparent until much later. I'm not sure that he ever becomes more likeable, but the reader does become more sympathetic toward him. Job works two jobs, two jobs that barely allow him enough money to live in a slum. He works harder than the other residents of his housing unit in many ways, hence the above quote and yet in many ways they are better off than he; certainly no worse off. He, and all the Nigerians in this story, work hard, work very hard, and tell themselves stories to make their lives easier. The book revolves around Job and Ifi, although Ifi may be the more interestingly complex character. The book is their story, but it is not their story alone.

We are a nation of immigrants. In fact we are all immigrants. We are born immigrants, brought into a world of which we have no understanding. Often the world we are born into is not the world we end up in, and whether or not we adept depends on how open we are to change, whether or not we can empathize with others, whether or not we can find that part which is human, and is common to us all. Books can help with understanding in a way that sometimes one-on-one contact cannot, in that books allow us to reach outside ourselves in a safe environment, thereby opening our minds to future encounters.

This is a book about the American Dream. Or perhaps it is about the myth of the American Dream; about the myths people tell themselves about progress, about class and race, about sexism. It is about the way the world we dream about doesn't really exist, and the way, even when we struggle to escape one set of biases, we bring them with us, and encounter new walls as well, walls that may be built on our own false expectations. But it is also a story of hope, and of the knowledge that the future can be a better one, only not perhaps in the way we imagined it in our dreams.

1. http://www.nber.org/papers/w23498#fromrss

June 27, 2017
Summer Closet

Moving offered magnificent opportunity for sorting through the various garments in my closet, something that had somehow previously been difficult. This seems odd because I am not generally sentimental. I love living in an old house, I love that I have, and use daily, items made by and/or used by my grandparents and great grandparents, but I don't keep things just because they have history. I think there is a connection between things and the earth and our lives, but I am not sentimental. I can usually give away things I've made, or that came down to me from people I know. My memories are not dependent on the things, and yet the things we surround ourselves with are still a part of who we are.

But back to the closet.   I already knew this was my house, and the previous house was just a holding area. Through finding a house, I also in a sense, found myself, and sorting became easier. I also knew I would spend a month in transitional housing. I had two basic goals:

1) pull out clothes that would see me through that transitional space (May) and the rest of the summer (June-August), therefore giving me time to unpack the house and settle in without having to worry about what I would wear,

and

2) just sort through the clothes and eliminate anything that obviously wasn't working.

Dresses were the easiest place to start as they really don't have to match anything else. The questions were simple: did it fit? Had I worn it? Would I wear it? A few things were obvious. A hand-knit alpaca dress was a no-go, despite the fact that I love it, because it is too hot to wear in Knoxville. Even when it is cold outside, buildings are heated. That dress suffered the same fate in Hyde Park – it was too hot to wear in any heated building. It would be fabulous if I lived in a drafty old castle, or perhaps during a power failure. Chalk it up to education and move on. If, when I find myself in my 70s or 80s, I am always cold, I can always knit another dress.

Then it was time for everything else. I started with bottoms, and laid them all out around the master bedroom. Then I went through everything else in my closet (except undergarments and jewelry) and put it in the appropriate pile, the bottom piece I decided it went best with. I wasn't worried about pieces that could be used in multiple ways, I was just looking for what worked. If a stack didn't contain at least three pieces, one bottom and two tops, out it went. If there was a top that literally went with nothing in that room, out it went.   The pile of widows and orphans was larger than the piles of keepers, and they were all donated, sold, or given away. What truly surprised me was the way the things that remained complemented each other. What remained was a wardrobe that looked like it belonged to one person, a wardrobe where most of the pieces would work together rather than against each other.

I stacked the things that would work for late-spring and summer on the bed and packed everything else. This is what was left, 35 pieces of clothing (I'm not counting shoes or scarves here). Less two pairs of pajamas, each of which I counted as one piece, one swimsuit, and four summer dresses, I was left with a wardrobe of 28 mix-and-match pieces to cover every activity from working-out to dressing-up.

The wardrobe has worked fairly well.  Three pieces that were needed for a trip to Chicago in early May, pieces which contained wool, were swapped out upon my return. They were replaced by three t-shirts, purchased at Uniqlo, also while in Chicago.



A few things didn't work. They gray cardigan in the center of the picture doesn't thrill me anymore and I don't enjoy wearing it. Another, more fitted, sweater has taken its place. The deep periwinkle shorts, and lighter periwinkle shirt, which were already pretty heavily worn, got covered in paint and retired. A favorite, lightweight sweatshirt, perfect for early mornings or cool evenings, progressed from threadbare-but-still-in-one-piece to tatters.  The remaining clothes work together well, and my wardrobe does not feel at all limiting or restrictive. If anything, it feels incredibly generous. I probably wear more of my clothes now than I did when there were more clothes in my closet.

Or at least it didn't feel restrictive until the last week or two. As we progress into summer heat, navy woven slacks and dark jeans feel hot and heavy, at least psychologically. I wanted something lighter and a touch of midsummer madness set in. I went shopping, ostensibly looking for something white or off-white but ending up with acid yellow and pale blue chinos, both from Anthropologie, shown above and below.  They actually work better in my wardrobe than white would have. I counted six different outfits that work with the yellow, and at least another four for the blue chinos, if not more. The navy slacks are out until September; the dark jeans remain, with reservations.

I've learned a few things. I've got a better sense of what I like to wear and have a wardrobe that supports that reality. I am not, ultimately concerned about numbers in the closet. Although I started with 35 garments, I am not really interested in adhering to rules, or adhering to a program like project 333. Even though I am talking about clothes for 3 to 4 months, this wardrobe is not 1/4 or 1/3 of my wardrobe. Although there are a handful of garments that are only worn one season, most of these clothes are worn at least through three seasons, if not all year. These 35 garments represent half my complete wardrobe in its current state, and hopefully eventually will represent more than half. Even in this America, land of overstuffed closets, it feels like a lot. But as I said, I am not really interested in numbers but in use, and it is not about whether I have more than some (I do) or less than others (also true). I want the things I have to work for me; I do not want to be a slave to them.

Through this whole process I learned that my closet is still too heavily weighted toward winter clothes. Of course, I like winter clothes more than summer clothes, and I moved here from New York State, where winter was a much more significant season than summer. Still, I am aware I have too much. When we move into winter, I will repeat this process, and winnow the collection down to the things that really work here, for the life I have now. Choice is a privilege after all

But, although there is no point in keeping basic things that I don't wear, I'm not going to give up something special just because it is worn only rarely. A silk party dress that only comes out occasionally stays, as will two bulky hand knit sweaters that I may wear only once or twice a winter, if we have a cold winter, and not at all if it is warm. They are going to stay until they fall apart because I love them so, because I panic when I can't find them. But these items aren't just another back pant, another gray turtleneck, another basic in a sea of basics.

I do think the whole process of packing and unpacking, the process of moving, has really made me think about what I have and why I have it. I don't really need a bunch of things for "just in case". In my dream wardrobe perhaps I'll have fewer basics, the 28 may be reduced to 15 or 20, or not. Basics can always be replaced after all, and more special pieces that make those basics sing. But there is no point to clothes that sing only in the closet, behind closed doors. Better to have what I use and use what I have. Better to have what I need and to use what I love.

June 24, 2017