East Turns West

So This is Christmas...

2011-12-28T20:56:00.013-06:00

...and what have I done? (Besides not update my blog in six months?)

I am enjoying reading all of the Christmas missives that come to me from around the globe, and apparently I haven’t done a Christmas update for a while. It seems I’ve set the bar pretty high a few years ago, and now that I’m back in the United States, back in my home state, hometown, and very nearly the home I grew up in, there’s almost a sense of “nothing to report.” All systems are normal.

Two years ago this coming February I began my new career as what I like to think of as a “paid Peace Corps volunteer” in my hometown. I am a faculty member with the University of Wisconsin Cooperative Extension system, a university “agent” or “Extension educator” in the Department of Family Living. Perhaps best known for the nation-wide 4-H or agricultural agent program, the university extension system has long (100 years in 2012 in Wisconsin) served as the university’s outreach arm from the campuses to the everyman around the State. Cooperative Extension has gone through a lot of changes over the last century, not in the least thanks to the emergence of the Internet and Google. My role a few years ago would have been as a “home economist” helping housewives select the best stove for their kitchen or explain the best way to get ring-around-the-collar out of shirts. We don’t do that anymore (and thank goodness, because I wouldn’t have lasted long!). Now my job is almost as difficult to explain as a Peace Corps volunteer’s. So, I won’t even try.

But, it has given me the opportunity for several firsts in this last year. It began in January with my first time teaching parenting classes. I guess this could be considered a promotion over teaching sex ed and HIV prevention to teenagers in Africa and Asia, but no less ironic. The Raising a Thinking Child curriculum is very interesting and almost – almost – makes me think it would be fun to have a kid to try some of this stuff out on.

Another first is live radio. Twice during this last year I had the opportunity to sit on a panel for an hour-long live radio forum…which then got me roped into joining the host of our local independent public radio station in pitching for their pledge drives. Now there’s something I never thought I’d ever do. I have yet to pitch for the polka show, however!

The next first was becoming a Master Food Preserver and exploring the big world of canning and dehydrating. One part of the “home economist” part of my job that does remain – and is gaining interest rapidly – is the art of home canning and food preserving. So, in order to be able to field the questions that come into our office about canned foods, I took the Master Food Preserver training taught by our state food safety specialist. It was a fabulous training, and enough to get a staunch anti-home economist like me to go out and buy a waterbath canner, pressure canner and food dehydrator all of my own (and inspire me to clean out a part of the basement to create a pantry). So, thanks to farmer friends, a good year for blackberries, and the UWEX food preservation publications, I put up tomato sauce, tomatoes, jams, zucchini everything, pickled watermelon rind, random vegetables, and chocolate raspberry ice cream sauce that I’m now enjoying all winter long.

Some of this year’s firsts have nothing at all to do with work. When I’m not working (and I’m still careful to not do too much of that), I’m usually busy making musical noises with various groups. I still play French horn, and now play in two community bands, two brass quintets (one in the winter only), an occasional community big band, and, this last year, a old silver cornet brass band. So my first for this year was learning to play (and transpose for, when necessary) the Eb alto upright horn, also known as a peck horn.

But French horn is still my first instrument, and this year I was blessed with the miraculous arrival of two more amazing horn players in our area. Our community band is now up to five (count them, five!) horns. Then, as another first, three of us got together to “ring the bells” for the Salvation Army Kettle, performing Christmas duets in the entry way to Shopko – much to the amusement of a large number of shoppers.

Also in musical firsts this year was my first Luther College reunion, which was also the first Luther College Concert Band reunion. Over 250 Concert Band alumni filled the stage to perform once again under the direction of the retired Weston Nobel and retiring Frederick Nyline. It was a sheer thrill to be smack in the middle of a 25 member horn section and to see so many faces from my college days – and to get to almost room with my college roommate of four years – again. (And yes, Callista Gingrich, wife of Newt Gingrich, was there in our horn section, and then, by extremely random chance, I encountered them afterwards coming out of a McDonalds in a town a hundred miles north where I stopped to steal free wi-fi - you can read about her take on the event here.)

Another first came when I took time off of work and flew out to San Francisco. Fellow Madagascar RPCV Kelsey Lynd picked me up from the airport and wisked me off deep into the glorious redwoods and took me on the longest HASH I’ve ever experienced – my first official half-marathon, and my first time doing a half marathon covering more than 3500 feet in elevation gain. Yeah, I hurt for the rest of my time in San Fran, but that didn’t stop me from doing a second half-marathon around the city from Golden Gate Park, to the bridge, down the warf, through the financial district and on. Perfect weather, amazing trip.

Wow, rereading all that amazes me. It seems I haven’t done much simply because I have been “home” all this time, but I am still managing to find firsts around most corners. And 2012 holds promise for even more firsts that I look forward to reflecting on next year.

In the meantime, I hope 2011 has brought you much to learn from and explore, and you have my best wishes for a 2012 full of happy firsts. May your life in the next year be full and satisfying, and may you find riches in all that comes your way and in all that you do.

That's disturbing...

2011-07-10T20:03:00.007-05:00

Anybody who has been to the house I currently live in knows about the patch of rather unsightly, well-tracked, mangy gold-colored carpet in the middle of the house. That patch of carpet that, for reasons of asbestos and other things apparently more hazardous than noxious 30-year-old shag, can't be removed at this time. You also know that really, I couldn't care less what happens to it, other than doing what is necessary to prevent it from becoming a complete biohazard.

So when these tracks appeared on the carpet, I was hardly motivated to race off for the bleach bucket and rags to deal with them.

A week ago, my parents showed up at my place with an ice cream cake to celebrate the 4th of July. The cake was your standard Dairy Queen variety with chocolate and vanilla ice cream, some chocolate crunchies inside, and decorated with some appropriate red-white-and-blue-yay-for-freedom design. We sat and ate our cake under the watchful eye of our 8-year-old Labradoodle, who was determined he wasn't going to let a plate go without a proper cleaning to ensure complete consumption of all served ice cream.

He completed his own patriotic duty well enough, but we didn't notice that in the process of getting every last lick, he had placed his paw on one or more plates now covered in melted blue frosting. Then he trekked off across the gold carpet shag.

As I said, I wasn't disturbed. Frosting, whatever.

But today I made an attempt to decontaminate the carpet, and the blue paw-print stayed. Even after some extra rubbing, they didn't so much as smear. Now, I couldn't care less what happens to this carpet, and no, I did not run off for the toxic cleaning chemicals. The point is: what on earth are they putting in this blue frosting and where is it in my body now? Do I need to drink some bleach in order to get it unstuck from my own insides? If it permanently stains a carpet, do I want to be putting this stuff in my body?

I'm filing this under Things I Don't Want To Think About, except that now every time I walk through the house, I think about it.

A Silver Screen Peeve

2011-06-12T14:31:00.000-05:00

Last night I went to see the movie, "Water for Elephants." I had enjoyed the book, and heard that the movie followed it fairly well. I will not be making any sort of movie review other than to say I'm glad I saw it, but it's not going on my "buy to keep" DVD list.

However, it did again highlight two peeves about movies, especially movies of late.

1. What's up with the mumbling? Either my hearing is going already, the sound system in the theaters I attend sucks/I'm getting spoiled by watching DVDs on my laptop with headphones in, or, more likely, I think, actors and directors seem to think that speaking quickly in an monotone while there's a noisy soundtrack underneath is somehow more dramatic. Instead, I spend my whole time straining to understand half of the more informative conversations, especially those critical to the storyline.

2. Details, folks. Water for Elephants is set in a Depression-era fictional circus that aimed to outdo the infamous Ringling Brothers Greatest Show on Earth. At least two major scenes in the second half of the movie featured the grand entry and spectacular of the Benzini Brothers Most Spectacular Show on Earth, with all the big acts parading into the big top to the accompaniment of the circus band playing the entrance march. The march used in the movie is the immediately recognizable, Barnum and Bailey's Favorite. Well, except Barnum and Bailey's circus was by that time merged into the Ringling Bros.

The venomous attitude of the owner of the fictional Benzini Bros. would have never have allowed that march to be played in his circus, even if it was out of fashion with Ringling Brothers at that time. How simple would it have been to create a new fictional circus march instead of stealing one that is so recognizable and so completely and totally wrong? Yes, it's a small thing, but the devil is in the details.

Perhaps that small inattention to such details is an indication of why this movie is not going on my all-time favorites list.

Easter Sunday with Tom and Jerrys

2011-04-24T11:27:00.003-05:00

cartoons. Not the drinks. (Wrong holiday.)

We began our Easter Sunday with seven adults watching a classic Tom and Jerry cartoons. Seven adults (and no children) snorting, giggling, chuckling, guffawing, and choking in response to the non-verbal, slap-stick humor that is essential to the mid-20th century cartoons.

When the cartoon ended, we turned our attention to the real-life action of Wrangler and Olivia, the never-ending amusement of our own cat-and-dog chase. Walnut, the flying squirrel (and Bullwinkle) are still safely up in Three Lakes.

Things I Don't Want to Know

2011-04-06T19:49:00.002-05:00

It seems everybody's after you to make your life better by getting you to quantify your sins: count calories, track spending, measure the distance you walked/ran/biked, etc., etc., etc.

Well, as of right now there are a few things I just don't want to know.

1. How many hours of "screen time" I rack up in a day.

A "screen" might be anything electronic and glowing that we stare at for work or entertainment, but I know full well that 80% of my "screen time" comes from communing with my trusty MacBook and 15% more comes from the time spent staring at my ancient work desktop PC (though most of that is spent staring at the screen waiting for the machine to DO something already, but still, I'm looking at the screen). And between time spent in productivity, personal and work-related, and time spent in sloth, personal and work-related, adds up to too many hours per day. I just don't want to know how many.

2. How many miles driven vs. miles walked in a week (corollary: number of hours spent in a car vs. doing just about anything else, especially walking).

I commute. And I drive around in general for personal and work reasons. Unlike my past lives overseas where most of my daily locomotion was under the power of my own legs, now I rely on 160 horses to get me where I am going the vast majority of the time. I do not want to know how much of my soul I have traded for this convenience.

3. Friendship and relationship hours lost due to my inability to correspond on a regular basis.

How many times have I put off writing that letter/e-mail/thank you note/invitation/etc., to the point of irrelevance?

4. Number of Recommended Daily Servings of fruits and vegetables and Recommended Daily Allowances vitamins and minerals I have not consumed.

I'm still here, aren't I? But at what price down the road? I don't want to know.

5. Hours of brain cell potential lost to unproductive meetings, needless waiting and wading through bureaucracy, technology failures and troubleshooting computer-related incidents, bad movies or books, and my own laziness and procrastination habits.

Enough said.

Signs of Our Times

2011-03-27T22:23:00.005-05:00

Today, as I drove out of my parents' driveway, I rather unexpectedly encountered a schoolmate's elderly grandmother, out for a stroll in the winter sunshine. As I waved and slowly drove around her, it occurred to me that it had been a long time since I had seen these signs that formerly greeted every person to drive up our block:

There simply aren't that many young children, slow or otherwise, running wild in the streets anymore. Instead, as our neighborhood increasingly reflects the demographic of our whole county and the northern half of the state, soon it will be time to replace those signs with something more like this:

Out of Sync

2011-03-19T21:06:00.002-05:00

I often feel out of sync with the man-made universe. When I am doing a job that requires some amount of creativity, planning or thinking, I am stifled by the 9-to-5, Monday through Friday routine. My creative energies ebb and flow according to some plan that doesn’t align itself well with what we’ve defined as a “normal” workweek.

Two things this week have disrupted my work energy: the transition from daylight savings time last weekend and now a mandated furlough day this coming Monday, forcing me to take a three day weekend now.

I am extremely sensitive to daylight, so when the hour shift in time came this week, I wound up oversleeping. Usually I wake up easily without the help of an alarm (though I keep one set just in case), but this week I never even heard the alarm at 6 AM. I slept soundly and comfortably until 6:45 or, one day 7:10. Oops.

But once I got up and got going, I discovered I was energized to do my job. This week was a lot of deskwork, but I came back motivated from a three-day conference last week. I had several productive meetings and encounters during the week, and I felt things clicking into place. After several long days at the office, I was accomplishing things.

And then Friday night arrived and it all came to a screeching halt. Being interrupted by a normal weekend is bad enough, but being interrupted by a three day weekend ending in a day where you’re not allowed to do any work at all is, right now, torture.

And to think of all those weeks when I so desperately needed a three day break. There are times for all of us when time away from the office would do us more good than time at the office. This isn’t one of them. Sure, I could go in on Saturday or even Sunday, no rules against that, and I did bring work home just in case, but it’s almost too late. The curtain has fallen, and the flow interrupted. Knowing I can’t work on Monday and that I should try to be otherwise productive with my allowed time off has killed my momentum.

I pray for the wisdom that some day I will have the confidence to follow my energies. That when I need time away doing other things, when I am being energized by life outside of work, that I will allow myself to follow, knowing full well that the energy for work will come again, and I will more than make up for the time off by being fully focused and many times more productive. And, to be able to find a way to do it in a place that doesn’t believe in alarm clocks, but allows me to track my day by the rising and the setting of the sun.

Tiny Bubbles, in the Ice...

2011-03-06T19:41:00.001-06:00

On Friday I broke out my flip flops, pinned a flower in my hair, donned a lei, and traded in my cabin fever for island fever. Or, at least that was the plan.

Not a bad plan really. Winter’s gotten to that long stretch with a few days that hover around freezing and sunlight that tantalizes icicles into dripping, only to return to a fresh dose of snow and icy winds the next. So, a nice break from the cold with a contrived Wisconsin Luau seemed just what the doctor ordered. Getting to go to a luau for free as a member of the band (yes, the phrase, “I’m with the band” is a great door opener), even better.

The luau was a local performing art center’s first attempt at a late-winter fundraiser, and again, good in theory, though apparently not so great in practice. They contracted with the award-winning barbeque and rib house across the street to smoke up a couple whole pigs (complete with apples in the mouth), so the menu was fine, and they roped in our newly-formed dance band (made up of members of the community band that practices and performs in the center) to play big band music for dancing after. So far, so good.

But then there was a complete failure to market beyond their audiences, other than a few posters hung around the area. Then, there was the price: $35 per person in advance, $40 at the door. So, for a couple (pretty much a prerequisite for swing dancing), it would be $80 for dinner and a dance. Even that might not be so bad, except for $80, I would expect to be seated at a table filled with fine china and served four full courses by a sexy young thing in a cummerbund and tuxedo, fundraiser or no. Especially since the band was getting paid in food only - heck, I would hope a bottle of wine would be thrown in.

In the week before the big night, word came down that ticket pre-sales had been dismal and there would, in all likelihood, be leftovers. My ticket in and meal would be free, but as they were desperate to fill seats, I cut a deal to buy one ticket if I could bring along two more people who would do some eating and some dancing.

And it’s a good thing I did. In all, there were maybe 30 people there, not including the nine of us in the band, the volunteers and the restaurant serving staff. All of them, it seemed, were in some way intimately connected with the center. All probably would’ve just forked over the $40 apiece as a goodwill gesture and saved them the trouble of printing and distributing posters, making too much food and dragging tables into the hall.

Yet, they gamely put up with an evening of vaguely luau-ish activities and overpriced raffles. They also hung around long enough for us to actually play through our entire program, save for the last set of three songs which accompanied the folding of table cloths and tables. My conscripted dancers did their duty as one third of the couples on the dance floor for most of the evening. At then end they distributed the copious amounts of leftovers - for $30 per doggy bag.

The food was really good, the band received rave reviews, and the atmosphere was rather festive. I really enjoyed playing and the view from the bandstand, though the downside to that is I didn’t get to do any dancing.

I really hope that they reconsider their model for the next time (if there is a next time), halve or even quarter their ticket prices, charge for the food, and then advertise the heck out of the thing (ever heard of the free PSAs on the radio? How about the community events calendars? Facebook? Seriously, Facebook, people), get a haul of raffle items and sell cheap tickets, and continue to convince our not-for-profit band to sing for their supper. I know a lot of people who would come then. This really could be good, folks.

That will help heat up this frozen tundra. And defrost my poor toes.

Passport

2011-02-26T18:49:00.003-06:00

February 15, 2011. I’ve written that date so many times it should have felt more real. It was the date my passport, my first “adult” one after renewing my original youth passport to go to Japan with the Luther College Concert Band after college graduation, would expire. (Interestingly, this meant the date on my passport was synchronized to the year of my ten-year college reunion.)

The date ticked on, ever closer, like a small time bomb. Yet every time I wrote it on an official document, it loomed off in some great distance of time and space and the general unreality of times that would never come.

But in January it finally hit me. This passport is about to expire. My ten years were up.

Last week I received my renewed passport in the mail. It arrived in a thin USPS priority mail envelope, completely unassuming except for the tiny “US Passport Center” return address stamped in the corner. It was shiny and stiff. The picture looks remarkably like the me in the old one. Apparently I am still that person.

But in the excitement of receiving a new license to wander the world, there was a moment of panic and grief. My old passport was not in the envelop. Gone, it seemed, were 10 years of my life as marked by visa stamps to Japan, China, Brazil, Paraguay, Madagascar, Thailand, Vietnam and Laos. Stamp dates that told the tale of multiple entries and years spent negotiating customs lines and proving that I was a citizen of the U.S. of A. Suddenly, it seemed as if those years and miles had not happened at all. It was hard to celebrate the arrival of a new passport when the old one suddenly seemed to mean so very little.

Much to my relief, a second envelop, even less assuming than the first, arrived several days later. There, tucked safely inside, was my old passport, officially hole punched, but in every way the well-worn, slightly blurred from being soaked in the Iguazu Waterfall, bloated with extra pages companion it had been for the last ten years.

My new passport bears an even more distant date of February 12, 2021, and has even fewer immediate plans for use than my old passport did when I received it. This passport also comes with a warning that it contains sensitive electronics and I am not to bend, perforate or expose to extreme temperatures. Which makes me wonder if, ten years on, my own sense of adventure is going to become as stiff and sensitive as my new passport. Or if we will both sill wind up bloated with additional pages of visa stamps before our next date of reckoning.

So close to CLOSED

2011-02-01T16:24:00.004-06:00

Splitting Hairs

2011-01-30T20:14:00.002-06:00

If there is one thing I dislike more than shoe shopping, it is haircuts. Probably the only reason I like them less is because they need to occur on a more regular basis and you don’t really have a chance to try it on before deciding whether you’re going to like it or not.

This also explains why my head of hair has varied in length between six inches and three feet long over the last 15 or so years. While I like it shorter for the efficiency and general agreeability, short requires regular maintenance. And, as my hair grows faster than the average person’s, it requires a lot of maintenance. That means gritting my teeth, walking into a place where a woman is going to force me to sit in a chair, stare a myself in a mirror, ask me questions about how I want to be made to look beautiful (which she will ignore). And then she going to expect me to make small-talk while she proceeds to do things with scissors that I am convinced is going to either leave me bald or looking like I invited a three-year-old to have a go - or both. Then I must pay an exorbitant fee for a result that would have made Picasso proud.

So, long seems like a good way to go. Except that I have an incredibly tiny head (I nearly suffered the humiliation of having to purchase a child’s bike helmet complete with SpongeBob stickers), and my fine, thin hair does not hang gracefully or do anything to balance my proportions. Needless to say, I don’t believe in permanents or other volumizing treatments demanding more money and maintenance.

My usual routine is to rotate through the various stages. I allow my hair to grow out until I get sick of it. I cut it off in frustration and, if I’m in the right place at the right time, I donate it. Then I suffer through the various stages of short until I can just tie it back and ignore it again.

Last week was another final straw. In the panic of minding the Smithsonian exhibit over the last few weeks, my hair had crept to the annoying lengths. Too long to look decent, too short to tie back. No time to do anything about it added to the underlying dislike of haircuts. Finally, on the day the Smithsonian got packed away, I went to do something to control it on its way to longer lengths.

Unfortunately, the stars were aligned exactly against me. My dry hair was full of static and flat, making it appear far worse than even normal. The one girl in the walk-in cuts-for-cheap that had almost become my “regular” stylist wasn’t working. My request for “just a bob, not too short” was promptly ignored leading to a battle of me gently suggesting a modification of the course, and her gaily chatting along and continuing on her path. She was desperate to tease a shape into my hair. My request for a “bob” turned into a sad attempt at a layered, vogue, inverted bob, complete with intensive blowdry and half a can of hairspray.

I’m not an overly demonstrative person, and probably less confrontational than I should be. I gave the results a hesitant benefit of the doubt in hopes that when I went home and washed it, it would be usable.

Not so much. The front hung in my face the annoying way it had before, and the back was short to the point of boy cut. The transition between felt more like the start of an Elizabethan curl-around-the-face do. Or maybe 1920s flapper?

Well, I suffered through a day with it, including a TV interview that broadcast the results to the top quarter of the state and some of the neighboring one. Fortunately I did manage to go and get it “fixed” the following day. Only real damage done was setting back my efforts to grow my hair long enough to tie back by several inches and more months. And it has done little to relieve my apprehensions about going under the scissors in the future.

A Christmas Puzzle

2011-01-11T13:45:00.000-06:00

Many years ago when we were small, my mother’s side of the family brought together the “boys” (my aunt and uncle’s two sons) and the “girls” (my sister and me) for Christmases and Easters. We have since grown, Christmas has moved to January, the location in Arizona, and the kid’s table comes complete with filled wine glasses. It’s been a long time since any of us believed in Santa Claus or the Easter Bunny. Yet somehow a certain tradition of making us work for our holiday inheritance has lived on.

Easter morning always arrived with a certain sense of foreboding for such a joyous celebration. A basket of colored eggs, chocolate bunnies, Peeps and jelly beans decorated the dining room table, but that was strictly off-limits to those that could be called a grandchild. Grandchildren had their own baskets, but one never knew where those baskets might be. Or what might be in them.

Easter was usually at the “boys” house, yet for all that you would think they would know every crook and cranny of their own home, the hunt for a fair-sized basket often lasted the better part of a hour or sometimes even a day. One year the baskets were famously booby-trapped with cans of silly-string, adding an element of danger to being the last to find the basket. The tradition continued for more than 20 years, and the finding never got any easier.

Now as we gather for Christmas, significant others of the grandchildren find themselves being initiated in the rights of present passage. A traditional monetary gift is hidden around the house, each “child” with their own, where an how must be worked out from a Christmas puzzle. One year I was extremely grateful to still be overseas when I found out that obtaining the clue had involved solving a Rubix cube.

This year our first clue lead us to a wrapped gift. The wrapped gift turned out to be a 100-piece jigsaw puzzle - ages 5 and up, maybe, but that was more about the choking hazard of the pieces. I was immediately grateful for the other family tradition of setting increasingly difficult puzzles at Thanksgiving and other family holidays.

I was quick with my puzzle (perhaps the easiest one of the bunch - it took seven of us to later complete my cousin's 100 piece hologram puzzle). Once completed, a cryptic message inscribed on the back of the puzzle directed us to the location of our gift. My message?

“Head north to find your modus operandi among the others.”

Hint: north was the kitchen.

One cousin’s girlfriend was quick with her clue - she’s been subjected to this before (including the infamous Rubix cube). Her tactic was to put together the scrawled-message side of her puzzle and discovered one key word as a giveaway. My other cousin’s girlfriend was initiated into the tradition this year and was overwhelmed by the whole process.

I was quick with the puzzle, but slow with the clue - and even slower as I had to sort through a whole cabin to find it.

Still this is a tradition I am glad lives on, and one I will never feel too old for.

Food Chain

2011-01-03T20:33:00.008-06:00

Just days before my sister returned from California, I discovered the culprit of shoes stuffed with dog kibble and items being mysterious knocked off of impossibly high shelves overnight (allowing me to rule out earthquakes and microbursts of wind inside my house): a flying squirrel.

Since dubbed “Walnut” (yes, there’s a story behind that, and it involves a friend’s attempt to live trap another mysterious creature causing damage in her garage, but only successfully ensnaring a shrew, a chipmunk and a walnut), the flying squirrel has taken its loss of anonymity in great stride. And unlike most creatures that sneak through holes in the walls to make homes in our houses, this one seems to be a relatively receivable guest. First, its cute. Second, unlike red squirrels or mice, they seem to do relatively little damage. And, their athletic prowess is to be admired. Mine regularly scales walls and curtains only to leap down again from ceiling height without pause. Finally, there’s almost a superstitious feeling about this guy, as this house was once home to another flying squirrel called “Chipper” who lived as a beloved pet among my father’s family. Oh, yeah, and did I mention Walnut is cute?

This would be more-or-less fine by me, except no sooner had I started to make friends, than my sister shows up bearing a cat.

Okay, a kitten, really. But one everybody had had high hopes of forming her into a mouser. And, despite my acceptance of one house guest, I am still suffering with the occasional unwanted mouse, so the idea of a cat had once appealed. But how do you teach a cat to differentiate between a common field mouse and a flying squirrel?

The squirrel has worked out a road system through the house, a part of which involves him trekking through some large storage cabinets above my closet, pushing open the doors, dropping to the hardwood floor with the sound of a tennis ball that doesn’t bounce, and then scurrying off into the kitchen to roust up a snack. Unfortunately, the other morning the cat was there to intercept him. The thud woke me from my dream in time to snap on the light, grab the cat (gently) by the tail and toss her out the door as I shut it behind her. This left the squirrel safe, but trapped in my room.

I sat quietly in bed, contemplating my next move, as he thoroughly explored his possibilities. He scurried up one wall, dropped on top of my dresser, traipsed across to the window, scaled the curtains, tight-roped the curtain rod, dropped onto my desk, ran across my computer, jumped onto my pillow, treaded across the pillow behind my back to the wall lamp on the far side, scaled the lamp, squinted desperately into the light, did a high bar routine on the arm of the lamp, dropped down to the quilt rack, explored my closet, climbed up the moulding but couldn’t make it back to where he came, dropped down to the door, considered trying to squeeze under it (despite the frustrated cat still outside), and restarted the circuit. He repeated the route several times before disappearing deep into my closet for a nap. The cat rousted him again later that day when I carelessly left my door open, only to be saved by me once again.

Add to the mix our Labradoodle. A Labradoodle that believes that anything smaller than himself has been placed on this earth to be chased. Cat meet dog - dog mee------ oh, never mind.

Except now the cat has learned that the dog is not that bright and even less persistent. Within hours she had him convinced that there were at least two, if not more, of her haunting the house. She could sit calmly on a chair and watch him as he gazed at a floor-length curtain, waiting for her to emerge from behind it.

This all would simply be amusing, except we’re forgetting the bird. Earlier this year when the storm knocked out my power for three days, all of us, dog, bird and me, moved to my parents’ home. The dog and bird stayed when I moved back to keep the flying squirrel company. Normally the bird and dog get along just fine (or, rather, they mutually ignore each other), and life is pretty balanced. However, she has been confined to the safety of her cage since the arrival of the cat, who has taken a very cat-like interest in this creature. The cage has been tipped a couple of times, despite my sister’s desperate insistence to the cat that the bird is a “friend.”

The bird and flying squirrel have not met. Bets are still open on that one.

So, thus far, we have cat chases flying squirrel and stalks bird, dog chases cat, and we all chase the dog. Beginning to sound like the House that Jack Built?

My uncle has two dogs, one of which happens to think himself something of a bird dog. My uncle leaves town and dumps the dogs on us. At one point that meant that there were three dogs, one cat, one bird, and not nearly enough humans in the house that did not have a flying squirrel at the same time. Three dogs is a love triangle that should never be attempted - the three of them chase each other constantly, vying for top dog. Two of the three dogs chase the cat and then fight over who actually gets her in the end. The cat and the other dog chase the bird and fight with each other for rights to knocking down the cage. All humans on hand break up whatever fights are occurring over various non-living toys at any time.

And now, we are going to leave the whole slew of them with my sister’s boyfriend as all of us abandon the frozen north country for some mid-winter sun. At that point, he will assume the top of a food chain that involves caring for three houses which, at any given time, could be occupied by at least one flying squirrel, unaccounted mice, one crabby bird in a cage, three neurotic and needy dogs, one precocious cat and Uncle Trevor in the attic. Oh, yeah, and a pellet stove that needs to be fed on a regular basis.

Less of a chain, and more like a knot of whatever my mother’s last knitting project was - I wish him the best of luck in keeping his place at the top of it.

Thanksgiving for Three

2010-11-26T20:16:00.003-06:00

Due to a variety of extenuating circumstances, good, bad and otherwise, the size of our family left in the great Northwoods for our annual Thanksgiving feast was reduced quite spectacularly this year. I have had a variety of Thanksgiving experiences, large and small, but this one still fit into the “new” category.

My father, my uncle and I were three bachelor(ette)s left alone for the holidays. I had such an intense week of things running up to the holiday that I had seriously threatened that, if left to me (and obviously, it was going to be left to me), Thanksgiving dinner was going to consist of either 1) macaroni and cheese and Spam, or 2) Chinese take-out.

My mother, calling from far, far away admonished me to at least take them out to a restaurant in town that does Thanksgiving meals. That sounded like I would actually have to take a shower and brush my hair, which really seemed more work than getting some food on a table at home. I suppose there was the option of picking up an actual Thanksgiving meal from said restaurant, but if there’s one thing I’m not crazy about, it’s a stranger’s version of a Thanksgiving dinner on my plate, even when all of the necessary pieces are there.

Miraculously, the day before Thanksgiving (on what was technically a “day off” for me), I suddenly got motivated. (Granted this motivation was in large part due to a stupidly forgotten work task on my part that required me driving the 20 miles in to work to do one measly thing.) I made a mental list (a written one would have been too much like committing to a course of action) and drove to a store and grabbed shopping cart.

The meat section had me flummoxed for a while. I don’t cook meat (I eat it, I just don't cook it). I’ve really never done more than a chicken breast. There would only be three of us. Even a small turkey would be huge...a turkey breast left no opportunity for dark meat...leftovers are good...but...thawing, cleaning, cooking, meh. Not appealing.

Then I saw the little Cornish game hens. Two for $6. One each. Decision made. Done.

So, Thanksgiving morning I made my presence known in my parents’ kitchen. We cleaned up from my father’s bachelor week, and I set to work making something happen. And, amazingly, it did.

Nothing fancy. I didn’t go out of my way to spice up the recipes with anything I wouldn’t normally use. But there were Cornish hens (that actually turned out pretty well for my first attempt at really cooking meat), mashed potatoes (with skins left on and not whipped, thank you very much), stuffing (okay, I cheated and go pre-seasoned bread crumbs), cranberry sauce (that at least was homemade with local cranberries and my own recipe), homemade bread (well, a half-loaf leftover from the weekend before), apple pie (that mom made and left in the freezer, figuring if we had nothing else, we’d have that), and two pumpkin pies (I just couldn’t let the holiday go without making a pumpkin pie, especially when it’s so easy). Oh, and green beans and assorted raw veggies.

And fortunately I didn’t have too critical of an audience to work with. The three of us would’ve eaten raccoon, probably. My one big slip was timing in getting everything on the table - thought I had it down, but then decided the chickens needed more time. Ah, well.

So, my first solo venture in the kitchen at Thanksgiving was not discouraging. Still not thrilled about the idea of taking on a turkey some day, but we people will generally just eat, even if it’s not gourmet and half burnt. There’s something to be thankful for.

The Week in 42 Words

2010-11-13T15:05:00.000-06:00

Sunday: To play is to pray twice.

Monday: Tested remedies for accidental meeting overdose.

Tuesday: To sleep, perchance to dream of...

Wednesday: Murphy’s greatest invention was the computer.

Thursday: A stop at the pasty shop.

Friday: To progress does not imply progress.

Saturday: Snow, rain and butternut squash soup.

77 hours

2010-11-01T22:20:00.002-05:00

In honor of the near-77 hours I was without power this week, I'm going to do a seven-quick-takes Monday to get things rolling again.

1. Obviously #1 is the fact that we're celebrating being back on the grid. The massive windstorm from Tuesday and Wednesday went out with a whimper by Friday. After that it was hard to believe it had ever been windy at all. I hauled all of the recently-cooked meals out of my freezers and found room for everything in my parents' deep freeze on Thursday. Then I found room for me, and when my sister and her boyfriend flew in for my cousin's wedding this weekend, we found room for all of us. No worse than Thanksgiving. But I was still glad when Wisconsin Public Service called and texted me on Saturday morning to tell me my connection to the civilized world had been restored.

2. Storms are good for the adrenaline. And they alter circumstances and it's interesting to see how one responds to them and to their consequences. One thing I've learned about myself is that I respond quickly to a sudden change in events and can move through the moment efficiently and effectively. However, once derailed from my original track, it takes me a long time to return to what was "normal" before. Makes going back to regular work rather challenging.

3. The storms were followed by more excitement this weekend. My cousin Erin got married, and Sarah and her boyfriend Scott flew home. I haven't seen them together since they left for California, and it was fun having them around again. When it rains, it pours: Erin's wedding, Scott's birthday and Halloween. Mom cooked up another storm in the kitchen (really, with all of us in there it was ready to be declared a Federal disaster zone, but whether it had been an earthquake or tornado or both is still being debated), and produced two massive lasagnas, garlic bread, huge salads, a carrot cake, two apple pies, and pumpkin ice cream. And whatever candy we raided from the trick-or-treaters' dish. Sarah produced enough friends to help eat it all. High moment from the Halloween invaders:

Scott, dressed as a "Extreme Weather Golfer" greets a young Harry Potter at the door. He then informs Harry Potter that he is actually the Dark Lord in disguise. He insists Harry must tell him a riddle to win his candy. Harry does, and Scott-Dark-Lord doesn't know the answer. Young Harry shouts the answer and, "I vanquished the Dark Lord!" He then kicks Scott in the shins.

4. Tomorrow I leave again for yet another training and meeting. I haven't slept a whole week in my own bed since early October. Last week I could've been in Washington, D.C., for work, but instead was displaced due to a windstorm. I'm beginning to think I should get a hotel perks card. Except now I'm not scheduled to go anywhere until January.

5. I found a wallet that I'd lost a month prior. It was in my office, which is where I thought it must be after having thoroughly dismantled my car in search of it and nobody made any charges to the credit cards. It fell down into a pile of curricula I was supposed to be reviewing. If I'd gotten around to doing my homework sooner...

6. Tomorrow is Election Day. I do have a landline, but am never home to hear it and have only received two robo messages. I share my parents' mailing address, so I don't get political junk mail. I don't watch TV. Ever. I listen to NPR. The only political advertisements I am subjected to are those being constantly covered by NPR programs. If they would just shut up about them I could live in a perfectly happy little bubble.

7. It's 30 degrees F outside and about 50 in here. Why is there still a mosquito in my house?

Great Lakes Cyclone

2010-10-27T17:02:00.004-05:00

The Upper Midwest/Great Lakes region was/is still being hit by a storm that, according to the National Weather Service Facebook Page, had conditions of a Category 3 hurricane, and made the storm that sank the Edmund Fitzgerald look like a breezy summers day. (Okay, maybe I exaggerate, but it still beat that storm by a bit.)

When they first started predicting 50 mph wind gusts, I was a little nervous. Monday night was almost eerily quiet. Maybe I was just imagining things, but the world seemed so still, perhaps because everybody was home battening down hatches. Tuesday morning dawned a bit breezy, but didn't seem that strange to me. I work at the airport, so we're used to getting some of the strongest winds across the runway. The dripping rain and muggy air was rather miserable for late October. But, not remarkable, other than some flickering lights and reports of power outages around the region.

Then Tuesday night I drove to Minocqua for band rehearsal. It was windy enough that driving was a challenge, and when I arrived I struggled to escape my car against a wall of wind. The drive home was a matter of dodging debris from fallen trees on the recently-cleared roads.

I entered my house fully prepared for the lights to not come on. But, to my surprise, the power was on and all was well. Unfortunately, I wasn't smart enough to fill my bathtub with reserve water just in case.

The winds increased in intensity yet again after midnight. Still, nothing unusual happened, though it was hard to sleep. I drifted off, but at 5 AM Wednesday morning was awoken by a loud thudding and a flash of light visible through my blinds. It wasn't until 7:30 AM that it was finally light enough for me to see the damage.

It was only one tree, but one very unlucky tree. It didn't just fall, and it didn't just fall across my driveway. And, it didn't just fall across my driveway and across the powerlines to my house. This carefully aimed tree managed to fall on all these things, while also taking down the power pole that brought the lines to my house, snapping it cleanly in half on its way down.

I haven't lost any other trees or suffered any other damage (yet). But, while we were lucky that it also cleanly cut the power lines so there was no danger of electrocution and we could at least get the driveway cleared, it also means that it's going to be quite a job to put in another pole and do all the rewiring.

With nearly half of the Wisconsin Public Service customers in my zip code, and some 25,000 customers across the region out of power, I doubt I'm high on their priority list. They're already predicting some homes won't have electricity restored until Friday or Saturday.

Luckily for me, I can be a refugee in my parents' home for the duration. There are many others who aren't as lucky. There's discussion of establishing shelters for those without a warm place to go. Actually, if it weren't for the shortage of water and heat, I'd actually be able to get along just fine. But our homes aren't made for living without electricity anymore. The furnace is gas, but requires an electric ignition pilot light and circulation pump. The water comes from an electric pump from the well. If it weren't for the heat, I could probably even haul my own water from home. But no heat in Wisconsin is a problem. Or at least a problem I don't want to deal with.

Requisite ironical note of all this? One of the local chambers of commerce is advertising a disaster awareness seminar. Oh, and all the area disaster response coordinators are out of the state at a training in Washington, D.C. Perfect timing.

Work and Thinking About Work

2010-10-23T22:14:00.001-05:00

Some people claim they are incapable of multi-tasking. While I may not actually be capable of multi-tasking well, I have discovered that it is impossible for me to work and think about work at the same time.

It’s like trying to gaze at the horizon and reading the map in front of you at the same time. I can think about where I am going and map out a course to get there, but if I try to do that while I am navigating city streets and looking for a particular address, I’ll only manage to get lost while not knowing where I am going.

So, when I land at a conference with 750 of my closest colleagues and friends after a week of swimming in project minutia and entrails of e-mails and meetings, it’s really hard to pull my brain out of the grassroots and climb back up to ivory watch tower.

It took me at least a day to let go of the fact that I hadn’t returned a phone call to reserve a hall for an event taking place in December and start thinking about whether that event is really the thing I should be doing at all. Rather than feeling energized by the possibilities and ideas being shared at the conference - much less contribute effective ideas to the organizational strategic planning process - I felt frustrated, overwhelmed, and irritated that there was the suggestion that all the work I was currently working on was either for naught or missing critical pieces that would make it worthwhile.

And now that I am back, it is going to take at least a day to rid myself of all those big pictures and bright-eyed dreams and focus back down to the daily steps necessary to make anything happen at all.

Next time I’m going to have to plan in advance before I start letting people steer this cargo ship I have for a brain in new directions.

Stark Naked

2010-10-17T22:11:00.002-05:00

A few weeks ago I was severely depressed. Labor Day came, and the “autumn” switch got flipped right with the calendar page. We went from highs in the 80s and even 90s to frost warnings in the course of a weekend. Fall is usually my favorite time of year, but, as I faced the certainty of my second complete winter since my return from the tropics staring my face, I was unnerved. The color of the leaves began changing, and while fall colors are my favorite palate in the world, I kept looking past them to the moment they would be gone and the world would be left bleak and grey.

Fortunately we did get our miracle of a proper Indian summer in October - a week of days with temperatures in the 70s and even some 80s after a couple of hard freezes. The colors were glorious and the sun shone brightly.

All it took was a thunderstorm followed by couple of windy days and the leaves were gone, and even the tamarack trees shed their needles in golden snow flurries. The tree branches were left shivering with embarrassment at their sudden nakedness in the shadowy October moonlight.

But then, as I drove home on a clear afternoon I looked out over an expanse of grey tree branches and I saw in them the stark beauty of winter. I had been dreading it so much that I had forgotten the clarity that comes with the season. Where summer is thick with humidity and crowded with vegetation springing up everywhere, late autumn and winter are crisp and fresh and everything pulls back and gives you room to breath. I can see through the forest now, even to see the light from my parents’ house a quarter mile away, shining through the branches. They eyes can stretch again and you can see deer passing through the woods hundreds of yards away.

Even the more monotone color wheel brings a sigh of relief after the absolute riot of color that was autumn and the intense greeness of the world of summer. The eye only needs to process one color at a time, not millions. Life suddenly seems to have become simpler, clearer, cleaner. And when there is color now, the world really means it, and focuses on making it the best color there is.

I’m still not sure my tropic-thinned blood is ready for another long winter, but my eye and my mind are ready for the clear air and bright days ahead.

Boots

2010-10-10T21:37:00.006-05:00

I don't ask much from my footwear designers. I don't need Nike high-top, super-cushioned, inner-spring, memory foam, buckwheat-stuffed, all-terrain, 4WD water-walking running shoes. Nor do I need nine inch nail spike heeled and pointy toed black leather knee-high designer boots. Neither are going to do me any good as 1) I don't run and 2) I don't design or make a habit of walking on men.

I do, however, ask a lot of my footwear. I walk in them. Every day. In all sorts of weather. And, usually, once I find something I like, I wear them until they fall off my feet with a plaintive cry for mercy.

And, I hate shoe shopping. Detest it. Probably because I can never find what I want or need. And that's probably because so many other people love the fact that they can buy a new pair of shoes for every day of the year. Whereas my goal is the find something that I can wear every day of the year and never need another pair.

I like boots. Actually, I really like the boots I have right now. Black, real leather. Basic flat sole with just a hint of a heel. Zipper on the inside, fits snug, ankle high. Børn boots, so they are really well made. I bought them about a year ago, and have probably worn them on 320 days since. I wear them in winter, I wear them in spring, I wear them in fall. Only on the 80 and 90 degree days did I not wear them. They go with almost anything. I wear them hiking, I wore them to my job interviews. They are the perfect Common Sense Boot.

So, are you surprised to learn that Børn no longer makes said boots? And should I be surprised that there is nothing even remotely similar in the line they now offer?

If you have any doubts, go to their website and see for yourself. And then go ahead and check the other boot sellers. Remember, I'm looking for real leather, low-to-no heel, no slouch, will last at least 365 days of continuous wear in all conditions, relatively easy on-and-off, and for goodness sake, NO POINTY TOES, chains, buckles fur, or other bling.

I would pay good money for a pair of well-made boots that fit my needs.

Anybody know a really good cobbler?

Best of Seven

2010-10-03T22:55:00.003-05:00

It's been a while since I've been on here, but it's been a fairly intense few weeks. So, I'll take seven quick glances over things as they have been.

1. Brakes are a really good thing to have on a car. They're even better to have on a car before you being a 700 mile, three city, two training road trip. Unfortunately I didn't have brakes in time for said trip, so my parents were kind enough to loan me Sir Locks-a-Lot to see me safely across the state. It is always strange to return to driving automatic transmission after having only a clutch vehicle for so long.

2. Large Event #1 is successfully marked off the calendar. I played a relatively minor role in the overall scheme of things, but it is nice to have had it come off so well nonetheless. I am always relieved when something large is over and has been a success, but also a little disappointed that so much effort culminates so quickly and then is gone. Now time to dive into preparing for upcoming Large Event #2 and Really Obnoxiously Big Large Event #3.

3. I made my live television debut last week. All two minutes of it. Whee.

4. Cranberry Fest was this weekend. Unfortunately the date coincided with a planned trip to Madison, but I still managed to lead one cranberry marsh and winery tour on Friday. This year the harvest was in full swing, so all the amazing cranberry factoids I learned for last year were far less useful this time around. In fact, I barely needed to speak at all. But the tourists were happy and bought a lot of stuff. Seems the cranberry products industry is fairly recession proof.

5. I am now learning my way around Madison, to the point that I can have a reasonable argument with the GPS as to which way is the best way to my destination. And I often win.

6. Peak color season is here. By "color" I do mean the fall colors of the trees. This is my favorite time of year, however I'm having a hard time celebrating the sudden return of cold. We're not even really being offered "crisp" - we've pretty much just been dunked into pre-winter. I am trying to come to terms with this cheerfully.

7. I just added up my vacation days. I am due a long one.

The State of Poverty

2010-09-11T08:33:00.006-05:00

It’s Saturday morning and it’s raining. A cold, miserable, steady, dripping rain. But I am warm and snug in my bed with a solid house around me and a watertight roof over my head. My bed has plenty of warm blankets, and when I do get out of bed, I have my choice of sweatshirts and other warm clothes for the day. And when things finally do get cold enough that I would risk freezing my pets or my plumbing, all I have to do is turn a dial and the furnace will come on and fill the whole house with heat.

During moments like this, one image floats in my mind’s eye: I am back in Cao Bang, Vietnam. It is winter. I am in my four-story solid cement house, settling into bed in my flannel sheets and under a down comforter. I am warm for the first time all day from a hot shower and as long as I get into bed quickly, I won’t notice the cold draft coming in the bathroom windows. The sound of steady dripping water on the tin roofs around me permeates even the closed bedroom windows. The mist has turned to a steady damp drizzle that will keep up all night.

Most of my neighbors are tucked away in their warm homes. But as I get into my own bed, I pause and look out the window, where I can just see the large dry goods market on the next block. It is closed and gated like a ghost town. A single light burns over the south entrance, and framed in the spotlight on the pavement is a bundle of light blankets on a large square of cardboard.

The market night watchman is wrapped worm-like in a dirty quilt, huddled on the four square feet of relatively dry ground under the overhang in front of the metal gate. He does not have keys to the market, so he cannot sleep inside under the solid roof. He is paid only to sit outside on the cement. He has no mattress, no tent, not even the rickety guard house that our guards in Madagascar had with a space for a cooking fire. He will sleep wrapped in a couple of old blankets in the rain all night, earning a few Vietnamese dong to support his family whose living quarters are just a few steps up from his open-air cement at the market.

-----

On Thursday this week I had the opportunity to participate in my first Poverty Simulation. When you enter the simulation, you become a citizen of Anytown, State of Poverty, USA (there are no illegal immigrants in this particular town, a situation that might have to be updated for future simulation programs). You are given a new name, a new age, (often a new gender) and a new family.

I was made the four-year-old son with an asthmatic three-year-old brother, of a single mom. Our father was long gone; she received $292/month in government assistance. Our monthly rent on a three room flat with broken windows was $200. Mom had no education, no skills, no child care. With $92 she somehow had to pay a $350 gas and electric bill, get to the grocery store to feed us on $75 of food stamps per week, pay $60+/month in loans for our stove, past medical bills, and clothing. She had to avoid drug runners and keep her inquisitive and bored four-year-old from wandering off, dragging the three-year-old brother along to the casino and getting caught by child protective services while she was trying to apply for non-existent jobs.

With the cards stacked so against us, you might expect our “mother” to just give up and declare the game impossible. I certainly wouldn’t have blamed her if she did.

But she didn’t. She attacked a seemingly impossible problem with grit and determination. Even with adult preschoolers whining and crying and causing problems, she knocked on “doors” looking for baby-sitters, strategized her path through the various agencies and didn’t take no for an answer. Moreover, she did everything she could to take the moral high ground and to play by the rules even when the game constantly cheated her. But it was like trying to climb Mount Everest with a toothpick and dental floss.

Three “weeks” into the simulation we hadn’t eaten for two weeks because she couldn’t get to the store for food, we still hadn’t paid our gas or electric bill, and the one success we had was when she’d remembered to ask for a receipt for her rent payment and was able to prove that we’d paid at least to keep a leaky roof over our head. We celebrated that like we’d won the lottery.

Our break came late in the third week, and our fortune rode on the bad luck of others. A single mother with a teenage son were in dire straits of getting turned out of their home because she couldn’t get work due to a disability and he had had a brush with the law early in the game. They asked to move in with us. In exchange she would provide child care for us, my mother would be free to get work and her son also landed a work permit. Then, two Luck of the Draw cards came our way offering a job to my mother and found money to our new nanny. With the extra $60 and my mother’s chance at full time work, if we pawned a few extra household items like a stereo, it seemed we might actually be able to scrape into the next month.

We rejoiced. We rejoiced over the opportunity to work, pay on a few bills and have safe, stable child care with a woman who minutes ago had been a stranger with a delinquent son.

And then our one "month" simulation ended.

-----

If the simulation had continued, what the would have discovered was my mother’s new income would have drastically cut her eligibility for food stamps, which she would have had to go renew at the welfare office. But the time it would have taken her to go to the office, sit and wait only to find out that her benefits were being cut might have cost her her job. Without food stamps she would have had to turn to the food pantry - only to discover that they handed out vouchers to the local grocery store - another trip across town and more time spent. And the food pantry was in danger of running out of resources. And we were running out of transportation credits to get mom to work, to the store, to the welfare office. We kids didn’t even leave the house at the end of the game.

Meanwhile, our nanny’s son finally did land a work permit, and assuming he actually found a legal job (which were scarce), she would discover that his earnings would reduce their food stamp and assistance as well. Blending our families might or might not have worked. What if he’d gotten in trouble again? True, the first time hadn’t been his fault and he’d been released, but now he was a known entity in the eyes of the law. Or what if my asthmatic brother had had a health crisis? Our landlord refuse to maintain our $200/month apartment - what if that became a serious problem? Or, what if we just plain didn’t get along?

The victories were so small...and the chances to loose them were so great.

-----

The day was extremely frustrating for all involved. After being cheated by Quick Cash or losing time and transportation credits to closed banks and utility companies, some took to hiding in their homes and hoping nobody came to check on them. Others found bill collectors knocking on their doors and were driven to the streets during the day in hopes that if nobody was at home they wouldn’t be able to do anything about it. Older children and teenagers wandered aimlessly because school was and out staying at home meant dealing with bill collectors.

Jobs were scarce for all, and those that did get jobs were paid $5 an hour or less.

“Budget cuts” reduced agency staff sizes by half, leaving only one case worker, a half-time banker and half-time utilities manager for the 15 families in the simulation. School was out for the summer, but there was the real possibility of not having a school teacher in the fall.

Crime was rampant, and as three and four-year-olds, we were being exposed to drugs, swindlers and gambling (the Casino kept handing out free spin tokens), had been inside the jail after wandering off on our own, and were being left in the care of strangers. Our mother was under constant stress which hardly meant a healthy, beneficial relationship for our childhood development.

-----

I think the one thing we all walked away with was a sense of relief that, while this was a reality for many people - one in ten in our county - it was not our reality. We returned to our cars with full tanks of gas to drive back to our good paying jobs and then home to our wind-tight walls and water-tight roofs. Yes, a roof may develop a leak or a car might run out of gas, but both would be dealt with. Our job might be stressful and annoying, but it was a job. Most of us lived in our own space without being forced to share living quarters with strangers and rely on them for child care. At night we had warm beds and soft pillows to settle into. We could splurge on ice cream on occasion.

Of all the images of poverty I encountered and experienced in my six years overseas, none stay with me quite like the market night watchman outside my door on so many cold, rainy nights, doing what he needed to do to scrape by. And I love rainy Saturday mornings in my warm bed even more for it.

Between a Rock and a Hard Place and "Horror"scopes

2010-08-26T15:02:00.004-05:00

Have you ever had a no-win week? A survey of today's horoscopes perhaps shed some light on why:

Daily News astrology by Bernice Bede Osol: ARIES - Things will go much better if you're the one who is in charge of an important endeavor that includes several people. Don't let anyone who isn't truly up to the task call the shots.

Yahoo horoscope: ARIES - Avoid the temptation to tackle new projects today -- you're sure to get dragged back into something you thought was long finished. You should get moving again by tomorrow, so have patience.

Bought a Mattress (reprise)

2010-07-23T07:21:00.006-05:00

Bought A Mattress (reprise)

[Sung to the tune of "Found a Peanut"]

Bought a mattress,
Bought a mattress,
Bought a mattress last night.
Last night I bought a mattress,
I bought a mattress last night.

It was lofty,
It was sturdy,
It was cozy last night.
The mattress was lofty, sturdy, cozy,
Sturdy, cozy last night.

Couldn’t wake up,
Couldn’t wake up,
Couldn’t wake up after last night.
After last night, I couldn’t wake up,
Couldn’t wake up after last night.

Now need caffeine,
Now need caffeine,
Now need caffeine after last night.
What’s the point of a new mattress,
If I need caffeine after last night?

Blueberries for Sal

2010-07-11T12:42:00.003-05:00

It seems that I have inherited at least a piece of a the traditional female gatherer gene - I love picking berries. Always have. In fact, the book that sprang to the top of my most-often-checked-out-from-the-library list was Blueberries for Sal. Now as an adult I have a copy of it sitting on my bookshelf (and the bear part seems even more appropriate this year than ever).

So I have been simultaneously thrilled and a bit disturbed to find my favorite blueberry patch to be absolutely brimming with big, juicy berries over the last three weeks - and apparently nobody else was picking them.

This is great because, of course, all the more for me. But really, there are far more berries than I have time to pick (although I can get nearly a half-gallon milk jug-full in an hour), and I hate to see that opportunity go to waste. Mostly I’m disappointed, however, because while this patch isn’t very far from town, it’s not exactly hidden and it can’t be that well-kept of a secret, the patch remains empty even at (what I considered) prime picking times.

There is just something so fulfilling about sitting in the middle of a patch of plants heavy with big juicy berries, gathering them all together into a container, then heading home to do something wonderful with them. Or, if you’re like Sal, dropping a few into the bottom of your berry bucket, listening to them go plink, plink, plink, then eating one or two, then picking out the two at the bottom of your pail and eating those. Rest and repeat.

Unfortunately my work and life schedule and the rain schedule haven’t allowed me more than a few hours here and there, but those hours have given me blueberry smoothies and pancakes and several quarts in the refrigerator (also unfortunately, the gatherer gene hasn't found time to morph in the Sal's mother's canning gene, so extra berries will probably just wind up the freezer). Still, why isn’t anybody else out there picking?

Today I was gratified to find a few weekend pickers wander out while I was out there - I welcomed them to my patch and offered all that I could share. The easiest of the summertime bounty.

The Land of Fairy Tales

2010-07-06T22:12:00.004-05:00

Tonight my parents and I went again to our newly-restored 50 seat, one-screen movie theater in town to see the third and final (?) installment in the Shrek series. It’s really the epitome of small town summer evening, and almost a fairy tale moment itself, to walk downtown, wander into the theater, enjoy whatever movie happens to be playing in an intimate atmosphere with people you mostly know, then wander back out into the still almost-daylight, past (or into) the colorful fudge/candy/ice cream shop brimming with customers, and off back home through the twilight. Just what movie is showing doesn’t seem to matter so much as just the act of going to a movie.

On our way home we chatted idly about the movie, whether it was as good as the second, in agreement than none could beat the first, and the capture and mixing of all the fairy tales and folk stories ever told. The whole “true love’s kiss…” and creatures and stories...

Then, suddenly I remembered something that happened a few days ago, but forgotten almost as soon as it happened:

I was in my room changing and getting ready to go out for an evening (which probably meant I was changing from one pair of jeans to another). I stopped to brush my hair (a rather pointless pursuit, but I made the feeble attempt), closing the door partway to be able to see into the mirror on the back of the door. The dog was lying on his bed on the floor next to my bed on the other side of the door.

Suddenly, a movement on the wood floor caught my eye. There, hopping into my bedroom, looking for all the world like he fully intended to be there, was a frog. A rather largish sized frog for this neck of the woods, though no bullfrog.

My dog took an immediate interest, but I waved him back to his bed. The frog sort of stopped and looked up at me (I swear, he did). I was a bit astonished - it’s no simple feat for a frog to navigate himself into my house and then all the way through it to my bedroom. Much less when I was actually in there. There is the whole large porch, kitchen, dining room, a bend into the hallway and then the choice of three rooms into mine.

Anyway, there I stood, with this frog patiently waiting at my feet. Waiting for...something.

So I bent down and scooped him up. Only thing to do was to take him back outside where he belonged. Except he was having none of it. Despite the ever-inquisitive chipmunk-chasing dog-beast at my heals, this frog was determined to get out of my hands and stay in my house.

I finally scrambled him to the porch and the deck and the yard.

And then I stopped. What if?

So yes, I kissed the frog.

But, I am still me, and there is no Prince Charming come to whisk me away (or, for that matter, whisk me to stay). And the mirror on my door is still keeping (wisely) mum about just who is the fairest of them all. It knows I know I don’t stand a chance, and that I don’t really need to know the truth, anyway.

So much for fairy tale endings.

Seven Sees

2010-06-27T21:15:00.001-05:00

It’s high time I make up for neglecting this blog. So, once again I return to the “Seven Quick Takes” as a way of figuring out just where I’ve been that I haven’t been posting here over the last several weeks…er, month.

1. What happened to June? One minute it was payday...and now it’s almost payday again. Well, I guess that’s a good thing. I did do a bit of traveling around the state this month - west, south and even further south for meetings and conferences. I’ve never been able to decide whether travel breaks up the monotony and gives me perspective and revitalizes me for more work - or just interrupts a flow of a schedule and wears me out.

2. We played our first summer band concerts this month. We did NOT suffer a complete community band FAIL (a.k.a., “bandwreck”) as many of us feared was possible. As a result, we figured we’d played pretty well. On the bigger picture, I also attended a concert in the park...and noticed the average age of those attending. Then, looking at the average age of those in the band, it makes me a little sad to wonder what community band concerts might (or might not) look like when I attain the status of a “seasoned band veteran.”

3. On the band note: I actually got to play in a dance band. Play “French” horn in a dance band. Not often a horn gets to swing - much less get to displace an extremely competent jazz trombone player and play the first trombone parts. With my apologies to him, I had a great time pretending to be first trombone (and occasionally 3rd trumpet)...even through I doubt anybody in the audience heard me, thanks to my bell facing the wrong way. Ahh, well, probably all the better for it.

4. More music (yes, I know) - it seems I’m going to have a new musical first on the 4th of July when I’ll get to play an E-flat alto upright horn, which I have not-so-affectionately dubbed the “Little Beast.” No more bells-backwards problem for the parade - I’m gonna blast those afterbeats!

5. Is it possible the 8-year drought is almost over? They were actually warning of possible flash floods last night - after a fast inch-in-an-hour on Thursday, three more inches Friday night, rain Saturday night and Sunday afternoon, the ground is actually damp. Still, we’re still nowhere near to making up the nearly 40 inch rainfall deficit we’re suffering. But, now we’re stuck trying to remember how to live in a humid, tropical, unpredictable weather climate again. Gotta admit, it was kinda nice knowing your weekend plans weren’t going to get rained out. Now we’re back to the roulette wheel.

6. It seems that people actually watch TV around here. As I met people at the conference I attended last week, people repeatedly looked at me and said, “I know you. I’ve seen you on TV.” Sigh.

7. I know I’m supposed to love tourists, but I can’t help but wish I had my solitude back.

The State of Prevention

2010-06-26T17:24:00.000-05:00

This week I spent three days at the State Prevention Conference among other “prevention” people - those of us that either are trained to work in or promote the philosophy that preventing problems is the cheapest and most certain way of solving them.

It’s a philosophy that looks good on paper and often even sells politically, but can be extremely difficult to implement. By nature, we are reactionary beings - we see a problem, and we fix it, and then wait around for the next thing to fix. Sometimes this works just fine, but generally people in this position complain that the spend all day putting out fires and never getting and “real” work done.

Second, prevention looks good on paper, but while it is very easy to report all those things that you reacted to and problems you fixed, it’s very difficult to show how many things have been prevented. How can you prove that vaccinations kept 100 kids from getting sick this year? Or, harder yet, that your anti-drunk driving education campaign prevented people from getting in accidents or killed this year? Maybe it was just a lucky year.

Still, it seems the public health approach of trying to keep people from gaining too much weight or smoking or drinking themselves to death is gaining more traction as time goes by. At least, that’s what the pro-health care reform politicians would like us to believe. The prevention community has been promised some very big money in the future by the bill - but it is still up to Congress to appropriate that in the coming years.

That, in essence, was the dynamic of this conference: people from the state capital and people from the counties and cities gathered to share ideas - and realize once again that the people gathered were not speaking the same language.

If there is one consistent thing world-wide, it is that people in the capital cities, be they national or state/provincial, suffer a disconnect from the local level. It is their role in the capitals and capitols, to set the strategic direction and policy for large numbers of people. The nature of this work - negotiations, study, diplomacy, advocacy, lobbying, and straight-up politicking - demands a certain level of academic skill. There is competition for the relatively prestigious, moving-and-shaking jobs in these capitals, so there is a depth of brainpower that can be constantly drawn upon. Plus, it is usually a place of passion and youthful energy. People often play as hard as they work, so there is usually as good an opportunity for a social life as a career. The dynamic, whether with a conservative or liberal bent (or something in between or otherwise), is usually motivated, full of ideas, and ready for change.

Often, however, just the opposite is true outside of the capital city - the further away and the more rural the area, the more extreme the difference. So while many of the representatives of these less politically driven areas sat in the audience, passions and ideas flowing from a capital city speaker were tempered with a quiet, “Yes, but…” from the crowd.

Not always, but often. It is the job of those middle-men in the prevention world to figure out how something that is being decided or developed at the strategic levels can be translated to the local level. It is the job of these prevention workers to take what is given to them and make it reality.

I always leave these conferences full of ideas. It’s also interesting to see later how many of these ideas actually manage to stick. Sometimes you do get a successful statewide (or even nationwide) campaign, such as the ban on indoor smoking in Wisconsin. But those are long term movements that must be fueled with almost constant passion of those at the state level. Motivation and renewed optimism is something we also often benefit from at these conferences. But it is also up to us, those in the middle, to make it clear when passion at the highest level isn’t going to mean a thing to the people that need to actually make the changes.

And in that lies the secret alchemy that determines success or failure of prevention.

Memorial Day Memories

2010-05-31T07:00:00.000-05:00

Memorial Day weekend. Memorial Day. Drop one word, and you get a very different connotation. The first is three full days away from the office, or, around here, the first busy day of summer as an endless stream of vehicles hauls boats, kayaks, camping and fishing gear, and people to the sun and lakes of the Northwoods. The second is a solemn day of remembrance, a day for color guards, cemetery decorations, patriotic music, and speeches.

This split is not limited to celebrations in the United States. I was re-reading my journal entries from Martyr’s Days spent in Madagascar. Apparently I was fortunate enough to be there for two March 29ths that were semi-attached to a weekend, so we celebrated the day as a full holiday weekend those times. The first March 29, in 2003, I had been in country for about two months and was still in training. I really had no idea what was going on. Our language and cultural trainers did their best to explain the history of the day, but it mostly translated badly as “Independence Day.” Yet, what I expected out of Independence Day wasn’t what I saw. It was a very solemn event with few organized community-wide activities like a parade or festival. My host brother left town to go to the capital to spend the day with his siblings and my host father went to the next town over to give a speech. So, three other trainees and I left town for a weekend-long bike excursion into the country.

When the next Martyr’s Day in 2004 rolled around, I had been at site in Bealanana for nearly a year. It still took my faithful sitemate, Elizabeth, to make the connection of “Martyr’s Day” to “Memorial Day.” We had just returned form our momentous 60 km hike down the mountain and back a few days before, so we didn’t do anything extraordinary for this Martyr’s Day weekend, but as volunteers only got official Malagasy holidays as days off, I know many other volunteers who did take advantage of the three full days. So, instead, we observed the solemnity of the day:

March 29, 2004 Malagasy Memorial Day. I was re-reading my journal from a year ago (2003), and somehow I’d had the impression that this was their Independence Day. Then Elizabeth said “Memorial Day,” and I realized how well that fit. We went to the ceremony at the monument in town and it was very much like the familiar U.S. celebrations: colorguard, armed contingent, officials, speakers, even a veteran. Oh, and scouts in uniform. Very patriotic. Yet very Malagasy.
The Sous-Prefet (equivalent of a County Board chairman) delayed all the proceedings as usual - so much so that even his wife walked into town ahead of his car. Then, the usual raising of the flag, national anthem, laying of wreaths, speeches. The mayor’s speech was short and to the point. Then the Sous-Prefet. Arrive late, talk long must be his motto. I was sweating from places I didn’t know I could sweat by the time he finished. But at least Elizabeth and I weren’t seated with the VIPs this time, so we didn’t have to fully pay attention…

I’m amused to read how the following part of the entry reflects on our recent down-the-mountain adventure, as one of our “guard des corps” (body guards) was the commander of the small legion of Malagasy troops (gendarme) standing in observance of Martyr’s Day.

Elizabeth and I amused ourselves by noticing the old gendarme from the walk down the mountain was the man barking orders at the troops today - and then noticing him notice us and informing the guy next to him who told the next guy and so on until the whole guard was now looking at us. We could just hear him saying, “Don’t look now, but there are the two white girls I saved from a bug.”

Always a good thing to have an in with the local military unit. (Oh, and if you don’t know the story of the bug, remind me to tell it sometime.)

Sadly, I never attended another Malagasy Memorial Day observance. The next year I had moved to Fianarantsoa, and was well warned that if we came within sight of the gathering at the monument, we would be dragged into the proceedings and seated in the V.I.P. section. We sent Dan as our sacrificial representative and the rest of us celebrated with a picnic brunch inside the compound, then, I think, took a long walk around the city in the afternoon while everybody else was busy getting drunk.

So, as I walk to the cemetery this coming Monday morning, I will remember standing in the hot sun, dust and sweat of March in Madagascar to honor Malagasy killed at Ambatomanga - and the good company I kept on those days.

A new county song

2010-05-30T16:07:00.003-05:00

After listening to a relative's review of past relationships again this morning, there came the outline to a new potential hit song:

Lasting impression: that one-night stand.
Lasting depression: that one that broke your heart.
Lasting oppression: the one you married.

Granddog

2010-05-30T14:52:00.007-05:00

My parents will be the first to complain that my sister and I are doing very little in the way of providing them with grandchildren. My sister and I will be first to confirm the truth of that statement. (Although my sister is admittedly several steps further down the road than I - she at least has a boyfriend. The only thing showing an interest in me at the moment is our fifteen-year old cockatiel, who, upon being left alone with me for an extended period of time last winter, laid her first egg.)

And while this is a crime to some nth degree, we have at least attempted to plug that gap by providing a granddog.

My sister took the lead in this when she welcomed home a puppy that grew into a gentle giant named Cooper. Unfortunately, we lost Cooper at Labor Day last year, but several months prior we’d absorbed a foster dog named Wrangler. Wrangler, a miniature-pony sized Labradoodle with mad-scientist eyebrows, takes his role as constant companion and best friend very seriously.

Wrangler’s first and most obvious dislike is to be left alone. His devotion knows no bounds - neither window screens nor fences nor the presence of other animals will prevent him from searching out his family. More times than we’d care to count we’ve had to go track him down after he’s escaped in an attempt to find us. In fact, the very first weekend we had him was during my sister’s master’s degree hooding and graduation. We left the three dogs (Cooper, Wrangler, and my sister’s housemate’s Golden Lab, Cyrus) in their second story apartment. We returned several hours later to find a lady standing at the end of the driveway, Wrangler in tow. She said she had caught him wandering the fields of the neighboring high school, near where his former owners lived. She thought she’d seen him around my sister’s place, so she brought him back.

I ran to the house to check on the other dogs, who were still very much there. Wrangler had attempted to break out of the bathroom window, which, for a little bit of luck, was only open a crack. He eventually broke out a screen and jumped onto the porch. If he’d managed the bathroom window, it would have been a 30 foot fall to the pavement below.

Even now, earshot, and preferably eyeshot, is as much distance as he allows between us.

My new job has caused a bit of a problem for all this. Normally I leave home at 7:30 AM, and the earliest I return is 5:30 PM, but usually my schedule keeps me away until 9 or 10 at night. For a dog that needs near constant companionship, this just doesn’t work.

Enter my father. My father’s business as a seasonal plumber, especially in the spring season before Memorial Day, involves a lot of driving to a variety of northwoods cabins and time in the outdoors. Wrangler has fully absorbed his role as apprentice. He relishes “going to work.” He accompanies my father to each place, has learned to wait for instruction on what he can or can’t do at each house, and spends his time either following my father into crawl spaces or splashing in the many lakes and chasing chipmunks in the woods. He observes carefully as my father does repairs - and if it weren’t for the lack of opposable thumbs, probably would have applied for his journeyman plumber’s license by now.

This as become so much his normal gig that when I do come home to stay for weekends, more often than not I find myself chasing back through the woods to my parents’ house to find the dog. But that’s normal - grandma and grandpa’s house is always more fun that your real home.

While a granddog might not be the little human my parents are anticipating, at least my big puppy can offer many of the same benefits: entertainment without the need for the providing maintenance. And the best benefit of all: when you get tired of him, they can just send him home.

As my father said as he dropped off the dog this evening, "He's the son I never had. Thank goodness!"

Bear Saga

2010-05-27T09:41:00.010-05:00

A few days I ago I dreamed there were 15 big black bear in my yard (inside the fenced-in part). Today, I woke up to one large, three-legged black bear in the unfenced portion of my yard.

My uncle's dogs, who have been with me for the last 10 days or so, had been restless all night. Finally at 6 AM I gave in and let them out to the porch, where the take the dog-door into the large dog pen. Tumbleweed, the youngest, was more enthusiastic than usual - and I quickly saw why. There, running across the yard was a large black bear.

I was relieved I'd only let the dogs into the pen and not the open yard. But then they didn't shut up. They kept barking. I headed outside and saw that the bear wasn't in any hurry to leave the yard.

And now, four hours later, it's still not in a hurry to leave the yard.

[update: I realized out a few minutes ago that it's not a "he," it's a "she" and she must've been just biding her time with her two little cubs up a tree somewhere. I don't think it's the same sow as from the "Bear Necessities" post - I'm pretty sure that one had two front legs...I think. It is, however, the same bear that was raiding my parents' birdfeeder last summer. Anyway, you can mentally fix pronouns as you go from here]

He's hunkered down underneath some big red pines, about 50 yards from the house. I've wandered out several times, only to have him look at me, and roll over and go back to sleep. At one point I thought he might be dead. I walked across the yard to the corner of the old barn - easily within 50 feet of the bear - and he just looked at me. Then, when I got to the corner of the barn, he finally stood up and did a display of aggression by attacking the tree next to him. I backed off.

That's also when I figured out that this bear is the three-legged bear that visited my parents' bird feeder last summer.

After that, Dad drove in, the dogs have barked, and I backed my car out. He's moved all of 20 feet. Not really normal for a bear.

So I called the Wildlife Service. They're sending the trappers out. Apparently they already have a bear trap set just a mile or so down the road for a nuisance bear. I think I've caught him.

Updates to come soon - the trappers are still a couple hours away on another job before getting here. The bear doesn't seem to mind. Honestly, he looks so comfortable I'd be tempted to go curl up next to him in the sun and shade.

We'll see what happens next.

Update 2: So, the bear and her cubs have wandered off down by our pond. The Wildlife Service is sending the bear trappers, but they're on the other side of the county. And I am spending an unscheduled day working from home. This is what makes life with wildlife interesting!

Final (?) Update: Well, the guys from the Wildlife Service showed up with live bear trap in tow. Unfortunately they were about 20 minutes too late and Mama had taken her cubs off to the south. I filled them in on details, and they headed down the road to where a neighbor with a chicken coop had reported a bear break-in the night before. I sort of enjoy the novelty of bear and cubs in the neighborhood, especially of the sow is going to be so chill about things that I could get within a few yards of her before she got at all upset. Seems like the right kind of bear to have, if you're going to have one at all.

That said, as I was updating my own bear story, a friend from across town was riding her bike home and literally almost ran over the rear end of yet another bear. They all seem to be out and about right now. Maybe today is the day of the teddy bear picnic?

...geese, chickens, turkeys, omby and water buffalo...but this is certainly something I never had to deal with in the third world...

One final update: Late in the afternoon I loaded my uncle's dogs into the car to return them to whence they came. I left them briefly unattended while I returned to the house for something. They jumped, snarling and barking, out of the back of the car and chased off into the woods. I yelled and screamed and go them to come back. I locked them safely in the car and went and grabbed binoculars. Sure enough, the two of them had treed a bear. I watched it make its way back to the ground - this one had all four legs intact, and judging from the size, was probably a yearling or a two-year-old. That makes four bears within a baseball toss of my house all in broad daylight in one day. That's a personal record.

My Life as a Status Update

2010-05-22T20:06:00.001-05:00

The phenomenon that is Facebook has created a whole new means of communicating: the Status Update. (For those few remaining of you that have resisted the pull of social networking, a “status” is a brief statement about what you’re doing/thinking/feeling/marketing/observing that is visible to all of your friends or friends of friends or just plain everybody depending on your privacy settings.) The result of this status updating, which could be done near constantly with all the minutia of one’s life if one wished (Erica is waking up. Erica is getting dressed. Erica is making breakfast. Erica just realized she’s late for work...again…), is that all your Facebook contacts know what you’re doing, even though you may never actually exchange a personal communication with them.

In some ways this has made my life so much easier. People claim they don’t have time for Facebook. I don’t have time NOT to use Facebook. I don’t have time to sit and send e-mails to every single one of my 322 friends. That would be nearly one e-mail per day for nearly a year just to send a single message to each friend. Never mind replies and actual content. And so, I rely on occasionally updating my status to remind people that I am still alive, should they ever feel the need to actually speak directly to me.

And so, my life over the last several months sounds something like this:

Erica celebrated her first Valentine's Day with to her new job. It hasn't given her any diamonds (yet), but hey - sometimes employment is a girl's best friend.

Erica has recovered her Luther ring from the depths of the safety deposit box.

Erica can't understand how she just suffered massive grilled cheese sandwich FAIL.

Erica takes the bypass so she doesn't have to drive past the Culver's sign each day...

Erica never thought her introduction to *live* public radio would be a polka show...!!!

Erica made her percussion debut tonight - on bar chime and rainmaker.

Erica gives thanks for washing machines.

Erica apparently lives in the Single Best Town in America...

Erica thinks that a day that you get congratulated for doing nothing more than managing to pass another 365 days on the planet is wonderful. Thanks to all!

Erica made cookies yesterday. Shhh...don't tell anybody.

Erica received her order of three guilty pleasure books in the mail today.

Erica: You know the economy is still pretty bad when there’s a foreclosed and auction sign on the lawn of the temp employment agency…

Erica wonders about returning to her hotel room to find a used bath towel hanging on the back of the bathroom door. One that was not used by her.

Erica has officially been un-adopted by her dog.

Erica could, should and would, but doesn’t want to.

Erica left her iPod at home. She’s going to have to listen to the wind and the birds on her walk today.

Erica is celebrating the anniversary of the patent for blue jeans by wearing blue jeans.

Erica keeps her left foot firmly planted on the floor of the car when driving an automatic.

Erica just vacuumed the Halloween decorations off the front of the house.

You get the picture.

Unfortunately, this does very little for those people who aren’t on Facebook and wouldn’t know the status of my continued residency on this planet unless I actually communicate using one of the millions of other means at our disposal.

Then again, the complaint has been raised against me that I am guilty of “Vaugebooking.” I prefer to think of these updates as indicating a universal state. They could potentially apply to anybody or anything at any time. They just happen to apply to me at that moment.

What is more fun is the extrapolations and associations that others make. Let the comments begin!

Bear Necessities

2010-05-16T18:12:00.001-05:00

Spring sprung a lot earlier than usual around these parts. Thanks to an incredibly unseasonal string of 70 degree days back in March, just about everything seems to be happening about three weeks early. I guess especially after such a lame summer last year everything wants to get a head start now, and was rather undampened by the five inches of heavy wet snow we got last weekend. One good thing: snow in May just doesn’t stay.

This happened several weeks ago now, but since I’ve been so negligent of this space, it never got written down.

It was just dark on a balmy (and I mean balmy!) Sunday evening back in early April. It was about nine and I had just gotten off the phone with a friend. It was just beginning to cool off and a busy work day ahead was calling me to bed. I walked out on the porch to close the door. I briefly thought about letting the dog out that door to do his evening business, but a noise fortunately made me stop.

Out about 20 feet beyond our deck there was a horrible crying noise.

“Noooooooooooo! Noooooooo! Nooo!” wailed the sad sound.

“Noooooooo! Noooo! Oooooooo - nooooo!” it continued.

My heart stopped - I’d never heard such a thing. It sounded like a lost and hurt child.

One of the bulbs in the outdoor floodlight had burned out and the other had been stolen by the winter pond skaters, so I had no way of looking to see if I could find something. And as much as things might sound human, I know very well that any variety of animals, from cats in heat to mountain lion, can convince somebody that there is a person in distress in the dark.

So, I ran for the phone. And, of course, called my daddy.

I held the phone out into the dark (while a very baffled dog sat at my feet trying to figure out what was interrupting his evening routine) for my dad to hear the noise. It came and it went, and soon was accompanied by the scrabbling of claws on a tree. Whew, at least it really wasn’t human now.

Dad was just as confused as I. Raccoons? It’s said they say it with far more abuse than a slap. Porkies also make a lot of noise this time of year.

But then the noise was joined by another, deeper and far more primal noise:

“No. Ugh. Hupmh. No.”

At least I’d already decided the first noise wasn’t human, but that second one, if it had come from an adult male human, would’ve had me dialing 9-1-1. The “no” was so clear that I fully expected the other lower octave noises to become words.

That was the last straw. I finally dug up a flashlight in hopes that the beam would go far enough into the woods to uncover the mystery.

Much to my surprise, the flashlight beam did reveal the intruder - it was much, much closer than I originally expected. And from the way it was crouched and snarling at me, my first thought was, “Wolverine!”

But just a few seconds later I saw the two black shapes scrabbling on the tree alongside the crouched menace. Then my brain kicked in, and I realized it was the momma bear and her two itty, bitty cubs. And they were making a fuss that I’m sure, like any human mother with twin toddlers throwing a tantrum in Walmart, was embarrassing and stressing her beyond intelligible words.

The next day my birdfeeders were taken down for the summer, and my attempts at an organized compost pile were abandoned. The bears are back - with these twins, the count stands somewhere at momma, two-year-old (last year’s yearling), twin yearlings (last year’s twin cubs) and two new cubs. That’s just the one family - there are still the three three-legged bears out there somewhere.

Since that day in early April I haven’t seen the bears myself. But pictures of this family made it to the front page of our local paper after they took up a week-long residence in one a tree downtown. Whatever the economy elsewhere, looks like it will be a bearish summer around here.

SE7EN Up.

2010-05-14T22:13:00.005-05:00

Earlier this week I was gently reprimanded by one of my two readers for the criminal neglect of this blog. Fair enough. So, to one of my two remaining fans - this comeback is for you.

But, as it is a Friday night and the end of a long week, I’m afraid I’m going to have to steal a move from another blogging friend’s playbook (which I think she ever-so-elegantly lifted from yet another creative word choreographer) and present you with a Seven Quick Takes Friday.

(The only downside is I’m not sure I have seven things to talk about. Well, hopefully by the time you finish reading this I will have thought of seven.)

1. The Job is going well. Hard to believe I’ve been on it for over three months now, and I still haven’t gotten fired. Not sure what I’m doing wrong, but I’ll keep trying to figure it out. As of now, I’m attached at the hip to three major projects, have fingers firmly planted in the pots of four more, and threatened soon to be ball-and-chained to five others. If only the gym teacher that failed me during the juggling unit could see me now.

2. I still manage to have a “life” outside of work. However, that “life” usually consists of me manhandling a sixteen-foot piece of intricately wound metal tubing while in the presence of others likewise manhandling pieces of wood and brass and generally annoying anybody within earshot. Rehearsals continue to consume at least two nights of my week, usually three. And a lot of the miles on my car. As they say, I wouldn’t be doing it if I wasn’t getting something out of it. I seriously believe that this uses the parts of my brain that would otherwise rise in mutiny over the parts that are required for The Job if I didn’t distract and exhaust them on a regular basis.

3. I’ve been in the media a lot lately. Newspaper, radio, community newsletters, TV. My most recent TV appearance mostly consisted of B-roll of me being rather expressive while conversing with others about topics completely unrelated to the rather serious subject of the story, and me being introduced while the footage shows me walking away from the camera. Apparently I have a face and an attitude made for radio. Better yet, newsprint.

4. My dog has decided I am unworthy as a caretaker. My schedule now usually has me leaving the house by 7:30 or 7:45 AM and not returning until 8, 9 or 10 PM. He has been spending a lot of time on the job with my father. Since this is the spring opening for all of the seasonal cabins, this means the pup gets to ride around to all these fun cottages and chase chipmunks all up and down the Three Lakes chain. When I returned this evening from a two day conference and picked him up, his response to returning “home” was to hightail it back through the woods to Mom and Dad’s place. I guess I deserve it.

(Whew, over halfway...let’s hope I don’t run out of steam.)

5. More on the dog: he officially cannot be left alone. As my father says, it’s hard to believe a dog with such a high I.Q. can be so dumb. He has learned to open drawers and has now discovered the location and the means of accessing my parents’ breadbox. He eats whole loaves of bread. When bread isn’t available, apparently he will settle for SOS scouring pads. At least he hasn’t learned to open the refrigerator or the oven (yet).

6. I’ve learned that there is a SS Nazi marching song called “Erika.” It’s rather unnerving to see a regiment of Nazi soldiers marching down the street while singing about their sweet blond farm girl named after the heather flower, my own name, “Erika.”

(What, only one more? Oh, dear, better make it good.)

7. Oh! At least according to Disney Family Fun, it’s official: I live in the “Single Best Town in America." Please note, this is very different from the “Best Town for Singles,” which I can sincerely attest, it is not. I’m guessing that isn’t going to change on, after, or due to August 3rd, either.

Best Practices and Success Stories

2010-03-12T20:57:00.006-06:00

A story:

The community was suffering. They were geographically isolated and their culture limited their mobility through the region. While they were skilled farmers, the couldn’t compete with the larger import groups that were pricing them out of the market.

News of this community in trouble got out and an agricultural educator came to the community. The spring tomatoes were scraggly and poorly-looking. The fruit was small and each plant only gave a few tomatoes. There might have even been some parasites. The early season market was a great opportunity to outsell the larger producers, but the unpredictable spring weather was wreaking havoc on the farmer’s attempts to start their plants early.

The agricultural educator devised a plan and a whole new system for growing was suggested. Rather than trying to heat greenhouses with wood, a bit of clear plastic and some black boards became solar green houses. New compost and mulching techniques were taught. Plants better suited to local conditions were identified and cultivated. Low-tech and cost-effective irrigation systems were employed.

As a result, these farmers began producing the best quality early spring and late fall crops in the region. They sent their produce to market, and based on their success, formed a new co-op for selling at auction. They began to out-compete the larger warehouses and were able to develop a successful system of co-sharing profits and reinvesting in their community farm production. The community was strengthened and whole families benefited from this new source of revenue.

A question:

Where did this story take place?

No, it isn't a Peace Corps story. It's not even a USAID or iNGO story.

This story is the story of a UW Cooperative Extension program with the Amish and Mennonite communities in central Wisconsin.

To me, this story captures the essence of the parallels of the international work I was doing, and the state-wide work the UW Cooperative Extension is doing right here at home. The same successes we come to expect in rural, traditional and often isolated communities in the international world is what the UW Cooperative Extension is modeling and perfecting right here at home.

And once again, I discover I have found my home again in Wisconsin.

How my job is (and is not) like Peace Corps.

2010-03-07T22:27:00.002-06:00

Perhaps the most unsettling thing about my new job so far has been the intense sense of déjà vu that I have at least three times every day. How is it possible that I can be home in my own town, my own community, speaking my own language, and yet what I see in front of me is a vision of what I was supposed to understand when I was 10,000 miles and two hemispheres away.

I suppose I had some idea of what the University Extension program was all about. It’s fairly easy to see some immediate parallels: find some educated people, stick them in remote communities, provide a series of trainings and give them access to resources. Major differences are also obvious: we were true foreigners in that community, most of us were pretty young and clueless, and our term was for two years, three at most. Still, in theory there’s a lot to be matched in the theory.

Yet, there were other parallels. Extension was raised as a model of what some of the agricultural outreach services were intended to do in remote Madagascar and Vietnam. The “Champion Communities” model also strove to do something similar with putting a educated (usually young) Malagasy person in each community to serve as a coordinator for community collaboration and improvement. Unfortunately, they lacked the impressive pay and academic support the Extension system offers. They were forced to make choices between doing things to take care of themselves and seeking to find resources from other places.

And so I come home to the University of Wisconsin Cooperative Extension program. A program that puts graduate-degreed (or imposes the requirement to become so) professionals in multiple sectors in each county, pays them a living wage with the type of benefits and provides the type of supports that allows one to focus on work, and then floods them with access to the type of resources that might overwhelm some, but would cause any self-respecting geek to drool.

I’m not saying the UW Extension system is perfect, but you can see what the Peace Corps and all of these other community-based expert programs strive to do through it. Just as when you are dropped at site as a PCV, UWEX orientation (at least in the family living program, which parallels the health education program fairly neatly) maps out your timeline from first day, first week, first month, first three months, first year. Your supervisor takes you courtesy visits to the important people. You read the black book or letter left from your predecessor (if you had one). They tell you to do a needs assessment, but you spend the first three months trying to figure out what to do. And they tell you not to even attempt a Plan of Work before six months. You get trained in cross-cultural sensitivity.

But then Extension does it better. Granted, they can plan on having their agents around for longer than two years. They offer professional development in every effort to try to keep agents around longer. In the ideal (and sometimes in fact), county agents become a central resource to their community, providing information to politicians, and documenting program impact through research and academic evaluation. Peace Corps was great. But now I’m seeing how it can really work, when real academic, political and yes, some financial, resources can be mustered. Sure, the extension system could be better. And Peace Corps is a fantastic program for reasons that the Extension can never dream of. But I do see in the day-to-day functioning of the Extension program, thus far, a system that developing countries should envy.

In Mourning for the Old Way of Life

2010-02-17T18:59:00.003-06:00

On February 1, 2010, I drove away from the house that I have called home for the last nine months at 7 AM, and looked back at it, knowing that it would be at least six days before I saw the daylight through the windows. I cried.

The most difficult part about starting a new job - one that involves a 45 minute one-way commute - was giving up the flexibility and comfort of working mainly from home. The house I'm living in has an extraordinary view, and on fortunate days in the winter, is full of sunlight from sunrise to late afternoon.

Trading that, and the ability to put in a load of laundry or bake a loaf of bread while I sit at my desk in the sunlight, for a basement office locked far away from any natural light from eight in the morning to four thirty or later at night, almost convinced me I'd made a mistake.

That long last look back was subsumed by days of orientation, organizing the office, and evenings full of music rehearsals. Now, almost three weeks into my job, I know I haven't made a mistake. It is possible to make the basement world a bit more habitable, and I've found the other basement dwellers to be more than welcoming (maybe they're planning to fatten me up and eat me?). Many evenings I've had to kill time and haven't left work until after 5, and for the first week that meant I didn't come up until after dark. Now, I find it disturbing to emerge above ground in the evening to find the late afternoon sun blazing onto the parking lot.

Maybe next year you can hire me to be your groundhog.

Reformed Reflections

2010-01-24T14:42:00.003-06:00

Even as a Catholic, I have a special place in my heart for Lutherans, particularly the ELCA Lutheran church. It all began the fateful day when I realized that if I really wanted to experience music in college, a Catholic university just wasn't going to cut it. Whatever you want to say about the Reformation, Martin Luther had something right when he returned the gift of music to the people of the church.

And so I matriculated at Luther College in Decorah, Iowa, where I, a good German Catholic girl, well-acquainted with Friday night fish fry, Vatican II and incense, was enrolled in a four-year intensive course in "How to Speak Norwegian Lutheran" à la Garrison Keillor and Weston Nobel.

This week, I was again doused in all of the best of the First Protestant Church.

Today, Sunday, the Northwoods Brass Quintet added its voice to a special service celebrating the 20th anniversary of Prince of Peace Lutheran church in Eagle River, Wisconsin. Throughout the service people shared memories of the first days of the "mission church" in Eagle River and the construction of the building and sanctuary boasting beautiful acoustics and a warm, welcoming atmosphere - an atmosphere that reflects directly the personal warmth of the congregation that inhabits it. A small church in northern Wisconsin, but with a full-voiced choir of the type that would inspire Luther to post his 95 theses all over again.

Lutherans say music is second only to Word in the liturgical experience. Luther College seeks to instill this in all of its students, and often it is the students themselves that further push the envelope in how music can best be used to express that which is inexpressible.

One of those students who used music as a bridge across cultures and religious experiences has been lost to this world. Ben Larson, Luther graduate of '06 and fourth year seminarian, died when the main building of St. Joseph's Home for Boys in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, collapsed on him during the earthquake on January 12, 2010.

Ben, the younger brother of my twin sister Luther compatriots, lived for music and for the Lutheran church. On Friday I had the honor of attending his memorial service at Luther College. In true Luther style, the event was meticulously planned and hastily thrown together. Every detail was attended to (as one might expect of a memorial service planned by a family of musical pastors and ex-bishops with a contingent of advising pastors and bishops for a near-pastor), but the execution of the event was up to a motley crew of those with various musical talents gathering that day. The result was seamless, and a highly appropriate mix of decorum and informality.

This, to my experience, is the essence of the Lutheran tradition, and the one that the Catholics stand to learn the most from. Ritual guides the practice, but a deep, underlying humanity colors the actual event.

Every human being, regardless of religious creed, should have the type of memorial I witnessed this week. Less the particular ceremony, and more the intent and emotion behind it. Sometimes you need to leave your own tradition to rediscover it in another.

Culture Shock Christmas

2009-12-26T21:15:00.002-06:00

I returned home to the United States on December 11, 2008 and I celebrated my first Christmas in five years at home last year. But this is the first year that I have experienced the full season, Black Friday through to Day After Christmas Sales, back in the US, and in the mindset of one who is no longer wearing the badge of Wayfaring Stranger here.

The end result is that I spent far more of this season as a bemused observer, rather than an active participant. Sure, I knew what was going to happen, but none of the traditions were my own anymore. I saw everything as if through the eyes of an outsider. I found myself mentally reporting on all that I saw in the same way I would have if I had been in Madagascar or Vietnam, watching the locals celebrate the season in their way.

This realization came clear to me in the midst of Christmas Eve Mass. I and two other brass players were asked to play for Christmas Eve Mass at the Catholic church I was raised in. So I had a front-row seat for observing the congregation during the service.

Everything was at once completely familiar, and yet crisp and new. I wondered what this would look like to a Muslim or a Buddhist – the way people gathered to sit in seats all lined up around a central point, the automatic responses and prayers, the interspersed music, the decorations and the incense. The symbols that lose their meaning when simply placed without explanation, the actions that have no obvious provocation (and, indeed, often leave non-liturgical Protestants baffled). It reminded me of the times I’ve wandered through Buddhist temples and heard the chants and seen the repeated bowing of Muslims in mosques, the prayers of Jewish people in Synagogue, and dances and prayers of people of different faiths and cultures during all sorts of life rituals.

I saw again with startling clarity where all the misunderstandings in the world begin. All those people perched in the pews facing the priest (and me) are beautiful, wonderful, well-intentioned people. They care for their families and I know many of them who go far above and beyond the call of duty to serve their communities. And then I saw the people in those temples and mosques and synagogue and ritual houses around the world. I saw beautiful, wonderful, well-intentioned people who care for their families and go above and beyond to serve their communities. I’ve sat at table with these people and I’ve celebrated their festivals and holidays. We all pray for the same thing - peace, health, and hope for the future.

Wherever and whatever you celebrate, I hope you take a moment to consider your rituals, and to fully celebrate their message, and how, in translation, they join with the message of all the others around the world in hopes for peace and health and well-being for all around the world.

I wish you all a happy and healthy 2010.

Happy Thanks Given.

2009-11-26T11:45:00.006-06:00

It's good to be home.

A year ago I was trapped in Thailand and celebrated Thanksgiving amongst friends in Chiang Mai - the Americans were handily outnumbered by the Brits (English and Scottish and Irish) and Canadians and Thais, and we were hosted by an Englishwoman who did her best to tolerate the Americanisms that happened, but all was joyful - especially since I had found refuge and a homecoming when my best effort to return Stateside were foiled by international incidents.

Two years ago I celebrated American Turkey Day in Hanoi - hosted by an Argentinian family, with two Australians, a West Indian from the British Virgin Islands, a handful of assorted Vietnamese (one who did the most and best "traditional American" cooking), and myself as the sole American representative.

Three and four years ago I celebrated with friends in the southern city of Fianarantsoa, Madagascar. Those were grand occasions with 35-40 Americans of various stripes, a cobbling together of whatever traditional foods we could find (usually involving a couple of calls to Embassy workers in the capital city with desperate pleas for extra cans of cranberry sauce or purreed pumpkin that they'd had shipped with their generous shipping allowances) and lots of improvising with local ingredients (it was also where I learned to make the best pumpkin pie in the world), and lots of held breath knowing there was no "running out to the store" if we ran out of some random ingredient or ruined something. We also had another chance to share the holiday with English and French expatriates and, of course, local Malagasy. But the results were always impressive - and unbelievably delicious!!

Complete with complete Malagasy turkeys!!

Too much food always meant that croquet or basketball or ping-pong was necessary before there was any possibility of dessert being ingested.

Five years ago, Thanksgiving arrived in the middle of a "rice crisis" in Madagascar. Here's a snippet from the letter I wrote home:

Life goes on, and on Monday E- [my "site partner"] boycotted a teacher boycott and continued to teach while all the teachers went to the district governor to complain about the price of rice. I also met with my Club SIDA [anti-AIDS club]... Then on Tuesday it started to become obvious that the rice issue was not going away any time soon. Teachers canceled classes again, this time a real strike. I still met with my Club SIDA, but it was obvious things were getting dicey otherwise. On Wendesday all things came to a head and the teachers announced that there would be no school on Thursday or Friday and possibly the whole following week until the rice issue was resolved.

So, just what is the big deal about rice, anyway? Good question. E- and I were having a hard time getting our heads around this one. Now, we know that rice is important here – it’s the staple food source and people eat more rice per capita here than they do in almost any other country on earth. Morning, noon and night, they simply have no idea what on earth they could possibly eat instead. Oddly enough, there’s no serious shortage of rice in Madagascar – in fact, rice production is up this year despite 2 serious hurricanes coming through right during the harvest time with the serious potential to ruin the year’s harvest. But no, there’s just as much rice as always, if not more, and yet the price of a cup or kilo of rice has increased almost 4 times and there seems to be no sign of it stopping.

I guess I should’ve paid more attention in economics class – the problem has something to do with the rice futures market and speculation. Now, these are terms I’ve only ever heard in relation to oil or gasoline – never rice. It seems kind of absurd, until you look at it this way: the Malagasy feel about rice the way we in the United States do about gasoline. The Malagasy are not nearly so dependent on gas like we are, so when fuel prices go up around here, it hurts because public transportation gets more expensive and transportation of products forces all prices up in general. When the price of rice goes up, however, is reason to panic. The Malagasy are absolutely dependent on rice, the way we are on fuel. There just is no feasible alternative in their eyes.

So I guess what’s happening is the rice collectors are buying up all the rice now during the dry season and either stashing it or shipping it all out to Tana and storing it there (this is a nation-wide crisis, it’s not limited to just our region) and not releasing it to the market in hopes of getting a good price during the rainy season when transportation of rice becomes difficult, if not impossible. I don’t know if this is a result of the cyclones last year that left so many communities cut off from their supply of rice and people are hoping to cash in should that happen again this year. Either way, there’s no rice on the market, but demand is still high, so the price is going through the roof. And it hurts most in here because we’re a net producer and exporter of rice, so there should be a good supply here, but yet the price is still uncontrollable.

So why a teachers’ strike? First, because they’re worried that students are coming to school hungry, or worse yet, having to drop out of school and go home because parents can’t afford the room and board for students to live away from home. Since most of these communities don’t have middle schools and none have high schools, this means students simply are forced to quit school all together. Second, the teachers have to worry about their fixed government employee salary. On the bottom rung are the elementary school teachers who make 600,000 Fmg per month (about 60 USD). Now a sack of rice (a month’s supply for a family) is 300,000 Fmg – half of a monthly salary. The cry is to stop the madness – so far with limited effect.

In the end, the effect on us was that E- got Thanksgiving off. So, irony of irony, we headed off to our sister city to celebrate Thanksgiving, the holiday of harvest and plenty, while people were on strike to protest there not being enough of a staple of life. But at least I can say one thing – we did not eat rice during our Thanksgiving celebration. And yet we still managed to be more than full. I think it’s time to teach people how to make mashed potatoes and gravy – plenty of that to be had cheap!

However, we did not eat turkey that year. Turkeys, while hardly common in Madagascar, were certainly present. In fact, I had a big flock of them that lived in the hospital yard where my quarters were. They would tromp around, clucking, with the big Tom turkey puffing and gobbling ferociously, announcing his authority over his hens and anything else he could see. They were never for sale in the market...and nobody could ever recall having eaten one. So, what were they there for? Nobody really seemed to know.

So, we determined we were going to get one for our Thanksgiving, to be celebrated with four other Americans posted in the region. V-, our loyal Malagasy compatriot in attempting strange American traditions in a foreign land, lead us on a wild turkey hunt, errr, goose chase, all over the Madagascar country side to search out the owners of these or any turkeys to request to purchase one for our holiday. The flock that lived on the hospital grounds belonged, apparently, to some rich folks who owned land locally but lived in a big city far out of communication range. But, she assured us, there were more flocks owned by those who lived locally. And so we set off by bike the Saturday before the big day.

Saturday was an interesting day. I arrived early at E-'s place, was wanting to tell her about the last couple of days – but she announced that we were going on a turkey hunt! Okay, I thought. Apparently she and V- had some leads on turkeys for Thanksgiving, but they were a ways out of town. So we jumped on our bikes and the three of us went on a turkey hunt that quite literally turned into a wild goose chase. We spent the morning wandering all around the countryside chasing instructions from random people (yeah, sure there are turkeys – over there), and even hearing the darn things, but never seeing a single one. We talked to a few people who thought they knew who owned the elusive birds, but there were stories of turkey plagues that killed off breeding pairs and lots of beating around the bush. Apparently turkeys are neither to be eaten nor sold in Madagascar. We gave up exhausted after lunchtime and came home sunburned and dehydrated.

There are turkeys over there...somewhere - we can hear them!

Closer...maybe?

Gah!! Nobody home!! Where are the turkeys? Where are the owners???

E- makes the best of a bad situation...in some much-needed shade.

But by Thanksgiving we had found another solution:

Back to our turkey-hunt-turned-goose-chase – we never did manage to get a turkey for Thanksgiving (despite there being many turkeys wandering around our town…), so we wound up with 2 geese. We took them, alive, on a taxi-brousse, spent a night in a hotel with them, and then on a second taxi-brousse all the way to the next town, where we killed, plucked, and ate them. Not exactly the same as turkey, but hey, this is the other side of the world…and the mashed potatoes were still the focal point anyway...

Odd that in a time the country was so panicked about rice being in short supply, we stuffed ourselves on far too many mashed potatoes and vegetables of all varieties.

Maybe we should have been more worried about a shortage of (clean) water?

A dinner guest that remained a guest:

I sorta freaked out some local Malagasy by actually handling the Parson's chameleon - the Malagasy view chameleons with a lot of suspicion as being an magical animal that can see the future and the past and present simultaneously (because of their independently moving eyes).

Six years ago, I celebrated Thanksgiving together as a trainer with the new trainees at the large training center in a remote location outside of the capital of Madagascar. It was another bizarre week, as so many of my holidays overseas were: one of the cooks from the training center staff died suddenly and rather mysteriously at the beginning of the week. Obviously this caused quite a bit of upheaval - plus with questions of Hepatitis C or Yellow Fever being asked, nobody knew whether it was safe to visit or to have the other cooks handling food that week.

Finally it was decided that all would go on as planned. What was beautiful to see, though, was the effort our organization made to support the family of the deceased staff member. In a country where people don't own cars and access to one is unbearably expensive, our organization authorized the use of company vehicles to transport the casket and the family to the capital city for burial, supported funeral expenses, and gave the staff members the day off to attend the funeral, while the American trainers, the training director and a skeleton crew "baby-sat" the trainees.

Then came Thanksgiving. Despite the fact that the kitchen birthday-cake baker died, the crew was still able to pull off a cake for Dr. Victor’s birthday that day. Then the news that here would be cranberry sauce at dinner that night—along with turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes, sweet potatoes, and gravy and pumpkin and lemon meringue pies...Thanksgiving dinner was a noisy celebration for all the homesick trainees. The menu was bounteous and complete from turkey and cranberry sauce to pumpkin pie.

I am very thankful to have had the chance to spend Thanksgiving among Americans--although I am sorry E- had to be so far away. I am sure the day would have lost most of it’s meaning had it been spent away from here. I am thankful just for this fantastic opportunity to do one of the hardest things I will ever do: work, live, eat, play and breathe the Malagasy way of life for two years. At the moment I am thankful for the opportunity to live and work with dedicated people who honestly love their country. I am beyond thankful for the support of a vast array of family and friends without which I could not continue to be here.

I am thankful for lychee season being upon us and for the chance to know what a “lychee” is. I am thankful to know the meaning of and be able to semi-intelligently use words like mazoto, mahay, voky, reraka, sipa, mahazo, mangala and so many more. I also am thankful for the blessing of knowing that I have the choice to return to the land of good roads, unsmoky kitchens, sofas and couches, grocery stores, internet, TV, reliable mail, books, books, paper and more books! But for now (and for a while) I choose to continue this path. It’s just nice knowing that the choice is there, even if I choose not to use the option.

The Thanksgiving seven years ago was the last one I celebrated at home before leaving to go overseas - a grand traditional family celebration made more poignant and appreciated by the fact that the Thanksgiving before (eight years ago) I had been in Southern California at grad school and unable to return home for the first time ever. For my first transient Thanksgiving, I was adopted by a professor friend who actually hailed originally from my small corner of the world and by chance came to know me during my first trimester of graduate school. He invited me to his home to share a meal at his table - and to celebrate my first vegetarian Thanksgiving.

Our world has turned 360 degrees in the nearly ten years since I have been home. "Tradition" in our family is to celebrate Thanksgiving in my parents' home and my mother's family coming from out of town to take advantage of the cold weather creating a natural outdoor icebox. In the years just previous, the holiday moved to my grandparents' house in another city as my grandfather was homebound and unable to travel for the holiday. With his passing this summer, the holiday celebration has returned, along with me, to my parents' home. My sister and I are both grown, and now graduate school graduates, both gone away and now returned to our ancestral lands. My circle of "family" now encompasses a global community of friends and adoptive family members around the globe. Thanksgiving is probably the greatest gift Americans can bring to their communities in the international world - I am glad I have had the opportunity to deepen my appreciation for the holiday and to know that it is worth far more than just another day to eat a lot of food.

Happy Thanksgiving to all - regardless of where you call home in the world. I am grateful every day for your presence in my life.

NewsFlash!

2009-11-08T21:02:00.004-06:00

The bird (Flash), laid an egg!!

We've known Flash, the cockatiel for oh, these 15 odd years now, and within the last 5 or so, wound up with full-time guardianship of said bird. We've gotten to know this bird pretty well - all of the likes, dislikes, personality quirks - and lived through those difficult seasons of molting and learning to fly. Every so often, maybe once a year, the hormones would start raging. Flash would start tossing around the newspaper at the bottom of the cage, making rolls and caves to burrow in. Mood swings were pretty common, usually involving a lot more hissing and flapping than usual.

But for 15 years we operated on the principle that the bird was not a female because no eggs ever appeared during these times. And, by logical deduction of no proof to the contrary, we referred to him as a "he."

Well, last week started out with a slow climb into the hormonal curve again. The bird wasn't happy with anybody or anything. Burrowing commenced. I even threw extra newspapers into the bottom of the cage to make him happy.

Then, one morning mid-week I came around the corner only to have the bird his and flap so violently I thought he might hurt himself. It happens repeatedly as I went about my chores. I opened the cage to let him fly where he would, be he showed no interest in freedom. Finally I gave up and threw a blanket over the cage to chill him out and let me get some things done.

This continued for several days - longer than in the past. Finally I decded enough was enough and started ransacking the cage.

And found this:

Well, now having proof otherwise, "he" is officially redubbed a "she."

It's not very big, and as there aren't any (real) male birds in the vicinity, it isn't going to become anything, but it's interesting to watch her "mother" it. She's very protective - and nasty - any time anybody comes near her cage.

As you can see in the video (once I manage to get it uploaded, that is), she hasn't quite got the hang of it, so it's probably a good thing we weren't shooting for getting chicks out of the deal!

Hallow'd Eve

2009-10-31T16:10:00.006-05:00

I don't know how October 31 managed to sneak up on me so stealthily this year, but all of the sudden, that great day for costumes, candy and mischief is upon us.

I don't have any big plans this year - except to provide back-up support at my parents' house which is always in the red zone of trick-or-treater onslaught, and I suspect particularly so this as Eagle River has canceled their Halloween party for community kids due to H1N1. So, I'm sure plenty of those children will be making their way to neighboring parties and communities for candy night.

But as I look back, I realize that I've been quite amiss in blogging about my Halloween experiences overseas, particularly in Vietnam and Thailand.

My first and only Halloween in Vietnam was in 2007. Vietnamese have a traditional mid-autumn festival on the full moon in September/October (though with temptures still well into the 90s, it hardly feels like autumn). This day is full of moon cakes and treats for the kids, folklore, and, apparently, even costumes, although I suspect that's more of a recent addition thanks to the exporting of western culture.

But of course, my team wanted to celebrate a "real" Halloween.

Ali, my predecessor, had already done a good job introducing the Cao Bang staff to the bare essentials of Halloween costumes and party games...except for carving pumpkins! I decided it was my task to remedy this, and so, I went to the market and bought four of their largest pumpkins.

When my staff, their families and a few friends arrived, I divided them up into teams. Each team got one pumpkin - and I showed them one that I had done as an example. Then I sent them off to far flung corners of the office to do what they would with whatever they could find.

Vietnamese are first, competitive, and second, creative. I patrolled the halls to keeps the spying to a minumum. And without our cultural baggage, they didn't dream of stopping at a hollowed-out, carved jack-o-lantern. Rather, they found paper and ribbons and streamers and boxes and soon had entire dioramas produced to house their creations.

There was no way I could choose a winner, so I distracted them by lighting candles and demonstrating how you make the jack-o-lantern faces glow in the dark.

Then it was time for the trick-or-treating. We hearded everybody to the bottom floor while I distributed the jack-o-lanterns on all four floors in front of closed office doors. Then off went all the lights - and the screaming hoards of candy-chasers came flying up the stairs! I'm sure I'd never get away with something like that in the US, but when they reached the top floor where I was barricaded behind the gate to the roof top, I was pretty glad for the protection!

Halloween 2007 could have been no more different than Halloween 2008. Last year on this date I was in Thailand. Our friend was determined to go as Captain Jack Sparrow, and we were determined to make him look as Johnny Depp-esque as possible.

So, we prepped by watching all three Pirates of the Caribbean movies, and hunting the markets for daubles and doodads (and a plastic sword) that would make the outfit. Then the sewing and stitching began - and finally, make-up:

Unfortunately the lighting was horrendous and so my photographic evidence of the work is a bit shoddy, but I it came off pretty well in the end...

Well, we tried, anyway.

Monster Mushrooms

2009-10-23T21:15:00.000-05:00

Ooooh, here's a post I never got around to finishing. Shame on me!

Another event from the last weeks was the discovery of a giant puffball mushroom in our yard. We didn't manage to get any pictures of the beast in situ, but you can imagine this is what it must've looked like. (Okay, ours was a little smaller.)

Anyway, we picked it, brought it home, and sliced it. It was so big that we called a neighbor and offered him half of it.

Now, just what do you do with a giant puffball mushroom, you ask?

Well, you fry it up and eat it, of course!

Yum!

Change of staples

2009-10-18T20:26:00.004-05:00

I just realized this week that six years of eating rice more or less on a daily basis has finally lead to a major shift in dietary perspective for me: now when I'm stuck and staring around the kitchen with no idea of what to eat, my default reaction is to reach for the rice.

Not potatoes. Not pasta. Not even bread.

Rice.

Now when I cook, I make extra rice just so I can have leftovers in the refrigerator. It only took me nine months, but I have finally perfected the Asian version of PBJ: fried rice. So, when I'm hard up for a meal, I fry up some rice.

I'll also confess that a major enabler in my default eating habits has been the acquisition of a rice cooker.

Now there is absolutely no excuse for me to not cook rice - all I have to do is dump in the rice, twice the amount in water, and press cook. Then, when it's done, the cooker keeps the perfectly cooked rice warm for me until I'm ready to eat. I can even steam fresh vegetables in it. Really, how much simpler can it get? Okay, it still takes about 20 minutes to cook the rice, so sliced bread still wins for speed, but as far as a hot meal goes, this is downright brainless.

And now rice is available in amazing quantities for cheap at Sam's Club.

Really. I'm in love with rice all over again.

The More You Know...about cranberries

2009-10-04T20:08:00.010-05:00

So, as of yesterday, I know more about cranberries than any relatively mentally healthy person with only a night of crash course web surfing and not in any way connected to the industry, should know.
I spent six hours of my Saturday leading bus tours from the Eagle River Cranberry Fest to Three Lakes to visit a cranberry marsh and the Three Lakes Winery. Considering I haven't actually been on a marsh since a second grade field trip and haven't been on a Winery tour since before I could drink and before they had an automated bottling machine, I had a bit of catch-up to do.

But thanks to an informative guide script and a bit of coaching from the pros (and a bit of Googling on Friday night), I think I did pretty well. And I now know a heck of a lot more about cranberries.

For example:

Wisconsin is the leading producer of cranberries in the US. Our state alone produces over half of all cranberries consumed here in the US. Good thing cranberries go well with cheese...and cranberry wine ever better.

Cranberries don't grow in water (actually, I already knew this, but here are the specifics). As with rice, water is a cultivation tool: after the harvest, the cranberry beds are flooded to cover the evergreen vines in ice. This protects the vines from freezing in our Wisconsin subzero temperatures.

Also, every three to five years, drive trucks out on the ice and dump several inches of sand. As the ice melts in the spring, the sand settles on top of the vines. This keeps an individual vine from growing too long by encouraging the vine to take root and branch into new vines.

The major pest for the cranberry is the Blackheaded Fireworm (mmm, doesn't that sound yummy?). Fortunately for cranberry growers - the Blackheaded Fireworms can't swim, but cranberry vines can. So they flood the bed just as the Fireworm is maturing and drown them out.

Then during the spring and summer the growers spray down the cranberry beds on nights that threaten to freeze. As ice forms, it released a small amount of heat (remember high school physics?), and this heat protects the blossoms from freezing.

Finally, in the fall, the beds are flooded because the ripe cranberries float. They use a machine to "beat" the berries off of the vines, and then all the berries float to one end of the bed where they are collected.

Cranberries are one of three fruits native to Wisconsin. The other two are blueberries (in the same scientific Order as cranberries) and Concord grapes.

Cranberries and blueberries are in the same scientific order with a third commonly enjoyed berry, the Lingonberry.

Cranberry vines take 3-4 years to begin producing berries, but once they produce, a single vine can continue producing for decades. Some have been known to continuously produce berries for 100 years.

White cranberry juice comes from using cranberries that haven't fully ripened (the color hasn't "snapped," and the seeds inside the berry are still white instead of brown). The commercial variety of cranberries doesn't fully ripen until after a hard freeze. White cranberries are commonly harvested around Labor Day (or the producers selected unripened berries from the regular cranberry harvest). Another species of cranberry does ripen in mid-September, without the aid of a frost.

Much research continues to be done on the health benefits of the berry, but really, you can't go wrong eating those little things (just watch the sugar).

Wisconsin growers estimate this year's harvest will be about 4 million barrels (in the industry, one barrel = 100 lbs of berries). That's down from 2008's harvest of 4.3 million barrels, but 2008 was a record year, and even with an 11% decrease 2009 will be the second biggest harvest on record. That is, assuming that after this strange summer and early fall, the color finally does "snap" with enough time for growers to get the berries harvested before it begins to snow and the flooded cranberry beds turn into a gigantic cranberry slushy.

I'll confess I was actually a lot more intimidated by the idea of guiding tours at the Winery. Fortunately I didn't wind up with anybody in my tour groups that were actually wine-makers (or, I did so poorly they knew better than to attempt to ask me any questions). I'm impressed with how much the facility has grown since I was last in the back of it. There were boxes of wine in every nook and cranny and stacked high to the ceiling. Seems like they're doing pretty well, and they've added a whole line of new wines (including some new grape varieties). We tried the new pomegranate and a red Zinfandel grape and cranberry wine blend that was very good.

Also new this year are cheese spreads that are blended with the cranberry, blackberry or blueberry wines. I snuck back into the parking lot today to get my fresh cranberries, but now that cranberry fest is over, I'm going to have to go back to the Winery tomorrow to stock up on my own cranberry supplies. I hope there's something left to be bought!!

Bra Bear

2009-09-30T22:04:00.007-05:00

There are few times when I have so much to say in one night, but I'm behind in posting a few things.

Several weeks ago Sarah and I were over at my parents' house for dinner. Mom left the clothing out on the line and had decided to just leave it overnight. We advised against, as there had been a lot of bear sightings in the area. We teased her that our local animals might decide it would be a good night for a toga party.

No sooner was this said, than the dogs started barking - and we could just see in the dusk that the wash on the line was moving...

Sadly Mom refused to clean off any of her SD memory cards (full of pictures from their Germany trip), so we could only capture 16 MB worth of the event...but needless to say, Mom will be thinking twice about leaving her dainties out on the line for the male three-legged bear to play with again any time soon...

Canned Panic

2009-09-30T21:20:00.005-05:00

Our family invaded our house for the evening - the same night my sister decided to try to make jam for the first time. She's never canned before, but the room is filled with experienced persons who were willing to yell suggestions from the living room to the kitchen.

She cooked the jam, but didn't boil the jars. Correcting advice was yelled, and a pot of water was put on to boil. Jars were put in and the family returned to the conversation.

Suddenly my sister marched into the room gripping a jar with the tongs:

"Look what boiling water does to jars!!!!"

After lots of questions about just what this amateur was using to boil her jars - and a slightly panicked closer inspection by three of the males in the family who all claim science backgrounds - she revealed that it was a defective jar that had come from the factory that way.

Happy (early) Half-Fools Day.

Of Bloggers Past...

2009-09-27T18:32:00.004-05:00

Great Books is a great way to keep things in perspective. Just when you thought you had an original thought -- well, let's just say it's probably been thunk before, and even more likely by somebody far better at thinking and writing than you or me. Further, that thought has probably also been discounted and shown to be completely false by yet another person far more worthy of the mass in his or her head and the ink in her hand.

In many ways, it is a shame so many of them had to come before us. I think they missed out by being born too soon. Case in point: Michel de Montaigne.

I daresay Michel de Montaigne would've been right at home in today's technological society. In fact, I would argue further that he was the first blogger. And his blog would have probably been called "Of Michel's Mind." And it would've been a pretty active blog.

de Montaigne pioneered the "essay" as a form of writing. Doubtless, he also pioneered the style of titling all of his essays as "Of" something. And true to form of any blogger, there was no subject deemed unworthy:

Of sadness
Of prognostications
That the taste of good and evil depends in large part on the opinion we have of them
Of prompt or slow speech
Various outcomes of the same plan
Whether the governor of a besieged place should go out to parley
Of books
We should meddle soberly with judging divine ordinances
Of sleep
Of thumbs
Of husbanding your will
How our mind hinders itself
Let business wait until tomorrow
Of honorary awards
Of not communicating one's glory
Of vain subtleties

And onwards.

And, like any good blogger, he provided links to his other favorite thinkers. Horace makes regular appearances, such as the following in the essay Of friendship:

-- A lovely woman tapers off into a fish. HORACE

Indeed, de Montaigne describes himself in that same essay as fully prepared for the form of thought-word-publishing: "And what are these things of mine, in truth, but grotesques and monstrous bodies, pieced together of divers members, without defnite shape, having no order, sequence, or proportion other than accidental?"

Which he follows with the above mentioned Horace quote.

Sadly, had the blog form existed in the day of de Montaigne, I fear that his insightful ramblings would've resulted in yet one more pile of mish-mash written in bad need of editing forever lost in the blogosphere and eventually zapped out by the next passing solar flare.

Maybe it's time to go back to stone tablets.

Releasing the Rocks

2009-09-27T16:23:00.004-05:00

Having visitors on the horizon is a great motivator, and the impending arrival of a large group of them has me tackling the attic for real. Or, at least, again - with promises to go back through those other boxes soon. But in the process of sorting through the unsorted, I found somebody's long-forgotten rock collection, too long removed from their natural environment. I decided it was high time to return them to their natural habitat. So, with the help of Wrangler, we released the rock collection: And they're free!!!!

More memorials

2009-09-18T17:35:00.001-05:00

Fairwell to a dear friend

2009-09-07T20:24:00.019-05:00

Cooper Brewster, 3 years old, was laid to rest this morning on the Brewster Estate. He lies in peace in the forest next to his beloved predecessor, Duke.

Cooper died Sunday night, September 6, 2009, after being struck by a car shortly after 8 PM.

Cooper's life, while entirely too short, was a blessing to Sarah and the rest of the Brewster family each day. We remember with joy his confidence, curiosity, intelligence and independence, and most of all, his devotion.

Rest in peace, Cooper. May you find many chipmunks and all the ice cream you can eat in heaven.

The Evil Mastermind and the Squeaker.

2009-08-25T22:04:00.007-05:00

At the end of May we acquired a new dog in the family. Well, at least we think he's a dog. He might just be an escapee or retired Dr. Seuss character. With a name like Wrangler, one has to wonder.

Cooper seemed to accept this addition to his personal space with the usual aplomb, though he quickly judged that this creature was not up to his intellectual standards. He's proven handy to keep around for the entertainment factor, so he is tolerated as long as he didn't get too pushy.

Wrangler rules the roost when it comes to toys. Toys are his raison d'etre. Anything that squeaks, especially. Cooper quickly figured out how to push Wrangler's buttons. Any time he wants to tease Wrangler, Cooper will get ahold of (all of) Wrangler's toys and parade around him, causing Wrangler to go into a frenzy of barking and panicking that he'll never get his toys back.

But tonight Cooper took it to a whole new level.

We were eating ice cream. Both dogs love ice cream. But Cooper LOVES ice cream. Sarah and Scott finished theirs first and Cooper claimed rights to licking their bowls clean. I was still working on mine, and Wrangler was patiently waiting for his turn.

Cooper also saw I had some, but he didn't get in line or try to out-brute Wrangler for ice cream he knew full well he didn't deserve. Instead, he turned back to Sarah and the drawer where he knew his own squeaky toy was hidden safely away from Wrangler's obsessive personality.

So Sarah gave him his toy. And he proceeded to parade around until he got Wrangler's attention. And he got Wrangler's attention, all right. Wrangler jumped and barked and whined and growled and fussed until Cooper finally gave over the toy. Wrangler, all happy, proceeded to squeak-squeak-squeaky-squeak-squeak...

...and Cooper made his way, oh-so-confidently, over in front of me and my nearly-empty ice cream dish.

No amount of begging or enticing could possibly persuade Wrangler away from that toy. He was stuck to the squeak like a fly on honey. And Cooper sat in full confidence of his right to that ice cream dish.

Cooper, the master manipulator, once again won his day and the third ice cream bowl.

And the Squeaker squeaks on.

Arranged Carriage

2009-08-25T19:09:00.004-05:00

I held out for 7 months, 24 days 16 hours and 30 minutes, but on August 5, I crossed another threshold in re-integration into American society: I became a car owner.

This was my first car-buying experience as the one car I owned previously was a hand-me-down. I have to say that the experience of purchasing a used car really is rather like an arranged marriage.

I entered the transaction with my prerequisite baseline criteria: 1) manual transmission, 2) good gas mileage, 3) and reliable mechanical condition considering what I was willing to pay. I was fully prepared to walk away if I couldn't find what I wanted that day.

The car dealer was my Yenta. And, as I suspect is true for most Yentas, he had his place in the transaction, but he was hardly going to become a trusted friend. He had too much to gain by the success of the transaction and too much to lose in the failure to be considered completely trustworthy. This despite all his reassurances about how, "he had a daughter too, and he would love to see her in this car."

Fortunately - or unfortunately - my first criteria (the manual transmission) automatically meant that my field of choice would be pretty narrow. All the more reason I would be willing to walk away and find a new Yenta. Lucky for this Yenta, he had an appropriate range of offerings. Even luckier for my Yenta, he was able to offer me something near to love at first sight.

But appearances and resumes can be deceiving, so we had to do the test drive. From what I've read and heard about arranged marriages, often there is a brief meeting - sometimes no more than a drive-by, sometimes just a quick introduction, sometimes even a short courtship. Occasionally you don't know what you're getting until you've gotten to the altar and are signing on the dotted line.

I'd say this test run was somewhere in the middle ground: I got to get in, take a turn around the block and make sure a tire didn't go rolling off into the street and no sawdust came flying out of the engine, and that was it. Worse though, I didn't actually know how to drive manual, so all I could do was take it on faith and my father's word that the transmission and clutch were in semi-decent shape (thank goodness he agreed to come along). It was a used car, so it came with no guarantees. No warranties. For better or worse, sickness and health, once I chose it, I was stuck.

So I drove the near-to-car of my dreams (but couldn't afford). And I drove the car I thought I deserved (and could afford). I looked at a couple others that I didn't even really think about.

Then came the wheeling and dealing. Nice car, too expensive (and I felt a little guilty for beating up on its clutch). Not-so-nice car that would likely have maintenance issues, but I could pay for (and I wouldn't feel guilty for beating up on the clutch). Or walk away and try again another day.

I've seen bartering for a bride in Madagascar. I've even had my own price in cows calculated. I can't say that the whole dickering over the cost of a car was really that much different - except that perhaps I wouldn't have been as personally involved if it was my own marriage.

In the end, we agreed that I would pay a little more and get the better car. And after more paperwork and waiting around, I was soon joined to a complete stranger.

And now the real work of a partnership begins. I don't know the car and it doesn't know me. But we know we have to make it work because we're both far too invested to give up on it. I have to learn to drive manual transmission. It has to put up with me long enough to get past those rough spots. I'm trusting it to be as good as its price tag warrants. It's trusting me to maintain it so it can live up to its reputation. And I think we're both hoping for a little bit of fun.

Really, not all that different from what thousands of people who have been matched to another human for life. Except that realistically our relationship will only last a maximum of ten or so years. Like most women, statistics hold that I'll outlive my partner. And then I get to try something new.

In which I wait my turn

2009-08-07T11:50:00.003-05:00

"Wait your turn, honey."

A mom admonishes her two-year-old child to return to her place in line at the library. There's a running joke that "queuing-up" is the national British sport, but truly we Anglos have the cultural norm of observing "first come, first served" down to a science. Polite parents start indoctrinating their children when they are very young with this policy, some even going so far as to encourage the further nicety of allowing the elderly, the disabled, the pregnant, those with only a few items, or even those with small children, through the line ahead of ourselves. And we retain the utmost wrath for those brazen enough to show no concern for a fellow human being and push their ego and agenda ahead of ours.

I heard that Africans and Asians were a much more communally focused culture, one that strove to "save face" and avoid embarrassments at all costs. I reasoned that this meant they would look at those around them and identify the ones most in need to be put first. They would wait their turn, knowing it was not their personal agenda that was the most important, but that of the greater good.

So it came to a shock to me to realize just how wrong this essential skill in polite human interaction turned out to be in the wider world.

When you go to a bank in many other countries, if you stand back and allow the person currently completing a transaction any privacy, you'll never get helped.

If you go to a government office with paperwork or a question, you'd better be prepared to step on toes and use your Western size and weight to bull you through the crowd to the counter in front of the clerk. And no indoor voices, please.

And heaven help you should you ever want tickets at a limited-seating event. In that case, be sure to sharpen your elbows the night before and wear your heaviest motorcycling boots. Camping out in line isn't going to do you and ounce of good if you're not ready to stomp on some toes when the doors open.

How is it that survival in cultures that downplay the personal ego hinges on one's ability to block out every other person's concern but their own? And yet, in our culture which promotes individualism and taking care of Number One, our survival as a community seems to rely on our ability to respect the rights and even needs of others?

It seems balance is required in everything - and the one thing that keeps chaos from reigning in our land is that parent gently reminding a child to "wait your turn."

And yeah, it's good to be home and to leave my steel-toed shoes in the closet.

Dinner and a Movie

2009-07-31T22:41:00.005-05:00

All work and no play makes for a slow slide into insanity.

If there is one thing that I learned in my time living in remote and culturally isolating locations, it's that a regular doses of light pampering and over-the-top fantasy are doctor's orders. Often this comes in the form of good food and a movie. Envelopes of fake cheese from Kraft Macaroni & Cheese boxes and a laptop computer were my first saving grace: I hoarded those envelopes and my precious supplies of butter and milk and a priceless collection of DVDs for Friday or Saturday evenings when I just needed to get away from rice and local pop culture. Those few hours eating comfort junk food and watching You've Got Mail anchored me when otherwise I would have drifted into a cultural oblivion.

I'd been feeling a little "off" this week - a little too steeped in reality. So when I realized that Star Trek was playing at the local theater, I put out the call. Mom, Dad and the kid sister readily agreed - it was time for dinner and a movie.

They've just opened a brand new - no, check that - our newly restored hometown theater. In what is becoming all the rage of local towns "revitalizing" their downtowns, a group of intrepid promoters of the arts joined forces and rescued and restored the run-down, run over, 1950s era movie theater, lately a gaudy gift shop called the "Hodge Podge Lodge."

The result is a attractively decorated 100-seat theater with screen and stage for shows and art gallery featuring work of local artists. They sold out on their grand opening a few weeks back and are now have daily movies and regular stage acts and art activities.

The atmosphere immediately took me back to Hanoi, where I was a member of the active art movie house, the Hanoi Cinematheque. The location, the service, the film selections, the ambiance: everything about the place screamed "escape." It is located in the heart of Hanoi, right on the border between the Old and French Quarters. It was well-hidden down a long alleyway usually parked full of motorbikes. But if you kept going past the bikes, you emerged into a hidden courtyard shaded by an ancient tree and cushioned in a sudden silence away from the ragin current of traffic, street vendors and tourists. The courtyard area was serviced by a small bar and restaurant, so it was the perfect one-stop escape from the daily Vietnam grind. Above the courtyard was a terrace of hotel rooms which was my usual place of residence when in Hanoi before I found my more permanent accommodations.

So it was with great eagerness I greeted the opening of a new theater in town - but it wasn't until this evening that we could fully appreciate the benefits. We left from home and made the easy walk downtown to get dinner. We finished with time to spare, and then wandered over to browse the gallery while waiting for the film to start. A few tourists wandered about, but the locals were there in equal force, so we had some time to catch up with old friends before the lights dimmed. The theater is airy and the seats comfortable. The concession stand opens right into the back of the theater - so should you run out of popcorn, you could get a refill without missing a scene.

After our escape into a world of fantastical absurdities, the lights came back up and we were released into a newly darkened world of stars and streetlights. A few people were still filtering out of Friday night fish fry at the pub across the street. The crowd had migrated to ice cream shoppe just next door - and who could resist the call of a brightly lit candy shop on a cool summer's evening?

We stopped for ice cream and a sampling of fudge before beginning the slow walk back home under the streetlamps. Just as I would have left the Cinematheque in Hanoi, we enjoyed a quiet walk home in the calm after the day's traffic, and now before midnight, the whole world has settled in for the evening.

And yes, tomorrow's Saturday. Just what the doctor said would fix it all.

Cleanliness is next to impossible

2009-07-26T15:33:00.002-05:00

This week I took a picnic lunch off to a park area where I chose to plant myself on a spot on the ground near a nice lookout point rather than at an otherwise convenient picnic table. I had a picnic mat with me, and the view was so welcoming I didn’t think twice of walking away from the picnic area.

Apparently I wasn’t the only one who had thought that the lookout was a nice place - the grass has been completely torn up at the best vantage point and all that was left was a fine, powdery dust.

Dust.

Oh, my - dust.

As the little poofs and clouds engulfed my feet and coated the bottom of my mat, I was instantly taken back to a life in which dust was a daily enemy. After I’d arranged my food carefully so as to avoid contact with the ground or anything attached to the ground, I paused and said a small pray of thanks for cleanliness.

How easily we take for granted one of the major differences between here and there. Here is so very clean. Even as we struggle against the common foes of mud, dirt, wet, pet hair, dust on the bookshelves, blood, sweat and tears - we have a whole range of weapons at our fingertips. There’s the obvious ones of lots of soap and water. Hot water. Right out of a faucet right in our house, indeed, in several rooms of our house. Who couldn’t stay clean when all you need to do is turn around to wash your hands?

Then there is the greatest weapon of all: structures that minimize our contact with the outside world. Our houses, offices, schools, businesses, especially here where the climate requires several months of the year seclusion from the cold, are buffer zones to anything that threatens to smudge. We’ve created entire “clean zones” where any dust or dirt that does dare invade through the most subversive of means are tracked down, sucked, swept or sprayed and made to cower under the power of abrasive and anti-microbial cleansing agents.

The result of having mopped floors and sealed pavement wherever our feet might pass and climate controlled air in the buildings where I meet people is that I haven’t spent the last six months harboring a constant feeling of sweaty filthiness that had become such a constant part of my life. I’m CLEAN!

And then I dropped a big glob of sauce on my pants.

Alas, there are some things they never will be able to protect me from.

In Which I Talk About the Weather

2009-07-18T19:48:00.002-05:00

It’s almost always a safe conversation piece, and it’s almost always there to be discussed. And even if it’s not (I’m thinking SoCal here where you run out of territory pretty quickly after “boy, it’s hot again”), you can always compare it to places where the weather is, well, different. Hotter, colder, wetter, more humid, dryer (ha, good luck), windier, calmer, sunnier, cloudier, more changeable, more predictable, or in some other way more or less preferable to the current location. I Googled it and didn’t get anything, but I’m sure somebody somewhere has calculated the number of hours of productive communication lost to discussing the weather.

I’m guilty of contributing my own tedious observations over the year - just today I barely resisted the urge to update my Facebook status with some snarky complaint about how I’m tired of wearing turtlenecks in July. Long underwear was made for February, not the height of summer. I’d like to say I talk about it because it’s worth commenting on. But I know better: I talk about it because it’s the easiest thing to say. In many languages.

In my time abroad I lived and worked in three or four distinct dialects of Malagasy, French, Vietnamese and English-as-a-Second-Language. Small talk might be painful in your native language, but it can be downright desperate when you have the vocabulary of a termite at your disposal. Suddenly you hear a phrase like, “Mafana be!” and you latch on to it with all your might. “It’s hot!” you return, “Yes, mafana be loatra!” And you swell with pride at adding that beautiful intensifier all by yourself, because its so very hot indeed!

I had somehow naively assumed that discussions of the weather in subsistence agriculture-based economies would be much more intense and analytical. A dry day would focus on the impact of a lack of rain on the yield of crops. Hot sun would turn into concern over the oxen’s ability to spend another hour plowing the field. A cold spring would result in debates over the right time to plant the fields.

I’m sure there was some of this, just as there is discussion among gardeners and farmers back home, but despite people’s live-or-die relationship with a good crop, the vast majority of the conversations were pretty familiar, and every day was extraordinary if only for the fact that the climate was so, well, normal.

So, how’s the weather been? I’m freezing, and it’s July 18. I’m moving back to Antananarivo if I’m going to have to suffer temperatures like this in July.

But it's amazing how much less likely I am to whine now that I've turned the thermostat up to 63. Because I have a thermostat.

Independent Celebrations

2009-07-13T20:50:00.005-05:00

Madagascar's independence day is on June 26th. Vietnam's is September 2nd. I never again experienced a Malagasy Independence Day the way I did on my first June 26th - the next one was in the coastal regional capital of Tamatave. My notes in my journal and letter home simply state that in a gap in the rain we managed to join the crowds on the beach for some fresh coconut juice. The year after I was already in Fianarantsoa, and I remember being warned to hide out lest I be roped into unwitting VIP work. I think we had an expat brunch to celebrate a day off from work, and I do remember going up to the market area to view the festivities.

I never witnessed a Vietnamese celebration in full swing - the one year I was in country I was on a motorcycle deep in the northern mountains somewhere. However, I did learn this much: there is a rule that ever residence MUST fly the Vietnamese flag. And there were lots of political speeches.

The Vietnamese political speeches I experienced firsthand when I did get unwittingly roped (pun intended) into another event. And my own house (when I got one) also displayed the red and gold star of Vietnam along with the others.

I had mixed feelings this year as I unfurled the American flag from it's winter spot above the porch windows to hang from it's post on the railing. For both Vietnam and Madagascar, the wounds of liberty are much fresher, 1945 and 1960 respectively. The have both suffered turbulent political times since those dates. Independence Day is only one of among celebrations and memorials in each country that mark their sacrifice to obtain their freedom, and the Independence day doesn't cary as much weight as ours. Our country is a country at war now, one that is calling upon its citizens to send those willing to sacrifice. Our country suffers from the divisions of an unpopular war. Madagascar, barely recovered from one crippling internal implosion now is battered by yet another. Vietnam celebrates a generation that has known mostly peace.

Still, so much of independence celebrations are more like stepping back in time to the era of Laura Ingalls Wilder's Farmer Boy. People buying brand new suits of proper clothes and dressed in Sunday best, quizzes about history, stump speeches by politicians to crowds massed in dusty town squares. Americans wouldn't stand still in the hot sun or a stuff auditorium to wait for their elected to show up and yammer at them for a couple of hours - that's what CNN is for. And frankly, I'm with the Americans on this one. Turn off CNN for a day - and join the masses that can agree on one thing for a day - a parade and a flag are something to look to with joy and pride.

Our first look back...

2009-07-11T19:51:00.003-05:00

Whew, it's been an amazingly busy week. I am only now getting around to what I intended all along: to dig through what I wrote before and maybe dredge up some memories that I don't want to have buried under increasing tangled neurons. Maybe I'll even have a random insight or two while I'm at it!

I'm particularly lucky to be able to celebrate a real small-town, old-fashioned, 4th of July on a regular basis - but many other countries celebrate their independence days or major festivals with as much, if not more, enthusiasm than we even work up around here.

For starters I'll posting a portion of a letter I wrote home to my family from Madagascar, after my very first celebration of Malagasy Independence Day on the 26th of June:

#23

June 27, 2003

Happy Malagasy Independence Day! Better known (like ours) as Vignt-six Juin.

That was definitely the major shaper of the whole week. People have been preparing to celebrate for several weeks now and last week Thursday the market literally exploded in a riot of vendors selling food, baskets, parasols, shoes, and most especially, clothes. All the regular sellers got in extra big shipments of new things from Tana over the weekend, so Thursday’s “big market day” extended itself into the following week. Everybody wanted to be well decked out for the big day and the local merchants did nothing to discourage it. People from all over started coming to town and for several days there was endless food and ox-cart and bicycle traffic of people bringing whatever they had been farming/making to sell and then return home with cases and crates of soda and THB beer, and maybe some biscuits or candy if they’d had good luck selling.

Not all people who came headed home right away. A lot of people stayed in town for the festivities and the place began to remind me of home on the 4th of July without the cars. But I haven’t gotten so many “Bonjours” and curtsies or nasty yells of “vazaha!” and the Malagasy Ts-Tsing (when they want to get somebody’s attention here, they “ts-tsss” and young guys especially like to use it on me) for months. I’ve really begun to appreciate how many people here know my name, or at least that I’m not French or at least not so much of an anomaly.

In the afternoon the day before there was a “ballet” competition put on by the women’s organization (and my friends were judging) where groups of women from literally all over came to sing and dance the completely Malagasy way. I really like these events. The costumes are great and I’m getting to the point I can understand a lot of the singing (helps that there tends to be lots of repetition) and since my friends were judging I got to sit up on stage and watch and not clamber to see through the crowd. (Bleachers haven’t exactly made it here yet, perhaps due to the lack of trees). The Betsileo were the best, although the judging may have been affected by the fact that there were so many of my friend’s friends in the group, but the whole event was a lot of fun.

By that time it was getting dark, and the kids’ contests began. There was a quiz contest (okay, so I’m not so up on my Malagasy/ French history) and I learned that electricity only came here in 1997. I wonder how much the town has changed since then. I bet a lot. Then as it got dark the kids started lighting Chinese lanterns (yes, real candles, real fire, and real kids, folks. I can see all you US bred parents shivering right now) and it made a spectacular scene of light and color around the square. I really regretted not buying one myself, but it was definitely a kid event. Fortunately Vero let me adopt her family (or they adopted me?), so I got some quality kid time. The look was actually much more Halloween than 4th of July from the jack-o-lantern effect and the downright cold wind, but it was beautiful nonetheless. Then people started shooting fireworks (once again, real fireworks, real kids, no laws) and they even had those obnoxious boomers that make you think (especially so close to Africa) that you’re at war.

The next morning, the actual Independence Day, I was up and ready at 7, but feeling like I had a hangover despite not touching any alcohol. There were more festivities that morning. So I headed back to centre ville. The place was full of children in school uniform in military line-up, women from the Women's Group and many other spectators. I found another friend there and soon was being ushered to sit up on stage with the VIPs. I was just a little cowed by this, but I took a rickety seat in back and I really did want to see/hear. And soon I was glad I did because I got to sit down in the shade. Once again, we were on Malagasy time. Any elected politician in America (short of maybe the President) who makes his constituents wait in the hot sun for 2 hours or more would likely quickly lose his constituency. Not so here. We sat and I tried not to sleep waiting for His Highness, the Sous-prefet to get himself out of bed after a late night at the disco. There’s no way over 1000 small school children would stand for it either in the US.

Finally they appeared and the festivities commenced. I assumed with the groups there (the schools, the women who had danced still in full costume, scouts, church groups, the Gendarme and the military police) that there would be more singing and dancing. But short of the National Anthem, there wasn’t. So I kinda tuned out the speeches (although I perked up when I heard interesting things—I’m really happy that with my language skills I can do that now, even if I don’t understand everything) but I learned later my assumptions were pretty much true - political promises of things that had been promised a year ago and still haven’t happened. Then all the groups paraded themselves military style in front of the stage to a really awful recording of a really awful band playing some really awful marches. Sigh. 6th grade band Jingle Bells anyone?

Then we were let go. I was invited up to lunch followed by more drinking and dancing at the Sous-prefet’s house but I politely declined, explaining I had another invitation to fulfill. So I escaped to the relative calm of Vero’s house where she was playing hostess to her siblings, child and friends for an Independence Day feast. Simple, yet elegant. And, unfortunately since here mom was at the VIP reception and her dad is still in Tana with a sick child from his church, I was delegated “lehibe” and put at the head of the table. I think I remembered my Malagasy manners enough—or at least they didn’t say anything.

After cake the kids were sent off to play and Vero, her friend who’s studying law in Tanarive, and I went off “mitsangatsanga-ing” around the town under the pretense of going to watch the soccer game, but we just kinda kept on going. I really like Vero because she’s such a contrast to my other friends and in that way a lot like me. Plus she and Fanja could appreciate the humor of really drunk Malagasy people desperately trying to form French words to speak with me. The best was when she told one guy I spoke Spanish. The next time I told her to tell them to try Japanese.

There ain't nothin' like a small-town Fourth of July

2009-07-05T09:46:00.009-05:00

One of the highlights of being back home is the annual Fourth of July celebration. In typical small-town fashion, everything happens exactly the same way every year. Pancake breakfast at 7 am, parade follows at 9, Friends of the Library used book sale in the basement of the library after the parade, flea market/craft fair and brat/burger/corn on the cob/beer stands in the park with live music from noon until sundown in the park, capped off with fireworks in the park at dusk.

But, this year there was a change. *Gasp, gasp* Some fatal breakage in the ancient kitchen at the community building rendered the making of pancakes and sausage impossible, so the whole breakfast was moved to the cafeteria at the K-12 school just down the street. Thank goodness. The old place was tiny, congested and nearly impossible to navigate. The school cafeteria area is spacious and is designed for mass food service and crowd control. Everybody stood around looking at the scene and shaking their heads. "Why didn't we do this years ago?" everybody asked.

But, due to concerns that the announcement in the paper and on local media and at the information bureau wasn't enough, the organizers hauled in a large road construction sign like this one:

to place on the corner by the community building redirecting everybody to the school. And, according to my sources on the street, they only announced it in every pause between floats during the parade.

So, the pancake breakfast, was, as always, hugely busy. On to the parade.

We're a tiny town (600 in town, less than 2,000 in the whole area) that attracts upwards of 10,000 visitors for the Fourth of July weekend. The running joke is that the entire town is in the parade while the visitors line the streets to watch. And we still have to recruit outside marching bands to flush things out a little bit. On the night of July 3rd, we had to make a last minute run down mainstreet at 10 pm for a late-night errand. People were already setting out chairs to reserve their spaces along the route. It's that big a deal.

The weather this Fourth of July was picture perfect. Highs in the low 70s/20s, clear blue sky, no wind. The crowds came to ooh and aww at the variety of features and get all the candy they could snare.

Post-parade is sheer insanity as everybody rushes to the library to snag the best $0.25-$2.00 book deals in the basement of the library. Enter at your own risk. Photography highly discouraged for your own safety.

Once the book beast is tamed, people scatter, some to get the last of the pancakes, some to get their brats and burgers and fleas, some to the hardware store and nick-nac stories and ice cream parlor on mainstreet. Within a couple of hours, though, town has pretty much emptied out and everybody is off to hit the lakes.

Then in the evening, they come. And they come and they come and they come. Like the final scene in The Field of Dreams. Drawn to the promise of light and bangs, they gather at the park with blankets and snacks and hope.

Last night was, once again, the perfect night. Cool, not a cloud in the sky. A nearly full moon welcomed us, shining just brightly enough to keep us from tripping over our neighbors, but not too ostentatiously as to outshine the pyrotechnics.

And the show begins.

Out little town spares no expense, and the show seems endless. Several times the whole crowd starts clapping, certain that that is the end. And yet more come until a final earth-shaking finale, punctuated by one last exploding star.

And we all go home. Those on foot feel very intelligent, indeed.

Another perfect Fourth of July in the perfect place to celebrate it.

The Girl of the Limbo-Lost

2009-07-02T23:14:00.003-05:00

More than six months have past since I made my return to the United States, and it's nearly the Fourth of July. Summer's half over, and soon another fall and winter season will be upon us. And it's past due time that I publicly declare that the next phase of my life will most likely unfold right here in my hometown.

Notice I still have to throw the qualifier "likely" in there?

Just have to keep that door cracked.

But now that I've wedged it open - just in case, mind you, just keeping my options open - I feel free to say, I'm back home. So, rather than pretending to be waiting for the next big thing to happen, the next big country to add to my list, I'm going to sit right down and say, "Here I am, what can you teach me, Wisconsin?"

To those ends, I've taken on two independent consulting jobs. Already both of them have shown me that the things I learned living in places with strange food and even stranger languages is needed right here. It's disconcerting to realize that I've become a prodigal - I went out into the world searching for that worldly labor that would define my life. Now I've returned home to discover that work is waiting here. Yet, without having left, I would have never had the experience necessary to be able to do the work back home.

That doesn't mean the story ends. The story doesn't say the prodigal doesn't leave again, and it doesn't say that there isn't more to be learned. But for the time being I am going to take the time to understand where I come from in the light of where I have been.

Erica does D.C.

2009-05-11T21:17:00.009-05:00

They say it's more about who you know than what you know. If you want to work you'd better network. So, after a few nibbles in the job market, I decided it was time to explore the full potential that is Washington, D.C.

I had a very productive week and enjoyed my visits with representatives of a variety of agencies working in the international public health and development scene. The information was helpful in helping me further define my direction for this next stage of my career.

But I also had a lot of fun.

Okay, so it rained. Really, it rained every day for the week I was there. The sun did come out: between the hours of 11 AM and 2:30 PM on Wednesday, May 6. I got sunburned - and bragged about it to all my friends stuck in cubicles who were convinced it had simply rained again that day. (And I began to wonder why I would want to be in a cubicle in the basement of a building where I wouldn't know if it rained or shined...)

I saw nearly a gazillion old friends, some for the first time in ten years! I am happy to see how people hardly change - and I hope that continues for years to come, since they are already some of the smarted, healthiest and most beautiful people I know.

I also had some spare time to see a few more of the smorgasbord of sights that is your national heritage. I also highly appreciate the fact that my friends who live so close rarely visit many of these national treasures - so I'm taking advantage of time now least I become a DC resident.

First visit was to the Library of Congress, in honor of my mother (the librarian)'s birthday:

I know, all your hometown libraries look like this.

Well, either way, next time I'm going to come up with some excuse to use their reading room. Shhhhhhhhhh.

I also did the requisite mall-walk (after the sun went back into hiding Wednesday afternoon) and took my requisite Mall and Pennsylvania Avenue pictures:

I also dove in and out of a few of the Smithsonians - but a few days simply could never do them any justice. The Museum of the American Indian was another first for me - and very enjoyable. Downstairs they featured some handmade sea, river and lake watercraft, including this Wisconsin birch-bark canoe.

I spent a lot of time just wandering DC streets and stopping in green oases between meetings. The leaves were out and the flowers were blooming -made it a little harder to come back to Wisconsin!

The Smithsonian Ripley Garden seems to be recovering nicely after getting trampled flat during the Presidential inauguration.

But the gardeners still have some day-to-day problems to deal with:

Maybe it was the rain, maybe the fact that I discovered the function of the manual ISO setting, maybe just because DC designers seem to like building fountains, but for some reason I was inspired to photograph water.

The Sculpture Gardens:

Dupont Circle Navy Memorial:

Entrance to departments within the Justice Department:

Fountain Garden, Smithsonian garden:

DC is a great city for walking - as my shoes took me through nearly 30 miles in 3 days. Now, if only working in DC didn't entail working, I might actually enjoy just living there.

Well, I've heard of the Maple Leaf Rag, but what about the Maple Syrup Can-Can?

2009-04-08T13:29:00.017-05:00

We finished and canned maple syrup this weekend - which is almost always both the most aggravating and satisfying part of the whole process. After all, the half-boiled syrup needs to be condensed to just the right constancy. Too little water boiled off and the syrup might taste good, but it's still watery and could spoil. Boil for too long and either you'll get stuff that leaves sugar crystals in the jar or there will be a gooey mess of syrupy sugar. And of course, it's almost impossible to know how long it's going to take to finish boiling just right. Watched pots never boil, but boiling syrup turns to sugar in a flash.

We started with nearly seven gallons of sap boiled to somewhere between 3/4 and 1/2 to full syrup. I boiled in the sugar shack until it reached about this point, and usually had about 2-3 quarts at a time. I brought it up to the house and filtered it then stored it in gallon jugs in the cool basement until we had enough to move to the next phase.

We've tried so many methods of boiling the sap to a finished syrup in the past. Somewhere over time the pan that just fit across the four burners of a gas stove has wandered away, as has the stove, so we were a bit perplexed. This is not an indoor job - the evaporating steam still has enough sugar content to make a miserable mess of walls, curtains, cabinets and anything else it comes into contact with. But this time we think we may have hit upon a gem of a technique: the turkey deep fryer.

It took a bit to get the last of the deep fried grease off the pots, but once we did, the LP gas tank connected to a single burner and stainless steal pot seemed nearly made for the job.

We had enough liquid at the beginning that we were able to put the thermometer in the lid - but the lid didn't stay on for long.

Soon we were at a rollicking boil. And we stayed there. For a long time.

Maple syrup boils at 7 degrees F above the temperature of boiling water, or 219 degrees F. But we lost volume quickly enough that the thermometer wasn't going to be of much help. No matter - we were already planning to use the much more precise method of using a hydrometer to measure the density of the liquid.

For hot test, syrup at 211 degrees F has a density of 66 Brix (sugar-to-water mass ratio). So we spent multiple long hours running in and out with a jar of boiling hot syrup and dropping the hydrometer in to see if it would float to the right line.

And when it did - there was much rejoicing!

The syrup is a bit darker than it has been in past years - the color of the syrup is dependent on the starting density of sugar in the sap collected from trees. The sweeter the tree sap, the lighter the final syrup. I suppose a multitude of other factors can contribute - how fast the sap is boiled or how long it is stored, for example. But since we're not trying to sell it, we're not too worried that we don't have a batch of Grade A syrup here. We'll still eat it!

Once we hit the magic density, we pulled the syrup off the fire fast, lest it go to sugar on us. Now we kicked the action to high speed.

The hot syrup needs to be filtered while it's still hot (or else it will just gum up the fine fabric cone filter), and it should be canned hot to preserve it.

I think we hit on a working set-up this year - the fabric filter sat inside a metal cone filter and drained into the base of the cream separator (a genuine relic from the Maple Lake Dairy days). The creamer's beginning to leak a little bit, but otherwise it held up to the abuse of several gallons of hot syrup for another year.

Mmm, syrup.

The rest of the canning set-up consisted of a pan to keep the rings and the canning jars warm, a pot to boil the canning lids, and another boiling pot to dunk the jars in to make sure they were evenly hot before filling. Since syrup is so high in sugar content we didn't have to worry about actually boiling the jars, but keeping them hot assures a solid seal.

Everything else happens pretty quickly - fill the jar, put the lid on, tighten a ring, and set aside to cool. Next is sitting back and listening for the *pop* of the lid getting sucked down into a tight seal. Oh, yeah, and the clean up. *sigh*

I didn't keep track of how many gallons of sap we started with to give the nearly seven gallons of finishing syrup, but it was a lot. Still, after two weeks of minding the wood stove, we canned over two gallons in this first run. Not too bad, and the sap's still running, so there's more yet to come!

Home woodshed office

2009-04-08T13:25:00.002-05:00

I doubt many Sugar Shacks are so well appointed. Sadly, no power points and no wi-fi, so I can only work as long as the battery holds out.

I am rich

2009-04-01T22:59:00.005-05:00

Today I was the richest person in the world. I had buckets of fresh air and clean, white snow to breathe all to myself. I have more unadulterated oxygen and nitrogen molecules in my own lungs in one day than much of the world gets to breathe in a year.

Thanks to the miracle of a gas-powered chain saw and an axe, I have as much firewood as I can greedily burn (well, for a few days). I have enough fuel at my fingertips to keep several African families in cooked dinners for months. And if I run out of the split and cut stuff, all I need to do is walk ten feet out my door and gather enough to support an Asian town for a week. But I don't even need to burn all this - I have the luxury of sitting next to a warm fire in an efficient wood stove as I boil down sap for a purely non-essential dietary treat.

I had all the drink I needed - no worries about water for tea - I had boiling hot sweet sap in massive quantities right next to me. I was warm, I was dry, and I had clean snow to wash my cup with after.

And that luxury is supplied by the natural world around me, which I am rich beyond measure for being able to take advantage of. So few in the world are in the right place at the right moment with the right kind of trees and the disposable time necessary to collect the blood of the sugar maple tree that runs only during a few weeks of the year, sit next to a stove with plenty of fuel - fuel for no purpose other than to make a sweet syrup - and to enjoy the purity of five inches of snow in April.

40 gallons of sap, a roof over my head, a stove and a lot of wood. Today, I am a millionaire.

April Fools...a week early.

2009-03-31T20:43:00.007-05:00

It's hardly surprising any more - spring made a false start on the Ides of March, landing me with a bandaged finger and a bunch of tapped trees. The first day of spring brought, yeah, snow and a lot of wind: The following week teased us with winter. I boiled what little we collected over the week as I huddled in the stove-heated sugar shack (okay, so it got up to 64 degrees F in there - and stayed stubbornly in the 20s outside). But boil I did! And the strange weather has been a great opportunity for me - I can only collect sap at about the speed I can boil it. But then there wasn't enough snow to cool it off with... The sap froze solid in the bags and I collected five gallons of ice. One beautiful day of spring on Monday, and April Fools arrived a day early with The foolery? The temperature dropped, it snowed, and then sap ran. Heh, go figure.

As of today I have three and a half gallons of half syrup and 20 more gallons of unboiled sap collected. As to what is still running in the veins of those poor trees only tomorrow (or the first better weather) will tell.

How much wood have I chopped? I lost count of that long ago.

Sugarbush Season

2009-03-25T21:02:00.006-05:00

I've taken a break from writing fiction and decided it's time to write some more non-fiction. It's time to dive back into some photography, and while this isn't Pulitzer stuff, I thought I'd go back to blogging a bit about some local culture that I'm re-experiencing for the first time in years.

My family is fortunate to have a good bit of land left from when our homesteading pioneer ancestors settled our little backwoods community. Over the generations we've been a jack-of-all-trades family: lumbermen, sawmill operators, dairy farmers, game-keepers, conservation and fire wardens, well-diggers, plumbers, carpenters, electricians, bookkeepers, hairdressers, school teachers, librarians, and whatever else it took to keep this little family running. Anyway, one of the things that comes with the territory - especially territory that has a nice stand of old-growth maple forest on it - is collecting sap for maple syrup in the spring.

My uncle was inspired to build a sugar shack and design a real sap pan, so when I was in grade school and middle school we had a passel of kids, aunts and uncles to collect the sap from each tree, a grandfather who loved nothing more than to sit for hours in the woods on a fine day and into the night tending the fire, and a grandmother who loved nothing more than delivering thermoses of hot chocolate and coffee and stuffing the all the hard workers with as many cookies as they could eat. Then we tapped a hundred trees and collected untold gallons of sap. We boiled and boiled and boiled and then had a big family canning party where we finished the syrup and canned quart after quart of the stuff. Our first computers printed labels proudly proclaiming the name of the long defunct family dairy and the classes came from school to tour our operations.

Now the passel of kids has grown and departed, the grandparents are no longer there to mind the fires and the cookies, and the aunts and uncles are retired and too tired to face such a big project. My sister has gamely continued tapping a few trees each year and boiling down enough sap to get a pint or two of syrup. This year, I've taken up the torch of family tradition, and I am (thus far) whole-heartedly enjoying it.

We have lots of snapshots of us running around spilling buckets as kids, but this year I wanted to get some digital pictures that document the process somewhat more rigorously. So I thought I would share a few of them here. I'm going to take some more time over the next few days while I'm tending the fires to get some more.

Our woods, barn in the field (used to have animals, now sadly abandoned), sap house is barely visible to the right of the barn in the forest. Opening the sap house for the first time this season...time to evict the mice...

The sap house (traditionally called "sugar shack").

Inside: the big black thing in the middle is the old sap pan over the old fire box - I think it holds nearly 30 gallons or something. Much, much too big for what I'll be able to manage on my own, not to mention how much wood I'll be able to chop. Yes, that is a deer head on the wall. Our family doesn't generally hunt, so I have no idea where that came from, but I suppose it's pretty much a mandatory decoration.

Sarah making her mean pirate face. We found this piece of pirate macheté work lying around - it may have belonged to Sam Campbell, and it's very, very sharp.

The actual process of tapping trees and collecting sap is really quite simple. First you drill a hole:

Then you put a tap into the hole:

Catch that drop!

Then you hang a bucket or a bag on the tap:

We used to use coffee cans, back when coffee cans were plentiful, but they filled up too fast and got full of tree bark and other junk, rusted and were really hard to store. Then we moved to old gallon milk jugs. But we discovered these bags with can hold a lot of sap and keep it much, much cleaner and are reuseable for many years. Some fancy operations even use a network of tubing that connects all the trees and delivers the sap right to a big storage bin, but we never perfected that. We also have a huge metal reservoir, but we haven't used it in years.

So we walk from tree to tree, collecting the sap into a bucket. Today we have a 40 gallon plastic storage tank, which seems like a lot, but when it takes 40 gallons of sap to boil down into one gallon of syrup, it's hardly a cash production line.

This year we're using the small wood stove at the back of the sap house to boil down the sap. You have to keep it well-stoked, so I'm spending a lot of hours just sitting in the woods baby-sitting the stove. As the sap boils off I just keep adding more and more to the 1 1/2 gallon pan on the top of the stove. This weekend I took the first batch of half-boiled sap off: about 4 quarts total.

I'll keep boiling until I get at least a couple of gallons of half-reduced liquid, then we'll take it up to the house to start the finishing process. We used to be really high tech about this, but some of our equipment has gone missing over the last couple of years, so we may have to be a little more creative (or at least less scientific and precise) about the whole thing. I'll write more about that as we get to that point.

Madagascar on my mind...

2009-03-12T08:35:00.006-05:00

A Black Day for the Island Nation

While few of the big-name news networks have felt it necessary to mention my first love in foreign countries, the island that I called home for four years has been experiencing a political charade of almost comical proportions that has sent the country into a tailspin towards tragedy.

To keep a tangled, convoluted mess as simple as possible, the general summary is this: back at the end of 2008, the young, media prodigy mayor of Antananarivo started gathering protesters to voice their discontent with decisions made by the current president, Marc Ravalomanana, including to sell a large chunk of Madagascar's countryside to South Korea as agricultural land. This is a controversial decision on the global level - can developing countries create long-term economic stability by selling/leasing large amounts of "unused" land to developed countries that don't have the physical space to grow food to support themselves.

But that's already a tangent. The point is, Andry, mayor of Antananarivo, was seriously upset about this decision and a series of others and started calling regular demonstrations in the center of the city. Suddenly, the whole exercise in democracy took a shocking and violent turn when he declared himself the defacto president of the country and ordered his supporters to claim his "throne" by tearing down the empire of Marc, Madagascar's "Yogurt King."

So the first violent protests resulted in the looting and burning of any shop or store that might sell the President's products and many other "foreign" stores, regardless of what they might sell.

The violence briefly spread around the country, leaving all cities in turmoil and foreigners in a state of intense uncertainty. Where is this going? Is it going to get worse? Will things settle down? Stay? Leave?

A short lull hosted peace negotiations between the sides interrupted by weekends of tandem protests of both party's supporters in different parts of the city. Regularly these protests turned to looting, occasionally violent.

Then, in a twist of logic that could only make sense in Madagascar, Andry ordered his supporters to march on the Presidential Mansion so as to claim his right by force. They were met by armed guards and several supporters shot. There was a big political scandal of the guards must've been mercenaries because Malagasy would never fire on Malagasy.

So Andry decided to march on the ministries in order to gain control of the government by squeezing the head from the body. The ministries evacuated and locked the doors and left the military guarding it. Twice. Maybe three times? Anyway, Andry's supporters had no idea what to do when they go there, so they left.

Meanwhile, life has almost returned to normal except for some inconvenience and interruption in the capital city. A political stalemate ruled. Marc refused to give up his presidency, Andry refused to be refused, both refused to negotiate or compromise or admit wrong-doing of any kind. The UN was called in. Then Marc and Andry stopped showing up to the meetings.

Things suddenly went down the toilet last week as the military threw their hands up, not wanting to fight their own people any longer, even if it was to maintain the peace. It's still not entirely clear what happened, but it appears the military has split into two as well, and the end result is that the US Ambassador has called for the closing down of the US Mission in Madagascar (including the Embassy, USAID and Peace Corps), and is encouraging all US citizens to leave the country. My friends are buying tickets out this week.

The US Mission in Madagascar also evacuated all of their US staff and citizens in 2002. Now, seven years later in 2009, this makes Madagascar officially an "African country with a history of unstable politics." Describing this as "Madagascar's latest crisis" almost creates an expectation that there will be more and greater crises in the future - it is only a matter of time. What began as a revolution of democracy at the turn of the century is now a typical African conundrum of stubbornness and name-calling. (The only upside being that it is not a typical conundrum of machetes and rampant life-taking.) At a time of global economic crisis, the island is doing itself no favors by creating political turmoil on top of economic uncertainty.

It is painful to watch my American friends that have built relations and lives within the community be forced to sever them at a moment's notice. But it is even worse to be abandoning those Malagasy who have worked by our sides and have taught us so many things about their country. We are leaving them powerless and without an organization to support them as we pull away, yet again, as uncertainty reigns.

And so they will leave Madagascar on the brink of civil war and many lives interrupted. Again.

Home again, home again, jiggedy-jig

2009-01-11T10:19:00.004-06:00

As of 2:45 PM today, 11 January 2009, I will have officially been back home in Wisconsin for one month after completing five years, ten months and four days of international service. Despite the excitement of the Bangkok protests, I arrived in plenty of time to celebrate Christmas and see in the New Year with family back home. It was also my first feel of snow after nearly seven long years. And when you consider that the snow years before that were pretty poor ones, it was really my first snowy year in over ten years.

It came as a bit of an anticipated shock - especially as I landed in time for a week of miserably cold temperatures and windchills. The big snows had managed to go to the south of us (my aunt and uncle, school teacher and administrator in the Fox Valley area, were none too pleased), but we had plenty of cold to remind me of what winter is really like. The sunny days, even if they were cold, did actually help keep me in the spirit of things even as the Christmas commercial season became a bit overwhelming.

And now the beginning of a new year has come and gone. For the moment, this is much more of an ending and a final wrap-up of my past six years than a new step forward. I'm taking time at home to collect myself and reaclimate to this now-strange world of cold, whiteness and complex kitchen appliances. 2009 will prove to be a very different year one way or another, and I look forward to see how it might surprise me!

I wish all of you a happy and healthy 2009. The whole world is experiencing many changes, so I wish for you all the strength and endurance to ride the waves and anticipate a time in which this will be an exciting story to tell. Indeed, who would have guessed six years ago that I would have told the stories that I have?

Christmas back on the (other?) side of the world

2008-12-25T22:27:00.000-06:00

So I have successfully survived my first Christmas at home in too many (well, according to my family) years. It started out looking like what I imagine many Christmases in the US and Canada - and possibly the U.K., but probably not Australia or N.Z. - looked like: We skirted the cars in the ditch and arrived safely and, despite the family's best efforts, we survived it. But one annual tradition I'd forgotten about was the magnetic noel. My grandmother has magnetic letters spelling "N - O - E - L" on her refrigerator. My sister, by tradition, changes it to spell "L E O N" as soon as she walks in the door at Christmas. Grandma, after some minutes, hours or days, notices this, grumbles and shifts letters back to her preferred order. My sister usually changes it again immediately, and so the battle rages. This year, for the first time, Grandma was left to wage battle as more than just Leon invaded her house: And once I saw the LONE Pine had made an appearance, I decided it was time to make my Christmas wish known: But somebody else wanted Who was quickly labeled for thinking he could get one in this economy. By then somebody had decided we were all just Yes, in these tough economic times, you'd better hope you can say, Merry Christmas, from our family to yours.

Suvarnabhumi Refugee Update

2008-12-05T02:13:00.003-06:00

Refugee status, day 10: travel documents are prepared and am awaiting flight.

After nearly two weeks of intense uncertainty and political volleyball, the constitutional courts played their hand and gave the Thai protesters a minimal win while simultaneously slapping them on the wrist for the inconvenience they've caused the world. I've really been amused far more than annoyed by the whole course of events - it has been a fascinating look into the Thai culture. I do fairly believe that the Thai people are about the only ones that would greet you with a smile, apologize for having to shoot you, shoot you, then kowtow to you and apologize again for having to shoot you. Truly, the land of smiles.

The latest news is that the protesters have abandoned the airport, apparently leaving remarkably little damage behind them as they were able to bring the airport online almost immediately. They had been predicting a minimum of 7 days to do security checks and reboot the IT systems, so it must be a statement of some degree of how careful the protesters were not to leave a lasting inconvenience to the travelers and those that service them. They made their point, and got out.

I have a new ticket for this week Thursday - a full 15 days after I was first scheduled to leave. Wish me luck!

Tales of a Suvarnabhumi Refugee

2008-11-26T19:59:00.004-06:00

BBC News: Thai protesters shut down airport

My timing couldn’t have been much worse. When I checked in for my flight from Chiang Mai to Bangkok at 8:30 PM on Tuesday night, trouble was just beginning to brew. When I boarded the plane and took off, word had just made it to my friends in Thailand that the Suvarnabhumi (Soo-Va-boom) International Airport was being besieged by anti-Prime Minister Somchai Wongsawat protesters. By the time I had landed at 10:30 PM, the outer entry area to the main concourse was full of yellow-shirted people chanting, and the inside was filled with reporters walking from group to group of people waiting with their luggage.

I was preoccupied with retrieving my luggage from storage and repacking and making arrangements to check in at 3 AM for my 6 AM flight. It was going to be a long night in the concourse for me either way, so I wasn’t paying that much attention. My mobile phone number had been deactivated, so there was no way for my friends to get ahold of me. There were a lot of protesters both outside and milling about inside, but the demonstration was peaceful and I knew the People’s Alliance for Democracy (PAD) had been protesting for weeks so it didn’t really bother me. It was late, people were still getting through the lines to arrive for check-in, so I figured it was just an inconvenience.

I had no idea the PAD had broken through security lines and were now announcing that only airlines that had express permission from them would be allowed to land. I spent a couple hours drinking an over-priced mocha at the Starbucks downstairs, the only restaurant still open, and came up at 3 AM to see some airport employees posting a sign that NWA flight 22 to Tokyo had been delayed from 6 AM to 10:30 PM Wednesday. The waiting passengers were shocked – and confused. At that point there was no information beyond that to share. We had no idea if it was an isolated incident due to NWA difficulties or something to do with the protest.

Over the next couple of hours more information dribbled out. Finally NWA opened their check-in counter to receive passengers and inform them that, at best, the new check-in time would be 7 PM that night. They gave us phone numbers to call to get status updates. No hotel accommodation was being provided by the airline – we were on our own until 7 PM that night. Maybe.

I was left with a dilemma and a decision. My inactive mobile phone was a big problem, as was my severe lack of cash. I had withdrawn my daily limit in cash to pay for my luggage storage. My inactive SIM card meant I had no way of contacting my Thailand friends in hopes of getting better news updates. I had USD and Euros, but none of the exchange places in the airport were open, and nobody could say if any of the businesses in the airport would actually open that day. Information was at an extreme minimum - not even a single announcement was being made over the airport intercom.

Finally I decided to get rid of my excessive luggage. I checked it back into storage and quickly repacked my carry-on with the few items I thought I might need for the day and maybe a night. I figured the cost of storing my bags for an extra 12 hours was more than worth the freedom of at least being able to get around the airport more easily.

I walked down to the lower level, intending to scout the situation. Already it seemed the number of airport taxis were limited. I finally decided to just make a break for the downtown where I could hopefully exchange some money and get a new SIM card for my phone and maybe find an coffee shop or internet café to sleep in for the day (note, by now I was going on 24+ hours with no sleep). I had just enough cash left to pay for the Airport Express shuttle to Sukhumvit, buy a Skytrain ticket to a part of town I knew fairly well, and purchase a SIM card and phone credit. Then I had to wait until 9 am to get more cash.

Then, flush with money again, I found food, but no internet. I called my Chiang Mai friends who passed on the news that the old Don Nueang Airport had been reopened. I got through to the airline, which told me the flight has officially been cancelled for that day and the following day. Regardless of what happened now I was going to miss Thanksgiving in the US. It would have been my first Thanksgiving home in 6 years, and I know many of the passengers on my flight and others that were being cancelled were those trying to get to the US for the holiday.

I told the airline representative that I thought I might try to go back to Chiang Mai. She agreed that this was a good idea, so I hung up and headed off for the old airport to see if there was any chance of getting a seat on a flight.

Not surprisingly, the few local flights were booked solid. However, the train station was just across the street from the old airport, so I walked over there and found, to my great satisfaction, that there was a second-class seat available on an overnight train leaving at 3 PM. I happily paid my 383 Baht (about 11 USD), and set off to find a local internet café to update people about my situation and plans.

It was a great relief to finally board the train in the afternoon. I was extremely grateful that in packing my carryon I had left in two warm sweaters and my Madagascar silk wrap and another neck scarf. I was still wearing my traveling clothes – jeans, boots, a couple of layers on top. The 2nd class car was only standard padded reclining seats, fans for air circulation (good thing it was the cool season and there was no need for air conditioning), and wide-open windows. It was actually a very pleasant time of year to be traveling with open windows, and I wish I could’ve been more attentive to the passing countryside in daylight. But after 36 hours with no sleep, I was pretty much done for. My one irritation is that they turned on and left on florescent lights all night long in the cars – no chance for good darkness for sleep. It was a 14-hour journey in all, and we pulled in to the Chiang Mai station at a very cool 5:30 AM Thursday. I took a tuk-tuk from the station and by 6 was right back where I started at Fi’s house.

She came down and let me in with that magnanimity of a hostess receiving a relative for Thanksgiving – and then banished me to a much-needed shower while she tried to capture another hour’s rest. I am now spending the morning catching up on the latest news about the situation and then planning on relaxing this evening with friends for a nice Thanksgiving dinner locally. At least I will get to personally enjoy the pies that I made before I left, thinking to be eating my mother’s, aunt’s and grandmother’s pies in the States. From the looks of it, things are still very much up in the air, so for the time being I will continue to be a Suvarnabhumi refugee.

Thanks to those of you that expressed concern over my whereabouts. As you can see from above, I was safe the entire time, and probably would've been equally safe had I chosen to stay in Bangkok. However, I am with friends in Chiang Mai, so I am more comfortable being here rather than in a random hotel. This probably will resolve itself in a couple of days and I will be able to resume my plans for re-entry into the US. However, if it does drag on, at least I am away from the center of the action and in a place where I have access to information. I will continue updating this as needed over the coming days!

A Buddha a Day

2008-11-22T03:46:00.006-06:00

There is a Buddha for each day of the week - and depending on the day you were born on, your Buddha is the one for that day.

Sunday Buddha.

Pang Tawai Natra, restraint

Character: respectable, carefree, wise, and beloved by both friends and relatives

Optimum Profession: manager, official, doctor, trader, craftsman

Monday Buddha Pang Ham Payath, making peace

Character: good memory, serious, love to travel

Optimum profession: trader, doctor, nurse, fisherman

Tuesday Buddha

Pang Sai Yas, sleeping

Character: brave, active, broad and serious mind

Optimum profession: policeman, soldier, chemist, cook, hairdresser

Wednesday Buddha

(Day) Pang Um Baatr, holding the alms-bowl

Character: polite, musical and artistic, ambitious, emotional

Optimum profession: writer, clerk, secretary, translator, teacher, orator

(Night) Pang Par Laeli, the blessed one

Character: hard working, diligent, honest

Optimum profession: writer, poet, doctor, scientist, actor, archaeologist

Thursday Buddha

Pang Samah thi, meditation

Character: good heart, graceful, tranquil, honest

Optimum profession: judge, lawyer, teacher, clergyman

Friday Buddha

Pang Ram Pueng, contemplation

Character: ambitious, gregarious, fun loving

Optimum profession: banker, singer, musician, artist, designer

Saturday Buddha

Pang Naga Prog, protection

Character: logical , tranquil, reclusive

Optimum profession: agriculturist, constructor, miner, bailiff

What, another Wat??

2008-11-20T03:19:00.007-06:00

So, yes, I am in the land of Wats, or temples. And yes, I went to another one. But this one was different - older, less gold lamé, lots more trees and more atmospheric crumbliness. Just a few pictures to share:

There's something special about words of wisdom on a placard right under a painting of dogs playing poker.

Monkish laundry.

The hall of stories: I'm not exactly sure what the story is on this hall, but every nook, cranny and paintable surface was covered in vignettes from various famous (and less famous) stories from around the world. There were obviuosly a lot of "Buddha" stories, but there were also stories from Africa, the Middle East, China and yes, Christ's teachings made an appearance or two, alongside some of Aesop's fables. I can only assume this room is used for teaching and meditating on the combined wisdom of the world's traditions.

Why indeed...

A good thought before entering the austere tunnels: The most fascinating sight for me, though, was the old Buddha graveyard. This whole area was full of Buddhas and other venerable statuettes in varying states of decomposition and destruction. Somehow the real beauty lies in the eternal serenity of even a dying Buddha... Death seemed to be a theme on the day. As I wandered to the fish pond, I found a serene yet oddly unsettling scene of a dead dove placed gracefully in the fork of a tree: But just in case I was to become too morose in my thoughts, I was met this happy guy on my way out of the temple grounds. With this much bouncy energy, who couldn't believe in life again?

Down from the Mountain

2008-11-19T22:23:00.000-06:00

I did eventually come down from the hilltop to poke around at things of a less heady and more earthy and historic nature. Luang Prabang is another of Aisa's UNESCO World Heritage sites, which means all the buildings in the old part of town are preserved for historic purposes and there are several well-organized and well-managed museums and lots of temples to visit. On the downside, almost all the places restricted or outright banned the use of cameras inside - most you weren't even allowed to take your camera in. So not a lot of photographs, but there were still plenty of things on the outside to amuse me. The grounds of the Royal Palace Museum offered some good shutter fodder: As the name suggests, it was originally built as a northern palace for the royal family (early 20th century) and has since been turned into a museum displaying the family's life style and ancient relics from the area. You can see the golden stupa in the photographs above at the top of the hill behind. One of the other rules that is strictly enforced in Laos - and which really amuses me, is the "no shoes" rule. It's generally polite anywhere in Asia to remove your shoes before entering a house, but here they even ask you to take off your shoes before entering a hotel, store or in these museums. A lot of disgruntled tourists - but as I happen to love running around barefoot, so it was great for me! The grounds included a closed theatre, but I had fun photographing the reflections in the doors: And the detritus of oil lanterns apparently used in some of the performances left outside: And you just have to love a place that can even make rubbish bins look good: The temples are the main reason for Luang Prabang's existence. Even the bustling tourist trade and the night market revolve around the life of temples and the Buddhist traditions, festivals and celebrations. Long a center of pilgrimage and retreat, the numerous Buddhist temples serve as a training ground for novice monks. It is expected that all devout Buddhist men serve as monks at some point in their lives, and many do. LP is one of the major cities for young boys (ages 15-20) to go and study as novice monks for a period of three or so months. So one of the major sights in LP is the young boys wrapped in shockingly bright orange robes running from temple to temple. Obligatory young monk picture. One of the major attractions is the early morning distribution of rice to the young monks by towns people. Every day around six am a family member will emerge with a warmer of sticky rice and a few morsels of food and sit on the road outside the house. A column of young novices will suddenly appear, each carrying a brass begging pot. They will pause, one by one in front of each person offering food and that person will put a small handful of sticky rice into each brass begging pot. The last novice in the column usually brings a small gift of thanks or blessing for those giving offerings. Monks are only allowed to beg in the morning, and must take only what is given to them and nothing more. What appears in their pot is their single meal for the day. I did not take any pictures of this - I just didn't feel right in anyway, shape or form. Nonetheless, it is a nice tradition to see, and I think it is a good character building activity for young, growing men. It teaches discipline, self-awareness and communal inter-dependency. Women can do it also, but it is a different and (apparently) less public experience. So the snap color of washed ropes airing on a line and the sounds of monks chanting in the mornings and evenings and the lively chatter of the young men dashing between temples creates an atmosphere of contemplation, reflection and anticipation of personal growth that saturates the entire city.

Steeped in Silent Stupa

2008-11-19T22:08:00.002-06:00

The next morning my task was to find a "place." A place where I could plant myself for a day with a book, some paper and pens, a camera and be out from underfoot of the hundreds of tourists tromping through the city in tour groups. The amazing thing about Luang Prabang is the ability of the city to retain with an iron grip a peaceful atmosphere - almost like somebody forcefully holding down a windowshade that keeps wanting to snap back up (or a cone of silence?) - despite the thousands of intruders roaming the streets. Tour groups might clomp through, but any local person will still speak to you in a voice barely above a whisper. Shopkeepers stand in their doorways and tuk-tuk drivers by their vehicles and breathe a request for you to enter their shops or jump in their cars so seductively, so subliminally you almost feel drawn unconsciously towards them. I, however, was not to be taken in by a myriad of requests to visit waterfalls or caves. I was drawn to the mountain. Like any self-respecting holy city, Luang Prabang not only brags of too many Buddhist temples and stupas, but also of a big hill in the center of town with a big stupa right at the top. And a lot of stairs to climb to get there. (The ones I've already climbed) Excellent I paused to admire the golden stupa, which apparently is a fairly new construction at the top of the hill, but replaces several centuries of past monuments. More interesting were the types of offerings people left - the marigold cone with incense is particularly popular in Luang Prabang. Then I wandered down and around yet a few more stairs: Peeked in a few windows: And climbed a few more stairs: Until I found it: I sat on the far side of this little stone stupa and, for the next day and a half, this view was my company.

The stairs to Phu Si and beyond

2008-11-18T03:33:00.011-06:00

The amazing thing about Luang Prabang is the ability of the city to retain with an iron grip a peaceful atmosphere - almost like somebody forcefully holding down a windowshade that keeps wanting to snap back up (or a cone of silence?) - despite the thousands of intruders roaming the streets. Tour groups might clomp through, but any local person will still speak to you in a voice barely above a whisper. Shopkeepers stand in their doorways and tuk-tuk drivers by their vehicles and breathe a request for you to enter their shops or jump in their cars so seductively, so subliminally you almost feel drawn unconsciously towards them.

I, however, was not to be taken in by a myriad of requests to visit waterfalls or caves. I was drawn to the hill of Phu Si.

Like any self-respecting holy city, Luang Prabang not only brags of too many Buddhist temples and stupas, but also of a big hill in the center of town with a big stupa right at the top. And a lot of stairs to climb to get there.

I paused to admire the golden stupa, which apparently is a fairly new construction at the top of the hill, but replaces several centuries of past monuments.

More interesting were the types of offerings people left - the marigold cone with incense is particularly popular in Luang Prabang.

Then I wandered down and around yet a few more stairs:

Peeked in a few windows:

And climbed a few more stairs:

Stepped carefully around the sleeping temple dogs:

And then found a nice, safe corner from which to admire the view of the lazy Mekong and to watch the clouds drift by.

The grounds of the Royal Palace Museum offered some good shutter fodder:

As the name suggests, it was originally built as a northern palace for the royal family (early 20th century) and has since been turned into a museum displaying the family's life style and ancient relics from the area.

One of the other rules that is strictly enforced in Laos - and which really amuses me, is the "no shoes" rule. It's generally polite anywhere in Asia to remove your shoes before entering a house, but here they even ask you to take off your shoes before entering a hotel, store or in these museums. A lot of disgruntled tourists - but as I happen to love running around barefoot, so it was great for me!

The grounds included a closed theatre, but I had fun photographing the reflections in the doors:

And the detritus of oil lanterns apparently used in some of the performances left outside:

And you just have to love a place that can even make rubbish bins look good:

The temples are the main reason for Luang Prabang's existence. Even the bustling tourist trade and the night market revolve around the life of temples and the Buddhist traditions, festivals and celebrations.

Long a center of pilgrimage and retreat, the numerous Buddhist temples serve as a training ground for novice monks. It is expected that all devout Buddhist men serve as monks at some point in their lives, and many do. Luang Prabang is one of the major cities for young boys (ages 15-20) to go and study as novice monks for a period of three or so months. So one of the major sights in Luang Prabang is the young boys wrapped in shockingly bright orange robes running from temple to temple.

One of the major attractions is the early morning distribution of rice to the young monks by towns people. Every day around six am a family member will emerge with a warmer of sticky rice and a few morsels of food and sit on the road outside the house. A column of young novices will suddenly appear, each carrying a brass begging pot. They will pause, one by one in front of each person offering food and that person will put a small handful of sticky rice into each brass begging pot. The last novice in the column usually brings a small gift of thanks or blessing for those giving offerings.

Monks are only allowed to beg in the morning, and must take only what is given to them and nothing more. What appears in their pot is their single meal for the day.

I did not take any pictures of this - I just didn't feel right in anyway, shape or form. Nonetheless, it is a nice tradition to see, and I think it is a good character building activity for young, growing men. It teaches discipline, self-awareness and communal inter-dependency. Women can do it also, but it is a different and (apparently) less public experience.

So the snap color of washed ropes airing on a line and the sounds of monks chanting in the mornings and evenings and the lively chatter of the young men dashing between temples creates an atmosphere of contemplation, reflection and anticipation of personal growth that saturates the entire city.

Laos by Lao-west

2008-11-17T01:47:00.007-06:00

Last week I went in search of Nirvana, Laotian-style. If there is one thing that is starkly different between Vietnam and its ASEAN neighbors, it is the intensity with which other SE Asian people's approach their spiritual life: Vietnam was most effectively "cleansed" of its religious attachments during the communist era while neighboring Laos, Cambodia and Thailand and Burma still hold fast to their complex and intense Buddhist and Taoist religious lifestyles. Last week I jumped on a convenient (if pricey) Lao Air direct flight from Chiang Mai, Thailand to Luang Prabang, Lao. For all the bright colors, shiny decorations and general gaudiness that defines Thailand, I was still a little taken aback by the interior of the airplane, which seemed to me to sing loudly of Hawaiian beach resort rather than landlocked mountainous jungles. Still, the service was better than I anticipated after warnings and horror stories shared by others who had taken the flight before me. Then again, maybe I'm just immune after how many Air Madagascar horror stories... The flight at two in the afternoon offered fabulous views of the Laotian mountains and villages with terraced rice paddies (now brown and dry after the harvest). The sheer ruggedness of the land was breathtaking for me. I had never had the opportunity to fly over northern Vietnam, so this was in a sense my first arial view of what I had been living in for the last two years. Looks far more intimidating than it felt at the time. Then our plane dropped and circled over a broad valley and a town snuggled into the sharp oxbow formed by the Mekong River - and an hour and a hop, skip and jump later we were in another country applying for another visa. Luang Prabang, for all it's exotic name in and exotic location is actually a fairly "padestrian" stopping point for tourists. The town nestled on the banks of the Mekong first came into existence as a religious site and a northern retreat for the royalty. Lao boys still travel to Luang Prabang to train as novice monks (as is common in Buddhist tradition, almost all men will live as monks for a period of their lives), learning to meditate and chant and studying the teachings of the Lord Buddha in the many temples in Luang Prabang. The architecture, history and culture resulted in the whole area being declared a World Heritage Site, and the tourism industry has almost literally exploded as a result. Yet, unlike in Hoi An, the town retains an amazingly Zen-like feel with none of the Vietnamese agressive and in-your-face marketing. The city almost dares you to try not to relax. The shopkeepers, tuk-tuk drivers and travel guides speak in hushed, almost meditative tones. It is a place where you could potentially go without speaking more than 20 words a day if you wanted (as I managed to do myself). Even the town's night market is subtle and subdued in all of it's riot of colors displayed under dim, incadescent lights. I spent my first evening walking the entire tourist district along the banks of the Mekong River. The architecture here seems a natural blend of northern Thai and northern Vietnamese tradition - but markedly warmer structure than the Vietnamese manage. Night time and morning until about 10 am was quite nippy and I was glad I'd brought both a sweater and a Malagasy silk wrap. My guesthouse was nice and cozy though. Guest houses and restaurants were almost literally a dime a dozen, both out on the main streets and tucked down narrrow lanes such as this one. Even the well-trafficked main street put sleep Cao Bang to shame with its listless business. It was almost as if the mountain valley had never heard a noise louder than the landing of the small planes and couldn't imagine raising it's voice to distrub the surrounding hills. Coffee shops and restaurants also lined the Mekong - and who could be roughing it in a place where you could buy a cup of hot chocolate like the one below? Quite the rough daily routine, I do tell you!!

Loi Krathong - Festival of Lights

2008-11-09T11:11:00.015-06:00

You have to hand it to them - the Thai people know how to have a festival! If they're not using fire hoses and water grenade launchers to soak you during Songkran, or chanting monks waking you in the pre-dawn hours with their blocks and gong-ringing, then they're shooting off huge fireworks and sending up thousands of paper lanterns to bedazzle the already star-studded night sky. All with very insightful and deep meaning, mind you.

Loi Krathong, is, as I understanding, the festival of the floating lanterns. The ceremony uses darkness and flame and air to symbolize the releasing yourself from the bonds of your past sins and mistakes as you continue down the path to enlightenment.

I was a little worried about this whole event as the large crowds known to attend and thousands of flaming floating lanterns in a small space didn't exactly sound like and incredibly good combination, but we were all pleasantly surprised to discover that the whole ceremony was very well organized and under excellent control.

We arrived just early enough and found an excellent parking spot within easy walking distance of ground zero. On the temple grounds large metal tiki torches were described a large grid and each group was allowed to choose a square on the field. We had a mat that just fit in the square and the ten of us made ourselves comfortable with the picnic we had brought. The beginning of the ceremony was already underway, amplified on loudspeakers strategically placed around the field. We were still borderline close to one, but the spot we had was dark and the people were very orderly throughout.

We sat and ate and prepared our lanterns for takeoff, while watching a few early releases that just couldn't wait test the winds above.

We were too far back to be able to see most of the procession and ground show in the beginning, but when the ceremony really got underway there was English translation provided to keep us all involved. They gave us instructions for following the chants and we watched quietly as the Thai around us chanted and kowtowed following the head monk's prayers. Then the torches were all lit and blessed.

Chaos broke loose at this point as some people began lighting their lanterns from the torches and ushers with blowhorns shoved through the crowds telling them to put the lanterns down - it wasn't time yet!

Finally we were all invited to stand and light our lanterns and within second the grounds were aglow with a thousand earthbound lampshade struggling for their freedom.

Then we were told to release them. In a moment the sky was absolutely filled with thousands of floating lights.

They rose to the trees, floating steadily north, until they just cleared the treetops and caught the southbound wind, creating a spiraling galaxy effect over our heads. More and more lights rose up (our group had 16 just for ourselves) in succession, filling the sky with thousands of new stars. The effect was breathtaking -

- and amazingly orderly. There were three or four lanterns caught precariously in the surrounding pine trees at any given time, but only one really threatened serious burning, and there were firecrews with trucks on the watch the whole time. The night was perfectly crystal clear and relatively still. Just to keep the adrenaline pumping, occasional fireworks were set off in the midst of the rising lanterns. The quarter-full moon shown down, guiding the lanterns to their heights and the stars seemed to welcome new friends for the evening.

Finally the lantern supplies were exhausted and the crowds began to slip away towards cars. The thousand lanterns followed our hour-long journey back to the city, carrying the memories of mistakes and sins past away on the wind and into the deep night.