Sassy in Print

Penguin Tea

2012-05-31T03:08:43Z

The Magic Teacup brings us a penguin today. The penguin brings me a fresh cup of intrigue today. AppleJack went down to the History & Heritage Society and found a thick juicy file on those dead relatives we discovered over the weekend. A fascinating history from the turn of the century would have never been discovered if we hadn't made that first stop to investigate those damn flags. It is incredible that we found this good stuff all because I love walking around in cemeteries. What a fantastic adventure this turned out to be!

We were specifically trying to find out why one particular relative was committed to an insane asylum around 1901 and we hit pay dirt. According to the court records the poor chap got old and developed what would likely just be considered garden-variety dementia these days and was sent away to the State Insane Asylum for Lunatics. More amazing than that was the fact that this was kept as a family secret for generations. This is why these names were not familiar to AppleJack when we stumbled upon their graves last weekend--because no one ever talked about them. This is also why when we asked older relatives for names of grandparents and great-grandparents no one could remember--they probably never knew anything about them. Having a "lunatic" in the family was a shameful thing back then; once they were locked away they were more or less written out of the family history and their names not repeated. Children and grandchildren were simply told the relatives died. Two relatives died in such asylums and never a word was spoken of them. Until now! AppleJack has liberated the secret!

Imagine being the first American-born member of your family and your direct descendants aren't even told your name! Imagine having no education at all, being a wounded veteran, and raising a family of seven children only to have your name conveniently "forgotten" so that in another generation no one would even know your story or how the family got here. Imagine being the forefather of a proud legacy of educators--teachers, principals, superintendents--after starting out an illiterate farmer and by the time your last grandchild is born your existence has been discreetly erased so that their children won't even recognize your grave. All because you got old and daffy--never violent--just confused and a little crazy. In 2012 you would probably be eligible for a variety of medical treatments, rehab, and maybe go into assisted living. In 1901 a judge declared you legally insane and you disappeared...forever...unless by some chance 111 years later a curious great-grandchild discovers your grave and searches out your identity. Imagine it taking 111 years to be written back into your own legacy. Imagine it taking 111 years for a member of your family to refuse to be ashamed of you.

Imagine.

(c) 2012, ACG

Liberate Your Art 2012

2012-05-30T11:43:39Z

Kat Sloma's postcard swap is back for 2012 and I'm joining in again. If you'd like to join in too there is still plenty of time. The swap date is August 11th. See Kat's site for complete details. This was such a fun and fulfilling project last year. I met artists from as far away as Hong Kong through the swap! The element of surprise was half the fun for me; never knowing where the next card would come from or who the artist would be. I even got one completely handmade postcard and you know how that juices my lemons! No matter what your form of art might be it is easy to translate it into a postcard so give it some consideration. I doubt you'll regret it.

An Art Stroll With Mystery, Dance, and Sexy Baseballs

2012-05-28T16:06:29Z

A holiday. I paid my respects on Saturday and Sunday. No heavy thoughts today. Today is reserved for an art stroll through the stuff I've been collecting on the fly--a little living scrapbook of inspiration over the past few weeks.

Central Arkansas has already reached 93 degrees. This is the coolest place to be in the heat of the day. I haven't bought a book in a bookstore in months.

AppleJack and I walk the dog in the evenings after it cools off. This was the vintage brick fence around one of the old houses for sale in the neighborhood. It's a treasure but of course it needs a lot of work like most old houses do. It would make a beautiful yoga studio. Every time we pass a house for sale my first consideration isn't usually what it would be like to live in such a house but rather how that house would function as a yoga studio.

When I ran my half marathon a few weeks ago my friend Jesse surprised me by personalizing my race bib. Instead of the standard race number I got my name. The name with no number thing is a privilege usually only enjoyed by elite runners. He really is awesome, isn't he?

When AppleJack and I made a stop at the Spirit Shop for adult beverages I became intrigued with several constellations of white dots on the concrete floor...

...so in the playful spirit of the moment I made him dance with me above the stars (as opposed to under them).

Since we live in a dry county this is the weekend mecca at the county line. Always busy. Always hoppin' with folks who imbibe on Saturday and repent on Sunday. As we danced AppleJack said "People are going to think we are weird." I said "Well we are weird!"

A sassy rock given to me by a coworker. On a break I was playing around with the light and reflection in my office with a beat-up picture frame in the background. It turned into such a cheerful little image that you would never know the whole scene sits atop a big utilitarian office printer.

I was out on the side of the road last week taking pictures of my clients participating in the Special Olympics Torch Run. The junk store in the background caught my eye with her bold make-up. Lipstick and eyeshadow to attract shoppers who need secondhand furniture and used tires in one location.

On the sofa, playing with shadow and ambient light, trying to make a baseball look sexy.

At the end of a very long, very stressful day I was trying to break the mood so I wouldn't take it home with me. Seeking a spot of serenity in a stormy atmosphere I found Little Chill Monster whispering "chill out, man" from his perch behind the ironside teapot.

AppleJack drove me out to an old cemetary to visit the graves of the family veterans for Memorial Day and to prove to me that he really wasn't making up his grandfather's name. See my pics on Facebook for those details. While we moved through the rows of fallen Gattins laid to rest we found this little girl's grave next to great Grandma and great Grandpa. No one knows who she was. We can't find any record of her being born to a relative yet there she lies. So my project over the summer will be to try to find out who this mystery ancestor was. We think she might be Tola, one of their daughters. As we sift through the family archives the handwriting and poor spelling of the census takers and record keepers is fairly hilarious with errors. Flora might have been written to look like Tola. There are no records on Tola other than her name listed as a daughter. In the meantime I made her simple little headstone into art of the Midnight In The Garden Of Good And Evil style while I work on solving the mystery.

Nice strolling with you. Enjoy your holiday!

(c) 2012, ACG

Internet Condolences

2012-05-28T03:36:40Z

Holy frijoles.

Just found out my Grandpa died.

Just found out my Grandpa died 7 months ago.

Just found out my Grandpa died 7 months ago via a Google search.

Yep; had no clue. What a way to find out! What a world we live in these days, huh?

Remember when I found out that my mom died two weeks after she was already buried? Now I found out her dad died half a year after he was buried. Crazy.

It all started because we were riding down a state highway and just could not fathom why we were seeing Confederate flags blowing in the wind. AppleJack and I were on our way back from the library and saw the flags at the local cemetery. It didn't register at first--war veterans, Memorial Day weekend--d'uh. The Sons of the Confederate Veterans had decorated the soldiers' graves with Confederate flags but we didn't figure this out until we stopped the car, got out, and stomped across the cemetery to investigate. Oh right; the Civil War. Double d'uh.

Since we were already parked and browsing through the cemetery we decided to keep strolling through the old grave sites. It was fascinating. These were some of the town's original families--founders, pioneers--with very primitive graves. Some of them seemed to be only buried halfway below ground with big humps over their graves covered in concrete or gravel. A few graves had some kind of rustic sarcophagus mounted above the ground that were crumbing with age. Some of the inscriptions were hand-printed with very poor spelling and grammar. Some sites were so eroded by time and lack of maintenance that it was impossible to tell who was buried there. The graves that had sunken in were especially interesting; you know, in a creepy way. We stopped to talk to a volunteer tending the graves and learned that there was no map of the cemetery in existence anymore. There was no perpetual care on the original property so this retired lady and her husband tended over 400 graves all by themselves. By the time we left the whole place felt like a community treasure (minus the flags) that we had never even noticed (until the flags).

So after we left AppleJack drove us over to a smaller and much shabbier cemetery where his paternal relatives are buried. His grandpa's name was so unusual that for awhile I actually thought AppleJack was making it up. Nope. We found the grave and he proved it to me; the old fellow really did have one of the funniest names I've ever heard and even passed it to his son! So of course I had to take a picture to go with the story to tell the Apples later. That grave led to another, which led to another until we discovered many more relatives than AppleJack ever knew had been buried there. We just kept finding more until we were finding folks that AppleJack couldn't identify. So of course we went home and starting tracing the family tree to find out who these folks were. For two days we scoured records and called relatives and searched the old census reports trying to connect what we knew to what we couldn't figure out. There are only about three people left living who could give us clues.  By the time we got our answers we were able to trace AppleJack's line back through four generations to the first immigrant from Scotland. So cool. I love this stuff.

This was so much fun that we dug out the paperwork for the bloodlines on the maternal side. Luckily someone else had done all the work for us many years ago and we inherited the records when AppleJack's mom died. We didn't have to do any legwork; all we had to do was read all the way back to the 16th century. As we perused the births and deaths and marriages I began looking up the family crests and ancestral histories of the surnames. Then out of curiosity I wondered about the surnames in my own family. So on a lark I googled my Grandpa's name and found his obituary in the search results. Never knew he had passed. Never knew he had served in the Korean War. Never knew he was a Mason. Never knew he had cancer. Crazy. Haven't heard from a soul in his family for something like 20 years now and then one day--bing!--Grandpa is dead on the internet. Crazy. I'm positive that none of my uncles would know how to contact me and since my mom is already dead there would be no one to call me or write to me. Grandma is still alive (as of the date of the obit) but I don't even have her address so of course she doesn't have mine. I'm sure that probably seems crazy too. For my family it's completely normal. It's probably who I'm so preoccupied with AppleJack's roots; I more or less don't have them.

This of course means I didn't/don't have any kind of emotional bond with Grandpa so there is that funky void where all the emotional distress would normally be at the news of his death. I know I'm supposed to be sad but I don't feel sad. We had no attachment to each other. We didn't share anything significant except other relatives. There was no affection.  The most remarkable thing I feel is that it's remarkable to learn of his death via the internet. I have no loss because I never had a relationship with him.

Now that I have spent the weekend bringing back to life the memories of AppleJack's dead relatives I felt compelled to at least acknowledge the passing of one of my own even though it feels like I hardly knew him. I'm trying to remember everything (anything) I can about him. Before my parents divorced I saw him on visits, a few holidays, a weekend here or there, but all 20 years ago or more.  Here's what I have left:

He could really, really cook. I mean really cook.

He made me cornbread in the old fashioned cast iron cobbette pan.

He fed me my first oysters. They were fantastic.

He was short. Stout. Big nose. Wide mouth. Big metal glasses.

He woke me up from across the room when I spent the night--bellowing that the sun had been up for hours and that I would sleep my life away.

He drove me to basketball practice once when I was in high school and then stayed to watch. I was embarrassed that I couldn't make any free throws without jumping. My coach wouldn't let me jump so Grandpa thought I couldn't make them. I totally could when I jumped!

I think his nickname was Red but I don't think he liked it much.

He wore white sleeveless undershirts around the house. With belted shorts and high socks.

He built robots in the basement, which was really just a storm cellar. You had to leave the house and walk around back to the little slanty doors in the ground and clomp down stairs to get under the house. He kept a little shop down there. We weren't supposed to mess around in there.

He liked pecans. Kept them in the kitchen in a giant bowl and cracked them with a pair of pliers.

He wasn't a hugging Grandpa. He was friendly but I don't remember ever touching him.

He read the paper every day in a Queen Anne chair next the fireplace they never, ever used.

He was rumored to have a bad temper (my mom's memory I overheard once).

He never owned a house the entire time I knew him. I found out when I was a teenager that Grandma and Grandpa's house was rented. Then they moved away somewhere. Never knew where.

He retired from General Electric but I never knew his actual occupation.

He had five children. One died as a baby. My mom was the only girl. She died several years before him.

That's it. That's all I can remember, other than his name and what he looked like when he was still in his 60s. He was 82 when he died. 11 grandchildren. 18 great-grandchildren. The picture that accompanied the obituary showed him standing in a field near waist-high tomato plants. Looked like a farm. I don't have any other pictures of him.

After my mom left us (when I was 12 years old) we tried to find her from time to time by asking Grandma and Grandpa. They always said they didn't know her whereabouts but one time we showed up for an unannounced visit and my dad was sure they were hiding her--maybe even hiding her in the house while we were there. They were already divorced by this time but she had disappeared from our lives completely though she had liberal visitation rights. Grandma and Grandpa kept saying they didn't know. The connection just seemed to slowly die after that and we never saw them again. Then she died and Grandma and Grandpa didn't tell us even though they still knew how to reach us back then. Crazy. Crazy coincidence that we repeat the anonymous death experience now with Grandpa all these years later.

Not exactly the rich traditional history of AppleJack's regiment of war veterans (see my pics on Facebook) but this is the best I can do with what I have--a crazy history of a crazy abnormal life that never stops producing these crazy stories. But I tell the truth no matter how crazy it is and this is where I come from; this family of people who don't talk to each other. We die and no one even knows it. We know each other's names but not each other's addresses. This is our truth. It's not sad.  Don't write to me and tell me it's sad. Saying it's sad transfers the focus from dealing with what it IS to comparing it to what it isn't. Then all we do is lament what it isn't. Not productive. Leads to shame.  Ain't playing the shame game.

Being ashamed of your family makes about as much sense as being ashamed of the weather. Maybe that's the lesson of this experience. The only family value that really matters is the one that values all families, even the crazy ones, like mine. The chances that it can ever work differently are very slim if we don't first start with how it works now. My family matters even if it doesn't work the way everyone else's does, right now or ever. Point taken by me.

So.

With a polite nod I bid you Sayonara, Grandpa. Thank you for your military service and your DNA. Whenever I eat oysters I think of you and remember you out loud, so wherever you are, we'll always have that.

(c) 2012, ACG

(c) 2009-2012 ACG All rights reserved.

Institutional Delight

2012-05-27T12:24:15Z

After listening to me bellyache about my neck ache for days on end it was suggested to me that the configuration of my work space might actually be the culprit. So I paid attention to the pain for about half a work day and decided they might be right. Standard office furniture is not designed for short people. The height and adjustability of everything is based on the average-sized person. I'm below the average height so no matter where I work I have to choose between having my feet rest on the floor or being able to reach a keyboard/mouse/phone/stapler, etc. Chairs with arms are usually the problem because once the chair is jacked up the height I need, the arms usually prevent the chair from sliding all the way under the desk. This means I sit perched on the edge of the seat all day with no support for any part of my body. Over time this hurts. It just look a little longer to hurt this time because I tried to find a happy medium between height and reach. I made it almost a year before anything started hurting this time, and since it wasn't my arm, shoulder, or wrist (as usual) I didn't realize it was the usual equipment problem.

Luckily I don't work in a cubicle anymore (whoo hoo!) and my hand-me-down L-shaped desk has a low end and a high end. I rearranged the desk so that I could work on the low end and look what happened:

I finally face the windows! This building is 50 years old and built in an institutional style that suited the institutional attitudes with which the public once treated people with developmental disabilities (make everything indestructible and easy to lock down). The only things that keep a small cinderblock room with concrete floors from feeling like a cell are windows. I may not have office furniture that fits but I do have windows. Now, thanks to my cranky neck, I can actually bask in their glow. Even with the bars the exposure to natural light and elements of nature make a huge difference. Now when I raise my tired eyes from paperwork and spreadsheets I will notice that difference first. I may have a dandy brain up there at my disposal but right now I am considering my neck to be an independent genius.

Yes, that canister on the file cabinet that looks like an urn is the infamous container from my story Angela's Ashes. Wherever I work, it goes where I go. I keep tea in it now; tea and laughter.

(c) 2012, ACG

(c) 2009-2012 ACG All rights reserved.

One Sucky Commie

2012-05-26T14:01:46Z

I just had to share my internet watch list experience with you after my Poetry Friday feature. Apparently there is web crawler with a Twitter feed called @RedScareBot. "Robot J. McCarthy" has a vintage profile pic of Joseph McCarthy with the following bio: Joseph McCarthy claimed there were large numbers of Communists and Soviet spies and sympathizers inside the United States federal government and elsewhere. This feed names names of individuals that are suspected Communists and Socialists by scanning the internet and then tweeting their offending internet activity. I recognized several celebrities named and tweets sent out to random Twitter users accusing them of being closet Reds too. I am now apparently on The List because it picked up my Poetry Friday feature in its internet net. My link was retweeted with the intro "Hot to Trotsky." This feed has 9807 followers as of the date of this post.

I gotta tell ya, my fellow Americans, that while I am thrilled to death that my blog is now being observed by over 9800 readers, I certainly never dreamed in a million that it would be for being a suspected Commie. Wow--just, wow. Sassy a Commie. Really. What a hoot!

I don't think a quasi-Buddhist can be a Communist, can she? Can a bleeding heart Liberal also be a Communist? Can a registered voter (Independent) who usually votes blue be a Red? I certainly never thought so! As I said in yesterday's blog I never even knew that my work ethic loosely paralleled a former Soviet law; I thought I made it up all my own! In any case, since I was careful to point out that the requirement that this work ethic be completely voluntary was just as important as the ethic itself, I assumed that would disqualify me as a Communist. I also thought my celebration of a Russian tossed out on his can for not being Communist enough moving on to acclaim as an American scholar and national representative to the Library of Congress would also disqualify me as a Communist. Apparently not. Apparently Robot J. McCarthy just plucked the rhetoric of my post out of its context and put me on The List.

A-freakin-mazing. The beautiful irony of this is of course that only in a country as free as the good ole USA can someone produce a web crawler designed to identify, condemn, and borderline libel other freedom-loving Americans. This is part of freedom too, you know. Well rock on with your fear-mongering, @RedScareBot. You are free to do that here with as much patriotism as I am free to memorialize a great Jewish Russian-American poet and citizen. As for my Red work ethic, well, I've been cheerfully paying 22 years worth of American taxes with it that fund both the U.S. Senate and the State Department where McCarthyism was born. So it obviously sucks as a subversive Communist activity.

(c) 2012, ACG

(c) 2009-2012 ACG All rights reserved.

Poetry Friday--Social Parasitism

2012-05-25T10:25:00Z

Welcome back to Poetry Friday. My neck still hurts (ugh) so I was not inclined to compose any of my own poetry this week. I do, however, have a fascinating feature for you! Today (May 24) is the birthday of Joseph Brodsky, a Russian poet who was thrown out of the Soviet Union during the year of my birth for an interesting crime--refusing to work.

My long-time readers and friends have heard me say many, many times over the years that I consider work to be a civic responsibility. I believe that everyone who can work should work. Whether that work is through gainful employment, volunteer work, civil service, or other socio-economic contribution, every member of a society should contribute to that society in some way that sustains it. Raising children is not enough. Donating large sums money is not enough. Everyone who can should do some actual work toward the sustenance of our communities and society at large. Until today I had no idea that I shared this conviction with the former Soviet government. Now it makes sense that the unemployed daughter of a very wealthy man once called me a Communist. While I am not now, nor have I ever been a Communist, I do feel strongly that this should be a national ideal. Where I differ from the former Soviets is that I would never consider it a crime! If we don't want to do it then it isn't a soulful investment in anything.

In this case Communism ended up serving us plenty well. The Soviets' loss was our gain; Brodsky became Poet Laureate of the U.S. some 20 years after his exile. For our Poetry Friday feature this week I celebrate his contribution with one of his poems.

Part Of Speech by Joseph Brodsky

...and when "the future" is uttered, swarms of mice
rush out of the Russian language and gnaw a piece
of ripened memory which is twice
as hole-ridden as real cheese.
After all these years it hardly matters who
or what stands in the corner, hidden by heavy drapes,
and your mind resounds not with a seraphic "doh",
only their rustle. Life, that no one dares
to appraise, like that gift horse's mouth,
bares its teeth in a grin at each
encounter. What gets left of a man amounts
to a part. To his spoken part. To a part of speech.

As for my high-falutin' ideas about civic responsibility this definitely means that even if I struck it stinkin' rich I would still consider it my responsibility to work. You bet. I would do different work, I am sure, but I would still always work at something. As long as I am accessing our society's public resources (and it is nearly impossible not to do this in some way) I should be contributing back to those resources. Paying the electric bill doesn't count. It's not just about compensation--it's about giving back something of added value to society--like time, creativity, problem-solving, sweat, assistance, expertise, etc. I wouldn't be working for money anymore but I would still be responsible for working for a better world and pulling my weight within it. I believe we all have this responsibility whether we acknowledge it or not.

Poetry counts as work toward that end but only if you share it.

Join in Poetry Friday! Post a link to your poem--here's how it works: http://blog.sassyangelac.com/2012/04/05/poetry-friday-is-a-go.aspx

With the exception of J. Brodsky's poem, (c) 2012, ACG

Fondling The Long Shot

2012-05-24T16:23:30Z

It's been a bleak week here for writing. It's certainly not for lack of inspiration; it's mostly because I've been dealing with a giant pain in the neck. I mean that literally. I've strained my neck and believe it or not it hurts to sit in front of a computer. Ironically sitting at a computer is the most painful position whenever I strain my neck. It's an injury I repeat from time to time. About seven years ago I strained it badly lifting weights at the gym (military press) and ever since then it has been super easy to re-injure, which can happen in my sleep or with too many hours at a desk. Most people assume it's the yoga but I'm always crazy careful with my neck in yoga class. Hard to be careful in your sleep though. It flairs up from time to time but this week was a bad one. Still hurts but I'm tired of not writing.

That doesn't mean I haven't been busy. I submitted one of my stories to a radio show. If it gets chosen to be on the show I will read it aloud for public broadcast with other authors also chosen. I think my chances of being chosen are pretty low because the story I submitted is one I wrote about childhood bullying and that is a darker subject than is typically featured on this particular show. Most of the stories that get chosen are of what I call the "country charm" variety and while mine has an epiphany and a happy ending it doesn't have any country charm. However, I didn't submit this story to blend in; I meant for it to stand out. If by some stroke of luck it does get chosen it won't be one that's easy to forget. That would be more important to me than submitting a cheerful story sure to be included but also sure to be forgotten amid all the azalea blossoms and butterfly anecdotes. Deliberately Sassy.

So how does this qualify as busy? Submissions had to be 500 - 1200 words. It took hours to cut my story down to 1200 words and still tell it well. I think much was lost from the story since I had to cull about half of the sass out of it but if my story was going to be rejected I wanted it to at least be read first. If it didn't meet the submission guidelines it wouldn't even be read. It took some major work to take one of my long wordy tales and compact it down to fit inside a radio show's time slot. I hated doing it too. By the time I finished butchering it down to 1200 words it didn't even feel worth submitting anymore. I sent it in anyway; partly because I didn't want to waste all those hours I spent on it and also because you just never know what's going to appeal to someone else. Last night I got two emails in response. One thanked me for the submission and indicated that they looked forward to reading it. An hour later I got a second email from them that was completely blank. Hard to know what that means.

They hated it so badly they couldn't think of anything nice to say and therefore said nothing? They loved it so much they prematurely hit the Send button before composing a glowing acceptance letter? Just a glitch? Started to tell me to revise it but then decided too much needed to be revised, said the hell with it and botched the aborted reply? Stunned silent with a finger seizure? Who knows? I'll wait. Submissions close on Sunday night. We'll see what happens.

(c) 2012, ACG

Base Layer Pink

2012-05-22T03:44:57Z

These cups ask "With which mind will you drink this tea?" When I first had these tea cups made the emphasis was on the first part of the question--which mind. Then last week I had a string of long, tough, emotionally intense days at work that shifted the emphasis to the last part of the question--this tea. We've seen with which mind you drank that tea but now how 'bout this tea? With which mind will you drink this tea? I was being served very different tea than I was used to drinking--which of course means I was choosing very different tea or bringing a very different tea into my life. How was I gonna drink this one?

At the end of each of these days in which I drank the new tea I didn't just feel tired; I felt raw. I felt chapped. I felt skinned like a knee. Pink instead of blue. I tried to carry on my normal curricular activities (cheerful work) and extracurricular activities (yoga modeling and running) but I did it without my usual verve, prompting concern and inquiries from those that care. What was wrong with me?  Was I okay? I seemed down/blue/morose. I was beyond blue, really. I wasn't just down--I was turned inside out--pink. Worn down to a base layer. So when Bella asked for a pink image this week I felt a zing along the Kindred Conduit that connects all creative souls. How did she know?

Nothing was wrong. Things were very, very right. I was being served some strongly challenging tea and I had to figure out how to drink it with the same mind I would drink all the happy harmony teas. It was good work--damn good work--but it was hard. It was a testy tea. Professional grade. It squeezed me and shook me down and demanded a this-hot-minute growth spurt that just left me spent with the effort. I took that tea and got it down and then got quiet and pink.  Completely tapped. No need to worry. This is how you grow. Blue may be what you feel when you are sad/lonely/depressed but pink is what I feel when I'm so exhausted from growing that I cry as an act of surrender to the process of emptying the reservoir so that it can be refilled. Pink is the warm tender bottom. Get down to the pink and you've gone all the way.

But then, when that reservoir gets filled up again, it can take (and brew) stronger tea than before and you'll get all your colors back.

(c) 2012, ACG

A Weekend Doodle

2012-05-20T11:38:00Z

Here's a little doodle for your Sunday morning. It was inspired by reading the blog of another writer who has a lovely professional headshot on her home page. She is beautiful in this photo with all the flattering elements in perfect harmony--hair, makeup, lighting, expert composition. She looks glamorous and approachable at the same time; a perfect welcome when you visit for the first time or any time. However, this week she put up a more natural picture of herself on her blog and I was mesmerized by how much more beautiful it was. I don't think she was wearing any makeup at all.  It was a candid shot of her leaning over her son's head and turning to smile for a snapshot. Small smile, no time to fix hair; no time to adjust light. I couldn't look away.

Her blog is set up so that the pro headshot rests on the right side of the screen whenever you read her blog. The candid shot went up front and center at the top of her blog post so you got to see both photos side by side. Here she was on the right all prettied up and perfect and here she was on the left all real and natural. I could see wrinkles and the motherhood under her eyes that was washed out in the glam photo. I could see the life in her face and as I stared in wonder at the experience around her eyes I said to myself She knows things! This is a face I can trust. I can believe her.  Right between her eyes were those three fine lines that I have between mine and I felt my heart quicken in acknowledgement that these were the marks of a deeper beauty. I really couldn't look away. The strength and ache and simmered wisdom in her face made the companion photo with lipstick and mascara pale in significance even as it sparkled with magic. I felt drunk on her gorgeousness.

Here, this will be easier--see for yourself.

So now when I'm looking around and noticing the beautiful women around me my regard has completely changed. I'm recognizing women who know things now. I'm attracted to the visible evidence of their wisdom the way I used to notice just a pretty face or a great haircut. I see a kindred beauty in the shadows not filled in or covered up by makeup. I believe in wrinkles. The deeper they are the deeper she probably goes. The eyes that stop me cold now are naked eyes. The mouth I trust is the one I can see and that little boys can touch with their fingers. So this doodle is for those beauties.  My eyes are now passing over the painted dolls and glamour pusses to find YOU and savor a beauty in which I can believe.

(c) 2012, ACG

Diapers, Monkeys, Baseball Legends

2012-05-19T10:42:00Z

A funny thing happened on the way to middle age; I forgot that I loved baseball. That is, I loved baseball when I was a kid because my great-grandmother loved baseball but I let it get dated out of me. Yes, I said dated out of me. You know how when you are young and stupid you give up the things you like for the things they like so that they will like spending time with you? It was like that, sort of, only much more subtle because I also loved football and I didn't realize I was sacrificing anything until baseball was gone.

I know my long time readers are blowing the bullshit whistle here and saying Hold on a minute! How is it possible that this chick who never spent 10 consecutive minutes with a grandmother managed to spend enough time with a great-grandmother to fall in love with a sport? Well it was possible because every time my mother got pregnant we had to move out of state. Yep. It's true. Not making it up--ask my siblings. It went something like this:

Parents met in Kentucky (mom's home) and conceived me.
Moved to Missouri (dad's home).
I was born.
Moved back to Kentucky and conceived my sister.
Moved back to Missouri.
She was born.
Moved back to Kentucky and conceived my other sister.
Moved back to Missouri.
She was born.
Moved back to Kentucky and conceived my brother.
Moved back to Missouri.
He was born.
Moved back to Kentucky for the last time and never went back; became estranged from the Missouri relatives for the rest of our existence.

But while we were in Missouri (off and on over six years) I spent time with my great-grandmother (dad's grandma). I called her Nan Nan. I am the only one of the four of us that can remember her because each time there was a new baby in the house I got to go stay with Nan Nan. I think I was seven years old when we left for good but my memories of her are astonishingly clear. She was a real weirdo but in the coolest way. She had no teeth (and no dentures) and wore diapers (before they made adult diapers) but she never seemed like an old lady to me. She also never treated me like a little girl; she talked to me as if I was an interesting person so that made her the most interesting person to me.

Nan Nan never made me shut up and go to sleep; she laid beside me in the dark and talked to me until I fell asleep. If I woke up early in the morning we would lay together and talk while waiting for the sun to come up. We made up stories about the shadows on the wall or ceiling. She left a strong imprint on my memory as someone who took me seriously as an important person when everyone else dismissed me as a little kid. I confided in her that I planned to grow up "too fast." She didn't try to talk me out of it. She must have known that was my fate anyway.

Nan Nan loved two things--soap operas and baseball. Her soaps were a standing appointment and she didn't suffer interruptions that couldn't wait for a commercial. She watched them all, every afternoon, a solid three hour block and then she switched over to baseball. You could interrupt her all you wanted during baseball. You could talk and ask questions during baseball.  She would get up and make you a sandwich during baseball. Her favorite part was the butt slapping. She always giggled and pointed it out to me when the base coaches slapped the base runners on the butt. When pitchers got relieved they got a slap on the butt too; she thought this was so charming. She also taught me the basics of the game while we were looking at butts.

But the best part of watching baseball with Nan Nan was that she had no favorite team(s) and never took a side. If I asked her if she wanted the guys in the red hats to win or the guys in the blue hats to win, she never cared which won. She just loved the game. She was the only person I ever knew who loved baseball that much but watched it completely objectively--a fan of the sport but never of an individual team, not even for one game and not even during the World Series. After the game was over she would cheer "Yeay! The Yankees won!" The next time she would cheer "Yeay! The Red Sox won!" She was captivated by the action but whoever won was fine with her; she didn't really care. Then we moved away and I didn't get to watch baseball with her anymore. I only saw her once after we left. I was twelve. She came to Kentucky for a short visit and I never left her side. Then she went home and died. We didn't go to her funeral. I saw a picture of her lying in her casket but she looked like a stranger to me.

The first significant man in any girl's life is usually her father. It was certainly the case with me, the firstborn. After that there were three significant other men but my sports education beyond Nan Nan was overtaken first by my father. Dad was a football man. The only time I remember watching baseball with Dad was when the Kansas City Royals were playing in the World Series. The rest of the time it was all football all the time. When football wasn't on we watched a little college basketball but I grew up with football on the brain and in the blood. He loved it. I loved it. I still love it and I enjoyed it so much with Dad that I forgot to miss baseball. I stepped into adulthood a full-fledged football fan for life. Then came the significant others.

You know their names: The Worm, The Toad, and The Pimple. (The reasons that these are not derogatory monikers are explained in The Glossary.) The Worm didn't like any sports at all--didn't watch any, didn't follow any, didn't give a rip. He practiced martial arts as a formal disciple, not a sport, and wasn't interested in the sporting aspect.  He had a general disdain for most sports because he considered intellectual pursuits more worthwhile. I took up martial arts by default for several years too and then gave it up when I gave him up.

The Toad had a strange habit of changing his favorite sport every time he changed peer groups. As a military man his circle of friends changed constantly and he always changed accordingly to fit in with the new crew. If his friends liked football then he liked football. When he made NBA friends he got into the NBA. When he made hockey friends he suddenly loved hockey. When ultimate fighting was the hot ticket among his buds he was obsessed with ultimate fighting. When his coworkers started running then he started running. When NASCAR friends arrived on the scene he threw himself into NASCAR. I would soooo love to say that I broke up with him because he got into NASCAR but I can't. That happened to be a fortunate coincidence.

The one sport The Toad never embraced was baseball. He never made any baseball friends so there was never a reason. The only cohesive thing about his being a temporary fan of all of these different sports is that the opposing players were always called asswipes even if they were superior athletes. Anyone not playing for the team he liked was an asswipe, even the winners. Score a touchdown--asswipe. Beat down the other fighter--asswipe. Win the race--asswipe. I did my best to weather the jumps from sport to sport to sport (with the exception of NASCAR) because I could always return to football on a Sunday afternoon no matter what the flavor of the month happened to be. In the meantime I forgot to miss baseball.

The Pimple had open contempt for all sports but one--college football. Every other sport was a waste of humanity as far as he was concerned. Professional football was tolerable but still considered a bad version of the real thing with overpaid thugs. He ridiculed all athletes that weren't football players because he believed that men only turned to other sports when they couldn't cut it as football players. All other sports were a bad joke and that went double for women's sports and triple for European soccer. The Olympic Games? Forget about it. We were all sheep being suckered into paying attention to the greatest waste of global resources ever invented.

The Pimple despised baseball most among American sports and claimed that it would soon die out because no one with a reasonable amount of brain matter cared about baseball anymore. I clearly remember a protracted argument in which many beloved American youth sports were reviled because they always funneled money away from football. He thought Title IX was an attack on football by women who suffered from penis envy. You can imagine how protracted that argument was!

The most significant thing about The Pimple's hatred of all sports other than football was that football was the sport that always drove him to violence. Football made him throw furniture. Football made him punch walls. Football made him stomp things. Football made him destroy every remote control to every television unlucky enough to be the one broadcasting a fumble or interception. Football made him scream curses. Football made him threaten other men. Football made him cut off other drivers in traffic and brandish soda bottles he meant to throw at their cars. Football made him get into a shoving match with an opposing team's fan on the way out of a stadium that resulted in me getting pushed down the bleacher stairs. Once he even wrung his hands in such fury that his watch flew off his wrist and smashed into the wall behind the sofa. If this his how his favorite sport caused him to behave you can bet there was no point in trying to watch any sports he hated. So by all means there was no baseball!

Then I married AppleJack. AppleJack loves football too but he was raised on baseball. He also likes soccer, hockey, running, and is generally accepting of most sports (including European soccer!) but baseball is the biggie. We love watching the Olympics. We even developed a mild interest in curling during the winter games just because it was such a hoot. Last weekend we watched a lacrosse match. I get to watch all the football I want during football season but during baseball season I've been cheerfully watching along with AppleJack. At first I joked that he was slowly turning me into a baseball fan because I completely forgot that I used to be one. We usually watch his favorite pro team when we aren't watching the University of Arkansas baseball team so it wasn't until the day I sat beside him watching a non-partisan game that I remembered.

AppleJack is a lifelong Yankees fan but on this particular day we were watching Arizona at Colorado. Neither of us have any interest in either of those teams but the game was getting good as we waited for dinner to come out of the oven. I was musing that I was just as interested in this bottom-of-the-eighth nailbiter as I would be if we actually cared who won and then--PING!--I remembered Nan Nan. I remembered that I wasn't becoming a baseball fan; I had always been a baseball fan--I just forgot for about 30 years. All it took to remind me was a game in which I had no favoritism and I was seven years old again sitting on a cushion beside Nan Nan's chair. I was coming home to baseball all this time when I thought I was just enjoying the Yankee games with a man who can take a loss without breaking things or declaring the winner an asswipe. The memory of Nan Nan and our baseball afternoons had gotten buried under all the dating crapola until AppleJack's ambient light caught the edge of it and illuminated it like a lost treasure in the attic. He always does that. It's his quiet way of changing my life.

So tonight AppleJack is taking me out to the ballgame. This was planned before my little epiphany but the timing is nothing short of butt slapping funny. Our city's minor league team is playing at home and we are going with a gaggle of our friends because it happens to be Monkey Dog night. I know this is hard to believe. I didn't believe it myself until AppleJack showed me a video on YouTube. There is a traveling sideshow act featured at baseball games all across the country in which monkey cowboys ride border collies and herd goats during the seventh inning stretch. No joke. Monkeys ride saddled up dogs--in little chaps and wearing little cowboy hats--while the dogs herd a handful of goats around the outfield. Real monkeys. Real goats. Real famous act that we just had to see with our own eyes.

You can google them if you don't believe it--their professional name is The Ghostriders. I think they are ghost monkeys. On video it is hideous and awesome at the same time. I expect it to be hideous and awesome in person as well. My friends and I chose our seats in the stadium based on placement to the monkeys as opposed to a good view of the game. I suspect my great-grandmother would pee her diaper laughing at them.

I hope wherever Nan Nan is tonight she is not resting in peace. I hope she's whooping it up somewhere with sizzling ovaries, a viable bladder, and all new teeth. When I told Dad I was writing about my baseball memories with Nan Nan he revealed that while she didn't have a favorite team she did have a favorite player. She was apparently all hot under the housedress for a pitcher named Catfish Hunter. This guy:

Photo from the Sports Illustrated Vault

Yep. A Yankee. I say go ahead Nan Nan, you slap that ass!

(c) 2012, ACG

(c) 2009-2012 ACG All rights reserved.

Poetry Friday--Wisdom Where You Are

2012-05-18T09:58:00Z

Welcome back to Poetry Friday; it's been quiet around here among the poets. This week I've been watching film noir, stimulating muscle repair, and arguing mathematical ethics with my peers. I've been inspired by a woman wearing a stone around her neck and by my own view of chains around my breasts. Sometimes the artistic process is a fondue pot. Have a dunk.

If you are still enough you can feel your heart beating
without putting a hand to your chest.
Quiet. Rest.
Breathe.
There it is.

This is also how you can feel the motion of your breath
without watching your chest rise and fall.
Whole body.
Aware.
There it is.

You can be silent and still and breathe and notice and feel
without changing any of your religion.
Moment. Another.
Present.
Here you are.

You can know and learn and discover mysteries and answers
without asking anyone a single good question.
Observe. Listen.
Wisdom.
Where you are.

(c) 2012, ACG

Join in Poetry Friday! Post a link to your poem--here's how it works: http://blog.sassyangelac.com/2012/04/05/poetry-friday-is-a-go.aspx

Holding Hands In The Valley Of The Shadow

2012-05-17T20:42:12Z

This my latest art acquisition made from more recycled parts--an old typewriter key and two silver spoon handles. You may remember the MarRel key from previous blog posts in which I discovered typewriter jewelry and chose the misfit orphan keys no one else would love. Typical Sassy. I so jive with the metaphor of releasing our margins that half the thrill of wearing it is waiting for someone to ask me what it means!

It was especially relevant this week when I was faced with the predicament of supporting someone expecting a family death and finding a series of close calls to be some kind of divine torture. You know how it goes, I'm sure. When someone is close to death there are sometimes a few episodes of "almost dying" before the big day of finality comes. Everyone scrambles and waits and worries and cries and then like some kind of backhanded miracle the loved one pulls through only to go through it again and even again. Sooner or later it becomes clear that the loved one will definitely die but the persistent boomeranging between life and death leaves the survivors in a constant emotional whiplash until it's all over.

In an effort to alleviate the bitterness growing in my friend after yet another close call I offered a margin release. My friend willingly acknowledged acceptance that her family member was going to die but she couldn't understand why "God didn't just go ahead and take her. It's so cruel!" Trying to respect my friend's faith, I responded:

Maybe you are being given extra time so that you can adjust from clutching her so tightly to letting her go. Maybe this time isn't for her; maybe it's for you--to help you get ready to face letting her go.

Her head snapped up and she stared at me wide-eyed for a moment. "You mean, like practice?" I nodded, hoping like hell I wasn't offending her, and reasoned that sometimes it takes several tries for us to ease our grip on something we fear even after we have been assured that the thing we fear will definitely happen. She waited, so I continued:

Every time she gets close to dying, what do you do? You hold on tight and pray hard and keep all your fear and dread and anxiety held closely to your heart trying to make it not happen. Maybe you're being given extra chances to learn to set her free and love her just as much as she leaves.

She began weeping. "So she can have peace?"

I answered:

So that you can have peace.

Her margin released.

The bracelet arrived later that night. In an interesting twist of irony it came with an unusual handmade clasp that I cannot operate with one hand. If I want to put wear this bracelet someone else has to help me. No one heals alone, remember? Apparently we don't release our margins alone either. My friend and I are polar opposites when it comes to religion yet we each helped the other release via one of life's most religious experiences--death. I helped her release her fear of release and she helped me release my thinking that I had nothing to offer someone who believes what she believes. The fact that the bracelet requires a second set of hands to be wearable makes it a poignant double metaphor.

I am fondling it.

(c) 2012, ACG

(c) 2009-2012 ACG All rights reserved.

Whizzy Motion of Terror

2012-05-15T14:50:19Z

When I was a kid I was terrified of all fans. I hated them. I couldn't sleep in any room that had a working fan because I was convinced that the fan blades would come loose from the crank as they spun and then slice me to ribbons like a giant food processor. It didn't matter how large or small the fan was; they were all weapons in disguise as far as I was concerned. I think it all started because I saw my brother stick his finger into a working fan and the finger was nearly severed. Fan blades were metal back then. Everything was metal back then. The world had not yet turned plastic. Even our toys were metal. What wasn't metal was wooden or glass. I call the plastic evolution of everything The Cheapening of America and I think mine must be the last generation that remembers what life was like before it all became cheap and plastic and disposable.

I've written before that we were very poor when I was a kid but the difference between being poor then and being poor now was that there wasn't an inexhaustible supply of plastic junk then. Back then being poor meant you either had very little or had nothing. These days being poor means you have a bunch of junk. Poor families back then owned just a few furnishings and household items. These items might be shabby and worn and very old but they were usually nice things when they were new--quality items that had just gotten old or been acquired secondhand. You didn't throw things out just because they got old and shabby because there wasn't a cheap alternative. You tried to make things last as long as possible. All purchases were investments.

Poor homes used to be just as tidy as other homes even if they were sparse and in disrepair. Then everything became plastic and readily available at a big box discount store so poor homes became filled with heaps of cheap plastic junk. There is no need to make anything last anymore because it is so easily and cheaply replaced. Homes can be filled to the brim with lots of the stuff we never had because now it is all completely accessible to the poor in plastic form. Break something? No big deal, just run out to the giant store of plastic everything and get another one for next to nothing. Tired of something? It comes in another color of plastic or a different style for very little expense at your nearest All Mart or squalor-dollar store. Poor folks can now spend what little money they have on a bunch of crap that won't mean anything to them. Is it any wonder that it all ends up littered across the front lawn? Of course not; it was trash before they bought it.

It also used to be that poor people only bought what they needed; they didn't waste money on stuff they didn't need. Now poor people can afford acres of stuff they don't need because that stuff is so cheap and disposable. John Q. Underprivileged can go shopping and be enticed into buying scads of affordable stuff he doesn't need so that he can sit around his poor home and still feel prosperous. Well-made secondhand items now cost more in antique stores than the cheap plastic versions cost at discount stores where poor people also buy their food so there is no incentive not to buy the new American way. No one has to go without anything anymore because we can all now afford everything. I find it economically tragic because Americans used to take pride in what we crafted. We built things to last and built them to be inherited by our children. We bought things with the future in mind. Now we build things to be thrown away when they go out of style and buy things not worth passing on to charity.

We didn't have air conditioning so we survived with fans during the summer. Houses weren't built with ceiling fans back then--especially not the rental houses we could afford so window fans and floor or table fans were standard issue. The fan that cut my brother was a sea green box fan that was moved from room to room; living room during the day, bedroom while we slept. Every part of it was metal except for the on/off switch and the cord. Because it was old and falling apart like everything else we owned the metal grate that covered the fan blades had rusted off a long time ago and was never replaced. The fan blades were fully exposed but this was the most powerful fan we had so we kept using it. When we were very hot we took turns sitting directly in front of it to cool off. My brother was just a tyke and curious about such things so he tried to touch the whirring fan as it cooled the air near him. Slice. Scream. Blood. Scramble for rescue. My phobia was born.

After that I never wanted to sleep in a room with a fan. Even as a rational adult I avoided it even when it meant being uncomfortable. I had awful visions of the fan apparatus tearing apart and the spinning fan blade flying around the room to scissor anything (me) in its path like a wheel of death. In hindsight this was not an irrational fear in theory because we routinely used everything until it fell apart. It was common enough for this or that to finally break because we used it until it died so it was only a logical assumption that all fans would break too. I didn't want to be around when they did.

Ceiling fans were even more terrifying than standing fans because they had no cover and hung directly over your sleeping body, meaning instant death and dismemberment when they attacked from above. You would get bludgeoned AND sliced! I was always happy when my various rental apartments in adulthood featured central air conditioning so I didn't have to contend with the ceiling fan issue. But the first time I dated someone who absolutely refused to sleep in a bedroom without a fan blowing on him I came to a crossroads. Since I didn't own a fan he wouldn't sleep over. Sorry, but that's the way it is! Then he showed up with a fan--bought me one special so that he could sleep over. Damn. What now? We broke up. After than I was to discover that there are lots of Hims out there that prefer a fan while sleeping and I was not inclined to break up with them all over a childhood phobia so I had to learn to get over it.

These days the use of ceiling fans at The Jesus Crack House is not a concession I make for marital harmony. We use them to keep energy costs down. It uses less energy to operate the ceiling fans and keep the thermostat set a bit higher than it does to let the air conditioner blast away from May to October in the Arkansas heat. I admit I still don't like it and I admit it is still due to my old childish fear but sweating through my sheets in August is not a better alternative.

The image above is the ceiling fan I sleep under every night. I hate it less because of my phobia and more because I don't like the fan's traditional style. It is white and brass and delicately ornate (this is more visible when the fan is still). It came with the house. It's not Sassy. The problem is that it is old and well-made and built to last. It is not a cheap plastic disposable ceiling fan; it's an investment that some older woman with different taste made for her master boudoir and even though I don't like it I can't call it junk. Every bedroom has an expensive ceiling fan in it but they all have distinctly different styles (none of them are Sassy.) This means that the former lady of the house gave deliberate consideration to each investment. As the child of a generation that understands this I appreciate these hallmarks of her consideration. I don't like any of them but none of them have come down. I have considered taking at least this one down and faux finishing it to suit me better--maybe change the globes, etc.--but I really don't think about it until I lay down to sleep at night so it keeps dropping in household priority.

Last night as I contemplated Bella's request to see an image of motion I took advantage of the low light and the fun silvery camera lens app I recently acquired and captured my old worst fear up there cranking away in the ceiling. That's my old phobia whizzing by up there in the shadow and blur. That's a whirring blurring old piece of quality craftsmanship too--not the kind you can easily replace at All Mart. Every single night I think exactly the same two thoughts I thought the night before: Look at me now leaving the fan on! and It's a classic and it still works great; maybe I'll learn to like it. Up there in the mechanical breeze my irrational fear and my rational practicality hold hands and fly in formation above my dreaming mind like the oddest of bedfellows not actually in the bed. I smile a conflicted smile each night before I turn off the light because that vintage fan and my vintage phobia are keeping such interesting company and as yet I can't throw either one of them away.

(c) 2012, ACG

Swordfish Tea

2012-05-15T01:51:37Z

The Magic Teacup has sent me a swordfish today. I had to do some research since what little I know of swordfish is visual recognition and that they taste superb. Turns out they are tragically gifted creatures. Swordfish don't school; they swim alone. As if being born with built-in swords wasn't cool enough they have a rare organ next to their eyes that keeps their eyes and brains warm. Helps 'em see better and think better in cold seas. Only 22 out of the over 25,000 species of fish have heater organs. They only live to be 9 years old before something else eats them (including humans), so even though they have special warm brains they all die young.

Following up from the weekend, my race in honor of childless women was pretty much a laugh out loud failure. The race went fine but I heard so many "Happy Mother's Day!" wishes from the general population than it wasn't even worth my time to correct anyone. Apparently if you are female, alive, and of a certain age it is automatically assumed that you have procreated. No one else visually identifiable as female would be alive or allowed out in public, right? You may be alive without a uterus but you may not be alive with a wasted uterus. Baffles me. Boobs equal babies in our brains, I guess. I only bothered with one conversation about it this morning:

Poor Random Questioner: Did you have a great Mother's Day with your kids?

Sassy: I don't have kids. (I've told her this before.)

PRQ: Oh, then did you have a great Mother's Day with your mom?

Sassy: She's dead. (I've told her this before too.)

PRQ: Husband's mom? (Common knowledge she died 8 months ago.)

Sassy: Also dead. We went to the cemetery. Hey, did you know today is World Naked Gardening Day? (That's true.) It is also Robert Zemeckis's birthday. He directed Forrest Gump. Ironically, it is also the birthday of a Canadian hockey player named Gump Worsley. (Also true.) So how are you celebrating today? Planting or pucking?

PRQ: I'll talk to you later; I'm not feeling very well this morning.

She was probably feeling my sarcasm burn holes in the ozone layer. I really wasn't trying to be a bitch (not completely); I was trying to illustrate a point. If a middle-aged woman must be assumed a mother on Mother's Day then why isn't an average clothed human being assumed a naked gardener on World Naked Gardening Day? The Gump reference was where it all went to hell; that thought just circled around in the weeds three times and then clumsily laid down somewhere else.

Anyway, all of that is over for another year; moving on. Do all men get the same treatment on Father's Day? Haha, no I mean it this time; moving on.

Swordfish became so quickly overfished during the '90s that they were at one point a threatened species. Too many of them (specifically female) were being harvested before they were big enough to reproduce. Thanks to rigorous conservation efforts, including chefs' and restaurants' refusals to serve it for several years, this is no longer the case and swordfish are considered to have successfully rebounded in numbers in the North Atlantic. Swordfish are not kosher. Swordfish will cannabalize their young under dire conditions though they are not aggressive to humans unless they are being harpooned by humans.

What a swordfish could have been doing in my tea is anyone's guess.

(c) 2012, ACG

Racing For The Unproductive

2012-05-12T10:39:00Z

Well here it is, my 19th half marathon. I realized yesterday that when I hit 20 sometime in the next few months I will have completed 20 half marathons in less than 20 years. Kinda cool when you say it like that. Hell, it's kinda cool anyway! This is my favorite distance. Long enough to demand that you take it seriously but short enough that you aren't hobbled for a month afterward. No--in case you are wondering--running a half marathon does not mean that running a full marathon is easy even if this distance comes easily to you. The difference between 13 miles and 26 miles is not simply 13 miles. The last six of the full marathon is a world apart from the first 20 and not even the best training prepares you for that world. But that will come this fall; right now I can just enjoy the 13 and the awesomeness of my friend Jesse.

I like it that it takes place on Mother's Day because I appreciate having something else to think about on Mother's Day.  If you are motherless on Mother's Day the world cries with you. If you are childless by biological circumstance on Mother's Day the world cries with you. If you are temporarily childless on Mother's Day the world eagerly waits with you. If marriage has given you legal stepchildren on Mother's Day the world tolerantly grants you a pass. If you are childless by choice on Mother's Day the world has no use for you.

In my 20s the response to being childless was Oh there is still plenty of time.

In my 30s the response was You'll change your mind; you'll see. Just don't wait too long.

Now that I'm 40 the response is Oh what happened? You couldn't have any?

At no time in my life has my choice not to have children ever been acceptable. As you can see it was always dismissed; first as immature, then as amusingly hesitant, and finally as the assumed result of dysfunction. At no time was it ever just okay for that to be my choice. There is always a comeback that elevates the choice to be a mother as superior and correct and the choice not to be one as inferior and defective. You know that heifer over on the Discovery Channel that has given birth to 22 children? Even she's more acceptable than me from the mommy perspective of what is healthy and natural. Having too many babies is still better than having no babies at all.

After 20 years of defending my choice to mothers I have to say that the women who were dismissive or even openly critical and disapproving were preferable to the women who tried to change my mind by layering on the knowledge of all that I was missing and throwing away. The bitchy mommies said their pieces, slapped me with some labels and/or diagnoses and left me alone to gossip among themselves. The pitying mommies were much worse--from them I got baby evangelism campaigns that resulted in the shameful acknowledgement that if I didn't want all these precious joyful maternal things then there was something wrong with me. The sucker punch of pity was of course that a baby would fix what was wrong with me if I would just ante up an ovary and do it--but alas, now I'll just never know (sob!). Ugh. Yeah, yeah I know I'll never know what it feels like and now it's likely too late yada yada yada. Making peace with a choice means not obsessing over the consequences, you know.

So as Mother's Day passes its shadow over my unproductive uterus for the 40th time I dedicate this half marathon to all the other Childless By Choice sisters out there also carrying the burden of not being a mother in a mother's world.  Here's to you, ladies--to us--and to the one minority group that will never, ever achieve social equality.  It's harder to swim against the current, so tomorrow I run for those of us who made the choice no one else can understand. Hip! Hip!

(c) 2012, ACG

Fondling Flawlessness

2012-05-09T11:58:42Z

Here's a new doodle for the middle of your week. I did two versions this time so that I could share them in a variety of mediums--one with the television in the background and one without a television but a tad more texture.

Yep, we can add flawless to list of my social scandals. So should you. There is nothing wrong with your body either. When you hide your realities you teach your body shame according to a standard that someone else established. Aren't you too smart to keep paying money for a standard that airbrushes kneecaps? Kneecaps--I saw this with my own eyes; we are now supposed to hate our joints too? Enough already. The defense of this kneecap alteration was that it was in keeping with industry standards. Holy shit; we are funding an entire industry that can't tolerate kneecaps? We willingly adopt this standard of "beauty" and then hate ourselves for never living up to it and even pay money to keep this standard a thriving constant oppression. This is emotionally insane. An industry like that is not designed to make you beautiful; it's designed to brainwash you into continuing to pay. Keep your money and let your body live within its own truth.

That's right, bucko. I ain't hiding diddly anymore and I refuse to call them flaws anymore. These are my realities. You will face them. I will not be ashamed.

(c) 2012, ACG

(c) 2009-2012 ACG All rights reserved.

Big World in May

2012-05-09T02:27:10Z

The self-portrait project continues into May with a new theme--Big World, Tiny You. The idea this month is to get ourselves into a bigger frame from a distance.

Week One: Climbing the hill to the one lane lane with canopied trees.

Week Two: Making myself small in a very big room.

Week Three: Running down the one lane lane with the canopied trees.

Week Four: Pale and small by the big yellow wall.

Fondling Where We Meet

2012-05-07T16:24:59Z

Bella's request for an image of a meeting place was especially tough for me this week.

I don't have any standing appointments with friends or family. We don't really have a regular meeting place. Me and AppleJack out on on the back deck? The sofa? Just the two of us at the kitchen table? Although we do have a weekly routine it doesn't include the typical family unit and my friends and I mostly meet to sweat together. I was fairly stumped on this one. The dirty floor in the gym where we roll out our yoga mats just isn't an inspiring image.

The family doesn't do reunions or Sunday dinners or birthday parties or any of that. We just aren't normal in that respect. We make plans on the fly or week to week at best. If I meet my friends for something it is usually a spontaneous event or a randomly planned activity--nothing usually twice in the same place. Our races are spread out all across the state so even when we do meet with regularity we are always meeting in a different city each time. So what to do?

I had to interpret Bella's last line a little more loosely. The one place we always meet whenever we get together is the start line. Sometimes we take road trips out of state to meet there and sometimes we come together from all corners of the state to meet there but wherever the starting line may be drawn, that's the one place we all show up together at the same time. We may cross the finish line individually but we all start together no matter the locale.

So here is the place we meet. On this particular day it happened to be in Hot Springs. Next weekend it will be in Little Rock. The next time it might be Batesville or Dallas or New Orleans but wherever that line is drawn we all stand on it together. You might think that this isn't a place for quiet celebrations or gathering with kindreds and loved ones as Bella suggested but after you've been doing it with the same group of people as long as I have it absolutely is. They are my kindreds and many of them are loved ones. As we log all those miles together we share much more than just the distance; we share our lives the same as others do in coffee shops and book clubs and family picnics. I don't stand with them anymore to compete against them; I gather together to compete with them. Christopher McDougall, author of Born To Run, said it this way:

“The reason we race isn't so much to beat each other,... but to be with each other.”

(c) 2012, ACG

Fondling The Catholic Method

2012-05-04T21:28:52Z

Another sassy week draws to a quiet close. Nothing particularly adventurous is planned for this weekend; a ten mile run, some bamboo maintenance, a trip to the library, things like that. That doesn't mean that there won't be adventure, of course. There may be plenty of merriment with the supermoon cresting and the Run For The Cheese family tradition taking place tomorrow. There will be fish tacos and margaritas at The Jesus Crack House as well. At the moment there seems to be a curious influx of door-to-door evangelists canvassing my neighborhood. Church vans drive up to the central stop sign and at least fourteen couples disembark and spread out on foot with Bibles and pamphlets. Then later the van comes back to collect them. Every sect but the Catholics comes calling. The Catholics just ring their big-ass bell three times a day every day. I love those Catholics.

When we first moved to the neighborhood the bell was silent. Then one day the bell just started ringing with no explanation and hasn't stopped since. Let me point out that this bell is really close; as in right across the street--a single lane street! Let me also point out that this bell is really loud; as in makes the dog sproing a foot into the air. At first we cursed it because it startled us or woke us, especially on the weekends. We couldn't understand why the bell rang; it didn't seem to be a call to chapel because it never rang immediately before or after services. Every day it rang even when there were no services! What the hell? Why was it necessary to wake us up early on Saturday morning? Was that supposed to make us want to attend mass 12 hours later? It rang when there was no school. It rang on holidays. A few times it even malfunctioned (we assumed) and started ringing nonstop at 11 pm and 4 am. Then it would ring for ten minutes straight at random. We still don't understand what was going on. Maybe they were calibrating it or whatever you do with big-ass bells.

But our irritation was short-lived. We got used to the bell just like we got used to the noise from the interstate, the neighbors' new puppy, and half the county's birds roosting in our bamboo. It doesn't bother us at all now, not even when we are sitting beneath its shadow relaxing by the fountain and get blasted by surprise. DOooooNG! DOoooooNG! DOoooooNG! Then it speeds up--DONGDONGDONGDONGDONGDONGDONG, etc! Now when we hear it three times a day it marks the events of our day and marks time: 7 am, noon, 6 pm. When daylight savings time changes, 6 am, 11 am, 5 pm. We've gotten so used to it that sometimes we nearly sleep through it. The dog just turns his head and looks, then goes back to sleep.

I rather like the bell now. It has become one of the sounds of home. I miss it when we are away. The blessed Catholics can ring away. They don't come knocking on my door or approach me on the street or stop to yell at me through the fence when I'm in the backyard. No personal questions, no confrontations, and no unwanted propaganda about where I will spend eternity forced upon me. The last one actually read "Are you good enough to go to Heaven?" No joke. What a shitty opener! Victory Baptists. Not the Catholics though; they just ring their bell. We know they are there. We know they are open. We know where to go if/when we are interested. By comparison the Catholic method is downright classy. I admire their use of the very unsubtle bell which very subtly insinuated itself into my daily awareness without calling into question my heavenly worthiness. Nice job. Not pushy. I respect that.

Think about it. I'm not a follower of Christ yet I named my home (in part) after the Catholic folks' aerial Jesus next door and I cheerfully rise and retire at the strike of their bell. While it may not be a soul saved those are results the Victory Baptists are never going get with their invasive visits and shame tactics. For all the crap they take from Protestants at least the Catholics managed to penetrate my forcefield of auto-rejection and earn an honorable mention. That ain't bad. Don't go mistaking this for an endorsement, mind you, but I must admit they worked some magic with that big-ass bell and I do enjoy a good magic trick.

(c) 2012, ACG

Poetry Friday--By Tilth and Grange

2012-05-04T09:54:00Z

It's Poetry Friday once again and this time I'm sharing one of the classics with you. I really don't like much classical poetry. I'm not going to lie. Occasionally I will stumble upon a classic that gets my attention but mostly I ignore it. Classic movies and novels get a big Hell Yes. Classical music gets a polite nod. Classical poetry? Ignored. Yawn. Never been very appealing to me.

Well then there was that anniversary weekend in the Alfred Lord Tennyson Suite at the little cottage in the mountains. Remember? All those Victorian roses? The outdoor shower built into the side of the cliff? The green toilet that got stopped up? You remember. I picked up a book of Tennyson's poems while I was waiting for breakfast that morning and felt my hair grow a full inch in delight over the ballet of his language. I tell you, I fairly swooned. It didn't make me run out and embrace the whole of classical poetry but it did bowl me over just enough to download some more Tennyson to my phone's Kindle app. Months later I finally got around to reading some of that massive download and immediately had to go trim all my fingernails and toenails after the second shock of delight to my system.

Let me show you why this Language Art lights me up so much. I'll set the stage for you and then share with you just a few lines that made me break out into a sweat last Saturday morning while I waited for the coffee to brew. Ask AppleJack--I squealed. I copied some of it down longhand. I typed some of it out and sent it via Facebook to my cousin in another state. I can't keep silent about it; it's just too beautiful and well...sassy!

Okay, there's a prince. He is betrothed to a princess in another country through an arranged marriage. The fathers (kings of these respective countries) made a contract for the marriage while the kiddos were still children (8 years old). The prince knows he is betrothed to this princess and wears a locket with her picture and a lock of her hair within it. Other than that he has had no contact with her. When they each reach the age of marriage and it is time for the princess to leave her kingdom the prince and his father send ambassadors to fetch her with a buttload of gifts--furs, jewels, etc. The ambassadors came back without her. They brought back an elaborate tapestry that the princess had woven as sort of a consolation gift and a letter from the king. He was very sorry. The princess would not marry.

The prince's father flies into a rage and calls an emergency meeting of his war council. He destroys the tapestry sent by the princess and throws a huge temper tantrum, vowing to send armies (100,000 men!) to avenge this broken contract and insult. As the king is gathering his captains the prince speaks up and asks his father to let him journey to the kingdom and speak to his bride face to face before they do anything rash like start a war. The prince's buddies are there and agree to accompany the prince. One guy has a sister in the other king's court who can probably provide some insight into the situation if he can go visit and press her for information. So the three of them--the prince and his two buddies--ask the king let them go on an intelligence gathering mission.

The king agrees to let the prince's buddies go but forbids the prince to accompany them. He flat refuses. So the prince goes for a walk in the woods to contemplate the situation. He takes out his locket and looks at his bride's picture and wonders why she has broken their agreement. He studies her face. Then this:

A wind arose and rushed upon the South,
And shook the songs, the whispers, and the shrieks
Of the wild woods together; and a Voice
Went with it, 'Follow, follow, thou shalt win."

Oh! OH! Oooohhhh...yeah. This is why I love poetry. That tingle of delight feels like fresh lemon juice on a soul weary of banal modern language and overworked slang. I can't listen anymore to every single thing described as amazing, awesome, or unbelievable. Even worse is describing them as like amazing, like awesome, or like unbelievable. All of my favorite bloggers are turning trendy and using the word Fuck in every paragraph these days while there is language like this going unnoticed and unappreciated! Read it out loud. Read it out loud again! It's almost painfully beautiful to me. But wait! There's more!

So the prince listens to the voice of the wild woods and decides he is going to disobey his father and travel with his buddies to the neighboring kingdom. They will sneak out of the castle late that night. But how does Tennyson have them sneaking? Oh! OH! This is how they sneak out:

...I stole from the court
With Cyril and with Florian, unperceived,
Cat-footed through the town and half in dread
To hear my father's clamour at our backs
With Ho! from some bay-window shake the night;

But all was quiet from the bastioned walls
Like threaded spiders, one by one, we dropt,
And flying reached the frontier, then we crost
To a livelier land; and so by tilth and grange,
And vines, and blowing bosks of wilderness,
We gained the mother city thick with towers,
And in the imperial palace found the king.

Oh my readers! I snuck out of my father's house at night many, many times as a teenager. Oh yes I know the dread of hoping you won't hear Ho! behind you as you clear the edge of the neighborhood. I have no idea what tilth and grange might be but I can truly imagine the blowing bosks of wilderness. This language reaches me deep inside where classical poetry just doesn't go--or didn't until now. This is brilliant to me; gorgeous and sexy. I quivered and wiggled on the sofa next to AppleJack as I read these lines on my phone's illuminated screen and then had to read them aloud to savor them and fill the air with their music.

So the prince and his buddies find the king, who wines them and dines them for three days. He's a withered old man but Tennyson doesn't just say withered, he says:

His name was Gama; cracked and small his voice,
But bland the smile that like a a wrinkling wind
On glassy water drove his cheek in lines;
A little dry old man, without a star,
Not like a king...

So on the fourth day of the king's hospitality the prince finally asks him why his daughter won't marry. The old king is regretful and tells the prince that he wishes with all his heart that the recent turn of events were not spoiling all their plans. He wants the prince to have his bride but tells a tale of woe. Some widows (Lady Psyche and Lady Blanche) had recently visited the palace during a festival and filled the head of the princess with ideas of equality and higher thinking. They sermonized on knowledge versus antiquated traditions. For days and days the widows counseled the princess until she was thoroughly depressed. She took to writing as an outlet and wrote awful odes of losing her childhood to become a woman and as such a woman becomes a slave.

The princess becomes so depressed that she begs her father to let her take a little vacation to a cottage at the edge of their kingdom. Her father allows her to go out of compassion for his suffering daughter not knowing that once she is away she will create a sort of college for unmarried women and banish men from the premises. These women form a sort of commune for themselves to study and live and no men are allowed, not even the princess's brothers who adore her. The princess remains there when the call to marry comes and of course, politely refuses. The king delivers this information to the prince in hopelessness, telling the prince that his chances of reclaiming his bride at this point are very remote. The king offers to write to her and plead the prince's case but as Tennyson puts it:

And yet, to speak the truth, I rate your chance
Almost at naked nothing.

This new challenge only spurs on the prince, who takes the king's letters (along with his blessing to travel with protection in this foreign kingdom) and his buddies with him to find his bride. It gets very exciting after this and oh so poetic but if you want to find out what happens you will need more than the space of this blog to read it! The title is The Princess and I was able to download it for free, which is like unbelievable but completely true. (That was a joke.) Obviously this discovery opened my eyes to beauty I did not know was hiding in the annals of classical poetry. I hope you'll give it a try. This is my contribution to Poetry Friday this week; a highlight feature. Please join in with your own poetry or highlight feature of your own. Here are the particulars for joining in. Meet me back here for more poetry next week!

Everything except Tennyson's lines are (c) 2012, ACG

(c) 2009-2012 ACG All rights reserved.

Fondling The Field Trip

2012-05-01T15:28:29Z

My karma walk last Saturday was steeped in vintage delight. The little shop I told you about has restored and installed an old-fashioned ice cream and soda fountain that serves local and organic ice cream. This is in addition to being an eco-lifestyle boutique featuring local artisans and natural products. I went in to buy some hair barrettes made from recycled upholstery (mini crowns, if you're Sassy). I found the fountain attracting half the neighborhood and had to see what all the fuss was about! Notice the vintage green glass bottles storing flavors instead of the typical hideous plastic pump bottles. Also notice the chalkboard signs made from old serving trays and picture frames.

The Green Corner Store, 15th & Main, Little Rock.

Super high ceilings and floor-to-ceiling windows flood the store with natural light to keep energy costs low. Another chalkboard sign made from an old mirror. Original transom windows that still work to release heat in the summer.

I took a seat at the old marble counter to order a treat. When I bellied up to give the soda jerk my order I encountered this proud pretty plate anchoring a seam in the antique stone. What a treasure made in the City of Brotherly Love now bringing the neighborhood together in The Natural State.

I chose fresh mint chip in a waffle cone made right on site. The ice cream was made just down the street and flavored with organic mint grown right outside the front door in the garden. No preservatives necessary when it only travels a few blocks! When you order it "For Here" you get the glass and spoon presentation. Loblolly Creamery, Little Rock.

Across the river in North Little Rock sits the classic corner drug store still in operation as the oldest continuously open pharmacy west of the Mississippi. The trolley still stops here--notice the cables attached to the top of the building. Also notice the original lampposts and the sign that has not been replaced with one of those garish LED upgrades. Argenta Drug Co., 3rd & Main, North Little Rock.

The 4-1-1. The trolley traverses the Arkansas River to serve the cities of Little Rock and North Little Rock, officially called the River Rail System. Yes, you really can ride a trolley across the river! Wooden benches inside the streetcars. Operators still narrate the points of interest like tour guides. Children and seniors ride for fifty cents. Lines are open until 10 pm during the week and midnight Thurs - Sat for your pub-going pleasure or baseball convenience.

The Farm Girl is a regular fixture at the Argenta Farmer's Market. She sells nothing that isn't sustainably grown and completely natural. No frills and no overhead. A freezer to the right, a pick up truck behind her, a checkered tablecloth and a money box. She was already out of fresh eggs and chicken when we arrived but she still had plenty of homemade bratwurst. Vendors at the market are strictly limited to independent Arkansas farmers--no retailers, no mega-corporations, and no imitators. If you don't grow it or make it yourself, you can't sell it here. I loved her farm girl look; the real deal making me smile with all her fresh-faced concentration, freckles, and 100% cotton.

Among our regular field trips this has become one of my favorites--now you can see why.

(c) 2012, ACG

Fondling The Seep

2012-05-01T03:23:18Z

Bella seeks an image of light seeping into the dark this week. I have seen such an image in a magic spell. I went across the river and skated on trolley tracks along Main Street. My husband kept pausing to let me catch up. A woman in a white dress played a harp in the street. In just a few moments I would be weeping inside a tent filled with screened doors and paintings of tiny black children wanting to come inside. But before that I would turn to see the building behind me that anchored the trolley lines. Its windows beguiled me. I thought of French playwrights drinking wine on painted wooden floors. A yellow dog brushed by my legs. I smelled wet clay from a potter's wheel I had just passed while trying to catch up. I heard only the last four words of a conversation spoken with an old movie star's accent. The color of the shadows brought to mind impractical underwear coming untucked from overnight train cases. Then, the sun.

(c) 2012, ACG

A Writer's Doodle

2012-04-30T15:45:45Z

A doodle to get the week started. This one has actually been kicking around in my blonde noodle for awhile now but it took me some time to get it sculpted to my liking. It was inspired by a conversation I once had with a lawyer who didn't want to be a lawyer. He wanted to be a writer and own a little boutique-style bookstore so he could spend his days writing and reading and sharing his passion for both with the public. He wouldn't do it though. He felt trapped as a lawyer by the marriage that forced him into law and then subsequently trapped by the divorce that left him dependent upon his law practice for immediate survival.

We would sometimes talk about writing during the first part of my tenure in his office, before things got really bad for him. Because of his legal training (I assumed) he was obsessed with getting his writing scholastically correct and couldn't tolerate writing that didn't conform to the strict rules of style, form and grammar. He dismissed some very popular and successful authors because he found errors in their technique. He found the deliberate misuse of language and rule for artistic effect to be lazy and irresponsible. It must right at all costs. It must be perfect. This stance is also what kept him from publishing or sharing his own work. He couldn't/wouldn't produce it for consideration until he was satisfied that it was completely perfect.  His work couldn't even go to an editor because he was simply never finished revising it. If he couldn't submit it in confidence that it was truly ready then he couldn't submit it at all.

It baffled him that I could write something in a day and then hit "Send" and put it out into the universe imperfect and sometimes intentionally not conforming to guidelines of good writing as dictated by literary scholars. It was something he claimed he could never do. I often tried to explain to him that my desire was to write like an artist and not like a writer but he felt that compromising the rules of writing was abusive to the craft. I argued that I wrote for the joy and fulfillment of writing and not to hone a craft but he couldn't fathom how I could be fulfilled with work that wasn't precise. There was a method! I wasn't following the method! He denied that this point of view was due to being a lawyer. He felt it was because he was something of a frustrated college professor. I think it was a little of both.

I made a critical professional error when I allowed him to read one of my stories as an example of how imperfect work could still make me deliriously happy. Although he didn't say unkind things I think it was impossible for him to regard me as anything other than a hack after that; not because I wasn't talented but because he felt I didn't care enough about being literally good and correct. This made me derelict in a general sense.  I argued that it wasn't that I didn't care; it was simply that I wrote as an outlet and not a professional endeavor. I should have known better than to expose work that I knew he couldn't respect. At the time I trusted that our conversations about writing were not a reflection upon my legal work for him. I see now that it was a mistake.  I am not sure he could help it--his standards were so high that anyone who worked with him was automatically demoted in esteem if their standards were not so high.

Of course he lost confidence in my legal work after that and I grew so bored with nothing to do that I eventually resigned. In hindsight I wonder if I subconsciously ruined my working relationship with him because I wanted out of the legal world so badly. (This was not because I hated law but because I needed a more flexible environment in which to grow creatively.) Why else would I risk showing admittedly substandard writing to someone who criticized award-winning novelists? At the time I thought I was making an important distinction--trying to enlighten him and show him another point of view. Now I wonder if I was subconsciously setting up the first turn in my journey toward a venue in which I could function within that alternative perspective I felt was so important. His chief complaint about me past that point was that I didn't seem to care; I was detached and indifferent. I probably sabotaged myself by showing him writing guaranteed to prompt that opinion. I didn't care about what he thought was important and he couldn't separate my overall ethics from my maverick writing. I probably also proved him right by resigning rather than conforming.

I don't regret it.  In the end it was best that we couldn't agree. I don't feel trapped professionally, nor to do I feel crippled as an artist. He got to be right and I got to be free. I write almost every day now and more importantly I feel joy almost every day now and that helped me make a better professional choice for myself too. Doing it "wrong" worked out brilliantly for me. So no, I doubt I'll ever try to write like a writer. I doubt I'll ever care.

(c) 2012, ACG

(c) 2012, ACG

The Blessing Of Fallen Plans

2012-04-27T22:01:58Z

This is my art for today--Stained Glass Candle. In reality, the candle is off-white and the glass jar in which it resides is clear. It is one of those vanilla smell-um candles I light when the potpourri stink of cafeteria food, bleach, and rubber gloves gets to be too much on a productive Friday afternoon. I used the digital magic skills I've been acquiring lo these many months to color the glass by staining the light given off by the candle, turning the utilitarian clear jar into a an ethereal emerald/sapphire sconce!

Can you believe I'm not racing again this weekend? I know, I know. Two in a row! I deliberately didn't plan a race this weekend because AppleJack and I were supposed to be teaching a cooking class at my favorite little green organic hippie store. The Chef was going to present a lecture on cast iron cooking and I was going to wrap it up with cast iron care and cleaning and how to make it last for generations. Unfortunately only one person signed up for the course so our host very wisely suggested moving it to the fall or winter. So we get a free weekend after all! We are still going to visit the shop though; that's one of my favorite field trips. We will hit the farmer's market and do the unstructured time thing again. Sometimes it's nice when plans fall through!

This cooking class idea started last fall when we competed in the Cornbread Festival. After we got our cornbread all set up we noticed that all the other contestants brought decorations for their booths. Being newbies we didn't bring anything! Before the judging began I ran a block over to the store and made a deal with the owner to borrow her cast iron collection for the table and in exchange give her some free advertising at our booth. She agreed and thankfully we didn't look so much like rookies by the time we got the table adorned with all her old-fashioned crockery and some of my Starter Stones. When the festival was over we walked back to the store to return the cast iron. I gave the owner one of my Starter Stones as a thank you gift. As we talked she learned that AppleJack was a chef and presented the idea for a cast iron cooking class. We will revive the plan again in the fall.

In the meantime we are so enjoying the friendship and partnership that was born of my panicked request to decorate our dowdy little cornbread booth. The store will host a Meet and Greet for AppleJack's personal chef service next month--the perfect venue! We both care so much about sustainable community living and naturally grown vs. engineered food that it's like a dream come true having this place as a resource! I deliberately gave up going to an art fair last weekend because I knew I would be in her store this weekend and this is one of the places I am most proud to patronize. I hope my readers will consider investing in their own communities this way--with independent local businesses that value homegrown resources. It is so rewarding, I promise you.

So I'm off to get the weekend started. I hope yours is terrific. Thank you again for spending your time here!

(c) 2012, ACG

(c) 2009-2012 ACG All rights reserved.