Organizing a community

Today, making the ten minute trip north from our place to the monthly Community Task Force meeting in Lacoochee, I loved the slightly rolling land, now brown and sere from recent freezes with an occasional blooming fruit tree here and there.
Turning off the main road, I can imagine that I have somehow found myself in the outskirts of Belize City, that place even the guide books tell you to avoid. Crossing the railroad tracks, the town looks particularly grim. It is just beginning to rain and everything I pass seems dispirited. There are clumps of trash plastered along the road, a few young men with extremely low riding pants lounging under the trees, a few rangy dogs, and some left over evidence of meager life lived here.
I turn in to the school compound, a cheerful beacon, and go into the office to get my visitor badge and have some cheerful chat with Annette who runs the front desk.
I have come to love these meetings. For so many years of my efficient life I have run meetings, and all issues are quickly addressed, no running over the margins.
This is a whole different deal. We begin by serving ourselves from a big pot of soup. (If you're vegetarian, ladle it off the top and if you want the chicken, dig to the bottom.) Everyone takes a place at the tables in the multipurpose room: the officer friendly from the Sheriff's department who runs the Boy Scouts, the earnest man who runs the Boys and Girls Club, the enthusiastic woman from United Way, whose mission is to get funds for Lacoochee, the retirees who run a food pantry from a local generic church. I see that the long-winded guy who runs the neighborhood watch program is absent today. The school/community liason person is there. I love Andrea, so devoted to the cause.
But the big star is Ms. Marler, the principal of the school. Karen Marler is a native of Lacoochee and came back to run this struggling school. Her heart and expertise is in community organizing. "Everything is about the kids," she always says. I used to think, when I was first a volunteer in this school, that something was lacking in the leadership of this school. But I didn't understand where she was coming from.
This day, she is full of her experience in taking a busload of local officials and executives who may be able to invest in this community on a tour of the town. She is lovely in a Dolly Parton sort of way and she has that chewy Florida accent. Talk about a steel magnolia! She seems to have no limit to the time she spends with our group, but she gets everything done, and everyone at the meeting leaves inspired. We have decided to do a community garden, we know where to get grants for the cheerleader costumes, and benches for the football players. Marler listens!
I am humbled by it all. When I think of all the small groups like this who are meeting around our country and who are doing just these things, I am amazed and heartened.
The poster boy in the picture is one of many I have known here at Lacoochee. Most of the kids are Hispanic. He, and all the rest deserve the best!
One of the best things about this day was meeting a young teacher (third grade), Ben Aguilar, tall and handsome and brown like my nephews. He was the brightest and best in Lacoochee when he was a kid. He went on to college and felt called to return and teach there. He runs an after school program in drama for parents and kids. I signed up as a volunteer! How could I not? Stay tuned.

Organizing a community

Big Freeze

The fields are covered with frost. For three nights there has been a hard freeze warning. In all my forty years here there has never been such a happening. All the orchids are dead, the palms have been hard hit, the ferns are toast. I can see that we have lost some citrus trees. I did not plant anything in the vegetable garden that couldn't tolerate frost, and I have dutifully covered the salad beds.
But we smell that acrid smell of bursting cellulose. Maybe this is an opportnity!
My brother and his wife are visiting us from California. They wanted warm and tropical weather, and at the last minute they included sweaters. Little did they know! We have unearthed all the shirts and jackets we have.
Undaunted, we went on a field trip to north Florida, leaving the plants covered and the dog warm with the house sitter. Our destination was Wakulla Springs Lodge where we would spend the night and welcome friends from Tallahassee for dinner.
Wakulla is a fascinating place, a state park. Our family has been there many times, only in the warm weather. We arrived in time to take the famous boat tour up the St. Marks River. It was not much over 40 degrees but the boat went slowly so we were not buffeted by wind. This boat trip is just as interesting as a trip on the Amazon; there is so much natural flora and fauna to see, and in such magnificent numbers. Alligators, deer, hundreds of birds, fish, turtles, wonderful aquatic plants, ancient cypress trees. We loved seeing the anhingas spreading their wings, an eagle soaring overhead, ibis looking for food, coots and moorhens bobbing about on the clear water. We loved seeing many manatees enjoying the warm spring water. Mothers and young came up with their funny snouts next to the boat.
The lodge itself was an adventure. We had engaged the two 'best rooms' that overlooked the spring. The building itself is lovely, the Ball Estate originally. It is now part of the State Park system. As I say, it was an adventure. In the vast lobby there is an ancient alligator in a case, "Old Joe", well varnished, maybe 20 ft. long, maybe fifty years old. Then there is the huge fireplace burning bright and hot. There are a few communities of sofas, some strange aggregations of high backed chairs, a few tables where checkers can be played, a large t.v not playing to anything, and some stacks of tables. The floor is wonderful and cold marble tile with not a suggestion of a softening area rug. When you look up the ceiling is beautiful carved wood, dark and colorful. This is not an intimate place, but it has possibilities.
Our rooms were gigantic, way larger than in any motel or hotel.( and a lot cheaper) My brother read the guest log in his room and found a recent entry that said, "Warning! Warning! There is a mouse in the bathroom! My wife has never packed so fast! This was at least a mouse, or maybe a squirrel with a bald tail!" We all laughed but my sister-in-law said the next morning that she'd heard some scrabbling in the bathroom..
The dinner provided by the lodge was wonderfully awful. We had known not to expect anything gourmet, maybe true southern (and all white) at best. But the main thing was the company which was stellar. Richard, at the far end of the table, and I, had ordered the pecan crusted grouper. Both of us love fish. Heavy brown logs arrived before us, nothing anyone could imagine other than the bubbly buttery nutty sauteed grouper we were expecting. Dismayed at finding that our entrees looked more like a second rate Spanish moss fabric art form than actual food, we soldiered on, and pushed it from side to side on our plates. The others were struggling with strange chicken parts, small game birds, and (Yikes!) liver. My brother had to remove the hard casings from his southern fried chicken and they lay on the edge of his plate, thick exoskeletons.
This morning we awakened to the fact that the power was off. Our car was covered with frost and ice. We left, thinking we'd get breakfast along the way, and could decently leave the lodge and the breakfast of leaden biscuits with gray gravy.
I love these road trip adventures. Not your usual motel. But I do think that in this new era of CHANGE, we might be able to make this special place, Wakulla Springs Lodge, a state park, into a really spectacular destination with at least acceptable food and decent accommodations (no mice).

The Humility of Gardening

There was a light frost on the fields this morning. If you squint a bit, you can almost believe it's snow. By nine a.m. it was all gone. The night before, expecting cold weather, I had placed sheets over the tenderest of the vegetables, and now I needed to remove them so the feeble rays of sun could give them a boost for the next two days of predicted really cold weather. I will put them back on.
I have been so proud of this winter garden, mostly all brassicas- collards, broccoli, and the mustard greens and beets, and two lovely raised salad tables, now bursting with many kinds of lettuces, chard and mizuma. I have put in a row of snow peas because I know they can take the cold better than any plant. The deep hay mulch keeps the weeds at bay, or at least hidden. This hay roll was a gift from my wonderful neighbor, Warren, and hardly a day goes by when I don't put another load on the garden. Tonight I have covered the hardiest vegetables with a thick layer of hay. I wonder if it will keep those babies safe. I have spread a lot of bed sheets over the salad tables and the broccoli plants now covered with florets.
The orchids live next to the pool and I hope they will not freeze. I have covered them with sheets, but they are pretty hardy plants.
I know that when I go out tomorrow morning I will smell that acrid odor of frozen plant cells now bursting. I know that the ferns will have that shiny look of death by cold. The bird bath will be frozen stiff, the milkweed flowers limp. The pastures will be sere and brown and the cows will need more feed. The bird feeders will need filling. The cardinals will relentlessly remind me.
It has been a wonderfully warm winter, after an usual blast of frost in November. The plants had no clue about what to do. Even with the short days of winter, they leapt up in the warm sun. We've been eating our own salad every day and have those collards in every way we can imagine. Broccoli is on the menu several days a week. The deer and armadillos have left the garden alone, the dogs bark off the rabbits, the bugs are waiting for warmer weather, and we have been eating well. My spring seeds have come in the mail and the tomatoes and peppers are sprouting in their plastic pots that live for now indoors on the bench in the inglenook.
But! Now we face some extreme cold weather for the next few nights. Those crazy colored bedsheets over everything will not be enough. I know this. My husband reminded me today that probably we will lose the garden but life will go on.
I have the new seeds ready to plant and those sprouts coming along. I love this aspect of living dangerously embedded in the natural world. It keeps me humble. I cannot count on the weather in winter. (In summer I can always count on the weather being totally hot and humid and full of bugs and mildews and blossom end rot, not to mention malignant flinders.)
The garden keeps my balance. This is a good thing because my head was in danger of being swollen too big this week. My daughter hosted a book signing party for me and my new book, "A Good Day for Uncle Elmo: Stories from a Schoolteacher's Journal". It was a very fun party and so affirming of the work I loved. Got back home, tended the garden, and replied to requests for a couple more book signing events. I'll do them because all the proceeds go to the school I wrote about.
Now, my small grandson is about to arrive to spend four days with his grandparents. I am thinking about French toast and fresh squeezed orange juice for breakfast and then, perhaps a trip to the library and the train museum and maybe make cookies. Let's not forget the hot chocolate on a frosty morning. Candyland is the game of the day and I have rented "The March of the Penguins" we can watch together.
Vegetables and kids growing. My head is getting back to the right size but my heart grows with the bounty of life.

Clothesline

Last year I decided that we should install a clothesline in our yard. I wanted to save electricity and reduce our energy footprint. In Europe, as you can see here in Italy, everyone hangs out their clothes, no matter how small the space is.
But we have loads of space and have always thought we had loads of energy. The clothesline was installed, one of those windmill things, next to the vegetable garden and a short schlep from the washer.
I thought I would hate having to hang out the laundry every day, another chore. But it didn't turn out that way. We start the laundry washing before breakfast, and by the time we are finished eating and cleaning up the kitchen, the laundry is ready to be hung out. This is my best chore: we both love it! We get out there in the first sunny and warm moments of the day. The sand hill cranes are just zooming in with their wild cries and the vegetable garden is so green and verdant and all of life is full of possibilities.
The best thing for me is the artistic arrangement of the clothes to be placed on the line. I love it when we have colorful sheets and towels, maybe a tablecloth or two in brilliant colors. I even love those blue jeans that will flap in the breeze, my black bra, Andy's red underwear and the socks neatly pinned together in pairs. We have our system- socks together, the heavy things towards the sun, the colorful things on the outside to be seen as an artistic gem.
In a few hours, just before lunch, I'll take everything down, folding them from the line into neat stacks, everything smelling sweet from the sun and breeze.
Our parents always dried clothes outdoors. Probably only our mothers did this.

Growing things

Walking out in the woods today I saw so may of these reindeer moss areas. These small light mosses lie on the forest floor to delight the eye. When the day is moist they are soft, but when it is dry they are brittle and you might think they would blow away.
I often take my mini walks to areas close to our house and I am coming to know the territory. I know where the reindeer moss grows, where the cardinals nest, where the tortoises and black racers have buried their eggs, where the turkeys have sex in the morning, and where the cranes dance their loud trumpeting love calls.
But nothing here engages me more than the daily tending to the gardens. Even in winter with the constant possibility of frost, we have an amazing vegetable garden. Daily, I announce to Andy, the cook, that we have collards, broccoli, lettuce and green onions. That's it for now. And that's what we eat every night. Up north they don't even have that!
The winter garden is neat and productive, everything carefully mulched with hay. I have ordered the spring seeds and look forward to those warm weather vegetables, the tomatoes and peppers and beans, squash and eggplants. But for now, I love those verdant greens.
For the last ten days we have been dog sitting my daughter's two dogs. One is a very large and beautiful black and white pointer mix, and the other is a four pound teacup poodle. Our own dog is a small wiener dog. The visiting dogs are totally neurotic and want to follow us everywhere and the tiny poodle has no sense of being house trained and is so bony and icky one wouldn't love to touch her. And she has an incredibly shrill and sharp voice! The visiting dogs are 'door bounders' and bark at everything. We are exhausted with all this. I say to them, "Get a life!" But their life is us. I cannot wait for them to be reclaimed by my daughter. Still, I do love animals, and I like to take the big dog out with me on my forays into the woods and fields. But I cannot wait to be just us, the family of two with one small dog who doesn't bark much (except at armadillos) and has a life that doesn't include following us everywhere.
Dogs or no, this is an incredible place! This evening I saw four deer under the feeder, the sand hill crane couple dancing, a turkey gobbler showing his stuff, gobbling (and still jumping on the female), and so many cardinals at the porch feeder, I can't count them. Venus is the brightest light in the sky and Orion shines bright. This feels perfect.

The Big Fish

I know, I know, this is not a photo worthy of a food article. But I just wanted you all to have a small vision of this lovely eleven pound red snapper (snapper Veracruzana) we had for Christmas dinner. What you don't see is the four men it took to hoist this lovely thing from oven to table.
Years ago, I got the idea for this from my Chilean friend, Nidia. She described the green rice that should accompany it, and the dessert flan. I held this idea through those English dinners of roast beef and Yorkshire pudding and plum pudding and all kinds of other puddings, most with sauces or gravies. Along the way I had become a 'half' vegetarian and ate no red meat. So, this year we went for the red snapper, the Mexican Christmas dinner. We did not have a platter wide enough for the green rice (made with cilantro, spinach and parsley) so it was served on the side. We also had collards and salad from the garden and the sinful chocolate pecan pie that Anne made. That dinner was just the best. All ten of us helped in some way and we loved the event.
Ten of us sat down for dinner. Our ages were from four to seventy. The four year old, my grandson Quincy, was excused early to watch a new video, and the rest of us truly enjoyed the fish and all the fixings and each other and the ideas swirling around the table. The college student who had just returned from some months in Cuba had stories to tell of his experiences, and the scientists among us talked of turtles and other environmental issues.
After dinner everyone pitched in to clean up the kitchen and get that first load into the dishwasher before going to sit on the screen porch with the armadillos rooting in the ferns and the five dogs alert, and continue the conversation.
I love these gatherings of friends and family. It's a good thing that I do because the next night, we had another and different ten guest dinner. This time it was a lot more ad hoc. I made Hoppin' John with the black eye peas and rice and everyone else brought stuff. Again, we had collards. And again, everyone loved them and they were all eaten.
Here's the recipe. You'll love it!
Take about 15 big collard leaves. Cut out the center ribs and roll up the remaining leaves and slice them thin and then cut those slices into small pieces. Leave those on the side. Now, in a large skillet or dutch oven put a medium sized diced onion and a LOT of minced garlic ( about five cloves) with a couple of spoonfuls of olive oil. Fry these until softened and beginning to brown, about two or three minutes. Add the collards gradually, and then about a cup of broth (chicken, or water or vegetarian). Add a little bit of salt now. Bring to a boil, cover, and stirring occasionally, cook for about 25 minutes on low 'til greens are tender. Remove the lid and turn heat to high and stir occasionally while the collards are cooking down. The pan will be almost dry. Take the collards off the heat and stir in some lemon juice, a little bit of olive oil, salt and pepper to taste. Your guests will rave!
Other than food.. So many wonderful friends have been here for the holidays. We have taken many great walks through the woods and fields. Our local sand hill cranes bugle noisily every morning (louder than parrots!), and we hear the deer barking at the edge of the fields. The cardinals devour the seeds in the feeders each day. We are all enjoying the warm weather after some days of frosts. The vegetable garden has been feeding the multitudes, and the orchids, hardy plants they are, are in great bloom. Even the rye grass we sowed under the clothesline looks perky and green.

Happy Christmas

Though it has been in the eighties today, the landscape is sere and brown from previous frosts and freezes. The vegetable garden is lush with broccoli and greens.
This Christmas Eve of this amazing year is to us quite modest. Tonight we packed the traditional stockings that earlier had been laid out on the hearth by four year old Quincy, now soundly asleep after a hearing of 'The Night Before Christmas'. Sox, toothpaste, wood putty, rubber bands, nail polish, a squeaky toy for the dog. No diamond tennis bracelets, no keys to a sports car.
Christmas pulls me back to my early Christian heritage and I love to hear the Nine Lessons and carols beamed from some cathedral or other.
Sixty years ago when I was a small child with an even smaller soprano voice, the midnight mass was a big deal. Those of us in the church choir gathered in the sacristy proudly wearing our freshly starched collars over our scarlet choir robes. Some of us wore our gold crosses we had earned for perfect attendance at choir practice and church services. We were issued our candles, and reminded again by the choir master to heed the important rest in the cantata. We were ready for the processional around the church behind the cross bearer. This was magic to me. The church was dark except for all the candles on the altar and the ones we carried. As we processed to the strains of 'Oh, Come all Ye Faithful', I was amazed to see the packed church this night. I can still smell the candles and the whiff of snow and cold brought in by the churchgoers.
We processed, finally, up the center aisle, by the creche in front of the altar, and took our places in the choir pews.
The mass seemed to take forever as I recall it now. I was thinking that back at my house we had already hung up the stockings, and was Santa already there? We got through the cantata and no one jumped the rest. By the recessional I was so sleepy and glad to jump into my father's arms and be carried home in the snow and put into bed.
I love this legacy from my parents. I grew up and became an agnostic, unable to give my own children and grandchildren any certainty in religious faith. But at Christmas, I shamelessly have all the trappings, mostly secular. I will not be going to any church, but I look up at the bright stars tonight and hope for humankind that we will prevail and care for each other in these hard times.

Masters of the Universe

This morning I drove up to attend the monthly community action committee meeting at Lacoochee School. (Oh, horrors! Community organizing!). As I went along Cummer Road towards the school I noticed the many Christmas creches in front of the houses. I slowed down right after the railroad tracks to look at a peeling vivid green block house surrounded with tan beaten earth. A dirt colored pit bull was chained out front, out of range of the creche that was carefully arranged in front and surrounded with hay. Somehow, this Christmas presentation, so tasteful even on the bare ground, so brave and affirmative, brought tears to my eyes.
The meeting of folks dedicated to helping this small rural community and school reported on their progress in establishing a boy scout troop, a football program, how the Girls and Boys club had a Christmas party the night before. The food pantry needs, needs, needs. A group of volunteers opens a daily office to help people get their food stamps and sign up for unemployment.
The school principal, a woman whose real talent is community organizing, affirmed all the participants. A tour de force, she has her heart and mind firmly set on what will be best for those 600 kids in her Title One school where over 95% of them are on free lunch and breakfast.
We volunters do what we can, and it is never enough. Here are kids who have never even been to Tampa! Some of them are always hungry and they don't even have the basic necessities. On the principal's wish list are sweat suits from Walmart so the kids can be warm!
After the meeting we were served a fine lunch with many many pecan pies. I took my plate and sat down with "Miss Lily", a huge black grandmother. She's huge in the community and is the mother, grandmother and foster mother of many. She's a person one listens to. I just loved her stories and I hated to leave.
Back home, I stretched out on the porch couch with the dog to read the New York Times. On the front page was an article by Louise Story about the compensation of the Wall Street wizards, the masters of the universe. We have known about these excesses for a few weeks but in today's story it was so detailed and spread out in front of me I leapt up in outrage!
I want to know a few things about this greed. Did these people grow up with no values, i.e. knowing right from wrong? Were these people so entitled from day one they didn't have to think about anyone but themselves? Did they go to Brearley or Choate or any of the other super expensive schools and then to an Ivy college and think they could just continue being oblivious to general human kindness and consideration? Did they think that having corporate jets and personal yachts and multiple homes and expensive cosmetic surgery and Patek watches was o.k.? Did they ever think of the concerns of such places as Lacoochee? ( One tennis bracelet would fund a field trip for ninety kids) No, they were concerned with the silliness of having the correct $500 stroller for their child, and to make a small bow to the vast unwashed, they spent a few of their many millions at charity balls.
There are a few vastly rich people who have made incredible difference in our society. Bill Gates and Warren Buffet come to mind, and there are others. But still, one wonders how many hundreds of thousands of others were the backs on which these titans walked.
I think it is going to take a long time for our society to correct itself. I still do see many Americans, like the folks in Lacoochee, who truly do know how to do the right thing. Maybe our models will have to come from the bottom up. Certainly, our models have not come from the financiers. We will all have to speak out when we see that the emporer has no clothes. We really knew that many people could not afford those mini mansions and we really knew that those New York people were fakes. But we chose not to see.
I remember one time that my husband's boss said in an economics discussion, "Everyone wants to be comfortble." Yes, sure. The thing is, though, we have to make a society where everyone can be comfortable, have a home, food, work.
I'd like to have these masters of the universe, those failed Wall Street financiers, these cynical multimillionaires have to spend some time living among the homeless under the bridges of America.
We are all responsible and we can't escape that. We can blame it on Bush, but we let this disaster happen because we were all too comfortable. I can't wait for Obama!

Pundit Fatigue

We saw the movie "Australia" today. The first two thirds of it was a predictable and lovely western and the last third was suddenly about WW Two. Such handsome actors, and you never thought for a minute that everything would not turn out o.k., and as a bonus you laughed and cried and loved the scenery and that wonderful kid. We were there for three hours and out of our normal time. As we drove home we said to each other that we needed more time away from these everyday concerns. We should take a vacation where there were no newspapers or NPR or TV. We need a rest from the news articles, and especially we need a break from the pundits who constantly explain and opine. But we are addicted.
There is a full moon tonight and as the moon was rising huge and yellow, four deer were cavorting on the edge of the woods. I think anxiously about the state of our American society. Are we heading toward the bottom of everything? Who are you out there on Face Book? I know you do not even know what an incredible mind Thomas Friedman has, or track any of the other commentators who think seriously about the American predicament. You only look at short comments on the "wall", or communicate in short text and twitter messages.
Be aware. The world is changing. It will not go back to the old times when it was necessary or automatic to be frugal. And this recession will change us.
You young people have an interesting time ahead of you. Materialism seems to be doomed for now and it won't come back as we have known it for a long time. Talk to each other, slide ideas past each other and don't be afraid to take the high road of doing the right thing, whatever it seems to be at the time. Be not afraid to think seriously about our hard problems. I am not so sure that our economic crisis will have the happy ending that "Australia" did. We could all be shot in the back. We've got to be serious, and serious does not come in tiny Face Book wall items and Fox News bites.

Christmas House Tour

My new friend, Chris, invited me to accompany her on a tour of houses decorated for Christmas in her upscale gated community near here. I leaped at the chance, being the nosy person I am. I have driven by this development thousands of times as I make the commute from our ranch into St. Petersburg. It's a golfing community but I never breached the gates since I do not golf.
I met Chris in a quilting class in our little town. She was clearly the most accomplished quilter and artist in our midst. One day we decided to have lunch together in a little shop next door. She was an Obama supporter, a rare bird in this place. She's lovely, thoughtful, community minded.
So I was glad to be invited on the Christmas house tour.
I arrived at the Club House, after signing myself in at the entrance to be official. Chris was waiting and we began the tour. We were to go to six places and it seemed they were identical. There were several models of houses (the Tradewinds, the Naples, etc.) While we are tooling from place to place I am trying to figure out who Chris is! Clearly, she's not a person who decorates her house with plastic accessories in every nook and cranny. Her house was not on the tour but we went by it (fast).
After seeing these houses I was left with a feeling of sad creepiness. Who are these people who have such perfect homes, recently purchased, that not a stray pubic hair could be found in the entire place? They obviously must ingest food, yet there was not a hint of anything edible or tracks of food on anything.
A theme of the tour was that every couple seemed to have some collection. In one house there were tiny lit up ceramic houses, salt and pepper shakers in another, really dreadful fashion sculptures in another. My favorite was the golf balls with applied glitter, or maybe it was the Christmas tree decorations made from shells with applied stickers. I loved this! I loved talking to these devoted couples who wore complimentary outfits. They were all recent occupants of these amazing houses. They had been police chiefs in Long Island towns, military men (I thought I would have to restrain Chris when she wanted to go on about her brothers in Iraq), CPA's, and whatever. But, now they were proud to live in this incredibly sterile and squeaky clean place, now decorated in overwrought Christmas.
There were some great surprises. One couple had some really nice paintings. Another couple had a really old mother carefully placed on a couch. I talked to her as the tour was taking a spin in yet another opulent bathroom. She looked stunned to be here and told me about her origins in Ireland.
In some strange way, I really connected with these people who are proud of where they have landed. They speak of how much they love their new community and their neighbors. To be retired is scrappy. You've got to figure out what to do with all these empty days. You can play golf. It looked to me like the women had a better grip on their lives. After all they had quickly decorated their homes for the Tour. The men had "offices" in their opulent homes that were maybe reminiscent of the offices they left when they retired. Everything now paper and dust free, maybe purpose-free as well. There were no books anywhere to be found but huge t.v.'s everywhere.
The bathrooms! All the couples were so proud of these,( we dutifully inspected them all), large enough for a square dance, and enough of them to service a posse of women with bladder disfunction.
Who are these people, my fellow Americans? Where are their compost piles?
Anyway, I loved doing this. Fodder for the mind. My new friend, Chris, has a lot of moxie to invite such an eccentric as me to go with her.
My grandson, Diego, has a lovely on line art exhibit. Go to tampabay.com/nie and click next to the XpressPluggedIn logo.
The photo above is my house, no connection to the Christmas house tour. We actually have a Christmas tree, in a pot, so we can plant it later. Not fake, and it has decorations made by a four year old.
I am so blessed, though idiosyncratic and certainly peculiar!

Jay

Thanksgiving, 2008. Here is Jay, my brother-in-law, preparing the turnips for the feast. This is a scene played out all across America on Thanksgiving with everyone in the family and all the friends contributing to a ritual so familiar to everyone. On no holiday is the choice of food so consistent and predictable.
Jay may be doing the predictable with those turnips that were just that day plucked from local Florida soil, but his amazing appearance in our life was anything but. What a lovely and profoundly decent man!
It was a second marriage for both my sister and Jay and in many ways they had been bruised. As we came to know Jay we began to think of him as a true pearl embedded in the layers of our life. We saw what a wonderful match he and my sister have come to be. He soon became the beloved grandpa to Maria's four grandchildren and the beloved Uncle Jay to our youngest grandchild, Quincy. No one can have too many uncles.
Jay, a professor of anthropology, really connects with kids of all ages, as they say at the circus. He can talk like a duck, he's funny, and he really pays attention to kids, something very few adults do. While the meal was being prepared, Jay and Quincy, who's four, sat at the big table and really talked. Kids don't know very many adults who truly want to hear what they have to say. Quincy is on a "penguin unit" these days, and Jay was really interested.
Jay is a little bit odd; he knows that every person he meets has a good story and he's not reticent about ferreting it out. Sometimes he's a little bit oblivious, a trait I can relate to, and then he'll appear on the spot, a gallant knight who knows exactly what's on your mind. He listens so intently and with such empathy your defenses melt and you find yourself feeling a lot lighter somehow.
Jay is just one of those serendipitous happenings in my life. I am so fortunate to know him and I truly believe he and Maria are perfect for each other. You don't pick your in-laws and mostly you make peace with them and put up with their foibles. Once in a blue moon you get a pearl. Jay's one of them.

Too early for winter

It is not the end of November and we are in for yet another night of freeze warnings. I cover the salad beds with old sheets and hope for the best. I leave the collards out to fend for themselves. Frosts and freezes so many nights have taken their toll on our gardens. In all other years we never had cold weather before New Year's. We live on the edge of a major swamp wetland! And it is dry, all the creek beds are overtaken with dog fennel, that first harbinger of micro climate change.
Tomorrow is Thanksgiving and we are having a whole passel of folks, some family and others. We'll have the turkey and the vegetarian alternatives and all the fixings we traditionally serve. We'll dig turnips and pick collards and lettuce for the meal. We'll put the big kitchen table out in the hall to accommodate everyone and the turkey will be browned and lovely.
This year, 2008, has been amazing! Much to be thankful for. People I love are alive and some have passed on to a better place. Children have been born. In our family there have been many milestones: Dan and Inia will be getting married next summer. Inia is well on her way to her doctorate and Dan is making his way with distinction as a science teacher. Elizabeth is in her first year in law school and Quincy,her son, now just four, is in his first year in Montessori. Maria and Jay and I have all published books this year. Andy and I stopped flopping around as retirees and now have some purpose. My niece, Grace, has just been accepted at Evergreen College. Lots of good stuff to be thankful for.
But the Big Thing to be thankful for this year is the election of Barack Obama. We are waiting and eager to see how he will handle this enormously difficult time. Never in my lifetime have I had such hope for the future, and never in my lifetime have I ever experienced the prospect of such a change in circumstances for us all.
Now, it is definitally a winter season. Spring will come as it always does. Meanwhile we can all be thankful for what we have.

Shay Lynne

Shay Lynne, pictured here with her family, is a sturdy eleven month old who was adopted two months ago from China. Their story is an amazing American odyssey.
I first met Jocelyn when she was a parent in my school. Tyler, the oldest boy, is now twelve. Then, he was no more than seven and his brother Ben was a toddler. Jocelyn and Mike, her husband, were the kind of appealing parents a school director loves. Their child was wonderful and interesting and both parents volunteered at school. I was aware that this family wanted another child and that Jocelyn suffered many miscarriages. Then I heard that they were trying to adopt a Chinese child. Everyone at school was most supportive. Tyler grew older and moved on to middle school and Ben came to our school. Still no baby. The difficulties of an international adoption are formidable but Jocelyn and Mike persevered. Jocelyn had attended a wonderful Chinese-American elementary school in San Francisco so she was inclined to include a Chinese child in their family.
It took three years to happen.
Mike is a policeman and Jocelyn is a nurse. When they moved to Florida they bought a house in one of these awful developments such a commute from anything. Everyone was unhappy. "It was toxic," says Jocelyn. They moved to funky Gulfport, put Tyler in SunFlower School, and their life drastically changed for the better. Jocelyn's mom, who still works as a mental health therapist, lives in an attached apartment and she gives a lot of time to help out with the kids.( I am envious of this arrangement in some ways. I would love to have my own grandson on hand more.)
In early September the call finally came. Their baby was ready and Mike and Jocelyn had to go to China to pick her up. They left Tyler and Ben with Mamaw, met up with thirty other parents-to-be, and flew to China. The group was divided into three, and each group proceeded to the place in South China where they would receive their children.
Jocelyn and Mike described this so vividly. They noticed right away how polluted the air was. One could hardly see anything. Barely over jet lag, their group of eleven couples went on a bus to an orphanage in Hunan province. They sat on one side of the room and on the other side were eleven "nannies" with children in their laps. One by one, the families were called to receive their new daughters. Mike said he recognized his child immediately. He had studied the photograph so intensely he caught that tiny little discrepancy in Shay Lynne's eyes. Jocelyn said she couldn't tell.
They picked up their new children and each family was given a packet of the clothes their child wore when left at the orphanage. Then, for the next three weeks, these families lived in a hotel while the visas and other paperwork was completed. They went on bus tours and all around the area. And all the time they had their new babies in tow. For some of them, this was their first child. These families were issued labels they could wear in public so that Chinese could know that these Americans were adoptive parents. Mike and Jocelyn said that so many people were friendly when they saw these.
When it looked like the Chinese adoption would really happen, Jocelyn began to think that she should get ready to breast feed this new baby. So she took the hormones to make her milk flow and began to pump. Her milk came in and she froze a supply. She continued.
By the time she and Mike had their new little girl fresh from the orphanage, they realized that something was very wrong. In fact all these newly adopted baby girls were very sick. They were not urinating at all, except for blood on the diaper.
Jocelyn called her American pediatrician. This was the moment of the emergence of the melamine problem in Chinese formula and milk products and Shay Lynne was certainly affected. Shay Lynne loved the pumped breast milk, and gradually over the next couple of weeks, the bloody urine stopped. When they got back to the U.S. they did all the kidney function tests and Shay Lynne was healing! She is now perfect, plump, dimpled and extremely cute. The doctors think she'll be just fine.
This American family came to visit us today. We walked in the woods and fields, Shay Lynne being passed from person to person. She loved the cows and the leaves. We sat down to a homely dinner of chili, good salad, and home made bread. Shay Lynne really wanted to crawl around the house and pick up specks to mouth. Ben and Tyler wanted to go outside with me with flashlights and look for wildlife. Mike really wanted to go out with us too.
I can see that those boys are going to be very good brothers. This gentle family who came to visit today seems to have the right values.
What a lovely family!

Those McMansions

For the last eight years or so our area in Central Florida seemed to change daily. Those huge developments, all named to memorialize the stuff they wrecked, ( Eagle Trace, Seven Oaks, Panther Run, etc.) crept relentlessly over the hills and wetlands and into our suburban neighborhoods. We objected and went to hearings and signed petitions. We weren't really thinking about the houses, though. We were focused on NIMBY. Yes, occasionally we wondered at who could possibly afford to live in that really huge one with the five car garage, or that other one with massive gables, squinched in close to the next huge house. And we just marveled at how many people could afford them. This was Bubble America when anyone could have anything they wanted. No down payments, put it on the plastic.
We weren't thinking straight. The secret was that hardly anyone really could afford them. I remember when we bought our first house in 1968, a run down row house in downtown Washington, D.C. The price was $17,000. We scraped together the 25% required down payment from a couple of thousand our parents gave us and our savings. We fixed it up mostly with our sweat. Our friends were doing the same. We dug the dead rats out of the walls, steamed off the old wallpaper and became members of the million gallon paint club. And, as we lived there and raised kids, we were very happy with this house of ours. It was affordable, close to work and schools. It didn't have granite counters or even a garage. We had the habit of living within our means, and as we moved on, this didn't change.
Somehow a lot of us got off track thinking we could have everything, no effort required. We gave our children too much in a material sense. We didn't save anything because we couldn't, and besides, there is always the credit card and tomorrow. We didn't show our kids how to save. Everyone wants to have a house, a home.
And now, the chickens have come home to roost. America is in deep housing trouble. Just keeping on bailing out mortgage companies seems to me an avoidance of the real problem. If a family bought a house that was wildly NOT affordable, or maybe just within reach if both spouses worked full tilt and then some, and please, god, don't let me lose my job, how is restructuring their mortgage payments a little bit going to help right now? These people are in a mess! They are dispirited. We are in deep recession and if one of those family members loses her job, she is not going to be inclined to figure out all the governmental paperwork, stand in lines, spend time on hold. Better just to walk away from that insanely wonderful house that is now in need of major maintenance anyway and go live with the in-laws.
But Americans are resilient and 'can do'. What we need is a lot more affordable housing. Imagine converting "Panther Trace" into affordable housing. Lots of it is already built. Those huge garages could be modified for living. Those huge gourmet kitchens could be halved. People could enjoy living in more of a town house situation, close to their neighbors, kind to the land. Architects and builders, the most creative of American artisans, could be put to work and ripples would spread. This affordable housing could be for sale or rent.
We already have a glut of housing stock (but mostly it is in these out-of-control developments). Let's use what we have. A new day is here and we must think creatively!
What do you think?

Little Kids

Here is Quincy at dinner with his grandparents. He loves to visit us, and we are happy that he comes often. He's been doing overnights since he was eighteen months old. Now these visits are easy; he loves knowing the ropes and where everything is. He notices every little change from the time he was last here. He knows where the best blackberry bushes are and where the gopher tortoise burrows are, and wants to harvest the vegetables he personally planted. I explain that the carrots are too small to eat yet but he persists and we pull up some 'tiny baby carrots' that he adds to the lettuce and peppers he carries into the house to Grandpa who will make the salad. Today's salad must include the first oranges from our annual harvest. Quincy is an orange lover and he is pleased that he personally went out and picked the fruit, made juice, and was the major taste tester of orange sections that went into the salad. By the time I get into the kitchen the baby carrots are long gone and the peppers too.
Tonight, in the dark, dishes waiting piled in the sink, Quincy and I went outdoors with our flashlights. Hand in hand, we looked for turtles and spiders. We looked at the gibbous moon and the stars above. "See, Quincy, look up there at that zigzag bunch of stars. That's Casseopia. And see that very bright one. That's Venus, the evening star." He loves his flashlight. Then we go in to take a bath and do all the bedtime routines.
As we lie close together on his bed, after having read his current favorite book, "Oxcart Man", he scrunches his face close to mine and says, "Granma Molly, I'm happy."
This could not have been a more perfect week and I am happy too. Every time I think about it, I am in awe of what America did in voting in Obama. For the first time in many years I am rejoiced and renewed to be American. It's going to be a long haul, and many sacrifices will be required, but I have hope we can do it!
I am so glad this happened in my lifetime! I could not possibly have imagined as a white person how incredible this is! Though I lived and demonstrated through the era of the civil rights movement, I never really really knew. Though I have spent my entire career as a teacher and school administrator agonizing about race issues, I never really knew.
So now we can go forth with hope and confidence in this very gifted new president. We will do everything we can to help him forge a new day for the United States of America. I notice already how many of us are speaking to each other, not being fearful.
Our little kids rely on us and we can be proud and hopeful that this new world order will celebrate their useful, not greedy, lives. It's up to us. Yes, we can do it!

Frost!

This has been the earliest in my memory of such an early frost- in October! We hated getting out of bed with our dog warmer who runs hot at our feet. This morning there was a white glaze over the pastures and steam coming up from the pond. The beans, tomatoes, eggplants and basil are toast. The collards, broccoli, cabbages and lettuce are loving the cool weather. Peppers are peaky looking, but might pull through. I think this blast of cold will color up the oranges before we pick them starting in November.
It's cold in my studio but I need to work on quilting homework for my class in traditional quilting. I still hate it; it makes me think of Legos, and I never liked them. I have been making quilts for many years but they are wild and definitely not traditional. Now I am learning the elements and the cutting and measuring and pressing. At first I was completely lost, but now I can cut and measure like crazy. But it's not me.
I went up to Lacoochee Community School today for the monthly community action committee meeting. By now I know so many of those kids and adults. Way more families are now on Title One Lunch, close to 100%. People are hungry, crime is up, money is scarce, everyone needy. These folks are all Obama supporters, hopeful for change. I signed up to read to kids and help with an afterschool drama project.
As I left off a huge box of fired and glazed clay pieces left over from the summer program I run here, a staff member told me that I could get a grant to use a van for next summer's program. A day like this makes me aware of how many people in this country just keep on doing little things to help out. They feed, teach, drive, do useful things.
I think I will just die if Obama is not elected! I have been canvassing, sending money, anything. I so hate the lies that McCain puts forth to the naive voters. Obama is so amazingly idealistic, American, and intelligently thoughtful.
Folks, vote now!

Silvio's Birthday

Here we are, our family, celebrating a birthday for one of our middle grandchildren. I am aware as I take this photo that our family is now the modern one. Seated around our table of sixteen people we have people of all colors and ages; we have gays and lesbians, single parents, step-parents, adopted people, and lots of different languages. We are firmly family and love these events. Everyone cooks and lends a hand. Dan fired up the grill for steaks and fish. Antonio caught many fish in our pond and everyone ate them with great relish, I made the birthday cake, and Maria made an excellent flan. My son Ben, made the loaves of bread, Andy made the potato salad and Diego, our fifteen year old grandson, moved all the tables together and set everything up so we could eat in unison. Pablo found waterlilies to grace the table. Tory helped all around. We picked greens from our garden for the green salad. We sat down together, replete with food and love.
This is Sylvio's day and I want to make it perfect. He hasn't been here in months and I have missed him so much. After dinner I announce that we must all go outside in the dark and play a raucous game of "Watcher in the Road", a traditional family game that involves running up and down the dirt road, lots of hugging, and 'strategy'! Silvio loves this, and so does Quincy, the youngest grandchild present. After a couple of rounds of this we walk back to the house and look at the stars so brilliant overhead and all of us feel replete with the good food and fun and love for each other. My husband and I hug each other in the dark, so blessed with this family that is nowhere what we ever thought it might be.
Later, I go with Silvio to the guest house where he is staying. He wants me to tell him a ghost story. We hunker down and I begin my yarn only to realize what a little guy he is, and I have to backtrack and say this is only a story, NOT true. But we have a wonderul conversation about how people make up stories. By the time I leave his eyes are closed and he is cosy under his covers.
How I love these grandsons! Pablo, the middle one, looks uncannily like Obama. His oldest brother, Diego, is my favorite because he is the oldest and the first under my heart and everyone knows this. But I am so blessed with them all!
It has been a few days of not being so obsessed with politics so it seems like a vacation.

My new book is out and you can order it online at Orders@xlibris.com. All proceeds will benefit SunFlower School in Gulfport, FL.

Days of Global Warming

We spent much of this last month talking talking and listening to many people - scientists, philanthropists and others who are greatly concerned about global warming and what it means to all of us who live on this planet. I believe that this issue is paramount in our considerations about life here on Mother Earth.
In Vancouver, B.C. we met with more than a thousand people from around the world who are working on this problem. As you can see from the photo, taken from our hotel window, we are an urban and technological people. It was strange to be in such an environment, even for a few days, when we rarely saw the light of day in that convention center in the bowels of the drab earth. It seemed like the future, and we hated it enough to leave a day early to get back to our life in the sunshine with lizards and our food garden and flowers and the frass that is now falling from the caterpillars in the hickory trees. In every session we heard about the dire condition of our natural places. We also heard about many projects going on worldwide to mitigate these.
After the sessions, Andy and I talked our heads off like we were in our twenties. We thought about our own life and how we could keep on smallifying our footprint and making a difference. We spoke of actualizing our desire to put in more solar power and include our neighbors.
Coming home on the plane I sat next to a couple of old women from Venice, Florida who had been to Las Vegas on a few days vacation to gamble and take in the shows. My head was so full of huge issues we must all pay attention to, I couldn't think of a single thing to say to these people who are only concerned with what's fun now.
These are strange times. Like so many, I have been consumed with politics, and my view has changed over time. I still passionately believe that we must have a change in direction, and Obama is the clear choice. But I now understand that people must have something they can 'hang onto'. For most, it is the compelling issue of personal economics and their fears. One issue voting must take a back seat to the issue of having food on the table and a way to put your kids through college. Gay marriage and abortion are small issues by comparison. I am still alarmed to think that a serious candidate, McCain, would be so cynical towards women to have selected Paylin as a serious person for his running mate. I hate to see all the lies and sort-of lies in the t.v. ads. I'll be glad when all this is over and we can get on to what is really important- the state of our planet.

The Emperor's New Clothes (not!)

O.K. I can deal with "Eye Wrack" and "Eye ran". But I cannot deal with more years of "Newcular". We've been there too long. Gov. Palin was just pitiful last night. Certainly, she did have energy, and certainly she is beautiful and buff. But, that said, this woman has no business being a heartbeat away from the presidency. And this is clear to anyone with even one clicking brain cell.
A few columnists and editorials in major newspapers have questioned her preparedness and knowledge, and many have refuted her claims of this fact or that. The thing is, Sarah Palin just doesn't know squat about presidential politics or history or science or anything else. What she does know is that the base of the Republican ticket wants celebrity, emotion, snarkiness, and a lot of references to god stuff and the lowest common denominator of American culture.
As a woman who came up in the seventies, determined that our daughters would have every opportunity, I was deeply offended that she played the "Mom card" so inappropriately. Yeah, we are all soccer moms, or have been. Now, there are even soccer dads! Yeah, we all have been in those shoes. But right now, we need someone who gets the nuances, has done the study, and had the experience. We don't really want or need to have a vice president (or god forbid, a president) whose experience and expertise is so constricted. The emperor has no clothes on. We all need to speak up.
Enough on that. The last couple of days have been glorious- cool to cold in the early mornings and verging on hot in the middle of the day. We Floridians all comment on the wonderful weather. Yesterday I bought myself a new bike, a cool powder blue old lady type cruiser. I am loving it as I pedal along the dirt roads enjoying the sights and sounds of the country. As I swish by in front of the house I see the giant mutant cosmos in full throat, covered with butterflies, and then I pedal on by the cattle pens and around the pond. I can already feel my thighs protesting so I slow to watch the sand hill cranes squabbling in the pasture.
The vegetable garden is producing huge quantities of lettuces and herbs. My small grandson, Quincy, planted a row of beans when he was here over the weekend and I see that they are poking up. The grasshoppers have been eating the chard so I put major effort into screening the chard beds. The cardinals and grosbeaks crab at me for doing this. The hummingbirds have gone back to Mexico as have the chimney swifts. At dawn we hear the migratory whipporwills, in contest with the resident barred owls. The huge golden orb weaver spiders who festoon our porches are almost at the end of their ropes, so to speak. They are plastering their egg sacks to the eaves, in readiness for the spring. These ladies are tired, their webs look disheveled and ragged and they are ready to hang it up come the first really cold spell. We hear the coyotes howling most nights and when we are in bed and close to sleep we hear the small scufflings of nocturnal creatures outside.