Giving and receiving

Here is one of the kids in my enrichment math class. She's nine years old, smart as they come. She has just figured out a new strategy in Hands On Algebra! "I get this! I get this" she says. All these nine kids need more than they can get in their regular classes, so they come to me once a week for an hour. I feel privileged to be there and trusted (this is a public school!) We meet in an empty room that seems to be a storage place for rogue tables and chairs. This is great, we all know this, and everyone hunkers down for the sheer pleasure of  learning algebra. The hour passes like a whiz. These kids are brown and white and black, girls and boys, and they speak Spanish and English. What they have in common is a strong curiosity  and the desire to learn.

Ninety six percent of the kids in this school are on free lunch. On weekends they do not have enough to eat.

 And here am I preparing a holiday gift list for my very own fortunate family! Scratch that, I think. Who needs fancy gifts from Harry and David? Who needs redundant fleece jackets from LLBean? So, this year, I will spend my holiday money on a field trip for one of the classes at this school. Those field trips are furniture for the mind.

I had meant to write about my amazing vegetable garden and send photos of the huge broccoli and collards, the snow peas and carrots, the turnips and lettuce and even tomatoes. Just imagine it. And come next February when our school garden grant comes through, our school community will be in vegetable production mode as well, feeding some of our families.

In this community there are so many generous people. They care with their hearts and energy and pocketbooks. They humble me.

Being Grandma

Quincy, my youngest grandson, has been here for the long weekend. He was delivered here by friends who are staying the weekend in the guest house. He boiled out of their car, talking a mile a minute and was eager to get here and reconnect with the place he has known since infancy. He calls our place his other home, and of course, it is. He went right to his room, shedding shoes, luggage, stuffed animals and the lunch box from school.

Soon we began to hear the familiar sounds of toys being pulled out and assembled in the upstairs playroom. And then he begins to come down periodically to tell us everything on his mind. I wonder what "unit" he'll be in this visit. Six weeks ago his mom decided that Quincy needed to have more childhood and less screens so now there is no t.v., no video games, no smart phones. No problem!

It is a joy to see his active imagination at work. First of all he got out  the horrid train set with hundreds of opaque pieces that we gave him when he was three (and he was way too young for it). Now, the whole set up is easy for him and all that was needed was a fresh battery, easily installed.

With this boy, just turned seven, life is easy. His tether is long and he easily rides his bike a mile and back to the gate and we don't worry. He drives the golf cart all over the place and gives "tour guide" talks along the way. He took one of the guests out to see his museum he has made over the last year in a remote cabin. He explained the exhibits of bones he has found on the property, and even gave her a guest pass so she could touch the bones. What a little bureaucrat!

And so much else in a weekend! He'd written a book and made a board game. Before a dinner for guests he cleaned up the downstairs of the house, prepared cheese hors d'oeurves, and arrranged for a predinner concert in which he starred playing the violin from the stair landing. (He has no clue about the violin. He takes recorder lessons, but he loves the violin we have here.)

All through the day there are all these interesting and fantastic happenings in his mind. And all through the day he dings me with his thoughts and suggestions.

I love this wonderfully interesting and handsome grandson, so worth the effort of having had him here over and over from the time he was a baby and really hard and picking him up hurt our backs and we never slept well and we never had a moment to call our own.

We used to say that 'quality' time bested 'quantity' time. NOT!

As a grandma talking, I think that the quantity of time I have spent with Quincy is stellar. My oldest grandson, Diego, now in college, has also spent many hours here and with me, and again, that quantity time gives us both such a bedrock of love and attention.

My grandchildren on the west coast are wonderful kids and I am so glad their parents continually send us photos, school work pages, drawings. It kind of keeps us connected between trips out to see them. Two of Diego's brothers visit occasionally and we so love their visits. But it is not the same as quantity and frequency. We send stuff to our grandchildren and often we have no idea if they ever receive them. Barking into a void gets old.

In our society we want our kids to go forth and do what they want. So often this means that they will be far away from parents who will be the grandparents of their children. And it's meant to be! So, whoever the nearest grandparents are, they are it.

But, for now, I am so amazingly happy to really know a few of my grandchildren who can be here, and I always want to keep up the potential connections.

I have a feeling that I may see quite a bit of the upcoming twin grandkids!

This is the name of our mobile society. For our far flung grandchildren I rely on their other grandmas and grandpas to

Now he is that quite capable and responsible seven year old person, a joy to me.

I hate football

I met my husband of fifty years at a football game so I shouldn't hate the sport. He was not on the team but was a member of the band. This was a blind date arranged by one of my college friends. Her brother was in the band also. Then, as is the case now, Ivy League colleges did not take football seriously. As I remember, the Harvard band went out on the field at half time and made a formation of a toilet (Flush Brown). Few people really cared who won.
My husband used to watch football games on t.v. and I would make negative comments and leave the scene. (A blood sport!) We never let our kids participate in football because of the injury risk, and as athetic kids they were into soccer, swimming, sailing, cycling and basketball. In my mother's heart I knew absolutely that I did not want to have my intelligent kids' brains battered by football.
But wait! There is so much more negative about football, especially in colleges. To begin, high school kids are courted for their football skills. They are invited to attend colleges to play football, never mind that they cannot cut the mustard academically. They play for the alma mater, everyone cheers them on, they are paid royally and some of them go on to have rich and puny lives. Many of them are forever damaged by having their heads repeatedly traumatized, and more are devastated by unfulfilled expectations. They don't get a good education.
So, college football (Not to mention national football!) is BIG MONEY, the one percent, cynical about our youth.  Let's not go to any college football games. Give money to the anthropology department. Stop subsidizing brain injuries, stop subsidizing the coaches who make more than a million a year and feel free to rape little kids in the shower stall because they know no one will notice.
Time to stand up for the right thing to do!

Mind furniture- and Grief

Many years ago, at least twelve, my business partner and I decided we wanted to travel to parts unknown. And for many years we went somewhere pristine each year. She had lived in Peru as a child and I had recently traveled there as a spose on a business trip. So we had to go.
Our first trip was to a romote part of Costa Rica - and it was so incredible, hot, miles of hiking through the jungle, swimming in rivers.
The next trip was to Peru, Puerto Maldonado, canoeing up the Madre de Dios River to Tambopata. These were not tour guided trips. Just us, adventuring alone, with one guide. We'd look at each other periodically and breathe, "We're here.." So amazing.
Tambopata might have been the most amazing and magical of all our trips. After many hours of navigating the river we came to the dock of the biological station we had come to visit. There was no sound of anything manmade and we walked up the long trail to the lodge carrying our backpacks, totally in love at first sight with the sounds and sights and smells of everything we had wanted to know for our whole lives.
We spent the next ten days or so in a primitive lodge whose beauty cannot be described. Our room was open to the jungle, we had bed nets to protect us from whatevers. We had never been more perfectly happy.
The scientists living there were pleased to show us their projects from the cultivation of certain plants to the incubation of Macaws. We got up at dawn to hear the howler monkeys and go to the clay licks covered with dozens of parrots. We hiked miles in the rain forest and found tarantulas, tapir tracks, huge snakes, monkeys, so many birds. We saw bioluminescents at night in the forest, we saw many bats. Our minds were thick with new knowledge.
Tonight I heard a report on T.V. that as gold has been discovered in that area, much of the forest has been stripped, Puerto Moldonato is now a gold mining town, Tambopata is no more as we once knew it. I wept.
Our children and grandchildren will not know what it is to be in the Amazon Rain Forest, alone, where there is total silence and even an agnostic can find a sort of belief in seeing a harpy eagle on the nest. They'll never have the chance to feel the total darkness in the Amazon forest at night.  Perhaps they'll have to do with a harpy eagle ap on their phone.
I grieve for the lack of natural habitat that is coming from having such an abundance of people (SEVEN BILLION!)

Frugality

We are frugal. Tonight we had a delicous dinner from the leftover chicken and rice we served to friends last night. Vegetables came from our garden and we ate bread we had made yesterday.
This morning with a chill in the air we were energized to examine the front porch for the first time since the heat of the summer. The metal retro chairs and tables we have had for  years looked quite shabby with peeling paint so we hauled them off to the barn to scrape off the old paint and repaint them with a new coat of forest green. I washed all the old cushions and we found a sort of new flag to  replace the old tattered one flying on the porch.
No trip to Ikea was required. After we hose off the spider poop, the porch will be perfect.
In another iteration of prosperity we would have just ordered new porch furniture and cushions.
We are not particularly fashion conscious because we are always doing dirty work on the ranch. I find that our local Walmart has pretty good everyday clothes: soft and lovely White Stag tee shirts for $4.00. (So, why buy LL Bean's tees for $25?) For $4 a pop I can have many colors of tees and refresh them often. Men's jeans and pajamas are the same. Who needs Brooks Brothers for these things? Frugality!
In the name of frugality we repurpose many things. My spouse cut down a dead orange tree yesterday. Most of it was cut up to be wood for our fireplace. The huge leftover stumps will be moved to the doorway garden as sculptural elements.
Our trimmings from cooking vegetables go into the compost. Our old newspapers become mulch for the vegetable garden. Crap from cleaning out closets go to the library or the consignment shops.
I cannot be so pure as those folks who have no waste. But we try to have a light footprint on the land and on the globe, ever mindful that we consume A LOT.
In our own ways, we need to be frugal because our earth depends on it.

House boat trip

If you ever went to sleep away camp do you remember how it was when you got back home? Everything was bigger than you remembered and you kept on singing "It's a Grand Old Flag"? You couldn't stop thinking about how great camp was? That was exactly how it was about our houseboat trip up the Suwanee River in perfect weather, not a cloud in the sky, the stars at night so thick, fish jumping and no sign of human habitation as far as the eye could see. There were six of us, all good friends, but never had we been in such close company for four days and nights. We naturally fell into the roles of ship's captain, cooks, scientists, springs swimmers, scullery helpers.

 All of us were loungers and close observers of the incredible passing scene of pristine cypress, birds and jumping sturgeon.

No one ever voiced it, but somehow we all seemed to breathe a sigh and stop talking about politics and issues. The last crossword puzzle from the NYT was done before the first dinner, and then we had NO MORE NEWS for four days! None of us noticed.

What we noticed was such stuff as a huge migration of the tiniest insects you could imagine, all flying in an incandescent cloud from the river one misty morning. It could have been a once in a year thing like grunions running. But we wouldn't have noticed it in our regular lives. We examined every blooming flower, every huge alligator, every turtle and snake.

And we noticed each other in ways one never does at a dinner party. All of us were in long term marriages and we all have grown kids. But we did not talk much about our children or grandchildren or health.  It was truly a time for us. We cared for each other with cooking great meals, taking care of this funky houseboat, laughing a lot, and remembering people and places and events. We put together an enormous puzzle, and we even played games. We looked at each other really closely and celebrated our wrinkles and fit muscles. And our friendship.

Kind of depressing to return, making the drive from the boat dock, listening to NPR and the same old stuff.

About time!

Here's an opossum I trapped yesterday in the vegetable garden. We'll take him out to the far side of the ranch where he can be with the dozens of others we relocated.

That expression! He's probably thinking  about Hughesnet, our internet provider. Finally, today, an angel came and brought us a new FAST connection and so I am happy tonight. I have called the phone company each week for years, asking them when we could expect a fast DSL connection. "Not tonight, honey." And last week they informed me that yes! we could do it. I really had no hope and today of the appointment the truck arrived on time, and my hopes sprang anew. But wait! Emerging from the truck is an old guy, hardly an angel, pony tail, beard, suspenders across a paunch, slouched under a straw hat. Not your usual computer geek to say the least. My heart sinks.

But, like Santa, he went right to his work, and soon the main house was on line. I was discouraged to find that the DSL did not work in my studio. We needed another line. I took ten deep breaths and called Bill, the computer person. Later, my husband thought of a solution and when I had found a very long telephone cable, he installed it and now everything works in my studio and in the main house.

If you live in the boonies as we do, it is important to have connections to the world. At first we just had dial-up, not much. Then we got the satellite, the best that rural folks can get. It was often so slow, and no chance of downloading anything.

So, now! Off and running, looking at all that stuff that was previously unavailable. I have always said that no connectivity was just the flipside of living in paradise. Dare I think that we can have it all?

The garden appreciated a little rain before the cold front moved in. Broccoli is heading and the greens are there for every meal. I cut some collard leaves for the soup I'll take on our upcoming house boat trip up the Suwanee River on Saturday.

Strength and love to all the occupiers! And today we got autumn. Quilts tonight!

The Demonstrations!

In the last couple of years I have asked any young people who come my way if they are interested in the politics of this nation. I was pretty much disheartened that so many of them seemed passive and uninterested. What they are interested in is celebrities and their own studies. They have told me that, yes, there are few people on their campuses and at work who join groups and advocate for various discreet causes. In individual ways many of them strive to make a difference. They volunteer in difficult places with difficult populations. They work hard in wonderful non-profits as unpaid interns.

I wonder whether these talented and thoughtful young people feel powerless, or feel they have no voice, or even whether this generation of almost-my-grandchildren has been too entitled for too long and believe that somehow everything will come out just fine. What would it take to make them stand up on their hind legs in their own country to make a difference here?

Maybe, just maybe, something has finally happened. Perhaps the tipping point came when so many realized that they had such huge loan burdens and no prospects of making enough to pay them off - or even getting a decent job. And Mom and Dad have lost their jobs.  They look up and see that a few make millions, neither fair nor ethical. It's the economy, of course. There was the model of the Arab Spring. Heady stuff to be in the middle of a huge demonstration with even something worth fighting for. The American Dream.

These demonstrations sweep the country. Many of the demonstrators are not young, not scruffy, just desperate, all colors, all ages.  It's hard to discern exactly what the demands are, and so far no real leaders have emerged as they did in the seventies. Early times. As far as I know there are not huge corporate funds supporting this, as they did the tea party.

I wish them well, I salute their strength, I respect them and I pay close attention. I agree with them and share their dissatisfaction.

We so badly need to have all parts of our population pay attention. These demonstrators fill a political void. After all, it matters what happens! We can't be just a nation of elderly folks wanting to preserve their social security and medicare (though that's important.)  And we can't be stuck endlessly dithering about outworn social issues such as gay marriage and abstinence and flag desecration. We need to pay careful attention to the new cohort of young people who have a huge new agenda and have long since leaped ahead of their parents' generation.

 

Drones

Remember those slumber parties in middle school when you thought of people you could instantly vaporize, no questions asked, no blame assigned?  Just, pouf! They would be gone and that boy who hit on you or the girl who was so popular and beautiful, a thing of envy would be gone from your lives. But we knew it wouldn't really happen and we'd have to deal with these people and so many others in the stretch of our lives. As adults, we came to realize that those persons we might want to vaporize needed to have attention paid.

Drones. These planes (of death) are sent to the Middle East and North Africa by the CIA in a midwestern state by strokes on a computer keyboard. At first, it seems that this is a really good way to run a war: no one is killed except the enemy. Sometimes there is a mistake and a whole village is wiped out, or a whole group of innocent folks who happen to be where the drone strike is happening. The folks at the bunker from where the CIA sends out their minions have no idea of the human fallout. After their day they go home to a MacDonald's take out supper, put the kids to bed and watch the ball game on T.V.

I believe that if war is the thing to do,  real people must be responsible for the damage. Real people must actually kill and maim (if that is the goal). Real people must be there to actually shoot and hurt other humans. Isn't this the definition of war?

We have been ten years into the Afghanistan war. Most Americans have not had to participate at all. Some folks put bumper stickers on their cars and no one has to face the Draft. We pretty much ignore the returning vets who need so much.

And now we have the drones, the ultimate 'zipless fuck'. We have war fatigue - and none of us were even there!

We should get out of Afghanistan, and we will. In quiter moments we may realize the futility of it all. War is no good. Especially when the fighting is anonymous.

Finally, Fall!

No chance of uploading a photo tonight. (Bad internet!!) Just imagine those great mutant giant orange cosmos, more than six feet tall, blooming! They rise above the Mexican petunias and the fuscia vinca below them. What a marvel.

The vegetables are a mixed bag so far. Lettuce and greens are doing well and now produce wonderful salads every night, but something eats the swiss chard each night. Many fire ants infest the garden so I suck it up and actually apply some poison to the hills. It doesn't seem to discourage them much. They just move on to the next garden box. The castor oil pellets seem to have discouraged the armadillos, and we have trapped a whole bunch of them. Armadillos, not pellets. Deer eat the roses every night.

Mornings, I walk around the yard to check out everything, look at the traps, think about what needs to be watered or fertilized, pick out some weeds, see if the oranges are anywhere near ready. When I look up and regard the woods line I see deer and turkeys. Red shouldered hawks cry and there is always the loud trumpeting of the sand hill cranes coming in and the hooting of the owls just finishing their business. The summer birds have left, except for the chimney swifts who will leave soon. So we now hear those loud calls of the big birds, especially the woodpeckers, jays and cardinals who will be here all winter. There are so many squirrels, those cute and busy rodents working the property (and the vegetable garden!)

There is indeed a great deal of physical work to be done here. We mow, weed, water, prune and tend. And not think about what is happening to our larger venue.

Just this week each of us paid $100 to get our teeth cleaned and we do this twice a year. I wonder what reality it is that Monano,  Pinellas County commissioner, could have said, as he voted against fluoridation (!), that anyone could just go to the dentist and get a cleaning, eat well, take care of dental health.. No need for fluoride and big government intervention. What planet is he on?

Such an embarrassment!

I am glad not to live in Alabama, a low hurdle. We are very interested in the 99% demonstations happening everywhere. What does it all mean?

Warning: This about Pets

Here is Lola, our best girl, in her favored spot on the porch couch. You can see that she has one blue eye, the dangerous one, that since she was a puppy, alerted us to her demands (many!). From her perch on the couch she can see out into the yard and monitor the comings and goings of armadillos, her first choice of critters to chase. When she spots one, or even the possibility of one, she is instantly off the couch and barking at the screen door. She has never caught one because they are armored with hard scales and way bigger than she is.

Lola is such a social animal; she prefers people to other dogs she mostly ignores. I am amazed at her memory of people she loves. All during the long summer when our house was closed up and air conditioned Lola fell into our routines. But today, the first day of cool weather after six long months, when we opened up the house she remembered that it would be good to go out on the front porch and lie in the sun. She remembers these routines. She is happiest when she can sit beside Andy when he reads the morning paper, or after lunch when she accompanies me on the couch to read the New York Times or in the evening when she knows one of us will boost her into our high bed so she can worm her way under the covers and await our warm bodies for the night.

I know the names of hundreds of my friends' dogs. Maggie, Pepper, Daisy, Breezy, Zoe, Bailey, Rebel, Phoebe -all friends of mine. No one ever would ask in a job interview or in a doctor's office about our pets. But they are key to our lives.

My sister has a dog who came to her as a puppy and it turned out that this dog was extremely difficult. But they kept on with this dog who did such things as eat the refrigerator. I wondered how in the world they could keep on with this creature. But, now, when I visit, Daisy just seems to be kind of a loopy personality, friendly, and watch your possessions.

An old friend from my childhood has the perfect dog, Velvet, a black lab, smart, perfectly trained and a joy to be with. My sister in law has a large curly Portugese water dog, Breezy, who is truly friendly and outgoing. I love having this large soft wonderful dog sit on my lap!

A daughter of one of my good friends has no kids but she has that old basset hound and she has to consider him as she contemplates a move.

Having dogs makes us human, I think. We laugh at their antics. They endure beyond our own kids. They are tactile and loving. All that good stuff. Dogs keep us fit because they always need a walk. They keep us responsible because they always need to be fed and watered. Sixty percent of us sleep with our dogs! We carefully tend to our puppy training and in their old age we lift them up onto the couch and give them soft food. We ignore their smelly farts. We incorporate the names of our dogs into our passwords.

Most of all our dogs present in our lives a sense of humor. In their own ways, all of our dogs are certainly funny. We dress them up in Halloween costumes (that they try to take off) and we give them ridiculous toys that squeak and quack.

We think of getting a back up dog. (Lola is a 'young' thirteen). Should we get another weiner dog?

Getting Old is Weird

See this moose on the right with the dewlaps? Does she wonder where they came from? I look at the thin and wrinkled skin on my toned upper arms that somehow appeared when I wasn't looking and I was out somewhere inhabiting a ten year old soul that will always be mine.

Just recently I read an excellent novel, "Emily, Alone" by Stewart Onan about an eighty year old widow, ten years older than me, getting by in a life well-lived and it was frighteningly familiar. Am I on this exact track? Onan so accurately describes the small routines and anxieties I get a whiff of. The woman does her crossword puzzles, talks to her dog, worries about her children and grandchildren, and sees the last remnants of her neighborhood as she knew it being sold house by house as the inhabitants die and she remembers the old times when all the kids played outside and the parents had potlucks and drank too many martinis.

This wasn't us, but there are some close parallels. We came of age as parents and citizens in the late sixties and seventies. We didn't want to be like our parents, but we knew that we would be more prosperous than they were. This is certainly not happening now; expectations have changed.

But what is still true is that there is still a disconnect between generations. Unlike the Onan protagonist, we have come not to expect anything from our children and grandchildren. We don't expect them to be interested in our lives. We love them and have majorly supported them as they have gone forth in their lives. This is our joy.

We have never wanted them to come on demand for requisite family holidays. Way too stressful! We welcome them whenever they can come, and to be honest, we kind of keep track when it has been months or even a year since they came to visit.

Long ago when it was obvious that our nuclear family all lived thousands of miles from each other, we embedded with local friends who have become our family. More than ten years ago, my friend Maria and I "adopted" each other as sisters. Maria and her husband Jay, my brother-in-law are just family now. Local sisters that we are, we can ask anything of each other. Jay and Maria are absolutely as important in our grandson's life as we are. The Auntie and Uncle Jay.

We all live so far from each other and we all have busy lives. Such a truism. You never know how things will turn out. Our daughter bought a lovely urban house and we renovated a garage out in back to be our pied a terre when we are in the city. Turns out that we love being there- but only for a short time. After 24 hours I long to be back home on the ranch where I can stretch out and be me.

I love being close to my youngest grandson. Often he comes to visit at the ranch. He has his own room and a playroom and knows every nook and cranny here, every book on the shelf. He's now driving the funky golf cart (while I grip the side). He doesn't notice my wrinkles and we can be kids together. Who else but a six year old kid could join his seventy year old grandma in the daily workout with weights? See my bruises.

I wish I could see more of the other grand kids. The upstairs playroom just gets more complicated and full of toys and books. We haven't removed the baby gate yet.

But, being weird as an old person, you just have to take it as it comes.

Being old is great. Time to do the generative things, volunteer in the community, have those small routines, belly laugh with a six year old. But I still hate those wattles and wrinkles!

Pundits in Black Suits

They are there all day and all evening, these pundits in black suits. They explain and opine on our radios and televisions and Twitter and Face Book. They are Democrats and Republicans, intelligent and dim. They have solutions to our enormous problems in this country.

Our economic problems seem far too large to be solved by any of the fixes we've heard. Pretty soon, it seems as if it's all "yatta yatta". We hang up our attention because we know that there will be no agreement in congress. Any good solutions will be dashed by partisanship. And, in any case, are there good solutions? So, tune out.

I am very very afraid that this America we all used to love will bottom out somehow. How can we get more jobs if there aren't any people to buy more goods and services? How can we jump start this economy if no one is willing or able to take the risk of putting enormous money into something like the WPA? 

I know it won't happen, we'll just keep on with the pundits and their forecasts, and lots of hot air. 

No wonder that the naive electorate cleaves unto the National Enquirer Fox News folks. What are they to think?? There is nothing sensible out there, so, hey, go for the big hair gal or guy.(especially if he/she isn't a person of color.)

Somehow, after a lost decade or two, we may begin to climb back out of this. We may begin to see that our 'barbell' society doesn't really work. Maybe we'll see that everyone (the rich, the big companies, big oil and big pharma etc.) really need to pay their fair share if we are to have a civilized country.

But, for now, I see the playing out of greed, mean spiritedness towards the less fortunate, and an unwillingness to compromise.

My glimmer of hope is the local energy and willingness to make things better here. I know so many good folks who just keep on keeping on doing good works, taking old folks to doctor appointments, building houses, picking up trash, reading to children, making gardens.

I hope this us US!



Thinking Back

Everyone has their stories of what happened and where they were on that terrible day ten years ago. Watching these people describe those excruciating experiences they had on that day and for months and months after, hurts our hearts. Even those of us who were fortunate not to lose friends and loved ones and never knew anyone who toiled at Ground Zero,  still grieve.

It is amazing that ten years have passed, and in that time we and our country have changed so much. I think we lost our patriotic innocence that day. Even through the "bubble" time of the spending and greed, we wanted to believe somehow that we were invulnerable. And yet, the edges of our confidence were beginning to fray as we looked the other way.

We stopped asking hard questions. No down payment on those McMansions! Don't think about the inevitable costs of maintaining such a grand place! Get that ginormous SUV on time payments, gas is cheap. Quick! Rack up everything on plastic.

We found out that giant Oil will spill, financial institutions will implode, and that huge house you got on credit will have a roof leak or a sink hole eating away the foundation. If you look the other way for just one second greed will compromise those wonderful natural places where we used to go camping. The bills will come due.

We thought our safety net we relied on would hold us up. Nope. Fully a fourth of us have no health insurance. We worry that as we lose work we'll have no more unemployment checks to put food on the table. Our education funds keep on shrinking. Our roads and transportation need major overhaul.

At least our seniors can count on Social Security and Medicare. But wait! We are in such a financial hole that even these programs we count on are on the cutting table. And who among us is concerned about those other folks who struggle, whose kids sometimes don't have enough to eat, can't get healthcare or dentristry or decent housing?? Lots of folks that I know. But it can't be done without a comitted government, state or national. This is what a civilized country does- "of the people, by the people, for the people". What's so bad about taxes?? The revenue makes that civilization happen.

This is the last decade. Oy vey!

The annual girl posse visit

This is the tenth year they have visited us at our ranch. This year Alex's little sister, Eliza, second from left, joined the group. Most other years Sarah comes, but this year she had already returned to college in North Carolina. Here they are in the kitchen where we have already cleaned up after a wonderful dinner and we are about to play cards. (Oh Hell!)

The visit is always highly traditional. I anticipate their coming as I do visits from my grandchildren. When they were younger they stayed upstairs in the main house but in the last several years they bunk in at the guest house and come down for all meals. They lounge about on the porch with the dog and in the house. Instead of reading novels as they used to do, they are now focused on their studies. There is time for the truck ride around the property, the golf cart drive, swimming, some exploring. They are the easiest of guests!  In the morning when they're ready they come down to forage in our kitchen. We oldsters have long since done our work-outs, read the papers, and are at work in the studios. Everyone feels comfortable.

These children (I always think of them as such) are so dear to my heart. From the moment they were my students way back when, I understood that these special kids were unique, gifted, and so kind. Now, Katie, Alex and Maddy are still roommates, still lifelong friends. I rejoice to see them in their young adulthood. We are so interested in what they did during the summer and what they anticipate doing for their senior theses. We have observed their growing competence and confidence.

Like most young people, these are like our own children; they don't ever ask us about what is happening with us. I suppose this is because we in the older generation must be static and seamless. And who wants to hear about health and finance problems?? They depend on us to tell them if anything is 'happening'. It must be apparent to these young women that we are more wrinkled, more gray.

During the weekend we talk a lot. The girls were here for a dinner when we had neighbors over. It was a lovely evening.

We expect to see some or all of these young women here as they need the quiet space in the guest house to write their theses. And I'll love thinking of them there and I'll also know they need no attention. What a gift our friendship is!

Old Friends

We are sitting on the porch looking out over Kelly's Cove on Penobscot Bay. The evenings are long, shadows longer at the end of the day. We are having the last of the wine we all drank at dinner. The guests are gone and I savor this rare time with my oldest friend I have known since I was sensible at the age of four.

We do not talk about our families; there has been plenty of time for that during this week's visit. And we do not exchange histories of all the time since high school. We do not talk about our men, sons, brothers and husbands. Juliet sits back in her porch chair, almost folded into the night and I think how beautiful she is right now. We talk about the students we have had over our long careers as teachers. We give each other the gift of nuanced and poignant stories we have never told before. No one at all, including my siblings, shares such a long intimate history with me as Juliet does.

 Now we are both retired and live in our paradises north and south. We both give our new lives (after working so many years) a great new energy in our communities. Juliet revels in teaching in a "senior" college where anyone can learn and anyone can teach.

Being here for most of a week, anticipating a hurricane that wasn't much beyond some wind and rain where we were, my husband and I were welcomed and fascinated by being in this household. Juliet's husband, Paul, is a local doctor, the ethical and intelligent kind we all wish we had. We love their comfortable house so nicely situated across the lane from the endlessly interesting coming and going of the tide over the rocks and beach. One day we cheered Paul on as he swam (in water much too cold for these Floridians) with Velvet, their amazing dog.

Everything was so comfortable. We loved the walks along the shore line into the small village of toy-like colorful cottages full of summer people enjoying the last days of summer, sitting on the porches, watering the petunias, hauling their kayaks in and out. We loved the produce market where locals sold hand made cheeses and those tiny sweet blueberries (picked by Little Sal's mother?) We loved going to a chamber music concert in a close by village, and we loved shopping in the co-op for some of our meals. Of course we loved talking politics and books.

Since we were little, Juliet and I spent every possible moment outdoors in the woods and still, we are both so interested in plants and birds as a part of life.

I enjoyed hanging up the freshly washed clothes on a line out back where the woods came down the hill and the hummingbirds buzzed everything red. Everything just felt right!

Seeing my old friend again was just the best. We all have those old wrinkled faces, and the usual health issues, but I certainly rejoice to think of the incredible skein of our lives.



This Paradise

I stand outside my studio as the light fades, huge pink and purple clouds on the horizon, promising future rain. The bats are out, intent on the flying bugs. Listening to music blasting out from my ipod, I am happy. No one here forever: our property spreads as far as the eye can see. Only the cows are heading this way and they will lie down for the night in the tall grass.

Of course there are so many things we have to do here, especially in this rainy season when everything grows so rampantly. This morning when it was somewhat cooler we put in a couple of hours readying the vegetable garden for the fall. We must have removed ten bushels of weeds and there is still more to be done. We placed the raised beds where we wanted them. Neither of can bear to remove the huge red sage bushes that attract so many butterflies. And how long can we let those volunteer zinnias stay? The compost pile is covered with morning glories and zinnias except for that small place where I dig in the daily
 kitchen scraps.

My usual computer is in sick bay due to a dysfunctional power source, so bear with me as I write on a tiny device, no photos possible.

The huge wall in my studio is covered with many pieces of beautiful fabric, squares and triangles. This quilt will be for Quincy, the grandchild I know best. I plan to make each grandchild in the youngest tier a quilt for Christmas. That leaves two to go after these. On the large work table are six table mats in the making. I love fabric!

And so much else! We are off to Maine for a few days to visit my oldest friend who lives on the edge of a bay there.

Getting Ready!

It is so hot that one can't possibly think of going out in the garden to weed. But we have made some new raised beds and they are ready to take out to the garden. The new seeds have arrived and I have already planted the new cauliflower and arugula starts. The rest of all the seeds will be directly planted in the new beds.

But for now we are enjoying all the hundreds of butterflies and bees and hummingbirds visiting the huge crop of volunteer red sage, zinnias, and butterfly plants that have taken over the plot. My daughter took several red sage plants to plant in her garden but it hardly makes a dent in the profusion. Soon I will have to take out the volunteer morning glories that climb on every available part of the fence.

Last night my grandson Quincy and I went out to set and bait the traps we hoped would capture the pesky armadillos that continue to root around in the garden. Quincy thought that wet dog food would attract them and he was right. This morning there were two oppossums in the traps. He went out with grandpa to let them go a mile away on the edge of the property. The armadillos are still at large..

Right now I cannot keep perseverating about national politics. So, I am enjoying the here and now of life on the ranch at the edge of the Green Swamp, gardening, working on local volunteering in the Lacoochee community and entertaining the many guests who come. I try not to listen to NPR too much!

My mission right now is to spread the word about good eating! Everyone needs to grow at least some of their own food. In addition to the school/community garden, I will be distributing plant starts and containers full of potting soil to the families who come to the "clay nights" we'll have at the elementary school this fall. When we hosted 'Art Camp' this summer, the kids and parents really loved the fruits and vegetables we served. This stuff is expensive, I know, so anything I can do to encourage a good diet with fresh vegetables is a small but positive thing.

This weekend my husband, the cook, made an exquisite soup! Two parts of peeled tomatoes, one part of peeled peaches, sauted onion. Cook it down until soft. Not long! Then puree it all in a blender or giraffe or food processor. Chill. Add minced tarragon and some heavy cream. Serve in chilled bowls. Yum!



The Last Veggies

Improbable, but the vegetable garden is still producing at least

Fun Stuff

Here is Berenice's painting from art camp this week. One of the activities was to start a line with a permanent marker and not pick up that pen until the drawing was done; then use water colors to complete it. Adults who came had such a hard time! And Berenice just came in and sat down and immediately took a piece of the "good" watercolor paper and produced this. I love it when the grown-ups and kids just really have fun together, learn from each other, and are on a par as persons.

We are several weeks into this art camp, and by now we have a steady and somewhat shifting group of two dozen parents and kids. They appear on the dot of nine a.m., ready to go. The first thing is opening the kiln from the past week's firing. They loved seeing the colorful newly glazed pieces, and by now they are all helping hands to unload and put away the kiln stilts and posts and shelves.

Then I explain what the art activities are today: the line drawings and water colors and clay glazing and making new pieces, and the ever popular construction room where they can put anything togethert they can imagine with glue guns. I have for today a bunch of toilet paper tubes, pieces of wood, pipe cleaners, old wires and hardware- junk!

I have not yet seen any kid or parent at loose ends. By now everyone knows where everything is, and if they don't see it in the bins, they ask to look in the drawers where I stash other craft items. I feel comfortable with these kids!

I have two amazing helpers. I never required it or expected it, but my husband has been an incredible help. He sees how these kids respond to an interesting day, and he's on duty as a lifeguard at the swimming pool and the primary provider of the lunch we serve to everyone at the end of the morning. He chats with the parents, and one time, I hope he'll try his hand at clay or painting.

The other steady helper is a wonderful college student from St. Leo's I discovered when I was judging a local art gallery show. She was tending the desk. I suppose I have a lot of crust but I immediately asked her if she would be willing to help me out. This Lindsie Dougherty gave me her phone number, and rest is history. She appears and is wonderfully capable and I think she'll be a fixture in our lives for the forseeable future.

Most of the families are Hispanic- Mexican and Cuban.

Next time all of them are going to bring the food for a Hispanic lunch. All I have to do is produce the promised VOLVCANO CAKE!

I love doing this. I get the chance to practice my Spanish and provide a loving climate for people to be creative. These are folks who are trying their best for themselves and their kids. I have made some unexpected good friends here, and I have made some good friends with their children, some of whom will be in my life for a long time.

This is such a great antidote to the hours I spend worrying about the wrong direction our country is in. These folks are not the mean spirited Tea Partiers who are not concerned about others less fortunate. (I've got mine!) Of course we do not talk politics or religion here, but these families see what our values are. And I see what their values are.

Lots to be learned and one is never too old to learn.