What We Need Is Here

The distant hope of yourself

For Lent this year, we've decided to return to a practice we engaged in several years ago - to not turn on lights or electronics after dusk each night. This time we may know what we are getting into and are anticipating the bad: hulu-withrawal and time-management challenges; but also the good: the peace, the earlier bedtimes, the glow of the oil lamp, the appreciation of light as the sun sets and the moon rises. I am looking forward to the change. 

Lent has often felt like a second chance at New Years or another go at Advent, both "holy days/holidays" so influenced by the franticness of Christmas that I feel I don't have the time to give them enough thought. Some people give up things for Lent - either things they want to leave behind for good, or things that will help them refocus their interest and make new habits. Others take a more positive approach - more exercise, more quiet, more reading, some volunteering, etc. Year after year it seems to be about finding balance and kindling a litle hope that - with some examination, intention, and focus - we can move closer to being the people we want to be for ourselves and for each other.

"Remember... to dust you will return." A damn good motivator. 

When I am among the trees,
especially the willows and the honey locust,
equally the beech, the oaks and the pines,
they give off such hints of gladness.
I would almost say that they save me, and daily.

I am so distant from the hope of myself,
in which I have goodness, and discernment,
and never hurry through the world
     but walk slowly, and bow often.

Around me the trees stir in their leaves
and call out, "Stay awhile."
The light flows from their branches.

And they call again, "It's simple," they say,
"and you too have come
into the world to do this, to go easy, to be filled
with light, and to shine."

- Mary Oliver

Zipcar

RIP, little Volkswagen Golf. We hardly knew ye, but you cost us a freaking fortune during your oh-so-brief time with us. We've been very lucky in the past buying used cars. I have relished telling the story of having once bought a car for $1000 at the same time a friend bought a new one for $15,000 - eight years later, we both sold them for a thousand. So we didn't hesitate when good friends offered to sell us their well-cared for VW, below Blue Book value, when they moved across country. The tragedy of watching the miserable VW die a slow death totally negates the former happy story. Thousands of dollars were spent during its last year trying to keep it alive, each repair promising to be the last for a while. It was just its time to go apparently.

The day I drove it to the official VW dealership repair shop, after our beloved backyard mechanic told us he couldn’t do anything else for it, turned out to be the last time I would ever drive it. It “jumped time” (whatever that means), and the ruined timing belt apparently took out some other engine parts with it.  So now we were in the very bad position of having to find another car quickly with very little money to do so.  We have a little used truck, but it only has three seat belts. There are four of us – and sometimes more. We began the search. And it ended with Zipcar.

Zipcar is a national car-sharing program. You pay an annual membership fee (ours was $25), and then you just pick up the closest car when you need it, billable by the hour or the day. For us, cars are $7.50 to $8.50 an hour or $69 a day, and gas and insurance are included.  It isn’t for everyone, but we think it might be for us. We are lucky to live downtown – within walking distance to entertainment, community events, the library, the food co-op, and numerous bus stops. The city's growing bike lane network connects us safely to a number of destinations. We really don’t need a four-seatbelt car often, and having to walk a mile to pick one up, and actually pay for it each time we use it, will hopefully help us be even more discriminating.  The idea of sharing a car thrills me. The possibility of driving one that is likely to get us where we’re going without a detour to the mechanic’s will be a huge relief.   

A Dark Season

Despite the Christmas-cheery music and shiny decorations filing up public space this time of year, it's the Advent themes of growing darkness and of quiet waiting that really resonate with me. The jump on Christmas feels as forced and false as spray-snow and electric icycles do. I want something more - or less.

A viable alternative to the shopping season, the season of Advent is an ancient tradition, which sets the well-known "Christmas story" in the context of a "people in darkness" awaiting a "great light" (Isiaiah 9:2). There is a body of pre-Frosty-the-Snowman music that speaks to the theme: In the Bleak Midwinter, As a Deer Longs, Silent Night.  And, somewhat more recently, there's Joni Mitchell's "River," whose baffled expression of modern traditions tangled up with grief and longing always touches me this time of year.

It's coming on Christmas 
They're cutting down trees
They're putting up reindeer 
And singing songs of joy and peace 
         Oh I wish I had a river I could skate away on . . . 

There's nothing Scrooge-ish about resisting the shopping season frenzy and acknowledging the dark - both in the physical world of winter, but also in our own psyches.  We remain a people in darkness a good deal of the time and, at Advent, we consent to the inevitability of it - to both its bleakness and its gifts. We wait, however skeptically, for the light. I think of how I might live as if it is coming, even when it appears to grow darker, how I might prepare a room for it. And how I can do this while I am also preparing cookies (fewer), a guest room for visiting family (dustier), and a shopping list (sparer). Just as the pupils widen in the darkness to adjust to the lack of light, I want to allow myself to open a little more to the mystery of all this, and to dwell in it peaceably for a time. 

{Photo - from The Christian Science Monitor}

Five Things Friday

A weekly gratitude list: 

1. Pajama Friday - A new tradition that was actually as good in practice as it sounded. I have always admired the post-Thanksgiving, anti-consumerism campaigns, but this one had such a positive spin: Don't just not shop, put on your comfiest pjs and loll around with your mom and sister on the sofa all day, knitting, talking and laughing a lot. Yes.
2. Fat Pants Saturday - We made this up, but I think it may be a keeper: On the Saturday following Thanksgiving, wear your stretchiest pants and get your exercise on. My mom and I started out with yoga at her apartment, then drove (because that's all you can do in Dallas...) to my sister's where we took turns working it off on her three exercise machines. We followed this activity by scarfing down huge bowls of ice cream with a side of my mom's homemade fudge. 
3. Occupy Gainesville's "Wise's Campaign" - Another really positive move by the Occupy movement, encouraging us to actually occupy this place where we live by caring, serving, and supporting its particular institutions (see draft flyer above; I couldn't wait).  
4. Mysterious bags of something left in our downtown garden, which I was afraid might be dirty diapers but turned out to be vegetable scraps - with a little note attached that said, "Thank you for what you do; please use this for compost if you can."
5. Hot water bottle - The plastic, faded red kind. Filled with piping hot water and placed between the sheets before I get into bed, it makes a great bed fellow on a cold night when the real thing is out of town.

Butchering a t-shirt - making use of the whole hog

When we asked for t-shirts for our Art for All project, we weren't surprised to be deluged. Everyone's got extras. Even the thrift stores were willing to give them to us for free! Inspired by Pinterest, and numerous "upcycling" craft blogs, here's how we used up these 100% cotton shirts. 

First we made "scarflaces" by chopping off the hem, then cutting loops around the bottom of the shirt up to the arm pits. These are great for our moderately cold winters - and so many pretty colors. Here are details on how to do it yourself. 

Then Daniel (housemate) told us that he and his friends had made "snoods" out of the sleeves. We decorated them with a little "Green House" logo stamp. These are so obvious and easy you won't need directions. Daniel wore two when he biked off to work this morning. Vickie is modeling one during the warmer afternoon. 

Left with a bunch of cut-off hems, neck bindings, arms seams, and other scraps, we cut them into uniform lengths and braided the strips into dog toys. I was skeptical about this, but Rudy really got into it, enjoying playing tug-of-war, then running around the yard triumphantly with his winnings. 

The thing I was personally looking forward to was making a rug like one of these (see mine above!). I am a knitter, but had to learn how to crochet for this (much easier to hold a loop of t-shirt yarn at the end of a hook, then to hold knitting weighed down with a growing rug. After a few false starts, it was easy, thanks to the encouragement and directions from the crocheters who are part of the Green House Knitters. After spending an hour per shirt to get a little ball of yarn, I found a much quicker way to cut a continuous spiral of one-inch wide fabric to pull and roll into balls of "yarn." Once my fingers got the hang of it, it became as mindless as knitting for me (I love that), and in no time: a colorful rug out of throw-away shirts. 

Now I am a bit obssessed with this upcycing project (partly because there is a small mountain of donated t-shirts blocking the shelves in the laundry room). There seem to be no end to good use for them: produce bags, baby bonnets, dishcloths...  

Getting things done - one pomodoro at a time

Sometimes I think my laptop is a little too versatile. I may sit down to record tutoring hours, take an online class, send an important email, or write, but I am only the tap of a finger away from checking Facebook, my email inbox or the weather report. (This is in addition to the fact that I am a few yards away from laundry that needs to be folded, dishes that could use washing, a hallway desperate for painting, and my yoga mat.) I find focusing to be a real challenge to getting the things done I want to each day. 

Over the last year, I’ve tried out a few good things I’d like to share. First, I found Now Do This. So simple, but strangely helpful  to have a little online app hanging out on your toolbar, reminding you what you set out to do, one thing at a time. You make the list – "put clothes in wash," "balance checkbook," "tutor student," "write about pomodoros" - and each appears in stark simplicity on a white screen until you finish the task and press “done,” at which point up pops the next task. When you reach the end of the list, a cheerful “all done!” message appears. It's very satisying. 

For the longer term and the bigger picture, I have found Todoist to be a help.  You list your projects and break them down into tasks with assigned dates.  For instance, some of my projects for this summer were house reorganization, finishing a cookbook, and spending quality time with family and friends. Tasks for the house project included assigning each room of the house a day or two here and there during the summer and recurrent garden chores like weeding or watering. The cookbook project was broken down into tasks like discussing format with the printer, deciding on illustrations, choosing recipes, and writing chapter introdutions. Goals for time with family and friends included regular outings to places around town with the children, learning to play cribbage, and meeting various friends for coffee.  Each day when I log on to the site it tells me what’s on the agenda for that day (or for a perfect version of the day anyway) as well as what’s still on the list from a few days ago. Again, there is the satisfying ticking off of things - but with the added pleasure of watching the tasks required for each project number down as you approach completion.   

For writing tasks that require stretches of serious focus, I have recently started using Ommwriter. It offers a very clean page to work on with no visible toolbar distractions. There are several choices of peaceful background music, which is great if you’re working someplace like a coffee shop – or your own noisy home. One option includes a pleasant typewriter tapping noise as you write. It helps create a refreshing little zone of peace and productivity.

The latest thing I’ve tried is the tomato-timer. Inspired by the Pomodoro Technique whose creator used a tomato-shaped kitchen timer (pomodoro is Italian for tomato) to create timeslots of intense focus, the "pomodoro" chops time into 25 minute intervals after which the buzzer goes off and a five-minute break is allowed. After four pomodoros, you get a 30-minute long break. What is helpful about this for me is that I don’t have to keep time or think about it, and that I am less overwhelmed by the stretch of hours that may be required to finish something I'm not excited about doing. I can just set my sights on focusing for a relatively short period of time, knowing I can soon take a little break to compulsively check email, fold laundry, or reward myself with a little yoga. 

The big kahuna of these focus-enhancing apps is a concept called Getting Things Done or GTD – an entire goal-setting and organizational strategy that both intrigues and scares me a little, mainly because of all the spin-off products for sale to help you implement it. The actual concept is simple though and fits well with the applications above: to set goals, to break them down into manageable steps, to take things one at a time AND – this is GTD’s particular strength – to keep things organized so that you don’t spend a lot of time getting on task, or finding the things you need to accomplish it.

While it may seem a little odd to have to resort to online apps to keep ones online life in control, it makes a kind of sense.  Like the answering machine and ringer volume control that developed over time with the telephone, the online world is offering ways to manage its own omnipresence in our lives.  The little machine on which I am typing is clearly both a blessing and a curse. I no longer pedal several miles to an office to access my computer files (and giant file cabinet) like I did only a few years ago. It’s all right here, ALL right here.  While there are times during the year when deadlines and structure are set by a stricter work schedule (and times during life that are regulated by the length of the baby’s nap and other family obligations), this particular summer has been much less structured. For those of us prone to distraction and juggling a number of different projects at the same time, (I am so tempted to say “whose lives have a number of windows open at once!), it’s interesting to see what others have come up with to help. And consoling to know there are others in need of this kind of help. 

Do you struggle with focus, follow-through, and temptation? How do you manage? 

 

Do you need a microwave?

We really don’t. A combination of little counter space, few kitchen outlets, and a wish to minimize things that need regular wiping down made us want to live without one.  We haven’t really missed it – and I enjoy being forced to do some things differently than I did back in my microwaving days: 

• We use a teapot to boil water – stove-top, or the quick electric one for small gatherings. 
• We make popcorn in a stove-top popper.
• We minimize the use of frozen and boxed “microwaveable food-like substances." Forgive me if this sounds judgmental: I do believe these things have their place. But I reached my lifetime capacity for Pizza Bites a while back. And these can be heated in the oven in the case of world-wide famine rendering them the last food left on earth. 
• We heat up leftovers in copper-bottom pots (good heat distribution and quick warm-up) and regularly eat them cold, especially in the summer. 
• If we forget to take the butter out a few hours ahead of time to soften for a recipe, we use the cheese grater and grate it instead – maximizing both distribution and surface area. 

I appreciate that microwaves use less energy in many cases, but I am not convinced that it makes much difference – especially for a large household like ours. I’d rather save the energy by not heating up at all. Plus I think the amount of packaging microwaveable-food comes in often negates the energy savings. I like to think that by avoiding it, we’re allowed the little more energy used by stovetop heating.

Anyway, it works fine for us. Do you use your microwave regularly? 

Home Economics

I took Home Ec in 7^th grade, but I think mine may have been the last generation to do so.  It went the way of “shop” (the "boy" version of this practical course). Together they covered a lot of good, practical stuff: preparing food, mending (or making) clothes, creating a budget, building things, making repairs. Unfortunately, I think the disappearance of these classes mirrored the decline of passing this know-how down to one’s children; so few young people I know seem to have learned these skills growing up – although I’ve met more and more lately who want to learn.  It also reflects, I’m afraid, the loss of dignity these humble practices had undergone.

“Home Economics” is an idea whose time has come, again – but an updated version that goes beyond my 1970s course, some of which had degenerated into preparing frozen peas and other products from the free corporate cookbook.  The word economy comes from the Greek oikonomia, which literally means “rules of the household.”  I like how Wendell Berry’s definition puts this in context of the common good, as “the ways of human housekeeping, the ways by which the human household is situated and maintained within the household of nature.” How we could use these skills now - to make things, to take care of things, to prioritize and budget, to build and repair - all in light of how our actions impact those with whom we share this place.     

We struggle to come up with rules for our own household that move us toward fitting in more responsibly with the household of nature as well as with respect toward each other and our guests. I find it annoyingly challenging. The whole subject of “housekeeping” has no small amount of baggage for me, and I have often asked John to cover it, fearing falling into gender roles or, worse, the awful nagging-mother role (I think I’m about done with this character).  I believe that “rules of the household”  - like how to arrange and label food in the fridge so it doesn’t go to waste, or to wash and dry dishes so water is not wasted and dishes are actually clean, which cleaning supplies to use on what, so that floors, appliances and people are not damaged,  or the way to hang clothes so they’ll dry faster and more loads can be hung in a day – do matter financially, environmentally, and even socially (no one likes the person who leaves their dirty dishes in the sink or never empties the drainer). But still I’m uncomfortable always being the one expounding them or patrolling the aftermath.

Honestly, I hate it. I think caring for the household, for the well-being of the people and things in it, is regularly scoffed at as trivial precisely because it’s been traditionally the work of women, not because this work is unimportant or unnecessary.   I end up torn between doing what is right and good for our household and the planet and perpetuating harmful stereotypes by  - god forbid – nagging.  I cringe at the thought of nagging - having to ask (repeatedly) someone to do something they would do without being asked if they concerned themselves with keeping  various household items safe, in good working order, and/or out of the landfill. The word itself is almost always applied to women,  most often  by someone who is disinclined to do the thing needing to be done because it’s a bother  or is deemed somehow beneath them. Accusing one of nagging is just incredibly disrespectful of exactly the thing that’s needed right now if we’re going to have a planet to pass on to our children and grandchildren. Thoughtful, caring respect for the things – and the people – in our lives isn’t idol worship, or the trivial occupation of women with too much time of their hands. It’s common sense for the common good.  

 So, my friends, teach your children well. It’s likely that during their lifetime, they’ll be caring more for the few(er) things they own, rather than simply blithely tossing what’s been neglected and hopping in the car to go buy a new one.  “Use it up, wear it out, make it do, do without” is not just a kitschy plaque at “Cracker Barrel” to remind of us of how quaintly our grandparents used to live. It’s savvy foresight, something that has also always been part of “women’s work.” 

{photo: Food News with Attitude}

Life particles and computer files

I love order about exactly as much as I hate putting things in order. Or maybe I just dread facing the disorder; once I resign myself to it and get started, it's usually not nearly as nightmarish as I imagine. Still I put it off with a thousand excuses, and then face the chaos during summer when the excuses are running dry. The ordering has begun, preceded by the purge of things not used or needed during the past year.

This year, the old computer is on the list of horrors to face, and I've been going through its files - copying photos and music and purging the documents.  It's been the little kids' computer since I got a laptop four years ago, and it sits in all its over-sized glory on a desk in the hallway where we can keep an eye on its use (another monster lurking).  But, within its bowels remain quite a few of my files from the past. The happy music and photo files were a bit tedious to deal with, but I didn't let myself get too emotional about how much everyone had grown or things had changed  - just copied them quickly to cds (the computer is so old it won't recognize the flash drive). But the document file is a different story.  It's overflowing with souvenirs of the past: "to-do" lists, resolutions, schedules, drafts of letters, flotsam and jetsam from former jobs, articles I wanted to get back to, articles I wanted to write, garden records, home renovation plans, papers my children have written, poetry I didn't want to forget, notes on cancer treatment I would like to.  At its core it's like an external hard-drive for my mind – chockfull of its plans, thoughts, fears, anxieties, and hopes. It needs to be wiped clean of 2000-2007, so it can better function in 2011.

Opening these little folders is like opening boxes where I tried to contain the unruly particles of life. It's interesting how computers help us do that, or think we're doing it. It seems important so we name it and file it for future reference. But for the most part those particles already did their work on us stealthily, colliding with former versions of ourselves to produce who we are right now.  And now they're done.  The run-in with the dishonest air conditioner company, the controversy over Ben's chemotherapy side-effects, the spastic list of complaints and injustices I felt compelled to document during the spring of 2006, the volume of vegetables my old garden produced, the pros and cons lists for moving to the Catholic Worker House vs. going back to some more normal (paying) work, the lesson plans for the school gardens we grew in 2004. . . done, done, done, done, done, and done.

Like so much "stuff," trying to capture it –as a souvenir, or a record –often just gets in the way of living our lives now. While there's an appropriate use for the "archive" folder, like any folder, box, cabinet, or closet, it's going to need regular purging.  And probably the easiest way would be to warehouse so much in the first place. I am sending 99% of it to wherever it is deleted documents go, happy to have lived most of it, for having survived some of it. The folder of poems I am emailing to the 2011 version of me.

{photo: A tiny version of "The Thinker" on the "Gates of Hell" at the Orsay Museum, Paris - Rodin} 

Hot summer lunch

COLD watermelon, COLD blueberries, COLD boiled peanuts, ICED mint tea. It helps a little.