a sinkhole garden viewed from that kitchen window as a kind of sphinx with beanpole pyramids when you were young, the world seemed limitless just see what we’ve found since, in the perimeters of a root canal while watching a grosbeak feeding merrily at the other side of the dentist’s window painlessly, as promised . keep smiling
Tag: Life
My favorite smaller cities and towns
Being a college town really makes a difference. My selections are definitely skewered by the stretch of the country I’ve lived in.
Here goes:
- Dover, New Hampshire (population 32,191): Yes, my provenance for two decades and the source for much of the material here at the Red Barn.
- Portsmouth, New Hampshire (21,927): Just a dozen or so miles down the road from us, the Port City is wealthier and more tourist oriented, especially around the photogenic harbor. With a strong Colonial flavor, thanks to its array of mansions, it’s a prime example of a New England seaport, a category that could easily lead to its own Tendrils entry.
- Portland, Maine (66,215/metro area of a half million): A hour up the Interstate from Dover, the Forest City is the center of a third of the state’s population, as counted in the metro area. The Old Port District is especially charming and pedestrian friendly.
- Brunswick, Maine (20,278): A bit further on is the home of Bowdoin College and a fun-to-explore downtown. I love its Vietnamese restaurant.
- Eastport, Maine (1,331): And much further up the coast is this much shrunken city that’s fighting for survival. No college, though. No Laundromat, either, or pizza parlor. Its saving grace is an spunky arts scene and the ocean, including a really deep-water port. As you’re seeing, it’s won our hearts … enough to lure us from Dover.
- Port Townsend, Washington (9,704): Jumping to the other side of the continent, this artsy community on the Olympic Peninsula relies on ferry service across Puget Sound for access to about everything other than the mountains and forests at its back. It’s also home to a state park dedicated to the arts.
- Ellensburg, Washington (21,111): Situated in the desert east of Seattle, this small college town blends Wild West atmosphere with outdoors opportunities, including the Yakima Canyon. You may have seen it in the TV series “Northern Exposure.”
- Yellow Springs, Ohio (3,487): Returning back across the heartland, I thought about adding Iowa City or Madison, Wisconsin, but don’t know enough about either to speak fluently. Yellow Springs, long the home of bohemian Antioch College, fills the bill for me with its small-town New England touches and the Glen Helen Nature Preserve.
- Bloomington, Indiana (85,000): Set in a wooded, rolling landscape, it’s the home of Big Ten Indiana University and its plethora of cultural opportunities. It also bears a passing resemblance to Daffodil in a few of my novels.
- Burlington, Vermont (42,417): Look, it’s the biggest city in the Green Mountain State and has Lake Champlain at its foot and great views of the Adirondacks beyond. It’s also about as hippie crunchy as you can get, though it helps if your grandparents set you up with a trust fund or two. You might consider Middlebury as an alternative.
~*~
I can think of some suburban Boston communities, but that would be cheating, wouldn’t it?
Your turn to weigh in with worthy nominations!
More than the bottom line
Even though I cut this from the final version of my novel What’s Left, it’s still true:
What people need, and this is essential to a proper approach to labor, is balance.
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Two things are going on here, one inside the other, but I’d like to be less confusing.
The first, quite simply, is my belief in what we Quakers call centering. We find our stopping all outwork activity for a time of deep meditation and reflection helps bring us perspective on the other parts of our lives. Add to that moderation and simplicity or focus all leading to a healthy balance of individuality, home, career, community, faith, and so on.
The second touches on attitudes toward labor itself, which quite frankly has been demeaned in modern society. What makes the concept of leisure so exalted? The danger, I suspect, is in overworking — often sucking any joy out of the project at hand.
Think of your job. What could management do to make it more human?
~*~
Yeah, yeah, yeah, what do I know? Like I’m an expert on anything?
Through the period of my life right after college, I kept relocating every year-and-a-half to a new job and location. The shock provided more grist for my writing than I would have anticipated, but not the time to digest it. Each round, I was just getting settled when I was interrupted and uprooted. That set me in four different states over six years at the beginning, followed by three more over the next ten. Altogether, that added up to 11 mailing addresses in seven states before I packed pack up for New England. No matter how adventurous I might find adjusting to the new environments, it was ultimately stressful. There were days I hardly knew where I was waking up. More emotionally difficult has been the way friendships fade over such distances.
As a writer who was also tackling the demands of a new job, I had little time to digest the fresh material, much less revise it, either as poetry or prose, especially if I wanted to dig beneath the surface.
As for my love life?
It’s a wonder I didn’t go loco.
What do you know about apples?
Maybe Jaya and Joshua took apples for granted when they moved into an orchard in my novel Nearly Canaan. That ignorance didn’t last long.
Here are a few of the things they may have discovered.
- Apples are a member of the rose family. (Good thing they don’t have thorns!)
- Apples have to be picked by hand.
- The trees require four or five years to produce their first fruit. Some trees grow to be 100.
- Apples account for half of the world’s deciduous fruit tree production. China, by the way, grows more apples than any other country.
- They come in sizes ranging from as small as a cherry to as big as a grapefruit – and can weigh up to three pounds.
- More than 2,500 varieties are grown in the U.S. but only the crabapple is native. Globally, more than 7,500 varieties are raised.
- The first apple tree in North America was planted by the Pilgrims.
- The harvest from an average tree can fill 20 bushels or boxes each weighing 42 pounds.
- About 36 apples go into a gallon of cider.
- Upstate New York used to be a big producer until acid rain from Midwestern coal-powered plants led to serious blight.
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And, yes, as far as that apple a day doctor thing goes, the fruit has no sodium, cholesterol, or fat but is rich in fiber.
What can you add to the list?
Really, they could be so embarrassing
Cassia’s future father arrives in my novel What’s Left after some funky adventures.
Throughout the story, she keeps trying to understand his hippie generation and its influence on her family.
But there are similar embarrassments going further back.
What most baffles you about your parents and their times?
Loves and fishes
three sessions dancing in a mental field followed by crisis in prayer life and practice of the sexual nature, followed by money and possessions Must run . Will walk later . because I hadn’t thought they’d be so closely related will you scratch the cat for me . every grub feeds on stage fright . with all encouragement, Woodchuck . birds are singing and carpenter ants invade the bathroom my brain goes ever into these leaps, as long as we’re at it at, beginning of the year we received a pay raise under the new contract, finally
Some similarities between Greek Orthodox Christianity and Tibetan Buddhism
In my novel What’s Left, there are hints that Cassia’s father was becoming interested in similarities between his line of Buddhism and the Greek traditions of his wife’s religious roots.
Here are ten things he might have observed.
- Both have a funny alphabet.
- Both are quite elaborate and ornate compared to other traditions.
- Esoteric teachings often based on teacher-student transmission and interpretation.
- They’re both viscerally rich. Heavy incense, for starters, and candles, with their wax dripping on fingers, for the Orthodox, while the Tibetans touch prayer wheels or mala beads.
- External visualization. Icons, for the Orthodox. Tankas, for Tibetans. Plus robes and processions and gold and deep red color everywhere.
- Death obsession.
- Chanting and ritual, including the liturgy for the Orthodox and mantra for the Tibetans.
- Monastic backbone. It’s a lifetime commitment.
- Both are rich in cultural context. Greeks are Greek and Tibetans live at the top of the world.
- Militancy is a matter of survival.
How does the rest of the family face up to the challenge?
Family-run businesses present their own unique operating models.
Under the ideal version, the members have an understanding of each other and their mission along with a loyalty that’s unrivaled. The business is part of their identity. Each member of the family understands his or her abilities and place in the enterprise. Often, they learned the operation from childhood on, starting at entry level. For their employees, however, that can come at the price of exclusion and upward mobility.
Sometimes the organization is headed by a patriarch or matriarch with the authority to make and enforce difficult decisions. In this model resentments and perceived sleights can mount over the years before erupting. Or the family head may no longer fit the kind of executive the company needs at a particular stage of its growth; a founder, for instance, may have technical expertise but not the people skills for marketing or adapting to a changing market.
What have you seen or experienced?
Favored cousin
as for the cure to feeling oh so blue center (as in meditation or prayer) untangle knots or go out weeding by the kitchen (see the worshiping community as a kitchen, too) go off to any place where there’s nurture and a certain kind of warmth then prepare a decent meal, slowly concentrate on digging out, one emotion at a time, not just feelings or thoughts on the run before my flight from the opera
