The Land and Us and Time

It is the same as it ever was. At least in the frame of time that matters to us. The flat plains laid down by the waters of ancient seas, glacier carved and dumped and meltwater washed and wind swept. Flat flat plains and channels of streams and rivers, escarpments and tumbling hills. Its cycles are bigger than us. I talk to men and women who have seen its wet and then its dry and now its wet again. We don't know the true time of the cycles or the scale of any of it. We can only respond in our own lifetime, can only react in our own time line.

Hawks that we killed with our chemicals are back on the land. Coyotes that we trapped to near decimation again howl at the dawn. Little bluestem colonizes short stretches of ditchbank. Litter erodes into ever smaller pieces at the side of the highway. If we disappeared tomorrow, traces of us would be erased before the record of the sea, the glacier, the wind.

My Father-In-Law

I shot a hole in the floor of his pickup truck.
He made fun of my 70's wedge shoes.
He handed me greasy Mustang parts to clean in a coffee can of gasoline.
He picked garden vegetables and passed them in a bowl across the fence to me.
He took me duck hunting with his son. I wore his chest waders.
He complained about my illegible handwriting.
He showed me his guns.
He asked me about my jobs.
He teased me for taking so many photographs.
He made me framed copies of his photographs that I admired.
He shimmied closer to his end of the sofa to make room for us in front of the basement TV.
He made things for my garden.
He held my babies and gleamed.
He told stories.
His chair faced the window, back to the door, and there was that flash of pure joy that crossed his face when you walked into the room far enough that he recognized you and smiled and said something like "Look what the cat dragged in!"
The advantage of marrying into the family is that I get to completely invent my own image of him. In my eye, he is possibly smarter and funnier and stronger and wiser and kinder and braver than anyone could ever really be, but I don't mind if my view is a little soft-focus and I don't think he would either.
Remember what inspires you and use it. Tell the stories that you think others can use. Tell them again and again. That's all we can do, let them make us be a little better than we might have been, and in turn, pass that on to anyone else that can take something from it. That's all we can do.

How To Weather A Storm

First, you have to live on a farm. Then you have to notice that it has gotten really dark in the middle of the day or that the sky is kinda a funny color and that the tops of the trees in the shelter belt are bent over about ninety degrees. Someone should say loudly "We should probably go to the basement." Someone should root around the junk drawer for candles and matches while someone else roots around the tool drawer for flashlights and spare batteries. Someone should go to the shop to get the men and someone should go to Grandma's to get her and hold her elbow while they rush across the lawn to the house. They should stop with her to comment on the trees. Everyone should convene in the basement. Discussion should ensue as to which corner they are supposed to be in. Someone should attempt to figure it out scientifically based on which direction weather patterns generally travel and someone should counter that with how it comes from every direction at some point when the tornado spiral is passing over. There should be discussion of the strongest part of the basement structure and dangerous things like the fuel oil tank and the gas water heater. One of the men should get curious and go upstairs to take a look-see. The other men should join after he doesn't come down after a bit. One of the women should dash upstairs for the camera and go out and stand behind the men and ask if they can see anything yet. The other women should get curious and go up. This leaves the kids and Grandma, who is just as curious and powerless to stop the kids from joining the rest in the front yard. She should make one kid stay back to help her get up the steps so she can see. When everyone is in the front yard watching, if there is or has been hail, someone should find a couple of the biggest pieces to put in the freezer. After it dies down, everyone should get in the car and drive around to look for crop damage and watch the water rushing through the ditches along the highways. The final stop should be that one place where the slope of the highway is misleading and it looks like the water is flowing uphill in the ditch. Then everyone should go home and have snacks. Remember to offer that Grandma should come in for snacks too and remember to help her back home afterwards. Go check on the hail stones in the freezer in the morning.

This Isn't About You Unless You Think It Is

It was in high school. We were on a bus, probably a "pep bus" waiting to leave for a basketball or football "away" game somewhere. Some of us were horsing around and joking back and forth and she turned back in her seat to face me and said "Oh, Karma, you are soooo dramatic." And with that statement, she shut me down. I flushed red with embarrassment and shrunk down in my seat, the joke forgotten and all joy taken out of the moment. Others were uncomfortable, some annoyed at the both of us for wrecking their fun and some just at her for being so mean, but that was no consolation to me.

Ever after, I was careful to "keep it in line", moderate the drama, when she was around, or even when any of her friends who might talk were around. I was stifled, inhibited, leashed, under her steely nasty sarcastic patronising control. I hated it. I hated her. I see her photo now and then or come across an article about her, at least I used to, she seems to have faded into obscurity lately, and every time, I felt the shame, the embarrassment, the sharp sting of the put down.
What was it? Was I getting more attention than she was or was I just too over the top and it irritated her calmer demeanor? Was I really offensive in some way? It does not matter. It is not right, and certainly not kind to shut someone down like that.
So don't you do that to me. Don't ask me to be less than I am. Don't tell me to keep it down, don't tell me to relax or calm down. If I want to be over the top happy and joyful, you can either join in my delight or shut up and let me be. If I am sad and carrying on, don't dismiss me and tell me I am over reacting. You don't know how much it hurts me because you can't feel what I feel, so don't tell me it is not as bad as I am making it. Maybe it is a terrible big deal to me. Support me and care about me but don't put me down. If you can't be there with me and share the drama, the ups and down, then get away. Don't tell me to be less, feel less, express less, love less, care less, feel less joy and less sorrow. Don't make me be less of the whole me just to suit your comfortable blandness and social decorum of calm and polite. Let me be all of me or get out of my way.

Loved

It was one of those family holidays where we were gathered with the cousins and aunts and uncles at Grandma's house, which was the rural equivalent of about a block away from our house on the same farmstead. In the usual way of childhood fickleness and temporary allegiances, for some reason unremembered, my sister and my cousins were refusing to play with me and I was nearly hysterical with sorrow and frustration and shame. My mother saw me crying off in some corner and rather than lecture and force the issue with the errant cousins, merely took my hand and walked me out the door. We walked to our house, where she took me into the living room and picked out not just one but a whole STACK of books, and settled me in next to her on the sofa and began to read to me. No pointless questions about why they were shunning me or who did what, but merely showing me maternal attention that was a pure and true form of affection, and showing it to me exclusively. Nestled there next to her, hearing her calm and smooth voice reading stories to me, I have never felt more loved. That moment would never leave me. No matter what happened ever, that day or for the rest of my live MY MOTHER LOVED ME. At that moment in time in fact, my mother loved me most of anyone or anything in the whole WORLD.
That is all you need to know, that one person loves you and will be on your side when you need it.
Soon, we grew a bit bored with the books and a little curious what was going on back at Grandma's house, maybe a little hungry for the lavish banquet of holiday foods, so we set back off down the path. And having established such lovely rapport with the reading, we chatted all the way and were still chatting when we walked in the kitchen door to find the family engaged in the usual chatter and laughter and banter. The cousins who had wanted nothing at all to do with me previously now realized me for the valued celebrity that I was and wanted to know where we had been and what we had been doing and suddenly wanted, needed desperately to include ME in their games and activities.
All was right with the world and I hope I gave my mother one last smile of thanks before I ran off to play with them.

Just a Weekend

It's really just a weekend
One of fifty two
In any given year
Where women come together
On the banks of a river
In a place so rural
It truly really is
In the middle of nowhere.
It's really just an hour
When the bonfire burns bright
Drawing us in
Greetings exchanged
News shared
Conversation flows
Voices raised in rhythmic sound
Drums beat
Hearts lifted.
It's really just a moment
When you're handed o'er the drum
Your fear wants to say no
But you don't let it win.
You feel the power
That was always there inside you.
They saw, they felt, they knew
They drew it out of you
Into the air, into the night
Into your consciousness
Where it will sustain you the whole year,
That instant when
You
Made them dance!

Birthday Memories

When I was very little and my grandmother still lived in town, she would come out to the farm and we would go out to dinner at the Riverside Supper Club and we would get to order dessert.

One year when I was fairly young, I had a birthday party at my house with cousins and second cousins. The house was built when I was three years old, so it was maybe my 4th birthday. My cousin, born the May before me, was my greatest hero, after my dad. I remember informing him that now that I had my birthday, I was the same age as him. He insisted he was still older by a half year. I said there were not half years, that I was the same number of years old as he was, and we fought and I screamed at him and cried and I remember being so upset that my dad had to come pick me up and hold me above the fray to try to comfort me and tell me that, yes, we said our ages in full numbers, but that Lee was indeed born in the summer before me and would ALWAYS be truly a half year older.

On my twenty first birthday, I lived in a house with three other girls and there were goings on that I didn't put together and several times, they needed to borrow my car and once I found a cake pan under the bed when I was looking for laundry but still did not put things together. My boyfriend took me to dinner and then wanted to 'stop by the house' that I shared with the girls and STILL I was clueless and there they were to surprise me with a party. They brought out the cake and there were looks exchanged. Finally the story came out that they had made an elaborate layer cake with frosting decorations and had stored it in the oven but then one of them had turned the oven on and ruined it, so they had to secretly repair it before the party.

On my thirtieth birthday, I was traveling for business to Columnbus, Ohio, where a favorite cousin lived and learned that her son and I shared a birthday. So on his sixth birthday and my thirtieth, I went to a party with little kids and his mom and I drank too much wine and played pin the tail on the donkey.

One year after 30 and before 40, my friend Dorothy had us all over for dinner. I had talked of a white layer cake with lemon filling and white frosting with lemon zest that my mother had made for me when I was too old for angel food with confetti baked in, so Dorothy called my mother for the recipe. Apparently having repressed my teen years, mother had no recollection of that sort of cake and poor Dorothy was embarrassed to have called and bothered her. But she looked up recipes in books and made her approximation of the lemon concoction and it was grand. But mostly, I was touched at all the effort she went to!

On my fiftieth birthday, I was in South Dakota at a nursing home with my mother trying to rally the forces and get her motivated to be more mobile so that she would eventually get out of there. A giant box arrived, which I assumed was get well flowers for her, but was actually three dozen alstromeria for my birthday! They lasted the entire 2 weeks I was there and I rearranged the last stragglers to leave for her in a smaller vase just before I left: It was one last little thing I could do for her before I left her to her caregivers.

This year, I am at the lake house with 11 Boy Scouts and 5 of their dads. We chatted and they played games until past midnight last night and this morning, got up around 6, when I had to open my gift which was a griddle so that we could make pancakes for them all for breakfast. They are ice fishing and I am making chili for their dinner. The views are lovely of the snow covered ground and the bare trees against the snowy lake and all is well at 52.

Savage Blood Sucking Beasts

I took one for this photo.

Mother

We were at my grandmother's house for some family holiday with all the aunts and uncles and cousins and I was feeling sad and alone because the older cousins would not play with me. She took me home and read books to me alone and talked to me about how hurt I was by the cousins' snub and discussed with me things I might say when we got back that might get them to include me. It was obvious that day that my mother loved me dearly and greatly and would do anything to make me feel happy and secure, but it was also implicit that I would get back out there and take responsibility and do my part to make things better for myself. I don't remember what books we read nor what specific advice she gave or what the issues with the cousins even were, but I know it worked when we rejoined the gathering and I know that my mother has always loved me and given me her best so that I might find my way and make a good and happy life for myself. Today I am old enough to have been on my own for most of my days, yet she still supports and guides and encourages me; she is still there for me just as she was that sad and lonely day so long ago, kind and wise and there for me, my mother!

Too Damn Hot

The 16 house guests hit the road and I settled into for a good day's work. I was gathering up the towels, upstairs and down, kitchen and bath, to start the laundry to run while I planted those shrub and trees, when the phone rang. My friend was on her way through and wanted to stop. We spent a while sitting on the deck, rocking in our chairs and talking about friends and family and events of the day. And complaining a bit how it is hot, too hot to do anything but sit, and it was nice. Made me remember taking 'lunch' to the fields on a hot July afternoon back when the farm still had some hay fields that had not yet yielded to the plow and it seemed to me there was nothing to do hotter than haying and no place on earth hotter than that hayfield. We went back home to the luxury sitting with our books in front of the humming droning fans, while the men went back to the hottest job in the hottest place. And now after an unusually cool and long spring, 'seasonable' weather is finally hot upon us and we have a new thing to gripe about, how it makes us sweat and makes the work seem twice as hard. Or, we could just sit on the deck and drink iced lemonade and plant when it cools in the evening.

Farming Sucks

The romantic myths of farming make me want to puke. Ah, the farm is so pretty, it must be great to work with the cute animals, "farmers feed the world", winters off, being outdoors all the time, no hours to keep, no office to go to. It's a job. A job like anything else has its good points and its crappy parts. Like never knowing if what you put into it will pay off at harvest time. Like being at the mercy of the weather. Like the dirt. The mud. The shit. Literally, if you raise animals. Or work outdoors where there are birds and bugs. The wind. Sunburn and dry skin and pollen that makes your head swell shut and dusty grit on your skin that turns to slimy mud when you sweat. And sore muscles from every new thing you do. It is comfortable out there about 3 days of every year and before that it is too cold and after that too hot and way too hot and even hotter and then it is okay for 3 more days but it is windy as hell and then it goes back to being too cold until next season when it starts cold again. And wet. Too wet until it is just right for that one day then too damn dry for the rest of the summer until it snows so you can't get a tractor into the fields for the goo. Pests in the form of weedy plants and insects and birds and raccoons and deer. Crops lost to drought and flood and hail and hard pounding rain and too early snow. Long long hours. Dinner for the farmer after the rest of the family is long in bed sleeping soundly. Sundays off but barely enough to catch up on rest before starting all over again at sun-up on Monday. Yeah, it's a great life. If you like hard work for questionable iffy maybe payback. If you like risking most of what you have saved again each year. If you like being uncomfortable or actually in pain. If you like working in solitude most of the time. If you like boring routine most days and work halting crisis of an expensive breakdown every now and then. No, farming sucks. It is hard hard work. For fairly good pay sometimes and an utter loss others, all at great and uncertain risk.

Compass Rose

The first time I saw this idea was on the floor of a stone house that was hand built by one of my heroes, a local naturalist. His house is on a river, and his water source is a spring that flows through his house and out to the river. His staircase echoes the shape of his wife's baby grand piano! Some of his crown molding is grapevine split into quarters. I loved the hand crafted touches in his beautiful home. We have been trying to fit a compass rose into every remodeling project and building project since and finally, at the lake house, it seemed right. This granite tile is set into the slate floor of the foyer, revealing the orientation of the house in relation to true North. Up north, where we came from in North Dakota, up north where we spent lake vacations at Star Lake when the kids were younger, up north where the Boy Scouts went on High Adventure paddling and are going again in a couple weeks. If you were looking at a map of Lake Redstone, knowing where true North is might help you understand where our lot is in relation to the southern bay of the lake. Knowing the cardinal directions might help you understand where the sun will rise and set in relation to the houses amazing windows and views. The design has an abstract sail as a North arrow in honor of the little sailboat my kids and their dad rescued from the garbage and restored to use. The bur oak represents the prairie savanna that covers the rolling hills of the region. The sugar maple represents the maple-linden woods that shelters the stream edges and valleys. The white pine grows to towering heights along the shores of the lake on the sunnier drier slopes, and our lot whose slope faces nearly north has hemlocks that drape their graceful branches near the shore where we put in our canoes and kayaks. Some day, I hope to carve this design into a linoleum block, reversed of course, so that I can make prints of it.

FLAT

The. Flattest. Place. On. Earth.

Shoes and Thanks

Ever see a lone shoe at the side of the road and wonder how it got there? Passenger riding with a foot out the window and the shoe blew off? Kids playing tricks on each other. Flushed out of airline toilets? Fallen off feet of riders of passing horses? Grown from a piece of lost shoelace? Well, I tried to abandon a pair once on Highway 1 just south of where it joins up with Highway 11 at the southern edge of North Dakota.
In high school advanced biology class, we dissected baby sharks. In between class sessions, we kept them suspended by a string in a drum of smelly liquid. Some of it would splash on the floor where you could not help but walk in it as you retrieved or stashed your eviscerated shark carcass. During this process, the gooey rubber of my trendy mid-70's wedge platform shoes absorbed the horrible dead sea life smell. It was gross, disgusting to carry that smell around with me all day every day.
One morning, leaving for school wearing snow boots, I set those shoes on top of the car to load other things, maybe my books or a gym bag, and it occurred to me that if I 'forgot' them up there . . . so I did.
I spent the day in glee that I had 'ditched' the nasty things . . . only to arrive home that afternoon to find that my dear uncle had seen them on the side of the road and rescued not one but both of them for me and taken them to the farm.
There was a nasty gouge in one of the trendy fashionable wedge heels and of course they still stank to high heaven, but my mother made me keep wearing them anyway. I hated those shoes. I bet they are still there in some dark corner of some closet in her house. They will never go away.

Snow . . . in March

Snow is so lovely.

In October, then the first few flakes fly, it signals at long last an end to the summer ragweed allergy season; all those nasty plants will be finally frozen and shut down. The big white flakes tumble down and kids rush out to catch them on their tongues and make trails as the ground is covered. It is cute when the Halloween pumpkins have a tam of snow. And those early autumn accumulations usually give way to thaws and a few more warm days.

In December, we all long for a white Christmas and the idea of snow for the holidays is oh so romantic and fun. We want enough to coat the ground but not so much so that it will interfere with our travels to and from holiday celebrations and gatherings. We are willing to dress warmly and walk and drive more carefully to be blessed with the beauty of the sparkling crystal snowflakes coating trees and covering the ground in a foamy blanket.

In February, the whole thing starts to sour a bit. The novelty has worn off and the romance is gone. In February, we want our romance to be chocolate, not frozen airborne crystals of precipitation. We pine for spring and curse each new snowfall, but generally resign ourselves to at least a few more weeks of less than pleasant weather before spring arrives. Yet fools like me are apt to rush out after a February snow storm to catch one last set of beautiful scenes, especially if the branches are coated and the day is sunny. Optimism can reign when you think it is the last big storm, and beauty can be found in it.

But snow in March? Especially snow that follows a flood caused by a ground frozen still and deeply by an early end to last autumn and a blizzard dumping massive quantities of the stuff just a few weeks ago? Such a snow that paints the tops of the sandbags and adds frosting-like edging to the swollen creek is cruel. There is nothing pretty or interesting or fun or romantic about such a snow and I do not blame the North Dakota and South Dakota and eastern Minnesota residents that cursed the white stuff these past few days. In March, one can be forgiven for being curmudgeonly about snow. In March, I will not ask anyone to see the bright side or find the silver lining to snow on the sandbags. I will not ask anyone to find the beauty in a March snow that comes during a battle against an oncoming flood.

Hot Air or Things Similar

My dad the corn farmer and his brother who was also his business partner were constantly engaged in a battle against the evil of the blackbird. They spent great amounts of time thinking about plots to destroy or avert the creatures. They read all the current farm magazines and followed every lead when the topic was mentioned. They invested in numerous advertised methods and rejected more than a few for concerns of compassion and environment. Poisons were ruled out as hazards to farm cats and things that also harmed other forms of wildlife were not considered. But the men were creative and inventive, often welding this or that to a tractor or digger or planter to enhance its performance, and so they did a great deal of thinking and tinkering in their spare time to discover ways to exclude or divert or chase the flocks of blackbirds from their fields. The dominant working method for most of my later childhood and teen years was 'poppers'. These were devices resembling cannons that ran off propane gas. The supply tank, the size used by a modern day barbecue grill, was attached to the popper by a hose. The gas feeding into a chamber advanced a timing mechanism and when the chamber was full, a spark was triggered using a flint common to cigarette lighters, and a great boom was emitted from the business end of the device. A summer ritual when the corn was mature enough to be damaged by the black flocks was to get the poppers out of storage and fill the tanks and adjust the timing. When that task was the order of the day in the farm shop, it was more than annoying to be home for that afternoon of frequent yet random booming . When the terrible flocks began to arrive and assemble, the poppers were distributed around the fields. The lazy farmer set them out there and left them, and the birds eventually acclimated to the regular repetition of the sound and rendered them useless. But the smart farmer turned them off at dusk and turned them on again in the morning, a chore that was often delegated to the teen who could drive. The acquisition of vehicles that could reach the parts of the field without access roads became a side hobby and ATVs and small motorcycles were common accessories in this war.

But still, having a workable functioning adequate method such as the poppers was not enough. No. They kept reading, kept sending away for brochures and articles and reports of scientific studies, kept asking around, and of course, kept tinkering and inventing. One summer, the great "big idea" that was going to solve this all was weather balloons. The brothers were going to fill them once and tether them at the edges of the fields and suspend various moving and reflective and noisy devices from them until the right effect was achieved. I am sure that they relished the opportunity for continued tinkering and adjusting and trials that this method presented. Maybe they secretly envisioned this leading to their fifteen minutes of fame as their invention caught on and saved countless farmers time and money. I remember the excitement and anticipation of the big day that we were going to Aberdeen to go to the airport to go to the weather department to talk to the weather people to attempt to secure a number of said weather balloons. And I remember the somber and sad end to that day, the quiet ride home, the disappointment that descended on the formerly lively group when it was learned that . . . it wasn't going to work. The very malleability that allows the weather balloon to be filled and rise and be resilient to bumping and bouncing in the wind also renders it soft enough that it continues to expand due to the pressure of the air inside, until it gets larger and thinner and eventually pops. Meteorologists take advantage of this expansion to allow it to rise as it displaces greater amounts of the air around it to sample and transmit data on various characteristics of the atmosphere at various altitudes and they take advantage of the popping in hope that at least some of the falling mechanisms will be found and returned to them for the gathering of more detailed data and for reuse. So even if the men invested the great sums in the balloons and tethered them to their fields, within a few days time, they would expand to the point that they would become thinner and thinner and eventually, pop, and drop that investment into an inelegant pile of useless thin rubber. Bad investment, messy disposal problem. Another dead end in the neverending always challenging world of cornfield blackbird control.

The Vast Empty Sky, The Vast Empty Land - II

The land there is vast, the sky even more so. I hated it as a child. All that empty was things I couldn't have and things I couldn't see; it was limits on what I could experience. It was limits on what I could be. I wanted flowers and I wanted to make things, art and maybe even music, though I had no talent whatsoever at that part. I wanted books and museums. I wanted to meet interesting people and learn things, and all the vast empty was just in my way. It was miles of empty between me and what I wanted to experience. I couldn't wait to get out. Sure, I loved some people there, but I hoped they would visit me after my great escape from the vast empty.

But you can't really go, not entirely anyway. The traffic and noise and constant movement of it all would wear me then, press me down. I missed the way seasons and weather mattered.


The seasons and the vast sky with its weather and the vast land with it soil were all that mattered, it seemed sometimes. We prayed for rain and thanked God when it came. We prayed for calm and dry at harvest and thanked God for the bounty. We lived there where land and sky touch, on that vast plain, that thin plane between earth and sky, hunkered down on the land, clinging to what we made for ourselves to ride out the winter blizzards, the summer hailstorms, the tornado, the dry winter days when the snow was all so driven down solid that only wisps here and there tore loose, but still the wind drove on, rolling weeds, bending branches, whipping scarves, tearing coats open, wrenching doors from out hands. Summer sun beat down day after rainless day as grain crops shrunk lower to the ground as hopes ground down low too. Nothing was easy about it. We should have been a dour and morose and sullen people, but we were not. Hearts soared with the blue sea of a flax field in flower or the golden yellow of ripe wheat and spirits flew with the northern lights and the milky way and the full moon so bright it cast shadows on the lawn grass. Vast flocks of honking geese filled that sky and settled on that land. Meadowlarks called, butterflies tumbled on breezes. But those moments still were only moments and I wanted out. For years, I never looked back.

It took me a long long time to love it in any kind of non-begrudging way. Missing the harvest called me back first, a vague uneasiness in the late summer, a wistful longing for something else, a lingering sense that I was missing something, something important, something big. There are times now, I am driving somewhere out there. Clouds tumble across the sky casting shadows that move across the land so fast it takes my breath away. The water in some pothole glistens in the bright sun or the skeleton of some long dead cottonwood calls to me. The perfect geometry of an old grain elevator, the perfect linearity of rows of corn or beans, the things men have done to claim and tame the vast land. Or just a clump of prairie grass or a wild rose at the crumbled edge of the road pavement, testimony to the once vast prairie that stretched horizon to horizon and maybe would again if we left it to those stubborn remnant plants. I stop the car at the side of the road. I stand on the center line and look every direction and just breath it in. You can do that out there, find a place to stop in the middle of the road and take in the vast. Someone might come by, and they might even ask if you need help, but if you say no, just enjoying the space, they will smile and move on. They might call you a kook when telling the folks at the post office about the mad lady with out of state plates standing in the middle of the highway, but deep inside, they know what it was all about. They understand that it is vast, above and below and in every direction, flat and vast, and sometimes, you just have to stop and be in it for a bit. Take it in. Stop thinking so much and just be, out there, small, but still, the only one there to feel the vast. It is vast and empty and it seems to go on forever, but in that vast sunlit and windswept and starlit space, it holds so very much that matters.

The Fake Sky That Really Was

I don't think much of the North Dakota landscape. I grew up there and to me, it is too flat, too boring, too nothing, not very interesting at all. Too much flat and much too boring to drive across and all pretty much the same for too many miles. But sometimes, like this day, it takes my breath away. This is how it really looked, patterns of light and shadow on the land and amazing colors of blue in the sky. I was glad to be alive and glad to be there!

Self-Portrait in Van

It was September and I was in a park in the middle of somewhere camping out of my car. In a place that is really something special on that second weekend. LaMoure County Memorial Park, Grand Rapids, North Dakota.
This is the view of the side door of my 1996 Dodge Caravan. At time of driving, it had a transmission leak, a brake fluid leak, and didn't always start. It shimmied at certain speeds, but hey, I had to get to WomanSong, so I left a couple days early just in case. Didn't need it, the thing drove fine, so I had time to hang out, relax, chill, livin' the good life outta the side of my van!
I will decode for you some of the items in the photo:
The RV out the other side window: I found out my 'alarm clock' for the day I taught a workshop first session in the morning wasn't going to be in camp after all and had gone back to town, so I knocked on these peoples' window and asked, never having met them, "What time are you getting up in the morning?" After some explaining and some if-then-well-thening, we decided I would borrow their alarm clock, get up and shower, and that would be about the time they needed to get up, so I would return their alarm clock at that point, thereby being their 'alarm clock'. WomanSong is like that. We take care of each other!
Inside the van, there are damp beach towels across the seat from prior showers, and bags of clothing for various parts of this trip. Traveling clothes, cool funky special WomanSong clothes, extra stuff for if it gets cold, visiting my mom and sister later clothes. Yeah, it is full over there on that other side of the seat.
The back of the van is just as full, with all the stuff for the three classes I am teaching and stuff for if I visit my friend Ken and we need to make photo notecards for the gallery and other art supplies for if I get the hankering to do a sketch or make some earrings for someone.
This side here is the pantry, and you can see the cooler were the magical Mountain Dews keep cold and the brown paper bag of food I bought in town and a red box of crackers and a green reusable market bag of food I brought from home and that loaf of good crusty bread from Whole Foods.
The backpack basket is what goes with me down the road to the park where WomanSong is held. It carries the WomanSong schedule of events, a water bottle, my spare Dews, maybe a snack, my camera, my notebook for writing down ideas and phone numbers and email addresses of people I meet, and my wallet and oh, maybe some lip balm and bug spray and a handkerchief or two. It brings back the CDs I buy from the musicians and any art I buy from the artists.
The hat is part of my 'uniform'. It shades me from the sun and covers up my bad hair on the days I don't feel like fighting the shower line and well, you just gotta wear a hat to WomanSong!
Don't you think YOU should come to WomanSong in 2009?

Some of My Heroes

They take my class. They say nice things to me. They say nice things about me. But they knew about WomanSong before I did! They were there one maybe two years before I even heard of it! They are smart and funny and fun and kind. The one in the cool layers and amazing scarves performs on stage, playing guitar and singing! Wow! A real artist! And she takes my class! I am wearing lots of scarves this year in honor of her. It makes me feel more expressive, more womanly, more . . . like I am finding my song! Thank you, women of WomanSong and see you in September!