My magnolia tree is young yet - it hasn’t got the size it needs to be truly magnificent, but those blossoms are amazing, aren’t they?

I’m not actually certain what this is, but I’ll be photographing it all season, so I’ll figure it out when it gets bigger.

These are wild irises!  We found them growing in our woods and transplanted them.

While not actually floral per se, this birch peeling ranks up there with the other sources of beauty, wouldn’t you say?

This little patch of wild violets took hold under the stone ledge off my front walkway.  It’s very welcome there.

Finally, take a look at my redbud tree in bloom.  When it’s done, the most gorgeous red leaves will appear.  We were told not to get too attached when we planted this tree in our front garden, because apparently we weren’t in the perfect climate zone to ensure its survival.  However, zones have been changed and we are no longer zone 5, but a more hospitable (at least for red bud trees) zone 6.

]]> http://thebluetwin.wordpress.com/2008/05/16/545/feed/ Organic Mama Magnificent magnolia http://thebluetwin.wordpress.com/2008/05/15/trials-and-tribulations-of-a-friend/ http://thebluetwin.wordpress.com/2008/05/15/trials-and-tribulations-of-a-friend/#comments Thu, 15 May 2008 19:27:51 +0000 Organic Mama http://thebluetwin.wordpress.com/?p=544

When I was in the seventh grade, I became friends with one of those people whose smile is infectious, whose warmth and kindness and quick wit makes her the sort of person who stands out from the murk of adolescent bullshit and backstabby bitches.

Back then my friend always went out of her way to celebrate birthdays; she wrote heartfelt cards with lots of hearts and xoxoxoxox lines and could always be counted on for a hug.  She always had a boyfriend and I can easily remember hushed conversations between us where she shared and imparted girlfriend wisdom while (relatively boyfriendless) I did little more than blush.

She stood up for me at my wedding, wearing a floor-length green velvet gown (that was too tight to fashionably accommodate underwear), and when it was her trip down the aisle 4 years ago, when she married a man she’d met and fallen in love with during a year living in Anchorage, I flew out to Vegas (where they were living) and stood up in champagne silk and stupid shoes for her.  She and her love were very always in touching distance and planned to spend the rest of their lives together. She’d really been waiting for this kind of relationship, this kind of guy, since forever.

We don’t speak often - maybe once every few months, but around November, I couldn’t get her on the phone.  What did I do?  I took it personally and although I thought I had learned this lesson, but when I didn’t hear from her on my birthday, I perceived her lack of communication as a sign that she was mad at me or that I had done something to upset her.  I called her a lot, got insecure and failed to see this was about her and whatever it was that she was going through and, specifically, NOT sharing with me. She emailed, apologized for being a bad friend, but said little more than generalities beyond that.

The last time I spoke with my friend in October, she was asking about coming out to the northeast to attend my daughter’s Bat Mitzvah ( she came to mine, back in 1980), and then… nothing.

What did I do?  Stalk.  Worry.  Stalk AND worry.  Send understanding emails and texts.  Cards full of love.

I missed her at the Bat Mitzvah and since a lesson in patience seemed to be in order, backed off and waited to hear from her.  I am not the most patient person on the planet and since I could easily tell something, perhaps illness, perhaps an inability to have the children she’d always wanted,  perhaps something else was WRONG, I had to actively put her from my mind and deal with the fact that while I was entirely ready to be her shoulder, as we’ve been for the other for 25 years, SHE wasn’t ready to talk.  I found this completely frustrating and continued to worry, not that THAT did the slightest good. I wanted to be an ACTIVE friend, ready to take care of her!  Not what she was ready for, I was repeatedly directed to the “please be patient” waiting room.

Three weeks ago, she emailed me to say that she was ready to talk, but I didn’t actually speak to her until this morning, when she answered my call. It was tremendous to hear her voice.

Turns out she’s not sick, as I worried she was.  Well, not physically.  She’s just heartsick.

Apparently, in DECEMBER, she officially separated from her husband. And then she coped by herself, cried for weeks and weeks, worked to untangle her life from his, and was too embarrassed, too disappointed, too angry to talk about it with me or her other friends.

This is a lesson for me into further understanding of human relationships. I find myself asking whether I could or would disappear from the lives of my friends if I were to go through something like this.  I don’t think I would, and I wish I understood, really grasped and didn’t judge that she DID. It’s selfish of me, and I feel small admitting it, but I was so worried, so convinced this was a worst case health scenario situation, I am partially relieved.

I’m so sad for her but glad she’s ready to be helped, to be listened to as she does the crying she warned me she’ll not be able to withhold. What’s clear to me from the short conversation we had is that she is over the worst of the sadstorms, the weeping jags and the anger, and while I wish I had been able to help her through that stage, I just wasn’t.  Now, she’s mostly disappointed, but determined to move on and get to the paperwork and other details that will undo her marriage.

She’s still all of those things she was, but now she’s less idealistic, more jaded.  If she needs me, I’ll be part of the team that helps her rebuild, encourages her and listens.

She lives too far away to hug, so I am sending her this one.

No particular themes for O’Mama today because randomness prevails - again.

1. This past weekend, my friend Jan came to visit me in New England from Chicago with her seven year-old daughter. This is us when I visited her when she lived in NYC and couldn’t resist poking her. Maturity runs rampant, no?

Jan and I have known each other since we played “champ “(aka “foursquare”) together when we were FIVE, just over 3.4 billion years ago. I hadn’t seen J since her wedding in 2000, I’d never met any of her three daughters, and I guess we settled into the long-distance friendship limbo; we phoned, we sent cards and books (”You’ve GOT to read this! Here I’ll get it for you…”), but we hadn’t been in the same breathing space for 8 years!?! Our weekend was lovely, with lots of catch up chats over mint tea and while our children were painting in the driveway while husband was fiddling in the garden, Jan and I got to enjoy a sunny and breezy spring day walk and talk. Alas, the weekend flew by, but the visit did me a world of good by distracting my from all the work I pretended didn’t exist…

2. Today I went off to get my state inspection done and confidently drove up to Spiffy lube and… I had a space cadet movement and went all mindless as to why I was there; ten minutes later I was paying for an oil change I almost needed and left, uninspected. I’m now 3 days over the state grace period and plan to do it tomorrow, but THIS time, I’ll tie a string around my finger.

3. Punimbook (punim: Yiddish for face) coughed up a friend request out of the deep dark reaches of my past last evening. Way back in 1988 I was a newscaster at McGill University’s student radio station and hung out with a crowd of ridiculously intelligent and creative people who were just a wee bit on the insane side. When I left Montreal, I left all of that behind except for some slightly spotty memories, so I was startled to hear from a man I’d had a desperate crush on from that crew. Now we’re “friends,” whatever the hell that means, but I hope it means I find out what he’s been doing for the last 22 years. What I find so interesting is that although I haven’t even THOUGHT of him or the station in years, this new, pseudo relationship has me awash in memories.

4. This morning I dropped off an application for a long-term sub position at the site of my teachering trial, where I taught freshman English (SO not my favorite age) and senior expository writing. My former mentor teacher is nearly 20 weeks’ pregnant and wants me to come in and take over teaching two sections of freshman, one of Am Lit, two of debate and persuasion, and possibly one of peace studies for just the over three months she’ll be on covered leave. I know I CAN do it, but after the relatively comfortable twice-weekly schedule of college courses, six classes, five days a week will require a HUGE energy and time commitment that I think I will have to have my family prepare for nowish. That said, I know she wants me to do it, but there have been other applicants… so I am going to attempt patiently waiting.

5. My speech students started delivering their visual aid speeches on Monday, but we only got through 5 of the 13 students. As I had feared most of them, despite lengthy conversations about the power and necessity of the well formed introduction and conclusion, just launched into the bodies of their speeches and then, stopped when they were done, with absolutely no wrap up. Grammar was, in two cases, essentially nonexistent (”we was,” “they was,” “there’s many problems”), but there was discernible effort. My three ringers, the students I KNOW will give good if not great speeches will present tomorrow. One can but hope. I got a great comment from Dingo the other day who, suffering similarly aggressively ungrammatical students, wrote about the desire to gouge out her eye with a chopstick. I’m thinking my students would respond with, “Why you doin’ that?”

6. Dr. who. Each Saturday evening some lovely soul in the UK makes the new episode available online and I find myself waking early on Sunday mornings to watch it before the rest of the house wakes up and needs me for something. Then, I find myself watching older episodes for hours like some dotty addict. Thing is, the show has infiltrated my brain and often when I should be bloody well doing something constructive, I daydream like a fifth grader. What things infiltrates your brains? Please tell me I am not alone!

7. Camp countdown has begun. This summer my darling daughters will return to camp up in Ontario for their fourth summer and they have been essentially unable to talk about much else. Discussions about what they need, what they’ve outgrown (everything) and the calls to gossip with friends in Canada about who is or who is not returning have begun. Boo remarked months back that she spends the better part of the year missing camp and her camp friendships and I see the intense anticipation she is feeling. Of course, she has done a LOT of changing both physically and emotionally over the year, so Mom here anticipates a very different summer for my now 13 year-old child.

8. Mrs. Chili has kindly replenished my supply of fine-tipped pens that for me make for more successful grading. I am certain there’s some pathology there, perhaps delusions, but I know I am far more apt to sail through a pile of exams or papers if the colors with which I scrawl all over the work are interestingly colored and satisfying to write. I’ve been avoiding those piles but now that I am sufficiently armed, onwards it is.

9. Boo was gifted very generously for her Bat Mitzvah and with some of those funds, intends to purchase a digital SLR Canon camera. Of course the model she wants is out of stock, so she’s slightly stompy and has started requesting I make a pilgrimage to whichever Bestest Buy store within 200 miles that has the thing, but has so far been mollified by the promise of our local store that it may come in within the week. Until then, I am certain she’ll ask me about roughly every hour or so.

10. Finally, this weekend we’re going to see what I’ve heard is an excellent treatise on the state of world politics and an actual thinking person’s film - Iron Man. I’m stupid excited. Review to follow.

Happy Tuesday!

I refer to the vast gulfs that separate those academically able, and those who should not be in college.

Yesterday, in my public speaking class, I gave the students an opportunity to put together an impromptu speech, and I provided a random topic on each of the 14 lined note-book pages I handed out. My instructions were to put together a short, organized (zingy opener, intro, body, conclusion) speech on the topic I’d provided, or one of their choice. I cautioned them to use good grammar and word choices (no, “My mother don’t cook,” or “SPEECH Yo!”) and suggested strongly that they be professional and handle the topics seriously. I gave them 15 minutes or so to work.

The topics I’d selected were ALL generic and varied from things like thunderstorms, rock concerts, college life, music, road rage, stand up comedy, breakfast, road trip.

Three speeches stand out for their coherence, their breadth, the speakers’ attention to detail and deliberation, while the others were notable mostly for their complete lack of actual substance. What could have been a fun exercise - and HAS been in the four other classes I’ve used it - was mostly a view of the south end of the spectrum. Let’s visit the academic pits, shall we?

Let’s call the first student Carla. An older lady (hmm, about MY age. Shaddup) back in school to pursue fashion design, she sauntered up to the podium on her six-inch hot pink heels and announced she was going to talk about thunderstorms. I anticipated an anecdote, some reference to her children and their either fear of lightning and the big booms of thunder or love of watching the electrical show… Moments after she opened her mouth, I had to fight the urge to scream: “I love thunderstorms, especially when I lived down in Florida because my friends and I would drop acid on the beach in Pensacola and watch the lightning…”

“EXCUSE me? Back up, Carla, Rewind, DELETE and start over! Are you kidding me???”

Without the merest hint of chagrin, she began again, concentrating on the experience pertinent to her topic, but she had already failed the exercise, certainly the judgment of what’s appropriate and what ISN’T, dammnit.

Two others mentioned the illegal or seriously questionable things they;d got up to: Miss “College Life” attempted to talk (in slangy, ungrammatical language) about how easy it was to get fake ID so she could get drunk (not, go drinking, just get wasted), and how the cops were always watching; Mr. “Rock Concert” only mentioned how much fun it was to stagger around drunk with other drunk people.

While I briefly considered taking my own life in protest, Mr. “Music” got up and launched into a concise, impassioned overview that went something like this…”Music has been a vital part of humanity since the dawn of time, when our own heartbeats set the rhythms of our lives. From tribal warfare drums to the bagpipes of the highlanders going to war, songs of passion, protest…” It was gorgeous and I didn’t want him to stop talking.

Mr. Stand-Up Comedy” did a similarly comprehensive and eloquent job at putting together a short, extemporaneous speech. He talked about how humor and laughter are humanity’s cornerstones and mentioned the icons of comedy and how much humor and satire reflect and shape our culture.

Finally, Miss “Road Trip” got up and talked about how to run your car for best efficiency, mentioned the high price of gas and the hot topic of small and or hybrid cars, how college students consider it a challenge to drive long distances, and where she would go if she had the time, never mind the money.

For the effort these last three showed, I was delighted. Yes, these are the most academically capable of my current classroom cohort, but beyond their significant advantages, they handled their assignment with respect. Many of the rest of the class are examples of the kinds of students a college with no entrance requirements other than a student loan attracts. These students at the other end, for whom the college is one of the only affordable options, I am sincerely grateful.

I sent them all this email this morning.

I wanted to thank you very much for taking the impromptu speech seriously yesterday and doing such an excellent job displaying what the exercise COULD and SHOULD have been about, instead of exploring the “illegal activity of the day” theme; you three stood out for your conscientiousness and passion and I am personally thanking each of you for being the kinds of students for whom teaching is interesting and worthwhile.

In my public speaking class, we’ve been discussing the variety of ways we as consumers are under a constant barrage of messages trying to persuade us of SOMETHING, often using sex, implications or suggestions of lack of some thing or quality, invitations to get on or off particular bandwagons, ideologies, etc…

We get a great many magazines into our household, from National Geographic, to Mother Jones, to Time and Newsweek, and my family and I are always on the hunt for the juicy ads (not, however, the most blatantly sexual ones) that we can sit around and deconstruct.

Most of these came from a Google search, but three of them came into our home in one magazine or another. I LOVE great ads with powerfully delivered messages, so this has always been one of my favorite classroom conversations because I get to provoke the students into thinking and really considering realms of things they take for granted without ever delving into the layers of meaning. The lightbulb moments: what I teach for.

I begin with vodka advertising…

1. SKKY Vodka. This one kills me on so many levels. As a piece of advertising art/propaganda (WHERE is that line?) the lines, the burgeoning focal point, the colors, the attitudes, the contrast in attire and those implications, the manner of the grip on the bottle, the building clouds… (source)

2. Absolut Vodka. Wholesomeness? (source)

3. Here we have for death in a bottle, brilliantly mocking the absolut ads. (source)

4. Three Olives Vodka: Sex in a glass with a side of British jingoism. (source)

5. Instant party vodka…

6. Belvedere Vodka. THIS one is slightly different from the print ad husband ripped out of I wish I could recall which magazine. In the print ad, the bottle is placed so that it aligns with the lines on the jeans and is, for all intents and purposes, that which extends from these rarely worn, upscale jeans. I am looking forward to using this ad in class l and hope to maintain an academic conversation without too much guffawing. Once I get the more obvious commentary out of the way, I am going to focus on the words used, the implications of the position of the woman, the color scheme, her expression, etc… Very rich, this one is.

7. An ode to an Absolut master of visual manipulation…. (source)

Now, leaving vodka behind, let’s look at other sources of visual directives for message delivery…

8. Straight to the point, eh? (source)

9. This is a classic and I anticipate a lot of conversation about assumptions, implications and stereotyping. (source)

Finally, here is one that I couldn’t NOT include. I have SO many to choose from if I wanted to focus on a sexually-directed message, but politically-driven advertising is a rich source. This one will need explaining to some of my less-than-aware students, but the message is pointy enough to discuss, particularly as we have already looked at length at the Nazis and the propaganda machine.

10. Straight to the gut. (source)

Happy Tuesday!!

I’ve a number of things making me distracted and stompy at the moment, however I am partially mollified by the sights of colorful blooms right outside my front door. AND the chocolate on my desk…

This first photo, the river of purple-y blue, shows wonderful grape hyacinths; it’s taken 4 years, but they’re starting to take over and are the first things you see walking up my front steps.

Here we have two colors of pulsatilla vulgaris and its furry stalks and flowers, which turn into something that looks very much like the puffball Horton hauled around in the Dr. Seuss book. (I got this Horton from this blog and while I still contend that pulsatilla is a likely Seussian stand-in, the folks at Suburban Wildlife Garden may have a more compelling argument about a flower found in Texas…)

Finally, the phenomenal phlox has begun to flourish.

I would post photos of my tulips, but a mole or some other hungry varmint ate them. All 80 of them. Growl.

MY tulips would have looked something like this…

Happy Friday, people!

]]> http://thebluetwin.wordpress.com/2008/05/02/photo-f-friday-2/feed/ Organic Mama http://thebluetwin.wordpress.com/2008/05/01/lost-in-a-good-book/ http://thebluetwin.wordpress.com/2008/05/01/lost-in-a-good-book/#comments Thu, 01 May 2008 19:48:45 +0000 Organic Mama http://thebluetwin.wordpress.com/?p=526

Yesterday when the bus pulled up at the mouth of our driveway and deposited my two offspring (silly term: they more got pushed out than sprang off, so maybe they should be called pushedouts), my youngest daughter absently disembarked, barely noticing her surroundings.

As she walked, she was entirely, completely, utterly immersed in her book and managed to look up only long enough to not trip over the metal threshold of the sliding doors as she entered the kitchen. I kissed both daughters hello, hugged them until they squealed and directed them with a pointed finger to go hang up their jackets and backpacks. The phone rang at that point and I got caught up in a conversation with my sister so I didn’t notice that my youngest had disappeared.

Ten minutes later I went looking for Monkeyface and found her, jacket still on, STILL wearing her ridiculously heavy backpack, leaning against the wall, lost in her literary world.

My garden calls to me.

During the time BEFORE I can safely plant without dooming plants to die of frost, I am making plans to eliminate some of the things that caused setbacks last year. which really prevented the kinds of success we were hoping for.

1. Hardwood sawdust and chipped nasty invasive autumn olive trees are going down in my garden paths to encourage me to not run the other bloody way when faced with the grass and weeds that come uninvited in to my vegetable patches. Bob will get to use one of his toys - the chipper el supremo - and I’ll get all sorts of workouts taking down the damn trees. I have a pole saw, hear me roar.

2. Spraying regularly to discourage the hoofed varmints from dining on my greens. We used a nasty concoction of putrefied eggs, garlic and cayenne pepper that really worked. Downside? Taking overly deep breaths in its vicinity.

3. Half-inch conduit piping. One of my dear husband’s ideas, these very reasonably-priced pipes, when driven about 2 feet into the ground, are remarkably sturdy and make attractive (well, if you like gray steel) trellis, arbors and bean poles. We’ve used them for a year or two as bean poles and they rock, so we’re expanding. Stay tuned for photos.

4. The conduit will provide the right home for my soon-to-be grape vines; Bob and I are about to invest in 3 different varieties of grapes and we’ll be planting 16 plants in all along our forty-foot pergola/trellis we’re putting up this weekend. We WON’T be planting Concord grapes because it gives Bob a case of the vicious ooks, probably from a traumatic Manischevitz-related Passover incident in his childhood.

5. My bed of red sunflowers, easily my favorite, will be (hopefully) welcoming 4 other varieties this summer. They are:

6. I welcome asparagus to my garden this year. We won’t be able to harvest for 3 seasons until it establishes itself, but I as I love this pee-transforming vegetable, I can’t wait until they arrive in the mail from Seeds of Change (where the sunflowers are from, as well).

7. Years ago, I planted some heliopsis - perennial sunflowers - which are spreading and coming up all over my beds; therefore, I am ripping them out and finding new homes for them. They grow to about 4 feet and are lovely, but they are energetic spreaders and I my front is replete with hundreds of shoots. Yep, work’s cut out for me this weekend!

8. Our new tractor arrives this Friday. John Deere took back our previous “entry-level”  yard machine, because it was a poor model they now even longer produce due to a plethora of problems, so they’ve earned our customer loyalty. Mowing - with earphones and goggles - is meditative to me, so I am excited to get myself onto that green and yellow monster and shut out the world.

9. Poison Ivy plagued us perniciously last year in a new corn bed we’d tilled in. DId I know that tilling and therefore disturbing unused ground practically scrteams for poison ivy?  Noooo.   In an attempt to smother that noxious weed, we’ve put down black plastic and weighed it down with leftover mulch hay. If poison ivy show up anywhere else, and it will - dammit - we’ll pull it all - leaves to roots, and bring it to the town dump.

10. In the next 3-4 weeks until we can safely plant most of my impatient (ok, so I’m projecting) seeds, I will attempt patience, cut down as many invasive trees as possible, and take photos of all the lovely things blooming around me.

Are YOU gardening this year?

Some of us walk obliviously through our worlds.

These people are not deficient necessarily, it’s just that they don’t pay much attention to their immediate surroundings. Walls have a tendency to leap up and smack these otherwise occupied folks and often, they can trip repeatedly over the same permanent fixtures in their homes.  Is it too much to ask to extend awareness of our bodies beyond our immediate skins?

This morning, my 75 year-old dad backed out his driveway INTO my husband’s Prius, which was parked right next to his Volvo.

The door is fine, but the passenger fender is dented and twisted, with the little plastic “hybrid” sign almost entirely obliterated: only the “brid” bit still exists and I have in it my pocket now. 

At first I was pissed - couldn’t he LOOK where he was backing up? Then I remembered, with empathy, backing into someone’s car as I shot out of the garage, and I decided to give my dad less of the frosty grumpy treatment. The pissed off returned when I realized my dad had oblivioulsy WALKED by MY car into order to get into HIS wrecking machine. He didn’t notice for reasons that remain obscure to me.  Perhaps he was lost in thought, or maybe he wasn’t aware of my little gold car because he didn’t expect it to be there and he was operating on automatic. 

Or maybe he just need to take his head out of his butt.

Last evening, my ten year-old daughter was in the shower and while bending to retrieve fallen soap, gashed her head on the sticking-out soap dish.  She started screaming, I dashed over, saw the blood all over her forehead, grabbed a washcloth to press on her head, and scooped her up. Fortunately, it wasn’t bad - scalp wounds are gushers - and a few hours of ice reduced swelling and pain. 

Thing is, she MUST have seen the soap dish, must have noticed it protruding from the wall when she took the soap OUT of it, but when she went to stand, she had forgotten about it.  SHE says the soap dish jumped out and bit her. 

My little spaz has a tender scalp, but is fine and has promised up and down to OPEN her bloody eyes, to stop bumping to doorways and walls, and to occasionally notice potential dangers in her enviroment.

As for my dad… well, I am planning on needling him with this little bit of expensive dumbassery for the rest of forever. 

I moved out of my parents’ house a very long time ago.

That aside I still come back fairly often to visit and more often than not, I inhabit my old room. It still has the grass wall paper, the posters of Amsterdam and of London , but none of my old furniture except my battered and hideously green bedside (and understandably left behind) table.

My father’s Jewish genealogical books, resource materials, and magazines have spilled over from his chaotic “office” next door - my younger sister’s old room - into this familiar and yet not familiar space and while I have absolutely NO claim on or say in what my esteemed parent does with the spaces in his home, I draw the line at large piles of holocaust survivor testimonies on my old bedside table.  I respectfully relocated this pile of invaluable but not soothing reading materials and then got out the stuff I like to have beside my sleeping place: glass of water, lip balm, my mouth guard to keep me from cracking my teeth while I sleep, and a good book.

Then I noticed the new computer in the corner.  When I lived here - from 1981 until 1992- I never had a computer in my room. Having this one here tempting me is not doing any good thing to my sleep habits. 

It’s been a LONG day; I taught one class this morning, listening to and feedbacking on 6 speeches (two students successfully applied for zeros on 15 percent of their grades by not showing up), then I came home to pack up the car only to be faced with a dog who had a pronounced disinclination to being locked up in her crate. In fact as soon as she heard my keys, she scampered off into the farthest reaches of my 6 acre property - across a small stream - to get away and I spent nearly 40 minutes trying to get her back in the damn house.  Normally a fairly obedient dog, she must have known I was keen to leave, AND it was 81 degrees and as a desert dog, she delighted in the heat and the opportunity to play. And I suspect to frustrate me. Eventually I twigged to bringing out her dog dish with food in it and banging on it, which happily resulted in the contrary creature bouding out of the forest of budding trees to my feet.  I will admit to some extreme satisfaction when after allowing her a snack, I clanged her crate shut.  Sometimes I am just petty. 

The girls and I headed north minutes later and had a gorgeous drive (averaging 43 mpg) over the mountains of Vermont.

It’s bedtime round these parts.  Good morning, Thursday!