Renaissance Day

I awoke to a Renaissance Day.

I've been blessed with several; my last one was in 1995. I was in my office, reading a newspaper article about living the rewarding life. "Sit down and ask yourself," the editorial writer challenged me, "how do you want it (life) to look?" I sat down that morning and resolved to enrich myself in several categories.

I was in what I had dubbed the Third Quarter of life and was living without health insurance. We had paid through the nose, never been sick, and cancelled it.  I pulled an article out of that very newspaper, telephoned the Women's Health Initiative, and joined their new (nationally acclaimed) research group on the spot in the estrogen/progesterone trial, the calcium/vitamin D trial, and the diet/lifestyle trial. The Initiative became what I would now call my "primary physician." I stayed in the research trials until they ended (ten years). Part one of what I called a Renaissance Day.

That same morning, I decided that I needed to do something about exercise. The Taoist Tai Chi Society of Tallahassee was holding its very first Jacksonville class the next week at, what was then, Florida Junior College. I joined that class. Later we met in the Unitarian Universalist Church. I practiced there once, and later twice, a week until 2007. I've been a much less faithful participant now that I actually live in Tallahassee, less than five miles away from headquarters.

While I was busy changing my life that morning, I realized that I also wanted to learn something. I had heard of French in Action, an amazing language series (it is now in revival online and elsewhere and has a huge cult following). I ordered the whole lesson plan, the textbooks, the complete series of tapes, and the workbooks. I used this immersion method of teaching oneself a language until my last tape player died and tapes themselves were long out of style, about a dozen years. I never really learned to converse like a pro, but I can read French and would be able to survive in Paris.

When the postman came into the store, I gave him the envelope in which I had enclosed my French in Action order form and a big check that would ensure me the excitement of learning something new.  He handed me the mail. On top of the pile (yes, it was that very same day) was a letter from Governor Chiles. He had appointed me to the Florida Board of Opticianry where I served until 2005. I didn't consider the timing a fluke. After all it was Renaissance Day.

In the afternoon, I began to search the newspaper ads for a cello. I never found one at a good price. I called Dr. Poppenbrach, a retired high school orchestra director, and the only class he had open was at 5:30 in the afternoon. I kept the store open until 5:00 on weekdays. In rush hour traffic, Orange Park was an hour away on a good day. Sadly, I shelved my cello plans but kept my eyes out for a used cello for many months. That little music education adventure never happened.

As soon as I realized that I couldn't get across town in time for a lesson with or without a musical instrument, I shifted my gears. I decided to concentrate on music in another way. I've been an opera buff ever since. You can cook the most marvelous Italian food while enjoying opera!

Yesterday, I was confirmed into the Episcopal church. Not a small step for a Southern Baptist girl of nineteen years, turned Methodist for twenty-three years, turned chronic visitor of many churches (member of none) for over twenty-nine years more. Thankfully, I did not need to re-affirm my faith or search for my spirituality. Those things have never wavered since my very first, childhood, Renaissance Day.

I've found a lot to love about that denomination and about the church that I now call home. After all, I have been labeling myself "Episcopal" for thirty years. I'm happy with the decision. My heart is singing this morning. I also love working in the food pantry, being a member of the Spirit and Creativity Guild, and (although I don't always attend) finally belonging to a book club filled with readers whose opinions I admire and respect.

I know that today is a Fourth-and-Final-Quarter Renaissance Day. There aren't a great number of changes to make, however, at this stage of the game. I'm still being "followed" and "charted" by the Women's Health Initiative.  I now have wonderful health insurance unless the Affordable Healthcare Act screws it up somehow.

For obvious reasons, I should order a course in Spanish this afternoon. This is Florida, after all, and Spanish-speakers abound. Tom and Jack will be fluent speakers just like their dad. I'm going to want to know what they are talking about when they break out of English and enjoy their second language.

I also want to get some Metropolitan Opera tickets. The theater here in Tallahassee shows the complete Met season locally on the big screen.

I've (just now) decided to set a weekday (Thursday, I think) for rambling around, taking photographs, getting to know the history of this, my relatively new, home in the Red Hills of Florida. I've put off having that kind of fun for six years. In truth, I'm getting a little reclusive. I can't really see to drive, and especially park the car, at night. I need to shift my perspective and take advantage of the adventures I can have during the daylight hours.

This morning I woke up from a troubling dream. The Taoist Tai Chi Society was in shambles for some reason and I was on the sidewalk looking at the destruction. A woman near me asked why I was so upset. "I just wanted to do a little Tai Chi," I answered. Tai Chi? Yes. But not there at the center on Thomasville Road. I have my reasons and they are good ones. The dream was right. That ship has sailed.

I began practicing the Tai Chi set in the garage several months ago. Moving meditation. I vow to be more faithful to the discipline. I need to practice religiously. I've studied the philosophy of Taoism for years. It's tenants see one through change in a way that western thought-patterns sometimes lack. The study of Taoism makes for a great introduction to a knowledge of Chinese history,  an appreciation for Chinese art, and a love of Chinese poetry and calligraphy.

Renaissance Day is truly upon me this morning. Plans are set. Adventure is afoot. I might even call the Board of Opticianry office later and "retire" my license. There won't be another #1926 in Florida Opticianry. I feel that it's time to hang that little adventure out to dry. I'm not going down Optical Road again, although it was perfect for me when the time was right.      

Aging: A Pain Somewhere

I almost never consider age. Yes, I walk slower and less far, tolerate not nearly as much sunshine and heat, sleep longer, eat fewer raw tomatoes, climb no ladders, and depend on a small army of helpers to do some of the heavy chores that I once enjoyed doing myself. I rarely consider this a sign of aging, but of course it is. It must be.

Only under stress do I begin to feel as if I might be too old for this or that. It doesn't have to be real stress either because imaginary stress will work just fine.

Take today. I woke up and could barely walk. It felt as if I had a crack in my pelvic bone. Pain means little or nothing on most days and I usually bank on the fact that it will disappear overnight.  Today, however, I took the pain to heart worrying about all the things I wouldn't be able to do if I didn't soon feel better. In the words of Woody Allen, "I am not (being) a hypochondriac. I am (being) an alarmist." Parenthesis, my words.

My to-do list was a giant. I had to be able walk. I wondered about pain. Logical Caroline told me that I was on the right side of the ground; that I probably pulled something on Wednesday by crawling around on the floor, looking under the furniture for my lost car keys; and that, since I had not lost weight or appetite, this pain was not cancer.

Loony Caroline disagreed but decided to make an effort not to worry.

Forcing myself to disregard the pain as well as the stress of disregarding it - chalk the whole thing up to aging - caused me to behave as if I were eons older. I took pictures of the HP printer and the shop vac cover so that I could be sure of getting the right printer ink and vacuum bags. Then I left home (guess what?) without my cell-phone.

I got to the grocery store and decided that I was walking better. Good thing, as I needed to park much farther away from the door than usual. I chose my items, I stood in line. $54.29. Suddenly it struck me that my purse felt extra light. My big, heavy, silver wallet was in the car.

So I race-walked out and back to Publix again. I found the bankcard on the passenger seat, the wallet (which I never use without replacing it into the purse) was casually open and in the center bucket. "Yes," Logical Caroline reminded me. "Same story with the lost car keys! Ditto, forgotten cell phone."

So much for "She's getting older but her mind's still good." I'm not even going to tell you about Sunday, how I was late for confirmation make-up class, or about the book of church history that I read in 24 hours to try to assuage my guilt.  Nor will I mention that I needed the class because I missed the very first one - wrong date marked on the calendar.

I'm going to wrap up this tale of woe because I just got a call from my cousin, Bebe. She forgot to send Fred a birthday card. His birthday was on September 17th. This is the 27th. Oh, my. It must have been because so much is going on up her way. So much stress! Her mind is gone.

She felt much better knowing that I remembered to buy his card (and one for Margaret) and forgot to send both of them!

In addition, after I clued her in about my own day, we had a giant, good natured laugh together. If we are aging, and we must be, we might as well find fun in it. "Get a good night's sleep," she advised. "Don't try to do so much," I suggested. She didn't tell me, specifically, that she woke up this morning with a pain somewhere, but I'll bet she did.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/08/13/this-amazing-animated-chart-shows-the-aging-of-america/

Yardbirds, for a Start.

Photo by Gloria Dawson/The Daily Green

http://www.thedailygreen.com

After I reviewed Michael Pollan's book, Cooked  http://michaelpollan.com I vowed to take a year, go through the chapters, and do a slow-but-steady turnaround in the kitchen and in the way I do things there.

Well, I've been good (A+) at the doing but have done not very well at reporting back to you. My first priority was to always have two good chicken stocks in the freezer. At all times. Without fail.

I bought the smallest local free-range chicken that I could find. Plump for its size and with no water added. I wanted it to render about three quarts of good, rich broth and that's exactly what it did. I intended it to be my Thai jungle soup broth but switched in the middle of my plan and made a savory, tangy stock instead. The smell permeated the house. Succulent, for lack of a more expressive word.

The local yardbirds are expensive but they are dense and tasty - like you remember from years gone by. Chicken pieces were smaller on Mother's platter. Yet, a chicken still gave the same feeling of satisfaction that these huge, watery, salty, and mushy legs, thighs, breasts, and wings do today. Probably more.

I made a Panzanella with chicken and capers while the broth was cooling down a little. That was my dinner yesterday. I had enough chicken left to make chicken salad for tonight - chunky, with the celery and apple cut the same size as the breast meat.

When I'm hungry for chicken again, I'll hunt down another one of these birds. Next time, I'll make the Thai seasoned broth for the freezer. I predict that I'll have enough chicken from that session for a Thai chicken salad and maybe a Chinese dish that requires cooked poultry.

I really need to sharpen my knives. These little birds will make several braised poultry dishes that I've been anxious to try. Now that I see how far the small, tender birds stretch, I know that one chicken will be enough for a family meal.

As an aside, the livers, gizzard, and heart that I found inside the chicken were fresh, healthy, and just the right size (versus grey, flabby, huge) I pulled out one of the restaurant-quality freezer containers that I bought from Brown's Kitchen Center http://www.brownskitchen.com/ when I began this project and began freezing them.

I'm using a small size jar so that when it's full it will hold enough for one single serving. No. Not fried like we used to make them. Sauteed in the finest olive oil/Irish butter mixture.    

And so it is that my Cooked experiment is beginning to buzz along. I'll give you a recipe for a stock for oriental cooking as soon as I talk to you again about yardbirds.

It's What's for Dinner

I have a small, free-range chicken in the fridge. I'm getting ready to make a little chicken stock for Thai soup. I also have day-old sourdough bread and cherry tomatoes.

This recipe was in the New York Times this morning. It's what's for dinner.

Here is the photo, by Evan Sung for the Times.

http://www.nytimes.com/recipes/1015153/panzanella-with-chicken-crisp-chicken-skin-and-capers.html

We Fight Chaos. Every Way We Can.

The mischief and mayhem of the weekend followed our little group into Monday.

I lost my car keys in the house somewhere and didn't find them until four o'clock. Corey's car was in the shop and my spare key was with it. Beth works until 5:30 now. Storm clouds were hovering. No grocery store, no tasty menu. Or at least not a great tasty menu.

We fight chaos, every way we can. Hone our coping skills continually. We know that family dinner can be anything we want it to be.

When I found the keys (in a small bag in the garbage) I headed out. It was just in the nick of time. Corey gathered up, he took over driving and we headed for Tom and Jack! Then, it was off to Advent School! We had decided to let the boys play on their old familiar playground while we waited for Beth to finish work.

It was the best thing we could have done. Tom and Jack have missed their old school. They got to see some friends, hug old teachers, play a while! I enjoyed being there, watching Beth interact with her group of little ones and her fellow teachers. I was getting calmed down from a topsy-turvy day. Corey began to relax, too, from his jet lag!

Finally, we were ready for Beef o'Brady's http://www.beefobradys.com/ and a fun, family supper out. We left, full and happy, in our separate cars slap in the middle of a gigantic afternoon storm. Rain was pelting us and we just didn't care. Who would have thought to take the umbrellas inside? Not us. We were still in the throes of chaos.

The boys, oblivious to unorganized adults, had been delighted on their visit to Advent School when a past teacher gave them a hearty bear-hug and exclaimed, "We've really missed you! Nobody else feeds the rabbits without being told!" 

If this story has a moral, here it is: A terrible day might just turn out to be a really good time when the family sticks together, and keeps smiling, through Plans A, B, and C.

Also, rabbits seem to remember exactly who their friends are!

Verse

I've disappointed?

You expected more, perhaps a rhyming poem?

Yes, I could write one for you. Yes, I do see.

You'd prefer that to this rambling, free association style.

This form is so unstructured…a priori.


Just as I was born reading, as soon as Grandmother Fullwood taught me the alphabet song and put a pencil into my hand, I wrote verse. I began with blessings for the table, couplets about the grass and flowers, or nonsensical riddle/rhymes. In grammar school, I presented the fifth grade play, that I had been chosen to write, in verse! Mrs. Work gave me an extra week to “prose it up; fix it.”

A child before after-school-care and day-camps, I spent a part of every summer with my cousin Dixie. We passed the time following our afternoon baths reading parts in Shakespeare’s plays aloud. I fiddled away one whole month of summer, once, writing sonnets because I grew so tired of acting. (“How, now, Gertrude?”)

Since all pre-teen-aged kids tend to get despondent, I practiced elegies, dirges, odes, and all that in Junior High School. Later, at New Hanover High, I won scholarships and contests with my free verse and my “beat generation” style.

To this day, poetry still falls out of my head unbidden and I almost never write it down.

I’m not much of a fan of most religious poetry, although I miss the words of the old Baptist hymns sometimes. Otherwise, the spiritual poet seems to be trying too hard with verse after verse of pretty, rhyming, supplicating, thanking, self-doubting, or glorifying words. One cannot beat the Psalms. What more (along with the lovely old acappella spirituals) do I need?

I won't rule out one day writing libretto for newly created church music, however, which is a different genre. But lately…

Lately, in the past half-dozen years or so, I've been practicing haiku. I believe that I have found my perfect medium of expression.

The shortest and most compact poetic form, the haiku has numerous styles, each with its own rules. I practice dozens of these and sometimes write prose in sentence form but haiku style. The reader seldom notices.

My own form of haiku is to write about a snapshot that I have just taken or a scene that I'm about to photograph. When viewed together, I call this style Images With and Without a Camera. I've been collecting these for awhile. Perhaps they can be gathered into a Haiku book one day. Or not.

When the images go stale, there is no use to keep them except for the occasional art display or because one of them tugs at my heart a little. I used to publish them on the old blog and also on Twitter and facebook.

To me, the photographic image and its haiku should be enjoyed as quickly in the moment as possible. This means right now, this season, this year, less than an hour ago, not more than a week ago. Then the form becomes an Image with a capital I.

You'll be seeing more of my Images…as we go along here. I might explain where and when I took the picture and what type of haiku I am using. That would be fun and the work would be more pertinent set in the proper time-frame – for a blog is a chronological record, if nothing else. A techno-diary/journal.

Occasionally, I group/frame/display some the haiku together to make a larger statement. One of these, framed in real life, is also pictured on the Holy Comforter Spirit and Creativity Guild web page. I call it simply Seasons. If I group others in that way, down the road, I’ll publish them there (web address to be announced) as well.

So, no. No verse today. If anything really stirs my imagination enough to sit down and write it out, I'll print the poem here. Promise. Otherwise, haiku it is!

Aidan and Ángel Prototype

Image on a Sunday Morning

The Autumnal Equinox, 2013, on Meridian Road (a canopy road) in Tallahassee, Florida. "To everything (turn, turn, turn) there is a season."

Churches

This is Holy Comforter Episcopal Church here in Tallahassee. This is my church, a house that welcomed me when I was in emotional need, friended me when I was a stranger, fed me when I forgot to bring a dish or make a snack to share, and took me in as if I had been a member for sixty years.

I pass fourteen other churches on the way to mine every Sunday morning. Plus one building in progress. Each structure fascinates me in a different way and they mystify me as a group - prayers going up from each, in near unison, every Sunday, connotes a powerful vision of  the oneness that souls share.

Every church building tells a story - a study in bricks, wood, walkways, windows, and steeples - through its facade alone. One does not even need to go inside, although I have visited a lot of them since I moved to Tallahassee. Both the architecture and  its placement on the land speak to me in a language of silent beckoning.

Therefore, I did what any other camera-buff would do if church buildings were talking to her, amazing her, and thrilling her. I began taking pictures of the churches, forming intuitive judgements while giving each building a "psychic reading" so to speak.

I once thought I would write a book that would include the pictures and the histories of each church I came across. The thought just didn't catch and hold in my mind. The oral histories of the older churches are well known throughout the city. That train of thought simply wasn't what I was after.

It was totally sensory. Feeling. How did the buildings make me feel? Did the vibes that I was getting from the many churches dotting the Tallahassee landscape affect my spirituality? What could I surmise from looking at the pictures of  buildings that house the Holy Spirit? Would such a strange creative hobby change me in any way? How?

I've decided that I'll be picturing the churches here on the blog from time to time. I want to be able to tell you in a simple paragraph (not a church history) how the structure makes me feel - what it's message privately imparts. Some of the photos will also be on the Holy Comforter Spirit and Creativity Guild web page when that is up and running.

It will be amazing to share my odd hobby with others! Maybe you will see what I see. Or perhaps you will see something entirely different!

Twitter with a Twist

This was the view from the computer table early this morning. I woke up with the realization that I had been tweeting all wrong!

I'm getting ready (after lunch) to re-open my twitter account but use it in a more productive way. Yes, I'll follow my friends - but no one else at first.


Let's see how the wind really blows.

And I won't tweet only to the few but to everyone. I once remarked that I wasn't important enough to facebook, blog AND tweet. That's because I was doing it all wrong. It's essentially about a change in the way one communicates. If I am going to tread through muddy and dangerous waters, I may as well not cross the bridge in order to keep my boots dry.

September on the Lake

I posted on facebook this morning that I was going to concentrate on my to-do list (the ten million things) today, as I have enjoyed the week so far without doing much real work. First, I took a walk around the lake, then I played with pets, and now, after lunch, I am posting this.

I wanted to show you Lake Petty Gulf in the last throes of summer. In October the pictures will gradually begin to "tinge" yellow and gold. We are interested in seeing the seasonal progress around the lake, are we not? This is Florida and, even here in the Red Hills of the Big Bend, we must strain our sensibilities and become extremely fine-tuned in order to enjoy the beauty of the changing seasons.