Category: Uncategorized (Page 1 of 2)

Vicki turned me on to a BookTuber named Angelina (Read & Reread) who is reading (among other things), one short story a day during Book Tube’s “Shorty September” — I thought I’d give it a whirl. Anyone else want to play along??

Angelina chooses the stories and links them on her YouTube page, and for your convenience, I’m listing the stories here, and will add a link to them as we go along.

I guess this her 4th year doing this thing. I may go back and read the 2022-2024 picks, but first let’s see how this month goes. I will read and comment here, so this is going to end up being the longest blog post ever.

1. “Good Country People” by Flannery O’Connor

Back in the teaching days, the literature textbook in our classroom included the O’Connor story, “The Life You Save May Be Your Own,” which I failed to bring to life for the kids. I assigned it one or two times mid-career (2008-2012, maybe?) during a short story unit, and the students read it (or pretend-read it) in the most perfunctory way imaginable. On the other hand, one rainy day I read “A Good Man Is Hard to Find” out loud to my students, and as I remember it, all of our heads caught on fire.

I had never read this story, and if you go to Angelina’s YouTube channel (linked above), you’ll see it’s the first choice for all four years — it’s her favorite. I read it this afternoon, and it has all the stuff that makes O’Connor great: icky people, horrible situations, and a dark comic thread. I know I’ll read it again before I go to sleep tonight.

Tomorrow, Speedoman. What I like about this list is that although there are familiar writers I have read before, most are new to me.

2. “Speedoman” by Ghassan Zeinnedine

What I love about literature like “Speedoman” is how it opens up to a world that is completely ordinary — even mundane — and yet completely foreign to me. I loved the flashbacks the husbands in this story provided, offering glimpses of their growing up in Lebanon, and then living through a civil war, eventually fleeing from the violence, and finding lives and new opportunities in Dearborn, Michigan. The familiar American story that is currently under attack.

I had to go and review the war — It was the early 80s, and I had just entered my 20s; I didn’t remember much but the song “The Lebanon” by the Human League. The internet told me that the invasion of Lebanon was the Israeli response to a Palestinean attack on the Israeli ambassador in the UK. And from there, how could I avoid thinking of Gaza?

Anyway, much of the story takes place at a gym swimming pool and spa area, where a mysterious Arab man in a pink robe suddenly appears on the scene, and underneath that robe he is wearing — you guessed it, a speedo — and a different one each week, with various famous Lebanese landmarks emblazoned on his firm ass. The shifting points of view between the husbands and wives, the inclusion of Arab pop culture like “the burkini,” the text messages exchanged between the wives as they think about this mysterious stranger with his intriguing package, the comical restaurant names like “Ali’s Famous Sushi and Kabobs” where the couples meet for dinner each week — all of these elements combine to make this story rich, funny, and totally unexpected. Loved the ending. Weird in the best way.

3. “The Great Awake” by Julia Armfield

I am realizing that there is so much good writing out in the world, but you must somehow make a point of seeking it out. I had never been to thewhitereview.org where this story appears, and there is so much rich content sitting there, waiting to be discovered. Maybe the way to find these places is to follow a few Book Tubers who make reading their business, treating it as both vocation and avocation. And like everything else interesting and compelling, you cannot hope to capture it all.

I don’t want to sound like an undiscerning fangirl, but I loved THIS story too about a city full of people who have lost their Sleep, a specter that has exited the body, and then shadows their host, mimics them, putters around, alphabetizes the books on the bookcases, and never, ever speaks. Armfield explains that sleep had transformed to a “sudden persistent wakefulness, the mutation of sleep from a comforting habit to a creature that crouched by the door.” People live in uneasy relationship with their ghost-like Sleeps, and wander around at night, filling these new hours with work and hobbies, social interaction, artistic performance — everybody zombie-tired, deep purple bruises under the eyes…yet never able to lose consciousness.

This story resonates, and I’m still trying to digest it. I especially loved Armfield’s language, like “Two a.m., dark throat of summer. A bleary stagger of us collected in the corridor…” A bleary stagger of us. What a great phrase.

Hey, if you’re reading along and would like to write a few of these these little paragraphs — neither analysis or summary, just pure reaction — I would welcome the offer. I’m enjoying it, and handling it now, but what will it be like come September 13th or whatever? At some point down the road, I just know I’m gonna miss because of all the other demands of life. Anyone out there wanting to jump in with me?

4. “Woodland” by Lydia Millet

Oop, it’s happened, and I’m behind schedule. No matter though.

“Woodland,” is a lonely, gut-rending story, told in a disjointed, sparse prose that reflects the diminished world that it is set in — a world of tremendous loss that we are facing. I was thinking about this the other day; Silent Spring and Rachel Carson are placed squarely in my lifetime, and climate change was my generation’s problem to solve, but despite the good work of many wise people, the decimation rolled on. We lacked a savvy marketing team to capture the risk and communicate it clearly, urgently, and today when I see my former students starting families, and having lots of kids, more than Zero Population Growth calls for, I fear what their world will be in 40 years. I think of it when I fold up a piece of used tin foil and put it in the recycling, and imagine that a child may scavenge it out of the dump someday, and perhaps trade it for something nourishing or useful. When future generations look back at our era of easy abundance and our blindness to the cost we have forced them to bear, I cannot help but believe that they will hate us.

5. “The Mine” by Nathan Harris

6. “The Stone” by Louise Erdrich (audio)

7. “Your Body is a Jewel Box” by Kay Boyle

8. “Speech Sounds” by Octavia Butler

9. “The Handsomest Drowned Man in the World” by Gabriel Garcia Marquez

10. “Ghost Birds” by Karen Russell

11. “The State” by Tommy Orange (audio)

12. “The Pedestrian” by Ray Bradbury

13. “The Redemption of Galen Pike” by Carys Davies

14. “Paper Menagerie” by Ken Liu

15. “Year’s End” by Jhumpa Lahiri

16. “The History of Sound” by Ben Shattuck

17. “Super-Toys Last All Summer Long” by Brian Aldiss

18. “Letter of Apology” by Maria Reva

19. “The Cask of Amontillado” by Edgar Allan Poe

20. “North Of” by Marie-Helene Bertino

21. “I Won’t Let You Go” by Hiromi Kawakami

22. “Arianespace” by Maylis de Kerangal2025 Stories

23. “You Got It, Take it Away” by Fernando Flores

24. “Winter Dreams” by F. Scott Fitzgerald

25. “Manifest” by Pemi Aguda

26. “The Summer People” by Shirley Jackson

27. “Catherdral” by Raymond Carver

28. “Patient Zero” by Tananarive Due

This is my fourth summer here, and this is what is happening:

Eleven chickens: three from 2022, and eight from 2024. We collect 6-8 eggs per day, and share with friends and neighbors.

The peach tree Maddy brought with her and planted the first year is producing lots of fruit. Last year they dropped while still green, but this year looks promising.

After three seasons, I am harvesting a little honey. It’s messy and sticky, but such sweet work. Every drop is precious.

I brought these in from the garden today, July 31. I love a salsa garden, andI hope to be pickling peppers by the end of August.

I can’t believe how much my life has changed since retiring. My friends are all getting ready to go back to school, and I definitely miss the sound of the marching band practicing as we prepare our classrooms for the year, and seeing teachers, custodians, admins, and students swarming the campus. I do miss it. But also: I don’t miss it. It’s fun to be retired. i definitely recommend it.

All names (except one) have been changed.

Today I asked Lila and Phil — because I ask everyone — about their star thistle eradication plan, and I remember quite clearly their declaration a few years ago, when I was still green behind the ears, that through their dogged efforts, they had managed to remove yellow star thistle from their property.  I held this in mind as cherished evidence that it could be done, that the war is worth waging, and through effort and persistence, it could be won.  

And it is a war — in this long, arduous campaign, I feel outgunned.  

Enough with the war language, and a switch to the vaguely religious — this was Lila’s reply:

Phil and I believe Star Thistle is a plague created to afflict and torment man and woman. [Phil] has spent hours pulling the nasty stuff out by the roots and it still returns. I have heard many weeds can survive in the ground for 7 years or more.  What a joyful thought, YUCK!!!

If we can keep it from dropping seeds hopefully eradication will occur in a few years as long as some kind of animal doesn’t drop seeds from its fur as it crosses the land, and [as long as] the wind doesn’t blow. 

It is a drought tolerant plant and got a major foothold a few years ago when it was so very dry.  Sorry for the unhappy news. We can all continue to do our best and pray for it to gradually diminish…We can think of each other as we pull, cut, and try to think happy thoughts.

Sometimes yellow star thistle is the first thing I think of when I open my eyes in the morning.

It invades my dreams.  It really is a blight upon the land.  

Everyone, everyone has a story, a strategy, a lament.  I’ve taken to asking, “what is your star thistle strategy?”

“I water it until the ground gets soft, and then go nuts pulling it up!”  ~~Mt. Aukum postal worker

“I pull it out by the roots before it flowers, and bag it up in black plastic and let it cook.”  ~~Jerry Bolland, DC

“Have you tried covering the plants with black plastic and letting the sun take care of it? That’s what I’m trying this year.”  ~~Sydney, Mt. Aukum Beekeeper

“You can clip the seed heads, the little yellow flower surrounded by spikes.  I know it’s rough, hard work, but you will stop the seed from spreading.”  ~~Edie Midas

“Bahama sheep.”  ~~Alberto Bocci

I saw one woman online with a shop vac and a long, long extension cord, vacuuming up tiny seeds that had fallen.

Yellow star thistle is poisonous to horses, and fatal. There is no known treatment.

Several University of California Extension programs have produced videos of earnest, educated, hard-working land managers — mostly women — standing in fields of yellow star thistle, or in front of PowerPoint slides in a cavernous, fluorescent-lit room, explaining the problem yellow star thistle has become in the western states.   

“It is a plague created to afflict and torment man and woman…”

The work of eradication is often framed as good citizenship, and in being a good neighbor.  

“We can think of each other as we pull…”

When I went to learn to extract honey with the El Dorado Beekeepers, II overheard someone say, “Well, thank god the yellow star thistle is blooming…otherwise, the bees wouldn’t have anything to eat.” 

I had forgotten that bee keepers generally welcome yellow star thistle, and Pablo Mimosa, the self-proclaimed Chicano Bee Master of the North, positively celebrates the yellow star thistle bloom in July and August…yet I can’t help but believe that these generous thoughts come more easily when the star thistle plants are OUT THERE, on someone else’s property.

As I pull, clip, strangle, poison with vinegar and salt, and I find myself ruminating on how fucking persistent this plant is, how insidious, how toxic, how harmful, how quickly it spreads, how strong it is, I suddenly find myself thinking about the Trump years.  

The parallels are uncanny. 

They think that yellow star thistle has been here in California since about the 1850s, and it’s just in recent years — the last few decades, perhaps — that it has really dug in and flourished, spreading throughout the western states.  Its foothold is deeply established, and is now so entrenched that it is impossible to imagine it ever really being gone.  We may win back a few fields, a few ranches, a few acres, but an earth where yellow star thistle is not a major problem does not exist.

One of the earnest University of California Extension program land managers, Brenda Stanchon, called yellow star thistle “one of the worst economic and ecological problems in California”, and as she is saying this, surrounded by acres of star thistle, cars are zipping by on the freeway just beyond.  Do the people in those cars realize that they are driving past one of the worst economic and ecological problems in California? I never knew. I would have never guessed.

As with the Trump administration, it is overwhelming, really.

I can only do my best.  

I can only continue to educate myself.

I can only attend to my yellow star thistle.

I can only attend to my yellow star thistle in ways that does not harm other plants and animals.

I can never hope to get it all.  

I can not go after it every day.

There is no future that does not have yellow star thistle in it.

Fighting back is simply a part of my life.

I will continue to water and pull, to clip, and to cook with heavy duty black plastic trash bags anchored down with landscape staples, and when the timing is right, I will mow.  

In the hot summer mornings, I will pull on long sleeves and thick black, puncture-proof gloves, step into my boots, pull a bandana over my face, put on protective eyewear, cover my hair, and string-cut the little fuckers (with flower-heads clipped so as not to fling seed) down to the bare ground.

I can fight back with buckwheat.  Buckwheat will compete with star thistle in the spring, shade it and crowd it out, and will feed the soil when mowed down and allowed to decompose.

I can fight back with goats. A goat will continue to eat star thistle, even when the dangerous spiny thorns growing at a good dog’s eye-level are sticking out, surrounding the flower, protecting the seed, and will poop out seeds that are no longer viable.  Goats ain’t cheap, definitely out of my price range, but they seem to be the the answer.

The Yellow Star Thistle/Trump years: a plague, a blight, a scourge — yet we find ways to fight back. We have allies. And when we push back, we become allies.

It’s tough to be a Democrat these days, or let’s just say it’s tough to be a morally awake human being and to witness what is happening in the country we grew up in. No need to enumerate the many atrocities since we all know them. There’s a pall hanging over us all, no matter your vote, and yet we carry on. I find myself reflecting on what it might have been like to be a good German citizen in the 1930s. I’ve dramatically changed the way I take in the news in an attempt to protect myself from the pain and chaos, but worry that it’s wrong to do this, that it is analogous to turning my back on the suffering of real people. But I ask myself, “what can I do?,” and the answer has not come. I send money to those on the front lines when I can, and wait for an answer. Meanwhile: deep gratitude for the resistance that is out there; in many ways large and small, people are pushing back.

I moved to the country for peace, and every day I bask in moments that I sit with the trees, observe the landscape changes with the seasons, reflect on the lives of the bees and chickens and the dog in my care.

I appreciate my sister Vicki in a new and deepening way. We have never lived together, so it took a minute for us to find our groove, but we’re in it now and it’s a great blessing. Vicki tells me that our mom worried that we would break apart after she died, with a distant relationship, but instead we are accompanying one another through the 4th quarter of our lives, with all the details and particulars (and indignities) of aging. You cannot resist entropy; you might slow it down a bit, but entropy always wins. It is important to reflect on death and dying; the Buddhists have this right. Far from being morbid, it brings fresh appreciation to all that is, to every conversation, every bite of ice cream, every dog game played on the lawn, everything. It’s the truth of what is.

I’ve been working hard lately — hard work cannot be avoided in the late spring. Suddenly, the wildflowers are surrounded by stickers (or becoming stickers themselves) and the barbed grasses are up to the waist. It’s mowing time. I finally have a strong and reliable riding mower (a Cub Cadet! Cheeto Yellow!), but the mowing window is closing; as the weather heats up, driving a mower over dry grass becomes a fire hazard, and everybody switches to weed whacking. We need to use the weed whacker out here anyway because of the many granite boulders and trees that cannot be approached with a mower. Mine is electric, and it is my policy to stop when the battery does…the workers out here with the gas-powered whackers will go for 8 hours, but there is no way my body would agree to that. Ninety minutes is plenty.

In the garden, the tomatoes are in (mostly), and so are the peppers, but I have not planted everything that I hope to harvest in September and October. My body feels tired today, despite good rest last night, so I’m taking a hint and enjoying a day off, doing laundry, updating the blog, and soon, I’ll disappear into the sewing room.

In fact, I’m going now. More updates to come. I’ve been slow and irregular out here, I know, but I’ll probably do better in the future. No promises this time.

Be sure to check out the Quilting link. I’ve made some cool stuff lately, and I’m in the middle of several projects.

Thanks for reading!

Reflection: Year Four

Four years ago, I was madly packing, getting ready for the biggest move of my life, from my suburban life in Rossmoor (left), where I had always been a square peg, to a life out on this road in the Sierra Nevada foothills, where I knew no one but my realtor, with no real idea about what was in store.  Most significant was leaving my daughter behind, which was hard. 

I moved in to this house on October 1, 2020.  COVID had the entire world tight in its grip, there was no vaccine, and Joe Biden was seeking to unseat Donald Trump.  

I found this recently during one of my old notebook-flipping sessions. 

February 2019

Five years from now is 2024.  The Elections! [I actually wrote, “the Midterm Elections,” but that’s embarrassing so I’m editing it.]

I’ll be retired. I’ll be 66, going on 67.  I’ll live in a house that I own outright (I hope) somewhere between Portland and Sacramento. I’ll have 2-3 acres, and a big roomy house. Big kitchen. Big private apartment for me, big private apartment “tiny house” for Vicki, who will be 79-80.  Carlos, who will be 71-72.  I don’t know if Madeline will be with us.  Maybe. Probably not. Maybe someday.  

I want to study NO-TILL gardening methods, maybe try it out now. I want at least a half an acre in vegetables, another half in flowers and herbs. I want chickens and bees for sure.  A couple of dogs, a couple of outdoor cats.  Two yurts.  I can do that, on my own, with help.

The thing is — I need Maddy, but the idea of her living with a bunch of old people while she is building her professional life — no matter how much she loves us — is ridiculous.

Fletcher:  Write it down, make it happen.

Reading this struck me; it’s remarkable how things have turned out, four years later.  Obviously, today’s situation is not precisely what I envisioned, but it’s damn close.

Living it, I know more — like how an acre of no-till cultivation is not feasible on this parcel of land, with these ground squirrels, with this level of commitment, and this body at 67. 

Pete’s prey drive has convinced me that two outdoor cats are not in the cards for us.

And I’ve come to see that keeping bees is, on the one hand, fascinating and cool, while also being quite stressful and difficult.  The heat of wearing that suit and heavy gloves in the summer.  The back strain when moving those boxes. The risk of fire – working with a smoker, surrounded by an acre of tall, dry grass.

But this is the life I wanted, and I’m living it.  The notebook entry had this list:

• Stir the pot. Jungian synchronicity. Meaningful events and people converge.
• Writing makes its own meaning.
• Write it down, make it happen. What I want:
•  A sweet dog
• A small, beautiful property
• An orchard of fruit trees
• A wrap-around porch
• A fire pit
• An outdoor kitchen with pizza oven
• A yoga/meditation spot
• A greenhouse full of starts
• A workroom for quilting, making cards, binding books, making paper
• Two yurts
• A wonderful, diverse, colorful, nutritious garden
• A bee hive
• A hen house
• A rescue burro

Again, reading this list from 2019 spotlights the good things that have come to pass.  Much of what I wanted is right here in my life. Other things have fallen away, and I still want to plant a fruit orchard in the bee yard, but that will require a tall fence to keep the deer out.

Habituation

I recently listened to a podcast discussing habituation, which is how we become numb to our lives—the situations we inhabit that once were dreams, the people we love deeply but somehow end up taking for granted, and all of the objects we pined for, then blindly accept as part of the detritus we’ve accumulated moving through this life. Even if we have recognized and worked to curtail our consumerism, that little squirmy urge for the new shiny thing persists.  New windows.  New car. A vent over the stove. A carpet shampoo. A massage. 

The problem, the Buddha reminds us, is attachment, desire, clinging. Marie Kondo asks, “is this box of crap bringing you joy?” I flip through the pages of Swedish Death Cleaning and look around. Although I had been planning for this move, it all happened pretty fast — sold my house, and bought this one in 6-days, and flew through a 30-day escrow.

Four years in, and the garage is still full of boxes, and weird things are stashed in every corner and nook. Time to examine what I am clinging to, and figure out why.  

Clinging: A Clockwork Orange, Naked Lunch, and other titles

How have some of these novels survived the multiple bookshelf cullings over the course of life, and made it all the way to this chapter of my life?  I have not read them, and I think we can safely say I will not.  In the case of Anthony Burgess’s A Clockwork Orange, this violent little text — “a savage satire,” “a nasty little shocker,” “a terrifying and marvelous book,” repels me even as I pick it up.  Why is it here?

The novel was published when I was five years old. By the time I was a young college dropout trying to concoct a hipster life on Long Beach’s Ocean Boulevard, I knew A Clockwork Orange was an important text.  Having it on the bookshelf meant something.  Displaying that title signaled an open-mindedness, a counter-culture stance, and also a commitment to supporting banned and controversial texts. “I may be a drop-out but I’m not illiterate, irrelevant, or out-of-touch,” it said.  “I may be a woman but I can witness a violent rape scene without melting down.”

That was then.  I have never read A Clockwork Orange, or have seen the Stanley Kubrick film, so why this still here, out on this country road?  I no longer need to signal who I am and what my attitudes are through titles on my shelf.  And the knowledge of that rape, which I believe happens early in the story, has kept that book closed and dark for decades.

There are easily a dozen titles chosen out of curiosity then, that hold little appeal today. Naked Lunch by William Burroughs.  The Book of Disquiet, Fernando Passoa. Underworld, Don  DeLillo.  The Broom of the System, David Foster Wallace (I love Wallace, but I’ll never read Broom, I know). These are titles that important readers and teachers have swooned over, and owning them with the intention to read them seemed to be a safeguard against staleness, or mediocrity, or literary habituation, perhaps. Or maybe it’s that squirmy acquisitive itch.  Or maybe I’m afraid I’ll forget about reading them if they’re just on a “Want-to-Read” list stashed away on Goodreads.

Speaking of Goodreads, last year, I set a reading challenge to read 40 books, and I read 43. In a way, though, it felt like an assignment, so although I enjoyed +90% of what I read, my motivation was driven by earning that gold star. You’re a good girl. You read them all.

Good lord, I need to escape that craven tug for recognition.

A routine joke within the meditation community: Self-knowledge is not always good news. And ain’t that the truth. Thankfully, a sense of humor helps, and practice brings recognition, acceptance, and surrender.

If you haven’t visited lately, I invite you pop in to the Quilting tab to see what’s going on in my sewing room.

Oh hey, hello, thanks for popping in to see what’s going on at lasflechas-dot-farm; this first week of January has been dominated by addressing envelopes and jotting quick notes to my people — long-time friends, former colleagues from two different careers, family members near and far, new peeps, some of Maddy’s peeps, some of Vicki’s too (their people are my people) — and I’ve invited everyone to come check out this quiet, dusty blog.

So yes, Happy New Year. My intention is to pour some life into a dusty blog. A real audience motivates me, so here we are. I’ve asked you to come, and here I sit, writing to you. I imagine you in my mind’s eye, and I’m working to speak right to you.

Before I get going, let me just say: Retirement, yes. Yes, yes, yes. I loved working and I especially loved teaching, but retirement is what I was born for. (Why don’t they tell you this on Career Day?) I love shaping my days however I like, working hard, or lazing around with Pete. And thank goodness for Pete, and for the chickens — they make sure I get up and out, every day.

Speaking of chickens…the chickens are on winter break, and our little white Leghorn, Yvie Oddly, is the only one laying eggs through these short, cold, grey days. I’m grateful for her (paltry) three eggs a week. Paltry poultry. Let’s see how things shape up once the days get noticeably longer and warmer; I hope to get 6-7 new babies this spring, and when those new girls reach maturity, we’ll be rolling once again in those rich, golden-yoked eggs. Not so long ago, the girls were producing more eggs than Vicki and I could use, but now it’s back buying organic eggs at the grocery store. Like city folk.

It’s cold and rainy this week, but I’ve got a tall stack of good seed catalogs, full of exciting pictures.

Here’s how it goes — I don’t even like Okra all that much, but find myself studying these gorgeous photographs of Okra, trying to remember why I don’t like it, then poring over growing conditions, days from seed to harvest, soil and sun preferences, etc. It feels like anything is possible, that any seed I put into the ground will grow, develop, and fruit. I’ve learned differently, but still…I believe. (I won’t be planting Okra though. I have limited garden bed space, so I only grow what I love to eat*, and Okra ain’t it.)

[*Exception:  decorative gourds.  I had them in the 2022 garden and have no idea why I didn't include them in 2023.]

Right now, growing in the winter garden is something new for me: garlic. I have three beds planted and a secret hope that I will be able to make a garlic braid — but a braid seems ambitious for a garlic rookie, don’t you think? Maddy says I am an optimistic gardener, and I guess I am. I secretly think everything will grow and thrive. And why not? “Seed, meet soil, sun, and water. Now, you do you.” Everything wants to grow. There are no slackers in a seed packet. Duds, maybe, but no slackers. There’s a difference.

The unoccupied growing beds are mulched with straw and oak leaves (oak leaves I happen to have in abundance) — they’re rain soaked, a little mushroomy, quietly waiting for spring. I’d like to be an Elliott-Coleman-Four-Seasons-Harvest kind of gardener, but I’m not there yet. Still trying to figure that out. I don’t have a green house or a hoop house, or a cold frame, but luckily I do have a most excellent sun room, which is where the seedlings will start this spring, (located adjacent to the baby chick corral).

Maybe the secret to blogging is knowing when to stop. Nobody wants to read long rambling posts about anything. I’ll tell you about the bees next time.

Here’s a thing though: I am working on my Chromebook that I inadvertently slammed into the floor like a WWF boss. You know one of those moments when you try to save something from falling and end up smashing it down instead. My track pad is no longer functional, so I got a cheap little mouse, and it’s not working perfectly. I am struggling to type and keep the weird little boxes that are mysteriously popping open to a minimum, but these Chromebook/mouse shenanigans are doubling the time it takes me to do what I want to do. Hopefully, I’ll get this technology thing worked out by the next time we meet.

Ahem. I’m not sending another card until 2025 or 2026 🙂 so please just bookmark this spot and come back in a month or so. That’s my modest goal: monthly posts, more if I can.

I’ll post on social media when there’s new content up.

One last thing, this last bit about writing…

In 2022, at my instigation, five of us local ladies — neighbors and friends and sisters — started meeting together once a month to share writing. It’s been a revelation, getting to know each other in this way. In this small group, made up of five friends who happen to live near one another — (talk about serendipity) — we have discovered evocative, funny storytelling, moving memoir pieces, and stunning poetry. I am more convinced than ever that many people are walking around chock full of rich experiences and insights, tales that need to be coaxed out, shaped up, and shared. But we fail to take ourselves and our stories seriously, fail to believe that what we have to say matters, and these insecurities keep us from getting it down on paper. I know this well; it is the story of my life as a writer. But bringing our stories forward is a source of great satisfaction and dare I say it? inner peace. EVERYONE needs a writing group, or a woodworking community, or a musical instrument, or a bunch of yarn addicts to talk and work with, or a sewing room, or a place to draw and paint. Don’t wait until retirement to carve out a creative space for yourself. It’s hard when you’re working. It is. But another life that is yours is calling.

Now it’s early April, and the sun is coming out from time to time, hinting at warmer days ahead. It’s glorious, feeling the sun reach my bones at last.

And I find myself wondering what I did with the months of January, February and March.

Gardeners diligently work in the seed starting room when howling winds outside reach deep into the tree canopy, and fling dead and weak bits to the cold and muddy ground. I did not start seeds, or sharpen and oil my tools, or order and organize seeds (more things farmers do in winter). Every morning, there were new branches on the path; one wild night, a tree broke in half, fell, and smashed the fence down. The clouds hung low all winter; it rained, it rained, and it rained some more. It snowed; it sleeted. Power went out. I did not remember that there would be a garden someday. What did I do to prepare for the season during the first quarter of the year? Not much.

I remember when I was dreaming of this place, I called my future self a farmer. Even the phrase “hobby farmer” seemed too cute, too diminutive. I read books and blogs, and watched videos of small farmers putting in rows of this and that, erecting cold tunnels and green houses, and thought, “Yes. That’s what I want.”

But now I really see what farmers actually face, and I know they do not get nearly enough credit for the work they do. I underestimated their labor, even while thinking I had a clear view. This website address features a “dot farm” URL and one of my Instagram accounts is @las.flechas.farmstead, and let me say now that calling what I am doing “farming” is a bit embarrassing. I had big dreams, and I really believed I could make a go of it, mostly by myself, and in my 60s. This just demonstrates how little I understood what farmers do, each and every day, even when the ground is pure mud, and the skies are threatening to dump more snow and rain.

Today I embrace the role of gardener, and I still have so much to learn. I had a really good year last year with tomatoes, tomatillos, cucumbers, gourds, pumpkins, and melons, but beans? Cauliflower? Greens? I put in so many seeds and baby plants that never really took off. I made goofy mistakes, like putting cold weather crops in the ground in May, for example. I naively thought that this farmstead project was about me, my effort, my intentions, how much I wanted it to work, how hard I tried, how carefully I tended what went in the ground. No. Not so.

But I’m glad I had that big crazy dream, because it fueled my ambition to get out of town, buy land, and get started on growing food.

Last Thanksgiving and Christmas, I made pumpkin soup for the dinner table from the pumpkins I grew — such a satisfying experience.

I’m starting late, but I think I am going to have the best year yet out there in my vegetable garden.

…the teacher appears. This book is just what I want right now.

In chapter 9, Dr. Connie Zweig lists the many teachers who have been among my inspirations and guiding lights, who are now spiritual elders or who have recently passed from this world. Just seeing their names fills me with gratitude and delight; I’ve added and subtracted from Dr. Zweig’s list, but we share many: the Dalai Lama, Thich Nhat Hanh, Ram Dass, Roshi Joan Halifax, Alan Watts, Joanna Macy, Joseph Campbell, Joseph Goldstein, Sharon Salzburg, Ken Wilbur, Pema Chodren, Richard Rohr, Joan Chittiser, Rosemary Radford Ruether, Matthew Fox, Thomas Berry, Starhawk, Bernie Glassman, Wendell Berry, Brother David Stendahl-Rast, Jack Kornfield, Reggie Ray, Father Thomas Keating, Jon Kabat-Zinn, Jean Houston, Mary Catherine Bateson, Marianne Williamson, Reverend Michael Beckwith, Thomas Moore, Cynthia Bourgeault, Rick Hanson, Mary Oliver, Natalie Goldberg, Julia Cameron, Anne Lamott…and there are so many more — I’m listing here spiritual teachers, a few poets and writers, but there are so many artists, activists, performers, thinkers who have influenced my inner life; I love every moment I’ve spent with these wise voices in my head, so fortunate that they live here, within my own lifespan, and that seeking and serendipity brought them to me.

I haven’t spoken publicly much about my spiritual life before. I guess I’m coming out.

Well, forgive my lapse, but I’m back.

Things I’ve heard from locals: (during the Caldor and Mosquito Fires, 2021-2022: “this is the worst fire season I’ve ever lived through, and I’ve lived here 30 years!” In the garden: “We’ve never seen a gopher infestation like this! It’s terrible!” And now, in 2023: “There hasn’t been rain like this, ever. We need it, but this is ridiculous.” So I guess I arrived in time for some record-breaking nature events.

I’m hoping things will calm down; I’m hoping for a few boring years. But with the unraveling of social civility, public trust in government, and extreme weather brought on by climate changes…these hopes are likely naive.

My sister and I argued a little last night because the perfectly legitimate fears she holds about the future evoke a kind of helpless anxiety right in my solar plexus, and all the hope and happiness I feel about scientific breakthroughs in fungus research (for example), and public conversations we are having about genocide, slavery, misogyny, xenophobia — as painful as they are — I cling to them as a promise of better days. 

But a sucking fear creeps into my body, and before I’m even conscious about what is happening — well, I become a rude sister; I need to apologize today.

To be sure, there are things to worry about that are close-up and personal, worries that are local. Recently when Maddy was up for a visit and was filling up her truck, an unseen guy at the opposite pump (bemoaning gas prices, evidently) said, “If I ever meet anyone who voted for Biden, I’m going to slit their throat!” A mountain lion (who lost habitat in the Caldor Fire) killed two of my neighbor’s goats last year, right on our peaceful road. And plenty of folks here will vote for Trump in 2024 if they can, and even seem to think that, secretly, he still IS the president.

The great big nightmares of our time are loud and insistent; many have dogged us forever; some nightmares are getting worse — police violence against Black people and random mass shootings spring to mind.  Countless children die before they learn to bounce a ball; resource pressures are closing in on 8 billion of us. Illiterate children growing up now face stunted futures, millions in our own country… frankly, the nightmares are overwhelming.  

These nightmares situate the sucking fear lodged in my solar plexus into a broader context, and I realize (again, again, again) that my suffering is a piece of global suffering.  The pressure I feel in my human body is a pressure that blankets the world, a nightmare that stretches back into time, farther than recorded language. 

All of this sends me to the cushion. I’ve renewed a lifelong meditation practice that brings me into silence several times a day, where I face my life, its flow, its purpose and meaning. I am grateful to have the time and inclination to stop and look closely. I’ve been able to slow down, swim past all of those internal voices that ask, “shouldn’t you be doing something else…you know, something actually real?” and when I was a mother, a teacher, a communications worker, an activist, an adult student — a fast-moving woman fulfilling multiple roles — the answer was always, Yes. Yes, get up. There are 100 things to do. You can sit later.

Well, it is later; I don’t recommend that anyone wait until they retire for this inner work, (a little can go a long way; we can find vast silent spaces to inform us, in 15-second increments; Buddhists call this “small glimpses, many times a day). 

Eternity is not sitting out there on a timeline somewhere. It’s now. It is always right here, present and shimmering.

Living on a country road helps. Retirement helps. My advanced age helps.

When I sit down to practice open awareness, or to engage in somatic practices that lead me into my own wise body, practices that show me who I actually am (nobody), and what I am (star stuff), and experience, quite literally, Whitman’s words, that every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you…it’s a little miracle, right out here on a country road.

Surrounded by these loving trees, and the clamoring fungi, (who thrive, who have thrived on this planet long, long before we arrived on the scene with our big fat brains and a tragic tendency toward amnesia), I am called back to simple, open awareness.

We constantly forget who we are, but silence, and the natural world can call us back. And from that silent space, I stand in my time, in this beautiful, suffering world. 

The Sierra Nevada foothills are gorgeous green in the spring, and wildflowers are bursting out everywhere. Here on the Las Flechas property, I’ve been able to find (besides the aforementioned Henbit Deadnettle), Baby Blue Eyes, Fivespot, Western Buttercup, Miniature Lupine, Redstem Storkbill, Hairy Vetch, Desert Rockpurslane, Spring Madia, Yarrow, Common Daisy, Garden Sorrel, and the unfortunately named Blue Dick, which despite its stupid name, is quite beautiful, with a tall, elegant stem and three or four purple-blue blossoms clustered together at the top.

My friend Michele learned that the Miwok Indians, who have lived on this land for thousands of years, call the plant Oocow. I prefer that. I planted California Poppies, but have not seen them sprout yet, though they are blooming everywhere along the roadside. I’ve scattered thousands of wildflower seeds, and am waiting to see them take hold and flourish. The native varieties are dominant of course, and Hairy Vetch is downright aggressive, taking over flower beds and covering over anything in its path. Beautiful though.

Rattlesnake Aversion Training

Our beloved dog Pete dives headfirst into every bush or gopher hole he sees, so in addition to the recommended series of rattlesnake vaccines — which buy us time in the case of a bite — I got a guy to come out with a bucket of poisonous snakes.

This guy shows up in a Members Only jacket and flip flops, and a Prius full of rattlesnakes. Not at all what I was expecting. The whole process was both terrifying and fascinating. Even with the snake’s mouth taped shut, it’s unnerving to see rattlesnakes hanging around on the property. These fuckers are hard to see, and I pray we never encounter one. But they are native here, and although they say that at our altitude of 2100 feet it is less likely that we will see a rattler, it’s certainly not impossible, so we opted for training, which involved a snakeskin to smell, several live snakes, and an electric shock collar.

Pete moved in to check out this fat bastard below, and the trainer deployed the shock. He told me that Pete didn’t require much juice; he’s worked with chihuahuas who required the full monty. After a series of such exercises, the trainer positioned the snake between Pete and me, and told me to call Pete. Pete took a W-I-D-E path around the snake to come and sit on my foot. Then he went to hide in the juniper bush until the mean man with the 80’s jacket and the shocky collar packed up his snakes in a bucket, tossed them into the back of his Prius, and went home.

Let’s pray Pete remembers.

The garden is in

Vince built the fence twice as tall as last year, so hopefully this year the deer won’t jump into my garden in the middle of the night to chow down on the fruits and vegetables that have take months to cultivate and nurse along to maturity.

For detailed gardening news, check out my new link, “Garden Journal.” It’s a work in progress.

The Mantle

Have I told you about the mantle?

When I bought this place, the living room was two colors. blue and tan; the grout between the fireplace rock was dark grey, and the mantle was made of the same crown molding that ran around the perimeter of the room at a variety of heights.

Well, my woodworking daughter Maddy, and my woodworking neighbor Karen, collaborated on choosing a log from a collection Karen had built after clearing some land for her garden; they took a half-log, cut and milled it, and began to prepare it to become the mantle. It’s a live-edge beam, mounted to a dovetail box that Maddy built with her uncanny attention to detail; then the unfinished mantle piece sat in Karen’s shop, waiting for another span of time when Maddy could come up and finish it.

The time is now! It is June 2022, and the mantle is in our fledgling workshop.

I wish you could see the front — it’s irregular and beautiful, just like a tree — and in an upcoming post, you will see it installed in its spot above the wood burning stove. That mantle, made by my daughter with help from my friend, and made from a tree that lived on her property, will now be seated in a place of honor in my home, into perpetuity.

Peace and goodwill.