Stoney Moss

Ah. The confessional.

Mark’s family is in from out of town. A niece and husband with their set of seven year old twins and a five year old. Plus they brought Mark’s nephew’s set of twins, 14-ers.

They are only staying a few days and not all of them are at our small house. The youngest is terribly allergic to cats, and we have a few. So parents and little Katie are down the road at a hotel and the twins are here. The elder boy, Kyle, stayed with the two little girls (Hallie and Allyssa) in the tent last night, but the girls came in at 2 in the morning, scared. We could hear them talking through the open bedroom window, just below us. We got one and the oldest girl twin, Kate, got the other.

King size bed: three humans, three cats, one dog. Surprisingly comfy.

Everyone is sleeping right now. I’m enjoying my alone time.

Ironically, I have work-work to do after five months of mostly goofing at the office (with an occasional proposal flurry or follow-up on a small project) and wasn’t here when they got in yesterday.

Mark will take everyone fishing today, and I will try to get work-work done today, at the office, so I can take them on a smallish hike tomorrow.

My confession? One of the young twins told me she was scared of me before. Now she isn’t.

I was alternately humored and sad about hearing that. Clearly, I’m not a mom for good reason. I don’t know how to play with kids when they are younger than five or six. Unless they want to read all the time or color & draw or look at bugs. I tell them “no” and lots of kids find that off-putting (maybe I don’t say it nice enough). I could simply be one of those spinster-aunt-cranky-teacher types. But the kids are all getting easier to enjoy as they get older. And I am staying chilled out. Day one anyway. We’ll see how the rest of the week goes.

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In the fervor of getting ready for house guests and working my work, I didn’t post toodooze. It’s a pass week. I haven’t been doing anything, and today is the 30th. I have missed the submission deadlines (for journals I thought might fit me) due today.

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I’m bossy. Mark has been complaining about it. And I heard myself doing it yesterday. I’m channeling my mother. And that is depressing because it seems so unavoidable. Fated. Without recourse.

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I like the word recourse. The idea of a stream skipping its banks and finding — making — a new route. Next week’s poem idea. Science fiction or fantasy.

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I probably won’t be reading much until the weekend.

Talking to the past is as good as reading fiction

My hand is tethered
to vellum and stained
a favored drawing ink: sepia.
New is old and old is renewed.

Scars are imprinted
on so many onion skins —
a bibliography was consulted.
(But the wrong records were retained.)

Fold my fingers
over yours — as dry as bark —
drape an arm. Tonnage of years
moldering in a mist yet to be
devoured in tomorrow’s sun.

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This is based on a can’t-do-it-reaction to Kristen’s prompt at Read Write Poem. Others probably could, and did, so you might check out the results here.

My poem used quite a few of the words from Jessica’s Wordle prompt the week before.  I probably should have found a place for a sapient belly dance, but ran out of bus time.

This week is the 37th anniversary of Title IX, the 1972 federal legislation that required schools to fund athletics equally, for males & females. When it went into affect only 7% of girls participated in sports. These days more than 40% of girls participate.

It affected me. I was a freshman in high school in 1972. Come my sophomore year Mr. Cunningham, the boys’ JV basketball coach, had to create a girls’ tennis team to supplement girls’ sports, which before then included only basketball, volleyball and softball. Me, Mindy, Jane and a few others joined up. We were so new we didn’t even rate a photo in the 1973 yearbook. By 1974-75, when Fridays came along, and with it the mandatory athletes-with-an-event must dress-up-and-wear-a-tie-to-school, I borrowed a tie from Jane’s dad, pre-knotted and we walked down the halls proudly. I wore a green & white ensemble — green pants, white vest, green/white striped shirt (all-girl attire, probably sewn by my mom) — with Mr. Conrad’s green tie. Jane and I formed the Girls Letter Club with the motto: “Bulldogs come in all shapes and sizes.”

We didn’t get too many complaints, at least to our faces. Mindy was the Homecoming princess/queen  who everyone liked (with good reason). Jane was smart and from a big city back in Michigan; her dad was manager of one of the biggest employers around, the Ford proving grounds out at Yucca. Sharon was always game!

Mr. Cunningham, also my algebra teacher (I loved algebra), seemed stiff and confused by coaching girls, but he was professional about it, never mean, just distant and coached us for two years. My senior year Mr. Laulo stepped in and stuck with it, and actually tried to teach us some tennis skills. I stuck with tennis, too, although I was a not a gifted player, and ended up with a big blue varsity “K” on my letterwoman’s sweater-jacket.

Bulldogs come in all shapes and sizes

When I went to college I wore that sweater the first week, and some ladies commented that they wanted me on their team, no matter what (although we didn’t have sports at that school, so it would have been pick up games of some sort or the other). Most of my awards were actually for music. I stopped wearing the sweater, not wanting to get put in a position I couldn’t perform to. At some point it time it disappeared, although I think my mom salvaged the letters and pins. They are somewhere in my attic.

Find out a little history about Title IX here.

How did Title IX affect you? Whether you knew it or not? (Hint: not only sports were affected.)

I told myself I would stop having mid-week cocktails. I haven’t.

I thought about joining a choir this week that is singing poetry (William Stafford set to song). How cool is that? Then I listened/watched their last performance. I can’t do it. It seemed such a great idea — I am not that talented, but I have some boundaries, thresholds — and theirs are clearly different (they were terrible, at least on the video). I am disappointed, it would have been fantasy fulfilled. I miss singing.

I told myself I would adjust my attitude towards my non-work work. I haven’t. It is sucking buckets (my attitude). I have a low bull-shit quotient, all evidence to the contrary, and I am not buying into the hyper-optimism. That is not a bad thing in and of itself, but I must come to terms with it.

I must delete any Facebook linkage for this particular post. (Not many of my local pals read Stoney Moss in the flesh, but some do read my Facebook links. Not that this confession is earth shattering. There are four things that might be earth shattering, according to Answers, Inc. — 1) our sun could die, 2) we could be hit by the right-sized asteroid or commit, 3) Gilese 710 and the Oort Cloud could fuck with us, or, 4) a hypernova a little too close to our planet could wreck just a little havoc. My shit is not earth shattering. None of ours is, right?)

Hyperbole is overrated and hard to resist.

I have four condolence cards I have not sent. I cried over one yesterday, at lunch, while I was trying to write it, weeks and weeks and weeks after a mother’s death — there are so many. Tabbouleh and tears.  What made me ever think I could craft words? The card is only partially ready to mail.

I have gotten some really good advice/questions lately. About all kinds of stuff. I hope I take them/consider them. (”Work hard. ” “Are you happy?”)

The basics: I am clothed, fed, housed, loved.

Art is taking those things not-for-granted.

How are you?

Other confessions, probably less contrary, are to be found, possibly, at January’s.

I’m thinking my “toodooze” are obnoxious … but want to keep doing them for myself, and yet “allow” those who might be morbidly curious to gander. So I am pass-wording them.

You can easily guess the password if you use an eight-letter made-up word that happens to have four Os in it. ;-}

I’ve loved garlic ever since my best buddy in college, Linda, introduced me to the fresh stuff in the late 1970s. She came from a well-to-do family of Italian heritage. She loved lots of fresh garlic and would double or triple any recipe’s allotment. My family was lower-middle class blue-collar from the mining communities of Arizona. The only garlic we ever had was in the form of garlic salt, and occasionally, garlic powder. My father didn’t care for any herb or spice he could actually taste beyond (non-herb or spice) peppers and chilies so that my mother, faithful homemaker she was, kept the cooking on our table bland. I wanted to emulate Linda and her family and move as far away from my family’s cookbook as I had from my hometown. From that humble introduction to garlic and subsequent reading of all the cookbooks I could get my hands on, I eventually became something of a foodie, although nowadays I try to eat as much locally or organically produced foods – preferably both – as I can manage.

Michael Pollan influenced my thinking most recently – and impacted my buying, cooking and eating habits – as has Bill McKibben, Eric Schlosser and Morgan Spurlock. I’m trying to eat more sustainably. So imagine my chagrin a couple of months ago when I saw the “country of origin” sign at my local cool and hip food store said the fresh garlic was from Argentina. Argentina? I thought I had cast aside Argentinean products when I quit buying imported hot-house flowers. Not that I don’t like Argentina, but it’s a lot of travel miles away from Oregon – and Western Oregon is a fertile place, especially the Willamette Valley, where I live. So why can’t I have local garlic?

Turns out there are a few reasons why and that my question isn’t fresh. And the answers are invariably complicated.

Most fresh garlic comes from China — it’s a huge continent with a varied and regional growing season as well as the cheap labor we all know about. Some of the garlic is organic; my local market – New Seasons – would rather buy organic from Argentina than China for reasons of quality control. They rotate organic garlic suppliers according to season and move from southern countries and states to northern – Argentina, Mexico, California and Oregon – to follow the season cycle. Nearly all processed garlic comes from China – that includes dehydrated, jarred, powdered, etc. Even the garlic center of America – Gilroy, California – can now only claim to be the largest garlic processor in the USA.

Things changed on the scene about 10-15 years ago when California garlic and growers suffered blights caused by large-field monoculture and China came on the scene with cheap garlic. A very recent ruling (May 2009) turned around the illegal-dumping charge that had been placed on China a few years ago, so consumers can expect more, not less, cheaper Chinese garlic on their tables in the coming months and years. If you want organic USA garlic you’ll have to wait for seasonal farmers markets, or grow your own.

Garlic is a slow-growing plant. The Nootka Rose variety my husband planted a few months ago takes 98 days or thereabouts to mature. That is not instant gratification. He planted five plants. We use about a head of garlic every week or two. I haven’t done the math but expect that our meager harvest will last about a month or two, especially if the garlic is cured by the time our home grown tomatoes peak and fresh salsa is on the table most every night. The fall planting, which might be a lot larger, will happen in September.

It’s a conundrum. Garlic has become such an important cooking ingredient it seems impossible to eliminate it from my diet. How can I limit my consumption to summer only like the fresh Oregon strawberries I’ve come to adore?

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Sources and resources

Kim O’Donnel in the Washington Post, July 10, 2006; “The Irony of Organic Garlic From China.”
Harry Cline in the Western Farm Press, June 7, 2007; “Quality, flavor keeping California garlic competitive.”
New Seasons Market
Garlic, growing, history and more
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Cross-posted to The Clade

The second time I thought I died I was not swimming

I thought I was brave,
wore a modest bikini,
bared to surf with no skills
the ocean bade — it traded in
rip tides and undertow.

My twenty-sixth year
wanted a love I shouldn’t.
Sky warmed cool waves
Bobbed me past breakers.
Why not this one? – I glide.

Skid into a spin. Aha, ‘Maytagged.’
Sometimes peace comes
when least expected. Counting
stops, we can decide to watch.
Consider: Is this out of body?

Or deeper in? The air burnt,
tempted water to put it out.
Sliding into wet then hot sand,
grateful a story wasn’t over.
Do we know how close we are.

Huntington Beach recedes
for me. An obsession, a life
traded to heal someone else’s.
I gave one man everything back
and left as soon as the tide was out.

* * *

So this is a poem for poem, responding to Kelli Russell Agodon’s poem “Vacationing With Sylvia Plath” that we are looking over this month.

I am not satisfied with my poem, but here it is anyway, talking about oceans and nearly dying — and being in a terrible relationship, which doesn’t come through enough. It is a scene I had been wanting to write about for a while, so Kelli’s poem gave me a little opening to explore some things. (Thanks, Kelli, for allowing this venture.)

“First Fear and a Death” was another of my “death poems,” published in Voice Catcher 3 and is about the first time I had sex. I am acutely aware of the psychological meaning of water and sex. I don’t think this poem hits that enough.

I’m struggling with a desire to write beautiful, evocative poems with surprising words and metaphor. As soon as I want to do that I turn literal and narrative. What gives?! Maybe I need to stick with essays for a while and not try so hard with poetry. I’m also struggling with tense. I wanted this to all be in present, but couldn’t pull it off. Maybe it should all be in past. Crap. Poem writing is difficult these days! Yeah, yeah, yeah. At least I am writing. Pfft.

The last day of calendar spring was cool and moist in Oregon, so a couple of hiking friends and I went to Multnomah & Wahkeena Falls instead of hiking “views.”

The last time I did this loop was about three years ago on a very hot August day with Mark & Danielle. It is always a shock to hike with relatively few people and then land at Multnomah Falls with lots of tourists, a gift shop, nice restaurant and people on asphalt trails wearing flip-flops.

Yesterday found the upper Multnomah Falls even more crowded since it was mild and ice-cream was less of a draw. Boy scouts were on hand, installing switchback markers from the popular tourist site (until recently, when a casino took over the top spot, Multnomah Falls was the favorite tourist destination — now it’s #2).

My pals and I added a spur to the loop, taking off on the Larch Mountain trail and then going on another ridge trail loop (whose name I can’t recall, now) for a while.

Here are a few photos.(Click through a few times to get larger versions.)

The last picture is from later in the day, at home, after Sport the dog had been hosed off (the slug he rolled in is still in his fur though! Biomimicry must be having a field day with slug slime.)

My reading-for-writers group met earlier this week and made our selections for the next year (one book per month starting in July). I am excited by the breadth of the list , which was purposeful — we wanted to expand our reading to include all kinds of genres thinking, why not? why not mix it up?

It will be an interesting reading & thinking year, and I thought some of Stoney Moss’s pals might like to see our selections. The book is followed by a general craft question, which the presenter will follow up on with more, while we are reading.

Wintering by Kate Moses
Craft Question: How can historical fiction integrate work by the subject (in this case Sylvia Plath’s poetry) successfully?

When Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit by Judith Kerr
Craft Question: What makes for successful YA lit, and what craft questions are these authors engaging with?

Out Stealing Horses by Per Petterson
Craft Question: How do you sustain a “prose poetry” quality in a novel-length work?

Let Us Now Praise Famous Men by James Agee and Walker Evans
Craft Question: How can nonfiction collaborate with other art forms (in this case a marriage between essay and photography)?

When a Crocodile Eats the Sun by Peter Godwin
Craft Question: How much “true family history” is it fair for an author to appropriate in memoir?

Science Fiction Shorts (TBD)
Craft Question: What interesting new formats are being used in sci-fi genre fiction?

Pale Fire by Vladimir Nabokov
Craft Question: How does Nabokov pull it off?!

Tinkers by Paul Harding
Craft Question: How does a short novel achieve so much in so little space?

Alias Grace by Margaret Atwood
Craft Question: How can true crime be translated into good fiction?

Essays from Best American Science Writing 2008 (TBD)
Craft Question: How are science essayists extending/enhancing the form?

Blue Latitudes by Tony Horowitz
Craft Question: How does someone pull off history, travel, adventure, current-events and memoir in one book?

Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout
Craft Question: What makes a successful collection of linked stories? Is it a novel?

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Have you read any of these? Would you agree they are list-worthy? Why?