Settling in With a Book

Now that the computer is back from the Exorcist, you would think I would be posting lots of entries. Yeah. I thought so, too. But I've been spending every free moment zipping through some John Grisham novels.

A new television series started this month, called The Firm. It's sort of a postscript to the Grisham novel of the same name. Mike, Brooks and I watched the pilot, which was very good, and we have looked forward to each subsequent episode. Brooks has read a couple of the Grisham books that we had in our personal library, but The Firm was not one of them. I checked it out of the library and read it aloud after the girls are in bed. Does it sound wierd that I read aloud to my 15-year-old son? It's something we do fairly often - on car trips and whenever we get a hankering to experience a book together. And I do voices and everything. It's a One Woman Show. *grin*

We finished The Firm in about a week and now we've moved on to A Time to Kill, my favorite book by that author. The experience is taking me back to my early married/early motherhood life when I first read these books.

I am a character-driven reader in most instances. I'll read books over and over again if they have characters who I want to hang out with. But I'm realizing that the books I'm drawn back to also almost universally take place in the south. Maybe I'm drawn to settings as much as characters? Or maybe there's a prototypical Southern Character that tends to appear in those books who draws me in.

Either way. Enjoying the time with my boy. And the southerners.

You Know the World...

I'm on a little road trip with my kids. They are on a brief break from school and the opportunity presented itself to go visit some friends. (Look for some more interviews coming!)

A scrapbooking friend of mine has asked me a few times if I thought scrapbooking would get me and my girls through some tough days of adolescence ahead. She noticed her own pre-teen daughter wanting to sit down next to her mom whenever the scrapbooking supplies were out. They would work on their projects together and the daughter would get chatty. I didn't really see the same thing happening with my girls, though they like to craft, too.

No, I think travel seems a more likely "refresh button" for my relationships with my kids. We get trapped together without so many of our usual distractions. We talk and laugh, rest and play. If I can afford it, I hope their remaining growing up years will include lots of little getaways with me and their dad.

I've been thinking of a quote from Haven Kimmel's "She Got Up Off the Couch." I'm on the road now without my copy of the book... I tried Googling the quote and couldn't find it. Pre-teen Zippy was taken by her mother to see a highbrow play on the campus of the big university - a very strange and stretching experience for such a young and uncivilized girl. Later, Zippy realized that her mom was trying to give her new experiences and make her world bigger than just their hometown of 300.

We love OUR little small town, but I think we improve it when it's colored by the rich experiences of it's inhabitants. I think it looks sweeter when we can see it's contrast against other settings. Our citizens seem less homogenized when we recognize the dynamic personalities that were trees lost in the forest of intimacy.

And when I bump the horizons a little further east or west, I say to my children, as Zippy's mom said to her, "Why, it's just the world. You know the world.'

The Great American Road Trip - Part 8

From Deadwood, we had only to drive an hour or so to the Custer area, where we could take in Mount Rushmore and the Crazy Horse monument in progress. We started the day at 5:30 in the morning with a big splurge - a hot air balloon ride over the Black Hills of South Dakota.



Our pilot picked us up in a parking lot across from our hotel. Our balloon was going up in a basket built for twelve. Besides the old balloon captain, our companions were an older couple and a family of three. We drove out to an empty field in the country where we were met by a team ready to help us get off the ground and chase us to our touchdown location - destination unknown.



It took only about 20 minutes to get from parking the van to being in the air. I couldn't believe how quickly it inflated.



There was another balloon excursion getting started in the same field. The inflation process was a good-natured race between the two teams and we won.



Once the balloon was upright, they wasted no time in ordering us into the basket.



I looked over with concern at my shivering family. I felt judgement for being a poor mom who doesn't dress her children warmly enough for the chill of the morning. We climbed in anyway, while I resigned myself to being too cold.



I needn't have worried. The flames were blasted to raise us to many hundreds of feet. The flames stopped and we just floated often, but we sank quickly, too, and that caused the flames to blast some more. Every time there was flame, I felt the part in my hair burning from above. We were not too cold.


Check out these views.



I love the way the light filtered through the mist.



Often we spotted a deer or two, who looked up at us with wonder. Until the flames blasted. Then they scampered away. The blaster was loud as well as hot.



One woman in our party nervously asked about our captain's qualifications. He told her that there were only about four balloonists in the world with more hours in the air than him. When they filmed "Dances With Wolves" the overhead shots of the herd of bison running were filmed from his balloon. Very impressive.



Did I mention Sophia is afraid of heights?



I asked her in advance if she would be too afraid, but she gave her blessing. I thought she did great. I was proud of her.



Did I mention the view was incredible?



Our original goal for landing was a field a little nearer than the one we ended up in. A gust of wind blew us out of position and our balloon pilot chose another one a little further away. Yay - our ride was extended by ten minutes!



I think the balloonist was in the practice of scoping out the biggest guy in the party and as we began our descent, he instructed Mike to take a rope and walk far away from the balloon once we had landed. The idea was to let the deflating balloon come to rest neatly and not on top of the passengers!



It took a little bit for the balloon to completly deflate and while it did so, some of the rest of us noticed in the treeline about 150 yards away from us - A Herd. Of. Bison. Now I have no idea if this was a bison ranch or if the fenced in pasture was so large that it just happened to include lots of random wildlife, including bison, but we did know that bison are inpredictable and dangerous. We laughed nervously and photographed awhile. Meanwhile our wise and crusty old codger of a balloon pilot looked quickly for an escape.

"C'mon, folks," he hollered and started trotting to the barbed wire fence.

A few more photographs until The Old Guy insisted that we move. I pointed out that my husband was still standing there obediently holding the rope of the flat balloon.

A quick glance backward by The Old Guy. Stops and cups his hands to his mouth. "C'mon, buddy!" Scamper, scamper, scamper.

Our team waited for us on the other side of the barbed wire fence and helped us all weasel between the barriers. I tell you, these guys (and one leathery woman) were such renegades. Instead of making me homesick for tidy, polite church-goers, as rough people often do, they just cracked me up. They seemed like cheerful pirates to me.

We piled back into the van and headed back to our meeting place. At some point on the way, we met up with the other balloon with another team in another field. That captain asked ours where his balloon was (still in the bison-infested field).

"Still in the field," said TOG. "We have to, uh, get the key." (Use wire cutters.)

Knowing glances and chuckles between the captains and their crews of pirates.

Continuing on our drive, I asked if they ever get into trouble with the property owners.

The woman answered, "Oh, sometimes they're not too happy, but really the law is on our side. It's just like with airplane pilots. If we have to land on their property to get you down safely, we have to."



Back at the parking lot, TOG got out a Tupperware container of fresh muffins and cheese, popped a cork of champagne and offered this toast:

"May the winds welcome you with softness.
May the sun bless you with its warm hands.
May you fly so high and so well that God
joins you in laughter and sets you gently
back into the loving arms of Mother Earth."

Amen.



Oh yeah, here's Mount Rushmore



And Crazy Horse. Can you see the outline of the horse's head on the side of the mountain?

The Journey Home:

As was our custom on this trip, we were as interested in the journey as the destination. We stopped at a couple of kitschy tourist spots on the way home. The first was Wall Drug. It started as nothing special - a family-owned drug store that was struggling to stay afloat during the Depression. Mrs. Wall persuaded her husband to consider advertising as a way to get people into the store. She felt that weary travelers on the dusty roads of South Dakota would stop in if they were promised the refreshment of free ice water at Wall Drug. They began putting up billboards and, indeed, people did come.

The store has grown to fill a whole city block and the spread of their billboards have stretched all around the globe. In fact, at home later this summer, we were driving on a stretch of road we don't often travel and there, on the side of a barn, was a hand painted sign that said, "Wall Drug - 917 miles - Free Ice Water."



They still serve free ice water to weary travelers.



Just a bit further down the road is the Corn Palace. I'd heard of it. A structure built in 1921, complete with regal onion domes, they display the fruits of the Great Plains in brand new murals each year. The murals are made of corn. What I didn't know was that it was a giant sports arena on the inside. Special sporting contests are held there as well as concerts and other entertainment events. On the day we were there, the basketball floor was filled with craft and souvenir booths.



So you can get a sense of how the murals are made....



Here is a close-up....



Of one of the interior murals.



Our final important stop on the way home was DeSmet, SD. Do you recognize the name of this town? I'm thinking that if you were a girl who grew up in the '70's and '80's, you probably read the Little House on the Prairie series. I surely did and De Smet is the name of the town where the Ingalls family finally settled. It was the site of the books On the Shores of Silver Lake, The Long Winter, Little Town on the Prairie and These Happy Golden Years.

DeSmet has a festival each summer to celebrate their heritage and the adventures of their most famous former resident, but we landed in their town on the wrong day to experience it. However, they do give a tour and offer a glimpse at some of the buildings of interest to those who love the Ingalls family.



Mike and Brooks were too tired to take in the tour, but I did read The Long Winter aloud on the drive home and all enjoyed it. I was especially tickled at how much interest Mike had in it - he had never read the books. The little museum/store is right next to the Surveyors' House (pictured above), where the family spent the winter after Pa's work for the railroad in By the Shores of Silver Lake. A couple of the historic buildings had been relocated to this area.



Another building was the schoolhouse in town where Laura met Mary Power and Cap Garland. It had been relocated to the museum neighborhood only fairly recently. Up to that time, it had been used as a private home for years. There were strips on the wall showing where partition walls had been and then been torn down. There was wallpaper on some of the walls. It had only been partly removed because, once the removal process was started, the original blackboards were found along with some chalk writing and drawings! They were waiting to raise the funds for the very expensive archival wallpaper removal that would leave the chalk markings unharmed.



Above is a picture of an Ingalls home which I don't think was ever mentioned in the books. Pa reneged on his homestead outside of DeSmet and this is the home in town which he moved the family to after the failure. Laura was already a married woman and never lived in this house.

I was introduced to the Little House series in 1977. I was in first grade and an early reader. My dear teacher, Mrs. Kurtz, walked by my desk at reading time one day and just placed Little House in the Big Woods on the corner of my desk without a word. I devoured the series that year. I now call it my "gifted and talented education." It was a complete thrill to walk in the places where Laura walked.

And thus concludes one of the spiffiest vacations I've had lo these many years.

Two For the Road

I enjoy the NPR food program "Splendid Table." Frequent contributers are Jane and Michael Stern (Or at least I THINK that is how they are still billed. I understand they are now divorced, but continue to work together. Wow. Diligence.) who taste their way about the country, stopping mostly at diners, coffee shops and the occasional bar.

They've written several books and, to my surprise, they are not all about food. Some are more specifically about travel or about American culture. This should come as no surprise since, in the tone of their writing and radio segments, they seem so sweet on the people living out small town culture, be they open-hearted midwesterners, crusty easterners, bigger-than-life southerners or loosey-goosey west coast types.

All I want to think about or talk about lately is our upcoming summertime road trip "out west." I've read, or at least browsed the Stern books "Road Food," "Eat Your Way Across the USA," and "500 Things to Eat Before It's Too Late: and the Very Best Places to Eat Them" in anticipation of these two weeks on the road.

Only by happenstance did I find this book: "Two For the Road," the Sterns' memoir about their travels. The good news: this book made me laugh out loud three times in the first eight pages. I was expecting to find culinary opionions that I trust, but funny, irreverant writing was a happy suprise. The bad news: their conclusion is that the people of the great plains undoubtedly eat well at home, but they offer very few public eateries worth a mention. On this matter I cannot be consoled.

Here comes a cute story, however - For the dearth of lovely roadside diners in that part of the country, the Sterns' very favorite diner story takes place in South Dakota. The coffee shop is easy enough to imagine. It was the one and only such place in town, privately owned with simple, hearty fare - open only for breakfast and lunch. In this particular community, the folks used it regularly and knew they could count on it, but they really never thought much about the service it offered to them all. And then, after decades of business, the owners closed up shop and moved on to other things. Like most can-do folks, the South Dakotans considered the new situation, clucked their tongues and shrugged, getting back to life as usual.

But as time wore on, they found they missed the daily opportunity to meet with their neighbors. Because the typical lifestyle was limited to: being alone in the house, being alone in the barn and being alone on the tractor, the coffee shop was such a comfort when one was looking for a little human contact and conversation.

This is where the story gets especially nice. Volunteers were recruited from the community in order to staff the kitchen on a monthly basis. Here I read stories of husband/wife teams splitting the labor on their assigned days of feeding their neighbors. One hog farmer might do kitchen duty (with an apron tied across his belly and a spatula in hand), preparing breakfast ham, waving away the instructions of how to prepare Earl's eggs because he knows already; hasn't he been cooking them for three years? And the hog farmer's wife rings up the orders and makes sure the coffee cups don't go too cool or too dry. Whomever makes up the menu and does the shopping plans for cinnamon rolls an another day, when a certain farm wife is in the kitchen because she's known for that particular breakfast and folks would be disappointed if they weren't on the menu when they know she's cooking.

I just thought that was such a cool story. I love that kind of community, folk and diner, don't you?

The Church of Each Other, Part One

I've been working on this post for a week. By working, I mean writing one lame opening sentence, deleting it and closing it up until the next day. I want my words to accurately express what myself and some of the people around me have been feeling recently. Since they can't, I just need to record SOMETHING of it. Over the last two weeks, in our small church in Indiana, we first worried over a nine-year-old boy who fell off the monkey bars and was badly hurt. We were given assurance a few days later that he would be fine, so we breathed a sigh of relief. Then we were punched in the gut when a favorite woman of the church fell victim to a heart attack and did not recover. We are all very sad.

Drema was a gentle woman from the hills of West Virginia who made everyone feel like family. She greeted me every Sunday with a hug and "How are you, Sweetie?" She remembered if a child had been sick recently and asked about them. Anytime a group worked to serve the church or people in need, she and her husband were the first to come, the last to leave and the hardest workers of the day. She was uncomplicated but not simple. She had little and shared everything. We all felt like we had something special with her. She leaves a loving husband and two teenaged daughters, one who is having her high school graduation next week.

I've been thinking about a phrase I read recently and it seems to describe the attitude in our church. Mary Jane Butters is seamstress, carpenter, community organizer, milkmaid, writer and farmgirl. She was raised in a devout Mormon family and her parents were in high standing in their small but tight Church community. While she doesn't practice any organized religion now, she talks with fondness about the intimate Community formed by the people of the church - by Being There for each other in good times, in bad times, in unthinkably tragic times. Today, when asked what church she attends, she says she belongs to the Church of Each Other. Without theology, she carries on the practice of Being There with her employees, her neighbors, her shareholders.

An excerpt from Mary Jane's Ideabook, Cookbook, Lifebook:

"The 'other' part of 'each other' is easier if you decide that people matter, no matter what. For behold, are we not all beggars? For me, then, it's the wheel, work, and a heart full of song - it's the church of Each Other, the church of Lend a Hand, and the church called Gathered Up. The stuff of belief in providing relief to each other is a mighty defense against the passionlessness of modern life. Anyone can attend. And anyone can join."

A mere day and a half after dear Drema's sudden death was our Sabbath, with a scheduled carry-in dinner after services in order to honor our graduating young students, Drema's daughter among them. I am the Chair of the Fellowship committee, which hosted the event. A very large portion of the church turned out in order to Be Together. There had to be some crying together, too. But also laughing together, encouraging together, helping together and certainly eating together.

When the eating part was mostly done came the real work of the event, which also happens to be some of my favorite stuff. My committee consisted of four other women, ranging in age from about 15 years older than me to about 75 years old. "How awkward," some might say, "of course you have nothing in common!" Not so. We have our work in common, and the feeling that the work is important. The people we care about bond us, too, as do the joys and sorrows of the Community. Right now our people are sorrowing and what we know to do really well is serve them from the kitchen.

Aprons were donned, hands got pruney from the dishwater and only two glasses were broken. All the church members bussed their own tables and sorted their plates, glasses and silverware in order to be helpful. Barb didn't want to take all that leftover cake home, so could she send it home with me, you know, for the kids? I didn't know where everything went in the kitchen, but Carol did. Carol knows everything about the church kitchen. We wondered if a certain dish belonged to the church or to one of it's members, but Ruby recognized it as being one of Wendy's bowls. And Sharon, bless her, who laughs at herself for managing to break a sweat when she folds socks, stood melting over the hot dishwater for an hour or more, hair sticking damply to every part of her face and neck, but did not stop until the work was done.

Look again, and I noticed Joann was washing a sinkful of dishes, too. And Darcey was in the Fellowship Hall, wiping down tables and vacuuming the floor. That's not unusual; they're always there when work needs to be done, but neither was on my committee... the work wasn't theirs to be done. No matter, they would pitch in anyway.

A month ago, Drema would have been a part of that crew. A month from now, the cast may change again. But what is evolving stays the same. There will always be people to hold your hand, bring you a casserole, wash up afterwards. The food tastes better in the church basement. The work is more meaningful when the one doing it chose it, was not assigned to it. We are more Family than family.

Miriam's Kitchen

I'm re-reading a book this week which I originally read years ago, Miriam's Kitchen. It's a memoir by Elizabeth Ehrlich, a basically non-observant Jew, inspired by her kosher mother-in-law to experiment with keeping her own kosher kitchen for one year.

Growing up in, and remaining in, the rural Anabaptist community as I have, my understanding of Jewish traditions is limited, to put it generously. Reading this book informs me that not only can the strictly observant Jew not eat meat and milk in the same meal, her food cannot be prepared in, served in, eaten off any of the same dishes. The author tells us that one of her grandmothers had SIX sets of dishes: meat, milk and neutral dishes for everyday, and meat, milk and neutral dishes for special days. One must not use the same sponge to clean up after milk as to clean up after meat. Once you've used the oven to prepare a meat dish, it is a meat oven. It must be specially cleansed to become neutral again and fit to bake your cake made with milk. Can you imagine?

Here's a quote from the book which spoke to me:

"I wondered what to teach my children. I wanted to build a floor under my children, something strong and solid.

"Then I remembered and unwrapped a bundle of family tales, many located in or near the kitchen. In these I found wisdom and innovation and the fading rituals and habits of an assimilating clan. I had been carrying that bundle all my life.

"What made me value my inheritance as treasure, not burden? The luck that has placed me, as an adult, in range of Miriam's kitchen. My mother-in-law Miriam, born in a small village in Jewish Poland, survived the Holocaust. A keeper of rituals and recipes, and of stories, she cooks to recreate a lost world, and to prove that unimaginable loss is not the end of everything. She is motivated by duty to ancestors and descendants, by memory and obligation and an impossible wish to make the world whole."

To me, the logistics of keeping a kosher kitchen seem foreign. But the reasons for thinking the effort is worth it do not.