Snowflakes

Saw this tonight, and got philosophical. 

I do dislike the ‘I think like men’ thing.

I used to say it myself, though. I have four brothers. I grew up around men, I liked to think I understood how they operate and think, and that I was similar. I’m a blunt speaker. I like sports. I loathe duplicity and “catty” behavior in others.

I’ll use the word catty because its meaning is a specific one about a specific kind of behavior that most are familiar with, but it’s a terrible word. I have four cats. They can be asses, but they’re asses right to your face. There’s nothing sneaky about it.

I don’t count the pissing in the closet because I’m pretty sure that was Gordon and it’s because he’s a thousand twenty years old.

Anyway.

I used to say I was like a guy, my best friends were guys, etc. in exactly the way this meme describes. Men are easy. They say what they mean. They don’t smile to your face and talk shit behind your back.

Only, they totally do. At least as much as women do.

Because people are people, and whether or not one is honest or a liar, easygoing or uptight, moody or easygoing, is a matter of character and personality, and has nothing to do with sex or gender. It’s the innate thing that makes you who you are. How you respond in a crisis, how you behave when nobody’s watching – that’s what makes you special.  

Humans, at least in Western culture, don’t generally like to be lumped into a group, because it’s imperative that the individual be considered apart from his group. “Just because some people, doesn’t mean I…” Every comments section includes somebody’s personal anecdote about how they are the exception to whatever assertion was made in the article.

We are all generally quick to distance ourselves from what everybody is doing.  It’s our quest for immortality in being unique individuals, damn it.

Snowflakes, if you will.

It’s odd that this term has been bandied about as an insult, when it is in fact the sum total of all that humans want to be. One of a kind. One in a million. A real gem. We glorify and crave being held in the highest esteem among our humans. “May his name live forever.”  The worst curse of all is to be ordinary.

At the same time, the worst crime of all is not to be ordinary, and the most “heartwarming” stories are the ones that celebrate the ordinary. Those whose names are not remembered beyond their grandchildren. Those are the vast bulk of the human species, and their heroism lies in not embracing the outwardly heroic role. The farmer and his high school sweetheart who raise their family on the small plot in Iowa.

Even then, we have to give their stories some twist to make them interesting. I think of “The Bridges of Madison County – “ her story is that of any farmer’s wife, at first glance. Except she’s more than that. She’s unique in some way – an immigrant, ah, a refugee of the war, a veteran’s wife. Immediately she is different – and that is what makes her interesting. Because she’s not exactly like the other unnamed farmer’s wives.

Only they all have equally unique stories, if only we were to find their memoirs in their chest of drawers.

We are all unique. Nobody else has lived in our skin, felt our joys, suffered our pains. Billions of us, experiencing the world in a unique and unrepeatable way. No two experiences will ever be exactly alike. 

We are snowflakes.

Wishes in a Jar

Last year, I gave my friends' 8 year old daughter a birthday gift of dandelion wishes. That is, a jar full of dandelion seeds, to be pulled out when a wish was needed.

I have no idea what she really thought of it, and I have a feeling the poem I wrote to accompany it got tossed in the garbage, but I'm proud of it. I've never been much good at poetry but I liked this one. Just found it while cleaning up my documents folders and I will share it here!

So remember: every time you see a field full of dandelions gone to seed, you can look at them as weeds, or you can look at them as wishes.

Wishes in a Jar

When so ever you have a need,

Take a head of dandelion seeds,

And blow your wish

Into the Air;

Then say these words,

“Let my wish be heard!”

And when the seeds

Are all used up

Just gather more

To fill your cup!

For know, sweet girl,

In this great world

There’s a place for every

Wish to be heard. 

More Holiday Treats

I saw The Nutcracker yesterday. For a story that's sort of just an elaborate fever dream, it certainly makes for some beautiful music and dancing. It was spectacular.

The atmosphere of the holiday season is so fun. As it gets dark earlier and earlier, it's such a welcome sight when the trees are lit and evergreen branches and colorful bows, ribbons and lights are strung everywhere. The ballet had all that: folks dressed in all their most glittery, sparkly, fancy best, dazzling sets and costumes, stirring and triumphant music. Highly recommend.

This weekend's cookie extravaganza:

Almond Butter Balls 
my mom's recipe, one I make every year, stupidly easy, delicious, not too sweet.


1 cup butter, softened
1/2 cup granulated sugar
2 cups flour
1/2 tsp salt
1 tsp almond extract, or 2 tsp vanilla extract
1-2 cups almonds, or your nut of choice - I often make this with walnuts
sugar for rolling, optional. I use a cinnamon-sugar mixture with a dash of nutmeg. You could also use powdered sugar. 

Cream the butter and sugar together with a mixer until very light and fluffy. add salt, flour, and extract. Stir together until well mixed. Fold in nuts. Refrigerate for 20 minutes or so until it's easy to handle.

Preheat the oven to 350F. Roll dough into 1" balls and place on ungreased cookie sheet. Bake about 10 minutes (ovens will vary). When still warm, roll in sugar, then place on parchment paper.

Makes about 3 dozen cookies, depending on how big you make them.


4-ingredient Peanut Butter Cookies 
So easy, you'll never make them with flour again.

1 cup smooth peanut butter (Jif/Skippy/Peter Pan, not the natural stuff)
1 cup granulated sugar
1 egg
1 tsp vanilla

Cream the peanut butter and sugar together until well mixed. Add the egg and vanilla and mix well.

Preheat the oven to 350F. Roll dough into 1" balls and place on ungreased cookie sheet. Using a fork, press ball down gently one direction, then again perpendicular to create a grid pattern.

Bake 10-12 minutes. Leave on the cookie sheet about 5 minutes after baking, then remove to cooling rack.

Makes about 2 dozen cookies.

I'm too lazy to go take a picture of the ones I made, but they look just like this. https://homemadehooplah.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/4-ingredient-peanut-butter-cookies-2-800x1198.jpg

Holiday Cooking

I'm undertaking a wellness regimen, starting two days ago. I must be totally mad to attempt such a thing at this time of year. It's the season of Break Room Cookies.

Ah well. The best thing about being an optimist is that you never stop thinking you can try again. And there's nothing like getting a new picture at the DMV - and actually owning up to your current weight - to make an aging gal want to make some changes.

So there's that. As the song says, every new day life's just begun.

I have a few boxes to send out to friends that are really family. Framily? Hey, I made up a word. Anyway, what do you add to round out a care package for a young man? A few things come to mind, but ultimately "food" is always a good idea. And so! Cranberry-orange cookies. These are awesome and a little unusual with the tart-sweet combination. These will be even less sweet than my usual batches, since I inexplicably never realized I was out of powdered sugar and will have to forego the orange-flavored icing. I did do some research to see if you can make it with regular sugar, and you can... if you turn regular sugar into powdered sugar first. Not gonna happen. Ah laziness, thy name is Farnsworth.

Cranberry Orange Cookies 

The Rabbit Hole

Discipline remains the enemy of my ambition. How long since I wrote anything? Counting it in months, that's scary.

Ah, well. The trick is to not let the guilt over not being productive, prevent me from being productive. So I haven't been writing, but I have been busily researching. So. Much. Research. It's my true love, really; I love to write, but even more than that I love to read. I like that my mind is still a sponge for those things that intrigue me, and I can still get drawn into the rabbit-hole of Wikipedia just as I did with World Books thirty years ago. 

Anyway, when you're trying to understand an ancient culture it's important to really understand those things their lives revolved around. In looking to the life of aristocratic women in ancient Greece, the first impression is that by modern standards, they lived sheltered, reclusive, oppressed lives, having little contact with anyone outside their immediate family.

This is true to an extent, but it ignores the sphere where women held tremendous power and influence: the state religion. There was no specifically priestly class, but the aristocratic families all held the most important roles and led the rituals around which the civic calendar revolved. The role of women was key in these festivals, and in some cases, men were not permitted to attend or even view their ceremonies. 

This line of thought led me to the Thesmophoria, a ritual devoted to Demeter during the threshing period. Threshing is a word I associate with processing wheat, but that's all I know about it, and here we go down the rabbit hole of how wheat is harvested. I'm familiar with the scythe, the sickle, the term "separate the wheat from the chaff," but how all of this was actually accomplished, I never knew. Turns out a tremendous amount of labor goes into it - reaping, threshing, winnowing, all done by hand. Villages worked together to get it all done before the rains came and ruined the crop, and it could take weeks or months. 

We just celebrated Thanksgiving here in the US, where around 2% of the labor force engages in farming. That number is just...telling, I think. In 1920, it was 30%. In 1850, it was 64%. 

It seems as a nation we're almost entirely removed from the harvest. Every year there's the debate about ending summer vacation for the kids since so few of them are needed on the farm anymore (a myth we all grew up believing).  Pretty much any food you want is available at a supermarket at any time of the year. Sure, we go to farmer's markets, we eat local food at farm-to-table restaurants, we have little vegetable gardens, but the number of us who really do anything significant to produce food is just minuscule. We're removed from the cycle of the seasons, of planting and growing and harvesting, on all but the most superficial levels. Carving pumpkins, making apple pies, visiting a corn maze. There aren't a lot of us who actually know how to drive a combine and get the massive grain harvest stored so we don't all starve this winter. 

Two percent of the nation feeds all of us and more. That number just floors me. 

They sell these at Michael's. 

Still, when I look around my neighborhood and talk to my friends, most of us who have a little bit of land will try to grow a vegetable garden and/or flower beds. The instinct to have little bits of nature around us is still pretty strong. We all gleefully take part in the harvest ritual of buying enough food to purposefully gorge ourselves and our families, and I think it's generally a time we remember to stop and take a moment to feel gratitude for those things we usually take for granted. 

We're a long way from the days of our ancestors, though. We're seldom most thankful for the food, if my Facebook feed is any indication. We're thankful for our families, our friends, our circumstances if they are good. But the notion of being thankful for this food as the old prayer says, is somewhat remote. The dangers of a poor harvest are less likely to result in famine as in those small tribal city-states. People still go hungry in our nation, of course, but on the whole I think we are very much removed from the real danger of starvation that was faced by our ancestors. 

The funny thing about history is that people haven't changed much. We're all still driven by emotions, for the most part. Love and anger and fear and jealousy and grief and hope and compassion. 

It seems to me that what we fear has always been a prime mover, and this is a thing that does change. I think about those ancient Greeks who fought against Persian invaders because they literally had foreigners landing on the beach with swords. Sure, the invaders expected to be able to say "give us earth and water" (i.e., tribute money) and the Athenians would choose to capitulate instead of all getting killed, but they were perfectly prepared to slaughter all the soldiers, then move through Attica enslaving and killing the remaining men, women, and children, burning their farms along the way before laying waste to Athens. 

Side note: Incidentally, the Athenians started it. They joined up with their allies from Miletos to attack the Persian empire, and they set fire to their city of Sardis. How much history would be altered if they had not done this? Maybe the Persians would never have bothered trying to take revenge on the Greeks, and nobody would know the name of Marathon, and a bunch of people who inexplicably enjoy running wouldn't have any reason to do a 26 mile race every year.

But I digress, because that is the nature of the rabbit hole. Where was I? Fear. It's hard, as an American, to imagine having to physically fend off invaders at our shores. Having to pull our weapons off the walls and go defend our homesteads, lest we be killed or sold into slavery by hostile invaders. Yet we are our ancestors: we still feel the same emotions, and emotions still drive us. We're still afraid of invasions. We're still afraid of The Other. 

But that wasn't where I started either. Where was I originally? Oh yes, the religious festivals of the Greeks and the role of women in the rituals that shaped their year. The perception that women were disrespected, ignored, and abused, but I think this is wrong. Women were the guardians of the home and the family, managers of the household, and played key roles in most of the city-wide religious festivals. Goddesses, too, were the patron of many cities - Athena to Athens, of course, but Artemis was the primary deity worshiped in Sparta, and so devoted to her were the Spartans that they refused to join the Athenians against the Persian invasion until their holy festival, the Carneia, was completed. 

And we're back at Marathon again. 

This is the rabbit hole. Now I am off to read about the Thesmophoria, a pretty odd ritual for Demeter, the grain goddess. Involved in this was the sacrifice of a pig, whose remains would be cast into a pit to be retrieved at a later festival, planting I think. I'll have to read that again. Women were the only participants at these rituals, and they were secret - regrettably, the ancient sources were pretty closemouthed about things that were supposed to be secret rituals, so we really don't know much about the mystery religions. They remain a mystery. 

I'll see myself out. Oooh, is there still pie? 

Summer Solstice

It's the longest day of the year! I love the irony that this, the inaugural day of summer and the hottest months of the year, also ushers in the start of shorter days. Granted, it will be several months before the lazy late nights shift significantly earlier, but after today it's all downhill until the winter solstice.

The full moon of June, which was on the 9th, is the Strawberry Moon, because this is the month strawberries start to ripen. I got my first real harvest (other than one or two here and there) a few days ago. Aren't they lovely?

Yeah, so they vary in size from a pea to a large grape, but that's okay. They are nothing like the strawberries available in the store, but they're sweet and delicious and the beauty of a small patch is that there's nothing to be done with them besides eat them straightaway.

Most of the spring flowers have faded off; my pretty yellow bushes have turned to green, the purple spikes of the salvia are temporarily exhausted (they'll be back in a few weeks), and the sage and thyme are finished blooming too. Next up will be the daisy I bought last year at the end of the season - which promptly died, but is coming back nicely - and with any luck, the lilies I planted three years ago. I keep getting plenty of healthy green stalks and no flowers whatsoever. In a fit of annoyance last week I told them that if they don't flower this year I'm yanking them all out to replace them with something that will give some summer color! I don't even remember what color these were supposed to be!

I may or may not follow through on that. I feel guilty pulling up plants; I pulled out the anemic and perpetually diseased rose bushes early in spring, and felt bad the whole time I was hacking at the four-inch-thick roots with my spade (I really need to invest in more garden tools, this was not really the tool for this task). My mother told me my grandmother used to talk to her plants - and she had a zillion of them, all over the house, racks on the patio, a huge Florida yard full of mango trees and other exotic flora I don't really remember - and that she swore by this as a part of their care.

I do this too. I like to chat with them as I'm watering them every week, checking out their leaves and the state they're in. Plant care seems to have skipped a generation from my grandmother to me - my mother rarely had real plants in the house, she preferred the plastic ones. To this day I'm not sure if she had a black thumb or if she just didn't like the idea of the bugs they can bring into the house. She was a bit of a clean freak.

Just a hunch. 

No plastic plants for me! To be fair, I have seen plenty of plants to an early death. I transplanted my parsley that lived a nice quiet life in my kitchen window out into the garden a few weeks ago, and it was thriving, until a couple of days ago when all the leaves mysteriously disappeared. I think I know the culprit on that one though. -->

The lavender is blooming earlier than I remember as being "usual," so I've pulled a few bunches to dry for later use. They are messy bushes but I love them.

Summer has begun and it's time for the heat. I am not, personally, a fan. If I had my druthers (what a great phrase, we really need to bring back some of those old phrases) it would never get above 75. Alas, Gaia does as she sees fit and cares not for my personal comfort zone.

Happy Solstice and may you all have a beautiful summer.

Life is For Living

The secret of life, I think, is to never stop living it. Never stop having adventures. Never stop doing things that scare you. Never get jaded to the beauty of the world, and stay open to experiencing new places and people and activities.

What does it all mean?

It helps to have adventurous friends, of course! This weekend I went with a friend to visit the Dinosaur National Monument, something I've wanted to see for years. We headed out on Friday and drove half a day across Colorado to the northwest corner, ending up in Utah where most of the actual dinosaur stuff is.

First stop, outside the monument, was the McConkie Ranch to view the petroglyphs left by the ancient Fremont culture. The nature of the iconography and its purpose is still up for debate, as well as their age - estimated from the year 1 to 1200, a pretty wide span.  The images are fascinating and unusual, and their placement on sheer cliff walls makes viewing them a bit of a challenge.

View from the ridge at McConkie Ranch. 

Getting older is such a mixed bag. It's frustrating in some ways - the achy knees, the mysterious bruises that appear from gods know where, the realization that I've forgotten something I was absolutely positive I'd done. As Isabella Rosellini says in Death Becomes Her: "This is life's ultimate cruelty. It offers us a taste of youth and vitality, and then it makes us witness our own decay."

On the other hand, getting older is freeing in ways I never imagined as a young woman. Looking back, I never realized how much I was afraid. Afraid to be myself, to have expectations of the relationships in my life, to choose a path to happiness that was completely my own. I no longer have any doubts about who I am and what I've chosen - single, childless, mostly solitary. I have made a lot of mistakes, and I have a few regrets, but I wouldn't trade any of it. Every decision I've made, for good and for ill, has led me to the life I have now.

Lunch on the Green River. Best shared with a friend who never stops smiling.

It's pretty great.

Touch the bones! What a cool place. 

The quarry is amazing. A solid wall of bones they left in the rock, some available to touch - millions-year-old bones of long-extinct animals. The wall is jam-packed with Camarasaurus, Stegosaurus, Diplodocus, and other unnamed species. It's spectacular. If you go there, do not miss the quarry.

This is a particularly special spot and may have been my favorite place in the monument. It was the home of Josie Bassett Morris, a woman who lived alone in a log cabin for 50 years. No electricity, no running water, miles and miles from the nearest neighbor - but if you walk these grounds there is no questioning her decision. Not far from her cabin, situated in a spectacular green meadow ringed with tall trees and still bordered by the fences she built herself, is this box canyon where she'd drive her livestock. It's quiet and peaceful and has an aura that is indescribable.

I see myself in this woman, though she was undoubtedly tougher and more resilient and resourceful than I will ever be. But the notion of living apart from the world, in a beautiful place with only my animals, has a certain appeal.


Maybe someday.

Josie's cabin