Feel Me, Read Me, Watch Me, Eat Me

Yeah, yeah, yeah, this isn't on a Friday like it used to be, but let's be honest, I wasn't so good about doing it every Friday so now I'm just doing it when it comes to me.  Let's take an organic approach to this blog, shall we?

This summer the ladyfriend and I brought mountain bikes with us to Boulder, CO, and I rekindled my love affair with my mountain bike (a 1998 Gary Fisher Paragon).  My colleague and friend, Melanie Chambers, got into mountain bike racing this summer and has written about it here. 

Can you ever have enough ways to make comfort food?  ("No," is the short answer.)  I'm excited to try this totally old-school casserole in the crock pot.

And finally, I'm looking forward to listening to the latest Stash and Burn podcast.  Yes, it's true; knitters do like to talk about knitting and yarn and everything related.  It's nice to listen to an easy conversation about it all.  It's especially good when you're knitting!

Have a good week!

Endings and Possibilities

I've been holding onto this post for a while, partly because I wasn't sure what else might end this year.  I guess I was also being a little superstitious despite my general inclinations in that area.

There have been a number of significant things/people/events that have ceased to be this year.  It started when I discovered that our beloved Lakeside Lodge in Gillespie Settlement, New Brunswick had closed without our knowledge (yes, I can be possessive).  We'd been stopping there on our trips to and from Nova Scotia for about eight years and had become close to the owners, Karl and Therese.  While we knew there'd been some problems, most signficantly the rise of food costs that made it difficult to make a profit at the restaurant, we'd figured they'd be figured out (yes, "figured" twice in once sentence).

When I looked up the actual address for a bike trip with my father, I read they'd closed their business.  It felt a little bit like my family had moved and sold the family house without telling me.  I tried to find a way to reach Karl and Therese because we'd never had a chance to say goodbye, but that is one of the things about endings.  Sometimes you don't get that opportunity.

The second significant end was the death of my college boyfriend, Pete.

(Note:  this image is from after we were dating and after I'd graduated)

I'd always felt I'd see Pete again.  He was what many people have - the one I felt there was unfinished business with (and no, I didn't think we were going to get back together or something).  So when an old college friend sent me the news, I was shocked and so full of grief.  Even now, I find it a little hard to understand.

The third significant ending was the end of the Michigan Womyn's Music Festival.  At least I knew that was coming when I went, but it didn't make it any easier, and I'm finding that I pull up images and moments in my mind that I know will never happen again.  Fest had become, in the six years since we first attended, a major part of my life.  It was a place that was yes, full of contradictions, but a place where contradictions could be allowed and examined.   One may think it's a cop-out, but I have no need to discuss the politics and various machinations that led to its end.  What I have to say is that I realized this year, while walking around Fest, that Fest allowed me to rise to my full stature - something that is so hard to do off the Land.  I'm trying to carry that around with me as I move through the world now.

There have been other endings as well.  I feel like this is the year for them, and maybe it's because I'm turning 50 (the ladyfriend turned 50 earlier this month).  I am choosing to see these things as opening up space for new possibilities from something as simple as making the trip to Nova Scotia in two days rather than three and freeing up a little time to reconnecting with one of my best friends from college.

Same New Year's Eve; same awesome sweater

This year has been huge for me in so many ways, and much of it fills me with excitement.  Can I tell you that I've read The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up and am considering changing my relationship to my stuff?  Opening literal and figurative space in my life could really allow me to take on the next decade being more and more of the person I want and believe myself to be.  This may all sound a bit, I don't know, new agey or something, but there it is.

September always brings a new year for many of us.  It's good to take a moment to recognize the shifts in our lives, and while we grieve them sometimes, it helps to recognize that they've opened space for new things as well.  Just thought I'd share that.

What I'm Wearing to Teach Today: First Communion

Someone walked in while I was taking this; a little embarrassing

Dress:  Rue du Mail
Shoes:  Robert Clergerie
Sunglasses:  Tom Ford

As Patti Smith Has Said

the people have the power.

As the US Presidential campaign gets into full-on looney-bin circus mode, with the Canadian political spectacle not far behind, and I hear stories like the one on As It Happens yesterday about Megan Nobert, it's hard not to believe we're going to hell in a handbasket.  Frankly, my faith that governments or other large "corporations" (sometimes it's hard to tell the difference) to affect change and actually take care of people, animals, and the environment is pretty damn low.  So it was great to read the NYTimes report on the Sea Shepherd's efforts to stop illegal fishing.  I hope you take a minute to read it, and hey, stop ordering Chilean sea bass already.

Coming Into the Home Stretch

Our neighbors, right across the street, at the community pasture

Yesterday the ladyfriend put our time here into perspective.  We always have this sense that time is flying by, but when we stop to think about what we've done while we've been here (and when we did it), we realize that we've pretty much enjoyed each day to its fullest, and that's what we like.  We've puzzled, biked, gone to Halifax to attend an opening, visited friends, read, crafted, swum, and more.  However, it's not so much about what we've done or accomplished since we've been here; it's the way this place constantly renews us.

The ladyfriend at the Halifax Farmers' Market

We have a little over a week left before we head back home.  August is a busy month for us as we are home only for a few, most likely frantic, days before we go to MichFest (more on that in another post), visit the ladyfriend's mother & family in Colorado, and finish getting ready for the school year.  (I think I have let go of any surprise that we hit the ground running in August; it happens every year this way.)  I have the feeling that this coming week will be a busy one.  Not only is it River John Days, but we'll be trying to see our friends here one more time as well as take care of some business and get a few more days of swimming in.  The great thing is that we always have faith we'll be here again next summer so there's no reason to fret about what did or didn't happen this time.

It's been a good creative time for me.  I'm working on a new collection of short stories and am starting to get a sense of the shape of that landscape.  I'm hoping to get one story finished (or as near to that as possible) to use for a residency application, but that might be a bit much to ask.  I am, in the meantime, attempting to cultivate a "work-lust" a la Seamus Heaney.  I thank my friend Karen, at Day In & Day Out for the quote and inspiration!

Things change quickly, last week's puzzle gets taken apart to make way for the next one.

Almost Two Weeks In - Nova Scotia

Hanging your lobsters was recommended by a vintage recipe we found; keeps the meat from getting water-logged.

Greetings from Nova Scotia!  We've been here a little over a week, and clearly time has gotten a little away from me.  While the image above depicts a sunny day, we've been having rather cool weather and a few rainy days.  It's only starting to get above 20C/70F during the day.  It's fine as we have plenty of things to busy ourselves with, like puzzles.

We finished this puzzle in about two days.  However, we'd sorted the pieces the last time we were here so a lot of the grunt work of starting a puzzle was done.  That doesn't mean it was easy.  We've already finished another one so we bought two more when we went into New Glasgow a few days ago.

We're working (yes, really - and it's good), crafting, reading, eating, and just letting our lives slow down a bit.  I finished Joan Didion's The Year of Magical Thinking the first week.  The book is from the Chester Newsies Lending Library (also known as The Artists' Newstand).  I'll be bringing it back when we return if you want to borrow it.  It's a really good book.  I happen to love Joan Didion's writing.

I have another book on the go (read-in-bed category), which I'm pretty meh about - Silence of the Grave by Arnaldur Indridason.  It's a mystery set in Iceland, which I got from my mother-in-law when she was getting rid of books.  I'll finish it, but I have to say,  I don't really care about any of the characters, and this is a book where's there's a battered wife, a junkie daughter in a coma, and a couple of others one might feel for.  Meh.  The other books that I'm dipping in and out of at will are Consider the Oyster by M.F.K. Fisher, which is great, and Writing Past Dark by Bonnie Friedman.  Both are more or less collections of essays so maintaining a narrative thread isn't important.

I brought supplies for four knitting projects and two sewing projects (both Alabama Chanin things - one is the sampler quilt and the other is beading I need to do at the bottom of a finished skirt).

We're headed into Halifax (the big city!) tomorrow for a friend's opening at a gallery.  I'm excited to try a restaurant I've read about and stay at an iconic Halifax hotel.  Plus the farmers' market is on Saturday, which we'll definitely hit.

We really feel at home here.  People don't really know what it's like until they get here, and when they do, they never forget it.  Happy summer!

If You Don't Document It, Did It Happen?

Bandana made with fabric gifted to me and bias tape made from Ikea fabric

This is one of the questions my friend, the performance artist Jess Dobkin, addressed in her recent performance  "How Many Performance Artists Does It Take to Change a Lightbulb (for Martha Wilson)"where she had 100 or so people documenting the performance with various technologies from pen and paper (yours truly and many others), video, film, tweets, etch-a-sketch, and more.  It is also something I grapple with because I really am not very good at documenting my output via social media.

Take, for example, MeMadeMay2015.  I pretty much did what I'd set out to do - wore something I'd made at least three days a week.  Oftentimes it was more frequent; nonetheless, it was hard to remember to take an image and upload it to Instagram.  I often couldn't be bothered.  I was doing other things, which reminds me of Susan Sontag and her collection of essays On Photography.

So, no new promises but just a thought I wanted to share.  Know that I'm always working on something, and sometimes I share it here or on Instagram.  Just because you haven't told everyone about it doesn't mean it hasn't happened.