Innisfree, Part II

“But I, being poor, have only my dreams. I have spread my dreams under your feet; tread softly, because you tread on my dreams.”

William Butler Yeats 

On a cool, sunny Tuesday morning I peer through the window of the Innisfree Poetry Bookstore and Café. The windows are no longer papered over with fine poetry and are now clear and newly washed. There are people inside; the place has finally opened. I hesitate, but then a man stands up, opens the door and says, “Lynn?”

He’s recognized me from my blog picture. I’ve actually found a bookstore and café where everybody (or at least somebody) knows my name. I walk into a small but beautiful space with long narrow counters along the front windows and down the center of the cafe where a person can sit and sip coffee while perusing fine poetry. A shiny new barista’s station sits at the back with a chalkboard listing espresso options. The wooden bookcases are filled with a mouthwatering variety of poetry: Jack Kerouac, Leonard Cohen, an extensive selection of Charles Bukowski, and much, much more. I know I’ll be back again for a more in depth perusal.

The owner’s name is Brian. He’s Irish and has the Irish love of good poetry. He and his wife Kate met and fell in love at a poetry workshop and have had the dream ever since of opening a small poetry bookstore and café. The circuitous route toward this dream included a stint in the Peace Corp, working with Navajo tribes in Arizona and teaching language arts. Now he and Kate have settled in Boulder among friends to raise their two young children. And I find myself standing inside their dream.

Care has been taken with every aspect of the space: sun streams in through tall windows, all manner of good poetry is arranged invitingly on the warm wooden shelves, and they have chosen to serve fair trade coffee roasted by the local company Conscious Coffees, who have their own dream of sustainability and simplicity, delivering their coffee by bicycle in reusable steel cans.

Standing inside this Boulder dream feels good and right. I highly recommend that my vast blog readership check out this fine place on the Hill across the street from the Sink. Sample the good coffee and find some poetry that speaks to your heart—tell 'em Lynn sent you.

Good King Wenceslas

Ye who now will bless the poor

Shall yourselves find blessing.

“Good King Wenceslas”, John Mason Neale

On one of my many Boulder walks one recent winter morning I pass by a bus stop where a man sits alone with a huge backpack. Just as I pass him I hear:

“How ya doin’?”

I think of ignoring him, walking on; you’re not supposed to talk to strangers, right? But I turn around, smile and say, “I’m doin’ okay—how

about you?”

“I’m good,” he says. “Can you tell me if I can walk to Table Mesa from here?”

It is maybe a mile away and I’m not sure how big a walker he is. “Depends—are you a walker? Dressed warmly enough?”

“Oh yeah, I’m warm—except I need a hat that comes a little further down to cover my ears, and some gloves.” Sure enough, the hat’s a little small for his head and his gloves are the kind with holes in the fingertips—he holds them up and wiggles them for me to see. It is icy cold and breezy. His bright eyes look out at me from a brown face as he tells me he plans to go up to Table Mesa and play his boom box to earn the $8 he needs to buy a hat and gloves at Savers. He just came here from Oregon he says, and was fired from his job for giving away food. I explain that Pearl Street is the place for street performers, not Table Mesa—but he says he’ll buck the trend and see what happens since he’s on his way to Golden anyway where he has a place to stay for the night.

So I hand him a $20 and tell him good luck at Savers. With a huge smile of thanks, he shakes my hand.

Was I naïve? Crazy? Maybe. But despite the donations we faithfully make to the Boulder Homeless Shelter, Habitat for Humanity, and Community Food Share each year, this seemed more real.

Salad Days

An 11/25 NYT article by Judith Warner, "Junking Junk Food," describes Sara Palin's latest maneuver, bringing cookies to the kids at a middle school in Pennsylvania to fight the "school cookie ban" there.  Apparently Palin tweeted that she wants to "intro kids 2 beauty of laissez-faire."

This woman is really starting to bug me. When 17% of children and teens are obese, doing what we can to encourage better eating habits is not an example of the "nanny state" anymore than educational programs on the dangers of smoking.

I had a fine moment as a mother a couple of days ago when my 24-year-old son told me that he was glad we had so many salads when he was a kid, that he loves having them when he comes over for dinner, and that often his "mouth waters" craving a salad. It can be done and it's not nanny state, it's good parenting.

Otherwise

Up on the Hill in Boulder across 13^th from Buchanan’s Coffee Pub is a small storefront papered over with poetry and a sign that promises “Innisfree Poetry Bookstore and Café, opening soon.”  The website also mentions an opening in early November, but previous signs have promised October—I am hoping for the best since I think the world has far too few Poetry Bookstore/Café combinations.  A few days ago this poem was posted in the window in large letters:

Otherwise

 Jane Kenyon

I got out of bed

on two strong legs.

It might have been

otherwise. I ate

cereal, sweet

milk, ripe, flawless

peach. It might

have been otherwise.

I took the dog uphill

to the birch wood.

All morning I did

the work I love.

At noon I lay down

with my mate. It might

have been otherwise.

We ate dinner together

at a table with silver

candlesticks. It might

have been otherwise.

I slept in a bed

in a room with paintings

on the walls, and

planned another day

just like this day.

But one day, I know,

it will be otherwise.

Some might say this poem is bleak or ominous – but I choose to see it more in terms of a reminder to be grateful and joyous about the present.  The poem represents a feeling that haunts me, but at the same time is the key that will set me free, because the choice is always either fear of losing all you hold dear or love and gratitude for all you have right now.  Every morning I wake up and choose one way or the other--and that choice makes a big difference in my frame of mind for the day.

This is an idea that I didn’t think about in my 20s that I can remember, and also an idea that may be foreign to many 20-somethings today.  But after much loss and challenge in my life, this idea is now at the forefront of my mind.  The most important point is that this is a choice, each moment of each day. 

10-20-10

 

It’s fall and the orange-red-yellow leaves against the electric blue sky always remind me of my daughter Caitlin, who was born on October 20, 1988.  I had an ultrasound before Cait was born since I was of a certain age.   At  the same time I got the good news that I was carrying a healthy baby, I was also thrilled to hear that I was going to be blessed with a daughter.  Since this was my second and last baby and the first was a son—it was the best news I could have heard.  I was so ecstatic that I actually developed a temporary appreciation for the color pink, never a favorite before this.I was close to my mother and as an adult I enjoyed many a good talk with her, often over a glass of sherry on the back deck at the family home on Sugar Lane in Indiana.  I very much wanted that same experience with a daughter of my own. 

 When Caitlin was born, on one of those beautiful autumn days we have in Boulder in October, she was already sporting a small fuzz of golden-red hair—a little surprising since neither M nor I have red hair though it does run in my family.  But why would we be surprised that our autumn girl would have hair with autumn colors?  Cait went through a few years when the hair was a challenge, sprouting out of her head in unruly glory, but eventually it grew into a gorgeous flow of golden red that is one of her best physical features today.

She's smart too, having inherited a scientific bent from her two great grandfathers who were both scientists, as well as my own mother who had a Masters degree in Botany and whose favorite subject as a fifth grade teacher was science. 

This winter Caitlin will graduate from CU with a degree in Biochemistry, and she’s working hard on an honors thesis to top of her undergraduate work.  She has shown great discipline, drive and courage in the face of the challenges this has presented her, and I’m excited for her and proud of her as she takes her next steps in the world.

Happy birthday, Caitlin!

Freedom

Yesterday, Lui Xiaobo was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.  “Who the heck is that?” you may ask.  He is a courageous Chinese dissident and one of the authors of Charter 08, a manifesto published in the People’s Republic of China in December 2008.  Charter 08 demands freedom and democracy for the Chinese people.  Lui Xiaobo will not easily enjoy the prize money since he is serving year two of an eleven-year prison sentence in China as a result of Charter 08’s publication.

I found the English translation of Charter 08 on a website called Human Rights in China (HRIC).  The document outlines 19 demands for democratic change—concepts we take all too much for granted in the U.S. including an independent judiciary, a guarantee of human rights,  freedom of association, assembly, expression and religion, and election of public officials.  The Chinese government is quite unhappy with the Norwegian Nobel Committee for awarding this prize and has warned Norway formally that this act will “pull the wrong strings” in the relationship between the two countries.

Since I work closely with people who live in China I take great interest in the changes that country is now undergoing.  The people I work with are like anybody else—they want to earn a decent living and provide the best they can for themselves and their families.  We do not talk about dissidence since they could risk imprisonment.  But I believe in them and like them, and I think I see signs of an awakening to the desire for these long-denied freedoms.  The Chinese people have been through many trials but they will overcome; it is time.  Charter 08 says it very well:

“After experiencing a prolonged period of human rights disasters and a tortuous struggle and resistance, the awakening Chinese citizens are increasingly and more clearly recognizing that freedom, equality, and human rights are universal common values shared by all humankind, and that democracy, a republic, and constitutionalism constitute the basic structural framework of modern governance. A “modernization” bereft of these universal values and this basic political framework is a disastrous process that deprives humans of their rights, corrodes human nature, and destroys human dignity. Where will China head in the 21st century? Continue a “modernization” under this kind of authoritarian rule? Or recognize universal values, assimilate into the mainstream civilization, and build a democratic political system? This is a major decision that cannot be avoided.”

In other words, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness...”

We live in interesting times.  Right on, China.

Beating Google

M sits across from me at the Bookend coffee shop and googles “left-handed underwear” on his iPad after hearing about it last night from Garrison Keillor on “A Prairie Home Companion.”  He discovers that there are 183,000 hits for this concept including one offering the opportunity to buy the item on line and promising that it will "save left-handed men up to 3, often vital, seconds when visiting the loo" (locating this reference is left as an exercise for the reader).

In an excess of gadgetry we now both have iPads, and we’re enjoying the hell out of them.  I have downloaded several books and now have a rule that I must finish the last one before downloading the next one I’m interested in.  It is incredibly easy and convenient to get them and read them on the iPad.  I’ve eschewed the Apple-developed book reading app in favor of Amazon’s Kindle since I already have a long term buying relationship with Amazon and I don’t want to get too cozy with Mr. Jobs just yet.

Now that M’s learned how easy it is to get connected at his favorite espresso haunts, he’s having a fine old time, indulging in every urge to look up words and phrases in on-line dictionaries and Wikipedia,  reading his email a little more often (maybe), moving just a touch beyond his former neo-Ludditism.  The iPads, which we both carry in our backpacks almost everywhere we go since they are no heavier than a book would be, do bring us a step closer to that thrilling Star Trek nirvana where in every case of curiosity or information deficit, one can simply say in a confident voice, “Computer…” and then ask for what one needs.  After a few days of this, M mentioned that he had tried once again, unsuccessfully, to “Beat Google.” 

“What do you mean, ‘beat Google?’” ask I.

“You know—search for something it can’t find an exact hit for.”

“Ah—have you tried Googling your own name, in full?”

“No.”  Pause.  Blip blip blip.  “Oh.”  Zero direct hits on that search, and another challenge met.  It turns out that M flies so far below the radar in Cyberspace and the world in general that there are no exact hits on his full name. 

Of course, M has also discovered the seductiveness of being constantly on line—the tendency to look something up, then follow a referenced link, then find an interesting article, perhaps on left-handed underwear or some other topic, and then wonder “what was I doing a minute ago, anyway?”

The price we must pay in the modern age.