Eating Artichokes

The other day artichokes were on sale at King Soopers, 2 for $3.  I bought two and took them home to cook the way Mom used to cook them:  cut off the tough stems; put them in a pot with salted water to cover (although the little dudes float, so covering them is an impossible quest); add chopped garlic (Mom used garlic salt instead); and then boil them to within an inch of their lives, for around 40 minutes. Chill them in the fridge for at least a day, then eat them cold for lunch with plenty of real, salty-lemony mayonnaise (Hellman's, not that sickly sweet Miracle Whip crap).

Eating an artichoke is a unique experience.  The boiling gives them a dark army green color.  You set them on a large plate so you have room for the discarded leaves, with plenty of mayo on the side, then you add another spoonful of mayo for good measure. Peel off one leaf at a time, dip the non-pointy end in just enough mayo to make it tasty, then scrape the soft green stuff into your mouth with your lower teeth.  Artichokes have kind of a vegetably, mayonnaisy flavor (some say they are merely an excuse for eating mayo--I've been known to eat cold leftover cooked broccoli the same way).

As you remove the leaves one by one, eventually you unearth a cluster of remarkably lethal-looking leaves in the center with pointy purple ends that can actually prick you if you're not careful.  You gather these together and pull them out of the remaining artichoke heart in furry little tufts, and then you're left with what my mother called "a delicacy," the artichoke heart.  And if you've been careful with your mayonnaise you have enough left to do it justice.

Artichokes remind me of my mother, who ate them with matter-of-fact gusto as if they didn't look like small green creatures from the planet Vegeton.  Sometimes I was allowed to pack one for my school lunch.  How the mayonnaise was preserved in my un-refrigerated little lunchbox so that it didn't kill me off with salmonella by the time lunch rolled around I'm not sure.  I do know that the other kids at my grade school, their lunch trays loaded with peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and mystery meat, would gaze at me with a mixture of revulsion and admiration while I ate the artichoke in the time-honored fashion--just one of many things back then that earned me and my family an eccentric reputation in a small southern Indiana town in the early 60's.

The Storyteller's Tapestry

It's not often that you can see creativity unfolding and blossoming right before your eyes.  It is even rarer to share this experience with an appreciative audience and to be linked to the creator by blood and history, to have known her since you welcomed her with great excitement into your seven-year old world as your youngest sister.

This was the amazing experience I had on a warm August Saturday in Indianapolis in a small IndyFringe theater, when for the first time I saw my sister Nell perform her new improvisational Story Theater show, "And I Am Not Making This Up."

Each of Nell's shows is different:  true improvisation.  After a few words with the audience, she begins with some movement, seeming to reach out into the cosmos and gather multicolored threads of memory and insight and humor, and then right before our eyes she weaves them into a tapestry that is greater than its parts. She speaks, gestures and flows, telling vivid stories based on her own experiences and often from the childhood that we shared and did not share. (If you have siblings you may know that one child's family experience can vastly differ from another's.)  

She tells of southern Indiana summers, of camp at McCormick's Creek, of her older brother Paul now lost to us, who teased and terrorized her unmercifully as he suffered and battled his own demons, and his final redemption as she finds and holds close a loving memory of him from better days.  She shares this memory:  when Paul died, the two of us went to the funeral home to say goodbye.  With mixed feelings, she touched his cheek.  So cold...as cold as snow, evoking a memory of when she was perhaps five and was on big brother Paul's back on a sled speeding down the steep Dewey Drive hill in Ellettsville...icy snow flying in their faces, a fast, scary ride, the laughing tumble off the sled at the bottom of the hill.  

She plucks these memories from the air, and weaves them together with another story about her first summer camp, the night hikes in the dark Indiana woods as she clings to her counselor and clutches her gigantic flashlight.  Singing camp songs by the creek in the darkness, she imagines a scary maniac, perhaps battling his own demons as he lurks up above in the limestone cliffs and peers down on the tiny campers below.  The singing closes with a hymn Nell humorously hums and mumbles, explaining that she never really went to church and so doesn't know the words. In my separate childhood I did go to church, so I know the hymn:  "Praise God from whom all blessings flow.  Praise him all creatures here below....".  And the maniac up in the cliffs is also redeemed it seems, as he rumbles a rusty A-m-e-n at the end of the song.

Emergence of light from darkness seemed to be a theme in the show I saw:  fear in the darkness for the tiny campers on the night hike clinging to their flashlights but then turning them off as they sit by the creek singing--the imagined fears the darkness generates.  I expected her to tell the tale of the candles set in little boats to float in the darkness down the creek, but she didn't this time.  Fortunately I had already heard that memory from another show she did in a woods years ago, and candles were really floated on the water for that one. 

Later she tells of the fire balloons set off from the deck behind our house into the darkness, and of the black Labrador madly barking his alarm at a flashlight sent up high into the night sky on a kite string by our equally creative and complicated father.

The most extraordinary part of the performance is to see my sister pluck those images from thin air and thread them together with the themes:   darkness and light, loss and redemption. I know she prepares beforehand to get her head into the place it needs to be, to be ready to capture the images on demand on stage, weaving in whatever the audience and ambience might hand her from cell phones ringing to plaintive train whistles in the distance.  It is nothing less than a miracle of creation and in August she did it six times over the course of a week or so. 

From the darkness of the stage Nell shone her light on images and memories I share with her in patchwork patterns, each of us seeing them through different lenses.  Darkness, light, redemption, love, forgiveness.  Classic themes, beautifully told.  It was a privilege to see.

Finding My Voice

                                                 Maggie Kuhn

  

After a long blog drought it struck me on a hike today that what I wanted to write about was finding my voice.  Have I finally found my voice after these many years, or not?  And what does that really mean?  To me it means speaking the truth out loud, clearly, kindly, rather than “stifling myself” constantly.  I stifle myself because of fear—fear of rejection, of authority, of dismissal, of my own sense of worthlessness.

I think finding my voice is not a one-time achievement but an ongoing quest.  I’ve won some battles in this respect but I’ve not won the war, since I often still have to drag myself kicking and screaming to the point where I’ll speak up even when it is absolutely warranted.  Part of me firmly believes that if I actually spoke my mind clearly, honestly and kindly at every opportunity that there might be such a radical change in my life that it would become unrecognizable.  Often it seems ever so much safer to be satisfied with the sounds of silence (Paul Simon had much to say on this topic).

But more and more I’m noticing physical reactions to my forced silences that might be strong hints that I really must speak out more—reactions like insomnia-producing pain from my jaws due to the clenching and grinding I’m unconsciously doing day and night. 

A wise woman asked me recently if I was singing these days.  I am not—even though the songs and their lyrics were always a source of joy and a way I could express deep ideas and emotions in my life no matter what was going on.  So the other night I got out the songbooks, pulled up a chair on the back porch, and told myself I only had to sing three songs and then I could quit if I wanted.  Of course, I sang many, many more—folks songs, spirituals, Leonard Cohen, James Taylor, John Prine.  It felt good.

At work and in my personal life, I’ve often kept my silence rather than be shut down or dismissed.  I think it’s dismissal that’s most painful; it feeds into my thought patterns about losing another person’s love or esteem.  But in my saner moments I know that someone else’s dismissal of me or my ideas is often much more about them than it is about me.
 

When I was young, my father (who I loved dearly) had particularly strong ideas about a child’s behavior.  A child was to be obedient (even though he himself was not in his own childhood, as his stories revealed).  Above all, a child should not “talk back,” but should show respect for her parents.  At times I was chastised for talking back when, in truth, I had no idea that I was guilty of this nefarious and disrespectful deed.  If I did talk back there were usually consequences that to me seemed devastating—mainly "the look" or angry yelling.  I’ve never been able to tolerate being yelled at without becoming incredibly upset about it—and so I’ve developed a variety of techniques for avoiding yelling and conflict of any sort. 

Many of these techniques can be used constructively—diplomacy, fairness, kindness, strong listening skills, excellent verbal skills, empathy.  But in the end it is only with great willpower that I’ve steeled myself over the years to “talk back” to those who have power over me.  I have to overcome a myriad of unpleasant physical reactions, including tears, trembling, a shaky voice, clamminess, hot flashes and a sinking stomach.  Not to mention the catastrophic mental responses like fear that I will lose the love or esteem of the person I’m confronting, questions about how important this issue really is (when weighed against my very survival), questions about whether I am perhaps dead wrong about this particular issue after all, and fear that speaking up at this juncture will irrevocably destroy the relationship and the person I’m confronting will lose respect for me or never speak to me again.  To someone who is not familiar with this kind of conflict avoidance, these fears must seem incredibly neurotic.

The interesting thing is that often when I finally force myself to have a conversation with the person in question I find that they have a perfectly reasonable response, or at least a response that does not result in the end of the world as I know it.  Of course, this isn’t always the case, and sometimes I have battles that leave me the worse for wear or that lead to more trouble for me.  But even then I usually feel as though they were battles worth fighting in the end—words worth saying for my own self respect. One of the first confrontations of this sort I remember daring to have in my life was, not surprisingly, with my father.

I was around 21.  My father had decided he didn’t want to “subsidize” my “shacking up” with M any longer.  I was finishing school and my parents were still paying some of the expenses, although I had a job.  I was living with M (we would not be married until many years later) and we were absolutely in love.  We are still together today, 39 years later.  Despite all my efforts to avoid confrontation on this, it was clear that I had to stand up to my father.  I was shaking so hard I could barely speak, even though it was a hot summer night on the deck looking out on the deep green, firefly-lit Indiana woods.  My mother fluttered around in the background like a firefly herself as the confrontation became more heated.  I had learned many of my confrontation avoidance techniques at my mother’s feet and I realize now she might have feared she would lose me somehow if the confrontation continued.  But I gathered together every inch of courage I had and told my father that if he was suggesting I choose, the choice would not be in his favor, and that I would support myself from now on in order to remove money from the equation.  The consequence:  voices were raised but the world did not end, and over time my father came to respect, trust and love M.

Many confrontations have happened since then—usually with far more angst beforehand than they deserved and with much better outcomes than I had expected.  And so, I have found my voice—I just have to keep finding the courage to use it.

People talking without speaking

People hearing without listening

People writing songs that voices never share

And no one dared

Disturb the sound of silence

                                                Paul Simon

Do you have a story to tell about finding your own voice?

24

Today I have a son who is 24 years old.  He’s many things including a mountain climber and a risk-taker—and he loves Boulder.  I know well that he also has a growing wanderlust and I would predict road trips and other adventures in the not so distant future.  Neil Young really had it right:

Old man, look at my life

Twenty-four and there’s so much more

Live alone in a paradise

That makes me think of two.

Love lost, such a cost.

Give me things that don’t get lost

Like a coin that won’t get tossed

Rolling home to you…

                              Neil Young

When I was 24 it was 1977.  Just a few months before my September birthday, M and I had packed everything we owned (mainly books, a typewriter and two guitars) into a tan square-backed VW and moved ourselves from Bloomington, Indiana (where at the time both cheap housing and jobs were in scarce supply) to Boulder, Colorado, mainly to follow our dream of living near the mountains.  I had graduated two years before.  We left everything behind in Indiana—all our friends, our family, our low-paying jobs, the abundant green of Hoosier woods, the orange-red of the Indiana fall.  I am surprised now that we had the courage to make such a monumental change, but at the time it seemed like exactly the right move.  We did have each other, after all.

It was May.  We were blessed with warm, summery weather and we had no idea how lucky we were about that—we camped in a tent for a week at the Wagon Wheel Campground up Four-Mile Canyon, and then we found rooms in a house on the corner of Arapahoe and Lincoln, right across from the public library.

Our housemate was a very strange ex-Californian named Peter, who was older than he wanted us to think, and who had been writing a screenplay for many years.  He was short, blond and tanned, and looked like a misplaced stubby little surfer.  His mother was wealthy and he seemed to have a limited but steady income from his mother to follow whatever dreams he might have.  He had once been a member of a cult on the West Coast, the subject of the screenplay.

We weren’t in Indiana anymore.

The year we came to Boulder a lot of construction was going on along a street called Pearl; they were building some kind of new-fangled outdoors mall where the street would be closed off for a few blocks and only pedestrians would be allowed. 

We were both writing a lot—M in longhand, I with my trusty little electric typewriter that my grandfather had given me when I started college.  We’d saved up enough money to not have to work for at least a couple of months.  It was a time of shining hope and vast optimism.  Ten years, later, Shannon, you were already one year old.  Happy 24th ! 

May your hands always be busy

May your feet always be swift

May you have a strong foundation

When the winds of changes shift

May your heart always be joyful

And may your song always be sung

May you stay forever young

                              Bob Dylan

Independence Day

As M suspected, it was sunny up in Breckenridge this morning, despite being gloomy in Boulder.  We drove west on 70 across The Great Divide and when we emerged from the Eisenhower Tunnel, as if we had journeyed from Kansas to the Land of Oz, we had blue sky and a 4^th of July parade, which was in full swing down Main Street with Corvettes, flags, kids, dogs and firemen.  The folks of Breckenridge do have the USA spirit. 

After quite a bit of searching we finally located our favored Breckenridge independent coffeehouse, The Crown, and found a great seat in an alcove just inside the front door with a fine view of the red-white-and-blue hubbub continuing on the street below.  The Crown has antique mirrors set into carved dark wooden hutches and four stone cupids mounted in a row on one wall and two crystal chandeliers. It is a fine place any time of the year.

On our way back to the car later we passed firemen in the middle of the still blocked off Main Street letting groups of thrilled children handle fire hoses, each group pointing at the other and just close enough to get everybody a bit wet. 

Parades are different now than they were when I was a kid.  Today parades have lots of shiny red and blue streamers and glitter and decorated high tech baby strollers and Corvettes.  When I was a kid, all the girls and women got together and spent many hours in the days leading up to the parade making flowers out of pastel Kleenex—you stacked together the tissues, tied them in the middle, then fluffed them out to make pale pink, green, blue or white blossoms.  These were painstakingly woven into the chicken wire shapes built over the vehicles used as the bases for the parade “floats.”  Then, on the day of the parade, the prettiest girls in school graced these floats, sitting high atop them in their pastel prom dresses and slowly waving to the crowd with white-gloved hands.  One girl got to wear the crown—having won the honor of being queen for a day.  Was I ever one of these girls?  No, I was on the sidelines wearing denim, peace symbols and a go-to-hell hat.

Also—we always had multiple marching bands in their uniforms playing Sousa and there were always pom-pom girls and baton twirlers and there was always a drum major leading the parade and marking time with his staff.  Humanitarian men called Shriners wearing red fezes drove little motorcycles in little circles along the parade route. 

Today, none of this was in evidence—nary a piccolo player nor a tuba blower nor a drummer nor a Shriner could be found.  But there was still a lot of hooting and cheering and American spirit, all the same.  The parade concluded with a spirited reading by a man dressed in 1776 garb.  When we first heard the voice coming over the loudspeaker I wondered whether we might be hearing a modern-day Tea Party diatribe, but in fact it turned out to be the actual  Declaration of Independence, indeed a radical document if you ever heard one.  Happy 4th of July! 

Are Newspapers Necessary?

Doonesbury has had a string of great strips lately on that antiquity, the newspaper.  To many younger people who are constantly online, newspapers seem old fashioned and ridiculously cumbersome.  I’ve been trying to clarify in my own mind why it’s just the opposite for me, why I’ve been fervently grateful for newspapers most of my life.

On Sunday mornings we get The New York Times, which certainly gives a broader and better perspective for the week than the Sunday Boulder Daily Camera.  Usually, as is the case today, we fold up beloved sections like “Week in Review” and “The New York Times Book Review” and stuff them in our backpacks prior to leaving the house.  Wherever we end up for coffee after our drive or walk, we have them handy and they can be guaranteed to offer up new ideas and happenings--information we do not know we don’t know.   

Today we sit outside Starbucks on Pearl Street in the perfect June air and M points out an article about the appalling idea of implanting e-books into one’s retina.  Presumably newspapers would also be available this way.  For someone like me who is still leery of considering laser surgery to correct my astigmatism, this seems beyond the pale.

Newspapers are more versatile than computers or e-books. You can read a newspaper anywhere and anytime you like, unencumbered by details like unavailability of free wireless Internet, lack of convenient power outlets, failing batteries or electrical equipment.  If you’re on a beach you can get smears of sunscreen sprinkled with sand and seagull droppings on your newspaper and really be none the worse for wear.  After you’ve finished reading the paper you can cut clippings from it to send to children in faraway cities or to be magnetically posted on the refrigerator door.

Long ago on humid summer nights in Indiana, those with the knowhow could shape and twist newspapers into loosely formed balloons and light them on the bottom edges.  The fire balloons would then gently lift and soar aloft, rising with the heat upward and upward into the dark night sky to be transformed into sparkling gold and black lace against the stars, with only the fireflies the wiser. 

If all else fails and you have no parakeets whose cages need lining or puppies who need emergency haven, you can recycle newspapers and they will live to see another day.

You can truly focus when reading a newspaper if you like, and not be lured to other links and obligations like checking your e-mail again or peeking to see if anybody likes you on Facebook. 

I will not go so far as to say newspapers are essential to my sense of wellbeing but with some good coffee in the morning, they do contribute positively.  Is this, then, an irreconcilable generation gap as the youth reads their news on the laptop screen each morning? To my broad blog readership, especially those under 25, I pose this question:  “Are newspapers necessary?

Earth Day 1970

White tents and booths with information on compost piles and solar panels have sprung up in Boulder’s Civic Park for Earthfest on this partly sunny spring day. I remember the very first Earth Day, in 1970. I was a member (I might actually have been president, I can’t recall for sure) of the Edgewood High School Ecology Club. One of our main projects was to build a large brightly painted wooden box with a hinged lid which we placed just outside the entrance to the grocery store in Ellettsville, Indiana. Here, ecology-minded citizens could deposit their newspapers and cardboard for recycling (back then, this was pretty much the full range of our ability to recycle materials, at least in Ellettsville). Periodically when the box was overflowing and the grocery store manager’s annoyance had reached its peak, we would borrow a truck, load all the newspapers into the back, and drive to the west side of Bloomington where there was a place we could unload the papers for recycling.

Today in Boulder we have three separate containers right outside our house, one for paper, cardboard, glass and plastic, one for compost material (vegetables, egg shells, coffee grounds) and one for the irredeemably unrecyclable remaining crap, which we try through good buying habits to keep to a minimum. The contents of each of these are conveniently hauled off on a regular basis as part of our trash service. We have a little white ceramic compost collector by the sink lined with a pale green compostable bag and I always feel a tiny sense of accomplishment when I carry one of these full bags of vegetable discard out to the larger compost container. We are lightweights, however, as there are other people right in our neighborhood with their own compost piles and large vegetable gardens on which they spread the compost they generate. Even so, we continue to make small strides to better honor Mother Earth and hope that the larger initiatives for renewable energy will take hold.

Another thing my Ecology Club did back in 1970 was create and perform a short save-the-earth skit at various schools in the area, and at the end of the skit as the finale we paraded into the audience singing a song, me leading the way with my trusty guitar. Our teacher and sponsor was Mrs. Wilt, a tiny bespectacled woman with long black hair whose quietly radical teaching style somehow slipped under the radar of our rabidly conservative school administration back then. She selected and helped us learn a song for our traveling ecology road show; peculiarly enough in retrospect, the song was “Suicide is Painless,” the theme from Mash:

Through early morning fog I see
Visions of the things to be
The things that are withheld for me
I realize and I can see
That suicide is painless
It brings on many changes
And I could take or leave it if I please…

So, “WTF?” you might well ask, children (because only my children could possibly still be reading this, and I can’t be certain of that). I think the song was meant in this context to evoke the same concept as the image of the unaware frog in the bath being slowly brought to a boil. And thus ends another strange tale of long ago and far away in Ellettsville, Indiana, US of A.

Cardinals and Snow

As I gazed at my Starbuck’s latte and pondered what I would say in the Christmas letter this year, I noticed a phrase printed on the side of the cup: “We invite you to LISTEN to your DESIRES and to RENEW your HOPE. To see the world not as it is, but as it COULD be. Go ahead. WISH. It’s what makes the holidays the HOLIDAYS.”

This contrasts with the Buddhist philosophy to neither hope nor fear, to let go of longings and be mindful of the joys available in the present moment. Can one let go properly (the lesson I keep working to learn over and over again) and yet retain hope and optimism? It seems that in order to renew hope one must begin by paying attention to the present moment and being mindful of all there is to be grateful for, here and now. And there is an optimism perhaps in Max Ehrmann’s phrase from Desiderata: “no doubt life is unfolding as it should.”

If a therapist were consulted, she might say that the first part of the Starbuck’s exhortation, the part about listening to one’s desires, is a very good plan, especially for those who have a tendency to try to make sure everybody else has the oxygen mask in place during the plane emergency and end up almost passing out from oxygen deprivation themselves.

A meditation on one’s own desires seems selfish and not in keeping with the holiday season—unless perhaps you have lost hope and you need to find a way back to the vision in the shining child’s eyes, seeing a Christmas morning where all wishes come true. For the Christmas book this year, my book club chose “A Redbird Christmas” by Fanny Flagg (also the author of “Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistlestop Café”). This is an unabashed fairy tale in which good people and a young child hope when it seems that all hope is lost, and end up with a Christmas miracle beyond their wildest imaginings involving redbirds and snow in the Deep South.

I have always associated red cardinals against a snowy background with Christmastime. I remember when I was around seven my mother wrapped a package especially for me and taped a red cardinal to it, carefully cut out from an old Christmas card. I don’t remember what was in the package, but I remember the love and thoughtfulness represented by the cardinal decoration. I also remember watching all the birds, including the cardinals, flock to feast on the sunflower seeds my Dad placed out on the upper deck bird feeder during the coldest, snowiest days of winter at our Sugar Lane house back in Southern Indiana. Those birds had reason to hope each year and also seized any opportunities in the present as well. So I will have my cake and eat it too, combining hope with mindfulness of the present. No doubt events are unfolding as they should.

So I wish that everybody who reads this has a great holiday. May all of you take a deep breath, be present, and renew your hope in the coming New Year.

Persimmon Pudding

When I was a little girl back in Indiana we always went to Grandmother’s old brick house on Dunn Street in Bloomington for Thanksgiving Dinner. The table would be set beautifully, with polished silver candlesticks and flatware, and a real lace tablecloth. We feasted on roast turkey, rich dark brown gravy, dressing, mashed and sweet potatoes, green beans simmered with bacon, and Grandmother’s special, tart, not-for-everybody cranberry and orange relish. For at least one dessert we would always have persimmon pudding with whipped cream on top. The persimmons were gathered from beneath persimmon trees on a nearby property my grandparents called “the farm.” I knew nothing of how such a dinner was orchestrated and set upon the table with exactly the right timing—Grandmother made it look very easy. I might be asked to bring some of the dishes to the table or fill the water glasses.

After Grandmother was gone, my mother made the Thanksgiving dinner each year at our house on Sugar Lane. I helped a lot more at this point so I could start to see how bringing such a feast to the dinner table was like an air traffic controller managing the simultaneous landing of several Boeing 777’s at the same airport—a calm demeanor and careful planning were both essential. My Mom also made it look easy but I began to understand what it took, and helped as much as possible with the relish plate containing the olives, celery and carrot sticks, and the traditional green beans simmered with bacon. But my father was always the one to make the persimmon pudding. He had planted persimmon trees many years before up in his vast garden, using seeds obtained from the farm—and each year he would harvest the persimmons that had fallen to the ground and were starting to soften, peel them and mash them into a rich orange pulp. With the precise care and intense breathing he applied to most important tasks he would mix and bake the persimmon pudding. I began to see that this was homage to his mother perhaps, although we never talked about it.

Later, I moved far away to Colorado and began to have Thanksgiving dinners of my own, learning to overcome the momentary panic when confronting a large turkey ready to be stuffed, calling my mother for advice where necessary.

Me on the phone: Mom—there are icicles inside the turkey!!
Mom: Yeah, there always are—just knock ‘em aside and stuff the old bird.

My father would painstakingly ship me enough frozen persimmon pulp for one batch of persimmon pudding, which due to his master skills at packaging and shipping would arrive in perfect time and condition for me to make the dessert for my Colorado Thanksgivings.

Dad is gone now, but persimmons can be found around this time of year in the produce department of most grocery stores.  And so this holiday I give thanks for these memories and I pay homage to those who came before me as I slowly and lovingly mix the ingredients for today’s persimmon pudding we will have with our family feast to come in a few hours. M is in charge of most of the cooking, since he is the master cook in the family, but I do the pudding, and the traditional green beans simmered with bacon.

Happy Thanksgiving to all. May each person reading this make and hold dear all the beautiful memories of your own families.

The year was 1965 and I was twelve years old. I wanted to learn to play the guitar, so my parents got me a golden-bodied acoustic and signed me up for lessons at Tom Pickett’s Guitar Gallery on East Kirkwood Avenue.

In the Hoosier town of Bloomington it was not a happening scene yet in 1965. A leather vest here, some long-haired guys there, but not so much love and peace and psychedelia. But Kirkwood was right down the street from the Indiana University campus and in the next few years as I was folksinging more and more, barefooted beings called hippies began to frequent the avenue in fringe, brightly colored clothes, and beaded headbands, smelling of incense and patchouli oil. Many of them also had guitars, slung over their backs like apparel.

My long-haired (and very exotic, I thought) teacher started me out with D and A7, and at first I had to work hard just to simply strum and smoothly change back and forth between these two chords. I was heartened to learn that a person could play hundreds of songs just with two chords. The first song I learned was “Good News”:

Good news, chariot’s a’comin’
Good news, chariot’s a’comin’
Good news, chariot’s a’comin’
And I don't want it to leave a me behind.

I picked up other songs along the same lines like “Hush Little Baby.” Soon I had graduated to 3(!) chords, adding G. I learned how to read tablature, and then I learned the magic of minor chords with Dm and Am. With just these chords and another progression: G-Em-C-D, thousands of songs could be played. Eventually I learned bar chords, and then almost anything (theoretically) was possible.

I began to play and sing everywhere I got the chance – for my friends and family, in Dunn Meadow next to IU, in talent shows, even once on a local TV station at a very early hour one morning. My father loved to harmonize on some songs like “Tell Me Why” and “Kumbuya.” By then I had learned a lot of anti-war songs as the draft and the raging Vietnam War started to take more of my friends. “Strangest Dream” was one of these:

Last night I had the strangest dream
I'd ever dreamed before.
I dreamed that all the world had agreed
To put an end to war.

I also sang “Simple Song of Freedom.”

Come and sing a simple song of freedom.
Sing it like it’s never been sung before.
Let it fill the air, tell people everywhere
We the people here don’t want a war.

And of course, “We Shall Overcome.” Not to mention Dylan’s “The Times They Are a’ Changin.’” The guitar teacher mischievously taught me that one at a very young age, perhaps hoping to introduce a mild insurrection in my distinctly unrebellious young life – but my parents never seemed to object, perhaps because I was an incredibly well-behaved little thing until I diverged from their plan in my twenties and started living with Mark (shacking up, as my Dad called it). They were worried about our level of commitment to each other. Thirty-five years later Mark and I are still together, so there you have it.

I learned lots of folk songs, playing and singing for hours a day sitting on the edge of the bed in my room, probably driving my entire family crazy. Folk songs were a great form of expression for me and are to this day. I loved the lyrics and had a knack for memorizing them – learning whole sets of songs made famous by Joan Baez, Judy Collins, Joni Mitchell, Leonard Cohen, Bob Dylan. It was one of the most exciting and inspiring periods of learning and growth in my life and I’ll never forget it.

Summer of Love

In the full, humid heat of an Indiana July in 1967, my parents packed the family into our light blue station wagon for a road trip headed west. I was thirteen years old. In those days, smoking was acceptable everywhere, even on long-distance car trips, but there was no air conditioning, so the windows were open to make up for it and all we had to do was dodge the burning ashes as they flew out the front windows and back into the rear ones.

Since there were no DVD/CD players, video games, or even reliable radio reception for miles at a time, we took along story books, comic books, crossword puzzles, and notebooks for journaling. We sang songs like “Tell Me Why,” and “Ezekiel Cried Dem Dry Bones.”

We played word games: Twenty Questions and a game called Hink Pink. In Hink Pink, you think of a noun and a modifier that rhyme, provide a definition as the hint, and players guess what the hink pink is. If the rhyming words have multiple syllables (and certainly all the syllables must rhyme), then you provide this hint when you describe your hink pink at the beginning of the game. You might say: “I have a hink pink that is an “obese rodent.” And the solution would be: fat rat. If you, perchance, had a multi-syllabic puzzle you might say, “I have a hinky pinky that means “crazy horse,” and the answer would be “silly filly.” Or a hinkety pinkety that is a “complimentary sparse distribution,” the answer being: flattering smattering. Or a hinketity pinketity that…but I leave this last one as an exercise for the reader. (If you have a really good hink pink that must be shared, leave it in a comment below.)

Thus we somehow managed to amuse ourselves for entire days of travel and restrain from driving each other insane to some degree, although this is easier for me to say because I squirreled myself as far away as possible in the rearmost compartment of the light blue station wagon, and the three siblings including my manic brother and two younger sisters were confined together in the middle seat. (In another example of how we did things differently back then, we never wore seatbelts; if we had been rear-ended I would have been mooshed like a little sardine.) But we managed to avoid for the most part the dreaded moment when my father would slow down and yell, “Don’t make me stop this car!”

Toward evening the kids would start begging for the ultimate treat, a motel with a Swimming Pool. No reservations were made ahead of time so often our exhausted father, faced with motels that had orange neon “no vacancy” signs or were so exceedingly seedy that we couldn’t stomach them, or did not have swimming pools, would drive much farther than planned to get us to the tiny motel room next to the big pool. After checking in, the next move was always cannonballs into the pool to work off all the unexpended energy from a long day of travel.

We passed through Reno on our way to the West Coast, with its exotically dressed ladies and noisy casinos that did not allow minors inside. My father was skilled at winning motel money in poker games. As another example of “things you wouldn’t do nowadays,” Dad handed me a twenty and told me to take the kids and find something to eat while he and Mom gambled for awhile. So I did that, and then the kids and I got distracted by a more accessible area with nickel slots, and not knowing that this was off limits for minors, I pumped a nickel into the nearest one. Suddenly, lights were flashing, bells were ringing and an alarmed woman was hustling the four of us out of the area. My chastened mother came to claim my winnings of about $40 in nickels, which to me back then seemed like quite a bit of dough.

We finally made it all the way to Fisherman’s Wharf in San Franciso, where people that some called hippies were thronging in large numbers, wearing colorful tie-died clothing, peace symbols and headbands, burning lots of incense and other stuff. Guys had hair as long, if not longer, than mine, which was down to my waist back then. People were handing out subversive literature, with ideas I had never, ever heard before and shocking pictures of sexual activity that caused my Mom to blush and pull the papers out of my hand, discarding them with amused horror. There were colorful posters with imagery that was said to be psychedelic, and something called flower power. We had arrived just in time for the Summer of Love. On Fisherman’s Wharf I put my nickels to good use and bought myself a dark brown leather hat with a floppy brim, which my father immediately dubbed my “Go to Hell Hat” for reasons I didn’t fully understand. I wore this hat constantly for the rest of the trip.

As we drove down The Big Sur, Highway 1 was lined with hundreds of hippies, all hitchhiking. In yet another example of things you would never do nowadays, my Dad picked up one of these hitchhikers and peppered him with friendly questions about how he had come to be on the road, where he was headed, what he believes. There was discussion of the need for peace and love, there was concern for something called the draft, and about a war that was raging in a place called Vietnam. The fellow was very good-natured and forthcoming with these questions, and thanked us politely as we dropped him off near the campground that was his destination.

That trip West was quite an adventure, and as we were passing through Terre Haute on the final stretch of our travels back home to our little conservative God-fearing rural Indiana hometown of Ellettsville, I had an epiphany, inspired by pondering the many strange hypocrisies and contradictions of a small town where most folks go to church every Sunday but full blown vandalism in the form of soaped windows, TP’ed trees and corn thrown against picture windows occurs every October 31st.

As a result of the ephiphany I actually made up a song, lyrics and music, wholly out of thin air, with guitar accompaniement. That autumn I won second prize singing this song at the annual Fall Festival. It was quite a hit because it was about sports, based on a cheer we used to do at ballgames. It is one of three songs I ever composed, and its lyrics are now immortalized in this blog as follows:

Ellettsville

I come from E-double-L-E-double-T-S-V-I-double-L-E.
A riot every Halloween and a church on every street.
I said E-double-L-E-double-T-S-V-I-double-L-E.
Our high school ain’t got long-haired kids
And we don’t take LSD.

Well I was born in Hoosier town
I lived there many a year.
I went to their schools and their basketball games
And I learned all their cheers.
But just one cheer stands out so clear
It’ll always be with me.
It’s E-double-L-E-double-T-S-V-I-double-L-E.

Well it’s football in the early fall
And winter brings basketball.
In summer there is baseball
For the guys who ain’t heavy or tall.
But through it all I can hear that call,
It’ll always be with me.
It’s E-double-L-E-double-T-S-V-I-double-L-E.

I said, E-double-L-E-double-T-S-V-I-double-L-E.
A riot every Halloween and a church on every street.
I said E-double-L-E-double-T-S-V-I-double-L-E.
Our high school ain’t got long-haired kids
And we don’t take LSD.

There is a game played overseas
Without a ball or goal.
And guys who go to play that game
Are playin’ with their souls.
I’ve often wondered how the hometown boys
Will bring home victory
Without that cheer to pull them through
Without their parents tried and true
To yell E-double-L-E-double-T-S-V-I-double-L-E.

I said, E-double-L-E-double-T-S-V-I-double-L-E.
A riot every Halloween and a church on every street.
I said E-double-L-E-double-T-S-V-I-double-L-E.
Our high school ain’t got long-haired kids
And we never faced defeat.
Ellettsville...Ellettsville.

A Midsummer's Night Romp in the Woods

Last weekend I went back to Bloomington to see a show my sister put together. It was an amazing combination of dance, music and improvisation, held on a summer night, outside, deep in an Indiana woods and meadow. There was a soiree beforehand for Nell’s supporters and a party late into the night afterwards with a crowd of extremely interesting and creative people. A cabaret-style performance of show tunes was particularly during the soiree was wonderful, especially "Somewhere Over the Rainbow," and the song from Porgy and Bess.

As the show started, George the tall troubadour led the audience on a walk through this woods. The theme was our interactions with and conception of God and the gods. A beautifully done folk song performed by Carrie and Krista about the mystical experience possible in the meadow, opened the show. Next was an operatic scene in which a hapless young woman humorously confessed that she had really done it now, and was then exhorted by God for having done it without consulting him first but on the other hand assured by Fate that she had no choice in doing it. We never know quite what “it” is but clearly it has caused a lot of grief. A Greek chorus led by Nell's friend Janiece stood by and chimed in on all the troubles and grief humans can get themselves into and the many plaints that result, not the least of which: "My dog has flees." In the end, a satyr lured the heroine off deep into the woods, and we followed.

We walked down the hill past mysterious lights held by members of the chorus amid thundering sounds of solemnity and tiny bell chimes, and then gathered to observe a quite incredible dance, which began with male and female shapes in shadow behind a red cloth, with chorus and music accompanying. The dance, done first together by Marielle and Robert, showed different aspects of a relationship between two people and perhaps also their relationship with spirituality; ultimately the larger shadow of a god hovered over the vulnerable human outstretched on the ground. Then they parted, and Robert did an amazingly powerful dance by himself with the long red cloth suspended from a tree, that seemed to show the emotion of wanting to reach out to love or be loved, and instead feeling trapped and anguished, but eventually finding one’s way back to the beginning and to life again.

After this we walked further to a hidden alcove in the forest, where we heard another dulcimer-accompanied musical piece by Carrie and Krista and later a drumming dialog deep in the woods, with a distantly heard and humorous argument/dialog/profession of love between a primitive couple.

We walked on to another clearing where the chorus of women stood, singing in a rhythmic African beat with great joy and making us all want to clap and join in. Then they stopped, picked up lights in both hands, and did a mysterious dance in the darkness the reminded me of fireflies. They began singing an old folk song and the audience joined in singing as well as we headed up the hill:

The water is wide,
I cannot get o’er.
Neither have I wings to fly.
Give me a boat
That will carry two.
And both shall row,
My true love and I.

It felt so good to sing along with that song—it soothed the soul. We walked back up and stood by the upper pond, where Scott did a beautifully creative dance from a platform in the middle of the pond, his body reflected in the water, with a blue ball of light that floated away from him and eventually returned to him as, in his dance, he emerged slowly from the water in an awakening, and eventually strode out of the pond toward a vision of a glowing angel on the far shore to whom he handed the ball, which I imagined represented his spirituality or soul.

Finally we walked to a simple stage, where Nell did her improvisational movement theater. This was the first time I had seen her do this particular kind of performance, and I was thrilled to finally see it. She spoke of memories we shared from our childhood, both heartbreaking (memories of my troubled brother) and beautiful. When a freight train and demolition sounds from the county fair threatened to distract her performance, she managed to weave them seamlessly into the storytelling. I especially loved her description of the candle boats on McCormick’s Creek during Y-camp and how magical they looked at night, floating down the stream. She talked about a conversation she had with my father where she asked him whether he believed in God. He replied that he did not believe in God, but believed in good, and that if we did good, he knew that it would come back around. To me this was a great way to end the show, tying back to the theme once more.

Nell is surrounded and helped to do all this each year by a loving group of astounding friends, some quite well known either locally or nationally for their creative work. I was hugely impressed by everything she and the group had accomplished with this show and look forward to seeing others in the future.

Rain

It's been raining more than usual here in Colorado, a very welcome event. The rain, and the time of year, remind me of a song by Adam Duritz of the Counting Crows called Omaha. It's from their 1993 album “August and Everything After” that always makes me think of my brother Paul, who told me once that it was one of his very favorite tunes. As usual, it is the lyrics that draw me most to a song I love.

It starts out with a verse about an old man—tearing him down, rolling a new leaf over. “The old man treading around in the gathering rain,” is perhaps somebody who thinks he is so right that he walks on water. This makes me think about my brother's relationship with my dad. They loved each other, and each could never be what the other needed.

Then the chorus comes in for the first time.

“Omaha, somewhere in middle America

Get right to the heart of matters

It's the heart that matters more

I think you better turn your ticket in

And get your money back at the door”

My brother and I grew up with our family in middle America – southern Indiana to be exact. The song makes me think of Indiana’s best seasons--the rain, the earth, the green fields.

The next verse is about life change or the hope for change —“rolling a new life over.” In this verse the old man is “threading his toes through a bucket of rain.” My father was a master gardener. Dad would often garden in the rain, or simply stand outside during a rainfall to revel in the water coming for the garden or to admire the lightning show. We all tried to help him with the garden, although his standards were so high that it was hard to please him. Even weeding and watering have a right way and a wrong way, could be judged insufficient, you see. It could feel like he was walking all over you. He didn’t mean to, but he did.

For Paul, I can imagine there was always the hope of ultimately pleasing him, somehow or another. But Dad was walking on water, and Paul was underwater.

In the third verse, there is a “young man rolling around in the earth and rain” in order to “turn a new girl over.” Paul had a hard time with relationships, in his own family and with girls. In the end, he was never really able to find a long term relationship for many reasons, mostly due to his own choices and because he struggled with mental illness and addictions. He was very lonely, I think. (To “get right to the heart of the matter – it’s the heart that matters most.”)

In the end, perhaps we all want to turn our tickets in and get our money back at the door. We all have our hearts broken. This song has heart – listen to it when you get a chance. You'll be glad you did.