Nothing in Particular

March 31st, 2010

There’s not a lot to talk about today. My day at work was mostly routine. This evening the three of us went out to eat at a local Thai restaurant using a discount coupon Ian found. Afterward, we watched another episode of Lost, which is getting weirder and weirder. I can’t even begin to imagine how they will end the series.

It’s been so much colder this week, which is a shock after such warm temperatures for much of the winter. It is good to get some rain and significant snow in the mountains. That will help the summer water situation. And spring is still advancing. There’s a double pink cherry that normally blooms around the time of Ian’s birthday, which is just starting to bloom. Plant bloom and leaf times are three to four weeks earlier than normal.

I also need to get organized and buy some vegetable seeds for our two small garden patches. I’d like to order some heirloom seeds, and I’d better do it soon. Bob noticed our neighbors already have vegetables coming up in their garden. I have next week off because of spring break, so I’ll figure it all out and order some seeds then.

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Inspiration from Pansies

March 30th, 2010

Several of us at school said emotional farewells to one of the students going to Denmark for two months. I didn’t expect either of them to be there, so it was great to be able to say one more goodbye. You can see photos of the two at the airport on the school blog. They will have a wonderful time exploring a new culture and place.

I finished The Zookeeper’s Wife this evening. I highly recommend it. Despite the fact that it covers very bleak events, specifically the period of Nazi occupation in Warsaw, Poland, the subjects of this historical biography (most notably the zookeeper of the Warsaw Zoo and his wife) loved life and generously did everything they could to help Jewish friends and residents who needed sanctuary or a way station on their way out of Warsaw. In addition, they loved art and animals and managed to maintain connection with both during the occupation. In particular, I was struck with the wife’s deep empathic connection with animals and also humans in distress, and her intuitive ability to communicate withand calm both kinds of beings.

Near the end of the book, the author cites research on personality traits shared by over 100 “rescuers”–non-Jews who risked their lives daily to save the lives of Jews and harass Nazi forces. They are traits definitely worth cultivating. According to researchers rescuers were

decisive, fast-thinking, risk-taking, independent, adventurous, open-hearted, rebellious and unusually flexible. They were able to switch plans, abandon habits or change ingrained routines at a moments notice. They tended to be nonconformists, and though many rescuers held solemn principles worth dying for, they didn’t regard themselves as heroic. Typically, one would say as [the zookeeper] did, “I only did my duty. If you can save somebody’s life, it’s your duty to try.” Or, “We did it because it was the right thing to do.”

I was especially struck by the “unusually flexible” traits. I’d like to foster those traits in myself, because those abilities would make handling even the small vicissitudes of life more manageable.

Also near the end of the book, the author quotes Henry Beston, an American writer and naturalist of the early 20th century. The quote was immediately familiar, because it’s one I found as a teenager and added to my voluminous collection of inspirational quotations. I don’t know whatever happened to my collection, so it was wonderful to be reminded of this one.

We need another and a wiser and perhaps a more mystical concept of animals. Remote from universal nature, and living by complicated artifice, man in civilization surveys the creature through the glass of his knowledge and sees thereby a feather magnified and the whole image in distortion. We patronize them for their incompleteness, for their tragic fate of having taken form so far below ourselves. And therein we err, and greatly err. For the animal shall not be measured by man. In a world older and more complete than ours they move finished and complete, gifted with extensions of the senses we have lost or never attained, living by voices we shall never hear. They are not brethren, they are not underlings; they are other nations caught with ourselves in the net of life and time, fellow prisoners of the splendour and travail of the earth.

Another lovely tidbit I learned from the book was the origin of the word ”pansy”. I have an especial fondness for these magical little flowers because I remember Granny C. (my maternal grandmother) growing and delighting in their “little faces”. In fact, pansy derives from the French word “pensif”–pensive or thoughtful in English.

Pensive Pansies

Pensive Pansies

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Money Matters

March 29th, 2010

I spent the evening cooking dinner with Bob and Ian and then slapping up a couple of blog posts on the Clearwater blog.

We made Saag Paneer out of the World Food Cafe cookbook, which took much longer to prepare than we anticipated, but it was good. We could have used a lot less cheese though. Even though I used four big bunches of spinach, it cooks down so shockingly that the cheese far outweighed the spinach in the end. I also made some seasoned Indian rice and Ian made some cucumber raita. All in all a satisfying meal.

Earlier today I researched community banks and credit unions. Evergreen Bank, a community bank where our accounts have been for years, was closed by the feds and its assets were sold to a regional bank out of Oregon, Umpqua Bank. It has been frothing at the mouth (my interpretation) to expand their operations into Washington. I’m suspicious of expansion-oriented banks, but decided to wait and see before jumping ship.

Last week we got a many-page booklet outlining the new banks policies and fees. It’s clear from some of their fees that they are more interested in profits for their shareholders than customer service. Time to find another bank. With perfect timing, the Seattle Times published an article today about 45 of Washington’s community banks, with detailed information about each bank’s health and prognosis.

In the Puget Sound region there were only three community banks whose balance sheets seem to be improving; the rest may pull out of this recession intact by finding new investors, but I wouldn’t feel comfortable taking a chance on them. So I looked into state credit unions, which by definition are member owned, not-for-profit institutions whose profits go back into the credit union to benefit the members through lower fees and other community programs rather than being paid out to shareholders.

There were several that offer personal and business accounts and they are members of a credit union network whose member institutions allow credit union depositors to use ATM machines throughout the network without surcharges–a major bonus. Next week I’ll be getting more specific details from each institution and figure out which one meets our needs best.

I refuse to bank with the behemoths that are too big to fail. It’s outrageous they were shored up and their CEOs continue to get huge bonuses despite major culpability for the financial crisis, while small community banks are allowed to fail when they provide more personal and valuable services to the communities in which they do business by supporting local businesses. Of course the small banks share some responsibility for getting carried away in the real estate bubble, but the feds are much less lenient with them because their demise is a loss to a much smaller group of people and doesn’t risk the whole financial system.

As citizens a large group of us could turn this situation around and decrease the size of giant banks by moving our money to community banks and credit unions that have a real interest in our communities because the people who have decision-making power in these institutions live and work here too and have a vested interest in a healthy local economy. “Move Your Money“ is an informal movement encouraging people to do just this.

I’ll let you know what I find out from my institutional research next week.

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Dinner with Friends

March 28th, 2010

Ahhh. The dance party was so tiring in a good way that I slept really hard last night–a full eight hours. As a result I felt good today. Bob and I headed up to Bothell for a Clearwater Commons meeting. As he said on our way home, we made some major decisions in an odd and fairly painless way.

I did a little weeding in mixed rain and sun on the bank we planted two summers ago . Got rid of a lot of shot weed before the seeds were dry enough to shoot out–whew! After the meeting we headed home to clean house a little and cook dinner for friends.

We fixed Crawfish Etoufee from a New Orleans cookbook recently given to us by a friend. So far everything we’ve cooked from the book has been great and this recipe was no exception. I also made cornmeal-squash muffins and a fruit plate. For some part of the evening one of our friends and I talked medieval history, which was really fun for me. He gave me some book tips, but only one is available from the public library. I’ll have to ask him again about one of them, whose author I cannot remember. All three books are social histories of common people using primary sources.

One which I believe is called The Ties That Bind, is about family life in medieval England, based on village records. Another called The Holy Greyhound is about the cult of a sainted dog in a small French village. Unfortunately, I can’t get that book at the library, but it is available on Amazon. The last book is Montaillou: Cathars and Catholics in a French Village, 1294-1324, which is available at the library.

Tomorrow will be a very busy day, with no hope of finishing everything I need to get done, so I’m going to bed.

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Dancing Fool

March 27th, 2010

I just got back home from a women-only dance party a friend hosted at a yoga studio. There were 10 of us there and most people brought along iPods or CDs with music they like to dance to. We also ordered food from a Tibetan/Himalayan/Nepali/Indian restaurant nearby. The food was yummy and it was really fun to dance with a bunch of friends. I loved looking around and watching everyone’s different styles and relaxed and unselfconscious movement.

The freedom of moving around to music is exhilarating, not to mention that it feels like effortless exercise because it’s just so much fun.

This morning we had a really good Bad Alien production meeting, welcoming a new person into the group who has a lot of experience with an animation program that everyone else wants to learn and switch over to because it’s more versatile and powerful.

Then after the meeting on the spur of the moment Bob and I joined our Bad Alien partner for lunch with a couple of his filmmaker friends. We knew them slightly, but it was good to socialize, find out what they’re up to and pick their brains on what kinds of things Bad Alien might focus on to increase our client base.

It’s been a full and satisfying day.

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Pete!

March 26th, 2010

I just have one thing to say today. Watch the documentary Pete Seeger: The Power of Song. It was made in 2007; I just watched it tonight. I found his story and the power of his passion to revive and get people singing American folk songs moving and inspirational. His vision and total commitment to it have influenced so many people, and at 90 years old he’s still around.

If you saw the inauguration concert at the Lincoln Memorial early this year, you may remember Seeger was there exhorting everyone to sing Woody Guthrie’s “This Land Is Your Land”–including the subversive verses, not just the first two that everyone knows and can feel comfortable singing.

A few years ago when Ian was small, the three of us had the pleasure and honor to see him at the NW Folklife Festival in a very intimate workshop setting under a little tent near the International Fountain. It was amazing to be so close to such a legend, but he wasn’t conscious of that. He was just there to sing with us the music he loves so much. So many wonderful songs and such an amazing legacy.

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Singing and Reading

March 25th, 2010

LOTS of singing today. I began the day rehearsing with the Clearwater Singers for Whistlepig in May. Once again we’re singing songs suggested by members, so I’m learning three new songs. They’re sounding more familiar–always a good feeling. A couple of them still have parts I’m unsure of, but youtube is my friend. It’s great to be able to listen to them for free anytime through that service.

The singers are well focused so far. We rehearse the three days that I’m at school and we just finished the first week. The youngest student singer is 7 and the oldest is 15–all girls. And then there are us two female staff members. One of my male colleagues, a wonderful musician, is accompanying us on guitar and I always appreciate his suggestions for things to try to make songs stronger and more interesting.

Later in the day Stephanie and I rehearsed two of the songs we’re working on, and this evening was my women’s choir rehearsal. In the latter group many of the songs are coming together and I’m beginning to figure out passages that are more tricky to sing.

I also finished reading Colman, the third book in Monica Furlong’s Wise Child trilogy, to a student. It was my great pleasure to be able to read the first two books again after having read them many years ago. I had not read the third book before, so it was fun to find out what happened to the characters in the first two books. They are wonderful stories, with gentle magic and profound observations about love, fear, connection and self-knowing. I’d highly recommend all of them.

Tonight I was thinking I had a fairly unscheduled weekend to catch up on things, but memories of meetings, company for dinner and other commitments came flooding in. Damn! I was hoping to catch up on bookkeeping, Clearwater blog posts and my own singing practice. I’m really looking foward to spring break a week from now, when I’ll have lots more time to get some things done.

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Moments of Magic

March 24th, 2010

Today felt like summer. Apparently, temperatures reached 70 degrees in Seattle. I don’t know what they were at school in Bothell, but they were probably close to that. For the first time this year I caught a whiff of the balsam scent of black cottonwood trees, one of my favorite outdoor scents which always evokes past memories of walking by the Boise River in my youth on late spring evenings.

There was an amazing and profound debate in School Meeting today, which was all about the rights of the individual to self-determination vs. the power of the  majority to limit individual rights. I’m not going to take the time to go into detail about it in this post, but will try to come back to it or perhaps I’ll write a post on the school’s blog instead.

A 7-year-old girl slipped on a rock in the creek today, bruising and cutting her knees. One knee bled freely and hurt a lot. She was distraught and crying on the other side of the creek from me. A couple of friends tried to comfort her. I went down to the edge of the water to find out whether she was up to walking across in her injured state. I was prepared to take off my shoes and socks, roll up my pants and wade across to get her. However, one of our kind and capable teenage boys, who was already barefoot and sunning himself on a nearby log, leaped up to help. He rolled up his pants, waded across and scooped up the little invalid in his arms. He waded back across and deposited her in my arms, whereupon I carried her back to the central campus.

I was planning to set her down on the outdoor picnic table and go get bandaids, arnica and paper towels to clean the cut. One of her friends who had tried to comfort her in her distress and who called to me after the accident, accompanied us back to central campus. She didn’t think I should leave the injured girl and ran inside to get the items I needed. She came back in less than five minutes and sat with us while I bathed the wound. Then she applied the bandaids very gently to her friend’s knees.

The little girl who injured herself sometimes tries the patience of the friend who helped today–and others–with a tendency to blame others and indulge in self-pity when she’s not included or when friends decline to play things she suggests. In our school’s environment children get to know each other very well–warts and all–and caring and compassion co-exist with impatience and irritation. Kids at Clearwater are clear-eyed, self-aware individuals who are skilled readers of others’ strengths and weaknesses. Their self-awareness allows them to develop the generosity of tolerance and honest feedback and create complex and caring relationships.

The foregoing experiences feel magical. The truth is that they should not. If people were free to really explore and be themselves, these kinds of events would be common place. No less appreciated, but less rare.

I promised I would talk a little about a particular passage in The Zookeeper’s Wife that struck me. The author, Diane Ackerman, spends some time talking about the ancient tradition of mysticism and meditation practiced by a particular branch of Hasidic Jews. I know little about Jewish religious philosophies and traditions, but this particular tradition resembles what little I know of Zen Buddhism.

Apparently in this Hasidic tradition, there is one god, defined as the oneness that subsumes all categories, the ocean of reality and everything that swims in it. Meditation allows practitioners to open the heart and unclog the channel between the mortal and the infinite. During meditation people are encouraged to observe their thoughts, silence the conscious mind, discover the holiness within themselves and be mindful of every moment.

The author spends some time talking about Abraham Joshua Heschel’s philosophical writings. Heschel, who grew up in Poland, managed to escape to England and then the United States during WWII, although members of his family who remained behind were killed. I loved this particular Heschel quotation reproduced in the book: “I have one talent and that is to be tremendously surprised–surprised at life, at ideas.” He went on to state the supreme Hasidic imperative: “Don’t be old, don’t be stale.” It is yet another way of emphasizing the importance of cultivating a sense of wonder and connection with the world and its inhabitants.

Amen.

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Liar, Liar, Pants on Fire

March 23rd, 2010

So I lied about writing more about The Zookeeper’s Wife. Once again my evening has been taken up with other stuff and here I am needing to go to bed with little time to post.

At school we Clearwater Singers began practicing for Whistlepig. We’re doing six songs, three of them particular favorites of three separate students in the choir. There are also three songs I’m not familiar with and will need to learn quickly so I can help others learn them and start thinking about nuances of style and performance for each. It’s a challenge, but fun.

I’m also scheming to practice and cover the song, “Red Cave,” by the band Yeasayer with some select adults at Whistlepig . It’s a really amazing piece and I’m looking forward to putting together an awesome version. In addition, another staff member and I are planning on singing duets on a couple of other songs. Lots of singing fun.

Also at school today was major hole digging for a trench fort, some wading in the creek, climbing trees and getting stuck, and a building a new potato canon with three barrels. It was warm today and most people were outside most of the day.

I hope tomorrow I’ll be able to wax rhapsodic about the aforementioned book.

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More Tomorrow

March 22nd, 2010

Not much time to write tonight, so I’ll keep it brief. Did lots of odds and ends today, including finishing up laundry, putting together a grocery list for the week and doing the shopping, hanging out at a coffee shop with Bob and Ian working on the grocery list and listening to possible music for the Clearwater Singers, while they worked on programming for a computer game.

This evening I washed up a bunch of dishes while listening to Diane Ackerman’s The Zookeeper’s Wife, a fascinating nonfiction book about the people who ran the Warsaw Zoo before and during the Nazi invasion and occupation. Ackerman also muses about many things zoological, entomological, psychological, theological and other -ogicals. I’d recommend it.

Tomorrow I’ll post a quote I just heard and other things that come up in the day. Good night.

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