Wednesday, December 26, 2012

Season's Greetings

A Gingerbread house from a Christmas past....

We've created a nice new gingerbread house, but this one with  the foreclosure sign  describes my state of mind more accurately.  What's up with this rotten world?



Wednesday, December 12, 2012

Only a picture

Picture of myself so that I can continue my code tutorial which  is requiring an http address. I like this picture. I wonder if my hair is overall more gray or brown.

Minutes later:
Just so you know, that didn't work. My son will be down shortly to laugh at me. Learning all the time.

Saturday, December 8, 2012

The Oxymoron of Homeschooling "Groups" or Why We are Getting a Ball Python Snake

My daughter wearing my handiwork
We travel about a half an hour once a week to a homeschool cooperative. The concept is that families gather together so that the parents can offer classes and workshops to the kids. This particular cooperative has been around for over 25 years. It is very organized. Parents must create "offerings" that then get scheduled. Families select the courses that they want to sign their children up for and in theory, everyone is served.

We are having a problem appreciating our group at this time. There are wonderful things about it; some developmentally delayed kids who are thriving in the supportive non-judgemental environment of the cooperative, and I had a great time teaching an Intro to Life Drawing Class to three 13 year old boys including my son (who never did the homework). So what's the problem? The problem is that I answered a questionnaire about 6 months ago that got a young documentary film-maker interested in including our family in her documentary on homeschooling. I was quite forthright about our "unschooling" and she didn't have any other such candidates. So, after some discussion, disagreement, etc, I persuaded my family that we would do this. One son liked the idea from the get-go. One son still doesn't know about it (He gets home from college 2 days before the film-makers will be with us!)  The other two children had reservations as did my husband. But eventually, they realized that it meant something to me. It has after all, been a fairly huge creative project of mine for the last 18 years or so. So then, we even got permission from the community college where I teach, and my daughter's horse barn for the film makers to film us there. Additionally, the indoor soccer field where my sons play pick-up has agreed that filming can occur. The supermarket where I shop said "no".

And so did the homeschoolers.

I have been walking around thinking about their refusal. It is based on the refusal of 3 families to allow the documentary film makers to film at our cooperative, even though we were assured by the film maker that she would only include willing subjects and could easily leave people out or even remove them from footage later. But the 3 families said "No" so that was a "No".

I wrote a "thank-you" to the group for carefully considering the idea. But my message went on to detail my inability to understand why they would not want an inspired young documentarian working on a film about a subject close to her heart (She was homeschooled!) and her camera woman. Wouldn't this be about the best thing that their children would be exposed to all semester? I reflected on how the rejection reminded me of how diverse a group we are.

My family attends the cooperative group in order to broaden our range of experience, to widen the range of possibilities, to expose ourselves to more than we might come up with on our own. I am realizing that this may not be why all the others are  there. Are  they homeschooling to keep themselves safe? snug in their own reality? The cooperative suddenly feels cloying and stifling. I want to get in the car and drive with my kids to New York City to be bombarded with smells and noise and crazy  people. I want to hear Salsa and rap at the same time. I want to be bumped into  rudely while being asked politely if I have the time.

I have given this group my heart, teaching what I love to teach more than anything...Drawing. In addition to the 13 year old boys, I taught 2 talented teen girls Advanced Drawing all semester. We were drawing landscapes with pastels by parking my car at a nearby park, when the semester ended.  There wasn't much on offer from the other parents for my 3 kids who were attending. The 13 year old didn't care as he was just there for the social experience. He loved everything and nothing. The 16 year old was bored out of his mind, and my daughter went home every coop day with a splitting headache. I think it was the strain of trying not to tell the girls at the coop a little older than her how stupid they were acting when they were together.

So I am left wondering why we are attending. And, in an inspired moment, I asked the 13 year old if he would be willing to give up going to the cooperative if I finally let him buy a ball python snake that he saw on sale at Petco. He said, "Sure!" So I have my chance to be free. We can get in the car next Spring and drive to New York for noise and stimulation, instead of to the cooperative. And all I have to do is keep dead mice in the freezer.

Saturday, December 1, 2012

Portrait Update

Brother and sister on pink plastic carrying case
The portrait above has been a real pleasure to paint; the person who gave me the materials is an artist and really knew how to pick a great photo and a fabulous surface on which to paint. The color alone is really fun to be working with and against as I apply color. Like all the surfaces, it comes with its challenges. There is something slightly unreceptive about the plastic, so that the paint, especially as I apply multiple layers one on top of the other as I try to get the likenesses just right, almost seems to "crawl" a little, but overall, I LOVE this surface. The images below are all the remaining portraits that I will be executing. I have "dragged my feet" on the portrait below because the surface is a bit scary...It is a vintage foil paper wrapped around a cardboard gift box. I have thought long and hard about how to isolate the surface from the ravages of oil paint, and I explained the problem to the person who gave me the materials when they initially asked about it's usability. In the end, I applied two polyurethane-like coating layers to the surface. I hope that the recipient of the portrait understands the extremely experimental nature of this surface preparation!
young man on vintage foil covered box

Woman and baby on woven placemat



I have applied a coating of medium to the fabric where I intend to paint the image. This project has its own logic, I keep thinking of the "shroud of Turin" because the photo image is very blurry and kind of indistinct and so I expect to make a portrait that sort of has the appearance of "materializing"  onto the placemat....

rider on helmet visor
progress on the pink carrying case 

Wednesday, November 28, 2012

Speaking for the Aimless Cluster

kale growing like wildflowers
It's time to "put the garden to rest" as they say. They say it and I try to comprehend it, but the garden, like a lot of other things in my life, doesn't really get "put away". Just as I don't always put all the dishes away, (maybe partly because I am about to start preparing the next meal?) I also don't completely clean up the garden. This slackerly permissiveness allows kale that has sprouted up all over the place to flourish now into the winter. I pull the biggest bunches out of the ground to both eat them and thin out the "patch". Similarly, the parsnips have regenerated themselves and are growing will nilly, here, there, and everywhere. Parsnips are delicious no matter whether they come out of a straight row or an aimless cluster....

Sunday, November 11, 2012

Baptized by Fire

"Obamney" meets his fate
The old ladder nothing more
 than fuel for the fire....

 Guy Fawkes 2012. I had only voted several days earlier because my friend was working the polling place and noticed that I hadn't come to vote yet. So at 8:30, only because she called and she is a very good friend, I reluctantly got in the car and tried to figure out who to vote for as I drove to the local firehouse. I knew it wouldn't be Romney, but the question was, was Obama qualitatively much different from Romney? Wouldn't  it be a more positive step to help give a third party candidate 5% of the vote (which Gary Johnson was supposedly close to receiving) so that in 4 years, we might have real debates and real issues instead of the two party waltz about photo opportunities?  I had spent the last few days considering not voting at all, but I realized that it reminded me of being a college student who wasn't attending a party just to spite someone else only to realize that no one had even noticed she wasn't there.

And then, several days later, we decided last minute to have a small Guy Fawkes event. We had almost not held the annual event but then just phoned up local friends and threw it together, with "the guy" getting made out of old clothes and dead sunflower stalks at the last minute. You have to throw somebody on the fire. There is nothing more gratifying than watching an enemy burn. So, we decided that the enemy this time, was "Obamney", the two-faced Republicrat wearing special underpants beneath his suit.



Old and young enjoy the catharsis

Thursday, November 1, 2012

Real Cough Drops

the "fresh"cough drops going into the oven to dry at low temperature
Last native plant class; we made cough drops.

I was born to do things like this. I love to make things that I have never thought of making. Who ever saw a recipe for cough drops?

So. we ground up: fennel, marshmallow, irish moss, fenugeek, liquorish, astragelas*. Then we repeatedly sifted it. (all under the watchful eye of our fabulous instructor, Dina Falconi.) Then we added honey and just enough water to make a paste. And then, we rolled little balls of the mixture similar to when you make truffles. (except a little smaller as you want these delicacies to be able to ease down the throat and to dissolve, etc)

Then, you figure out a way to dry them; I used my oven on some sort of setting below its bottom temperature and I even left the door open. Dry for a few hours. This was a very intuitive part of the process. They can be stored in an airtight jar, or if you are worried that you may not have quite properly dried them, store them in the refrigerator.

No flu shots for me thank-you. I have hand-rolled cough drops.

*pardon spelling please

Sunday, October 28, 2012

more trash portraits!

Completed baby on tray
I'm trying to work consistently on the portraits now, knowing that my studio will shortly become uninhabitable once winter kicks in....we may get the wood stove installed sometime this winter, but then again, we may not!

The baby above is the second completed portrait, and I've begun the third below. Collecting the "commissions" and then issuing letters to everyone who had submitted objects took more time than I had budgeted in. That's a weird thing about being an artist...you spend a lot of time with paperwork and documentation, and emails.

I sent out letters letting people know that I had received their materials and planned to complete as many portraits as possible before December. I had to send two letters out that asked the recipients to please send me a photo of someone to be painted on the fabulous object that they had left for me. I have received no response from either one. I can't figure out why they would leave me an army green plastic canteen, for example, with no photo of someone to paint on it.

I'm very excited about the two kids below...I can't help feeling that the commissioner of this one really understood the project!
bother and sister with Betty Crocker started....


Wednesday, October 17, 2012

Drawing Naked Ladies Gets More Interesting

an assortment of drawing surfaces
I love to draw and am very proficient at it. Not only does it come naturally to me, but I also spent some intensive years in Drawing classes in Art School. Then for many years, I did not draw very much though I continued to paint. Last year, helping my son prepare a drawing portfolio, got me re-interested. I took him to a life model drawing session nearby so I could instruct him and he could draw. At one session, I paid the fee and drew too. It was fun at first, but not really compelling and I began to feel bored. He went off to art school, and I spent the next winter making several detailed large drawings of my children and my house. It was heavenly to be drawing again. The figure-drawing sessions loomed in my memory. I challenged myself to think of a way to get interested in "drawing naked ladies" again, like we did so much in art school. And then I thought of drawing on found materials with ink if necessary. I had a large atlas of maps and I attended one session and tried it out. It was definitely interesting.

Corrugated Nude
Getting ready to leave for a figure drawing session this past Sunday morning, I opened the recycling bin in front of my house ...I was in need of diverse surfaces on which to draw. The materials inside were actually quite inspiring...butter packages that I imagined prying apart to draw n the inside grayish-brown cardboard surface that would be such a nice geometric yet fairly rectangular shape. Then there were lots of cereal boxes; I wondered if I would decide to draw in ink on the outside or again try working on the more uniform surface inside. I already had some materials gathered in my studio. I collected it all into a portfolio and went off to the session.

I brought regular white drawing paper too, but you know what? I did not use it. It was really exciting and interesting and rewarding to draw on all the found surfaces. I started out with 1 minute gesture drawings on data pages from the large atlas that I am slowly pulling apart...I have used the pages for folding home-made berry cartons, and drawing on maps. Then a five minute drawing on a map followed by another 5 minute drawing inside an Annual Report...This seemed like a wonderful place to secret beautiful intimate drawings of nudes....I will bring it again and work on filling the pages with drawings.

The highlight of the morning was definitely the nude on the white corrugated cardboard above. The holes that are punched through the drawing vie for attention with the tonal pencil drawing of a standing nude woman. I recognized immediately that this was very successful.

Next week, we will have a male model..I will have to decide  if he belongs in the Annual report or should it be all women. I lean towards all women. A naked man has a different relationship to all those stocks and bonds I think.
Principle Gesture


Saturday, October 13, 2012

Blind and remembering


the "wetlands" behind my house

I attend my last "native plant" class today. This will be our 6th session, meeting once a month during the growing season to "meet" about a dozen plants a session. These plants are full of nutrients and medicinal properties and they grow around the house and along the edges of the roads.... Last month, we did something different; leading and being led, with our eyes closed and without language, through the woods. When it was my turn to close my eyes, I at first felt unsure, and then as I walked along with my companions' hands guiding my arms, I grew more at ease, trusting their pace and the subtlities of the pressures of their hands on my arms...and then a most amazing experience swept over me. I would think that I sensed sunlight, or deep shadow, and then I found myself experiencing ideas of being next to a driveway under a tree, or being in "the" backyard and it was sunny just ahead of me. It felt like clear physical memories without any idea of naming places or events. I felt so grateful for being able to feel this that I wanted to cry. Does my body have a deep well of experiential memory? I have never felt this before...it is akin to the feeling one gets by shutting ones eyes and counting ten calming breaths; the sudden remembrance of being in one's body more than in one's brain, as we mostly are.

Thursday, October 11, 2012

Cleaning that desktop

rubber rage? along the route to NC in Delaware (I think)
So, I am struggling to regain space in my computer so as to transfer some video footage for a  job, and I find myself finally culling through the files and piles of images that my family of 6 has amassed and "dumped" into the computer....To be perfectly honest, it is mostly myself and my 13 year old son who are the villains here. He takes tons of photos....and unfortunately, a great proportion of them are worth looking at. So here are two that particularly caught my eye.
This makes me want to stretch a canvas in these dimensions and channel Botticelli or Fra Angelico.... 

Saturday, October 6, 2012

Eco Art and Other Impossibilities

artist sketch of "Bug Cinema"

I am belatedly reviewing an "eco art show", "Whale Oil To WholeFoods" that took place this past summer in two locations in Greene County, New York. I am reviewing it now because, I have time, the curators are friends of mine, the show was a good example of well-intentionedness gone awry, and I don't like to step on any toes but I don't see that anyone else on the web or otherwise has seen fit to honestly assess the effort and intent that went into this show and efforts like it. 

The show took place this past summer, and was billed as an "Eco Art Show".  The curators hoped to put together a collection of art that reflected various perspectives on the ecological issues that we are faced with, and to that end, even invited artists from other countries to participate.  I thought that the first version of the show at the Greene County Council on the Arts was interesting and even contained work that I wanted to own; the dust bunnies created by  Suzanne Proulx. Ms Proulx made believable life sized bunnies  out of dust collected and somehow transformed into a sculptural material. The bunnies all look like they are snuffling along quietly. Now if you ask me, that is eco art. Taking something that nobody really has much use for and using a minimum of energy and resources to transform it into something that feels compelling and real.

Due to a certain amount of personal involvement, I was too aware of some of the extremes that went into mounting the second leg of the show that was exhibited at the Agroforestry Center.  James Brady was invited from Ireland to participate in the show. He had proposed creating a "Bug Cinema".  So here we have the first red flag. He flew here from Ireland using his share of the 44 tons of fuel necessary for one trans-Atlantic flight. Once he was here, he was assigned a driver (my 19 year old son) as James did not drive. Second huge red flag. The fact that he was coming to a rural area and did not drive, but could not stay right where he was mounting the "Bug Cinema" created a situation where he had to be driven. This actually resulted in twice as many miles being driven than if had been able to drive himself, as my son had to drive the 7 miles to go get him, drive him to his destination, drop him off, and then drive home himself. Then the whole diesel expenditure occurred in reverse to get him home at night. On other days, they drove even further, to go rent special solar lighting in a town 20 miles away, or to go buy fabric for the project in a different town 20 miles in a different direction.

I am not picking on James Brady or the curators. I must clarify right now that I am only writing about this (and risking upsetting people I really admire!) because we are all faced with ethical decisions about  expending our share of trans-atlantic jet fuel in order to see our 8o year old mother-in-laws or take our children to see the Parthenon, etc. This eco-art issue just exemplifies choices we all make every day.....   I think it is important for all of us to acknowledge when we are making a mistake even when we are trying to "do the right thing". It is often difficult to know which is the "right thing'.  For example, in the grocery store, when the cashier asks if you want your groceries in a plastic or paper bag, what is the right answer? I'm sure I don't know unless it is "I brought my own bag", but even that might not be right as it may be made of plastic at least in part that required some sort of terrible pollution in it's manufacture, or pillaging of natural resources....  

I also think it is possible for one person to be imported from far away, at the price of their share of the 44 tons of fuel, and maybe more, but the message that they bring must be inspiring, thought-provoking, and big. Brady's Bug Cinema was not. I'm not sure what sort of experimentation Brady may have done before attempting the project here, but the evening that the bugs were supposed to succumb to the attraction of the solar lights in order to perform some antics for an expectant art audience, two terrible things became clear. Brady's solar lamps were not bright enough, even once they had been sort of jury-rigged by my electrician husband (who is thankfully not an artist but a person who knows how to make electrical things work) when they failed to work. The second terrible thing was that Brady had missed an obvious lighting solution for his cinema: the all night signage lights for the Agro Forestry Center that we all filed past after over an hour of trying to imagine that some sort of Bug Cinema was occurring in Brady's dim set-up in the woods. The moths and bugs were too busy  in the hot exciting lights of the AgroForestry signage to go looking for Brady's unchartered and unpromising pitiful solar lighting situation. And the Agroforestry signage lighting would have cost the Arts Council and the environment nothing as it was an existing lighting condition.

When I was a student in undergraduate school, we subjected ourselves and everything around us to scathing critique. I think that is healthy and I miss it. Not everything is wonderful and not everything makes sense. IF more people voiced a critical opinion it might lead to greater thought going into projects before they are mounted...Another important aspect of criticality is that it can be paralyzing. I imagine that at some level, Rupp and Potash who curated the show, could sense that Brady's contribution was requiring a bit too much fuel  to qualify as a good eco-art idea, but they had a deadline to meet and lots of other things in their lives to take care of, and they just went ahead, hoping that his final piece would make it all worthwhile. 

Many of the most critically astute artists that I went to undergraduate school with, eventually stopped making art. A truly critical and intelligent perspective can lead to inertia. I guess I feel that in this case, inertia might have been a better approach than the literal slurping up of fossil fuel to a make cinema that very few bugs attended.


Thursday, September 20, 2012

Competing for Food With The White-faced Hornet

While I am accustomed to timing my raspberry-picking to coincide with the honeybees' nap-time (early morning or evening) I find a new competitor out on the raspberry bushes this year...the white-faced hornet. My 13 year old son who knows about such things, has assured me that the sting of the white-faced hornet is really vicious. So far, I have continued to exude a zen-like calm as I pick, so that we are shoulder to shoulder in the bushes....both extracting what we need without altercation....

Friday, September 14, 2012

the "Free Portraits"

I received a local Arts council grant this year to undertake a "free Portraits" project. (funds made possible by the Decentralization Program of the New York State Council on the arts) My idea was to invite the general public to submit throw away objects to me with a photo of someone whose portrait they want painted on the object. I made a brochure about the project that I distributed throughout the summer, largely through "Commission boxes" installed in the public library and at the Agroforestry Center.

 I was excited to see when I got back from my summer travels that I had several submissions in the "Commission Box" in the Catskill Library. I am finding that there are twists and turns to working with the public that of course I did not anticipate. Several people submitted objects, but no photo. Most of the submissions came with phone numbers and no email, which is my chosen way to communicate. So today I created a form letter that I will send out by regular mail to let all the participants know that the painting of the portraits is underway.....

I completed the first portrait largely in the Greene County Council on the Arts gallery where the project was installed as part of the Whale Oil Show in July. I set up my easel and painted right in the window of the gallery at set times twice a week. I completed the first portrait, which is pictured here....Rob aiming a gun painted on top of an exploded can of spray insulation! This was a creative submission on his part, though it may fall short as an actual "portrait" as his face is not that easy to make out. He came to my studio during the local studio tour last week and did not realize that he would get to keep the portrait. he had the idea that I should sell it as part of my body of work!

I am nearing completion on the second portrait which consists of a very cute baby girl painted on a wooden serving tray. This has been a challenging painting assignment as the baby's face is proportionally very different from an adults and I have had to keep increasing the height of that immense forehead and the distance between the eyes, etc. It still is not enough of a likeness for me so I will continue working on it this Sunday....

More to come! For now, I must address the form letters and then correspond with a few "submitters" by email so that they all know I am working on it!

Thursday, August 30, 2012

The Country of the Present Moment




Unmitigated profusion
On a late afternoon whim in between bringing in laundry, feeding the chickens and starting dinner, I gathered sunflowers and put them in a vase. Total and complete pleasure flooded through me. I am aware of how lucky I am to be able to concentrate for a few minutes on the vase of flowers, blocking out the blankets airing from flea infestation, the weeds over running the patio, the peeling paint on the house, the bills, the need for a new furnace, my family's lack of health insurance, etc etc etc etc....
Momentary Bliss

Tuesday, August 28, 2012

Tonsil mucous and other things you did not know you had to worry about....

Worry collage
So when I woke up on Monday (yesterday) , I made coffee and allowed various concerns and projects to slowly sharpen into focus in my mind. There was the note my 16 year old son had left late the night before to wake him up as he had grown increasingly concerned about these strange white blisters on his throat, there were dental visits for myself and the same son scheduled for later that day, there was my oldest son in  Florida in Hurricane Issac's path, there was the decision about wether to allow my two teen sons to play soccer in the homeschool league which entails a heroic amount of driving for the parent (me), there were the two drawings that need to be completed by Thursday at the latest, and there were the class descriptions due at the college I teach at as classes start next Tuesday. There were some other concerns sort of out of focus in the back of my mind, but I'd say these were the primary ones that I felt I needed to address that particular day.

So I sat down at the computer and checked the path of the hurricane. It seemed to be missing the Sarasota area, though each "weather map" illustration pictured it differently. I quickly checked and found no headlines about Sarasota under water or art students found floating. I then googled the white ulcers on my other son's throat and found alarming warnings to see a doctor immediately as the throat could close up and breathing could cease, and on the other hand, home remedies such as gargling with salt  water. Feeling no further ahead, I decided I better at least make sure he was still breathing so I went upstairs and looked in on him. It reminded me of when the kids were infants and I would check that they were still breathing. He was; only he was a lot bigger than an infant. Next, I went back downstairs and pretty efficiently typed up the syllabii for the classes I was teaching.

By noon, my world had been rocked by the the dentist telling me I needed a root canal and there was an appt available tomorrow. I felt obligated to take it as future Tuesdays would require me to be teaching. Simultaneously, the 16 year old was now very worried about the mysterious ulcers. I had a look at them. We phoned an alternative health friend who suggested that it could be yeast. We phoned the doctor and made an appt to come in that day once we had phoned the dentist and cancelled the dental appt.

We spent a long time first waiting in the little examination room for the student doctor. He asked lots of questions. He was supposed to guess what it was and then the doctor would confirm or contradict his guess. He left the room without enlightening us. When the doctor finally came in, he was as friendly as ever. He has a merry face. He looked over the notes, examined my son's throat, asked a couple more questions and then calmly explained that the little white things were mucous off of the tonsils. Not everyone manifests them as sticky globs that bother them, but everyone has it! I asked the student doctor if he had guessed correctly, and he smiled and said that basically he had, but that he didn't know the name of it. My son had been complaining about stuff in his throat for 2 weeks or so. (We rarely rush to the doctor) The doctor explained that it was not live flesh and he tried to scrape one of them off to show us, but my son's gag reflex was not having it. He recommended salt and water gargling, and that if we were really bothered we could go to an ear, eye, nose, and throat specialist. I reminded him that we had no health insurance and  I stated that Iw as pretty sure we would be able to deal with it just fine, now that we knew what it was.

We went home, relieved. I felt a little foolish for going to the doctor, but at the same time, the peace of mind was wonderful. later that night, my son came triumphantly down the stairs bearing the three nodules pictured above. He had pried one out, and coughed out the others.

The root canal did not hurt at all, but the novacaine has not worn off yet.

Friday, August 24, 2012

"Crackers" about Vacation

Early morning ocean
     In my 5th official week of vacation; weeks only broken by a 5 day stint of teaching 3-7 year old "sprouts" who mostly are already very accomplished "artists",  I enjoyed the company of my family from Virginia visiting our NC beach house. We frolicked on the beach and played crazy games like one  called "Things" each evening. It was fun except that I had to refrain a bit from kitchen activity, as the guests don't find baking in August in an un-air-conditioned house an acceptable activity. I, on the other hand, subscribe to my dear friend Jessica's theory which is that if it is already a hot day, turning the oven on doesn't make a whole lot of difference. Anyway, I restrained myself to 2 loaves of bread, some broiled fish, and a peach cobbler while they were there.
   As soon as they were gone (and after I returned from a little jaunt down to Florida) I baked the crackers pictured above. Good crackers (and by "good", I mean crackers without hydrogenated oil and corn syrup, and other harmful ingredients) are expensive and can vanish quickly from the pantry shelves, so I had wanted to try making them from scratch for awhile. They were incredibly easy as the recipe in "how To Cook Anything" had promised and they are delicious, if a little softer in texture than most commercial crackers.
    I have a sneaking suspicion that my relatives find my desire to cook things like this somewhat ludicrous. I can just hear my sister saying, "I'll go buy you a box of crackers if that's what you want". She's missing the zen of creating each moment as much as possible. Yes, there can be zen in reading ingredients on the packages in the Food Lion and searching the aisles for the rare appearances of actual food, but to me, that's a more difficult route to oneness with the universe.
Poppy seed crackers

Wednesday, August 8, 2012

Harry's Barn Fight

site of former barn
So we came back from being away for 3 weeks, and our friend Harry had done it! He had taken down the huge hulk of falling down barn that graced our yard and loomed over our driveway.

Now, when I go out the door, I do a double take, pausing for a second to recognize the absence of the lurching, sinking, relic. I pause for a second to readjust my vision as it roams large across the barn foundation and on out to the new little red barn and the apple orchard..... no longer trapped close up by the decaying side of the barn.

How did Harry do this? In his younger days, he was a bull fighter. So it sounds like he literally climbed onto this barn and used a chainsaw, crow bars, a small fork lift, and brute force to reduce the thing to submission. He described using the forklift to fork his assistant up out of the hole in the floor when he fell in. He described using the forklift to gently sort of shake the roof loose from it's supports and then the amazing earthquake-like KABOOM with a fallout of dust when the roof released and fell to the ground. he said he used the chainsaw to cut the huge heavy roof into four pieces and it was when the last piece fell that Harry went with it. He showed us the hole in his arm from a nail. And he said he'd went through 3 pairs of jeans sliding down the barn and wearing holes out in the pants. I wish I had taken a video of Harry telling about it. He stood strong and tanned by the sun, an older man, about seventy I think. He always wears a hat, and he would pause in his story-telling to remove his hat and wipe a kerchief across his graying head of hair. He tells a really good story. At one point he turned his face to the sky, shut his eyes, and extended his arms outwards. I can't remember which part of the tale he was telling, but I'll never forget how he stood there in the hot late afternoon sun for a second, making sure he conveyed the drama of what he had experienced with that old barn.

He is theoretically selling the salvageable wood on. He says that all I owe him is a bottle of wine. I'm trying to figure out what sort of bottle of wine could possibly repay Harry for this herculean effort. Maybe wine that comes with a delicious dinner? Maybe a few cases of wine? Maybe wine when he least expects it?

I admire Harry for being able to do that huge job, and to have done it so cheerfully. To him, it was another adventure. To us, it was an overwhelming problem that we could not address.

 

Sunday, June 24, 2012

Test Scores and Tofu

the meal
I am required by NY state to submit end-of-year assessments for my homeschooled children. When I retrieved the tests for my youngest two from a fellow homeschooler's mailbox (we had joined in on a bulk test order) I was relieved to see that the scores of my youngest son had risen slightly. He had earned "low average" and "low" and even a "high average" in various areas, but not a single "very low" like he had last year. I had just ascertained from a specialist that he does indeed have a vision problem, which explains his general inability to work academically. He had surprised me as took the test, with me reading him the questions, with a rudimentary understanding of grammar. How would a person who can't read know to put a comma anywhere?

I was reflecting on how the vision specialist kept referring to the difficulties that my son must encounter as he tries to do his "assignments". My husband and I hinted that he didn't actually have assignments, but we could tell that the specialist was not ready to truly understand the freedom that our children enjoy to essentially educate themselves when they are younger. Because of his vision difficulties, my son's "freedom" had stretched on longer than even we had expected.

Meanwhile, my oldest son had picked up a friend from the airport who had flown in from Bejing to return to the US early in the hopes of working the remainder of the summer before they both resume animation school. He spent several days at our house. He was visibly skeptical about most of the food that we put in front of him, undoubtedly scarred by the year of bad cafeteria food. It turned out that he is a very good cook and he made first a delicious egg and vegetable breakfast for us, and then the dinner that is pictured above. It was inspiring to watch him cook and to realize how many more vegetables they eat at all meals in China. Not too many bowls of cereal or sandwiches get consumed I guess.

 When my son returned from dropping him off at the airport for the last leg of his trip back to school, my son told me that his friend had been most astonished by watching the younger siblings "do nothing". He explained to my son that in China, it is not OK for children to do nothing. As I went around doing my chores and activities the rest of the day, I pondered this. I knew this about China; my middle son even had studied cello with two separate Chinese instructors who shared memories of living in "music buildings" where everyone played instruments as much as possible so as to be the best that they could be at playing said instrument. Both instructors had parents who were musicians and drove the kids to practice many hours a day. Now though, I felt a bit like I had been plunged into icy cold water on a hot day. I was so accustomed to thinking of myself as a protector of my children's freedom to learn at their own pace. "Doing nothing" is important in our house; important enough to warrant banning television and video watching when the children were younger. The internet had introduced a whole new challenge as far as allowing time for "nothing". Something about the perspective from a different culture shook me up thoroughly. Maybe education in China was less about rote memorization and more about full engagement of the intellect? My son's friend had stated that in China, people believed it was important to learn as much as was humanly possible; the idea was to acquire as much knowledge as possible. I had thought about this before; I had often wished that I had the resources to expose all four children to a second language when they were very young. And then, it had occurred to me that a rigorous study of classical subjects at a younger age might be beneficial. I had opted instead to essentially let them play until at 12 or 13 they began to want to study academic subjects like math and English. Does this encourage creative critical thinking?   My son's friend apparently marveled that one of the younger brothers could "do nothing" for years, and then buckle down to study hard and perhaps gain entrance to a top University.

It's good to have an ideological shake-up once in a while.

Wednesday, June 13, 2012

Promotional Transfats

The healthfood store was all out of Nasoya "Nayonaise" which we use in our house instead of Hellmans. But we all like Hellman's too, so I stopped in to obtain it instead from Walmart. Ah, there it was, in one of those massive towering promotional displays at the end of the aisle. It was only as I actually grabbed it and put it in the cart as I careened toward the check-out area, that I realized it was more that just a jar of mayonaise. It had a sort of tumorous growth bulging off it's backside. I looked at it closely as I waited on the register line; the plastic label was shrink-wrapped around the plastic jar of mayonaise AND the tumorous growth. It said "BONUS!" above  the Hellman's logo on the front, and there was an image of Lipton's Onion something. It turns out that they have included, for the discounted price of the mayonaise, a "free" packet of Lipton's onion dip mix. I was immediately suspicious. Why? What is Lipton's onion dip mix? Why do they want everyone to have it? An obvious answer might be that they hope that once people taste it, they will want to eat it all the time and then sales for onion dip mix will skyrocket. I do not ingest much Lipton onion dip mix in my social circles, but I am aware that it is already a key ingredient in maybe the majority of American homes where chips are served with dips....or at parties in those homes anyway. It seemed unlikely that Lipton's could really hope for much of an increase in sales, as I believe they have already cornered the market so to speak. I do not event think there is a healthfood version of Lipton's onion dip mix, though I am probably wrong here. But if there is, I do not think it is enjoying anything near the popularity of Lipton's.

SO then I checked the ingredients. In tiny letters that I had trouble reading, it said "CONTAINS: SALT, CORN STARCH, ONION POWDER, SUGAR, AUTOLYZED YEAST EXTRACT (BARLEY), CARAMEL COLOR, PARTIALLY HYDROGENATED SOYBEAN OIL, MONOSODIUM GLUTAMATE, CORN SYRUP, DISODIUM INSOMATE, DISODIUM GRANULATE, SULFUR DIOXIDE (USED TO PROTECT QUALITY)

Whew!  I'm ready to throw the gift tumour away. Monosodium glutamate is the stuff that gives people headaches isn't it? Partially hydrogenated soybean oil is not food, it is used by food companies the same way I use damar varnish in my oil paint; to make a more manageable consistency. Give me my health and an unmanageable consistency any day. The fat in my arteries, not to mention on my thighs, needs no further coagulation thank-you very much.

Tuesday, June 12, 2012

A Feminist Approach to Lawn Care

I can remember vast tracts of fresh mown grass in even stripes when I was a kid. My grandfather would cut the lawn that led down to the water at the summer cottage on Shelter Island. It always seemed so effortless and organized.

 I now use a wonderful John Deere self propelled mower to mow about 2 acres around our house. The mower is truly wonderful, but still something of a mystery to me. As soon as it doesn't just start, I feel completely forlorn and utterly mystified. Don't get me wrong, it is a really good mower and often does "just start". But it has a way of not "Just starting" when I am the most desperate to get the grass cut, like when we have not managed to mow for 2 weeks and we have just been through a hurricane and then 4 days of bright sun and the grass is over a foot tall. Then of course, if we do manage to start the mower, we stress it out as it really would require an industrial highway department machine to do the job properly. Other times, I finally get the mower to the repair place, and it turns out that mice have built a nest in some engine part. It all seems so mysterious when it just doesn't "turn on" even when I get one of the teen age sons to pull the cord with all the force they can muster.  It runs through my mind that I really must take a small engine course. Must check the Continuing Education courses for that one.

It is a formidable task keeping that much grass short. Well-intentioned people say to me "I hope you have your sons mowing that lawn for you" or even, as Harry over at the horse farm would put it; "Get those boys off their ass and out there mowing the lawn". I explain to those people. that the lawn mowing is my activity; the boys can unload the dishwasher, hang the laundry, and vacuum the downstairs while I mow. By claiming mowing, I avoid the need to buy a gym pass, attend exercise class, walk for an hour, etc. It is rigorous physical exercise mowing our lawn; I can tell you. It's even a more demanding work out when this mower doesn't "just start" and I have to push the back-up non-self-propelled mower. It is so hard to push up the rises in our lawn that sometimes I have to get a running start.  I definitely sleep well after those episodes. 
Spiral mowing
No matter how I start a given area of mowing, I end up mowing in a spiral, methodically eliminating corners as I mow round and round the perimeter. It is even more dizzying when I think I may be running low on gas and I am determined to complete the spiral before running out; then I mow really fast in tightening circles. I think about how spirals were claimed by feminist artists in the 70s, but then of course it took a male artist to get really famous off of one; Robert Smithson's Spiral Jetty. My spirals are largely an outcome of how the lawnmower works; expelling the cut grass to  the right means that I always want to be steering to the left so as to avoid traveling over all the hunks of freshly cut grass to the right. So a spiral seems logical. I just don't see so many other lawns cut in spirals.
Dr. Suess specials

When I am done mowing, I revel in the look in of the fresh cut grass leading up to the edge of my flower garden. I have weeded enough by now so that the paths through my garden are quite inviting. The pale pink peonies are the last color of peony to bloom,,,the long stalks weighted down with their opulent flowers. And my Doctor Suess specials are blooming right now...I must try to figure out what these are really called one day....

Wednesday, June 6, 2012

OK, so I am a jaded homeschool mom. But I am sure that I am not the only mom out there who just does not think that the following sounds fun. One of the e-lists that I am on for local homeschool networking has just gone mad of late with messages flying every few minutes about summer get together ideas and possibilities.  I almost hit "unsubscribe" today after the 20th message came through, and then thought I'd give the group the benefit of the doubt. But by night time, my generosity had worn thin and I got seized with the idea of typing out my thoughts in relation to all the enthusiastic suggestions. (I've changed the names to protect the guilty)


I was asking Mary and Carl her kids their opinions of places to go during hot or stormy weather, and they like the idea of alternating places...a park with a pool, a park with sprinklers, a park with a beach and lake; a roller rink, a bowling alley, a bounce house... These last 3 are venues to avoid like the plague aren't they? Aren't bounce houses pretty specifically geared for under 10's? or maybe even younger?? My youngest is 11. And not too interested in a bounce house.
 
Do your kids feel the same? No, thank god.
 
Some initial investigating finds that "kids bowl free" (if you sign up) all summer at many local lanes, including Del Lanes in Smithville and Hoe Bowl in Freeport, and both have open lanes when we usually meet.  (The one in Freeportl is about 4 minutes away from a terrific waterfront park/playground which has a food/ice cream stand and outdoor concerts Thursday nights! "Food" needs clarifying here. I'm pretty certain that was is being served up at this location does not qualify as "food" in our house.
  I would love to go from one to the other.) And I would love to bang my head repeatedly with a hammer.
    Rollarama roller skating rink in Kingston This is only an hour and 10 minutes away!
 offers "Family Night" every Thursday, with a family of 4 paying only $12 for the entire family ($3 for each person over that), plus $3 skate rental if needed.  (Much cheaper than Rollarama's, and much cheaper food as well. Again, we probably have different ideas about the merits of this cheap food.
)  The down side is that it doesn't start until 6:30,not from my point of view as that might be enough to stop me from going
 but I still think a lot of the kids would go for that.  "Bounce Around" in South Mall offers group rates...Still waiting for someone to remind me of where that other bounce place is. It won't be me.

Friday, June 1, 2012

Before and After

Vegetable garden: BEFORE
So, yes, this is a picture of my so-called vegetable garden. As you can see, it is actually an exquisite document of about 25 different native plants that grow easily in the fertile farm soil of my garden. I am currently taking a "Native Plant" class with Dina Falconi and am starting to distinguish these weeds one from another. We enjoyed Cream of Stinging Nettle Soup last class a month ago. It was really really good, and (here I must review my notes) it helps with allergies, and is good for the circulatory system among other things.

Since I took this picture a few days ago, I have exercised my power as a decision-maker, and I have removed most of these plants to make way for my broccoli and celery seedlings. I have laid the huge weeds in piles along the pathways of the garden,so as to allow the minerals and nutrients to leach back into the soil. Again, not the neatest looking garden, but I have been cheered to find some role models for this sort of patchwork gardening in the likes of old lady gardener Ruth Stout's gardening methods. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iWz0-DznwSE

As soon as I finish establishing the vegetables in neat rows, I will publish an "After" picture. Ot course, there is always an "after" picture after that too, as the summer progresses and I either stay on top of the weeds or I don't. Unlike Ruth, I mostly do my gardening clothed.



Friday, May 11, 2012

Making pizza and paintings

my glasses where I left them
 Channeling William Carlos Williams here:
(but the female multi-tasking version)
making pizza
need yeast from fridge
old celery in fridge
recipe for celery soup?
need glasses to look in cook book
where are they?
outside hanging from the garden fence post where I left them several hours ago
go get them
take camera with me to take a picture of the inside of the compost bin.
interior of the compost bin






Which brings us to the main idea of this post:
I have become someone who thinks of "planting" plastic bags on my property so as to allow it to get embedded into the natural environment as it does in the woods around here....I want to make some more paintings of this phenomeon...and when I went to get compost out of the big bin, there were some beautiful plastic bag specimens curling through the compost....

Detritus #4 oil on linen

Thursday, May 3, 2012

Gardening?

Is this gardening?
  So I was out taking care of a big job: removing the entire "raised bed" of raspberry bushes. Please don't ask why I had a raised  bed of raspberry bushes; it was not a good thing. So  that's why I was removing it, re-potting as many of them as possible in the hope of finding them new homes either with friends or even elsewhere on my property.

I receive "Organic gardening" magazine in the mail. The pictured gardens, fruits, and plants, are all so perfect and lovely. Nothing like the intense chaos that I call a  garden. The raspberry culling event happened to be right next to what is supposed to be my herb garden. Some different concepts are battling for supremacy in my herb garden, There are the many "volunteers" or plants that have decided to show up without necessarily checking in with me first. These include fabulous things like anise, echinacea, chives....It also includes weeds, which brings us to the second category: useful weeds like lambs quarter which I use to augment the spinach in spinach pie....and then the third category is baby raspberry bushes. These had made an escape from the "raised bed..."
 .
As I work in the garden, I am aware of how much it connects not only to house-keeping, but to how one lives life. I keep my garden open to so many possibilities, that they sometimes smother each other out. Or don't produce as they would if they had more space. Reminds me of both my attic and my life. I have a lot of trouble deciding that one plant (or a book or a dress) is good and another bad.

Naturally then, weeding is extremely challenging to me. Even huge dandelions seem worth keeping; I think to myself that I might want to photograph them soon for a possible painting idea. It is just like going up to my attic determined to find some stuff to throw away on trash day, and coming downstairs with a big box of "junk" that turns out to contain a potentially valuable Hess truck toy, a sheaf of writing and drawing from when my oldest son was fabricating paper cars, and some soccer trophies. It is not clear that these things can be thrown away, though in the cold light of the computer as I write about it, it seems like they should. At the moment of dragging them from the attic closer to the trash can, I am wondering if I should wait to ask my son if he wants any of it, and I know my husband would kill me if I threw away one of the Hess trucks....

But for some reason, I love to weed. I love the visual clarity of weeding everything out but one type of leaf in a given area, and of how often the weed in a given area seems to mimic the chosen inhabitant of that area. When I weed for hours in the SPring or summer, I sometimes see after images when I shut my eyes at night, huge black circles of dandelion leaves exploding in some canyon of my vision....And then the otehr day, I was done weed-wacking and staggered across my patio and happened to look up and found myself stunned by the dangling beauty of the wisteria.  They reminded me somehow of galaxies....

Monday, April 30, 2012

Tooth and Tree

Can you see the crack running down vertically from the junction of the two main limbs stretching up? This is the same old huge maple tree that my son and artist Matt Bua secured the base of their "tree house bridge" to.

My husband noticed the crack a while back. This tree is behind our house, very close to our house. I have since noticed a similar old maple tree at our soccer field with a similar crack. I wonder if this is a common old age affliction of maple trees. The huge limbs press upward full of strength for years, and then the weight of all that vigor and strength begins to succumb to gravity...and slowly, the huge vertical limbs start to pull away from their core....they come "unglued" so to speak.

We need a "tree guy" now to come tell us what to do. Can we wrap the tree with a huge steel belt,  to prevent it from splitting apart? Would that work? OR would he suggest lopping off one of the huge limbs, maybe the one looming over the roof of the house?

Meanwhile, and not so differently, I must seek the attention of the dentist to ascertain exactly what is going on deep inside my tooth. Does it have a similar crack that is slowly widening and allowing great gusts of cold air to hit an exposed nerve? Ot is it simply decaying gums exposing the root of the tooth? Which would be bettter? Which costs more to fix? or shore up? Can something be loped off to make it stop hurting?

That's all for now from Aging Acres....