Bozeman Thanksgiving

 dearest friends

 branch art installations

 the Winemaker

 an incredible meal, after a 21 day cleanse

 mountains, snowshoeing, and light

these four 

the winter steals my songs away / in all of this i come undone

V2.

I've been a child I've been a slave
I've grown bitter and learned to pray
Packed my bags and started back
The cost was just too high to pay 

Em                         G/F#       C9          G
When you walk through the water I will be with you
Em                         G/F#        G                C9    
When you pass through the river the waves will not overtake you
Em                            G/F#       C9               G
When you walk on the fire the flames they will not touch you
Em                   G/F#                 C9 
You are mine, you are mine, you are mine

road trippin' (gypsy august)

W2 to Minnesota... 

Grand Teton, Wind River Canyon to Thermopolis Hot Springs

Sundance, Buffalo, and Devil's Tower, Crazy Horse

Minneapolis and Hudson, Wisconsin

sea dwellings

Grow old with me, the best is yet to be.

-Robert Browning

''I sit on the bench under the wild cherry tree in the cemetery and sort through my memories, but the harder I try to remember, the more I get confused about which are memories and which are stories. When I was little, my mother used to tell me family stories--but only the ones that had a happy ending. My sister also told me stories: her stories were strongly formulaic, with goodies (Mother, Cossacks) and baddies (Father, communists). Vera's stories always had a beginning, a middle, an end, and a moral. Sometimes my father told me stories, too, but his stories were complicated in structure, ambiguous in meaning and unsatisfactory in outcome, with lengthy digressions and packed with obscure facts. I preferred my mother's and my sister's tales.

I remember a time when my sister and I loved each other, and my father and I loved each other. Maybe there was even a time when my father and my sister loved each other--that I can't remember. We all loved Mother, and she loved all of us.

My sister is ten years older than me, and had one foot in the adult world. She knew things I didn't know, things that were whispered but never spoken about. She knew grown-up secrets so terrible that just the knowledge of them had scarred her heart.

Now that Mother has died, Big Sis has become the guardian of the family archive, the spinner of stories, the custodian of the narrative that defines who we are. This role, above all others, is the one I envy and resent. It is time, I think, to find out the whole story, and to tell it in my own way.''

-A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian, Marina Lewycka

In all things,

at all times,

you will abound with everything you need.

re: being with your best friend

elle, after almost three years

on loving your women

and how going out for breakfast is my new favorite thing: confession (I've done it five times in the past eight weeks, even once with Kia at 6:30 before school). Come on.

Recognizing Women, Part III

Narrowing down to three out of all the women I´d like to celebrate is no small choice, but this third one is undoubtedly one of the strongest and beautiful women I´ve ever met. And as life would have it, I got to spend quite a bit more time with her in the year before moving south.

Patty Ediger, carpenter, horse-back rider, gardener, animal lover, listener, frequent crier, and source of clever commentary, is becoming like another mom to me. She´s fairly tiny but word has it she could out-arm wrestle her sons until they were 7th graders. She helped build her family´s house and their business and is self-taught and capable with legal, company, and non-profit financial bookkeeping. She gives classy DIY projects for Christmas. She goes on canoe-camping trip dates with her husband. She is basically the woman we all want to be.

Patty turned 50 on March 10th and wrote me,

´I cringe with the thought of it....why? Maybe because I have had a certain image of what 50 will be and didn´t like it... maybe because as a woman in this culture I already have had to struggle to find value in a man's world and becoming older in a culture that actually marginalizes older people rather than honoring and valuing them ...well it´s just a bit depressing I have to say. However, your words cheer me up and I need to take [a Tibetan friend´s] advice and just choose to not think about it. I feel great, I feel strong and young and I should be happy about that.´

I love her honesty. May women know more honor and value in the Northwest and all over the planet, calling it out in each other and wearing wisdom and strength and beauty as crowns.

Recognizing Women, Part II

A woman who reminds of writer and former Westmont prof Marilyn Chandler McEntyre (who deserves an entry to herself) is Kettle Falls´ own Lynn Schott. Also a poet and teacher, I got to write an article about this lady last summer when she retired from teaching high school English. That was in the town eight miles from mine, so I never got to have her, but her reputation as a teacher in a forest-industry town is highly upheld. Born and raised in San Francisco, and having spent several years of her 20s in Guatemala, Lynn´s choice to teach at a struggling high school in a poor, rural area greatly blessed hundreds of students. For me, meeting Lynn brought with it increased respect for all good teachers (especially those lovers of language and story) and a seed-idea that maybe at some point I want to try my hand at teaching high school or community college English. The woman holds to high standards, asks questions that push into the comfortable and accepted, and demonstrates kindness to even the most difficult students. She doesn´t have email or a computer, so she won´t be reading this, but if you could meet her, she´d make you coffee and you´d sit in her garden or by her fireplace and have a long, rich conversation.

Recognizing Women, part I

This little post from the lovely Ms. Lisa Borden reminded me that Today is International Women's Day.

I want to take her lead (another beloved woman worth emulating) and recognize some women this week who have been mentors and role models to me.

#1) Rosemarie Springer. Like Lisa, who got to know Rusty on Westmont College's San Francisco Urban semester in Spring '82, I found the acquaintance of the lady during my time in the city in Spring '08. Rusty, who just celebrated her 80th birthday, was 77 then, a retired Urban professor who sat on the board of Sojourn, the non-profit multi-faith chaplaincy at General Hospital, where I interned. My professor, Brad Berky (who was on Urban '82 with Lisa!) kept insisting I meet Rusty. When we finally met, it was love at first sight. She is a lover of literature, poetry, conversation, food and drink, and, of course, the city. She lives in Little Italy and still climbs four flights of stairs each day to her apartment. She's never been married (though she was once engaged), but still goes on dates. Rusty once told me that she has learned to 'Celebrate the days as they are,' and those small instructions have written themselves into me. I deeply hope to spend another day sharing coffee or tea with her when I return from Central America. Having a friend so much older feels a bit precarious, with the future of even this year unknown. But I wouldn't trade anything to know Rusty, she is one of the most beautiful women I have ever spent time with.

More coming!

vapor drew the lines

there is steam rising up in circles around her face,
touching her brow, her long hair, pulled back,
her spanish cheekbones, her dark french eyes

i am watching her, listening, looking away
hearing the mountain stories, looking west into the deep fog,
the blurry city lights, blinking vaguely
the mountains i can't see for mist, but trust the same

we, the three of us, are deep in this hazed water
relaxing and fearing at once, still and quiet and whispering,
waiting.

and the images, images, images!

the woman, murdered by Crow, in her octogonal wooded home,
the couple bravely headed to alaska,
the girl, hung from rafters, in the garage i was no stranger to
the man, snuck through window, to hurtandhurtandhurt the sister
(she's still alive, you know. she's a lawyer, she lives in denver).

i don't really know how to say things.
i will say it again.
i have said it before.

but here we are, this rainy midnight.
this hot jacuzzi tub.
here we are, clouded, surrounded by fog.
looking through a scanner darkly
a mirror shrouded
believing in beyond the veil,
or trying to believe.

oh january burning! with your stories that cut my life!

Welcome to the Bird House!

So I promised to post some photos of our new casita<3

A little orange kitten bounding through the snow to Liz and me,
walking Cedar Loop
I picked it up, fingers on its belly, damp from snowflakes,
released it back at its driveway, voicing quivering mews.

And pitbull puppies at the Flour Mill when I went to pick up hay yesterday,
tiny and fast asleep. I pet them gently for a long time.

At the Vineyard today, 3-year-old Naomi let me hold her,
play with her hair until she whispered she was sleepy and laid down beside me smiling.

I don't know what it is about baby things, the way my insides feel all soft around them
(and I'm not saying this is necessarily a "Feminine" thing),
but one day I hope to stand in that grove of matriarchs,
to join the shining women who have been the glue of my life.

on being apart

mary / alexa woodward
Mary was born in a southern snowstorm in the mountains of North Carolina
Her mother all alone in a little cabin in the woods...
It's a strange thing for a storm like that to blow through in the month of March
but Mary brought a sweet spring breeze...
We spoke of Kierkegård and Harper Lee and films I should see
and she'd read every book that had ever meant anything to me

Mary was a fire, and I am a fire, and you are a fire
I miss your flame

Mary was a preacher once
but she quit preaching so that she could love
and love is all she does these days
she asked what if God is real
what if God needs healing too
if the whole thing hinges on whether or not we could forgive her

The poets, they are a dying breed
in a world of steel and cold concrete
where so much is guns and money and things
When Mary is gone and the cities are ashes
and the empires are mythologies if anything at all

When I am dirt and stars
and you are dirt and stars
and the old soul children learn
to recognize each others pyres

Mary was a fire, and I am a fire, and you are a fire,
I miss your flame.