(Intermission) Blogging: U R doin it wrong...*

I have conflicting goals in my head for this here blog... One is to post more often. The other is to post beautifully rendered, fully conceived essays that hold together from beginning to end and say something Profound and Meaningful. Oy.

I think I'd like to work on goal one and ignore goal two for a while. So here's something short and sweet for today.

On Facebook this morning I announced that it's International Karen Does Nothing Day today, and that my plan was to be lazy.

(a sign I ran across recently)

For the first time in weeks, today my calendar lists NO appointments. And I decided on Monday that the to-do list was making me feel overwhelmed and a bit glum, so I'm trying to hold it at arm's length for a while--you know, only getting stuff done that really could not be put off, keeping those appointments that I had already made weeks ago, and generally doing as little as possible otherwise, taking things a bit more slowly.

I had some advice recently that really hit me as True and Useful: instead of doing stuff from a place of "should," start paying attention to what brings me joy and do that instead. I'm trying that, and I must say, I feel a lot less glum and overwhelmed.

(Baby sock in progress, for a colleague who's preggers. The yarn is keeping me entertained--such interesting colors!)

The to-do list is still there, but it can wait. Just for a little while, I'm trying this new way of moving through my day, and taking note of those little things that make me happy... like knitting pretty things, eating blueberries, reading in my pjs. And writing on the blog! Well, whadaya know.

I haven't decided yet whether it's funny or pitiful that I had to schedule a day to be lazy. I'll think about that tomorrow. (Or maybe some other day...)

Ciao,
Karen

* The title means a) that I'm taking an intermission from describing my four corners trip, and b) I'm making a reference to LOLcats, who r doin it wrong sometimes.

Adventures in the corners (part one)

I have just returned from a trip to the Four Corners region of the U.S.; I was on a research/scouting trip to a) figure out what's out there for our students to see next year (those who will be taking the Four Corners Course Connection), and b) learn about the region. I can say I did both. A lot!

I've been hesitating to post this entry because I'm not sure yet quite how to sum up this adventure. All I have is my words and my photographs from my little camera to try to convey the awe these places inspired. Okay, here goes.

(Rather than showing you place by place where we went in this post, I'll share some themes. But here's a list of the featured stops: Albuquerque, Aztec Ruins National Monument, Mesa Verde, Anasazi Heritage Center, Hovenweep National Monument, Natural Bridges National Monument and Cedar Mesa, Edge of the Cedars, Monument Valley, Navajo National Monument, Canyon de Chelly National Monument, Acoma Pueblo, and back on around to Albuquerque again. It was a whirlwind adventure!)

Theme one: out the window.
I think I took several hundred photos of the view out the window of the car. (My colleague Barbara and I drove from Ohio to Missouri the first day, then Missouri to Albuquerque, then all around the Four Corners; by the time I flew home that added up to about 2700 miles. Barbara did 99 percent of the driving. She is intrepid!)

I know that "out the window of the car" is not an ideal situation for photography, but I kind of feel like when you're out there, you just can't help it. Or at least I can't--I grew up on the east coast, and the topography of the Four Corners looks like another planet to me.

Here are a few of my photos out the window:

(On our way through Missouri, we passed a famous landmark... it was shiny!)

(Driving from New Mexico to Colorado, we saw the first of many interesting land formations...)

(Near Durango we passed by the southern tip of the Rockies. Wow!)

(At Mesa Verde you can see evidence of a forest fire some years ago. It's kind of eerie to come around a corner and be in a patch of dead trees.)

(This is near Mesa Verde. The landscape out there is just breath-taking. I love how you can see for miles and miles...)

(This is in southern Utah, where the rocks are red and the canyons are many.)

(Utah again, following Jim's truck to Bluff, where we ate dinner... More about Jim and his truck soon...)

Theme two: made by hand
On this trip I learned a lot about the Ancestral Puebloans and their culture. Twenty years ago, when my brother and I came through this region on our way out to California (that's a whole 'nother adventure), the story was that the people who lived at Mesa Verde and other cliff dwellings throughout the region were the Anasazi (a Navajo word that means "foreign ancient ones"), and that they had disappeared for mysterious reasons and left no descendants.

Today the park rangers tell a different story: that the cliff dwellers left because of drought and resource decimation (for example, wood--it takes a lot of wood to build kilns and fire pottery!), and that they spread out and mingled with the people who would later become the various Pueblo cultures throughout the region. I think this is a better story--one that emphasizes survival and continuance rather than a kind of romantic vanishing--so I'll be passing it along to my students next year.

We saw everywhere we went the evidence of their living: their houses...

(This is a series of doorways at Aztec Ruins (which has nothing to do with the Aztecs, by the way).)

(At Mesa Verde. You see T-shaped doorways at a lot of dwellings...)

(At Aztec Ruins. That is a 900-year-old ceiling, my friends, still intact.)

(Spruce Tree House at Mesa Verde. What an amazing place!)

(This is at Hovenweep, one of my favorite dwelling sites...)

... and the things they made for everyday use that are beautiful as well as functional.

(On display at Mesa Verde.)

(I enjoyed seeing the ladles and pots and mugs...)

(I can't even tell you how much I love this seed jar...)

(This portion of the Edge of the Cedars museum includes an original ladder--foreground--and a display of pottery that has been seized from looters/collectors; sadly, it's a huge collection, and not even a fraction of what people have taken from dwelling sites.)

(This is a bag of woven cotton on display at Aztec Ruins. They had cotton! They were spinners and weavers!!!)

Check out some photos of a sandal here, and some mugs here. They made lots of mugs!

And, like us, they liked to adorn themselves with beautiful things.


I was inspired by these beautiful things. Even though the people worked very hard to survive, spending most of their time doing the work of procuring and preparing and storing food, they took time to make the things they used beautiful and meaningful.

Theme three: Karen finds yarn (fiber) everywhere she goes
When I became a knitter a few years ago, my family started joking that if you plop me down in any city/town in the U.S., I will find the yarn shop there. Now that I'm a spinner (and learning how to weave as well), this has meant that on my recent adventures I find evidence of spinning and weaving--humans using plant and animal fibers--everywhere I go.

In their spinning and rope-making and weaving, the Ancestral Puebloans made use of yucca, cattail, cotton, and other (more unusual) fibers...

(Hey, I have a nearly endless supply of hair... I wonder if I could learn to spin it??)

They even made blankets of yucca and turkey feathers (can you imagine how soft and warm that would be?). (I thought I had a photo of one, but I can't find it in my file--?)

... and they wove using MACAW feathers!

(The museum tag for this piece reads: "Object: Macaw Feather Sash. Date: A.D. 1150. Location: Canyonlands National Park. Materials: Abert's squirrel, macaw feathers on yucca cord, leather ties." The maker must have been a very valued and important person in the village!)

Of course, when we were in the Navajo nation, there was LOTS of yarn in evidence, as the Navajo are famous weavers, spinners, and dyers. Here are a few photos along the way:

(Yes, that would be a WALL OF YARN at the gift shop at Canyon de Chelly. I am proud to say I controlled myself--but only because I realized the brand of yarn is one I can get online.)

In Albuquerque I was really excited to see this in a restaurant where we had breakfast:

(Sorry the labels are not readable!)

It's a kind of chart of how the colors in the weaving are derived from natural sources--mostly plant parts--with a tiny loom in the middle.

(Here's another one, this time at the museum at the Anasazi Heritage Center. You can also buy one of these at the gift shop at Monument Valley.)

There was a full-size loom displayed at Mesa Verde, just around the corner from beautiful rugs for sale:

(Also at Mesa Verde: loom and...

... yarn and spindle!)

And and the Anasazi Heritage Center, there was a hands-on loom with directions about how to weave the Navajo way:

(This was meant for children, I think, but OF COURSE I gave it a try...)

The upright loom is very different "machinery" from the rigid heddle loom I'm learning to weave on, but the concepts are the same. I loved the feel of the well-worn beater--it seemed like lots of hands had polished it. The Center had lots of interactive displays and ways to learn, so I would recommend it highly if you're out that way...

This is a long post, dear readers; I'd like to continue describing my adventures in another post--one where I tell you about how I did stuff I was scared of doing, and about the rock art I saw in various places, about seeing iconic western landscapes, about the privilege of visiting sacred places, about being in another nation... For now, here's one more photo out the window:

(These are the mountains on the edges of Albuquerque, over the wing of the airplane home!)

May you enjoy some beauty in your adventures today!

Cheers,
Karen

Milestone

I'm in the middle of end-of-semester craziness, but couldn't let this day pass without noting it.

Today's milestone has been sneaking up on me--more quickly this year (at least it felt that way), and especially quickly in the last couple of weeks.

This is me and my son reflected in the bathroom mirror; we're both standing in our stocking feet:


The photography is not so great (well, I was on my way out the door to a faculty meeting and in a hurry), but the thing to notice is that he is as tall as me. At 12 years old! I didn't expect that to happen for a few years yet!

I'm glad he's healthy and happy and growing well. And, of course, this is also a bittersweet moment.

Hope you feel tall today!
Karen

Another thought about re-entry

When I posted "Re-entry randomness" just after our trip to South Dakota, I was still trying to figure out how to sift through what I experienced, and definitely trying to figure out how to do something I'm not very good at: integration.

I don't know if you've ever had this problem. Here's the way I feel it: after I've had an amazing experience away from my everyday life (especially away from the deadlines and schedules of my job), and it has tapped into parts of my brain or self or soul that I don't normally interact with on a daily basis, I want to hang onto whatever it is I've learned as I go back to my everyday life--my family relationships, my friends, my job, my students. I want that wonderful or sad or moving thing to have some effect on my life, to press on it in some way, to shape it a bit differently. I don't want to leave behind completely the self I was as I made it through that experience; I want to bring that new self forward. I want to ask that new self to take part in the everyday choices I make, and the interactions I have with people, and the way I teach, and even the way I treat myself.

But it's hard.

Routine is such a trap, maybe a temptation. Sometimes it seems like it would be so easy to fall back into those routines and just do as I was doing before. Because it was working well enough, I was getting by just fine.


Except the gift of a "disturbing" or moving experience--one that makes you feel like you understand something in a new way--is that it makes you realize what seemed good enough just isn't, it doesn't fit anymore.



And for sure, what we experienced, just like each year I've gone to Rosebud, was moving--it moved us away from where we were, and to a new place of understanding or even confusion. It changed us somehow. And in order to honor that experience, we can't go back as if it didn't happen. That would be tragic, really, a waste of something precious.

We worked to help the Lakota people who are saving their culture and language and lifeways; we learned about oppression and despair and courage; we laughed and shouted and sang and cried. We opened up to what was in front of us, and to each other.

Surely that matters. Surely we can bring that forward into our lives back in Ohio.



My daily task, now, is to figure out how. And to support the other people who took that trip with me as they do the same. And, as it happens, to support Patrick, who has recently had a similarly moving experience and done some hard work and is also trying to integrate it into his life. Wow.

May you experience something that moves you!

Wishing you courage,
Karen

The late-winter, early-spring struggle

It snowed today. Real snow, with accumulation (though luckily it did not stick to the streets and sidewalks).

(This is the trunk of my car as I was brushing it off before my drive home.)

(I wish I had taken the time to really focus in on some of those snowflakes--as annoying as they were to see, they were also beautiful!)

Everyone's been talking today about how they're not happy about the snow.

I've been watching carefully for signs of spring, signs that I'll finally be able to put away my winter coat and turtlenecks soon. When we went walking at Deer Haven a couple weeks ago, I was disappointed to find that there were no buds on the trees (that I could see, anyway). There were just the papery-thin leaves on one kind of tree, making a rustling sound in the breeze.

(The leaves looked a bit like butterfly chrysalises--chrysali?--hanging in the trees.)

(Um, Dexter? That's kind of a giant walking stick...)

(woohoo!)

Lots of browns, greys, and gold all around us, and though I find winter colors beautiful in their own way, I'm kind of looking forward to everything around us greening up. Within a couple days of our walk, it snowed overnight, complete with ice to scrape off the windows. Drat.

But then a few days after that, the temperatures snuck up ever so slightly, and I spied a couple things that made me hopeful: crocuses in a neighbor's yard!

(Just as I took these photos, the neighbor whose yard this is arrived home; we traded enthusiastic appreciations: finally, color in the garden!)

And the next day: our very own crocuses opened to the light!

(Here are our first happy yellow flowers, poking through the winter-drab flower beds...)

And that day I saw a sure sign that warm weather must be coming: the turkey vultures are back!

(Their wobbly wheeling in the sky made me smile out loud!)

Our daffodil and tulip leaves have been growing, and finally on Monday, the first few (on the east side of the house) started to open up.


On my walks home the past two weeks, the weather was pretty chilly, but I was seeing sure signs of spring here and there. Monday afternoon I found some tree buds:

Beautiful and hopeful! And brand new! So today's snow was a bit disappointing.

I had to remind myself of a couple things. First, there's the saying I've heard repeated in Ohio each spring: after the forsythia bloom, we have three snows. Today's snow is the second, so there's just one more left. I can hang on for one more, right?

And, because I've been reading Reya's posts on spring, I am reminded that birth is a struggle, like a chick having to peck its way out of a shell, as she points out, or a shoot breaking through a seed cover. (Reya didn't mention this, but childbirth was sure difficult, too! And it's really, really hard on the person being born!) So even as I'm cheerfully noticing signs of new growth, I can also give respect to the effort that process takes, and wait patiently for it to happen as it's supposed to.

Hang in there! Spring is coming, despite the snow.

Cheers,
Karen