Snow Day Crows

Bloomington was supposed to get a snowstorm last night. We didn't, but I took a snow day anyway and made Christmas cards in honor of our crowly visitors.

All of the posted are paper cut outs.

 

Gifts for the Sated

I don't need anything. Really. My little house is so crammed full of stuff that not a week goes by we don't happily eject an item or two.  I'm not a minimalist, but I'd like to be.

I'm also not religious. Neither is the new husband, but we were both raised in households that celebrate Christmas. There's no question that we'll continue to do so with our parents and siblings, but what's to be done in our own little house.  Should we exchange gifts?  It's our first married Christmas and we're talking traditions.

We want to live a more sustainable life, a simpler life. A life that where there is a place for everything and everything in its place: A life with less stuff.  A life that is less materialistic.

And, yet...

I like giving gifts and don't want to live in a world where gifts aren't given. I, personally, fight incurable narcissism and gift-giving is a way to break out of myself, to reflect on who others are, their likes and dislikes, their passions, their needs.

But, what if, after some reflection, you realize your loved ones are just as sated as you? What to get for the person who has everything?  In the last few years, I've been trying to shift to consumables and re-suables in gift-giving, to functional art and whimsical utility.

Gifts that are fleeting
Some of my fondest memories are of  traveling and trying new foods with my  long-time friend Julie. I have ideas on what to get her and her husband for Christmans, but when I really think about it, what I want most and what I hope she wants most is focused time and shared experience -- just like when we were teens. This year we plan to go out for a swank meal (sans the children) instead of exchanging presents.

My Dad, who isn't online and won't see this (Mom might -- don't tell!), thinks going to the movies is a luxury. He's getting gift certificates for his local movie theatre. Maybe I can talk him into going Christmas night with us.

The perfect gift is shared experience.  It doesn't always work out. Sometimes you might not want it to. I'm not here to judge. Other options: Coffee, fine wine or even local beer. Everyone has something that they love that is to be experienced or consumed -- leaving no trace.



Courtesy of Bag It Conscious



Gifts that are sustainable

Last year I discovered reusable cloth sandwich bags and life has never been the same. These colorful bags serve as reusable gift wrapping for small gifts or are gifts in themselves when filled with a cookies or nuts. I now have a pattern and will try my hand at to making them one day, but in the meantime, I get my fix on Etsy at Waste Not Saks and Bag It Conscious. Goodbye Ziploc bags.



Thanks to the economic downturn, the vintage, the repurposed and the upcycled are acceptable. One relation is getting a vintage pin from Sublime. Someone  (not saying who) is getting an upcycled handpainted mug from Bloomington artist Sally Harless.   And, while I don't have anyone in mind for these upcycled zombie figurines brought to my attention by my friend Rebecca, I really, really wish that I did.



Courtesy of McSweeney's.



Gifts that keep on giving



 Museum Memberships and season tickets could make someone's year. I heard about a cookie-of-the-month subscription today. The twist? The giver's doing the baking.  If time is short, there are plenty of quirky subscription services to please the quirkiest of friends. I gave a Wholphin subscription to friends getting married this year.  If you have friends even hipper than mine, consider a McSweeney's T-shirt subscription.

Gifts of useful beauty



I think it was my friend Danielle who once said she'd like everything she owned to be a work of art. Hear, hear.  Hand-crafted wooden salad tongs, screen printed tea towels, whimsical kitchen implements. I have a cloth napkin covered in screen-printed ants that makes me smile every time I spill my soup.



Courtesy of Sally Harless



You do have to be careful. I bought my rather serious brother a can-opener shaped like a shark one year. My idea was to brighten up his life with whimsy. I think I just convinced him I'm daft.

My brother, by the way, is very good at gift-giving. He bought me my first New Yorker subscription.  Another year it was a bottle of Absente, the closest thing Americans could get to real absinthe until 2007. It tasted terrible, but I enjoyed imagining life as a degenerate artiste.

Gifts that give
I'm tempted by the Heifer International charity gift catalog of  but  Ms. Manners frowns on donations on behalf of someone.  "It's very nice to give people presents and it's very nice to donate to charities, but let's separate these two things," she says. If you do get a charity gift, Ms Manners has advice on how to word the thank you note.

Gifts that are just too much
Give but give responsibly. Reasonably. IU researchers are finding that the generous of heart are thought to be anything but.

Don't give too much. Don't give too little. Don't give something that will take up space and depress someone's spirits, and cost  money to keep.  Ugh. Gift-giving is fraught. Gift shopping can be a joy, but it can also be disheartening when you realize you don't know someone well enough to know where to start. Maybe it's time to do something about that.

On the other side, the delight in receiving is not in the having, but the unwrapping and being the focus of attention for a moment. Sometimes there are well-intentioned misses. In these cases, gift-receiving allows for the practice of grace under disappointment.

The lessons of grace and delight are the reason that I want very much to maintain Christmas-time gift-giving if/when a kid enters the picture. Matt worries about religious traditions to which neither of us subscribe. It's a discussion for another day. This year Matt and I decided not to exchange, but we've still given a gift to ourselves: a stay at a bed and breakfast on our visit to the family.

Unfounded Fears: Rabies, Crows and Belly Buttons

"Crow Invasion Has Neighbors Squawking"
- Bloomington Herald Times headline, Sunday, December 5, 2010

When I was a kid I was afraid of two things. Okay, I was afraid of lots of things, but two in particular thanks to my mother's evocative warnings.  One fear was that my belly button would pop out. This, my mom told me, would happen if I picked up my none-too-little little brother. I really shouldn't have tried to lift him. Arguably, I also shouldn't have been imagining torrents of blood stream out of a hole in my stomach. Thanks, Mom.

Speaking of stomachs, the other fear was rabies. After we watched Old Yeller, my mom, warning against strange dogs, told me that rabies required a month of painful shots. Every day. In the stomach.  We saw lots of westerns in my household; I think I conflated the imagined pain of this with gut shot.

For the record, even if this dramatic treatment was ever true, it's not true now. Four treatments. In your arm over the course of 14 days. That's it. And rabies, though fatal if not treated, is so rare in the United States that only 55 cases of human rabies have been diagnosed since 1990.

Rabid dogs are scary, but even the best efforts of Stephen King won't make you look twice at the family pet. Some creatures just have a P.R. problem.  Bats can carry rabies, but so can raccoons and nobody runs in fear when they first see one (though perhaps they should). 

Bats from one perspective are tiny teddy bears with wings who make margaritas possible and control the insect population, but the vampire bat's dance with Bela Lugosi has ruined their reputation.   The little brown bat (actual name, not me being precious) that flies through Indiana trees, eats our mosquitoes and provides choice fertilizer isn't after our blood or set on giving us seizures. Enter a P.R person's dream and a ecologist's nightmare: White Nose Syndrome. Nothing creates a more enduring legacy than an attractive corpse. And, bats have never looked cuter.  Pictures of sick little bats huddled together evokes "Got Milk" ads and what's more wholesome than milk?

I'm thinking about bats because Bloomington has been visited by the other B-grade horror fixture: the crow.  A murder of crows. If that appelation doesn't hearken to darker things, I don't know what does.

While some Bloomingtonians are none-to-pleased by the invasion of crows, I like them. One recent foggy morning, I scootered downtown to fetch bagels.  As I drove through the back roads of the Maple Heights neighborhood, mist hid the horizon and leafless black trees reached across the road. Crows as big as cats flapped in front of me and disappeared into the fog.  My life had taken a turn to the delightfully spooky.

I wasn't always delighted by crows. On an early trip to Disney World, a stalled Haunted House ride trapped me next to a squawking mechanical crow. Or, raven. Or crow. The difference was immaterial. It was unhinging -- like being trapped in a real-life cross between The Tell-Tale Heart and The Raven.  By the end, I was ready to plead guilty to anything.

Fortunately, I was a child at the happiest place on earth, not a terrorist suspect. My punishment was the It's a Small World ride, which my parents inexplicably loved.

Bats, compared to crows, have it good. While bats are now tragically cute, they also have the Organization for Bat Conservation and attractive TV spokescientist Rob Mies.  Crows have no attractive spokescientist. They have goth teens.  Bat houses can be bought at Lowe's, while cities and farmers invest in sonic bird deterrents. No one respects a scavenger.


Crows do, however, have a sympathetic new documentary. My view of crows changed on seeing this film. Not only do crows clean the streets of road kill, these omnivorous creatures have a complicated social structure, mate for life and have the capacity for tool use -- an ability long ago thought to be held by humans alone.

They can also hold grudges, another human-like trait.  Take that, dolphin, sweet jester of the deep.  In fact, not only can crows take a dislike to someone, they can teach that hate to their children, which is both neat and disturbingly close to home.  

Bloomington has seen the crow's visit as a nuisance. In a recent newspaper article, the great number of crows was compared to a scene from The Birds. I've never read an article so full of excrement. Literally. "Wear a hat," an IU biologist said.

Perhaps I would feel differently if my back deck was besmirched. Instead I look at the crow painting my friend Brett gave Matt and me as a wedding gift and choose to think of the murder, not as menace, but as a mysterious break from the routine. I'm prompted to learn more. I know vaguely of the crow's trickster place in some myth, and as I research I'm surprised to find one very different story: The Rainbow Crow, a hero's journey that colors my view of crows yet again and makes me wonder more about why some creatures are admired and others aren't.

Baby, Decide My Future

When I was in my early twenties, my mother asked me when I planned to have children.  "When I'm 28."  A glib answer, but even so, it seemed so reasonable, so normal, so in the distant future. Twenty eight seemed like a very grown-up age.  Twenty eight came and went and here I am staring down the barrel of 37. 

And, I'm still not ready.

Some days I still don't feel like a grown up. I check my mileage at all the milestones. I do all of these very grown-up things, and yet the immaturity lingers.  I ever-so-briefly dated a man who told me on our second date about his checklist. He asked about mine. Besides the more prosaic home-ownership, which I attained about the time I should have been following the biological imperative, my checklist of things has long included writing a novel and flying in a hot air balloon.  After a master's degree, he planned the house, the wife, the kids, ... the political career.  Our date was part of a larger plan. I ran for the exit. Or, maybe he did.

Part of the problem on my side was that I would make a terrible politician's wife. The other part was the plan. His plan and mine.  I wanted to be married but to someone who wanted to be with me -- not with a guy who needed a wife.   I've struggled with two philosophies of life:  for life to happen naturally, which is not so much fatalism as a belief in serendipity, and the desire to own my decisions. I've bounced back and forth between these and it might explain why some friends would probably describe me as both flighty and methodical, depending on the occasion.

A friend of mine was appalled a few years ago when I told her I might not have children. She was taken aback that I'd even consider straying from the course that most people take.  That was decision-owning mode. On the flip side, there is the go-with-the-flow, accidents-happen mode. Sometimes the two philosophies converge in odd ways: tidal-wave riding with a life vest.  For years, I've stashed away PTO for a maternity leave I've never planned to take. Accidents happen.

I just recently went from being flighty and methodical for one person to doing so for two. Our checklist now includes building a garage -- albeit a parent-aggravating sustainable one ("It's going to be made of what?") and maybe, just maybe, the possibility of expanding to three.  I went from very ambivalent, but prepared just in case, to game to the possibility.  One baby is doable. One baby is portable. One could fit in our little house.  One baby is a good excuse for a middle-aged woman to make sock puppets.

I also could train physically for one. And, I will have to train. I have a shifty vertebra and need to keep a strong core just to walk. And, so again, the methodical me kicks in.  I'm stronger than I've ever been, but need to be stronger. Let the training begin.

My husband's training seems to be sharing information on the lifetime costs of child-rearing, studies that point to decreased happiness for people with children and articles about how having children changes your life for good and bad.  He's interested in the subject and nothing deters him.  He's an optimist. I ignore these suggestions for reading material and enjoy books such as Baby Fix My Car. I don't even have a car, but like the idea that a baby can be so useful. I'm an optimist, too.

We recently had reason to think serendipity had struck despite our most methodical of practices and plans for the not-so-near future. We walked to CVS where I bought a New York Times and a plastic stick that would decide the rest of our lives.  Planning ahead, I sprang for the economy twofer with an expiration date of December 2012.

It took less than a minute to get the answer.

I'm not going to lie. I was relieved. Mostly. But, I had the PTO just in case.

Bullet Point Storytelling

Angie's List,  Letterman's Top Ten, the TSA's Prohibited Items. A search in Google brings up over two billion results for the word list. The word death only brings five and a half million.

Only love is stronger than a list ....  8,930,000,000 results.

Like love for a bad man, lists can lead you astray and leave you feeling empty. An overuse of Powerpoint in the military and education has led some to say the Microsoft program, which focuses on charts and bulleted lists, is evil and makes us stupid.  I'd argue about causality on the second point, but nevermind. Is Powerpoint evil?  Please. Amoral, maybe. Are bullet points the end of civilization? No, that's ridiculous. That honor belongs to chocolate fountains.

All week long I create a list called "Saturday." It is list of all those things I can't or won't do during the week. The banal and the aspirational wait together -- not in order of importance, but rather in random order of thought.

A selection from last Saturday:

• Put spare monitor on Freecycle
• Put CDs on Craiglist
• Take books to Opp House
• Schedule Clothing Exchange
• Sync phones
• Buy toothpaste and toothbrushes
• Make a mobile
• Make persimmon pumpkin pie
• Need motorcycle gloves and sweater tights

Lists are intriguing because they provide an insight into a person's life. If you're wondering, I accomplished just more than half. Well, Matt made the pie. And, drove me around. Sweater tights? Check. 

Found magazine is dedicated to these storytelling moments with the public sharing of lost and found private love letters, photos, and, yes, lists. Each piece provides a glimpse into someone's life and reminds how much we have in common,  how much we don't,  and how much we hope we don't.  (We also find evidence at Found that people have long delighted in funny pictures of cats.)   Like photos and notes, lists are relics of our time on earth and when found by a stranger and shared, they become poetry.

Sometimes lists are more explicitly poetry than not. The list or catalog poem is a common grade-school exercise. Anyone who can write can write a list, so the thinking probably goes that it's a good start for would-be budding poets. I'm not aware of too many celebrated poets that use this form. You've probably come across Maya Angelou's Woman Work, an effective piece about the weariness of a working mother. Each line adds another layer of labor until the reader feels bone-tired by the end.  This isn't the example given to eager gradeschoolers. They get Walt Whitman's I Hear America Singing. I love Whitman, but blech. I can see why there's a dearth of good poets these days with this as the model. Want an antidote? Read Song of Myself, section 1.

A few years ago I was reading some book or other on positive psychology and came an exercise to combat depression: keeping a daily gratitude journal. The gratitude journal, you might well guess, entails making a list of things for which you are grateful. As an ingrate, even in the best of times, I tweaked the idea one long lonely winter when I dangerously close to feeling self-pity. I'd just recovered from temporary blindness and assorted personal angst.  Each night, until I didn't need it any more, I simply made a list of "good" things that happened during the day. Good is subjective, but these were moments of beauty or banality that gave me satisfaction, if not joy.

I've returned intermittently to add to the journal: A day here, a day there with only one extended return. What drove me to despair again in the spring of 2008 is what drives everyone to despair: the absurd behavior of the other (opposite sex, same sex, etc.).  What pleased me enough to note were what pleases everyone: good food, accomplishment, time with friends, and feeling especially well-turned-out.

To be more specific, this entry from Tuesday, 2007 April 24:

• Postcard from [a friend]
• Caught an advising mistake
• Spanish subtitles on Coffee and Cigarettes
• Good show of hosting neighborhood meeting, created nice spread
• Ate a couple of pieces of chocolate -- very nice
• Made crabcakes with leftover crab from Sunday's dim sum efforts
• Lunch made for tomorrow and clothes picked out
• The sound of rain in trees

What strikes me is that there are very few momentous, earth-shatteringly happy moments. Okay, there might not be any. I don't want to read the whole thing to make sure, because it goes on a bit and is best reviewed only momentarily. I took pleasure in small things: a pleasant walk to work, a good piece of chocolate, new rain boots (these were really kick-ass rain boots). I also noted the weather far more than is healthy for an American younger than 40. In particular, I really enjoyed kicking through puddles in my new rain boots. And, coming home to tea.

I recently found the to-do list of my wedding day. Not quite ready to part with it, I put it in the middle of a pile of papers to unearth another cleaning day: a gift to my future self. Though I have pictures and videos a plenty, the list is the closest thing I have to a written record of that blur of an occasion.  And, this might be the concern of Powerpoint critics. Instead of deep thinking and reflection, our history has been reduced to bullet points, a gloss over the complicated, sound bites instead of intelligent discourse.  But, it's a false dichotomy. You can have the occasional zinger as well as real conversation.  There is room for both the list and the fuller forms. A list can be literature.

Barry Lopez Is a Humble Man

Sometimes I just want to go home. Actually, quite often I just want to go home.

Then I remember that part of my job is to go to lectures and things, though days can be long with meetings, spreadsheets and lengthy explanations. Sometimes I skip because time is finite and hot tea waits. But, there'll be time enough to rest when I'm dead. Maybe I should be supportive of colleagues;  maybe I'll learn something. Maybe I'll miss something VERY IMPORTANT if I don't go.  Then I drag myself forth.

Last night before going home to my cozy house and beautiful husband, I dragged myself a very short way to hear writer Barry Lopez speak.  Noting the distinct lack of crowd, I panicked a little. Was that faculty member coming to ask me why there weren't more people?  Perhaps he was, but he was interrupted mid-greeting by someone more compelling. I got a grip. The true organizers of the event conferred across the room. A bit player, I had even less role to play this time and relaxed in my seat. People shuffled in even as the speaker approached the podium.

But, I couldn't see him. My seat, chosen to aid a quick exit, held a perfect view of a column blocking the podium.  I did a quick cost-benefit analysis of moving during the introduction and embraced inertia. Our man Barry Lopez is a great man with many awards. I looked at the time and thought about lamb and eggplant casserole.

Finally, Lopez spoke.  "I am only a writer. I am a single voice," Lopez said.  A single, sonorous voice.  Lopez spoke with great humility about writing.  And, I perked.

To Lopez, writing is about creating patterns and building beauty -- even when writing about darkness, the writing can be beautiful.  Lopez said a writer is a kind of servant, though the service can be any number of things: to memory, to words, to society.  Writing should make deep connections. The writer's job is to create something beautiful that touches people and writing that does not is otherwise is forgetable. The average magazine article, for example, is so forgetable that it can be recycled months later and readers don't even know the difference.  

A man once told Lopez that there is no difference between fiction and non-fiction. There is only the authentic and the inauthentic. An authentic story is about us. The inauthentic is about you. And, while Lopez disagrees with the point about fiction and non-fiction, the point resonates with him because it speaks to Lopez's view on writing as service. I think it is a beautiful idea and I hope that my writing touches others -- I thrill when it does -- but let me admit something: my writing is very much about me.

I am only a playwright, a very minor one and without a current work in progress. I am taking a break from playwriting, conserving my strength during a year of many changes-- a new relationship, a marriage, a new job.  All is well,  but something is wrong. I think if I don't write I am not myself.  I understand the world through writing. It is my filter, my oasis, my means of making meaning.  It is the means by which I learn to be a person -- to discover myself and struggle to do more than go through the motions.

It is writing that drives me to go beyond the motions, to do things I wouldn't otherwise do because all experience teaches.  Anything, everything can help me grow as a writer. And maybe as a person.  Every experience is an adventure not to be missed.

 "The world is too much with us, late and soon." This line sticks in my head and I wonder if I'm too materialistic. I don't mean materialism in the sense of consumption, though that might be true, but in the sense that life can be devoid of visions and ideas. This world is too much with me and it lays waste my powers. As a child I created complicated worlds. Where are these worlds now?

So we've established that writing is a service to myself. But, in writing this journal -- blog is such an ugly word -- I also hope to point out the adventure in the everyday, the sublime in the mundane, to discover mystery and romance with a capital R while turning over rocks, peering in the ditches, chasing after my hat.

Barry Lopez and I don't have a lot in common.  He's kind of old. I'm still kind of young. He doesn't have a blog. I do! He is in touch with nature and wants to walk paths in places hardly touched by civilization.  I think my new Iphone is super cool and might visit my sister-in-law in Indianapolis soonish.

While no household name, Lopez is a well-respected, award-winning writer who has touched hundreds of thousands of people.  Bill Moyers, the nearest thing the U.S. has to a bodhisattva, thought Lopez was the perfect guest for his last show. I was not in the running because the list of candidates was too narrow. 

Barry Lopez is a humble man who does great things. I'm ... not.

We have one thing in common.  We each seek to learn about the world.  I'm not very good at humility, but my arms are open to discovery even as my feet kick it away.

Is my writing beautiful? Probably not, but my hat in the wind is. The rocks are. And, what's underneath them might be sublime.