January 9, 2008
Dear Hearts and Gentle People,
I am told that my last essay (see previous entry) has caused Discussion among people who have read it. I guess that’s what I’m here for – to get people thinking and talking, as well as laughing.
I guess. I don’t know. I just write this stuff.
It has been a snowy, stormy time here in the Northwest, and on the west coast of the USA in general – rain, wind, snow, thunder and lightning. A real winter. The effect of La Niña, I’ve heard. I’m not sure what you in the Midwest and east are told to blame for your weather, which has not been a picnic, either.
2008 is an election year and the madness is on, as I’m sure you all know. I saw Mike Huckabee on the David Letterman show the other night. He was charming, and funny, and said all the right things we want to hear.
Back when I was dating men, I learned that charming, funny men who said what you wanted to hear were the ones to run away from as soon as possible, because on closer acquaintance they turned out to be anything but charming and funny, and anyone who tells you what you want to hear has a plan for you that you don’t want to experience. This was a hard lesson for me, but I think I eventually learned it.
I saw Richard Nixon on the Johnny Carson show back in 1968. He was also funny and charming and said what we wanted to hear. He came across as a great guy. I liked him. I was too young to have the perspective of his track record for the previous two decades, and that one appearance made me think, oh, he’s a good guy. I like him.
And he was elected President and brought the country peace, prosperity, contentment, and integrity.
I’m joking. He was elected President and he was a brilliant, tragically flawed person who thought he was above behaving legally, or with integrity. His hubris eventually brought him down. A tragedy for him, and for all of us, and we live with the fallout still.
So I don’t think I’ll buy Mike Huckabee’s folksy bite on David Letterman. He has the smile of a demented Kevin Spacey, and appears to wear contacts that make his eyes look big and dewy, and he says what you want to hear. Hmm. Does anyone want to know any more about him before handing over the country to him?
And I don’t mean to pick on Huckabee. I don’t trust any of ‘em at this point, of any party. I wonder who the vegetarians are running this year. I think, “Eat more nuts, don’t elect them” might be a good campaign slogan.
Yeah, I’m pretty cynical about politics at this point.
In spite of that, I wish you all the best year possible –
Blessings & love & hugs & grace & peace
Mary
Wednesday, January 9, 2008
Sunday, December 30, 2007
Spirituality Revisited + the Last of the Turkey
Well, dear hearts, I wish you a happy new year. I have a feeling I’m going to spend a lot of mine at the cardiologist’s office. I am now taking a calcium channel blocker for chest pains. It helps. It’s not a cure-all, but it helps.
The last essay spurred some responses, so this essay talks about those responses, embellished by my own rambling thoughts. Ramble, ramble.
We are on nearly the last version of the Christmas turkey: turkey chunks in gravy, with mashed potatoes. Rick and the boys liked it. I skipped the mashed potatoes, but did indulge in a bit of leftover dressing. I’m not sure what my grand daughter ate. She tends to ask for snacks, like a p, b, & j sandwich, or a little salad with ranch dressing.
It’s nice having the whole family here. I enjoy having the house full. Tomorrow Allysan will go back to her mom's house, JD will go home to Renton, and Drew will go to work, before heading in to the Central Tavern to see his guitar teacher's band. Rick will go to work, also, and I might go over to Lake Union to see the new year in with friend Becky on her boat, if I feel well enough to leave the house.
That’s about it for tonight. Blessings, peace & grace to all – Mary
Spirituality Revisited
Last issue our esteemed Editor Ed asked us to write about spirituality. I did so, to the best of my ability, and have received a lot of good feedback of the “amen, sister” variety from people. Thank you. Glad it resonated for you.
I have also received two complaints, both of them from people who say they do not believe in God, and both taking deep exception to my statement that, “Saying you don’t believe in God is one way of saying you think you are God.” Neither of them think they are God, they said, and they resented my saying so.
Well, I didn’t intend to get all medieval on anyone’s agnostic or atheist heinie, and I apologize to my atheist and agnostic readers who felt offended. At the same time I am pondering what nerves I have trod upon, and how much of the reaction is about what I said, and how much is about the people who reacted.
Most of the steam I was venting in that statement was my own frustration with people who (1) think they have all the answers; and (2) are militant about shoving their answers down other peoples’ throats. A Christian, or atheist, or agnostic, or liberal, or conservative, or what have you, can be a know-it-all who doesn’t listen. You meet angels and asses in every strata and condition of humanity. I’m getting old and I’m getting tired of know-it-alls taking up my time.
One plaintiff was the friend I quoted in the first paragraph of that essay, who said that God did not invent man, man invented God. He wrote with some feeling about the evils of religion as well as his rational, godless, meaningless universe, which is a comfortable place for him.
I’m pretty slow on the uptake sometimes, so it was a couple of days before I went back and re-read his email and realized he wasn’t talking about the evils of God, he was talking about the evils of religion.
Which brings me to my next lesson: religion is not the same thing as spirituality. Let me repeat that: religion is not the same thing as spirituality.
In fact, religion can be a real spirit-killer. I thought about this a lot about twenty years ago when I first began going to church as an adult. That was when I realized that it isn’t God that people hate or don’t believe in, so much as religion, or church, or the terrible things people do in the name of God. It is human beings who behave so badly. It’s no wonder that a lot of people want to spit in the corner when anyone starts talking about God. They have their reasons for feeling that way. You don’t have to be religious to be abusive or violent, but adding religion to an abusive or violent personality seems to be like pouring gasoline on a brush fire.
A more common effect of religion is that people buy into religious beliefs and opinions, and then feel threatened or afraid when they encounter a difference of opinion. The unfolding of truth is suppressed – after all, why look for the truth when you’ve already got it? Why doubt when you have all the answers? So the people who are most open to the continuing revelation of the truth in the world, the ones brave enough to face their doubts and question their God, are the ones most likely to be misunderstood, feared, reviled, and in the extreme, killed by other believers. It is extraordinary that people continue to seek their truth, considering what the consequences can be.
Religion isn’t all abuse and violence. I’ll repeat that, too: Religion is not all abuse and violence. Religions at best are communities of people coming together to learn, to grow, to support, and to serve one another, as well as people outside their community.
I still believe that where people go wrong, and by people I mean me, is when they think they are God. Whatever you believe, if you think you’ve got all the answers, and anyone who doesn’t agree with you is beneath you, well, dang, you have missed the mark.
Next time I’ll try to write something funny.
The last essay spurred some responses, so this essay talks about those responses, embellished by my own rambling thoughts. Ramble, ramble.
We are on nearly the last version of the Christmas turkey: turkey chunks in gravy, with mashed potatoes. Rick and the boys liked it. I skipped the mashed potatoes, but did indulge in a bit of leftover dressing. I’m not sure what my grand daughter ate. She tends to ask for snacks, like a p, b, & j sandwich, or a little salad with ranch dressing.
It’s nice having the whole family here. I enjoy having the house full. Tomorrow Allysan will go back to her mom's house, JD will go home to Renton, and Drew will go to work, before heading in to the Central Tavern to see his guitar teacher's band. Rick will go to work, also, and I might go over to Lake Union to see the new year in with friend Becky on her boat, if I feel well enough to leave the house.
That’s about it for tonight. Blessings, peace & grace to all – Mary
Spirituality Revisited
Last issue our esteemed Editor Ed asked us to write about spirituality. I did so, to the best of my ability, and have received a lot of good feedback of the “amen, sister” variety from people. Thank you. Glad it resonated for you.
I have also received two complaints, both of them from people who say they do not believe in God, and both taking deep exception to my statement that, “Saying you don’t believe in God is one way of saying you think you are God.” Neither of them think they are God, they said, and they resented my saying so.
Well, I didn’t intend to get all medieval on anyone’s agnostic or atheist heinie, and I apologize to my atheist and agnostic readers who felt offended. At the same time I am pondering what nerves I have trod upon, and how much of the reaction is about what I said, and how much is about the people who reacted.
Most of the steam I was venting in that statement was my own frustration with people who (1) think they have all the answers; and (2) are militant about shoving their answers down other peoples’ throats. A Christian, or atheist, or agnostic, or liberal, or conservative, or what have you, can be a know-it-all who doesn’t listen. You meet angels and asses in every strata and condition of humanity. I’m getting old and I’m getting tired of know-it-alls taking up my time.
One plaintiff was the friend I quoted in the first paragraph of that essay, who said that God did not invent man, man invented God. He wrote with some feeling about the evils of religion as well as his rational, godless, meaningless universe, which is a comfortable place for him.
I’m pretty slow on the uptake sometimes, so it was a couple of days before I went back and re-read his email and realized he wasn’t talking about the evils of God, he was talking about the evils of religion.
Which brings me to my next lesson: religion is not the same thing as spirituality. Let me repeat that: religion is not the same thing as spirituality.
In fact, religion can be a real spirit-killer. I thought about this a lot about twenty years ago when I first began going to church as an adult. That was when I realized that it isn’t God that people hate or don’t believe in, so much as religion, or church, or the terrible things people do in the name of God. It is human beings who behave so badly. It’s no wonder that a lot of people want to spit in the corner when anyone starts talking about God. They have their reasons for feeling that way. You don’t have to be religious to be abusive or violent, but adding religion to an abusive or violent personality seems to be like pouring gasoline on a brush fire.
A more common effect of religion is that people buy into religious beliefs and opinions, and then feel threatened or afraid when they encounter a difference of opinion. The unfolding of truth is suppressed – after all, why look for the truth when you’ve already got it? Why doubt when you have all the answers? So the people who are most open to the continuing revelation of the truth in the world, the ones brave enough to face their doubts and question their God, are the ones most likely to be misunderstood, feared, reviled, and in the extreme, killed by other believers. It is extraordinary that people continue to seek their truth, considering what the consequences can be.
Religion isn’t all abuse and violence. I’ll repeat that, too: Religion is not all abuse and violence. Religions at best are communities of people coming together to learn, to grow, to support, and to serve one another, as well as people outside their community.
I still believe that where people go wrong, and by people I mean me, is when they think they are God. Whatever you believe, if you think you’ve got all the answers, and anyone who doesn’t agree with you is beneath you, well, dang, you have missed the mark.
Next time I’ll try to write something funny.
Wednesday, December 26, 2007
Wag That Spirit + Boxing Day Thoughts
Go Not Gentle into that Good Night
'Tis the day after Christmas, and there is much rejoicing in my heart, mostly because it is still beating steadily, having made it through another holiday rush. A friend, Betsy Michaud, used the term "holiday martyr" in her Christmas greeting verse, and that certainly resonated with me. I hate December. I hate the rush. I hate the pressure of having to come up with those "just right" presents when I don't have a dollar in my wallet.
Oh, I love my family and my friends. I love the dinners and the company. I love my tree, dripping with pearl earrings and necklaces that I pick up at the thrift store, and also decked with the plastic angels I found in a junk shop over in Soap Lake. They are just like the ones my mom had when I was a kid, that I loved then and played with, and having them on the tree feels so sweet to me.
It's just the idea of the season, the pressure to buy, to spend, to be thoughtful and creative and so forth, when I already feel like my resources are tapped out.
Rick and I are always living right on the line, especially now as we support two houses instead of just one. The move that was supposed to get us out of debt has us hemmoraghing money that we don't really have. That's stress, my friends. We're hoping to get the old house rented after the new year and slow down the bleeding, but oh well.
It's a family tradition. My dad sold the ranch in 1967, put the proceeds into the stock market, and then, in 1968, the market crashed. I don't think he ever recovered from that, and he died about seven years later, of a heart attack. I remember him going into himself, staring at the floor. He and my mom got real estate licenses, and they both worked at it, but I don't think either of them ever made a sale. After a while he just came home and appeared to give up. I am the age he was when he was giving up -- and when I think of that, I think, dammit, I'm not giving up, I'm going to fight like a tiger to live, and be alive. To have "life in abundance," as we Christians like to say.
It is difficult to think of fighting like a tiger and being lively in these long months of convalescence from mononucleosis. I am facing another round with the cardiologist and his tribe because of my frequent pesky chest pains. Angina = bad, you know. Sucks to be mortal, I've been thinking lately.
But then I think of good old Dylan Thomas, who drank himself to death before his time, and what he wrote to his father, which went something like this:
"Go not gentle into that good night,
But rage, rage, rage against the dying of the light!"
Those lines, however I'm misquoting them, give me courage and fire up my spirit.
Sherman Alexie
I've been on a Sherman Alexie toot lately. Sherman Alexie is a writer and poet who grew up on the Spokane Indian reservation, and who writes beautiful, funny, moving, tragic stories about Indian boys and their complex love/hate relationships with their alcoholic fathers. There have been movies made of two of his screenplays: Smoke Signals, which is based on stories from his first book of short stories, The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven, and The Business of Fancy Dancing, a movie about a young poet, who has left the rez and found success as a writer and speaker, and returns to the rez for the funeral of a childhood friend. Fancydancing was filmed mostly here on Vashon. Smoke Signals was filmed partially in Soap Lake, Washington, a town I have spent some time in, and I can see how parts of Soap Lake could stand in for the rez.
Alexie has had a recent success with The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-time Indian, a youth market novel. I read it the other day, and it's good. Now I've started reading The Lone Ranger... and begin to recognize the characters and stories from Smoke Signals.
I'm not sure why all this tragedy and humor are resonating with me right now. I'm a white person reading about the reality of being Indian and it is like watching a car wreck: it's horrible and I can't look away. But the kid's a pretty good writer and I'm enjoying his stuff.
Ya Gotta Have Heart
The scheduler at the cardiologist's office just called. They want me in there tomorrow afternoon. I'm going to talk to a nurse practitioner. Yay. I generally like nurse practitioners. So the ball is rolling on getting serious treatment for my cardiovascular disease, and that makes me feel better somehow.
OK, now the latest essay, the one that ran in last week's Loop, and then I need to get to work writing something for next week's Loop. It's not as bad as it sounds. At least I have an idea to start. This one was written because Ed Swan, the Loop's editor, wanted to have a theme of spirituality in the last issue, and this is what I came up with. Could be better, could be worse. Hope you enjoy it.
Wag That Spirit
A dear friend once told me that God did not invent man; man invented God. That’s a popular concept among people of great intelligence, and my friend is a person of great intelligence. His great intelligence has gypped him out of the comfort, depth and yes, the reason, of faith.
The reason for faith is simple – when you have faith, you have a richer, fuller, and more joyful life. I know that not everyone wants that, but still, all you hopelessly rational people out there could get down off your tired old defensiveness and eat your share of the faith feast off the good china, if you would, without worrying about appearing to be weak, or whacko. No one is strong or sane all the time, especially people who go around trying to convince everyone that they are strong and sane.
Saying you don’t believe in God is one way of saying you believe you are God.
Saying you believe in God, but going on to say that you know who is going to heaven (you) or hell (not you), is another way of saying you believe you are God.
The basic mistake we all make is that we think we know more, or better than, God, even if we don’t believe in God. We’re so smart and we’re so full of good ideas and we know what’s right and what’s wrong. O what a marvelous creation is man! Or woman! We invented ourselves! Clever homo sapiens.
How do you explain God, or the divine, to people who don’t want to get it? I used to try to explain God to my kids by saying that the word “God” is like a little box that holds a teeny few atoms of what God is, and that box serves as a symbol to our human minds for all the things we do not know and cannot grasp. That unknowable, fathomless, ultimate reality or truth is God, or what we talk about as God so we don’t have to go around saying “the unknowable, fathomless, ultimate reality or truth that we are incapable of imagining, much less grasping.” It’s a short cut.
God speaks to our spirits. What’s a spirit, Mom? I tried to explain spirit to the kids by telling them that your spirit is a part of who you are. It’s a part of every human being, just like the blood in your veins, or the heart beating in your chest, or the need to breathe. It doesn’t matter what you think or how smart or stupid you are, you have a spirit, just like a dog has a tail. Just because you can’t see it doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist or you don’t wag it.
Me, I’m a Christian. I believe in God and the resurrected Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit, and that is my religion. This is what and where I was called to be, but I had a spirit before I ever knew a thing about religion.
We human beings are animal creatures, with animal natures. We are naturally subject to animal passions, and we act out of fear, weariness, hunger, loneliness, horniness, anger, jealousy, etc. In our hearts we’re always in junior high – bitter, thrilled, perishing of loneliness, spiteful, manic, worried, desperate for love, desperate to be popular, plotting, planning, strutting, limping, aching, triumphing.
So when someone tells us to calm down and let go of all that, it sounds nuts. It is totally antithetical to our animal natures to be calm and let go of our attempts to control everything, fix everything, judge everything, and mete out punishment and reward. We strive to be God. We’re pretty lousy at the job.
However, human beings also have a wisdom tradition: let go of your animal cravings, stop reacting to everything, love yourself as you are with compassion and kindness, and love others as they are with compassion and kindness. Be kind. Be generous. Be patient. Study. Meditate. Own up to your own sins, but don’t get obsessed with beating yourself up over them – that’s an inverted self indulgence. Shut up and listen. Try to do better. Try to do good. Try to serve instead of trying to control. Do the best you can, and that is enough.
If we go against every screaming bit of our animal nature and let go of trying to be God in our own lives, a miraculous thing happens. Life starts to make sense. If you live as if the truth is true, life starts making sense.
So, how does your spirit wag, your one and only, deepest, most tender, part of you, where truth and light and reality meet, and you stand tall in the dignity of who you are? Don’t ignore your spirit, or lie to yourself that it doesn’t exist. That would be silly.
Now get out there and wag.
'Tis the day after Christmas, and there is much rejoicing in my heart, mostly because it is still beating steadily, having made it through another holiday rush. A friend, Betsy Michaud, used the term "holiday martyr" in her Christmas greeting verse, and that certainly resonated with me. I hate December. I hate the rush. I hate the pressure of having to come up with those "just right" presents when I don't have a dollar in my wallet.
Oh, I love my family and my friends. I love the dinners and the company. I love my tree, dripping with pearl earrings and necklaces that I pick up at the thrift store, and also decked with the plastic angels I found in a junk shop over in Soap Lake. They are just like the ones my mom had when I was a kid, that I loved then and played with, and having them on the tree feels so sweet to me.
It's just the idea of the season, the pressure to buy, to spend, to be thoughtful and creative and so forth, when I already feel like my resources are tapped out.
Rick and I are always living right on the line, especially now as we support two houses instead of just one. The move that was supposed to get us out of debt has us hemmoraghing money that we don't really have. That's stress, my friends. We're hoping to get the old house rented after the new year and slow down the bleeding, but oh well.
It's a family tradition. My dad sold the ranch in 1967, put the proceeds into the stock market, and then, in 1968, the market crashed. I don't think he ever recovered from that, and he died about seven years later, of a heart attack. I remember him going into himself, staring at the floor. He and my mom got real estate licenses, and they both worked at it, but I don't think either of them ever made a sale. After a while he just came home and appeared to give up. I am the age he was when he was giving up -- and when I think of that, I think, dammit, I'm not giving up, I'm going to fight like a tiger to live, and be alive. To have "life in abundance," as we Christians like to say.
It is difficult to think of fighting like a tiger and being lively in these long months of convalescence from mononucleosis. I am facing another round with the cardiologist and his tribe because of my frequent pesky chest pains. Angina = bad, you know. Sucks to be mortal, I've been thinking lately.
But then I think of good old Dylan Thomas, who drank himself to death before his time, and what he wrote to his father, which went something like this:
"Go not gentle into that good night,
But rage, rage, rage against the dying of the light!"
Those lines, however I'm misquoting them, give me courage and fire up my spirit.
Sherman Alexie
I've been on a Sherman Alexie toot lately. Sherman Alexie is a writer and poet who grew up on the Spokane Indian reservation, and who writes beautiful, funny, moving, tragic stories about Indian boys and their complex love/hate relationships with their alcoholic fathers. There have been movies made of two of his screenplays: Smoke Signals, which is based on stories from his first book of short stories, The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven, and The Business of Fancy Dancing, a movie about a young poet, who has left the rez and found success as a writer and speaker, and returns to the rez for the funeral of a childhood friend. Fancydancing was filmed mostly here on Vashon. Smoke Signals was filmed partially in Soap Lake, Washington, a town I have spent some time in, and I can see how parts of Soap Lake could stand in for the rez.
Alexie has had a recent success with The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-time Indian, a youth market novel. I read it the other day, and it's good. Now I've started reading The Lone Ranger... and begin to recognize the characters and stories from Smoke Signals.
I'm not sure why all this tragedy and humor are resonating with me right now. I'm a white person reading about the reality of being Indian and it is like watching a car wreck: it's horrible and I can't look away. But the kid's a pretty good writer and I'm enjoying his stuff.
Ya Gotta Have Heart
The scheduler at the cardiologist's office just called. They want me in there tomorrow afternoon. I'm going to talk to a nurse practitioner. Yay. I generally like nurse practitioners. So the ball is rolling on getting serious treatment for my cardiovascular disease, and that makes me feel better somehow.
OK, now the latest essay, the one that ran in last week's Loop, and then I need to get to work writing something for next week's Loop. It's not as bad as it sounds. At least I have an idea to start. This one was written because Ed Swan, the Loop's editor, wanted to have a theme of spirituality in the last issue, and this is what I came up with. Could be better, could be worse. Hope you enjoy it.
Wag That Spirit
A dear friend once told me that God did not invent man; man invented God. That’s a popular concept among people of great intelligence, and my friend is a person of great intelligence. His great intelligence has gypped him out of the comfort, depth and yes, the reason, of faith.
The reason for faith is simple – when you have faith, you have a richer, fuller, and more joyful life. I know that not everyone wants that, but still, all you hopelessly rational people out there could get down off your tired old defensiveness and eat your share of the faith feast off the good china, if you would, without worrying about appearing to be weak, or whacko. No one is strong or sane all the time, especially people who go around trying to convince everyone that they are strong and sane.
Saying you don’t believe in God is one way of saying you believe you are God.
Saying you believe in God, but going on to say that you know who is going to heaven (you) or hell (not you), is another way of saying you believe you are God.
The basic mistake we all make is that we think we know more, or better than, God, even if we don’t believe in God. We’re so smart and we’re so full of good ideas and we know what’s right and what’s wrong. O what a marvelous creation is man! Or woman! We invented ourselves! Clever homo sapiens.
How do you explain God, or the divine, to people who don’t want to get it? I used to try to explain God to my kids by saying that the word “God” is like a little box that holds a teeny few atoms of what God is, and that box serves as a symbol to our human minds for all the things we do not know and cannot grasp. That unknowable, fathomless, ultimate reality or truth is God, or what we talk about as God so we don’t have to go around saying “the unknowable, fathomless, ultimate reality or truth that we are incapable of imagining, much less grasping.” It’s a short cut.
God speaks to our spirits. What’s a spirit, Mom? I tried to explain spirit to the kids by telling them that your spirit is a part of who you are. It’s a part of every human being, just like the blood in your veins, or the heart beating in your chest, or the need to breathe. It doesn’t matter what you think or how smart or stupid you are, you have a spirit, just like a dog has a tail. Just because you can’t see it doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist or you don’t wag it.
Me, I’m a Christian. I believe in God and the resurrected Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit, and that is my religion. This is what and where I was called to be, but I had a spirit before I ever knew a thing about religion.
We human beings are animal creatures, with animal natures. We are naturally subject to animal passions, and we act out of fear, weariness, hunger, loneliness, horniness, anger, jealousy, etc. In our hearts we’re always in junior high – bitter, thrilled, perishing of loneliness, spiteful, manic, worried, desperate for love, desperate to be popular, plotting, planning, strutting, limping, aching, triumphing.
So when someone tells us to calm down and let go of all that, it sounds nuts. It is totally antithetical to our animal natures to be calm and let go of our attempts to control everything, fix everything, judge everything, and mete out punishment and reward. We strive to be God. We’re pretty lousy at the job.
However, human beings also have a wisdom tradition: let go of your animal cravings, stop reacting to everything, love yourself as you are with compassion and kindness, and love others as they are with compassion and kindness. Be kind. Be generous. Be patient. Study. Meditate. Own up to your own sins, but don’t get obsessed with beating yourself up over them – that’s an inverted self indulgence. Shut up and listen. Try to do better. Try to do good. Try to serve instead of trying to control. Do the best you can, and that is enough.
If we go against every screaming bit of our animal nature and let go of trying to be God in our own lives, a miraculous thing happens. Life starts to make sense. If you live as if the truth is true, life starts making sense.
So, how does your spirit wag, your one and only, deepest, most tender, part of you, where truth and light and reality meet, and you stand tall in the dignity of who you are? Don’t ignore your spirit, or lie to yourself that it doesn’t exist. That would be silly.
Now get out there and wag.
Thursday, November 29, 2007
Living with Mononucleosis, part 1
It is a strange thing to wake up and realize that you’ve had enough sleep. I can’t remember when I consistently woke up feeling that way, but I’m pretty positive it was before I had kids. It has happened two days this week. Woo hoo.
I’m getting enough sleep because I’m getting over mononucleosis, and I’m resting. I’ve been telling people today that I am aggressively resting. After three months of living with mono, I have learned (finally) to respect the virus and am finally doing what I was told when it was diagnosed: resting. It helps. I feel a little better, and I am getting enough sleep – although under that refreshed feeling I have the deep, thorough exhaustion which I attribute to the mono.
I have had mono long enough to stop wondering when I’ll get back to being my old self, and to consider that being my old self is what got me into this fix. I am thinking maybe I should try to design a new life that’s more like the restful life I’m living now. Not that I’ll ever be satisfied with how I’m living life. I’m grateful to be in solitude and doing not much of anything but knitting and watching TV and reading right up until I have a major case of cabin fever and feel like running out of the house screaming. I never do that – one doesn’t, usually – but I do hop in the Honda and head off to dump some recycling, or check out the yarn supply up at Granny’s Attic, or see what’s in the post office boxes, or see if there’s anything for me in the library. Then there is the obligatory stop at the grocery store.
Then I come home and scrape together some dinner.
One of the things I’m not doing much these days is cooking, so meals are exercises in improvisation. My husband is enjoying more pizza than usual, which makes him happy, I think. Meals are interesting. Today for lunch I had a leftover artichoke and a piece of pumpkin pie. It seemed to be OK. I didn’t fall over or anything afterwards.
I watch birds out the kitchen window. I bought a “Birds of Seattle and Puget Sound” book a few weeks ago. I had noticed lots of birds in the yard – especially Steller’s jays in the Asian pear tree outside the kitchen window – and decided to put a little bird food out and see what happened. What happened was a couple of dozen little guys which I identified as dark-eyed, or Oregon, juncos. Cute little guys, and lots of them, all fighting with each other over the booty. One black-topped chickadee showed up, also, but didn’t make much progress against the many juncos.
The Steller’s jays showed up to say, “Hello hello hello, what’s all this, then?” and pretty soon the jays were in and the juncos were out. But once the jays left, the juncos came right back.
I guess I’m going to have to have a heart to heart talk with myself soon. Think realistically about what life has ahead. Right now I have to assume I may be semi-laid up for another three months; that’s not an unreasonable assumption, apparently.
And I think I’ll start blogging more often.
I’m getting enough sleep because I’m getting over mononucleosis, and I’m resting. I’ve been telling people today that I am aggressively resting. After three months of living with mono, I have learned (finally) to respect the virus and am finally doing what I was told when it was diagnosed: resting. It helps. I feel a little better, and I am getting enough sleep – although under that refreshed feeling I have the deep, thorough exhaustion which I attribute to the mono.
I have had mono long enough to stop wondering when I’ll get back to being my old self, and to consider that being my old self is what got me into this fix. I am thinking maybe I should try to design a new life that’s more like the restful life I’m living now. Not that I’ll ever be satisfied with how I’m living life. I’m grateful to be in solitude and doing not much of anything but knitting and watching TV and reading right up until I have a major case of cabin fever and feel like running out of the house screaming. I never do that – one doesn’t, usually – but I do hop in the Honda and head off to dump some recycling, or check out the yarn supply up at Granny’s Attic, or see what’s in the post office boxes, or see if there’s anything for me in the library. Then there is the obligatory stop at the grocery store.
Then I come home and scrape together some dinner.
One of the things I’m not doing much these days is cooking, so meals are exercises in improvisation. My husband is enjoying more pizza than usual, which makes him happy, I think. Meals are interesting. Today for lunch I had a leftover artichoke and a piece of pumpkin pie. It seemed to be OK. I didn’t fall over or anything afterwards.
I watch birds out the kitchen window. I bought a “Birds of Seattle and Puget Sound” book a few weeks ago. I had noticed lots of birds in the yard – especially Steller’s jays in the Asian pear tree outside the kitchen window – and decided to put a little bird food out and see what happened. What happened was a couple of dozen little guys which I identified as dark-eyed, or Oregon, juncos. Cute little guys, and lots of them, all fighting with each other over the booty. One black-topped chickadee showed up, also, but didn’t make much progress against the many juncos.
The Steller’s jays showed up to say, “Hello hello hello, what’s all this, then?” and pretty soon the jays were in and the juncos were out. But once the jays left, the juncos came right back.
I guess I’m going to have to have a heart to heart talk with myself soon. Think realistically about what life has ahead. Right now I have to assume I may be semi-laid up for another three months; that’s not an unreasonable assumption, apparently.
And I think I’ll start blogging more often.
Monday, October 29, 2007
Sweet Old Bob
Dear Hearts and Gentle People,
It is essay & letter time again. All our time and effort and energy have been devoted to moving out of one house and into another the last few weeks, and to that I attribute my lack of focus. I ended up writing about the book I’ve been reading. Oh well.
Still, I hope you enjoy this modest offering.
We are gradually settling in here at Casa Tuel Nuevo. Day by day I uncover more floor space. I throw things away, and give things away, and move things around, and then it’s time for lunch and after that I start over. The process of going through each box, and looking at each scrap of paper in each box, is as slow and tedious as I expected and it sounds, but I’m getting on with it. Some days I think, “I need a break,” and go crazy and drive up to town and pick up the mail at the P O boxes. Woo hoo. Oh, and Reva, your toilet brush has made it into the trunk of my car and I will bring it by one day this week, I promise.
Yesterday my childhood pen pal, Judy, came by for a visit. Our correspondence began when we were both about ten years old, which would be, oh gee, almost 50 years ago. Yesterday was the first time we met face to face. Wow. She and her husband Mark (who is in Seattle for a business conference) came out and we did a walking tour of greater downtown Vashon and then came down to the house. They are lovely, down-to-earth people, and it was great to meet in person after all these years. Hope you had a good flight home, Judy, and that you get a little sleep tonight!
Sad news: Cathie Fisher, who was the organist at our church for about seven years, passed on last Saturday morning. Cancer. She was younger than I am and this was one of those, “God, this just isn’t fair,” situations. There will be a memorial for Cathie at our church at some as yet undetermined date. You can email Church of the Holy Spirit for that information at: office@holyspiritvashon.org
OK, back to work. Wishing all of you a Happy Halloween and a Blessed All Saints’ Day ~
Blessings, love, peace & grace to you
Mary
Sweet Old Bob
I’ve been reading Robert Benchley’s book, Love Conquers All (©1922 by Henry Holt and Company, and re-issued in paperback by the Akadine Press in 1999). I would like to thank whoever gave this book to whichever thrift store in which I found it.
Reading a piece by Robert Benchley is, for me as a column-writer, like listening to Malvina Reynolds’ songs as a songwriter. The works of either one make me think, “What’s the point? They did it so much better than I could ever hope to do it.”
They did, too, but I keep writing all the same. The reasons I don’t give up trying to write columns and songs are simple: (1.) I’m alive. My idols, Benchley and Reynolds, are not; and (2.) They wrote for their time, I write for mine.
During a week like this, when inspiration has blithely passed me by (inspiration thinks it’s a real joker), I read Robert Benchley and think, oh, it would be easier to call in sick and re-print one of his pieces. People would enjoy it, and I wouldn’t be stuck here trying to beat a column out of a brain which has hung up the “closed” sign.
Unfortunately, the heirs and assigns of Mr. Benchley still have the copyrights to his works, and I can’t grab a column and paste it in here. Too bad. You’d enjoy Benchley.
He wrote things like “How to Watch a Bridge Game” back in the 1920s. It isn’t really about bridge, of course, or watching. It’s about how cluelessly annoying people with nothing to do can be to people who do have something to do. Bridge may have passed its heyday, but annoying people and being annoyed never seem to go out of style.
Benchley’s gentle albeit barbed whimsy may be out of style also. It’s hard to be gently barbed when you’re contemplating the recent sanctions imposed upon Iran, and the further erosion of everyone’s civil rights in America. Nothing gentle or whimsical about either of those topics.
But he tackled tough topics with not a small bit of acerbic irony. He reviewed Darkwater, a book by W. E. B. Du Bois. That is the specific piece I wish I could reprint here, but I cannot. It is razor-sharp. I will take a chance by quoting this much: “Justice in the abstract is our aim – any American will tell you that – so why haggle over details and insist on justice for the negro?”
For all politically correct people who have lost sight of the fact that substance really is more important than form, I point out that this was written in or before 1922, at which time “negro” was the correct and polite term for what we were calling “African-American” the last time I looked. Please forgive me if that is not current. I don’t get out much. All I know is that racism is the cancer that rots America at the core, however you want to say it, and I believe that is the salient point.
Racism, war, the loss of our civil rights – these are not things I can write about with gentle whimsy. I wish I could channel Sweet Old Bob.
“My friends call me SOB,” Benchley said. “It stands for ‘Sweet Old Bob.’ They see me coming and say, ‘There’s that SOB.’”
I wonder what he would say about the current state of the world, the country, and the human race. I know it would be great. I wish I could say it myself, but we moved house a couple of weeks ago, and I have been sick, and to these things I attribute my brain’s total lack of cooperation with the writing process. Better luck next issue, kids. Meanwhile, you might try laying your hands on something by Robert Benchley. Trivia answer to question you didn’t ask: yes, it was Robert Benchley’s son, Peter Benchley, who wrote Jaws, and there wasn’t a teaspoon of whimsy in that.
Further notes: Rob Lopresti, Bellingham-based author (Such a Killing Crime), songwriter, and librarian, writes:
”If it's any comfort, back in the thirties when James Thurber and EB White shared an office at the New Yorker, one would finish a piece, hand it to the other and ask "Did Benchley already do this?" So that problem has been around a long time.”
You can read all about Rob, his book, his CD, his blog & MORE at: http://www.roblopresti.com/
It is essay & letter time again. All our time and effort and energy have been devoted to moving out of one house and into another the last few weeks, and to that I attribute my lack of focus. I ended up writing about the book I’ve been reading. Oh well.
Still, I hope you enjoy this modest offering.
We are gradually settling in here at Casa Tuel Nuevo. Day by day I uncover more floor space. I throw things away, and give things away, and move things around, and then it’s time for lunch and after that I start over. The process of going through each box, and looking at each scrap of paper in each box, is as slow and tedious as I expected and it sounds, but I’m getting on with it. Some days I think, “I need a break,” and go crazy and drive up to town and pick up the mail at the P O boxes. Woo hoo. Oh, and Reva, your toilet brush has made it into the trunk of my car and I will bring it by one day this week, I promise.
Yesterday my childhood pen pal, Judy, came by for a visit. Our correspondence began when we were both about ten years old, which would be, oh gee, almost 50 years ago. Yesterday was the first time we met face to face. Wow. She and her husband Mark (who is in Seattle for a business conference) came out and we did a walking tour of greater downtown Vashon and then came down to the house. They are lovely, down-to-earth people, and it was great to meet in person after all these years. Hope you had a good flight home, Judy, and that you get a little sleep tonight!
Sad news: Cathie Fisher, who was the organist at our church for about seven years, passed on last Saturday morning. Cancer. She was younger than I am and this was one of those, “God, this just isn’t fair,” situations. There will be a memorial for Cathie at our church at some as yet undetermined date. You can email Church of the Holy Spirit for that information at: office@holyspiritvashon.org
OK, back to work. Wishing all of you a Happy Halloween and a Blessed All Saints’ Day ~
Blessings, love, peace & grace to you
Mary
Sweet Old Bob
I’ve been reading Robert Benchley’s book, Love Conquers All (©1922 by Henry Holt and Company, and re-issued in paperback by the Akadine Press in 1999). I would like to thank whoever gave this book to whichever thrift store in which I found it.
Reading a piece by Robert Benchley is, for me as a column-writer, like listening to Malvina Reynolds’ songs as a songwriter. The works of either one make me think, “What’s the point? They did it so much better than I could ever hope to do it.”
They did, too, but I keep writing all the same. The reasons I don’t give up trying to write columns and songs are simple: (1.) I’m alive. My idols, Benchley and Reynolds, are not; and (2.) They wrote for their time, I write for mine.
During a week like this, when inspiration has blithely passed me by (inspiration thinks it’s a real joker), I read Robert Benchley and think, oh, it would be easier to call in sick and re-print one of his pieces. People would enjoy it, and I wouldn’t be stuck here trying to beat a column out of a brain which has hung up the “closed” sign.
Unfortunately, the heirs and assigns of Mr. Benchley still have the copyrights to his works, and I can’t grab a column and paste it in here. Too bad. You’d enjoy Benchley.
He wrote things like “How to Watch a Bridge Game” back in the 1920s. It isn’t really about bridge, of course, or watching. It’s about how cluelessly annoying people with nothing to do can be to people who do have something to do. Bridge may have passed its heyday, but annoying people and being annoyed never seem to go out of style.
Benchley’s gentle albeit barbed whimsy may be out of style also. It’s hard to be gently barbed when you’re contemplating the recent sanctions imposed upon Iran, and the further erosion of everyone’s civil rights in America. Nothing gentle or whimsical about either of those topics.
But he tackled tough topics with not a small bit of acerbic irony. He reviewed Darkwater, a book by W. E. B. Du Bois. That is the specific piece I wish I could reprint here, but I cannot. It is razor-sharp. I will take a chance by quoting this much: “Justice in the abstract is our aim – any American will tell you that – so why haggle over details and insist on justice for the negro?”
For all politically correct people who have lost sight of the fact that substance really is more important than form, I point out that this was written in or before 1922, at which time “negro” was the correct and polite term for what we were calling “African-American” the last time I looked. Please forgive me if that is not current. I don’t get out much. All I know is that racism is the cancer that rots America at the core, however you want to say it, and I believe that is the salient point.
Racism, war, the loss of our civil rights – these are not things I can write about with gentle whimsy. I wish I could channel Sweet Old Bob.
“My friends call me SOB,” Benchley said. “It stands for ‘Sweet Old Bob.’ They see me coming and say, ‘There’s that SOB.’”
I wonder what he would say about the current state of the world, the country, and the human race. I know it would be great. I wish I could say it myself, but we moved house a couple of weeks ago, and I have been sick, and to these things I attribute my brain’s total lack of cooperation with the writing process. Better luck next issue, kids. Meanwhile, you might try laying your hands on something by Robert Benchley. Trivia answer to question you didn’t ask: yes, it was Robert Benchley’s son, Peter Benchley, who wrote Jaws, and there wasn’t a teaspoon of whimsy in that.
Further notes: Rob Lopresti, Bellingham-based author (Such a Killing Crime), songwriter, and librarian, writes:
”If it's any comfort, back in the thirties when James Thurber and EB White shared an office at the New Yorker, one would finish a piece, hand it to the other and ask "Did Benchley already do this?" So that problem has been around a long time.”
You can read all about Rob, his book, his CD, his blog & MORE at: http://www.roblopresti.com/
Wednesday, October 17, 2007
The Moving Experience
So. We moved.
Thirty years in one place, and we moved.
Our first-born son was born in that house, and we moved.
All the work we did on that house over 30 years, all the life lived in that house, all our children’s growing up years, the waterfall you can hear through the bedroom windows, the view of trees and water, the neighbors who are also friends, the squirrels and raccoons and occasional bear, all left behind, as we picked up everything we owned and moved it about seven or eight miles, depending on whether you take the Westside Highway or the Main Highway.
I came down with mononucleosis, and we still moved.
Why? Oh, it has to do with money and surviving in retirement. That sort of thing. Even knowing that it might all be in vain, we’re trying to lighten our load and reduce our financial demands.
In thirty years we accumulated several truckloads of stuff. Because the opportunity to move and the need to empty our house arose so fast, we did not sort and toss before the move. We tossed everything loose into boxes, including some things I wanted to leave there, and moved the boxes to the new house. Now we’re living in what feels like a warehouse full of furniture and books. I know it will get better, one box at a time, and we’ve made incredible progress in a few days, but most of our stuff is waiting to be re-discovered and put back to work, or culled out.
I have no idea where the remote controls for any of our electronic items are located. It’s been OK – as I write, Laurie, the Cable Woman, is hooking up our televisions (yes, plural) to the outside world, so tonight we won’t have the peace and quiet I’ve kind of enjoyed the last few nights. It’s OK. I don’t think my husband could bear missing another week of Bones and House.
The dog is beginning to calm down a bit, but still doesn’t like to let us out of his sight. He follows me from room to room with a worried expression on his face, and when I sit on a couch he curls up next to me and snuggles in. He is feeling secure enough now that he has stopped stress-panting, so the overall air quality is better, although my grand daughter let me know this morning that my own breath could use a little work.
I lived in Burton back in the early 70s, and it’s nice to be a Burtonista once again. I love the drive along the water south of Burton – it soothes the soul, and brings back memories of being a young hippie, swimming in the harbor with Ed and Boo and Nina and their Great Dane, Cossack. Cossack did not especially like swimming; Great Danes are short-haired dogs who like to be close to the woodstove, and the cold water of Puget Sound was not his idea of a good time. He did go in, though, and I remember holding on to his sides as he pulled me through the water. He didn’t enjoy that as much as I did. Ed always said that when the tide came in over a sun-warmed beach the water was warm, but in my perception “warm” Puget Sound water meant that it took a few more minutes for the hypothermia to set in.
I have to thank people, from the bottom of my heart, who lent their hearts, hands, and vehicles to the move: Kate, Tara, Mary Beth, Steve and Julia, Deborina, Roy, Becky, & Maggie, the loving and generous people of the Church of the Holy Spirit, and especially Sonya, who saved our sorry exhausted butts by showing up and cooking dinner for us for a few days on top of packing, unpacking, and directing the placing of furniture. Gracias to Lenin and Luis (“Let go and let Lenin”) who did all the heavy lifting, and huge thanks to Reva.
The old house is for sale; the best deal on a 3 bedroom, 2 bath, stick-built house on Vashon Island. For heaven’s sake, somebody buy it.
Oh, and I’ve started a blog, and realized I’d probably get more feedback if I actually told someone it existed.
Here’s the address: http://spiritualsmartaleck.blogspot.com/
You can email me at: mary.litchfieldtuel@gmail.com and I wish you would. I’m up here surrounded by boxes and would love to be distracted from unpacking.
Thirty years in one place, and we moved.
Our first-born son was born in that house, and we moved.
All the work we did on that house over 30 years, all the life lived in that house, all our children’s growing up years, the waterfall you can hear through the bedroom windows, the view of trees and water, the neighbors who are also friends, the squirrels and raccoons and occasional bear, all left behind, as we picked up everything we owned and moved it about seven or eight miles, depending on whether you take the Westside Highway or the Main Highway.
I came down with mononucleosis, and we still moved.
Why? Oh, it has to do with money and surviving in retirement. That sort of thing. Even knowing that it might all be in vain, we’re trying to lighten our load and reduce our financial demands.
In thirty years we accumulated several truckloads of stuff. Because the opportunity to move and the need to empty our house arose so fast, we did not sort and toss before the move. We tossed everything loose into boxes, including some things I wanted to leave there, and moved the boxes to the new house. Now we’re living in what feels like a warehouse full of furniture and books. I know it will get better, one box at a time, and we’ve made incredible progress in a few days, but most of our stuff is waiting to be re-discovered and put back to work, or culled out.
I have no idea where the remote controls for any of our electronic items are located. It’s been OK – as I write, Laurie, the Cable Woman, is hooking up our televisions (yes, plural) to the outside world, so tonight we won’t have the peace and quiet I’ve kind of enjoyed the last few nights. It’s OK. I don’t think my husband could bear missing another week of Bones and House.
The dog is beginning to calm down a bit, but still doesn’t like to let us out of his sight. He follows me from room to room with a worried expression on his face, and when I sit on a couch he curls up next to me and snuggles in. He is feeling secure enough now that he has stopped stress-panting, so the overall air quality is better, although my grand daughter let me know this morning that my own breath could use a little work.
I lived in Burton back in the early 70s, and it’s nice to be a Burtonista once again. I love the drive along the water south of Burton – it soothes the soul, and brings back memories of being a young hippie, swimming in the harbor with Ed and Boo and Nina and their Great Dane, Cossack. Cossack did not especially like swimming; Great Danes are short-haired dogs who like to be close to the woodstove, and the cold water of Puget Sound was not his idea of a good time. He did go in, though, and I remember holding on to his sides as he pulled me through the water. He didn’t enjoy that as much as I did. Ed always said that when the tide came in over a sun-warmed beach the water was warm, but in my perception “warm” Puget Sound water meant that it took a few more minutes for the hypothermia to set in.
I have to thank people, from the bottom of my heart, who lent their hearts, hands, and vehicles to the move: Kate, Tara, Mary Beth, Steve and Julia, Deborina, Roy, Becky, & Maggie, the loving and generous people of the Church of the Holy Spirit, and especially Sonya, who saved our sorry exhausted butts by showing up and cooking dinner for us for a few days on top of packing, unpacking, and directing the placing of furniture. Gracias to Lenin and Luis (“Let go and let Lenin”) who did all the heavy lifting, and huge thanks to Reva.
The old house is for sale; the best deal on a 3 bedroom, 2 bath, stick-built house on Vashon Island. For heaven’s sake, somebody buy it.
Oh, and I’ve started a blog, and realized I’d probably get more feedback if I actually told someone it existed.
Here’s the address: http://spiritualsmartaleck.blogspot.com/
You can email me at: mary.litchfieldtuel@gmail.com and I wish you would. I’m up here surrounded by boxes and would love to be distracted from unpacking.
Monday, October 1, 2007
This House
It is an auspicious moment in our personal history. After thirty years in the same place, we are moving, to a bright and airy manufactured home up on a hill south of Burton.
This has not been an easy decision, as you can imagine, and we’re doing it for several reasons. It’s time, apparently.
When we moved into this house thirty years ago, it was not really a house. It was a wreck. The roof leaked, but the floor had sagged and separated from the bottom of the wall on the south end, so the water had a way to drain, and that was good.
Rick says that the first time he went into the crawlspace to jack the floor up level and reattach it to the wall he put a hydraulic jack on the ground under a joist and began cranking it up. When it contacted the joist, it began to sink into the mud.
So then he got out from under the house and dug drainage channels to dry out the crawlspace. After he’d done that he was able to jack up the floor.
He got here in January, 1977, and I came down to visit him in his new home. The front door was a double door that stood open and when I walked in it was to a large room full of old lumber, old doors, windows, chairs, boxes, tools, cobwebs, and garbage.
“Oh, my, God,” I said. And I hadn’t even encountered the large population of rats that were in residence yet.
That was my introduction to the house I would move in to the following December. Later, when our older son JD was small, he called this room, “the room that looks like the attic.”
The living space was the other two-thirds of the house. The kitchen was located to the right of the room that looked like an attic, and took up the rest of that half of the house. In the other half was the bedroom, roughly the same size as the kitchen, and then the living room, roughly the same size as the entry room.
The building had been the mess hall of the Danish-Methodist Conference Beulah Park Chautauqua grounds. It had also hosted the Epworth League.
The original owners and builders had followed the contours of the land when they built. There was a large field in front of the church. On either side of the field there flowed a stream. These two streams fell into a deep ravine and joined into one creek at the bottom. The Chautauqua hall and church was a rough-hewn building, clearly built by volunteers, and it sat on the point of land between the two Beulah Falls.
The church building is long gone now, but the land and the streams remain.
In November of 1977 I did a three-week tour in British Columbia, playing concerts in the interior of B.C. It was cold there. I learned what it was like to use an outhouse at minus 12. Cold, that’s what it’s like. I was leaving a bad boyfriend, and it was an emotional time, and the cold suited my many moods. On the plus side, I found my first Lynn Johnson cartoon collection, David, We’re Pregnant, in a bookstore in Smithers, I think, and I’ve been enjoying her work for the last thirty years.
When I came back to Vashon, the day after Thanksgiving, I came home to the oh-my-god broken down, leaky, dirty, dark, windy wreck of the old mess hall in Beulah Park. I’m sitting here almost thirty years later in that same building, writing this.
I have said more than once that I was young when I moved in to this house, and it was living here that made me old. When I arrived, there was that room full of clutter to walk through to get to the real house, and once inside the walls were dark brown, and the fireplace, which must have been a huge focal point of the old mess hall, smelled of creosote. Rick had plugged a cheap metal woodstove in to the chimney, one of those oval-shaped thin metal ones that you had to replace every year or two because they burned through. That kept us warm, at least when we were close to it.
There was no bathroom in the old mess hall. The toilets, and the shower, were in the other building, the old dormitory building, up the hill from the mess hall. I became adept at peeing into coffee cans, and walking up the hill for serious business.
The shower terrified me. You had to walk through a doorway from one of the two bathrooms into utter darkness, and feel your way to the stall which was located a few feet in. There was a light once you got to the shower, and the hot water heater was right next to it, and I was always afraid of getting electrocuted because I could see electrical wiring dangling around the shower stall. In response to my whining, Rick put a bathtub and hand sink into the house in 1978, and it’s a good thing, too, because I don’t think I would have taken a shower for years if he hadn’t.
In the winter when you walked through the house, you could feel the heat being sucked right out the bottom of your feet. The winds blew right under the house, unhindered, and there was no insulation under the floor.
We lived like that for almost ten years, with no toilet in the house, and the wind blowing through. I put up plastic window seals on the windows in the corner of the bedroom, which slowed down the breezes, and I painted the living room white, which brightened it up considerably. Rick built closets for our clothes, and we had cantaloupe crates for our kitchen cabinets. We had an old wood-burning range we could cook on when the power went out, which it did more often in those days. There was a sign written in felt marker next to a round brown light switch on the kitchen wall that said, “DON’T USE THIS SWITCH.” Next to that Rick had written, “Ignore this sign.”
The house had two electrical circuits. They ran from a square four-socket plug with two circuit-breakers on the kitchen wall. The two sockets on the left were one circuit; the two sockets on the right and the entire building were the other circuit. You couldn’t have the stove and the burners and the lights on all at once; a circuit would cut out and leave you in the dark. We limped along with that system for ten years or so. Early in 1986, the winter after our second son was born and we spent most of the winter nights walking the floor with him and his ear infections, the breaker clicked one night, and when I went to snap it back on, sparks jumped from the box.
That’s it, I thought.
There was block grant money available from King County, and we applied, and got it, and in the fall of 1987 we moved out and the entire place was gutted right down to the outer shell. Our contractor was Lotus, and her helper was Kate, two right-on womyn who did beautiful work. Other contractors did the solid foundation on the east side of the house, and Lotus sank piers down to bedrock on the ravine side. The crawlspace was sheathed, and insulated. Wiring contractors came in and put new wiring in the whole house. Insulation went into the walls and up in the attic over the ceiling. Two guys from Seattle came out and sheetrocked the whole space in one day. Two island guys did the wall taping and mudding. My friend Velvet’s son Lance sealed the walls, and we painted. I think I did some of the painting, but Rick and others did more. We got it done.
We moved back in at the end of January, 1988. The old mess hall was no more. We had a new floor plan, two bedrooms, a kitchen and dining room where the attic room used to be, and, centerpiece to the whole shebang, a FULL BATHROOM with toilet, sink, and shower/tub right in the center of the house. I could turn on two lights without blowing a circuit. It was warm for the first time. Hallelujah. We were home.
That was almost twenty years ago, and it has been a wonderful home for us. It’s warm, and dry, and everything works, mostly. OK, the dishwasher’s a little wonky. In 1993 I received a family inheritance, and we made the attic into a room with a second bath.
JD was born here. We have lived our adult lives here, raising the kids, welcoming the teeming masses of cats, dogs, rats, mice, guinea pigs, and rabbits which came to us. I sit here and remember thirty years of tears, laughter, song, anguish, joy – this house has been the container for our lives, and it’s not easy to leave.
But we are leaving. This week, now, tomorrow, we’re packing up and getting out. Or at least someone is packing up and getting us out – I have mononucleosis, pneumonia, bronchitis, and sinusitis, sort of a bacterial-viral grand slam, at the moment, and am not up to doing all the actual moving. The last time I moved, in 1977, I packed all my worldly goods into the trunk and back seat of my ’58 Chevy, and drove down here. Kind of a bigger proposition this time around.
Come back to my blog again. Maybe I can write up the Rat Wars that Rick conducted when he first moved in here. Stay tuned.
Blessings.
This has not been an easy decision, as you can imagine, and we’re doing it for several reasons. It’s time, apparently.
When we moved into this house thirty years ago, it was not really a house. It was a wreck. The roof leaked, but the floor had sagged and separated from the bottom of the wall on the south end, so the water had a way to drain, and that was good.
Rick says that the first time he went into the crawlspace to jack the floor up level and reattach it to the wall he put a hydraulic jack on the ground under a joist and began cranking it up. When it contacted the joist, it began to sink into the mud.
So then he got out from under the house and dug drainage channels to dry out the crawlspace. After he’d done that he was able to jack up the floor.
He got here in January, 1977, and I came down to visit him in his new home. The front door was a double door that stood open and when I walked in it was to a large room full of old lumber, old doors, windows, chairs, boxes, tools, cobwebs, and garbage.
“Oh, my, God,” I said. And I hadn’t even encountered the large population of rats that were in residence yet.
That was my introduction to the house I would move in to the following December. Later, when our older son JD was small, he called this room, “the room that looks like the attic.”
The living space was the other two-thirds of the house. The kitchen was located to the right of the room that looked like an attic, and took up the rest of that half of the house. In the other half was the bedroom, roughly the same size as the kitchen, and then the living room, roughly the same size as the entry room.
The building had been the mess hall of the Danish-Methodist Conference Beulah Park Chautauqua grounds. It had also hosted the Epworth League.
The original owners and builders had followed the contours of the land when they built. There was a large field in front of the church. On either side of the field there flowed a stream. These two streams fell into a deep ravine and joined into one creek at the bottom. The Chautauqua hall and church was a rough-hewn building, clearly built by volunteers, and it sat on the point of land between the two Beulah Falls.
The church building is long gone now, but the land and the streams remain.
In November of 1977 I did a three-week tour in British Columbia, playing concerts in the interior of B.C. It was cold there. I learned what it was like to use an outhouse at minus 12. Cold, that’s what it’s like. I was leaving a bad boyfriend, and it was an emotional time, and the cold suited my many moods. On the plus side, I found my first Lynn Johnson cartoon collection, David, We’re Pregnant, in a bookstore in Smithers, I think, and I’ve been enjoying her work for the last thirty years.
When I came back to Vashon, the day after Thanksgiving, I came home to the oh-my-god broken down, leaky, dirty, dark, windy wreck of the old mess hall in Beulah Park. I’m sitting here almost thirty years later in that same building, writing this.
I have said more than once that I was young when I moved in to this house, and it was living here that made me old. When I arrived, there was that room full of clutter to walk through to get to the real house, and once inside the walls were dark brown, and the fireplace, which must have been a huge focal point of the old mess hall, smelled of creosote. Rick had plugged a cheap metal woodstove in to the chimney, one of those oval-shaped thin metal ones that you had to replace every year or two because they burned through. That kept us warm, at least when we were close to it.
There was no bathroom in the old mess hall. The toilets, and the shower, were in the other building, the old dormitory building, up the hill from the mess hall. I became adept at peeing into coffee cans, and walking up the hill for serious business.
The shower terrified me. You had to walk through a doorway from one of the two bathrooms into utter darkness, and feel your way to the stall which was located a few feet in. There was a light once you got to the shower, and the hot water heater was right next to it, and I was always afraid of getting electrocuted because I could see electrical wiring dangling around the shower stall. In response to my whining, Rick put a bathtub and hand sink into the house in 1978, and it’s a good thing, too, because I don’t think I would have taken a shower for years if he hadn’t.
In the winter when you walked through the house, you could feel the heat being sucked right out the bottom of your feet. The winds blew right under the house, unhindered, and there was no insulation under the floor.
We lived like that for almost ten years, with no toilet in the house, and the wind blowing through. I put up plastic window seals on the windows in the corner of the bedroom, which slowed down the breezes, and I painted the living room white, which brightened it up considerably. Rick built closets for our clothes, and we had cantaloupe crates for our kitchen cabinets. We had an old wood-burning range we could cook on when the power went out, which it did more often in those days. There was a sign written in felt marker next to a round brown light switch on the kitchen wall that said, “DON’T USE THIS SWITCH.” Next to that Rick had written, “Ignore this sign.”
The house had two electrical circuits. They ran from a square four-socket plug with two circuit-breakers on the kitchen wall. The two sockets on the left were one circuit; the two sockets on the right and the entire building were the other circuit. You couldn’t have the stove and the burners and the lights on all at once; a circuit would cut out and leave you in the dark. We limped along with that system for ten years or so. Early in 1986, the winter after our second son was born and we spent most of the winter nights walking the floor with him and his ear infections, the breaker clicked one night, and when I went to snap it back on, sparks jumped from the box.
That’s it, I thought.
There was block grant money available from King County, and we applied, and got it, and in the fall of 1987 we moved out and the entire place was gutted right down to the outer shell. Our contractor was Lotus, and her helper was Kate, two right-on womyn who did beautiful work. Other contractors did the solid foundation on the east side of the house, and Lotus sank piers down to bedrock on the ravine side. The crawlspace was sheathed, and insulated. Wiring contractors came in and put new wiring in the whole house. Insulation went into the walls and up in the attic over the ceiling. Two guys from Seattle came out and sheetrocked the whole space in one day. Two island guys did the wall taping and mudding. My friend Velvet’s son Lance sealed the walls, and we painted. I think I did some of the painting, but Rick and others did more. We got it done.
We moved back in at the end of January, 1988. The old mess hall was no more. We had a new floor plan, two bedrooms, a kitchen and dining room where the attic room used to be, and, centerpiece to the whole shebang, a FULL BATHROOM with toilet, sink, and shower/tub right in the center of the house. I could turn on two lights without blowing a circuit. It was warm for the first time. Hallelujah. We were home.
That was almost twenty years ago, and it has been a wonderful home for us. It’s warm, and dry, and everything works, mostly. OK, the dishwasher’s a little wonky. In 1993 I received a family inheritance, and we made the attic into a room with a second bath.
JD was born here. We have lived our adult lives here, raising the kids, welcoming the teeming masses of cats, dogs, rats, mice, guinea pigs, and rabbits which came to us. I sit here and remember thirty years of tears, laughter, song, anguish, joy – this house has been the container for our lives, and it’s not easy to leave.
But we are leaving. This week, now, tomorrow, we’re packing up and getting out. Or at least someone is packing up and getting us out – I have mononucleosis, pneumonia, bronchitis, and sinusitis, sort of a bacterial-viral grand slam, at the moment, and am not up to doing all the actual moving. The last time I moved, in 1977, I packed all my worldly goods into the trunk and back seat of my ’58 Chevy, and drove down here. Kind of a bigger proposition this time around.
Come back to my blog again. Maybe I can write up the Rat Wars that Rick conducted when he first moved in here. Stay tuned.
Blessings.
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