The handbasket into which the world is rapidly going to hell seems to grow more dangerous by the minute. At such a rotten instant, it’s only natural for souls like me to seek other baskets going to better places. I’m relieved to have found mine over the past several weeks. In truth, I found not one but 12 baskets; they made up a delectable flat of Bell’s Farm strawberries. The contents of those containers have taken me from the earthly abyss to gustatory heaven.
For the non-cognoscenti, Bell’s Farm sits on 65 acres of beautiful farmland on West Beach Road just north of Libbey Road. It’s been owned and operated by the family of Jesse and Margaret Bell for 70 years, since they moved to Whidbey Island from Wapato in Eastern Washington. Jesse and Margaret’s grandchildren and great-grandchildren still own and work the farm today.
Ever since they started growing strawberries on Whidbey in 1946, the Bells have hired local kids as soon as school lets out in June to harvest the crop. At first, the entire harvest was taken to a Skagit cannery. But then, beginning in the 1970s, they began selling fresh berries in local stores. In the 1980s, as farmers’ markets in Coupeville and elsewhere became increasingly popular, Bell’s berries were a smash hit among freshness seekers. (Everybody in Coupeville today knows; if you want some Bell’s Farm berries at the Saturday Farmers’ Market during the short harvest in June, you’d better get there early or you’ll miss out.)
Since the 1970s, the Bells have also set aside a portion of their fields for those who want to pick their own berries. Bell’s “u-pick” has become a Whidbey cultural phenomenon that brings out entire families—including grandparents and kids as young as two or three—for a morning or afternoon of berry-picking and familial bonding. It turns “farm-to-table” into a tangible experience.
What makes Bell’s strawberries so special? Ah, that is truly beyond my words. Only taste will tell you. I am old enough to remember when strawberries we bought in supermarkets were brilliant red and the size of a thumbnail. The shortcakes of my youth are still a sweet memory for me. But you had to get the berries home and eat or preserve them right away; they spoiled quickly.
That’s why our corporate food industry worked hard over the past 20 years to develop a fresh strawberry with long shelf life, capable of being grown in hothouses from Alberta to Chile, then shipped worldwide and able to sit for several days or more on the rack in the produce section.
What we get in our supermarkets today are pale imitations, often pallid in reddish color and gigantic in size—as big as four thumbs. Three or four modern Goliath strawberries are usually enough for an individual shortcake, but they’re hardly worth the effort to chop them up. They have a long shelf life but they have no taste. Chewing one is almost like chewing the recycled paper or plastic basket it came it.
The Bell’s Farm strawberry season is so very short, usually no more than three weeks. But while it lasted this year, I was able to indulge my senses and my imagination in a pleasure without guilt. Shortcake every night. Berries on my cereal every morning. Fresh (not canned) jam on an English muffin with a latte in the afternoon. Strawberries mixed with fresh spinach with dinner. A berry or two popped in the mouth before bedtime. And, of course, a fresh strawberry in a glass of champagne with friends.
I did freeze four of the 12 baskets from the flat I bought. They are waiting for me whenever I need them. With that for reassurance, who cares where the hand basket is taking the rest of the world.
Once upon a time, Harry Anderson made an honest living as a reporter, editor and columnist at the Los Angeles Times. He now lives in central Whidbey, where he spends his time gardening and ruminating on things that interest him.
WLM stories and blogs are copyrighted and all rights are reserved. Linking is permitted. To request permission to use or reprint content from this site, email info@whidbeylifemagazine.org.
I’ve been away for what feels like months—because I have been away for part of every month since March. And there is nothing like being away, to make you appreciate home, when you finally get there. Home is where I am now—in the land of green and plentiful trees and water-bright sky, and liquid sunshine and sundogs in the clouds or unexpected rainbows and eagles flying across them. All of this is home. All of this I miss when I am away and breathe in with the first gust of wind blowing up off of Holmes Harbor when I return.
Home skies overhead at last! (photo by Judith Walcutt)
Also with home come three manuscripts in various stages of incompletion. This does not include the short stories that are hiding in nooks and crannies all over the office, which is a mess again. Mortifying. I have every good excuse in the book—in several books––and, having been away for the many times I have been, my main excuse is what we call in dated techno-talk—bandwidth, and the lack thereof when you are doing a job as fully as you can with every fiber, optical or not, in your being. That’s what I’ve been doing in Kansas City. I’ve been giving my work there—the young people I work with there—my full attention, to see if some kind of difference can be made in their lives.
This is the second year I have been traveling to Kansas City, on the Missouri side of town, to teach and mentor students in Sound Arts and Audio Production at Paseo Academy, which is a public, inner-city, arts magnate school. It is hard to work there. We all pass through a metal detector to get in the building, which has some excellent facilities in various stages of falling down. The kids that are there are glad to be there, given the alternatives.
Some kids are there because they have run out of options elsewhere and have found refuge in a school which puts arts before athletics—they have a dance curriculum rather than a football team. Other students, with any sort of learning challenge, cognitive differences such as autism, hearing and/or visual impairment, gender and/or sexual identity issues are placed there for their own protection.
Drive-by shootings, gang warfare, rape, suicide attempts, small children shot through walls (accidentally, when it was their Dad who someone was aiming at)—these are the realities of that school district, the surrounding neighborhood, and the young people in it.
Making “radio” plays for the first time can be messy work. (photo by Jim Keel)
I know this because these are the subjects they chose to write about, when asked to write a personal narrative, a story about themselves, cued by a single sound. I learned a lot about their lives, the places of their hearts, their fears and the damage they have sustained already in their young lives.
The benefit of being an artist in their midst is that I can surprise them—I can shake them up out of their mind-sets because I am not a teacher in the traditional sense and I am not a parent in the expected sense. I am something “other” and, in that otherness, I can offer an alternate route, like sidebar remarks which are different in perspective than they are used to. This “otherness” can bring something life-changing to the table, in an educational environment, in a way that nothing else does.
Everyone is just GA-GA over STEM activities—More math! More science! Yay! But what about the rest of the mind and the person? Where does emotional maturity come from if not from the cultivation and maturation of the heart—and where does that come from, if not from the expression of the emotions and how is that best done? Through the ARTS, dummy! Through the ARTS!
You want people to stop shooting each other? Give them another way to express their feelings! Give them room to show their hearts and what’s in them! Give them room to transform the lead of their lives to the gold of expressions in music, words, movement, visual imagery, whatever it is. Works of the imagination are the fuel to get out from under the crush and churn of the hard parts of growing up, in any circumstance, and they provide the juice to get out beyond the breakers, in the toughest of places, the roughest of waters.
Learning to use a microphone gives voice to unheard voices. (photo by Jim Keel)
But when and where, exactly, does a young mind have the chance and the encouragement to “think different,” as Apple’s ad people so coined the phrase—ungrammatically indicating the kind of mind that thinks outside the box, that doesn’t care about grammar, the kind of mind that breaks set with everyone else—and comes up with something new, something different, dare I say—original?
Where does that kind of mind come from if not from the creatively inviting and imaginatively engaging process of developing modes of expression—all kinds, in any and all media. Bring on the finger paints! They are actually GOOD for you and for developing that emotional I.Q. that feels things for and with other people—that compassion thing that more and more children and adults seem to be losing altogether. Too many first-shooter games! Not enough clay!
And then there’s plain old hand-eye coordination and a whole host of tactile learning that grows synapses whose long tendrils reach out to higher level thinking processes. How do we solve the problems we are facing today which are firmly based on ignorance? Let me put it this way—if you want to overcome ignorance in all its forms, the best thing to do is mandatory art therapy, for everyone. It’s a good thing and there is no downside to it, except maybe it can get a little messy in the process.
What’s happening instead is that technology, neat and clean, is put first—young people are inundated with screens at earlier and earlier ages. The programs which are interactive story games and allegedly educational are made by other people, with other people’s ideas and thoughts played—pre-played––out for the consuming minds. They don’t have to do the thinking themselves, they can just drive around someone else’s imagination and have it done to them, for them, and without their having to lift a finger or a brain cell. And this happens to those young minds before they have had a chance to find and tell their own stories, paint their own images, before they’ve had a chance to have an idea, a thought, a concept, an Aha moment all of their own.
First thoughts and early child language acquisition kind of go hand and hand. If one is restricted, so is the other. Children who are spoken to and verbally interacted with as infants have been proven to acquire language earlier and at a higher word count than those children who are not. If we know that engaging young imaginations with some kind of real world content, with something as simple as reading a book out loud helps young children to become better thinkers, better people, better leaders all around, then why don’t we have art programs mandatory in every school?
Oh! Because art costs money?
You know, most of the really creative people I know and have known would never allow money to stop them from being creative, in whatever medium they could get their hands on. I know a child who sculpted with masking tape. Given a roll of masking tape––he created a myriad of forms and figures—I think it was five mice in a rock band complete with a drum kit. It was amazing! I have never forgotten it! What does a roll of masking tape cost? Not too much, especially in comparison to 3-D printers and CAD labs.
No, I don’t think art is cut from budgets because it costs so much; I think it is cut because it encourages free-thinking. It encourages the imagination; it encourages invention and people who “think different,” and therein lies the problem. How do you test it? How do you tell if “it works”? How do you quantify it? We can’t fund it, if we can’t quantify it, right?
So bring on the STEM content. There are yes/no answers aplenty—there are answers period. Right ones and wrong ones. It’s simple. It’s easy. No messy clean up. Except the nuclear ones.
And I am pretty sure STEM costs a lot more to run in the schools than art. These days, to have what it takes to compete in core science curriculum, you have to have CAD labs, bio labs, physics labs and computer labs. Lots of computer labs. In fact, more computers than any thing else, in any other department. That’s a lot of equipment. That’s a lot of money.
Whereas art, for the most part, can be done minimally with paper, pencil, a little scotch tape, maybe some cheap water colors. And words, just plain old words on paper—that’s REALLY cheap!
But, it can save a life. Especially the writing. It can save your life because if you can write about it, whatever it is, you can transform it, turn it into something spectacular and “different.” No matter how bad, frightening, unreal, tortuous and terrible, you can name it—and if you can name it, you can free it. Writing can save your life.
In the Green Room at the Kauffman Performing Arts Center, Kansas City, MO, the Paseo SoundPlayers get serious. (photo by Jim Keel)
This is what I tell my young artists in Kansas City. And then I try to tell them to “listen” so that they can learn. I try to engage them in active listening, because I know this one true thing which I share with them—and so I will share it with you. If you can listen, you can learn. Conversely, if you can’t listen, how can you learn? It sounds obvious but somehow that simple fact is dissolving in the digital scatter of our every day lives—phones, screens, all the media—all the time, and we’re just not listening!
When I take my students down the road of listening—to stories, plays, sci-fi, comedy, mystery, you name it, all productions in the audio-only medium—I play it for them, so that they can reawaken something or perhaps even awaken something for the first time in the area of their brains which imagines things. I ask them to listen with their eyes closed and then just watch the pictures in their heads.
Culminating weeks of work, Paseo SoundPlayers perform at the Future Stages Festival for Young Artists at the Kauffman Performing Arts Center. (photo by Jim Keel)
This I believe: this helps them, later, when they are reading or writing or perhaps even while doing math problems—the imagining capacity that is triggered by listening seems to me to be crucial, in a huge number of ways, to overall comprehension skills. If people are learning only visually, what is happening to that capacity to imagine, with no visual stimulus? To imagine something that hasn’t been imagined by anyone else but you?
I fear its loss and worriedly watch as it seems kind of inevitable. Still I fight back. I hope others fight back too—perhaps by spending planned family evenings listening to something together, or listening to things in the car, or just listening to sounds all around. Whether in country or city—listening helps us to know where we are. When we listen, deeply, we have a chance of understanding.
And that seems to be crucial right now. Listening and understanding.
The author as a blur, moving at the speed of sound (photo by Jim Keel)
Anyway, that’s what I’ve been working on in Kansas City and I’m grateful for the opportunity to do so. Now that I am home, I am listening to the birds, the sound of boats on the bay, the owl at night. It is quiet here and I am listening to the quiet, and so glad to be home. But I still have a few questions that plague my tranquility.
In August, the Island County Primary is coming up. It is a good time to wake up and smell the coffee. I am asking any and all candidates the same question. It is my litmus test. I want to know where he/she stands on education, funding for education, and particularly funding for the arts in education. I am asking the question, listening to the answer, and making my mind up from there. Ballots are due Tuesday, August 2.
Breathing in Paradise (photo by Judith Walcutt)Norman Corwin Award and the man for whom it is named (photo by Ken Solo)
Judith Walcutt does live on Whidbey Island, though she spends time in other places working with young people in the audio arts. This is her 35th year running Otherworld Media, a 501(c)(3) non-profit arts and educational media company. She just received the Norman Corwin Award from the National Audio Theatre Festivals for Lifetime Achievement in Audio Theatre.
WLM stories and blogs are copyrighted and all rights are reserved. Linking is permitted. To request permission to use or reprint content from this site, email info@whidbeylifemagazine.org.
Oh, the good old summertime. The bees are buzzing, the birds are chirping and the cotton is high. Apparently—I definitely have a stack of washing, that’s for sure.
But it is also the ideal time for planning for the fall writing challenge “NaNoWriMo” (more about that later). This is because sitting in a deck chair and dreaming is a fabulous time to let your imagination run wild, like a group of von Trapp children wearing the bedroom curtains.
As you sit there dreaming, you’ll probably fit loosely into one of two camps as a writer. You identify either as an Outliner or an Outlawer. And whichever you are, now is a great time for planning.
Outliners like to prepare; they like to be ready. They have journals and graphs, extended character bios, stimulating scents and special writing music. And Outlawers–well, they don’t. Outlawers let ideas stew, sometimes for months—and the summer is a fabulous time to get out the stew pot.
“Outlawers” is a made-up name, in case you thought for a second I was smarter than you are; it’s a name I have for all of us “out of the boxers.” Oh, that sounds naughty—but I guess you catch my drift, or my draught if you’re out of your underwear.
I am a hand-on-heart, confessed Outlawer or, as some people call us, pantsers. There is only one way I can write the first words of a new project, and that is by running with my hands in the air, screaming, towards the amusement park of my imagination. I arrive at my keyboard on day one with a hundred different half-blown cobbled-together ideas, scenes and sketchy characters all brimming inside me like a stovetop full of pressure cookers ready to blow.
Then, once I start writing, there is no real rhyme or reason to my first draft. My process goes something like this: Okay, first the Rollercoaster…no, no, the Carousel, then the Ferris Wheel…then I have to tackle those high swings and, OMG, is that the Haunted House?
Don’t get me wrong; I don’t think my way is better. I actually have Outliner envy; how I wish I had all my scenes neatly typed up on a clipboard and knew everyone’s name, eye color and weight before I start. How much easier would my job be?
I did try to plot once; it was for a screenplay. It was beautiful, a fabulous shiny new storyline all ready to go, all 110 pages written out on little index cards. But the ink was barely dry on the words “Fade in” before the protagonist turned to me and told me to shut up and listen… and that was that. I have been chasing characters around ever since, writing everything they say like a frenzied reporter in a black and white film noir. I have very little to do with it. I just get out of the way and let them lead. I have more characters called ‘Jane Doe” in my first draft then a New York City morgue.
Alas, this is the creative brain I was given and, like a yarn factory broken into by a gang of mischievous cats, you know it’s all in there—you just have to unravel the whole thing.
Usually, what dictates the first tentative lines of my latest masterpiece is what shouts the loudest in the vaudevillian theater of my imagination. I can often start right in the middle of a story—some odd, unimportant scene that has been haunting me for weeks. It comes to me complete with a gang of derelict characters that I haven’t even met yet who have been following me around like a bad smell, hollering “me, me, pick me, write me!”
Now, I know some of you are nodding and smiling, and some of you have no idea what the heck I’m talking about, as you’d no sooner arrive at a first draft unprepared than at church naked.
Which is why NaNoWriMo and I are a perfect fit—like cheese and biscuits, coffee and cream, chocolate and anything. And for all you outlawers (and especially you outliners), the Summer is a great time to start stewing and plotting.
Na-no-what-mo? (you may be saying…) Well, there may be one last writer who hasn’t heard of National Novel Writing Month. And for that one person who’s just left the convent after ten years of seclusion, here’s a breakdown of what it is.
Every year on Nov. 1, crazed, wild-eyed, coffee-drinking writers bolt out of the gate like black Friday shoppers and race as fast as their pens can carry them to 50,000 words by the end of November. The idea is no editing, just writing; no over-thinking, just writing; no “bum leaving seat,” just writing.
Having run the Nano gauntlet three previous times, I’ve gotten used to the highs and lows of the month-long process, and having lots of ideas to draw from is an excellent way to get through the dreaded mid-November NaNo blues.
So, for all you “Outlawers” and maybe a few of you sneaky “Outliners” who are intrigued by running naked, just this once, pull up a deck chair and start dreaming up the next great American novel.
Suzanne Kelman is the author of “The Rejected Writers’ Book Club” and an award-winning screenwriter and playwright. Her accolades include The Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences – Nicholl Fellowship Finalist, Best Comedy Feature Script -L.A. International Film Festival and Gold Award Winner – California Film Awards.
(Suzanne Kelman’s photo, at top, was taken by Kim Tinuviel)
WLM stories and blogs are copyrighted and all rights are reserved. Linking is permitted. To request permission to use or reprint content from this site, email info@whidbeylifemagazine.org.
There are unwritten rules for writing pop music. If you want airplay, if you want people to listen, it’s gotta be this way—c’mon kid: make sure that song is catchy, about three minutes long, and make it about something anybody can relate to.
And, like most rules, these are complete nonsense. Most of us don’t like being told what to do.
Care to stroll through some great songs that aren’t typical? Want to mess with the status quo? Welcome to the All-Time, Top Five Ways To (Not) Write A Hit Song.
Rule #1:
Don’t start with the chorus.
Build up to it so people can sing along.
Well…no. How about The Beatles “She Loves You” as a template? Boom, immediately to the chorus, which grabs you ’round the neck and doesn’t let go. Is there any song more instantly exciting, more recognizable? I missed the Beatles originally; I was a fat little kid with a baseball mitt by the time they broke up in the late ‘60s. But, as I grew up, I went through all their records, saw all the movies, and cherish these songs like no others.
(Side note: every succeeding generation seems to do this—my children can quote “Hard Day’s Night” and “Help” almost verbatim, and a good friend’s elementary-school-aged son absolutely fell in love with the “Number 1” compilation a few years ago. Every young person goes through a discovering-the-Beatles phase, and that’s a good thing.)
It absolutely warms my heart to know that music messes with color lines. In the late ’50s, young white kids danced to Chuck Berry and Little Richard, much to their parent’s horror. Paul Simon reportedly went to Fame Studios in Muscle Shoals, Alabama, to record “Kodachrome” and wanted “those same black musicians who played on ‘I’ll Take You There’ and all the Aretha Franklin songs.” Little did he know the studio house band was the Swampers, a motley collection of pasty-white good ol’ boys. That’s right, Paul—all those greasy licks on Wilson Pickett, Percy Sledge, and Etta James records were made by these guys:
It also warms my heart to know that Paul Simon championed South African and Brazilian music later for his Graceland and Rhythm of the Saints albums. In both cases, he collaborated with indigenous musicians and created some brilliant music.
Rule #3:
Keep it short.
Go ahead, pick any lengthy Bob Dylan song—“Masters of War,” “Desolation Row,” “Hard Rain’s Gonna Fall,” or “Brownsville Girl.” I wouldn’t trade these for any two-and-a-half-minute pop song written in the last 20 years.
Sure, just because a song is long doesn’t make it good—“In-a-Gadda Da Vida,” anyone?—but why be so constricted by a format? There’s a great story about Dylan in the early Folk City/hoedown days not being able to fit two songs in to the “10 minutes per performer” limit—“each of my songs are way over five minutes!”
Dylan (left) with Tom Petty
And what about the iconic classic radio dinosaur “Freebird”? After refusing to cut the piano intro (played by roadie Billy Powell who, no one knew, was a brilliant classically-trained piano player for years) or the three-guitar blowout at the end, they decided to just send it in to the record company and the radio stations without telling them it clocked in at almost seven minutes long. Love it or hate it, there’s no bigger hit at that length.
Rule #4: Stick to the
verse/chorus/verse format.
How amazing are the epic story songs of Roy Orbison? How lucky was I to see him play live a handful of times before he passed away in 1998? Usually starting with a soft-spoken, evocative first line—“a candy-colored clown they call the sandman/tiptoes to my room every night”—and building to an operatic pop symphony by the end. Uber-bass guitar genius Garry Tallent has said that “Running Scared” almost put him off of music completely. How could one do it any better?
Ladies and gentlemen: Randy Newman. Long before his “You’ve Got A Friend In Me”-style songwriting for cinema, Randy was the king of the cynical, ironic character song.
Talk about missing the point—he received hate mail for “Short People,” but no, he didn’t really feel that “short people got no reason to live”—it was a joke. And, irony of ironies, “I Love LA,” which many saw as satire, was really true—Randy was really singing So Cal’s praises, not criticizing the shallow, self-interested vibe of Los Angeles. Both songs were misinterpreted. And is there any more joyful video than this one?
Mr. Newman is genius at picking out a deplorable character to tell the story—and that’s the point: the speaker in the song is a jerk, not the songwriter. There are many, many others in his catalogue who do this—“It’s Money I Love,” “Rednecks,” “My Life Is Good,” and so on. This is a captivating technique; I wish more songwriters would do this, much like an actor playing a role. Do people think Daniel Day-Lewis or Michael Fiennes are really like the terrible characters they play in film?
Maybe it’s the last vestige of teenage rebellion—rock and roll has always been young people’s music: a lonely wolf howl of freedom, independence and making your own sense of the world. And even for someone like myself—pushing 50, or pulling it, if truth be told—there’s still a joy in not doing what I’m supposed to. Turn up the music.
Erik Christensen teaches English at Oak Harbor High School, writes songs and poetry, and still thinks Vin Scully is the best baseball announcer ever.
Erik Christensen band is doing a short tour of Oregon and California in July, then plays the Penn Cove Brewery Taproom in Coupeville on August 12.
WLM stories and blogs are copyrighted and all rights are reserved. Linking is permitted. To request permission to use or reprint content from this site, email info@whidbeylifemagazine.org.
It started two months ago with a phone call from my sister.
“Have you seen the wild blackberry blossoms?”
There was a hint of challenge in her voice, she—the middle child, me—the oldest sister: the beginning of the seasonal contest of wild blackberry picking.
I had seen the tiny white blossoms. They covered vines everywhere I drove and walked on South Whidbey.
“It’s the earliest I have ever seen them,” she said and I agreed.
Two months ago, most Whidbey Island residents stood at the shoreline and squinted into the distance for a chance sighting of the gray whales and orcas. My sisters and I have been occupied otherwise. We’ve slowed our cars, scoured the ditches, gauged the sun and mentally calculated the time of year. We’ve secretly prayed about rain (we are not the praying kind). We hoped for the right balance, not too much to wreck the pollination or mold the flowers but enough to encourage plump fruit. The two hot days last month held the key.
The phone rang.
“The wild blackberries are out. I have never seen so many red berries!”
A blackberry pie in time for the Fourth of July is rare and a pie in June is unheard of.
These Pacific Northwest days—the days immediately after school lets out—the weather is gray and damp in the morning and the afternoon is clear and warm. The blackberries love the hothouse steam of the tall grass and the heat of the afternoon filtered by the nettles poised like bayonets over the growing fruit.
* * *
On cue with the blackberries, my family—minus our working father—would load up the station wagon in Seattle, prepared for the summer. It was stuffed to the rafters with my mom, five girls, flannel sleeping bags, the cat basket that could not contain the cat, the Coleman cooler, groceries, library books and suitcases with shorts, t-shirts and swimsuits and beach towels.
There was no I-5. We drove a meandering route up the east side of Lake Washington, Issaquah and Bothell and finally down the tree-lined road to the Mukilteo ferry landing. When we saw Puget Sound, we sang the “Doxology” at the tops of our lungs. (We are the singing kind.)
We ferried over on the new boats—the Rhododendron or the Olympic—and drove up the island on the old highway to Freeland, then ducking down Cameron Road to the cabin on the edge of Holmes Harbor. With luck, the yard had been mowed but most likely not. We hauled the gear into the cabin, through the large wooden door without a frame or lock—only a long worm-eaten board with the name of the cabin, “Wit’s End,” rendered in red paint.
Unloading the car in the tall wet grass was the beginning of summer dampness: tennis shoes that never quite dried out, swimsuits that were clammy and rimey with salt, sleeping bags full of sand and pillows that absorbed saltwater from still-wet hair.
We hurried over the plywood floors, staking out our bunk beds. My favorite was the upper bunk across from the open doorway into the living space. From that spot I could see the flicker and shadowy light of the fireplace and the kerosene lamps. Out of sight, at the picnic table, my mother would sit tackling a volume of Dickens that she wouldn’t finish. I’d hear the strike of a match and she would smoke one Pall Mall. Below me, my little sisters slept end to end under old sheets and army blankets and breathed sweet open-mouthed noises.
In a few weeks, when the weather warmed up, we went blackberry picking. It’s tough going—the picking gig. In my family, there’s a moral subtext to picking that has something to do with courage, dumb fortitude and no whining. After a brief discussion about containers (the Revere Ware quart saucepan had a great handle, the Pyrex pitcher, too), we would give small metal cups to the little girls and get into the car.
It took a good two hours to pick the minimum two to three cups necessary for a pie. The berries were the size of your little fingernail and the vines had tiny, mean stickers. Vines trailed over fallen logs and camouflaged holes in the ground that you stepped into with a crash. The nettles were fresh and fiery, the snakes always a horrible surprise and the first berry made an insubstantial “plink” going into the container.
It’s a demoralizing sound: you must not look into the bottom of the cup until you’ve picked the first layer and the plinking stops.
There was the thrill of consolidating into our mom’s larger container with the hope that she would call it good—enough for a pie—and we’d struggle out of the brush and load back into the car. We’d lick our wounds but not complain too much —our forearms scratched and full of tiny stickers, our ankles burning with nettle stings, our fingernails dyed purple and black, and streaks of berry juice on our skin like sailor tattoos.
My mom would fire up the Great Majestic woodstove stove and we’d go swimming. After dinner we’d have pie, always with whipping cream because we never had a refrigerator. My mom would discuss the quality of the crust and we’d bob our heads and peep our praise and make our first tentative remarks about crusts that were too short, too thick or underdone, and filling that was too sweet or not sweet enough.
Siri’s blackberry pie, early this year! (photo by Siri Bardarson)
My sisters and I are all terrific pie makers because we learned from the best. But the real reason we care so much is that we know that blackberry pie means, “LOVE 4 Ever.”
I’ll close with a horrible poem I wrote in 1973 in pencil on a piece of ripped grocery bag. I had picked the berries and baked a pie in the Great Majestic all on my own. It hung on a nail in the cabin forever.
Ode to the Blackberry
I shall now praise the rare prize,
The finest fruit in Paradise,
Who in the sunny field doth dwell
And under summer’s sunny spell
Bursts forth in bounteous multitude
A rare jewel worthy of platitude.
Amongst garter snake and nettle high
You attempt to thwart the avid picker
With prickly claw and stickly sticker.
But in the end must resigned be
To clever hand in pastery. Forever with the God’s fare to vie,
Your true realization, the blackberry pie.
A Northwest native, Siri Bardarson is a writer with an emotional hotline to the vibrant natural beauty of Puget Sound. When not writing about the importance of the wild blackberry, daisies and natural time, she practices her cello a lot and sings at the same time. She loves her Whidbey Island home.
WLM stories and blogs are copyrighted and all rights are reserved. Linking is permitted. To request permission to use or reprint content from this site, email info@whidbeylifemagazine.org.
So I wonder. The Orlando massacre. Could four-dozen people be mowed down in five minutes by a deranged, hate-inspired individual with a military assault rifle on Whidbey? Here, on this peaceful, blissful, beautiful, slow-paced, placid, agreeable, mild-mannered Rock where arguments are usually resolved over a cup of coffee?
I’ve been wrestling with that since I awoke Sunday to news of the slaughter at a crowded Florida gay bar at closing time. The too-easy answer to my question is, “No, of course not!” We’re too small, too far away from crazy troublemakers. And besides, we don’t have crowded gay bars and we go to bed long before last call for alcohol. We also don’t have deranged, hate-filled individuals running around with assault rifles . . . do we.
But take a read of the crime reports in our three island newspapers. Murder. Assault. Threats of violence. Robbery. Alcohol and drug-induced rage. Meth labs in the woods. Semi-automatic gun practice near homes where children play. Then take a look at the online comments sections in those papers or on social media. People write scary, sometimes threatening things with strong and nasty words they’d never say out loud in public.
People who don’t like Navy jet noise are called traitors and told to shut up and get the hell out. Navy supporters are branded as warmongers who want to militarize the entire island. Conservationists are job killers; foresters are habitat destroyers.
There are other worrisome things. A Bernie Sanders sign at Highway 20 at Arnold Road is defaced with angry symbols not once but twice. A portrait of President Obama doctored to make him look like Hitler is proudly displayed by political protesters on a sidewalk by the Coupeville Post Office. Gun advocates bring their weapons to an Oak Harbor city council meeting to demand the right to carry those guns in public parks and playgrounds, all in order to “protect” themselves and us from somebody, anybody else.
Are we really as polite and peaceful as we think we are on this Rock? Judging by the evidence, I’d say no. We kid ourselves if we pretend otherwise. The bumper-sticker, 140-character Twitter universe in which our entire planet now exists has infected even sweet, bucolic Whidbey. It has truncated and coarsened our public dialogue. Even our local churches are at odds and won’t even talk with each other about gay marriage and women priests, among other things.
All this threatens one of our most precious attributes on Whidbey: our sense of community. It really is much easier here than in a big to city to cocoon ourselves, withdraw among our tall trees and gardens, talk only to those we like and tune out what we don’t agree with. Before tweets, posts and online comments overtook us, we trusted a few resources to tell us the truth. But now we don’t know whom to trust, so we don’t trust anybody.
This is no way to live in our beautiful place, so I will make a modest proposal. Starting tomorrow, each of us will pledge to ignore or not send an angry tweet, snarky remark on Facebook or nasty online comment. Instead, each of us will call someone and ask them to have coffee and talk about something controversial or difficult. Let there be peace on Whidbey, and let it begin with me!
Once upon a time, Harry Anderson made an honest living as a reporter, editor and columnist at the Los Angeles Times. He now lives in central Whidbey, where he spends his time gardening and ruminating on things that interest him.
WLM stories and blogs are copyrighted and all rights are reserved. Linking is permitted. To request permission to use or reprint content from this site, email info@whidbeylifemagazine.org.
You hear it everywhere you go: I’m so busy; I’m too busy; my children have a packed schedule; Lunch? Let me look at my calendar… I think I have a Tuesday next August. Does that work for you?
I thought, when I moved to Whidbey Island 27 years ago, my life would become calm and serene and, more importantly, far less busy. At first that seemed to be the case, since I only knew a couple of people and had little disposable cash to go to many things. WICA did not yet exist and The Clyde Theater only showed two movies a week.
Street Work; Anne Belov; Oil on Linen (c) the artist
While in college and graduate school, I always had part- or full-time jobs, so I learned to juggle class work with making a living and even (occasionally) having a little fun. This learned ability to multi-task allowed me to keep a roof over my head and continue to make paintings when I left school.
When I finally hit the tipping point of being able to make a living with only my artwork, the juggling didn’t stop. If you think making a living in art consists solely of staring at the lovely landscape till inspiration strikes, and then you create a masterpiece that instantly sells—well, I’ve got news for you. There’s the paperwork and record-keeping and making sure you have supplies. And then there’s framing and scheduling and transporting the work. Oh yeah, and then there is doing the work itself.
Eventually, in order to have money coming in more regularly, I added printmaking with a small company that sold etchings around the US and in Canada. This worked great for a while, until it didn’t.
Eight years ago I started drawing cartoons, and, shortly after that, decided to dip my toes in the waters of children’s illustrating and writing. Boy, do I know how to find (non) lucrative, time-intensive pursuits or what?
Pandamorphosis by Anne Belov
What works for me is having several creative irons in the fire all the time. While scheduling all these different aspects of my creative life can be challenging, it’s not impossible and—truth to tell—I kind of like it. I must have a short attention span or something, because working at different activities throughout the day keeps me mentally engaged.
When all I did was paint, I would sometimes find myself doing stupid things late in the day because my attention had wandered off somewhere. Breaking up my day into one to three hour segments allows me to keep all the balls in the air, only occasionally dropping one on my head. I keep a calendar (mostly…Oh, yeah, I need to go write this week’s schedule in the calendar!) with notes about what I’m working on in each of those varied projects. And, oh, let’s not forget gardening, yoga, and hanging out with friends.
Add blogging and website maintenance and keeping up with fans of my panda cartoons to the mix and you have a very busy life.
There is a vast online community of writers in every genre you can think of, and I’m lucky to have connected with the KidLit writing community, mostly through SCBWI (Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators). Unlike the Seattle folks who can get together regularly in person, since I prefer not to “go to America” as we islanders call it, I’m more active online. This has led to creeping internet obsession, and I finally had to take myself in hand to cut down the amount of time I was hanging out online.
There’s an App for that…
Fortunately there is a Facebook group for that. Yes, I belong to a Facebook group, whose goal is to stay off the internet until we have completed at least one hour of creative work each day. Started by Bay Area children’s writer Deborah Underwood, this group keeps us accountable so that our day’s productive potential does not get consumed by watching panda videos or trading witty dialog for photos of pandas, or…well, you get the picture.
Because, in this group, we are all swimming in the KidLit pool, we have interests and challenges in common. It is an accountability group, for sure. But it has also become a support group, as we navigate the turbulent waters of children’s publishing.
It was a liberating revelation to realize that I don’t want to get rid of “busy,” since I finally realized that it’s what drives me ever forward. The best I can do is to keep “busy” under some amount of control. And isn’t that the best we all, in this busy world, can hope for?
Doesn’t everyone feel like this some days?
Anne Belov is a painter, printmaker, cartoonist and writer living on Whidbey Island. You can find her paintings at The Rob Schouten Gallery at Greenbank Farm and The Fountainhead Gallery on Queen Anne in Seattle. Her pandas hang out at Panda Chronicles. You can find the six-book Panda Chroniclescollection at Moonraker Books in Langley or at the Whidbey Writer’s Network booths at the Bayview, Coupeville, and Oak Harbor farmer’s markets. She is working on a graphic novel starring pandas. Don’t miss seeing her work, along with a baker’s dozen of other painters, printmakers and sculptors at this year’s Froggwell Biennale, Friday through Sunday, August 5-7.
WLM stories and blogs are copyrighted and all rights are reserved. Linking is permitted. To request permission to use or reprint content from this site, email info@whidbeylifemagazine.org.
It seems appropriate that I am writing this on the day my husband goes in for his eye exam, but that isn’t the “20/20” I have been dwelling on lately.
I have lost 20 pounds so far this year. This makes my weight the lowest it has been since we started our dairy. It seems being focused on the farm 24/7 didn’t allow us a lot of time to focus on our needs. Although I was stronger two years ago than I am today, I can say with certainty I am healthier today.
Twenty pounds lost seems like a lot and it isn’t insignificant for any reason. Other people are now noticing and telling me I look like I’ve lost weight, and it is nice to hear. The weight isn’t coming off by itself; I am working for it. I’ve been more active and eating smaller portions of more nutrient dense food (Yay! CSA/farmers’ market season!) and it turns out there is no magic bullet. I am proud of my success.
This mark on the scale has thrown me for a loop, though. At my peak weight I was 294 pounds. Now I’ve lost 20 and the scale reads 274. However, instead of rejoicing in my 274, I cautiously tell myself I have 24 pounds to go until my first big milestone. That is, until I remember how this 20 pounds has already changed my life.
I walk with my dogs a lot more and see some of my neighbors (ones I really enjoy) more regularly, because I’m out walking.
I recently went to Japan, and then Minnesota, in plane seats—notoriously cramped, but my butt fit. There was no need to “suck it in” to fasten my seat belt; there was no concern of my hip taking over the seat next to me.
Vicky (left/center) with sisters Jane (left), Ruth (right) and mother, Carol (right/center) in Minnesota last week.
When I was 20 pounds less than I am today—at 254 pounds—I completed the Honolulu Marathon with my tenacious best friend. Yes, I completed a marathon at 254 pounds. All the training for the marathon didn’t help me lose weight as I’d hoped (I actually gained weight). It felt so good to cross that line, it ended up not being about the weight, but I still remember exactly what I weighed.
Vicky (front/center) with her medal and fellow marathoners, including Bette Cooper (lower right), the best friend that gets her into these crazy things. Just hours prior they completed 26.2 miles!Vicky’s Finisher medal with the magnet sent to supporters of the fundraising endeavor in 2002. Her statement to those supporters still rings true.
Twenty pounds before that: 234 pounds, I was discharged from the hospital after a near-death experience that resulted in a scary and frustrating long hospital stay, a surgery, and a diagnosis of an autoimmune disease to last me a lifetime. It’s also what I weighed when I got married. Neither time was weight an issue, yet I still remember exactly what the scale read.
Wedding day, with her daughter, Christine Maifeld, by her side. July 15, 2001
The interesting part to me is that I remember my weight during all these significant markers. I don’t remember the year (unless I look it up, or am prompted—um, except my anniversary—of course I always remember that).
I remember my weight. That needs to stop.
I am a confident person. I am comfortable in my skin, strong and more healthy than many of my friends, quite a few of whom are literally half my size. Yet I am tuned into my weight as a primary marker in my life. It seems I could have 20/20 vision, as long as my view isn’t obscured by a scale.
It isn’t just about weight. Excess weight is easy enough for others to see. But some people struggle with how they think others perceive their hair, teeth, eyes, wrinkles, skin spots, feet, hands, chin(s), etc. Is it possible to remember that after you part ways with someone, they are likely not recounting any physical appearance but, rather, how you left them feeling? Did your interaction make them smile from their heart? Did it cause them stress? Did it make them angry?
I still will lose weight and will still use a scale to mark it, but I will no longer use those pounds to mark my life.
I need to lose weight for my health, so I can play with my granddaughter and not tire so easily, and be around when she blossoms into the person she will become. I want to lose weight so I can pursue things that, for safety’s sake, require I weigh less.
I also need to care less about the number. It isn’t a magic number, no more than 20/20 vision is. Do you even know anyone with 20/20 vision (especially over the age of 50)? I know very few people who don’t wear some sort of corrective lens to assist. Why is not having 20/20 vision okay, but having a scale report back a number I don’t like is not okay? How about we embrace our imperfections and love ourselves with them instead of in spite of them?
20/20 is a plan, not my vision. I will work on losing another 20 pounds, and hopefully another 20 or so after that. But what I weigh when my granddaughter is born? I simply don’t care. It will no longer be the milestone marker of my life.
To be honest, this post almost didn’t make it. After writing, editing, editing some more, and dropping a few tears I almost trashed it, because “it’s just about me being fat.” Then the light went on and I realized that is exactly why I need to share it. I know I’m not the only one who has ever discounted themselves like that.
Maybe some people will be embarrassed for me as I huff and puff and pedal my voluminous backside to town, or because I shared my real weight number out to the world… But, I think, not the folks in this community.
Thank you for noticing I look “healthier” instead of “thinner” and telling me I look “happier,” not “skinnier,” and for your encouragement. We’re doing this community thing right. Regardless of today’s number, I am happier and healthier because I am here, in this community.
For more related reading, this writer delves into a few related issues in her blog How to Talk to Little Girls.
It provides excellent ideas for those of us who have been programmed to communicate based upon appearance (including clothes, hair, etc.). Sometimes I forget and I need a crash course. Have I told you I’m going to be a GRANDMA? It’s time to make this the best world it can be…and time for me to finally understand why so many activists are grandparents.
Grandma-to-be Vicky Brown, Chief Milkmaid (mostly retired) at the Little Brown Farm, puts her passions on the page writing about food, agriculture and the tender web of community.
WLM stories and blogs are copyrighted and all rights are reserved. Linking is permitted. To request permission to use or reprint content from this site, email info@whidbeylifemagazine.org.
Vortext is a gathering for women writers held annually at Whidbey Institute, created and hosted by Hedgebrook. It took place May 19-22, 2016. The following are excerpts of this writer’s notes and reflections on the experience.
May 19, 2016 is the day that Vortext begins its process this year, unfurling and finding its way into being, like any piece of writing—there is a place where it must begin and this is it. I’m picking up writers from the shuttle, waiting with my friends Evie and Harolynne to see who the voices in the whirl will be this year. They come to the island from all over, from as near as Freeland and as far as New Zealand, South Africa, and even Miami! Literally, from the other side of the world and also right next-door, mutually drawn to the core, the white heat at the center of this vortex spiralling out from Hedgebrook, irrepressibly connecting the dots of women’s voices rising worldwide.
They came from all over—writing women walking the walk! (photo by Catherine Willis Cleveland)
What is the purpose of such a convocation of women writers, young and old, new and seasoned, all hues and flavors, together alone with themselves and each other for three intense days of good words, good work, good food, and good walks?
Oh so many reasons to join the whirling mass!
It is not a competitive environment, I tell my van of writing women coming from afar. I explain that Vortext has proven to be an opportunity to refresh, to take refuge in, and remember the reasons—and the feelings––hard, hidden, hopeful––all which made us want to write in the first place.
This will be the fourth year for me, volunteering to help in whatever ways that I can—picking up and dropping off, shuttling from here to there, and all the while absorbing new information, new stories, new voices finding their way to the table. Also, after lunch and before the afternoon session, I set up mics and slip in a little voice coaching, for those who want to prep themselves to read at the open mics. It is my joy and privilege to do so—to help in anyway that I can this vibrant institution that has its local and global priorities clear.
By providing opportunity and encouragement for the voices of women to be heard, sometimes for the very first time, Hedgebrook nourishes the interconnection between all women’s voices. I am so pleased to be part of something as vital and important as the spiral that covers the points of infinity.
Vortext 2016: A convocation of women writers, talking the talk too! (photo by Catherine Willis Cleveland)
Each of the years that I have been here, I have heard stories that made me laugh so hard my stomach hurt. And stories that brought tears to the corners of my eyes and down my face, as when hearts crinkle up and burst their seams with something deeply sad, but true and so beautiful in its sadness.
To inspire, to open the place in the heart, in the mind, where we remember suddenly all at once like a flash of lighting, or gradually like the slow opening of a densely petaled rose, these are the purposes of the real vortex we swirl in. We collectively remember why we wanted to write, felt the urge to write, and even couldn’t help ourselves and so had to write—in the first place—for all the reasons you can imagine. We come here to this beautiful place on the Chinook lands, floating on the jewel that is Whidbey, and we rest our minds in this time and place—in that opening in the field where we can breathe in all that is sweet and sour and poignant and rich in our own fertile grounds, and remember: why we live to tell the story.
So today, I’ll be picking up the writers coming from all over, and tomorrow, we begin the practice!
Tools of the writing trade! (photo and drawing by the author, feather by Hannah)
The next day begins for me making a mad dash to get to the Chinook land early enough to shuttle writers from the bottom parking lot to Thomas Berry Hall at the top. A general buzz of interest, excitement, a wondering of what to expect, and perhaps a little nervousness pervades the short rides up and down the hill. Once there, the attendees get their bags and name tags which we are really glad to have—because there are just too many new names to remember them all—and who doesn’t want a nice bag?
With breakfast, the first wave of Hedgebrook’s now legendary radical hospitality awaits us–a gentle landing of homemade granola, fresh raspberries, locally sourced sheep’s yogurt, bagels as good as any found in Brooklyn, and plenty for all with and without gluten, dairy, or whatever the dietary need.
At 9:30 a.m. of Day 1, the group assembles in the Hall for the Keynote addresses. Amy Wheeler, Executive Director of Hedgebrook, opens the gathering with words which invite all to be fully present as the writers, the unique and singular voice which each woman in the room is, reminding us that by choosing to be here, at Vortext, we have already begun the important work of showing up for ourselves as writers.
2016 Mentoring authors (right to left)—Hannah Tinti, Kate Gray, Laurie Frankel, Dani Shapiro, Ruth Ozeki, Natalie Braszile (photo by the author)
The first day’s keynote presenter is Ruth Ozeki. I am a huge fan of her novel, “A Tale For the Time Being,” which tells a great story and bends the laws of physics. She speaks to many issues surrounding a woman writer’s life, including the ongoing predicament that pervades life for most women who write––that she is seldom ever just a writer and almost always that and something else (a mother, a teacher, a bookstore worker, house cleaner, a cook, a payer of bills, a million and one things!). Her words somehow set the stage for each one of us to come to terms with the struggles we each encounter to get there, to get to work, to stick to it, to evolve practicing the craft, wrestling angels and demons to the ground and even to the death!
Rahna Reiko Rizzuto came next and through the means of reading the ancient symbols embedded in a tarot deck, she gave the entire gathering at Vortext a reading. Tarot, she says, is simply a method of working with the images inherent in our unconscious mind which allow a person to discover what she already knows to be true. This is a paraphrase, but I knew what she meant.
Somehow, in the cards she laid out for all of us there, she did reveal to us what we all knew deeply to be true—we saw the process, the feminine hero’s journey, to move from the hidden side of the moon through that forest from the trees, driven on a chariot propelled by urgency, healing the wounds by transformation from lead to gold, and finally manifesting justice by simply standing in the sun, in the light of the sun, for all to see.
Rahna Reiko Rizzuto reads the signs and shares the vision. (photo by the author)
Again—these remarks are only paraphrases, my making of meaning from the words filling the room—and every morning, we had stories of writers, women writers, who have made it to the other side—they have done their work, held their ground—waited eleven or more years from manuscript to manifestation, staying true to the truth of their words or else leaving the necessarily unfinished one behind, in the car wreck she escaped from with her life. Wow! What stories! And what a lesson—when to leave it behind and move ahead with something new…
The writer’s life, riddled with obstacles and then the over-coming of obstacles—we heard about it every which way from Ruth and Reiko, but also Natalie Braszile, Kate Gray, Laurie Frankel, Dani Shapiro, and Hannah Tinti and each one of them had the heart and courage to tell us deep and important and painful and true and uplifting, and deeply personal confessions of their writing lives.
Natalie Braszile tells the harrowing tale of her novel’s 11 years at sea before landing on the shore of a major breakout, soon-to-be TV series, “Queen Sugar.” (photo by the author)
As a crowd we groaned and gasped out loud together! We felt hurt with them and also redeemed by their courage and jumped to our feet to applaud their fortitude in over-coming the “no’s” of interior and exterior voices, the trials of the cruel business of books, and the strength to just keep writing, no matter what.
Dani Shapiro stirs the cauldron with her lyric keynote. (photo by Catherine Willis Cleveland)
After the keynotes did their jobs—of warming us up with stirred-up emotions and evocative imagery—the way a good book does—we, the writers in attendance, broke out into separate sessions with the mentors, the sensei of the words and actions, the ones who have crossed into the fabled lands of deckled edges and elegant frontispieces in print.
I can’t and won’t tell you what happened in each session, because truth be told, I don’t know how to describe it. Each session was unlike any other, made up of the one-time only combinations of women in the room and the skillful means by which the teachers freed us to speak, write, remember, imagine.
The days which followed the first, repeated this schedule—breakfasts of splendid foods followed by the morning keynotes, presented by the visiting authors who lead the sessions with the attendees. A splendid lunch with much writerly chatter transitions into quiet time for private thinking, or walkabouts, or rehearsing for the scheduled open mic times.
Later, the sages return for questions and answers among writers and every day ends with more rigorously radical hospitality—more good food, good wine, good suss, before breaking for the day.
Questions and answers in the afternoon with (left to right) Ruth Ozeki, Rahna Reiko Rizzuto, Dani Shapiro, and Hannah Tinti (photo by Catherine Willis Cleveland)
I could tell you a list of exercises the teachers taught or a certain way of working they encouraged, to evoke writing from the compost heap of a writer’s mind as well as drill into the forgotten diamond mines found deep in buried, long-forgotten feelings. I could try to tell you how Hannah Tinti showed me how to free myself up mentally by using a hand-cut, quill pen—or how Ruth Ozeki unlocked the old oak bureau hidden in the attic of my unconscious Victorian brownstone and released the scent of burnt sugar, or how Dani Shapiro made me remember the tip of the ice pond of things I had forgotten to remember before—vanilla ice cream cones with sprinkles, the smell of the smoking car on the Erie Lackawanna train from Short Hills to Hoboken, the glistening frozen trees of fairyland winters. I could try to tell you—but the words could never cover the mojo—the magic—that made things happen in my mind, in my journal, with my words, and among my secret voices, when I became a dot on the spiral unwinding from Vortext.
Hannah Tinti sings a song ‘bout a’ trying and a’trying…to write! (photo by the author)
I cannot tell you it all, because like the sweet dream that vanishes with the twittering noisy dawn, I can’t bring it all back to the speakable, effable world. Some things must remain hidden, for future excavations of time and place—but I hope you have had a glimmer of it, from what I’ve written here, have tempted you to come out, come out from wherever you are, and join the outward-blossoming beauty of Hedgebrook’s offerings.
Vortext 2016 writing women, fortified by radical hospitality and each other, come together in the Long House on the Hedgebrook land for final words and dedication renewed. (photo by the author)
On the final day, the convocation of women writers returned to the land where Hedgebrook lives and breathes, and fosters the voices that already have and will continue to birth the change we want to hear and speak–locally, globally, voice by voice, women’s voices rising!
And my-oh-my! How that garden grows to the sky!
Hedgebrook garden at work—growing sustainable opportunities for women writers… (photo by the author)
There are many ways to join the community that Hedgebrook holds in its conception and manifestation. Schedules for future master classes, salons, and residency programs can be discovered by exploring the website: http://www.hedgebrook.org. The next event on the Hedgebrook land is the Summer Salon on June 18. To find out more about it all, how you can join in, how you can help—email hedgebrook@hedgebrook.org or subscribe to the Hedgebrook email newsletter here http://eepurl.com/bceX7T.
…and armfuls of beauty over time (photo by the author)
Judith Walcutt, a grateful Hedgebrook alum, is a writer in her 28th year on Whidbey Island. Recently, she was named the 2016 winner of the Norman Corwin Award for Lifetime Achievement in Audio Theatre by the National Audio Theatre Festivals. Her novel, “Memoirs of a Modern She-noodle,” is forthcoming SOON from NeoPoiesis Press.
WLM stories and blogs are copyrighted and all rights are reserved. Linking is permitted. To request permission to use or reprint content from this site, email info@whidbeylifemagazine.org.
Spring is the perfect backdrop to practice seeing and experiencing change in every moment. It’s on the ground—we can practically watch the grass growing from hour to hour and, certainly, day to day.
Lilac Skies (photo by Gina Simpson)
The plants are blooming voraciously and dying back with the same fierce leave-taking. We witness the delicate new shoot transforming to leaf to bud to bloom in the space of a few passing days.
The sky provides the light for this grand and dramatic show of constant change. We have clouds forming and turning mountainous as they climb ever higher into the blue firmament, followed by a strong wind that sweeps it away in mere minutes.
And then what? A hard rain drumming on the rooftop for a few brief minutes, followed by a silent stillness that flows into birdsong. The birds must study all winter for the release of their spring songs.
The cosmos in an allium (photo by Gina Simpson)
This symphony of spring has a simple mantra—change, change, change. This is a change both constant and certain. We would be wise to carry this spring mantra into the long days of summer and the stillness of winter. Spring is the season within all seasons—practicing its dance of renewal through constant change. Pema Chödrön shares with us her words of wisdom, “You are the sky. Everything else—it’s just the weather.”
This inherent changing rhythm brings me to the doorway of dance. I love dance in all its forms and it has been my lifesaving companion throughout my journey. In the last 20 years I have been fortunate to study with two very gifted teachers, Deborah Hay and Christine Tasseff, right here on Whidbey Island. Deborah Hay, who is based in Austin, Texas, teaches, choreographs and performs internationally. Deborah is also an author, brilliantly using words to translate her experiences from the fields she inhabits. I am currently rereading her book, “My Body, the Buddhist,” replenishing my cup in Deborah’s well of profound wisdom. Her latest book, “Using the Sky: a Dance” was published in 2015. I studied with Deborah the first couple of times here on Whidbey when she brought her Solo Commissioning Project to WICA for five consecutive summers beginning in 1998.
Christine Tasseff, circa 1996. (Cover of “Island Independent” by Bill Ruth)
Christine Tasseff, who has lived on Whidbey for 30 years, has also taught her popular classes and workshops here, as well as in Seattle, NYC and Nashville. Many of you may know Christine through the gardens she shapes with her landscaping team, Roots. I know her as a gardener of the moving body, stewarding all the many shapes that arise and fall on the dance floor.
Christine, like Deborah, is a keen observer of the body, the space around it and its relationship to the other moving bodies in the field. She studied for 26 years with Gabrielle Roth, dancer, author and founder of the Five Rhythms practice and brings Gabrielle’s legacy to brilliant life every Sunday morning at Bayview Hall from 10 a.m. to noon. The class is by donation and is aptly named Prayerbody.
Prayerbody in motion (photo by Joni Takanikos)
Christine creates an environment in which a body may gently explore the rise and fall of its own individual rhythms and shapes. With her gentle guidance there is no wrong or right way—just the practiced attention to your own movements and your relationship to the movements of others. Christine describes one of the many aspects of her teaching by saying, “Dance is translated not only through our bodies, but also through our heart and soul as we weave community on the floor.” Through this process you may find yourself stepping through a transformational gate.
In my 20 years of this practice with Christine, I—along with her many students—have had the opportunity to work with some incredible local and visiting musicians. The core group of musicians who currently are creating the soundscape for Prayerbody include Joseph Sanchez, Nick Toombs and Ashley Eriksson. Christine draws musicians who share her keen awareness of the palette held by dance and the music assumes the presence of another limb, shaping each dancer individually and collectively. This dynamic orchestration creates limitless opportunities to explore new rooms in the body.
I often bring my journal to jot down thoughts during class. Here are some from Easter Sunday:
Bred in the Bone Easter 2016
Eat this bread
It is my body
So holy, so holy, so made
for eating—with every sense
held—withheld
Cornucopia of Strange Beauty
Drink this wine
It is my blood
sour and sweet, all the holy
rivers of longing—forever
tied to the tree, the rocks
the sky—this holy body
of trailing tears
Eat and Drink from this well
It does not belong
to me—It belongs
to the estuary moving
towards the sea.
Growth (photo by Joni Takanikos)
So in the spirit of this moving and enchanting spring field, I encourage all of us to dance however we can: from our chairs, our beds, our lawns, roadsides or to simply be witness to the profoundly beautiful choreography of spring.
For more information about Prayerbody and to contact Christine Tasseff, go to prayerbody.com. Dance opportunities abound on Whidbey Island. Check out classes and performance schedules at Whidbey Dance Theatre: widtonline.org.
I highly recommend these two acclaimed documentaries. The 2011 film about the legendary choreographer Pina Bausch, “Pina,” and the 2013 film, “Afternoon of a Faun: Tanaquil LeClercq,” the life of the acclaimed ballerina.
Joni Takanikos is a perennial student of the miraculous nature of the body and the fields it inhabits. She teaches yoga at Half Moon Yoga Studio in Langley.
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The handbasket into which the world is rapidly going to hell seems to grow more dangerous by the minute. At such a rotten instant, it’s only natural for souls like me to seek other baskets going to better places. I’m relieved to have found mine over the past several weeks. In truth, I found not one but 12 baskets; they made up a delectable flat of Bell’s Farm strawberries. The contents of those containers have taken me from the earthly abyss to gustatory heaven.
What makes Bell’s strawberries so special? Ah, that is truly beyond my words. Only taste will tell you. I am old enough to remember when strawberries we bought in supermarkets were brilliant red and the size of a thumbnail. The shortcakes of my youth are still a sweet memory for me. But you had to get the berries home and eat or preserve them right away; they spoiled quickly.
The Bell’s Farm strawberry season is so very short, usually no more than three weeks. But while it lasted this year, I was able to indulge my senses and my imagination in a pleasure without guilt. Shortcake every night. Berries on my cereal every morning. Fresh (not canned) jam on an English muffin with a latte in the afternoon. Strawberries mixed with fresh spinach with dinner. A berry or two popped in the mouth before bedtime. And, of course, a fresh strawberry in a glass of champagne with friends.
As you sit there dreaming, you’ll probably fit loosely into one of two camps as a writer. You identify either as an Outliner or an Outlawer. And whichever you are, now is a great time for planning.
Then, once I start writing, there is no real rhyme or reason to my first draft. My process goes something like this: Okay, first the Rollercoaster…no, no, the Carousel, then the Ferris Wheel…then I have to tackle those high swings and, OMG, is that the Haunted House?
Which is why NaNoWriMo and I are a perfect fit—like cheese and biscuits, coffee and cream, chocolate and anything. And for all you outlawers (and especially you outliners), the Summer is a great time to start stewing and plotting.
There was a hint of challenge in her voice, she—the middle child, me—the oldest sister: the beginning of the seasonal contest of wild blackberry picking.
“The wild blackberries are out. I have never seen so many red berries!”
In a few weeks, when the weather warmed up, we went blackberry picking. It’s tough going—the picking gig. In my family, there’s a moral subtext to picking that has something to do with courage, dumb fortitude and no whining. After a brief discussion about containers (the Revere Ware quart saucepan had a great handle, the Pyrex pitcher, too), we would give small metal cups to the little girls and get into the car.
