The joy of harvest

Even though the greatest joy in life is to love and be loved in return, there is something extremely fulfilling about harvesting, especially if it involves apples, the best fruit in the world by far. Have you ever noticed how much 'real estate' in a produce aisle is devoted to apples? Because they are the most versatile of any fruit and so delicious - well, unless they are called delicious :). The apple tree in the picture is at Red Apple Farms, a fantastic old farm that is a good hour away, but worth every minute of traveling there.



I used to have reservations regarding fruit picking. As a child I was forced to go into the woods with my mother to find mushrooms and pick blueberries. The mushrooms were completely camouflaged and avoided detection and the blueberries were so tiny, growing on low scraggly bushes, in short I hated those excursions as a kid. Then a few years back, me and the girls met some other family for blueberry picking at one of the local farms and I became instantly addicted to picking fruits.

There are few things as satisfying as harvesting and I think that is due to it being literally satisfying, satisfying the need for sustenance that is. Gathering something as essential to life as nourishment is a task so basic, that it appeals to something deep within us. I find the same holds true to tasks like chopping wood for example. When I was in grad school, my room was heated with a little wood/coal stove and bizarre as it sounds, I liked going into the basement and chopping wood and filling the coal bucket, since it related to something essential for my survival: heat. In our complex and modern lives is very little space for basic tasks, we are all accustomed to comfortable convenience. When visiting old farms like Artemas Ward's farm, most visitor have the same reaction: so much work! But I find that I yearn for such simplicity, where there is a lot of work, but the work is all related to one's own life and survival. I absolutely love the idea of growing trees for cutting down the wood to make furniture, or have sheep for wool to make sweaters and socks, grow flax for spinning linen thread and weaving it into fabric and dying it with plant material.

Oh well, this makes me think of Tasha Tudor again, I am sure she would understand exactly what I am trying to say. Alas, since I live in this crazy, modern world, outings like apple picking have to satisfy my need for 'basic'.

Breathe

When we first met, I did not have enough money to bring this Buddha home, even though at first sight I knew he was supposed to end up in my company. A year later I could not find him - probably because I was looking for him - and then another year passed. To my delight, while not looking for him, I stumbled across him literally, since he was on the floor and quite dirty. I was very happy to take him to my home, where he had a spot waiting for him.


My husband did not quite get it at first, but when I told him that the presence was enough to give me joy every time my gaze fell upon that peaceful face, he understood (or was smart enough to just shut up). As I am in the phase of work till you drop from exhaustion and sleep deprivation, I easily get frustrated, angry, stressed and loose oversight. But one moment in his presence and my breath slows down and my happiness factor goes up. He might be made of clay, but there is more to him than molecules. I call him Siddhartha, which might be blatantly wrong, after one of my favourite books of one of my favourite authors (Hesse). After the purchasem it was quite fun taking him on all the errands we had to run. I am sure that people passing the car thought we are completely nuts. Maybe so, but at least happy!

Quote on Thursday

"Basing our happiness on our ability to control everything is futile."

Stephen Covey

When looking at my bookshelves, one can find a section of books about time management, theories about happiness, advice on how to live and the sort. I enjoy some of them, dislike most of them as they usually try to tell the reader a simple recipe to follow and then everything will fall in place and the reader will turn into the happiest, wealthiest, most popular, successful and healthy chap on the block. Yeah - life is that simple, right? The first book I have ever read of this type (a very American thing) was "fit for life" but it did not solve any of my problems. Anyway, once in a while there is a really good book though. 2 years ago I was giving a talk and workshop on finding your true passion and learning who you really are. One of the books I used in my preparation was Stephen Covey's "The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People: Powerful Lessons in Personal Change" and I was surprised how much I liked it and the approach that was so easily transferred to the different aspects of life.

So why did I pick this quote? Because lately it feels like I have so little control over things and it is driving me a little nuts. I do not like to live my life reactive, but sometimes we have to and this quote reminds me not make my happiness dependent on how much I can control. On the other hand there are areas we can attempt to control and I have been bad at my time management. One major reason being that my brain is not working as properly as it used to. I used to never forget anything and calendars where a cute accessory, not a necessity. Lately I have forgotten some important appointments - today I forgot to pick up my friends son from preschool and that is awful.

I have been a bit defiant about really putting a good time management system to work for me and today I finally succumb to it. I will not rely on my brain powers alone, there is something to be said for a place to write down everything. I tried Filofax for a while and it never worked, there was not enough freedom for me and enough space to write a lot. I tried Apple's iCal and though it is not bad, it is not enough and it stays on my computer - it could come with me if I had an iPhone, but I refuse to pay for those ridiculous monthly fees at AT&T. I like Covey's system, but there are no designs I like in the size I like. The big size is boring looking for business men and the cool looking pages are for women and their tiny purses - hello, that is not me! Can a woman not have a big planner? So I have decided to make my own system with Levenger, that way I can design it myself and make it suit my weired life.

Here is to my hope of managing time, anticipating curve balls and accepting that there is not much in life I can truly control! With the quote chosen, I could have written a multitude of blog entries, like how children do not behave the way we envision they should, how our neighbors might not vote the way we like, how other people cut us off or ... The topic does not matter, as long as we can see that happiness resides inside of ourselves and not in controlling external issues.

Splitting one self into millions of pieces

So, apparently I am not blogging much. Not that I have nothing to say, believe me, I have always plenty to say and talk about. Also no shortage of interesting topics lately, but a very urgent shortage of time. Fall is always like this and I cannot stand that I have no time to enjoy the leafs slowly drifting to the ground, the low sun with it's golden light, the slight chill. I have not decorated for Halloween in years, because I am so short on time. This is the problem: I am splitting myself into millions of pieces. Or one could say I have way to many roles to play and there is hardly any space left on the stage for just 'me'.

So within the last 4 weeks I have been (in no particular order) mother, daughter, parent, wife, chef, travel agent, interior designer, television producer, school council member, friend, customer, political activist, small business owner, sales clerk, party organizer, photographer, camera (wo)man, maid, apple picker, queen of directions, chauffeur, present purchaser, secretary, volunteer, teacher, carpenter, craft organizer, researcher.... I am sure there is actually more, but completeness is not a necessity.

A lot of these roles are chosen, but some choices are not always free and in some way a 'must' in order to fulfill these roles to the standard I have chosen or because I see them as a kind of civic duty. But outside of singing in the chorus, which is so wonderful, there is no time to read a novel, do a craft that is for me and not for my business, to just sit and dream (if I try I usually fall asleep). A lot of these roles are work and a lot of these roles are fun and gratifying, most are all of that. I think the issue is finding a balance, because it is important for feeling content. Writing this blog had become a very important 'me' thing and having missed it for a month - it is almost hurting somewhere in my soul, for a lack of expressing this better.

So where and how do we cut to make more balance? I am no shortcut person at all, so this is not coming natural to me. In the past forty something years, I just sacrificed sleep and that is becoming increasingly hard to do for longer than a week. Where five hours used to be plenty, I do need six to seven hours now. New ways are needed and I might have to come up with a plan, if I find the time to think :) We will see.

Peace to you all and all the roles you play.

Quote on Wednesday

Begin it Now

Until one is committed, there is hesitancy, the chance to draw back, always ineffectiveness. Concerning all acts of initiative (and creation), there is one elementary truth, the ignorance of which kills countless ideas and splendid plans:

That the moment one definitely commits oneself, then Providence moves too.

All sorts of things occur to help one that would never otherwise have occurred. A whole stream of events issues from the decision, raising in one's favour all manner of unforeseen incidents and meetings and material assistance, which no man could have dreamed would have come his way.

Whatever you can do, or dream you can, begin it.

Boldness has Genius, Power and Magic in it.

Begin it now.

- Goethe

Mom interrupted

So, something must be in the air. First J has some friends here for a sleep over and they go outside to rollerblade, they do not heed my advice regarding the importance of wrist guards (from my experience) and it results in poor little A breaking her Ulna and her Radius. The actual event was actually less of an interruption than the feeling guilty somebody got hurt at our house, while in our care.

Fast forward 2 days and we have the next candidate for emergency procedures. Apparently our cat Mika had a bad infection inside her leg for a while, just never showed any signs of it until it was horribly bad and needed surgery. So this poor cat is limping about and has a tube inserted into her leg and a cone around her head. Now I am lucky my husband is the animal handler in the house and he takes her to the vet and gives her the medicine (an extremely difficult undertaking). I got burnt out handling sick animals when we got them as very sick babies last year and I spent many hours a day for many weeks dealing with that. Now I take care of the peripheral actions, like trying to clean bedsheets, he put the dripping cat on or taking care of spots the cat mistook for a litterbox. So I banned the cat to the downstairs where, guess what, I am working into the whee hours of the morning, or at least attempting it, since attention starved Mika wants me to just spend time giving her TLC and have you ever noticed how a little cat can be so incredibly and understandibly demanding? She keeps on trying to nudge me with her head, resulting in actually just bumping into me with her cone. That is as funny as sad, but was not really welcome, since I already had to divide my attention between my hands on the project and my eyes and heart glued to the TV screen to catch every glimpse of Colin Firth in a late showing of Bridget Jones 2.

I am experienced dealing with interruptions, for years I was prepared to be ready in a seconds notice to run S to the ER with either Croup or horrible head wounds. Oh and then there was the time my husband broke his neck. I think I can handle these unforeseen events pretty well, after all, I had training myself throughout my whole childhood, being so very accident prone. What I do not like though, is this looming feeling of impending disasters that could possibly strike any moment, because I have other interruptions to deal with, like loosing my 160 G external hard drive, meetings that expand from 1 to 4 hours, last minute play dates that require shuttling kids back and forth or last minute school assignments. Or of course, getting caught up in blogging on Saturday morning.

Battle the Frazzle with list making

Somewhere I read just a while ago something along the line of: "Stop making lists and start life." I think I understand what it is meant to say, expressing that if we are too focused on listing our goals and wants, we are not working on actually achieving them. At the same time, I am an avid list writer, always was and so is my mother. The difference here is probably in the type of list, condemning a list of goals, but surely not a to do list?

The past few weeks things are starting again to go crazy with me trying to juggle working, family, volunteering, friends, exercise, music and writing. I tried juggling one summer, I think it was in '88, and I gave up relatively soon. I am not good at juggling, may it be balls or different aspects of my life. In the past days I have been getting so frazzled, that I started getting into a hysterical panic and started thinking I should just stop Everything instead of trying to do Everything. I think I was actually whining - urgh - and started listing the 200 things that need to be done outside of work and family to my husband. He told me to just write it all on a list to get it our of my head and get to it later. Now that is exactly the advice I would give somebody and usually I do exactly that. When I get frustrated though and desperation is set in motion through too much stress and too little rest, I can get lost.

I think making lists is a wonderful thing, it organizes our thoughts and it takes pressure of a mind already over burdened. But, often I find that even though I try to put things out of the head and on the paper, I did not transfer them, but merely made a copy and now I have it in the back of my head and on paper as well, just to remind me in case I manage not to think about all the things to be done. So in order for the lists to be more effective, I am trying to link my items with time planning. What that means is for example, that in order to get ready for my show next week, I only do the most necessary things outside of it, like homework and dinner, but keep the rest for later. The week after my show, I will concentrate on fixing up the guest room, as my mother is coming to visit. The following week will be getting ready for a trip to D.C. and so forth.

I think what I am trying to achieve is a list that I know will actually really be done and is not a conglomerate of lofty goals and vague ideas. Though they have their place somewhere too. There probably should be a multitude of lists and maybe a list to keep track of the lists? Well, I am not anal enough for that. When I worked at Tanner Research in California, we had to keep track of every 15 minutes of our time and we had to write weekly reports about what we did that week and which goals we achieved and what our short term and long term goals and plan for the following week are. At times it was annoying, since it was meta work and did nothing for the project to be done, but it kept things nice and organized. I think I need to apply some of the things I have read. I like some ideas of Covey from the 'seven habits' and Randy Pausch had some interesting ideas in his time management lecture.

Well, enough musing about lists, time to make some :)

“One of the secrets of getting more done is to make a TO DO List every day, keep it visible, and use it as a guide to action as you go through the day.” Jean de La Fontaine

Cooking inspired by literature

I had a really boring dinner planned for Thursday, just rice and soycutash. My back was hurting and that usually kills the motivation for grocery shopping and cooking alike. While I was soaking in the tub, trying to numb the back pain with excessive heat, I started reading 'The Toss of a lemon' by Padma Viswanathan. Slowly some kind of atmosphere of India grew inside me and by the time I made it to the kitchen to prepare dinner, it could no longer be boring, it had to be indian inspired. So here is what I did.

I started some brown Jasmin rice in the rice cooker. I added ground cloves and coriander, ginger, cumin, salt, golden raisins and butter to it. When the rice was getting closer to being done, I took my wok and heated up some Ghee (clarified butter), added some Panch Puran, dillseeds and diced onions. When the onions where nice and soft, I added frozen soycutash (soybeans, corn and red pepper) and unsweetened coconut and salt. When I considered it done, I added just a bit of cream to bind it a bit.

Since the kids like fresh veggies with dinner, I cut up carrots and celery and made a dip from cream cheese, milk, curry, onion, ginger and mustard powder. The rice got a sprinkling of sliced almonds and we also had European style yogurt and Tamarind chutney to perfect the taste. As a treat we had sugar coated fennel seeds, of course, because we all love them. I am lucky to have a good Indian supermarket in town.

And so, just because the book inspired me, we had wonderful - yet super easy - dinner that lasted well over an hour filled with conversation.

Who has the time for more than 2 blogs? Certainly not me and so this will sit idle, at least for a while.

If you want to read my posts, check out the cardinal compass or maybe the blog about my own little company Raventree-Studio.

I wish I could just write, really and I keep falling into the same old traps that take all my time. If my day could just have 72 hours - 48 of which the world stands still and I am all alone, quiet, peaceful with time to think, read and write!

Giving children independence and freedom

This week marked a big step in my daughters life. This was the first week they were allowed to walk home alone from school. They are 8 and almost 10 and I thought the moment was right. They are good about traffic safety, they know about strangers and they walk the first part with a group of moms and kids. If we cannot give our children responsibility and trust them, how are they supposed to become self reliant and feel good about themselves? And that they did, the big smiles they wear when they come through the door after school speaks volumes. Doing things on their own makes them happy, independence makes them happy.

Earlier this year a NY mom gave her 9 year old a Metro Card, $20, some quarters and a subway map and let him find his way home from Bloomingdales. As she describes in her column, he was "ecstatic with independence". And then it took a life on its own, as far as asking whether she is America's worst mom, you can read about the reactions here.

I applaud her. People often make the point that times have changed, but I do not believe that to be true, statistically it appears to be actually safer. The chance for kids to be abducted is as small as being hit by lightning and think about it, the majority of those abductions are relatives anyway. What has changed is the media coverage and we hear about every little thing happening in the western world and that makes us think that this is an imminent danger out children are in. Our society lives in an atmosphere of fear and as parents we are overly worried about our children. When I compare my childhood to the ones of my children, I am bewildered how different it is. Today, life is packed full of programs and time is micromanaged. Unstructured time is an anomaly and fun is drowned in classes and learning, turning kids into stressed, pressured and worried little adults. Meeting other kids is facilitated through organized play dates, children do not just meet their friends at the park and instead of biking they get shuttled around in comfortable vans while watching videos.

When I was my kid's age life was free, there was time, there was boredom to spark creativity and there was the great outdoors, even in the middle of a big city. Yes, there was danger; I had my run ins with sexual predators and strangers that lured me with candy, but I had been warned, I had instructions how to deal with the situation and that is what I did. I had no kind of damage from that, instead it made me feel safer, because I knew how to handle it. I had a lot of freedom growing up, but I also had responsibility and my mother trusted me and I never wanted to betray that trust. Trust is something that needs to be earned and I want to give my girls the opportunity to do exactly that. In the end parents need to also trust themselves, trust that they raised their children to make the right decisions. I admit that I was very self reliant at an extremely young age because of the circumstances my mom and I lived in, but I prefer that over the other extreme. I have met girls at the end of high school still completely parent managed, that I have to question how they can find their own way at all, never having had the chance of their own road. If kids have no freedom, they lack freedom of making their own choices. Without their own choices, they cannot make mistakes and those are important to learn, to become competent and successful. Parents who try to keep mistakes away from children, keep experiences away from them and hinder self development.

It is not always easy to let go and to give up control and I do have a tiny slight worry while they are on their way (literally and figuratively), but I have to trust them.

Lentil Soup

Even though it is not here, the enjoyable absence of humidity and the clear air leads to feelings of fall. Couple that with soup and we have heavenly bliss - after all, it is Monday and that is declared soup day.

Since I have not made it for a while, it was time for boring looking, but delicious tasting lentil soup. Lentils are protein packed health food and we love them. A while back I had read about french lentils, also calles green or Puy lentils. They are supposed to be the finest lentils around, with a rich taste. They were originally grown in Puy (France) on volcanic soil, hence the name. So when I saw them at Whole Foods, I thought I should give them a try. The soup turned out good, but I don't think it is necessary to use french lentils for it, after all, they are more expensive and harder to come by and it does not make such a big difference in soup or stew. Because they stay firm after cooking, they make great lentils for salads or appetizers. I will have to try that soon.

Recipe for Lentil Soup:

I cut up 1/3 lb of bacon and start frying it in a heavy soup pot.
I then add a medium sized small diced onion.
After 5 minutes or so, I add carrots and celery, finely diced. I used about 1/2 lb of carrots and bout 1/2 stalk of celery. When possible, use celery root, but i is not always available.
When everything is nicely coated and hot, I add 3-4 Tbs of tomato paste and 1 Tbs of flour and mix it all up.
Add about 1 1/2 quarts of broth - I used 'Better than Boullion' beef broth, but it can be anything - and about 2/3 pound of washed lentils (300g)
Let this simmer and stir once in a while or the lentils will all stick to the bottom.
After 1/2 hour add diced potatoes, I used 4 medium sized ones.
Let it cook for another 1/2 hour.
In the last 15 minutes I added small diced polish kielbasa, but that is optional.
Season with salt, black pepper, balsamic vinegar and fresh parsley.

The magic of music! My iMixes on iTunes :)

Music is amazing. The multitude of musical expression is unfathomable and does not seize to amaze me. I think music speaks to something so deep within us that words can not adequately describe it. Sometimes when I think I just cannot go on with life, I think to myself that I could just give up everything in life and just listen to music until I die and that would be a good life. In my view, music is the highest achievement of human kind. It transcends nations and borders and even time, it influences our emotions and it can fulfill and heal our soul. I cannot imagine a life without music.

The way we listen to music has changed a lot and I freely admit to loving my iPod. I listen to a broad range of music, may it be medieval, baroque or classical; rock, pop, jazz or new age, world or meditation or whatever else. The iPod allows me to always have the appropriate soundtrack of my life right at my fingertips. Since its first release, iTunes has captured me, there is so much music to discover and re-discover. It is just like following book after book on Amazon, one can get lost and the wish list can get longer.

I have made music compilations since I was 15 and had/have quite a reputation for mixing. I would spend a lot of time analyzing the order and trying out different sequences. So when iTunes came out I was in playlist heaven. Any birthday party gets its own mix, as do some trips or Girl Scout meetings. Why it took me so long to actually publish some of my iMixes, I don't know, but here are my first few published ones (with more to follow):

Relax and let your mind take flight - for Ben
Fantastique! Contemporary french music
Timeless classics for kids and adults :)
Yes! There is great music for children!
Music for kids that adults love too :)
L O V E - L O V E - L O V E!
Movie Magic Music

Check them out next time you are on iTunes and give me your rating ;)

Healthy and delicious school lunches

Lunch at my children's elementary school is a sad affair. Why it is not possible to have a healthy school lunch with food that is good for learning? Domino's pizza or curly fries just doesn't cut it. Hence my children bring their own lunch. To be honest, I have been dreading the beginning of the school year partially due to the 'morning-lunch-making' experience. My mother cooked for about 85 children and 30 adults every day. She followed a kind of food schedule and certain meals appeared on certain days. I have decided to do the same this year.

Lunch needs to be nutritious, wholesome and fresh. Of course it needs to taste really yummy to actually be eaten. I also try to plan the lunch in a balance with the other meals. If the children have omelet with goat cheese for breakfast, lunch can be pasta and dinner should be focused on vegetables. When the children start with oatmeal or some other cereal, I try to get more protein into the lunch and so forth. Additionally it is important that it is ecological sane and keeps trash as minimal as possible. We are using sturdy lunch bags from Pottery Barn, Sigg bottles, Tupperware sandwich container and snack cups. We also have these great sandwich wraps that double as a surface to eat from. I also like to put a thin damp washcloth in a ziploc bag for messy lunches. Hot lunches stay nice and warm in thermos cups for soup.

This is my plan so far: Monday is sandwich day, because dinner will be soup. For bread we use multi grain, whole wheat or rye, english muffins or flat bread. On the sandwich could be turkey and cranberry sauce, roast-beef and salad, tuna salad (rarely), egg and tomato, homemade cream cheese spread, cheese and apples or anything else we come up with. Tuesdays is soup day, left over from the day before. Favorites are tomato soup with rice, butternut squash soup, chicken noodle soup, lentil soup, chili, minestrone and this list could go on forever . Wednesday is special day like panini, bagel, homemade waffles, spring rolls, salad, natural chicken strips or something special the children request. It can also be buying school lunch for the experience. Thursday is another sandwich day and Friday is Pasta Day with either penne and tomato sauce, whole wheat mac 'n cheese, ravioli or some other pasta dish.

As a side I pick something that complements the meal, usually along the lines of unsweetened apple sauce, yogurt, fruit or veggies (carrots, celery, red pepper) and dip, corn chips and salsa, pita chips and hummus, hard cooked egg or cheese and crackers. My children always have their water bottles, but sometimes they can buy milk. For snack at recess I often pack string cheese, fruit, yogurt smoothie, pop corn, pretzels, crackers, oatmeal bars or popcorn. Because of so many allergic children we stay away from nuts at school and have them at home instead. I like to get the children involved in the planning and to some part in the making. They are already very good at reading food labels and understanding them. We also have them help with the snacks like counting out pretzels or crackers or measuring the volume of a snack. This way they help and learn portion control and serving sizes.

I can control what goes into the lunch box, but of course I cannot control if the children eat it, especially since S seems to eat so slow and talk so much, that she returns home most of her lunch. Today I gave her orders to stop talking and start eating until half her lunch is gone.

My child's school assignment turns into thought exercise for me

S. came home with a school assignment for tomorrow, we had to tell her a funny story from when she was little so she could put it into her graphic organizer and bring it to school with a photo from the same time (see below). Sounds easy enough, but I was wrecking my brain and could not come up with a funny story. What came to my mind was the time we lost her at Playmobil World, her many ER visits with extreme Kroup or with horrible head wounds from being unbalanced and other catastrophic times we had together, like puking for hours on a flight to Germany or on another flight when she was focused on kicking the seat in front of her and I had to physically restrain her legs for seven hours.

Apparently my child does not offer a lot of physical comedy, though in retrospect horrible stories can have very amusing and entertaining qualities and if we would make a video showing the many times she has fallen of a chair, we would probably win a prize for it (but we don't have the footage). In our search for stories, we looked into our book in which we record interesting moments of childhood if we remember to do so. Looking through the book, almost everything we found for S was something she said, usually a dialog in which she took everything literal, or just very interesting expressions. Now this should not come as a surprise to me, this child did not learn walking the stairs and running until she was four, but she could write her name before her second birthday. When it comes to vocabulary and perception, she is light years ahead, when it comes to coordinating her body in space, not so much.

But back to the assignment, we had a lot of fun reading in that book of memories and remembering the funny stories and it is good thing for all of us, it makes us laugh together and it shows us the funny and heartfelt times. Through this shines the message that life has its ups and downs and that there are always good moments waiting around the corner, it also shows how life and people are changing, but what is not changing is us being a family. So what story did we come up with? When S was two years old, we had this long and cold winter and the snow accumulated and grew and grew. The children wanted to play in the snow while I got some firewood and S started walking on top of the snow following me until, all of a sudden, she broke through the snow crust and was completely gone! The snow was so high in the backyard, that is swallowed her all the way. After the first shock and overcoming the difficulties of pulling her out, we all just burst out in roaring laughter and stayed away from the snow until it melted away in spring.

And before I forget it, I will add two more entries into the book. While on vacation, when I tried to convince J not to visit the souvenir shops, to my delight S remarked that it is all "glorified junk" anyway. And when I went on an evening walk with her the other week, she complained about not having taken her cardigan and when I reacted surprised, she told me: "I feel a pinch of coldness on my skin." I can't begin to tell you how much I love my cerebral and clumsy muffin.

To dare to sing despite the fear

Today I have joined the Stow Festival Chorus. I have loved singing all my life, especially in a chorus, but it has been quite a while since I sang in a chorus or sang at all for that matter. I have been wanting to join a chorus for so long, but did not know where to start and ... well, I was afraid to do it. So when a friend told me she is joining a chorus and if I would like to do so as well, I just replied that I would be too scared to audition and make a fool of myself. And then it tortured me: here was exactly what I had wanted to do and why was I not jumping with joy and instead had fear rule me?

Why the fear? When I was a child (the newspaper clip shows me performing at the age of four) I was musically gifted, but due to lack of adult guidance, I decided against singing in the advanced chorus at school, because I did not want to get up earlier than I had to. Yes, I gave up the chance to sing at the Hamburg Opera to sleep in. Now I could scream just thinking about it! When I was a teenager, I wanted to join a wonderful chorus, but the director told me to wait until I was 15. I could hardly wait, but then got so scared, that I never auditioned and just went to the concerts. By the time I reached University, I was invited to sing in a chorus and since I was successful in anything I attempted at that time (outside of love) I joined and had a wonderful time singing. The singing was exalting, but the chorus itself was very strange. The singers were a very close knit group that also sang in the academic choir and a lot of them studied music part time or full time. I never found a way into the group and it ended on a very strange note (pun intended). Since then I have been paranoid that it was my singing that was so terrible, that it made these unfriendly and arrogant people despise me. This experience - coupled with the the fact that I have never learned sight reading and need to know what I sing or play - left me with so much fear, that I spent the last years just wishing to be singing but too scared to attempt it.

Fear of failure has always stood by me, I can count on that! But if we do not dare, how can we know? The issue with trying something that might not work out is exactly that, it might not work out and then it is a fact. Sometimes it is easier just to keep wishing and not to try, one can have fear and hope at the same time, but when there is failure, the hope has drowned. I am actually very afraid not to be good enough and not to learn enough to be decent, but I have decided that I rather take the risk. For if I take the risk and give my best effort, maybe it will turn out right and this chance, however little it is, is worth being taken.

And so I have joined the chorus (luckily without audition)! Granted, I feel like I do not quite belong there, that I am not good enough, but I will try to become good enough. The Mass in D by Ethel Smyth is sure worth a huge effort.

Happy Birthday Tasha!

The Rolls for Special Occasion and the Butterscotch Rolls are in the oven for a very late tea, because today we are celebrating the birthday of New England's Tasha Tudor, beloved illustrator and author of children's books. She died this summer and today she would have been 93. Unlike most, I have not grown up with her books and I just stumbled across her a while back. A couple of blogs announced a celebration of Tasha Tudor and I decided to learn a bit more and requested a multitude of books through the library. My mother has been collecting picture books as long as I can think and Tasha Tudor would fit in beautifully, but the books are much less a focus for me, it is more her way and view of life. I am incredibly inspired after reading so much about her and I am in awe about how much she is a kindred spirit. I'd like to attempt an explanation.

In a way Tasha Tudor reminds me of my roots, like the picture of my great great grandmother at the spinning wheel and the way she dressed like my old great aunts when I was little. I am sure that is a big part of the appeal of her life, her art work and her practiced anachronism (Hey, kind of like our visit to Sturbridge below). We live in such a crazy, fast paced, modern and ugly world that we all yearn for the simplicity of times gone by. Of course the apparent simplicity came with a lot of hard work. As Tasha Tudor said: "Don't look for shortcuts; all good and worthwhile things take time and effort." I think that has been the mantra of my mother and my grandmother. I grew up part time in the agrarian world with harvesting, pickling, baking bread, hooking rugs, getting up early to milk the cows, feed the pigs, tend to the garden and so forth. Even though I am not part of this anymore, it made me who I am and I grew up self reliant and with a lot of freedom to do whatever I wanted to do.

Already when I was quite young, people characterized me (lovingly and teasing) as somebody who plants flax for fiber, then weaves it into fabric for a table cloth to be decorated with self cut stamps and home-brewed natural dye, just to adorn a table built from some trees I cut down. Yes, I like making things from scratch. If I look at my mother, my grandmother, my great grandmother; the women in my family have always been like this, may it be arts & crafts, cooking, baking, gardening, landscaping, woodwork, any textile art or whatever else comes to mind. Like Tasha, the women in my family are industrious, the hands are never idle and we take great pride in the work and tasks we do.

Harry Davis asked Tasha to sum up her life in as few words as possible and she said "I was always tired". That made me laugh out loud, because I can absolutely emphasize. People often ask me when I do all my sewing, carpentry, gardening, kitchen arts and so on and I always reply that I do not sleep. I am sure there are a lot of people out there, that feel the same. But I see some other similarities too. When I spoke to my mother today and told her about Tasha Tudor and why I like her so much, she reminded me with a chuckle how I always thought I was born into the wrong time and really belonged to the 19th century. Harry Davis speaks about her dark side also, how she could be a procrastinator and how she could be mean, stubborn, imperious and unforgiving, by her own account. I admit to the very same personality traits.

Even though I did not make it into art school, I always did illustrations and graphic design on the side or full time. I yet have to put some efforts into my own children's books, which have a hard time to actually materialize, partially due to my own business with crafts, textile and paper arts. Tovah Martin says about Tasha Tudor that all the parts of her life work comfortably together - which just this year has become one of my main goals and is part of this blog. I think it is interesting how Tasha despised the word craft and I think I understand why. If you know german, the word 'Kunsthandwerk' is much more appropriate, but it is difficult to translate meaning something like artistic craft, for the lack of a better translation.

The easiest way to connect to Tasha Tudor is in the kitchen. Being the daughter of a chef, I am quite comfortable there and like my mother and Tasha Tudor, most of my recipes start with "melt butter and saute onions" and I use imagination instead of measurements, much to the chagrin of people that ask me for recipes. I absolutely love the idea that she grows her wheat, thrashes and grounds it and after drinking tea for thirty years, I wholeheartedly agree with the importance of tea time. Tasha Tudor made soup every week, huge pots that can feed an army and she pointed out the importance of seasoning and flavor. If you have been to my house, you know soup is a cornerstone of my cooking.

In no means do I claim to be like Tasha Tudor, she was so unique and wonderful and a national treasure - and I don't even have a corgi - but I hope I was able to show why I think we are kindred spirits and maybe allowed a glimpse of why I am so inspired. I like to close this with one of my favourite Tudor quotes that shows up in the recipe for Raspberry Syrup: "I advise reading a book while stirring so as not to waste time."

Thank you for your time, I hope it was not wasted :)

I have enjoyed this week:
The Tasha Tudor Cookbook
Tasha Tudor's Heirloom Crafts
The Art of Tasha Tudor by Harry Davis
Tasha Tudor's Old-Fashioned Gifts

P.S. The Butterscotch Rolls were quite yummy! And though they are not exactly health food, Tasha Tudor also said: "...once a year will not hurt you, and life is too short not to enjoy a few treats."

Mischief is my middle name

A friend of mine put me up to take the 'What Kind of Flower Are You? Quiz' at This Garden is Illegal and it showed that I am a Snapdragon (Antirrhinum majus). I am relieved, since they are quite so lovely. Here is what that says about me: "Mischief is your middle name, but your first is friend. You are quite the prankster that loves to make other people laugh."

I think that is very interesting, because it is true, if anything characterizes me, it is how many friends I have and how much I make them laugh with my odd stories. What this has to do with Snapdragons, I do not know and there is not as much mischief left in me as was once. What I do know is that they are very hardy and can withstand a heavy frost, even thought they came from the Old World - the Mediterranean to be specific. Well I am hardy too and I deal with winter pretty well.

I am just really happy that I am not a Canada Thistle: "You are a mean spirited, ornery cuss. People try to get rid of you and you just keep coming back." You should see the 9 foot tall thistle out there in my yard, it is impressive and ugly.

The best day of summer

Yesterday was our last day before the new school year. Our summer break went by too quickly, just like everybody I have been talking to and there was no unscheduled time at all, except for yesterday. So we all slept in and just decided during breakfast what to do with that lovely and beautiful Monday. Our library has a great program of museum passes and we checked availability and decided on Old Sturbridge Village. We had been wanting to go for quite a while anyway, since the kids have been on a kind of american history trip and they had their old fashioned dresses all ready from our pioneer party the day before. We packed our picnic basket and filled our water-bottles and headed west.

A few years back we made our way out there on a cold January Sunday and got so cold between the car and the entrance, that we opted out. Yesterday was the perfect day though. OSV (Old Sturbridge Village) is offering a plethora of activities and demonstrations on any given day and we decided right away to just do a few houses and things and come back - come back often! We watched a demonstration of dying wool and then of handling a musket. The poor man showing that must have damaged ears for sure. After a brief stop in the tin shop, we headed for the old school house and on the way tried some shuttlecock and trundle rings. At the old schoolhouse we encountered a wonderful and funny young lady teacher, the children absolutely enjoyed it. Our next stop was the potterer and the children had never seen somebody working at the pottery wheel and their faces lit up like candles, they thought that was the most amazing thing they had ever seen. Having tried and failed the pottery wheel, I was just as amazed.

Next on our agenda was a demonstration of broom making, followed by a stop at the bake shop, trying to milk a (plastic-) cow and a break on the playground, where they were working on their skills of playing Graces. This was followed by a hands-on craft making a tin candle holder, which was not as elaborate as the girls had hoped. S being a lover of horses needed to have a horse drawn ride around the mill pond, actually she wanted more than one, but we were in desperate need of lunch, as it was already tea time. We headed to the tavern, got some uninspiring modern kids food and then concluded our visit with two women filling paper tissue balloons with hot air over an small charcoal oven and letting them fly into the sky. S. did not want to stop watching all the failed attempts due to the breeze sweeping down the common. Only a visit to the village bookstore and gift shop could get her moving. We bought a game of graces, though we really loved the trundle hoops too, and they each got a candy stick to sweeten the way home and saying good-bye to summer.

On the way home J. remarked, that this has been the best day of all summer for her and this would have been a lovely ending, but of course S. literal to the bone, had to point out, that the day was not over yet and J. would have to wait with such a statement until the day was truly over. Since it is over today, we can say that it was the best day of summer!

The evil water bottle

Last Monday I went to pick up S from soccer camp. All the fields were littered with water bottles - discarded water bottles, some of them even almost full. Interestingly, a lot of them were the Poland Springs eco bottle. When I first saw that commercial a few months back, I could hardly believe it. Poland Springs is trying to make people believe that they are actually doing something environmental by buying the eco shape bottle and I think this is bordering on green washing. Isn't it great that the bottle is lighter and - wow - even the paper label is 30% smaller. This does not take away from the fact bottled water is absolutely out of place in every day life and actually only belongs to special circumstances. The fact that so many children just leave the bottles on the field is a whole other topic, that I do not want to get in here now.

The production, transportation and consumption of bottled water wastes resources and energy and pollutes our environment. Millions of barrels of oil are used to make plastic bottles and more is needed to transport them, some even across the ocean. The vast majority of bottles end up as rubbish in landfills, even if they are recyclable. Can you imagine 30 million plastic water bottles a day? Or the bottles get burned and release toxins into the air. On top of it, it takes a lot more water in the process, than actually ends up in the bottle. Let's not forget that water is actually a precious resource, too. Some might argue that the oil used for the plastic bottles is minimal when compared to transportation of other food or drinks. Even though that might be a valid point, I cannot consider it, because changing from bottled to tap water is something everybody can do easily. Orange juice has to come from somewhere other than New England (which is one of the reasons we do not buy it regularly anymore), but I have a lot of faucets. Bottled water is unnecessary and as a consumer I can make a decision that is responsible and not selfish.

Some people think bottled water is safer, but in truth, municipal water underlies stringent EPA testing requirements. The Natural Resources Defense Council did a four-year review of the bottled water industry and concluded that "there is no assurance that just because water comes out of a bottle, it is any cleaner or safer than water from the tap." 70% of bottled water produced and sold within states is exempt from FDA regulation, and a good 1/3 "of tested bottled water brands violated, in at least one sample, an enforceable standard or exceeded microbiological-purity guidelines." Additionally, plastic bottles leach chemicals, which is why that have the warning not to reuse the bottles. So I can filter my water at home and use something safer to store the water. If I am in doubt, I can have the water tested to make sure there is no contamination like lead or something else.

We are a convenient society and buying bottled water seems so convenient, or is it? Somehow my life does not seems more complicated and stressful because I fill up my children's bottle with our charcoal filtered tap water. Filling our bottles and taking them with us has become a habit, we do it automatically. I think that filling up our own bottles is cheaper, safer, more convenient and definitely better for the environment. I am not a fan of plastic for food and drink - just think about BPA - though I make some exceptions. We are using non toxic and eco friendly SIGG bottles from Switzerland. One of my SIGG bottles is about 20 years old and is starting to look beat up, truthfully none of them look pristine, since they are meant to be used. So the only drawback to them lasting so long, is that when I see a new print design, I really have no reason to get a new one.

Think about this: there are some cities in Canada, that have a bottled water ban.

Solitude

This is the second weekend in a row, that my husband was so nice to take the kids and give me space and time by myself. Most of my life I have been by myself. My mother and I were a small family unit of two and as a necessity stemming from her working 2 jobs and being very independent, I was raised very early to be self reliable and spent much time alone. I am and was not a loner though, anybody who knows me, can attest to how social I am and how I love to be with friends. As most things in life, there needs to be a balance though between shared and alone time. Solitude is a basic need for me. On one hand it recharges me and readjusts my being back to it's true self and on the other it enables my creativity by giving me rest and energy at the same time. Having a weekend to myself is incredibly freeing, peaceful and constructive.

With the birth of my first daughter, I was propelled into a world completely deficient of solitude and quiet and it took me a while to realize how important it is and that I need to cultivate it. Strange enough though, becoming a mother also made me very lonely. Loneliness is quite opposite from solitude. Solitude is the choice to be alone without being lonely, Loneliness is not a choice and can occur without being alone. I have often experienced the feeling of loneliness while being with other people, feeling out of touch and emotionally isolated.

I do not know if my love for solitude is circumstantial or inherited. My mother and grandmother both were individualistic people that craved it. Maybe it is part of the psyche of creative minds. All my life I have loved to go on long walks, especially by the water or to sit at dusk and just be. Communing with nature rather another person is a state of mind that feels like being one with the world and internally content. In today's world it can be difficult to reach that. We are never out of touch and can be reached anytime and anywhere, have entertainment in our pockets and calendars and to-do-lists that take every minute of our lives. So I have decided that I will try to have a block of time once a week that I spent in solitude and I hope that it can balance the craziness of the other days. So if you cannot reach me on my cell phone, I might be experiencing quiet solitude at Walden Pond, which is a bit closer that this beautiful lake in Maine.

Random and Spontaneous Acts of Kindness

The other day while driving home from the Y, I noticed that the car in front of me had a tire with almost no air left. Now how do you let that person know? If you use the high beams, they just get annoyed, thinking you are telling them to go faster. I had to make a decision, do I turn to take the way home or do I follow the car and hope the driver is not on the way to somewhere far and away? If I just mind my own business and something happens to the driver? So I decided to do the right thing and followed the car. We stopped at a light and for a moment I considered to jump out, but it looked as if the red light was at the end of it's cycle and behind me were two big and powerful cars of german engineering with important -and impatient - looking men. So I kept following that slow, old, white car with the very erratic driver. To my relief the driver stopped soon in front of a store, because she was lost. I stopped right behind her and to my surprise she apologized to me for holding me up. I told her about her tire, helped her with directions and then told her where to get air for the tires.

Maybe you have seen the bumper sticker with the phrase "Practice random kindness and senseless acts of beauty" attributed to peace activist Anne Herbert. I love that phrase and it's message. I have always liked helping people, it is in my nature. Usually most helping out pertains to friends and family, it feels really good though to help strangers, as it appears completely selfless. Or is it? If we all put in our best effort towards strangers, we are making this world a kinder and better place and in turn we benefit from that as well. When I was a teenager, my mother and I spent one Christmas eve dinner with people from the old folks home in our community that had nobody to celebrate with. It was one of my best Christmases ever. I read somewhere to do one selfless thing a day, I think that is a great advice.

Check out 'the Random Acts of Kindness Foundation' or 'the Good Deeds Organization'.

Six Things

I got tagged by my friend Christina at Rockhound Place and I was challenged to write about 6 things that people do not know about me. This is of course a rather difficult endeavor, because usually there is a reason these things are not well known to people, especially since I am a very open and communicative person. Highlights of our past are easy to share, but what about the failures, embarrassing moments and even dark corners? I could find enough dark tales, but that would be a bit scary and very depressing. So, to have a balanced little list, I had to think for a few days to choose and also to ditch most stories having to do with drinking.

Did I mention before that my perfectionism stands in the way of successful blogging like a giant obstacle?

1.) Unusual: When I was a child - a very active child - , I held the record for most x-rays in the practice of my orthopedic doctors and I also constantly depleted their inventory of bandages and plaster. I spent so much time at their practice, that one could have thought I am part of the inventory myself.

2.) Funny: I was so incredibly nervous at my first piano recital, that I played everything way too fast, got lost and had to improvise, which nobody noticed, since I was playing soooo fast :)

3.) Scary: At the confusing age of eleven, I once misinterpreted something I overheard my mother say and consequently believed that she was trying to get rid of me. I was convinced that she had hired somebody to kill me. And so for about a year, on any given Tuesday night, the night she was always taking a class, I searched every inch of the apartment in fear and desperation while only moving sideways along the walls and carrying a big kitchen knife in my hand. I have never spoken to my mother about this and never will.

4.) Stupid: At the age of thirteen I went to a 3 week camp on an island in the north-sea (very cold and windy in March) and I had my first real straight-into-the-heart-fill-your-diary crush. At every party we danced to Blondie's Heart of Glass together. The last time we danced he tried to kiss me and I was so innocent and clueless, I did not get it, moved away and spoiled the moment. I am still upset over that one.

5.) Crime: A lot of the rich kids at school went shoplifting when we had a free period. It was just for fun and they picked random things and then threw them into the trash later. I thought that was incredibly stupid, but somehow it set the scene for me, after all I was not rich like them. I shoplifted three times and I admit that the adrenaline rush is amazing, but I could never do it ever again.

6.) Awesome: While working for the Festival of Hearing in 1990, I got to meet a few composers. One of the composers was John Cage and his personable and humble demeanor impressed me greatly. It was a great experience to enjoy the concert after meeting him.

Maybe I should have chosen more fun stuff, like that I am pretty good at catching chipmunks or that I love to eat Spaghetti with ketchup (there goes my credibility as gourmet chef...). Anyway, I am tagging Andrea at rerun and jungleclown to tell six things.

Tell your children that when you are 17, you do stupid stuff :)

Lately - since a friend introduced J. to them - my children are experiencing a Beatles kick. We were driving somewhere listening to them and my children asked questions about the singers. I told them about my past obsession with the Beatles and that I was a fan in the true sense of the word of being fanatic. I explained how important my home town Hamburg, Germany was in their early history and how Obladi-Oblada was the first pop music I consciously remember. I told them about traveling to England with 17 to see a lot of relevant places and how I almost got run over while taking a picture to the entrance to Strawberry fields. I also told them that I waited a whole week for Paul McCartney in soho square park in front if the MPL building and that in retrospect I think that was rather stupid and I could have done something much better with that time, like visiting some more museums or take the train to Oxford like my friends did. "But then again, one does a lot of stupid stuff with seventeen, it just seems to be that way." I said and my 9 year old replied: "Thank you for telling me that. I will try to remember that and not do stupid things when I am seventeen, good that I know that."

And right there it struck me that it is really important to share with your children and to be honest about your life and your past. I do not think that this will have any impact on the stupidities my children will do when they are seventeen, but I do think that showing children that parents a) had a life before them and b) made mistakes and learned from them, is important for relating to each other. Sometimes we ask so much of our children and forget our own childhood, how unfair life seemed at times, how misunderstood we felt or how we just had to make our own mistakes. When I tell stories of my own past, I do not gloss over and I try not to exaggerate, though logically there are some things that I leave out, because they are not age appropriate or because I do not want to taint their relationship to certain people. I loved to hear stories from my grandmother when she was young. The beautiful thing about listening to that kind of personal oral history is how close it is to your life through relationship, yet how removed it seems because things have changed so dramatically in just a few generations.

The frame work in which this is related to our children plays a vital part in the effectiveness, because we all know the nagging parent that in a confrontation brings up the typical "and I walked 5 miles to school in the snow and without shoes" and usually just gets an eye-rolling. It is a whole other story when you are hanging out with your kids in the evening with the lights dim and the books are read and it is almost time for kisses and lights out. This is the perfect time to talk about things that happened that day, about highs and lows of everybody and maybe there is a story that touches upon some topic that comes up. My mother and her siblings actually had to walk very far on very cold days through deep snow, not dressed very warm and sometimes somebody could not attend school, because there where just not enough pairs of shoes for everybody. Once my great uncle had to whittle wooden shoes for my mother and since he was a man of ideas and not execution, they were not smooth enough, my mother got a splinter, then blood poisoning and almost died. If I bring this up after reading Harry Potter 7 and how cold they kids are in the tent, my kids would probably open to it and could reference it somehow. If I bring this up when I angry because my seven year old strangely enough and yet again misplaced all her shoes, it will just come over as annoying or threatening and probably just be ignored - I always imagine it sounding like the adults in the Peanuts cartoons: 'wha hwah wha bla wha...". I prefer to talk about my past in a humorous way anyway. When I was eight though, I was not able to see the fun in trudging through deep mud in the middle of the night while shivering in my nightgown and being guided by a flashlight that was just bright enough to highlight all the scary spiders in the outhouse, but in retrospect I do think it is quite hilarious.

Anyway, it is wonderful to have connections between my past and my children's present and stories are a good way to express these connections and to live them out. Returning to the Beatles, I enjoy tremendously when we break out in song together and can have fun that way. I have this very old and taped poster of the Beatles in 1965, my birth year, and I had it matted and framed when I attended university. Since then it has been kicking around in basements and attics and now it gets another round of display in my older daughter's room and I think that is just awesome. And just maybe it will make her smile when she is reminded of how silly her mother was when she was 17.

Snags

At times it appears as if life is nothing like a string of snags following one each other and we turn to un-kinking the kinks and un-snaggin the snags.

In regards to my last post about my laundry spider I encountered the first snags. I hung the laundry in the evening and as a result had a few mosquito bites to show and the hanging of the laundry was not peaceful with me swatting frantically about me. And then today, while I was standing outside and painting something - as I often do - a sudden storm came up and I was standing there, messy with paint and not in the position to scoop all the laundry off the 'spider' and so I had to let it get wet again. Therefore timing and weather seem to be a greater factor than anticipated.

I encountered a more difficult snag regarding this blog. I am very thorough and a perfectionist and I aim at being so complete, that I keep reading and thinking and collecting and researching, as if I am writing an article for a magazine. Blogging of course is different and I am not finding an easy way into it, even though I know that this is the perfect forum to post my own questions, to ponder and contemplate, after all, I am on my way, not there yet. I have also noticed something else in my process. Since I have been reading and researching so much, it has been changing my mind set, as if I am sensitized to the topics I am learning about. For example I cannot believe the huge mountain of shiny and colorful wrapping paper and packaging at a birthday party, I can't help but get angry at all the idling cars I notive everywhere (why are they usually really big cars?) and I feel guilty wasting water while waiting for it to get warm. Every styrofoam cup makes me cringe and bottled water elicits anger. Overall this is a good thing though, since it will give me more ideas about little changes everybody can do.

Some snags can be quite funny. Wednesday I set out with the children to visit the farmer's market in Worcester. We were very excited, expecting all this local and maybe even organic produce and just a wonderful time strolling along the stalls. Imagine our surprise when we arrived, since there were four vendors all together. One with bread for $6.25 a loaf, another with watercolor paintings, a little one with pies and finally one with tomatoes and pale looking small cucumbers. We bought a few pounds of tomatoes and then had a chat with the market's manager. He promised it would be different in a few weeks and told us that most of his regular farmers did not have enough produce yet, since spring was too cold. Just for comparison: the market around the corner of my first apartment in Germany had about 200 stalls over roughly half a mile and offered produce, meats, fish, cheeses herbs, tea and spices, bread, home made candy and pralines, even things like antiques, candles and clothing and really anything else one can imagine. The would be numerous places to eat wonderful foods of different ethnicities and often even live music.

If I could just solve that little snag of being unable to customize the blog's appearance the way I want to...

The laundry spider

I am scared of spiders, but I just got the most awesome spider for my garden: a laundry spider.

This is an umbrella design clothes line and it actually looks more like a spider web. When I grew up a lot of people had either a laundry spider - as it is called in German - in the yard or the typical laundry lines between poles. For winter or city dwelling a lot of houses have attic or cellar spaces dedicated to clothes lines. It was not that I really loved going up into the attic to hang or take down laundry or running out because of a sudden impending rain storm sweeping through and you try to get the almost dry laundry before it was soaked. Just like other daily chores, it was just that, a chore.

Until a few years ago I did not have a dryer, but somehow thought when having children and doing laundry for a few more people - more messy anyway - it would be logical to have a dryer. It did not even occur to me NOT to buy a dryer, after all every other family I knew had one. But even though a dryer is more convenient, it is neither good for the environment nor for the clothing itself. Add the whole fire hazard to it, even though we clean the lint trap after every load and the exhaust pipe is less than a foot long, having had more than one house fire in my past, it sticks with you. And so in my quest to change the things that I can change and make at least a small difference, I decided we needed a clothes line. My own clothing for the most did not make it into the dryer anyway, because my first encounter with those machines during living in student housing taught me the lesson of never ending shrinkage. So the idea of a clothes line was just taking it a big step further.

At first we just wanted to have a regular line from the deck to a tree with a pulley system, but being under the pine tree did not seem like a very good idea and it would have only given something like 30 feet, which is not enough. So I looked into the laundry spiders I knew from Germany and if they are available here at all.

My search found a company that has been around for a while making a system made of steel, which I think will rust too quickly.(Whitney) I also found the Belgian company Moerman offering these umbrella dryers made of aluminum and also way more stylish. I could not find any reviews, since they are very new to the American market, but since we are not talking a major purchase, I contacted the company selling these for some more information and felt comfortable ordering it. They came in 4 different sizes and I decided for the second biggest. It has 170 feet of clothes line and it spins in the wind - appropriately it is called the Super Spin. It has a cover to put over it when it is collapsed or one can just take it out of the ground sleeve and bring it inside. I do not think we need to have it out when we have a party.

I ordered it at Shop-at-Clares an actual store in Pennsylvania and not a big box retailer. They have been good about answering emails. It was delivered within days and so my husband was very nice and put the stake/sleeve into the ground, we might have to redo it though, since it sticks out a tad bit and is also not a perfect vertical.


When I threw out my back in the fall I started to share laundry duty with the children. I would do the sorting and they had to the moving into the washer, out of it and into the dryer and out again and then I did the folding and putting away. This helped tremendously with the strain on my back, but that system does not work the same now and I have to come up with a different routine. Besides the schlepping of the wet laundry, I actually quite enjoy standing in my backyard and hanging the laundry. I am sure there are days when it will be a hassle. I am not sure yet how I like to stand in slushy snow and turning my hands into icicles while attempting to freeze-dry my laundry. There still will be days I will decide to use a dryer and I will keep putting socks and underwear in the dryer - until it makes me feel to guilty. At least I have a gas dryer, which uses less and cleaner energy than electrical powered ones.

So being the paranoid person I am, now I am less concerned about the house burning down, but I do wonder if somebody comes to steal clothing, but just as I revel in my bravery in the presence of spiders, I just ignore these thoughts as best as I can :)

My quest

Come and join me on my journey to a more conscious life, my quest to find ways to a more meaningful, richer and fuller, but yet simpler life. My cardinal points are the real life green, frugality, an enjoyable family life, contribution to society, my mental and physical health, nature, happiness and of course cooking and the kitchen garden.

How can we make conscious decisions that are economically sane while good for the environment and contribute to our communities and the world at large? How do we create a life for ourselves and our family and friends that leaves us content and at peace, healthy and strong? Each moment only comes around once and what are the choices we are making? What are the consequences of our choices?

From recipes for the peasant gourmet to running an environmentally friendly household, from doing exercises to finding one's own center and intent, comments on society and the human psyche, analysis of things that are going on around us to wonderful spots in New England. I have studied media, sociology and literature, so naturally there will be posts pondering and analyzing issues tangent to these fields. I have worked many, many different jobs - graphic designer, festival coordinator, journalist, photographer and educator being just a few of them. I build furniture, love gardening and I work with anything paper or textile. As a legal alien German, living in suburban America I am often offered a slightly different perspective. Essentially though and most importantly I am bringing to this an unquenchable thirst for research and the iron will to make the most of what is left of my life - practically and philosophically speaking. Consequently this blog will appear quite eclectic - just my life and my interests.

In a way this is an all encompassing blog, yet trying to focus on the main points, on priorities - hence the name cardinal compass. This is a goal as wide as I can think, making it easy and difficult all the same. The connectivity of all things makes everything relevant and yet, I want to stay focused. There has to be a threshold of what falls within and what stays on the outside. But rather than constricting myself into categories, I have decided to just start. To 'just start' is a big thing for me, as I tend to over think, -plan and -analyze. But that is a whole blog topic in itself ...