Snow falling, heat rising and leaves scattering

stitching
Originally uploaded by monpon.

After the snow stops falling
And the April rains have come and gone
Moss grows soft in dry brown forests

After the heat has settled
And the humidity weighs down
Dry fields crackle and bake

When leaves brighten
And the Harvest moon shimmers
Fat apples drop soundlessly

When the earth stiffens
And dry leaves scuttle off
Bare branches startle

Then I may remember
In bits and pieces
The things that came before:
The snow falling, the heat rising and the leaves scattering.

(text by me for handmade concertina book: coffee and ink dyed paper, text printed on cotton, stitched and hard-bound)

Good Eats Reading

I happened upon two food-related books in the last week "The Dinner Diaries" by Betsy Block and "A Homemade Life" by Molly Wizenberg of Orangette. They are very different in their focus, but both got me thinking about food and eating.

Block writes about overhauling her family's diet to be more sustainable and healthy and Wizenberg writes about her love of cooking and how food is steeped in memories and stories. The two books compliment each other, while as Block tires to cook with millet and eats an 18th century meal of pease porridge, Wizenberg goes through pounds of butter and cups of heavy buttermilk to get a cake batter just right. While Wizenberg's book has more passion for the pure enjoyment of eating, Block's book offers some good guidelines for eating locally (CSA's), sustainably (less meat and dairy), organic and in-season foods (whenever reasonably possible), fair-trade (especially coffee, tea, chocolate and sugar), choosing seafood that is not over-fished or full of heavy metals, and replacing refined white flour with whole grains (think spelt, quinoa, flaxseed, bulgar, millet, wild rice and barley).

Block's book is heavy with debate and conflict (Husband doesn't eat tomatoes! Raw fish eggs are not safe for children to eat! Son swaps healthy food for junk at school!) and she tends to flit from topic to topic and uses a road map that only she is aware of. Her kids are fussy eaters, and that I can relate to, so she is often frustrated when it comes to family mealtimes. Despite her sometimes over zealous approach to improving her family's health, she searches out good/safe/healthy alternatives that anyone can incorporate into their lifestyles one step at a time.

The Orangette blog writer offers her recipes in the spirit of simply sharing darn good food. She adores french food and writes endlessly about cake (!). Her recipes are intertwined with stories of growing up in Oklahoma, travels to Paris and living in Seattle. She rounds it out with soups, breads and salads along with stories about her family, friends and childhood. Her recipes include Fresh Ginger Cake with Caramelized Pears, Shaved Fennel Salad with Mushrooms and Parmesan, Butternut Squash Soup with Pear, Cider, and Vanilla Bean, and lots more. I enjoyed her argument of the merits of "white" chocolate, which sadly fell out of fashion after the 80's and the story of how she ordered a macaroon cake for her birthday one year that was as big as her head. The second half of the book was a bit "fluffy" and I don't mean the cake batter, though the recipes are just as good. But hey, I am not complaining - I just settled down with a whole grain, honey-sweetened, peanut butter cookie and some fair trade Mexico Kulaktic coffee slow brewed in a french press. Yum!

Eldest son

juj and mom
Originally uploaded by monpon.

It is a rainy, overcast morning and I had planned on getting out in the garden and planting a few seeds, seedlings and flowers and digging out a couple of old stumps from a pair of dying bushes. But, seeing as it grey and chilly and I am feeling a bit moody (could they possibly be related?), I'll wait till sunnier days. I have been thinking a lot about change lately: kids getting older and needing me less in familiar ways, marriage and the many stages it goes through, especially with young children, and as the semester ends and I reach my half-way point for a BFA, I wonder what lies beyond that.

As for my eldest, he is about to be a teenager in a few short months. And although he has always been strong willed and not afraid to question authority, he is moving into a place where he will be making more and more of his own decisions. It is tricky to find that balance between his decisions and our limits, his opinions and our values, his need to explore and experiment and our insistence on his safety.

Take the issue of technology for example; it is not uncommon for some middle school aged kids these days to have cell phones, video gaming systems, computers with Internet access, i pods, cable TV, email and texting. I feel like half the battle these days is limiting electronics, which is tough with a kid who at an early age played with snap circuits, who asked for batteries and wires for his birthdays and has interests in solar power and electricity. He has to-date taken apart two computers, modified his pc with more memory and ram than he will ever need, added a second disk drive and 11 speakers, downloaded free software onto his Nintendo DS so that he now has a browser and an operating system and can tap into free wi-fi in the neighborhood. There is no stopping this kid and like myself and my sisters and brother he has a bit of the obsessive in him.

I am proud that he has found something he is truly interested in and is self-motivated to learn more about, and for now we've settled on limited computer/electronic time and making sure he rounds out his days with sports, school work, reading, socializing and outdoor time.

But we can tell where his heart really is.

I do wish perhaps that the world wasn't so technologically driven and that this generation of kids wasn't growing up with an endless stream of digital information. This is when I wish for simpler times, a few acres of land with space for tree climbing and fort building, a creek to wade and fish in, a thicket to run through, to play and hide in. And he knows the value of this, I have to trust that. But he is venturing out on his own, full of opinions and ideas that are his not mine. Hold on tightly, I think, and let go slowly.

sandy beach finds

sandy beach finds
Originally uploaded by monpon.

We had a lot of great finds at the beaches in Oregon and Washington - sand dollars - or their off-white skeletons, crab shells and bivalve clams with hinges intact. We brought them home carefully and Mai shared the crab shell with her fellow 3 and 4 year olds at school who looked at it through magnifying glasses. The clam shells turned out to be good music makers too, when Mai put in a few small stones and shook it like a shaker. Our Music Together class must have inspired her! The oceans, tide pools and estuaries have much different offerings than what we are used to in the great lakes region. Aside from the invasive Zebra Mussels and the occasional dead alewives, the beaches turn up smooth, rounded lake stones make from limestone, basalt, granite and slate with mineral bands of quartz, calcite and agate. I have many happy childhood memories of discovering what might be an agate or holding a perfectly round wave- rolled Lake Superior concretion in my hand.

End of the tunnel

The semester is finished and I can say a happy goodbye to the tunnel and flag books, bad critiques and late night bookbinding.  And Hello to little white strawberry blossoms, planting a salsa garden, starting my summer reading and recreation program.  That is after I catch up on my sleep that was interrupted multiple times between the hours of 10:30 and 2:30 p.m. by calls for drinks of water, distress about said water being too warm and yucky and complaints about ear pain.  All this while I was in the middle of a nice dream about walking through an underground city in search of my sister's college boyfriend, who I finally found after much google map searching.  We were sitting in his apartment with his blond son discussing who inherited some old furniture from the old apartment when I kept getting interrupted by moans, fusses and whines.  Nothing a nice little nap with Mai Mai can cure, though I doubt the dream reunions will be worthy of a sequel.    

I did think I may have to hang up my blogger password for a while there since there wasn't much in the way of actual blogging going on in the past couple of months. But for now I'll continue to post erratically and with as must gusto as I can muster! 

When the living is easy

swing
Originally uploaded by monpon.

Ahh, laundry hanging on the line near a blooming lilac tree. A bright red cardinal searching for worms in the thick green grass. Fresh cut tulips on the kitchen counter from an errant row of bulbs growing on the front lawn. Cilantro, chives and mint in the garden. Finally, we can wake to sunshine and warm air and spend more than a few hurried minutes out in the yard. We are brightening up the living room with a fresh coat of paint, sitting on the sidelines cheering for Juj's soccer team and making plans for summertime.

I won't soon get the sight and scent of the cherry blossoms out of my head.

We all recovered well from our travels and are back home after a lovely family trip. We drove along the coast from Seattle to Portland, stopping at Seaside for an afternoon splash at the beach and then drove to the Northwest Portland Hostel where we stayed two nights. It was truly beautiful in Portland, warm, sunny, green and blooming. Yes, we will have that too, soon! The kids got to run and romp and and roll in the parks and yards and we slowed down then tempo of our sightseeing. We did visit the rose gardens, drink some yummy Rogue beer and walk around near the hostel (Paper Source shop!). Most importantly, though, we got to hang out with cousin Ollie and her lovely parents!

Flying to Seattle or Don't Trust Expedia to Actually Book Your Seats Even Though You Pay For Them

Twelve hours after we were supposed to be at our destination, we are finally on a flight to Seattle. Maia’s got a window seat and is watching Rainy Days with Little Bear, an appropriate theme for one whose first airplane trip is to visit a notoriously drizzly one.

Despite our careful planning, we immediately encountered a major fiasco at the check in desk: there were no seats in our name despite our itinerary. John stood at the Midwest ticket counter, his body slowly slouching and slumping and finally collapsing over a two hour span while the clerk tried unsuccessfully to locate our seats, unravel the mystery of the discrepancy and find some way for us to get to the pacific northwest in time for John's conference. We had booked two months ago through Expedia: four seats to Seattle via Minneapolis, round trip. But although the tickets were confirmed on our itinerary, they were never actually booked by Expedia. Expedia wanted to rebook for the next day at noon and throw our itinerary into the shredder but John and the persistent Midwest clerk weren't having any of it since we had a conference, a car and a hotel scheduled, booked and waiting. Thanks to Midwest, who refused to let Expedia off the hook, we finally got a flight to Minneapolis three and a half hours later. We ran through security and dashed to the terminal, our names being paged over the loudspeaker, only to spend one and a half hours on the tarmac while storms blew in and out and traffic control repeatedly changed directions for the plane's take off route. When we reached Minneapolis, we had missed the connecting flight and needed to find a place to stay close by in order to get up and out by 5am to catch an early flight.

We arrived at Sea-Tac airport tired but happy, our adventure only just beginning. There would be more mix ups, frustrations, fatigue induced crankiness and general disorientation, but our first attempt at air travel with two kids will most certainly be memorable. The views from Moran State Park on Orcas island and while crossing the Puget Sound to the San Juan islands by ferry made up for all for our initial stumbles and hassles.

Luck of the Spring

April is the rainy season and today like many other days this week, is wet and grey. The grass is greening up, pale yellow-green buds are sprouting from bushes and flies and ants have been spotted. Spring bulbs have grown thick leaves and flowered into yellow daffodils with tulips not far behind. Blue violets cover lawns, dandelions lift their fuzzy heads with strong necks and the crocus delicately pushes aside the dirt to make room for her short stem and wide flower.

It has finally warmed up fairly consistently, but I fear once I change my banner picture the temps will drop down into the nasty again. But we have enjoyed walks to and from class, to the library and playground and of course to the bakery for bread, cookies and coffee.

Maia has been watercoloring up a storm! We have been reading lots of library books (Owl at home by Arnold Lobel, There are cats in this book by Viviane Schwarz, You can't take a balloon into the Metropolitan Museum by Jacqueline Preiss Weitzman, Iggy Peck, architect by Andrea Beaty, I love my new toy! by Mo Willems and Skunkdog by Emily Jenkins) listening to Putumayo Dreamland cd's (Celtic and Asian), playing eboo Life on Earth matching game - this one looks even better with images by Charlie Harper, attempting to participate in Turn off TV week (does that include computers, laptops, phones, DS's and video games?) and thankfully, getting back into the spring baseball and soccer seasons.

I made a flag, flexagon and tunnel book this week and read "Seven Days in The Art World" by Sarah Thonton and felt much better about our critiques. Her chapter "The Crit" was as disturbing as it was absurd - 12 plus hour crits for three artworks at CalArts where the instructor says little to nothing and students sleep, eat and occasionally attack the artist for his/her work. Fun times I'm sure. How lucky I really am!

Lost and Found

I was waiting for this portion of the class, the box making section, and as labor-intensive as it was, I am happy to have completed two boxes made of book board and covered in book cloth and decorative paper. One even has compartments!

The first one we made, the smaller one, came with all the book board pre-cut from a company called Paper Source, which also had clear instructions on sizes of the cloth and paper. For the second one, we were on our own in terms of dimensions, paper and cloth sizes and divider lenghts. The planning, measuring and cutting took longer than the actual gluing together.

As for the class overall, I am a bit disappointed that the instructor has had a hard time stimulating discussion during critique time. For the first project she basically did all the critiquing herself, and for the second project, she had the artist speak about their work and then assigned one classmate to make comments. Despite the coffee and cookies she brought in, discussion was painfully sparse.  This last time she assigned a classmate to comment on another work first and then let artist explain his/her ideas, which makes more sense in order to get an unbiased impression about an artwork. Mostly though, the discussion returns to her opinions and ideas and what associations she makes with the materials or images. No wonder no one speaks. 

Frankly it is disappointing when an instructor, who may know how to make things really well, doesn't know how to guide a discussion, provide background or helpful

information that may be lacking or help students to think critically, not just do all the critical commentary herself.

My project ended up being a lost or found box that contained a collection of everyday objects that were compartmentalized and paired with an image that gave the object a new context, meaning and history.

And spring is such a good time for finding these little treasures that have been buried beneath the snow and leaves.

Too many people, too much

John and I got to get away last weekend, the first in many years. John had a Conference in NYC on Friday(along with a million dentists and Irish dancers with big curly wigs) and we celebrated a friend's wedding in Brooklyn on Saturday.

It worked out pretty well that I got to bum around Manhattan on Friday. I walked till my legs fell off - was a little scared of the subway, all the hurried, pushy people, the alphabet soup of rainbow trains, the blaring alarms, long lines and the too much swearing at the ticket machines. So I walked up to MoMA and saw a lovely bookarts/paper/print exhibit called Paper: Pressed, Stained, Slashed, Folded with works by Claes Oldenberg, Anna Maria Maiolino, Eva Hesse, Robert Smith and Joseph Beuys. Also, on exhibit was The Printed Picture which documents the history of printmaking from etchings to photographs to digital prints. Then there is the Kippenberger exhibit and installation, not to mention the permanent collection containting many Picassos, Monets, Miros, Van Goghs, Cezanes, Seurats, Kandinskis, and so on. This is where my brain turns to mush and I require much drinking of coffee on a nice concrete bench in Central Park where there are actually daffodils on the verge of blooming.

Although I didn't make it to Talas, which had just moved to Brooklyn last month, I did make my sewers' pilgrimage to Purl Patchwork for some Japanese cotton print (Kokka) and a party dress pattern (Oliver+S)... oooh the Liberty of London! We quickly toured the Center for Book Arts on West 27th street and saw a display of book sculptures by Jacqueline Rush Lee and many handmade letterpress books.


We also got to play with the dolls and toys FAO Schwartz, ate at Sam's Falafal, saw a late night swarm of bikes for a Critical Mass ride and visited the New York Transit Museum for tees and subway trains for the kids. We did finally ride the subway on a goofy, hiccuping trip back to the hotel after too many Coney Island Lagers.

"Spring" Break

It's the last day of my Spring Break and I am finally coming out of a seasonal fog. My poor brain was stuffed full of sinus pressure and it took me until this week to refill my nasal spray and now my head is starting to deflate. The week went from sunny and warm 70's to grey and cold 30's - no wonder my brain is in shock. Nevertheless, I did get some good spring cleaning done, except for the room I am now in, which is strewn with bills, reading assignments, notices from school, lists, appointment reminders, magazine clippings and piles of drawings and scribbles. As usual I was far too hopeful as to what I might get done this week and am terribly sad that the assignments and projects start up again next week. But with later hours of sunlight and (slightly) warmer weather, things can only be looking brighter...

We had spent a lot of time making mock up books with different bindings including Japanese Stab Binding, Coptic Stitch, pamphlet stitch and hard cover binding using lots of lovely papers and book cloth. The real work came when we had to fill those 20 or so pages with visual narrative content.

Ink, paint, crayons and lots o' water

Maia's got the scribbles. She marks up the white walls of the bathtub, she brushes ink on parchment, smacks her hands full of white paint on black paper. She draws fats circles and delicate lines, large swirls and sweeping arcs with fat brushstrokes. She concentrates, carefully watching her brush move through thick paint. She fills the page almost entirely and sometimes she is satisfied with large swaths of negative space. And when she is done, she is done. She moves on to the next project and never looks back.

Running from the brush

As a rule Maia does not like getting her hair brushed. Also as a rule Maia loves running around the dining room table with loud music and the dog yipping at her heels. For the bi-weekly hair brushing (yup), I usually have to hold her down with my leg around her waist as a "seat belt," spray her hair until it is dripping wet with detangler and gently brush it with the "nice brush." So when she turned the running around the table game into chasing me with a hairbrush game, I couldn't resist the role reversing chase. When she caught me, I had to relent, frightened as I was. The final "do" was not fit for publication and even though I could not see through the wisps of hair over my eyes, my hairdresser took pride in her work and did brush, most importantly, "very gent tel ley."

Reading Habits Part II

On a shelf above my sister's bunk bed were rows of Nancy Drew (yellow cover) and Hardy Boys (blue cover) books, which she would read one after the other, her head obscured by pictures of mysterious mansions, odd-looking characters in awkward positions. She read as if she could make the world disappear with the opening of a book and the occasional turning of the page. She took an interest in detective work and fancied herself a private investigator and had her own book of notations of the strange and unusual happenings that took place in and around the house.
But, she was credited with teaching me to read - in between the stacks at a library book sale.

When the letters finally merged into words and the words became meaning, I was transformed. The code was cracked. The black and white shapes now jumped from the page in simple, repetitive words: "Run Sally, Run!"

Part II of Reading Habits (my early memories of books and reading)

Reading Habits

I grew up surrounded by books. Book-shelves doubled as wall dividers separating makeshift bedrooms from the living and dining areas. The shelves reached high to the ceiling and displayed books of every color, heft, height and subject. Books lay in piles alongside beds, in stacks on the dining room table and were strewn across the hardwood floors. In our attic we housed a library - our collection of books bought at yard sales, thrift stores and church basements. We had over sized books with black and white photographs by Alfred Stieglitz, small paperback boxed sets by C. S. Lewis, Burial Grounds of Woodland Indians, the Beatles Songbook and Modern Toys. We had picture books, young adult novels, comic books, stories of Ernest Hemingway and poetry by Carl Sandburg. We were instructed to have clean hands, never to write in books or fold down the corners. Books were our friends we were reminded, only half in jest. We were read to and we read, with varying degrees of interest.

Excerpt from "Reading Habits" a zine project about early reading/book memories for my bookarts class.

I'm a little airplane

We took a spontaneous trip to Oshkosh last weekend to check out Julian's science Olympiad competition. Julian identified anoles, bull frogs and horned lizards, while other kids tested their knowledge in herpetology, anatomy, cell biology and meteorology. We popped in just in time to see the trajectory and Wright Stuff: a great catapult event and a not so successfully airplane liftoff. Julian stayed over in the UW dorms the night before and came home on a bus later that evening.

Meantime, we took Mai to the EAA Air Venture museum to check out their collection of aircraft including sea hawks, monoplanes, a gyrocoptor and a gyro plane, a hang glider, a Wright Flyer replica, biplanes, triplanes and volksplanes and many others in their "assortment of over 20,000 historic aviation objects." We had the most fun in the Kid Venture Gallery exploring an airplane cockpit, doing flight simulators, blasting off rockets, playing with robotic arms and wind machines.

Julian would have loved it, so we'll have to go back when they have their annual Fly-In at the end of July.

25 Things

1. I am addicted to blogs, coffee, naps and books
2. I am brain-dead by Friday evening
3. I "heart" thrift shopping
4. My secret guilty pleasures are watching bad reality tv shows and reading the tabloids (for shame).
5. I dislike housework
6. I have temper tantrums
7. I dislike schedule and seasonal changes
8. I "heart" kid shows and picture books
9. My favorite kind of book is the memoir
10. Sometimes I feel like I've lost my sense of humor
11. I am happier each year I get older
12. I went on my first date with my husband when I was 14 (we went to Rocky Rocco's and kissed on every corner on the walk home)
13. I love the feel of wool roving
15. I am a vegetarian by marriage
16. I am a coffee snob, french press please
17. I got to relive my childhood through my kids
18. I am intoxicated by the smell of the woods (pine needles, bark, fresh leaves and dirt)
19. I am sad that in some ways it feels like high school never ends
20. I have a love/hate relationship with pets and food
21. I wanted to be a school teacher when I was young
22. My reading comprehension sucked until college
23. I like baths and saunas
24. I wish I could draw better
25. I'd love being alone for part of the day everyday.

This list is subject to revision at any time

Brian tagged me, and Christi, your it!