Three Loons On Island Lake

Three Loons On Island Lake, October 17th 2019, iPhone Video, Island Lake, near Cromwell, Minnesota, video © 2019 by QuoinMonkey. All rights reserved.

We are back in the Twin Cities. The morning we left Island Lake, the moon set in a dense fog. Three loons surfaced to greet the day. Magical is an overused word, but that’s how it felt sitting on the end of the misty dock watching sunlight hit the circling reeds.

We weren’t ready to step into work life Friday morning. The five-thirty alarm interrupted my dreams; the October sky seemed too dark for a waking body. When left to our own devices, we stay up late for creative work, rise later in the morning. We don’t naturally awaken at 5:30 or 6 a.m. in the city.

The ways we make a living around office computers and machinery hum (so different from the Taos hum) remind us of the unnatural habit-forming rhythms our bodies endure to live in a metropolitan landscape: traffic, crazy harried drivers, school bus dodging, and overcrowded parkways.

Cities are beautiful in a different way. Later we’ll take a two-mile walk around an urban lake and go to a friend’s home for an evening fire. The choices we make. I choose to keep writing.

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bar talk – 11/365

bar talk -11/365, Archive 365, Fine Line Music Cafe, Warehouse District, Minneapolis, Minnesota, October 2009, photo © 2009-2012 by skywire7. All rights reserved.

The Fine Line Music Cafe combines the essentials to a fun night out = music, food & friends. Both local acts and national headline bands play here in an intimate setting. Searching through the archives and stumbling on this capture makes me want to get back there soon. Plus today I caught the end of a radio interview with The Gaslight Anthem on MPR’s 89.3 The Current. Guess where they are playing tonight? Yup, the Fine Line. But Mary Lucia said it was sold out so I am just writing about it. Like wiser folks have told me, you can’t do everything!

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ARCHIVE 365 is a photo collaboration between skywire7 and QuoinMonkey featuring images from our archives. We will alternate posting once a day in our Flickr sets from July 1st 2012 through June 30th 2013. You can view our photographs at skywire7 Archive 365 set on Flickr and QuoinMonkey Archive 365 set on Flickr.

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Soo Line – 5/365

Soo Line -5/365, Archive 365, Downtown, Minneapolis, Minnesota, August 2007, photo © 2007-2012 by skywire7. All rights reserved.

Minneapolis has history hidden in the details. Many of the historical buildings are gone but small pieces remain. The camera lens lets you see into a world that might go otherwise unnoticed. This clock caught my eye as we were driving around in the rain taking photos. What a neat find. Plus digging through the old photos makes me want to go exploring for more unique pieces of our past.

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ARCHIVE 365 is a photo collaboration between skywire7 and QuoinMonkey featuring images from our archives. We will alternate posting once a day in our Flickr sets from July 1st 2012 through June 30th 2013. You can view our photographs at skywire7 Archive 365 set on Flickr and QuoinMonkey Archive 365 set on Flickr.

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Happy 4th Birthday red Ravine

In Gratitude for another year of red Ravine, with much appreciation to our readers and guests. You keep the community going strong and inspire me every day with your courage, grace, and humor. red Ravine was conceived in Taos, New Mexico, born on November 3rd, 2006, and launched as an Aries, April 7th, 2007. It seems important to mark the passing of time, to reflect and remember how far we have come.

On the first anniversary in 2008, we were living dangerously. The second year, we celebrated poetry with a Postcard From Billy Collins — Kicking Off National Poetry Month. Year three explored the range of horoscopes of our readers. Here we are at the end of year four. I saw my first butterfly this afternoon signaling the birth of Spring. It held all the promise of a passionate year five. Thank you for all you have given!

-posted on red Ravine, in celebration of her 4th Birthday & Blogiversary, Thursday, April 7th, 2011

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Joshua Trees & Desert Sands — Jan 25 1947

Joshua Trees & Desert Sands, southeastern California, postcard found in Monticello, Minnesota, March 2011, Colortone © Curt Teich & Co., photo scan © 2011 by QuoinMonkey. All rights reserved.

The “JOSHUAS” or “PRAYING TREES” are found throughout the desert sections of the Southwest. The coarse fibrous limbs growing in unusual grotesque shapes bear branches of dagger-like leaves.

When we visited the Trumpeter Swans in Monticello a few weeks ago, we ended up going for pie and coffee at Cornerstone Cafe. But not before we checked out the local thrift shop and a new antique store that opened just around the corner. Liz and I were drawn to a table of vintage postcards, much like the postcard from Atlanta that my Uncle Jack sent to Mom in 1952.

Vintage linen postcards were printed from 1930 to 1945 by Curt Teich & Co. of Chicago; they closed their doors in 1978. In my research, I found that the company used a color printing technique called C.T. Art-Colortone. The thick paper was embossed to give the card a linen texture, and the inks were printed on a lithography press using color separation. Linen postcards often portrayed landmarks, landscapes, and roadside attractions, but fell out of fashion in the late 1940’s when polychrome printing was invented.

I thought it would be fun to post a few over the course of the year. My favorites in Monticello were a series of postcards that had been hand addressed and mailed from somewhere across the USA, back to the small town of Dover, Minnesota. In January of 1947, Ione made it clear that she sprang from the swampy Land of 10,000 Lakes, and found it hard to love the dry beauty of the California desert:

Joshua Trees & Desert Sands – Jan 25 1947, southeastern California, postcard found in Monticello, Minnesota, March 2011, Colortone © Curt Teich & Co., photo scan © 2011 by QuoinMonkey. All rights reserved.

Fri. night.

We are just a few miles from Riverside. May call Ralph Keyes. Guess we are through the desert at last. Will finish the last 100 miles tomorrow. We went thru Tuscon this A.M. I called Margaret. She was so surprised to hear me. We covered miles and miles of desert and cactus. Margaret says the desert will soon start to bloom then it is beautiful. We went through El Centro where Eva Ferrier and Don used to live. Don’t blame them for leaving here. I haven’t been travel sick yet so guess I’ll be alright.

Ione.

The desert has a beauty all its own. Though I have not spent time in the California desert, I find peace and solace in the high desert country around Taos, New Mexico. I read that Mormon settlers named the Joshua tree when they traveled west toward their promised land. The shape of the tree’s outstretched branches reminded them of the Biblical story in which the prophet Joshua reaches his hands toward the sky. Joshua Tree National Park gives the tree another important place in American history: Franklin Roosevelt dedicated Joshua Tree National Park in 1936 (only 11 years before this postcard was written) to assure that California’s rapid urban sprawl wouldn’t threaten the unique desert ecosystem in which the trees thrive.

During the Ice Age, Joshua trees grew strong across the American Southwest. According to an NPR article, in the 1930s scientists explored Gypsum Cave outside of Las Vegas where they found parts of skeletons, hides, and hair from the giant ground sloth — an animal that had been extinct for 13,000 years. In layers of the sloth’s dung, there was evidence that Joshua trees were a favorite food of the sloth, including leaves, seeds, and fruits. When the desert turns dry as a bone, the only way animals like the antelope ground squirrel, desert wood rat, and blacktail jack rabbit find moisture is by gnawing through the bark of live trees. The Joshua tree is one of the “great canteens of the desert.” What would we do without ancient trees?

-related to posts: lack of oxygen haiku, Georgia Pine Over My Grandmother’s Grave, WRITING TOPIC — TREES, Spirits In The Bosque — Patrick Dougherty Leaves His Mark On Albuquerque, Tales Of A Prodigious Cottonwood, Excavating Memories, virgin cottonwood haiku, Fourteen Dozen Roses: The World As The Jungle It Is, World Labyrinth Day, Trees For The Forest Series, lone pine haiku

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Owl Feather Study In Blue

Owl Feather Study In Blue 2, BlackBerry Shots, Minneapolis, Minnesota, February 2011, photo © 2011 by QuoinMonkey. All rights reserved.

Owl Feather Study In Blue 5, BlackBerry Shots, Minneapolis, Minnesota, February 2011, photo © 2011 by QuoinMonkey. All rights reserved.

Owl Feather Study In Blue 4, BlackBerry Shots, Minneapolis, Minnesota, February 2011, photo © 2011 by QuoinMonkey. All rights reserved.

Owl Feather Study In Blue 3, BlackBerry Shots, Minneapolis, Minnesota, February 2011, photo © 2011 by QuoinMonkey. All rights reserved.

Owl Feather Study In Blue 1, BlackBerry Shots, Minneapolis, Minnesota,
February 2011, photo © 2011 by QuoinMonkey. All rights reserved.

It was a windy 10 degrees when I found this downy owl feather blowing across a parking lot. I decided to photograph it with my BlackBerry over a break. The bright sun made the shadows pop against the texture of my lunch bucket. Feathers are symbolic. Ordinary as extraordinary.

Yesterday we drove down to Monticello, Minnesota to see the wintering Trumpeter Swans. Again, two downy swan feathers floated across the observation site and landed by my foot. I’ve added them to my feather collection. Hope is the thing with feathers. And, thanks to Yves Klein, I think I’ve entered my Blue Period.

-posted on red Ravine, Sunday, February 20th, 2011

-related to post: WRITING TOPIC — LIGHT AS A FEATHER

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The Mirado Black Warrior

The Mirado Black Warrior – 3/52, Week 3/BlackBerry 52, Minneapolis, Minnesota, January 2011, photo © 2011 by QuoinMonkey. All rights reserved.

I was at the Casket Arts Studio last night (Liz and I finally completed, scanned, and mailed our sketchbooks to New York) and saw this still life on the art desk. The Mirado Black Warrior is one of my favorite pencils. I bought about ten of them years ago when I read that author Thad Beaumont, the main character in Stephen King’s The Dark Half, wrote his books with Black Warriors. By association, I made the leap that the Black Warrior was also Stephen’s pencil of choice. (I just knew that if I used them to write, his uncanny ability to weave a story together would rub off on me.)

I am fascinated by the way ordinary objects impact our daily lives and have read about the history of pencils. Liz included the pencil on the cover of her sketchbook for The Sketchbook Project because pencils changed the world (her theme was Things That Changed Other Things). I learned at Pencil Revolution that part of what makes the Mirado Black Warrior so enticing is that it is rounded (rather than octagonal), smells like heaven because of its cedar construction, flows smoothly on the page due to the waxed-ceramic and graphite core, and has a semi-soft Pink Pearl eraser that will not burn holes through your pages.

Did you know Henry David Thoreau’s family owned and managed a pencil factory in Concord, Massachusetts? According to The Thoreau Society, “Thoreau family pencils, produced behind the family house on Main Street, were generally recognized as America’s best pencils, largely because of Henry’s research into German pencil-making techniques.” (For more on Thoreau and pencils, check out Henry Petroski’s classic account The Pencil; the thick, tall book is on my bookshelf.)

The Dark Half tops my list of books by Stephen King, along with his nonfiction work, On Writing (see 10 Tips From Stephen King On The Craft Of Writing). I even went to see him at the Fitzgerald Theater in November 2009. So when I saw the Mirado Black Warrior on the desk last night, I knew it would be Week 3’s Jump-Off in the BlackBerry 52 collaboration with Lotus. Feel free to join us if you wish (learn about the project’s beginnings at BlackBerry 52 Collaboration).

-related to posts: icicle tumbleweed (haiga) – 2/52, Best Of BlackBerry 365 — First Quarter SlideShow, BlackBerry 365 Project — White Winter Squirrel, WRITING TOPIC — TOOLS OF THE TRADE

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BlackBerry 52 Collaboration

Bamboo Morning (Haiga), BlackBerry 52, Jump-Off – Week 2, January 10th 2011, photo © 2011 by alotus_poetry. All rights reserved. Medium: Digital collage created using MS PowerPoint 2007 & Adobe Photoshop CS2. Photo taken on BlackBerry. Poem first created on magnetic poetry board with word kits.

I was in Ely, Minnesota on a hot July afternoon when a new haiku 2 (one-a-day) notification popped up on my BlackBerry. It was A~Lotus, a friend I met through red Ravine. Liz and I were taking a break in our room at the Adventure Inn before heading back to the North American Bear Center. I took a minute to read the comment:

Hey, here’s an idea: Why don’t we do a BB 365 Collaboration? We each do our own 365 photos and manipulate them however we want to, be it adding text/poetry, collages or any other mixed media. However, we will be responding to each other’s photos. It’s a triple challenge:

A) The first individual will take the first photo of the New Year.
B) The second individual will take a photo in response to the first individual.
C) Both individuals can be as creative as they want in their own separate photos.
D) By the end of the year, each individual will have their own 365 batch.

Already in the middle of a BlackBerry 365 Project for 2010 (view the entire year’s slideshow here), I had to do some soul-searching about whether I could commit to another year of taking a photo every day. Honey, Lucky, and Ted were waiting. I tucked the idea into the brim of my Minnesota Twins cap, sent off a quick response to Lotus, and headed back to the NABC:

A~Lotus, I’m on vacation up in Ely, Minnesota right now. But, at first glance, I like the idea of collaborating on a BlackBerry 365 year. I definitely want to do another kind of photo practice next year. It stretches me. So let me think about it a little more and read over your proposal again when I get back into town. I like your enthusiasm! Will check out your Flickr account.

Sun Bleached, BlackBerry 52, Jump-Off – Week 1, Golden Valley, Minnesota, January 3rd, 2011, photo © 2011 by QuoinMonkey. All rights reserved.

A few months flew by. I needed to respond. I agreed to post one photo each week for the 52 weeks of 2011. And that we’d call it BlackBerry 52. Lotus is a poet, so it seemed like a fun idea to also collaborate on one renga for the 52 weeks of 2011. We’d call that Renga 52 and keep it going for a whole year on haiku 4 (one-a-day) Meets renga 52.

We finally landed on collaborative practices I felt I could stick to — one photo a week, one poetry addition a week. It’s tough to do any practice for an entire year. I’ll write about the challenges of BlackBerry 365 in another post. For tonight, here are the simple guidelines that A~Lotus and I are following for BlackBerry 52. It’s a call and response:

BlackBerry 52 Guidelines

1. One person posts a BlackBerry photo on her Flickr account each Monday. This is the Jump-Off.
2. The other responds with a BlackBerry photo, a haiga, a piece of art, any form of visual response.
3. The response to the Jump-Off must be posted on Flickr by the end of the next Sunday.

If you’d like to join us for BlackBerry 52 each week, post your responses to the Jump-Offs on Flickr and drop the link into the comments. The Jump-Offs for January 3rd and 10th are the images above. (I’ll also add a BlackBerry 52 link to the sidebar.) You can follow A~Lotus on Twitter (where she writes poetry every day in community with other Twitter poets), at Poetry By Lotus, and on her Flickr account. Can’t wait to see what develops by next New Year’s Eve!

-posted on red Ravine, Tuesday, January 11th, 2011

-related to posts: BlackBerry 365 Project — White Winter Squirrel, BlackBerry 365: Things Loved, Things Learned

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haiku for silence

View from The Gatehouse,” Mabel Dodge Luhan House, Taos,
December 8, 2010, photo © 2010 by ybonesy. All rights reserved.

 

Sleepwalking I arrive
but silence awakens me
to our suffering

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On this second full day of silence, something snaps. I thought I came here because: I had vacation time to kill, I wanted to give myself a gift, it had been a long time since I’d been to a silent retreat in Taos with Natalie Goldberg. Today I am reminded that this is not play. When I go into silence, pain emerges. I wake up.

A quick step out of silence to give you an update, QM. I am also reminded that I met you here, that our friendship was created in silence and through the humanity and compassion we find when we come here. I am grateful for you, for all the friends I have met through Taos, and for everything I have learned about myself through coming here.

I am not writing much since arriving. In fact, I have only thus far written in the zendo during collective Writing Practice. Outside of class, I have spent my free time in The Gatehouse, where I’m staying. I’ve read, slept, and worked on collages. After I publish this post, I might venture out for a walk. I crave the cold air in my lungs.

It is good to be here, to wake up to all of me. To be humbled again.

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-Related to posts Sitting in Silence and haiku 2 (one-a-day)

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This Thanksgiving Weekend, Make A Gratitude Journal

Lotería Journal, altered Moleskine cover with ybonesy doodles (plus Caran d’Arch, gouache, and ink pen), design © 2010 by ybonesy, all rights reserved.

I love journals. I’ve written about my love of journals. I have doodle journals and writing journals, and I even have my first ever journal, a gift from my sister Bobbi, who got it for me as part of a Scholastic book order she made for her new class. She gave it to me about the time she started teaching: 1974. I was 13 years old, a newly minted teen, and my journal (it was actually more of a diary, although I’m not sure what the difference is) was the perfect place to log news of piddly babysitting jobs (for which it was not uncommon to make 75 cents!), swim lessons, and crushes. That early journal got me believing that any life—even one so boring as my own—was worth recording.

That’s the beauty of the journal. That it might collect the ordinary and occasional extraordinary goings-on of your existence. And that someday you might look back on it as one experiences the family photo album. Memory, insight, a looking glass into your world, or at least a snippet of it.

So it is not surprising that I’ve recently discovered the joy of making journal art. I’m not sure what else to call it. I take blank journals—the basic Moleskine works great—then figure out designs to create on the covers. It’s a fun project, one that can easily be done over a long holiday weekend.

♥ ♥ ♥

To make the Lotería Journal, which I fashioned after the Mexican Lotería cards, I used the following items:

• Moleskine or other journal – I like the Moleskine brand, but it is a bit pricey. Any simple journal will do; for this project it’s best to stay away from leather or cloth covers.
• Gesso – to apply to the cover so that you can color or paint the cover (the gesso acts both as a whitening agent to better absorb and reflect light in color, as well as a primer so that whatever you apply bonds well to the surface).
• Evenly sized images – for this journal I used my own, but you could cut images out of magazines or tear out cool papers and draw different designs on each one.
• Mod Podge – to glue the images to the Moleskine cover, and later, once the piece is completely done, I’ll paint the entire cover with Mod Podge to seal the design and give it a glossy finish.
  
• Paints and wax crayons – to add color.
• A black pen, preferably permanent, but if you use an impermanent one, just make sure it is completely dry, and when you do your final paint with Mod Podge, do a quick brush; don’t go back and forth or linger else the black ink will smudge.
• Brushes – a one-inch one for the Mod Podge and a small one for my paints (both of which I keep in water while I’m not using them).

♥ ♥ ♥

And given that we are in the Thanksgiving season, I can’t think of a better use of a lovingly created journal than to transform it into a Gratitude Journal. Now, folks out there may practice daily Gratitude, but for my part, this is an area that I’d like to improve. I want to spend more time giving thanks for what I have and less time wanting whatever it is I don’t have.

A Gratitude Journal can take several forms. One idea is to use it as a way to say Thank-You to someone in your life. My sister Janet once created this type of Gratitude Journal for me, although we didn’t call it that back then. But now as I think about it, that’s exactly what it was.

About thirteen years ago I organized a trip to Spain for my dad, Janet, another sister, and my sister-in-law. The five of us spent two weeks traveling all over the country, staying in unique and at times quirky places. An olive-farm-turned-bed-and-breakfast, a renovated monastery, and a former brothel, for example. We had a wonderful time, and afterward Janet made me a journal as a memento of our experience. Handmade paper adorned the front and back covers, and inside on a long single sheet of paper that she folded like an accordion, she made a collage of different scenes from the trip.

You could create a Gratitude Journal and inside turn it into a personalized Thank You to someone close to you. I know I often pull out the journal my sister made for me. It’s so much richer than a Thank You card.








A Gratitude Journal could also be something you keep for yourself over a certain period of time—say, the upcoming year—to help practice gratitude in your life. There are a lot of ways you can do this. For example, each day you could think about what it is you’re grateful for and then write about that particular topic. Or make a doodle about it, or do a collage on that page.

QuoinMonkey wrote a post at the end of 2007 titled Feelin’ Down For The Holidays? Make A Gratitude List. She made her list at the end of the year, as has been a tradition of hers for several years now. Here you can see her Gratitude List from 2007 looking forward to 2008, along with mine. And here are QM’s Gratitude Lists from 2009 and 2010. You could follow QM’s example and dedicate a sheet of paper to each letter of the alphabet and see what flows onto the page.

Or maybe your Gratitude Journal project is more about simply focusing this weekend on creating a beautiful cover for your journal. Maybe that in itself is the act of Gratitude, giving Thanks by allowing yourself to spend a few hours making art.

And speaking of giving Thanks, QM and I are immensely grateful for the community and inspiration we’ve received over the years from working together and from all of you.

Have a wonderful Thanksgiving holiday!

♥ ♥ ♥

♥ ♥ ♥

Journal Art, mixed media journal covers—washi paper, Caran d’Arch, collage, small wooden canvases top two), postage stamp (third), stickers, etc., design © 2010 by ybonesy, all rights reserved.

♥ ♥ ♥

♥ ♥ ♥

-Related to post On Providence, Old Journals, & Thoreau

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World’s Largest Ceramic Mosaic – Hanoi’s Ceramic Mosaic Mural Project

In a flash, HaNoi’s Ceramic Mosaic Mural as seen from the taxi, October 2010, iPhone photos © 2010 by ybonesy, all rights reserved.




Entering the city of Hanoi last week, I immediately notice that the ceramic wall is done. This four-kilometer-long work of art, which has been in progress for the three years since I started visiting here, runs along the city’s Red River dyke system. Earlier this month, just in time for last week’s celebration of Hanoi’s 1000th birthday, the completed wall officially became the world’s largest ceramic mosaic, as recognized by Guinness World Records.

The idea for a ceramic wall along Hanoi’s Red River came from young journalist and painter Nguyen Thu Thuy. About the world record, she said:

We are very proud to have successfully gained a Guinness World Record achievement. This project reflects the vibrancy and complexity of Vietnam’s capital city, and is the ideal way to commemorate Hanoi’s 1,000 year anniversary. The integration of international artists and children’s art depict many different moods, cultures, eras of history and styles, and they have all been created with the greatest craftsmanship. We hope that this achievement brings pride to Hanoi and that the people of the city enjoy the mural’s beauty for many years to come.

The collective public work of art—Vietnam’s first—began in 2007. The mural is organized in 21 sections and was designed by 35 professional artists from ten countries and supported by hundreds of artisans from traditional ceramic villages in Vietnam, Vietnamese and other children, and students from fine arts colleges throughout the country. The murals depicts Vietnam’s landscape and peoples, and is said to be a visual narration of the country’s history.

The mural embodies the country’s rich tradition in ceramics, of which I barely scratched the surface during a day of sightseeing to the town of Bat Trang. The entire village, it seemed, was dedicated to the making and selling of gorgeous plates, cups, vases, sculptures—you name it, they made it.

More than anything, Hanoi’s Ceramic Mosaic wall reminded me of the color and buzz and energy of Hanoi and all of Vietnam.

You can read and see more about the wall, including video clips showing artists working on the mural, in the official Hanoi Ceramic Mosaic Mural website. The Hanoi Ceramic Mosaic Mural blog includes many interesting photos, such as the original Photoshop artist renderings of the mural back when it was only a concept. That site also talks about the artist and staff of the project. Finally, this Travel Blog entry includes close-up photos of the wall in progress.

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Goodbye Corrales, Hello Vietnam

It’s that time again. The harvest is winding down. Jim bought a small basket of red and green chile so we can roast, peel, and freeze a few baggies to pull out in the middle of winter, when our bodies crave the chemical capsaicin (which produces the heat in chile). The air conditioner is closed up, and the heater turned on.

But it’s also time for one of my frequent journeys to Vietnam. I’ve stopped counting how many this makes — surely I’ve used up the fingers on both hands and am now onto my toes. I can tell you that each time I prepare for another trip, I go through the same bizarre process of mental gyrations.








Roma’s Five Stages of Travel Preparation


Stage One: Avoidance. As soon as I know I have to go on a long trip abroad, I put it out of my mind. After all, the trip is weeks, maybe months away. I sometimes neglect to tell even my family; I don’t want them to fret any earlier than necessary. Although I’ve gotten better about this, it would not have been unusual a few years back to hear the following conversation in my household:

ME: Hey, Jim, I did tell you that I’m leaving on Monday to (fill-in-the-blank-country)?

JIM: What?? No, I had no idea.

ME: Oh, I’m sorry. It was spur-of-the-moment.

JIM: You mean, they only gave you four days’ notice?

Stage Two: Nostalgia. I walk around my house, the patio, my yard, the girls’ rooms with a sweeping sense of loss and dread. How can I leave all this? I don’t want to go. Don’t make me go!!




Corrales Growers Market with the iPhone, all photos © 2010 by ybonesy. All rights reserved.




Stage Three: Guilt. Surely my children will be damaged by all my globe-trotting. Don’t people ask me every time I tell them I’m off again, “What about the girls?” I rush around like a crazy woman, trying to make my absence more bearable. I take Em’s Halloween outfit to the seamstress so it will be ready by the time I return. I hang up Dee’s clothes in her closet so she could find them easily while getting ready for school. Jim gets a homemade apple pie–his favorite. So this is what inspired Superwoman, I think.



Stage Four: Panic. This is the frenzied state I find myself in the day before I leave, my suitcase still not packed. I am relieved to find that my multientry visa is still valid. Whew! It would have been disastrous had it expired. (Been there, done that.) At 8 pm, the hour I should be hitting the sack given that I have to wake up at 3:45 am, I start flinging clothes into my suitcase. It’s cool in Hanoi, hot in the south. Whatever I forget to pack, I’ll just have to buy there. Hmmm, was that a goosebump I just felt?









Stage Five: Calm. Bags are checked, boarding passes in hand. I got an upgrade on the leg from ABQ to SFO. Wandering through airport stores, it dawns on me that I forgot to pack my neck pillow. Pick up a super soft one to add to our collection back home. Also picked up two books I’ve been wanting to read: lit by Mary Karr and Louise Erdrich’s The Plague of Doves. Between the books, my writing and doodle journals, plus a presentation and a bit of writing for work, I will make good use of my alone time. I’m ready for this. Let the fun begin!









A Sampling of (Recent) Vietnam Posts

• Vietnam As Destination, Vietnam As Muse
• The Mekong Delta Through A New Set Of Eyes
• Children In Vietnam
• On Being A Mother Who Travels (Or A Traveling Mother)
• Local Color — My Favorite Shots From Ha Long Bay
• Vietnam — On The Road To Change
• Vietnamese Painter Pham Luc & The Gift Of Happiness
• Burro On An Airplane

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FridgeFotos: Hot Meets Cold

My appliances: Chambers stove, Thermador oven, Big Chill fridge
(front and side), photos © 2010 by ybonesy. All rights reserved.






Chambers, Thermador, Big Chill
hot, hot, cold
duck, duck, goose

-Related to posts PRACTICE: My Refrigerator and FridgeFotos – Assateague Island To Frozen Trolls

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PRACTICE: My Refrigerator – 20min

My refrigerator looks old but it’s not. We bought it this year, from a company in Boulder, Colorado, that makes retro appliances. Our fridge is a crisp white, matches the old Chambers stove, which really is old. Both have rounded edges. The fridge has a Whirlpool motor and doesn’t make a whole lot of sound, not the way some old fridges do. But I guess that’s because ours isn’t old; it’s new. Most importantly, it fits into the predefined space for the fridge, a space that happens to have been designed in the 1950s, when the house was built. Which means it won’t fit a year 2010 refrigerator, even if we wanted one.

Which we don’t. No, our retro fridge is a handsome appliance. It makes me think about Pablo Neruda’s sensuous Oda a las cosas. Ode to things. Our refrigerator is shiny, and the name of the company that manufactured it appears on a nameplate with retro cursive handwriting, the kind that evokes images of old majestic cars from the 1950s. Buick. Cadillac. Chevrolet.

Honestly, I don’t even know what the majestic cars were back then. I was born in 1961, but most of my memory is set in the 1970s. I suppose this fridge of ours is reminiscent of June and Ward Cleaver, but I like to think it could also have fit in the home of the Brady Bunch. You know, Alice, the maid, and how she wore that blue dress with the white apron, and the six kids, three boys and three girls, all the exact same age, who often filed down the stairs and ended up in the kitchen, hungry.

I bet when they looked in their fridge they found things like big Kosher dill pickles. Mom always bought us some generic brand pickle, not the crispy Koshers that I buy for the girls. Although when I was a kid, we ate our generic pickles without complaint, and when we finished them off, we drank the pickle juice. And we ate carrots that we peeled and dipped in white vinegar, with salt.

Our fridge, it gives me a good feeling. I guess because it’s such a perfect thing. Why did fridges have to change so much anyway? A few years ago, when we were doing a home remodel, Jim and I went refrigerator shopping. The fridges were so complex. There was the SubZero and the Viking, and the way the salesmen talked about appliances, you would have thought we were buying cars. I think you could keep different parts of the refrigerator cooler than other parts, the way in new cars you can heat one person’s side yet leave the other person at a lower temperature, and the kids can watch movies in the back while your car tells you how to navigate to the grocery store. So it goes with fridges. You want apples at a temperature where it doesn’t hurt your teeth to bite into them yet they stay crisp for weeks? I bet newfangled fridges can do that for you.

Our refrigerator is new but it’s humble. It looks good, and for someone like me, often the way it looks is more important than what it does. It’s not because I’m shallow, although it’s certainly within my repertoire to be shallow. But in this case it’s a visual thing. Jim’s functional, but even he seems to enjoy the new fridge. It is wide on the inside, not too many shelves. We need to bend down lower than with the more sophisticated fridge that we bought for the kitchen remodel but couldn’t use in our new house because, well, our new house is actually an old house.

Maybe I love our refrigerator because it reminds me of days when I ate cheese and mayonnaise sandwiches on soft bread. Not Gruyere or dill Havarti, but plain old yellow cheese. Before we knew that mayonnaise would clog your arteries and that soft bread would make you soft, too, and when the only people who ate chewy bread was the woman in the Nude Drawing class who wore her long braids in two buns on each side of her head, and the only way she got chewy bread was by making it herself.



-Related to posts WRITING TOPIC — MY REFRIGERATOR and FridgeFotos – Assateague Island To Frozen Trolls

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FridgeFotos – Assateague Island To Frozen Trolls

My Refrigerator, photo © 2010 by chickenlil. All rights reserved.

From chickenlil:

This is a photo I took last summer, my grandson decided to play a practical joke on us by loading the fridge with trolls! Had to take a picture of that!

My Refrigerator, photo © 2010 by reccos62. All rights reserved.

From reccos62:

What is on my D or no D? BITE ME from Assateague Island, two PSU football player cards that match the jerseys my daughter and I have, a picture of my honey, weight loss ideas, a school photo of my bonus son.

When we posted WRITING TOPIC — MY REFRIGERATOR on red Ravine last week, our readers were inspired to take photographs of their refrigerators. The above are a few of the images we received. Hope you enjoy them as much as we do. We’d love to see the inside/outside of your refrigerator. If you are so inspired, send your FridgeFotos to info@redRavine.com. Or make a list of what’s inside/outside of your refrigerator and join us in a Writing Practice. When inspiration strikes, follow the Muse!

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yellow sock haiku

Hello From L&P Sock Puppets Invade Osteo, Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, September 2010, photo © 2010 by Pam Wilshere, haiku by Louis Robertson. All rights reserved.

yellow sock haiku

footed yellow sock
breathe deep the essence of earth
love, my yellow sock

NOTE: My brother Louis has been pretty sick for the last few months. A few nights ago, he went into the hospital where he still resides this evening. Earlier today, his partner Pam sent me a text message, followed by a photograph. This photograph. I can’t tell you how big my smile was when I saw that yellow sock puppet pop its head up on my BlackBerry. My brother’s sense of humor is shining through. A glimmer of hope. It made me happy when they said I could post their collaboration on red Ravine. 8)

Louis wrote with us a few weeks ago when he was inspired to join us on the WRITING TOPIC — SCARS. He also sent along a photo of his liver transplant scar (not for the faint of heart). To meet Frankenbelly 2 and learn a few things he’d like to pass along to his kids, see his Writing Practice post PRACTICE — SCARS — 15min.

Thank you L&P Sock Puppets. You lifted me. I have so much gratitude for the gift of family. And laughter.

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WRITING TOPIC — MY REFRIGERATOR

My Refrigerator, BlackBerry Shots, Golden Valley, Minnesota, September 2010, photo © 2010 by QuoinMonkey. All rights reserved.

To some, refrigerators are bare places, slick and spit-polish clean. Enamel, stainless steel, plastic. Avocado greens and lemon yellows in the 1970’s. Black, white, and stainless steel, the current aesthetic. For some, appliances are pieces of art — sleek, retro, places that make a statement through even curves and vintage hardware. In our house, the fridge is a place that collects — grocery lists, receipts, magnets, calendars, bits and pieces of our lives. One day, we realize the clutter for what it is, throw the valuable photos and magnets in a shoebox, and toss the rest. Until the cycle begins again.

The front of my refrigerator reflects a timeline of my life, something I call fridge typography. Magnets from Ocean City, Maryland, an old photo of Liz’s sister when she was a small girl, the Morton Salt Umbrella Girl, the official Geocaching logo, Lily and Hope black bear swag from our trip to the North American Bear Center in Ely, Minnesota last July. There is a school photo of my niece, a postcard of Hershey Kisses I sent to Liz when I was in Pennsylvania in May, another of the World’s Largest Boot (size 638 1/2 D) sent to Liz by Bob (or was it Jude) when we were down near Red Wing, Minnesota for a writing retreat earlier this year.

Fridge Typography, September 2010, photo © 2010 by QuoinMonkey. All rights reserved.

What does your fridge look like? Is the outside uncluttered and sparse? If so, open the door. What food do you have inside your refrigerator? Is it all fresh and ready to eat? Or are there a few rotten items to be tossed. What about the freezer? Do you have old-style vintage refrigerator coils (remember what it used to be like to defrost condenser coils)? Or is yours state of the art, energy efficient, humming along quietly in the night.

Fifteen minutes should do it. Or if you’re on a roll, go for 20. Get out your fast writing pens and Writing Practice notebook. Jot down My Refrigerator, and Go!

-posted on red Ravine, Sunday, September 19th, 2010

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