Love Is On Its Way

Deviled Eggs, Love Is On The Way, Minneapolis,
Minnesota, April 2010, photo © 2010 by
QuoinMonkey, All rights reserved.

Wake Up! Winter Bones,
Celebrate the Rites of Spring —
Love is on its Way.

-posted on red Ravine, Easter Sunday, April 4th, 2010

-related to posts: haiku 2 (one-a-day) and Watch Me Pull A Rabbit Out Of My Hat — last year’s Easter post with info on the origins of the Easter Bunny

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Ode To Joy & Christmas Eve

Ode To Joy & Christmas Eve, snapshot of my art studio desk, BlackBerry Shots, Minneapolis, Minnesota, December 2009, all photos © 2009 by QuoinMonkey. All rights reserved.

savor the small things
the joy of writing haiku
in the dead of night;
the silence of snow falling,
calms the chatter in my mind

circumspect darkness
relative humidity
what matters to me?
seeing clearly with the heart
things invisible to the eye

Holiday blizzard
thank you for braving the storm
following footprints
of those who walked before us —
Joy hides in the strangest places

It’s the dead of night. I’m staring out the window at snow falling on cedars, oaks, and ash. A Holiday blizzard. I’ve always liked Christmas Eve almost better than Christmas. When I was growing up, I’d stay up way past the time when my five younger siblings were in bed, rocking in the leather recliner, bathed in the glow of firelight and candles. Some years the living room would be blue from head to toe, my mother’s favorite color, with a tree dressed in angel hair and the front door wrapped like a package with pine cones and ribbon. Do they still have contests for best door decorations?

I can smell Amelia’s fruit cake and rocks, ladles of egg nog, cloves spiking the Christmas ham. It’s the time of year when I count my blessings. I’m grateful for family, friends, and lovers, for blog partners and red Ravine readers, for puffy orange coats and wet mittens. Thank you for walking with us through murky and uncertain waters. Thank you for running through rain. And pausing in the darkness of Winter. There is so much joy in the silence.

Happy Holidays from red Ravine, December 24th, 2009

-related to posts: haiku 2 (one-a-day), Poem For The Trees (Keepers Of The Light), A Few Of My Favorite Things, On Eating December Snowflakes, Tamales — A Christmas Tradition, Merry Merry, Happy Happy, A Partridge In A Pear Tree, A Christmas Gift From Dad, On Collecting Pigs Against Your Will

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Here Comes The Sun(Shine) Shrimp!

Castles In The Sand, Ocean City, Maryland, July 2005, photo
© 2005-2009 by QuoinMonkey. All rights reserved.

Happy New Year to all of our red Ravine readers. When I was talking to my brother on Christmas Day, he said he was going to fire up the winter grill to make my sister-in-law’s luscious Sunshine Shrimp. She commented on ybonesy’s Tamales – A Christmas Tradition  that she would send the recipe along to anyone who wanted to try it. Here it is!

I’m a big shrimp lover, and since I’m allergic to fish, tend to order shrimp whenever I get the craving for seafood (just ask Mom and Liz how many fresh shrimp I ate in Savannah and St. Simons last summer!). All this talk about shrimp led to memories of sunny days at the ocean, so I combed through the archives and landed on the beach at Ocean City, Maryland.

Liz and I joined my mother, sister, and her family there a few years back and had a great time boogie boarding and bodysurfing. (I won’t mention how many pounds of sand ended up my bathing suit when I wiped out!). It’s also the first time Liz met my family so she was very nervous. I’m happy to say, she passed with flying colors!

It’s 4 years later, New Year’s Day 2009 and we’re watching the 120th Annual Tournament of Roses parade and looking forward to more black-eyed peas for lunch. We slow-cooked them last night and ate them right up to midnight. How are you spending your New Year’s Day?

Backbone, Flipper Claw Of A Dragon, Face Of A Sand Dragon, Ocean City, Maryland, July 2005, photos © 2005-2009 by QuoinMonkey. All rights reserved.

Sunshine Shrimp!

• 2 lbs medium sized shrimp (peeled & deveined)
• 2 lbs assorted fresh vegetables cut into 1 inch pieces (yellow squash, green squash, yellow & red bell peppers, red onion). You can also add mushrooms to the mix but J. & I don’t like them in this recipe.
• 1 medium sized can frozen orange juice concentrate that has been thawed
• 2 TBSP lemon juice
• 1 TBSP olive oil
• 2 tsp minced garlic or 2 cloves of garlic that have been pressed
• 1 tsp dry Dill Weed (or fresh) that has been finely chopped
• 1/2 tsp each salt & pepper

In a large storage bag, combine all ingredients. Shake well to coat thoroughly. Chill & marinate for 30 minutes.

Preheat grill & put ingredients on a small slotted grill pan. You can also thread these on a grill skewer if you don’t have a slotted pan.

Grill for 8-12 minutes until shrimp is opaque & vegetables are tender. This can also be done in the oven rack set to broil. Best if done on a grill, though!

Serve hot with white or long grain rice.

 

Thanks to alittlediddy for her Sunshine Shrimp recipe. Gratitude to all who read, comment, and visit red Ravine. I’m grateful for your presence here. And to my blog partner extraordinaire, ybonesy, I couldn’t do it without you! A very Happy New Year to you and your family and I look forward to another year in creative collaboration with you on red Ravine.

 May your 2009 bring prosperity, love, and joy.

Sand Dragon, Ocean City, Maryland, July 2005, all photos © 2005-2009 by QuoinMonkey. All rights reserved.

-posted on red Ravine, Thursday, January 1st, 2009

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Poem For The Trees (Keepers Of The Light)

Antique Lights, Minneapolis, Minnesota, September 2008, photo © 2008 by QuoinMonkey. All rights reserved.

I can’t believe it’s Christmas Eve. Our cat Chaco, who we discovered last week is chronically ill, is resting comfortably in the bedroom. He spent Winter Solstice in the emergency hospital. We brought him home from the vet yesterday along with three prescription medications and a bag of fluids we’ll be administering subcutaneously over the next few days. Dr. Blackburn says he’s a fighter; he’s walking better, eating more regularly, and his little Spirit has more life than it did last week.

We’ll take him back on Saturday to see how his vitals look. In the meantime, we are learning to care for a chronically ill cat. It goes without saying, Liz and I haven’t been getting much sleep. So the energy for posting has flagged. But then I ran across this inspirational poem by Russell Libby.

Described by kindle, site of the Northern New England Bioneers, as “a farmer, a selectman, an economist, a poet, and a visionary builder of local, organic food systems in Maine and beyond,” he seems like a man close to the Earth. Since 1983 he and his family have grown organic food for friends and family at Three Sisters Farm in Mount Vernon, and his Maine roots date back to 1635, when his forebears settled in the colony.

His poem reminded me of all the trees that lose their lives this time of year (31 million Christmas trees last year in the U.S. alone). Many Christmas trees come from tree farms these days (500 Minnesota tree farmers expect to harvest 500,000 trees this year), though I have been known to go out and cut my own from the forest of a friend’s ancestral lands. Fresh pine is the smell of Christmas for me. And I love sitting in the dark and staring at the lights on the tree.

Since we haven’t had time to put a tree up this year, I thought I’d post these photographs of the antique Christmas lights mentioned in The Poet’s Letter — Robert Bly. It was at Poetry Group that night that our friend Teri shared a story about how her family discovered the lights hidden on top of a rainwater cistern in the basement of a Minnesota farmhouse that has been in her family for generations.

Trees provide balance and structure for the thousands of lights that burn brightly this time of year. I am grateful for the untouched land, places preserved for old growth forests, trees with skins that will never be touched by an ax or saw.

Here’s one last quote for the trees I found in an Alice Walker book, Anything We Love Can Be Saved — A Writer’s Activism. It’s printed below a black and white photograph of a man with his arms stretched wide around a tree. It’s a good time of year to remember what is worth putting our arms around.

This photograph of an Indian man hugging a tree has been attached to my typing stand for years. Each day it reminds me that people everywhere know how to love. It gives me hope that when the time comes, each of us will know just exactly what is worth putting our arms around.

   -Robert A. Hutchison

 

Holding The Light, Minneapolis, Minnesota, September 2008, all photos © 2008 by QuoinMonkey. All rights reserved.

American Life in Poetry: Column 194

BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE, 2004-2006

Father and child doing a little math homework together; it’s an everyday occurrence, but here, Russell Libby, a poet who writes from Three Sisters Farm in central Maine, presents it in a way that makes it feel deep and magical.

Applied Geometry

Applied geometry,
measuring the height
of a pine from
like triangles,
Rosa’s shadow stretches
seven paces in
low-slanting light of
late Christmas afternoon.
One hundred thirty nine steps
up the hill until the sun is
finally caught at the top of the tree,
let’s see,
twenty to one,
one hundred feet plus a few to adjust
for climbing uphill,
and her hands barely reach mine
as we encircle the trunk,
almost eleven feet around.
Back to the lumber tables.
That one tree might make
three thousand feet of boards
if our hearts could stand
the sound of its fall.

American Life in Poetry is made possible by The Poetry Foundation publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also supported by the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Poem copyright (c) 2007 by Russell Libby, whose most recent book is “Balance: A Late Pastoral,” Blackberry Press, 2007.

Reprinted from “HeartLodge,” Vol. III, Summer 2007, by permission of Russell Libby. Introduction copyright (c) 2008 by The Poetry Foundation. The introduction’s author, Ted Kooser, served as United States Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 2004-2006.

-posted on red Ravine, Christmas Eve, Wednesday, December 24th, 2008

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A Few Of My Favorite Things

Simpsonized QM, Minneapolis, Minnesota, October  2008, photo © 2008 by QuoinMonkey. All rights reserved.

I do kind of look like this photograph. That’s Kiev up on my shoulder. She’s upset that I’ve done three posts about Mr. StripeyPants (“Pants” for short) and have yet to upload one photograph of her sleek and furry self. (If it pleases the court, we’d like to submit the following items into evidence: Exhibits #1, #2, #3.) I’ll have to make restitution next year.

Liz was playing at the Simpsonize Me site one day and I leaned over her shoulder just in time to take a slow walk through Springfield. The website’s been around a while, but if you haven’t tried it yet you’ll need Flash Player and a clear shoulders-up photo crop.

ybonesy’s still a bit groggy from her trip to Vietnam, so I guess a little self-indulgent play won’t hurt. Here are a few of my favorite things. Strange as they may be — they are all mine.

1. Answering The Phone, “Dunder Mifflin this is Pants…” — any The Office fans out there? In last week’s Moroccan Christmas episode, Meredith’s hair caught on fire. And Dwight Schrute was selling bootleg dolls during the Holiday party. It’s a must see.

2. Porcelain Sinks — Not partial to stainless steel in sinks or tubs. I like the tactile, white brightness of something more organic, and would rather hear the thump of dishes on porcelain than the clank of a glass on stainless steel. I do like brushed steel in microwaves, refrigerators, and stoves.

3. Cool Eyeware — I didn’t wear glasses until I was 42. I try to make the best of it. This year I bought a pair of squarish red Ray-Bans. I also like the way people look in glasses. I wonder if that’s because they look more writerly to me.

4. Woofle Jelly Cake — Hmmm. Ran across the recipe Mom sent last year for Ada’s Jam Cake with homemade preserves. More to come on that one later.

 

5. John Coltrane Playing My Favorite Things, Circa 1961 — John Coltrane with his band in Baden-Baden, Germany gets a 5 star rating from me. To view in widescreen, click on the link and it will take you over to Astrotype’s YouTube page with John Coltrane, Sarah Vaughan, Thelonious Monk, and more.

John Coltrane – soprano sax, tenor sax
Eric Dolphy – flute, alto sax
McCoy Tyner – piano
Reggie Workman – bass
Elvin Jones – drums

You can read about the life of John Coltrane in his biography in Rolling Stone or at JAZZ, a Ken Burns film on PBS.

My Favorite Things, written by Oscar Hammerstein II and Richard Rodgers, was first introduced by Mary Martin in the original 1959 Broadway musical production, and later sung by Julie Andrews in the 1965 film adaptation, The Sound Of Music. It has become popular around the Holidays for the winterish theme and upbeat tempo.

I can be found humming it around the house. And you might, too, after you hear Coltrane play it. Are there songs that get stuck in your head this time of year? What are some of your favorite things?

 

Raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens;
Bright copper kettles and warm woolen mittens;
Brown paper packages tied up with strings;
These are a few of my favorite things.

Cream-colored ponies and crisp apple strudels;
Doorbells and sleigh bells and schnitzel with noodles;
Wild geese that fly with the moon on their wings;
These are a few of my favorite things.

Girls in white dresses with blue satin sashes;
Snowflakes that stay on my nose and eyelashes;
Silver-white winters that melt into springs;
These are a few of my favorite things.

When the dog bites,
When the bee stings,
When I’m feeling sad,
I simply remember my favorite things,
And then I don’t feel so bad.

A Walk Through Springfield, Minneapolis, Minnesota, October  2008, photo © 2008 by QuoinMonkey. All rights reserved.

-posted on red Ravine, Sunday, December 14th 2008

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On Eating December Snowflakes

           A Charlie Brown Christmas, snippets on YouTube by FlyingForGlory

Patty:  Try to catch snowflakes on your tongue. It’s fun.
Linus Van Pelt:  Mmm. Needs sugar.
Lucy Van Pelt:  It’s too early. I never eat December snowflakes. I always wait until January.
Linus Van Pelt:  They sure look ripe to me.

I love to watch the snow fall. I’m a huge fan of Winter. I’m also a big Peanuts fan and watch A Charlie Brown Christmas every single year (you can’t beat Vince Guaraldi’s score). The snow theme captures the best of both worlds for me. I’m not apt to take Lucy’s advice though. I love December snowflakes!

There are two other shows I make sure not to miss over the Holidays: Mister Magoo’s Christmas Carol and A Christmas Story. I’m sad to say that Bob Clark, the director of 1983’s A Christmas Story, died unexpectedly earlier this year (see Remembrances on NPR). His cult classic will live on.

I’ve also been inspired by a couple of snow posts by fellow bloggers. One is on Joe Felso: Ruminations, 13 Ways Of Looking At Snow, a tribute to Wallace Stevens. And Snow Sculptures at Leslie’s Blog, complete with vintage black and white photographs. You won’t be disappointed.

It’s Christmas Eve. This is my last post for a few days. I’ll be checking in once in a while for comments. But what I really want to say is thanks for writing with us and visiting red Ravine. We are grateful for your presence here. And thanks to my faithful blogging partner, ybonesy, for holding up the other half of the sky.

It’s still and silent outside the window this morning. The storms of yesterday have passed. The day Moon is clear. Liz pointed it out to me off the deck this morning on her way to work. And have I thanked you enough Lizzie for all of your patience and support around my crazy writing life?

Finally, whoever is reading and writing with us, however you celebrate this time of year, I hope your Holidays are sweet.

-posted on red Ravine, Monday, December 24th, 2007

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