My Apricot Hopes: from Jam to Stones to Little Trees

 I had hoped to make a trip to a few apricot orchards last summer. 

Spurred on by blog and cookbook author, Lisa Prince Newman, I had noted the location of some orchards in what people now think of as Silicon Valley, but it was not always so.  I grew up just north of the Golden Gate and remember a family jaunt to orchards south of the city.  Little farms that welcome visitors and have ripe cherries and apricots on the trees make a pretty indelible memory.  

Pre-covid, back in the last months of 2019 and maybe even a week or two in January 2020, I was imagining an early summer trip to Monterey County to visit friends on the coast south of Carmel. On our return home I had hoped  to wind our way to a few orchards I had read about.  Timing is everything with apricots; it is a short season and a fragile fruit, but the possibility of tree ripened apricots seemed within my grasp. 

Sadly, the 2020 apricot events had to be cancelled and family farms and orchards were not open to the public. Visiting our friends was not an option either. Our trip to the central coast is still a hope for another season. 

As the summer of 2020 unfolded, my gratitude for our garden and fruit trees grew, but I was wishing I had an apricot tree.  We twice had planted an apricot in our home garden. The first was one of the many fruit trees crushed by a neighbor's giant Cedar tree while we were renting out our house and working in Carmel. The tenants in our house telephoned to tell us of the fearful sounds as the huge tree fell on a stormy night. Thankfully the heavy trunk and long limbs had just missed the house. Everyone was safe; there was much to clean up but more for which to be grateful. 

We bought new young trees and made a Saturday trip north to plant them; but alas the apricot replacement was not one of those we found alive when we returned home a few years later.  While apricots are available in the markets, they are often either green or over ripe and generally pretty expensive.  So why didn't I promptly plant another apricot?  Let's just say it was a very busy and complicated time.

Imagine then, my delight, when in the shut-down summer of 2020 the oldest local fruit stand, which has grown over the years into a trendy expensive market, used a notorious social media platform to advertise organic apricots clearly at a "loss leader" price.  We donned our masks and headed down the road and were possessed of twenty-two pounds of blushing apricots within the hour. 

Oh, and they were good, those apricots, and we ate as many fresh as we could and made jam together in several sessions and felt pleased with the results and ourselves. 

Now I had a heap of pits. I just couldn't bring myself to toss them.  Many fruit trees grow best from cuttings, but having grown my favorite peach tree  from a pit that sprouted in my compost pile, I was pretty sure an apricot stone could yield a tree that would  carry on the most desirable traits of its parents. 

My favorite peach tree in spring 2020 bloom

 I knew that different seeds require certain conditions in order to germinate because as a child I had watched my father.  He would admire a tree in Golden Gate Park and gather some seeds and start experimenting.  He explained to me what botanists call stratification as a process of tricking the seed into waking up by mimicking the conditions of the seasonal changes of nature. I knew I had to wake my sleeping pits, stir them from their complacent dormant state. 

A quick search led me to the school of "youtube" where I found several generous instructional videos about  germinating stone fruits. One method was to put the whole pit in some soil in a bag and stick it in the refrigerator, while another proponent  said to remove the kernel from the outer shell and store them in soil in the fridge.  A third tree sprouter said to put bare kernels alone in a bag and store them in the freezer.  

So on July 27th, 2020 I did all three of those things. 

I could've checked them in August. I surely could have inquired on their well being in September.  Several weeks at low temp would have been enough to wake them, but it was October 13th before I rescued my bags of moist dirt and pits and brought them to the light of day.  The package of soil-less naked kernels is still tucked in the freezer, so that part of my experiment is on hold for now. 

I was excited to find that both whole and naked kernels were sprouting. I planted two of each and labeled the pots on 10/13/2020

On 11/03 I repotted the two viable trees, they were both from whole pits.  I think that au natural is the best way to go.  I have continued to have success with additional pits from the whole pit bag.

,

The other pots surrounding the trees have additional sprouters that I have since popped into soil.  If you try it, put the root poking out of the now cracked open pit facing down and keep them moist.  I have plastic egg crates over my pots to keep them a bit warmer but more importantly to stop the visiting squirrels from digging them up.  I have had fun gifting sprouting apricot seeds to nearby friends ... we all need something to watch grow in these strange days. And hopefully we can all look forward to apricots on our little trees, maybe three to five years down the road.  

Today, in between trying to find the hidden typos in this story of pits, cold dirt and hidden hope, I realized all these hopeful trees already need taller pots because they want to put down a nice long tap root, so I transferred them to bigger pots. 

I don't mean this post as instructions for growing stone fruit trees, there are many sources available with more and better information.  I'm just saying hello and sharing a little project that buoyed my heart of late.  I hope you're finding ways to keep as much of your life on track as possible during these prolonged and challenging days of covid related restrictions. It is so easy to get derailed.  

February 15, 2021***UPDATE***13 little trees and growing.

Sometimes Even a Title is Too Many Words

1. 

Poppies under my peach tree on an April afternoon....

Today, while it is Yet so Called

Yes.  Pressing on. 

One step at a time. 

“At a time.”

The morning routine is fraught with awareness of time.

How often is time noted by mortals as “fleeting”?

Youth, at play, absorbed in doing-exploring-being, does not take note of time.

Those of us older than a child,  those who’ve passed into the realm of self consciousness, also can dwell in deeply immersed doing, but in retrospect are often aware…“Time got away from me.”  

Or, did I get away from time? 

So much time does get away, and then we splash in pools of memories, murky little puddles though they may be.

I have muddled in my own and others' memories at near expert level, looking for that jigsawed piece that could  finish the puzzle laid out on today’s flat surface.  What could -should -would such completion mean for tomorrow? 

But fragments of time gathered again, like crumbs of bread brought back to the baskets after all have been fed and are satisfied, speaks not only of brokenness but of the whole always fragrant and new. 

The invitation is ever emblazoned on the morning: ”...today, while it is yet called today...” 

Notes from the Smokey West

I saw with delight that the forecast for tomorrow is for cooler weather. 

   
                                                                                                             
I hope that is really true....from 95* F down to 79* F.  It would be some help to those fighting the fires and those perched waiting to learn the fate of their homesites. 

Just the smokey air makes me lethargic and combined with the heat I could become truly cat like.  Phoebe the cat moves from one cute position to another on her little pillow.  I try to move around and be a bit more functional, but I did take a nap I hadn’t planned on. 

The strawberries were abundant again today and Mark picked quite a lot of tender little green beans.  We have been trying to keep up with them and not let them get big.  I have some blanched and frozen already and we have eaten quite a few.  

The peaches are such a gift; one night we just had piles of peaches and yogurt for dinner and we were quite happy.  Then there was the night we made a peach pie…oh my.  

Our daughter - S.B.- gave Mark some colored corn seeds last year for a present and he  gathered in his harvest  today.

 We sat in the shade and pulled back the husks; it is so beautiful.  It was like a treasure hunt, not knowing what colors of jewels we would uncover.  The colors are deep burgundies and gray blues, orange and golden yellow and these colors mingle in variations that say that summer does not last for ever…

Fire is certainly a phenomenon that forces much perspective on you even if you only get the smoke from afar.  I smell it and think of those up close and laden in protective clothes and heavy gear fighting to corral the flames. I think of those evacuated from their land and homes, the short term times of wondering if it will be a long term displacement.

And for some,
no matter how the restoration takes place, is feeling at home ever quite the same?
I was truly touched by a man who wrote an on-line  thank you to firefighters with a picture of his gracious curved patio stairs, the stones littered with the ashes of his family home and the current site of his survivor chickens scratching through a feast that had been scattered for them by the firefighters.   Yes.   He has encouraged me and I  haven’t even lost anything. 

The Governor and the Chicken Lady

A True Story Retold...

Christian Archibald Herter, who lived from 1898 to 1967, was Governor of the state of Massachusetts from 1953 to 1957.  This is a story he told on himself.

 I heard a version of it in a sermon in the 1980’s from a dear Anglican priest, Fr. David Schofield, who used it to illustrate how important it is for us to know who we are.   Although I remembered the story vividly, I wanted to be sure I had the Governor's name right.  When I checked it out on the internet I found the tale has been repeatedly used  to make many points, but I think it hardly needs any amplification to be of great value.  Here it is as I remember it.

~~~~~

Christian Herter, a graduate of Harvard and the governor of Massachusetts mid 1950’s was seeking re-election.  He was having one of those really hard days on the campaign trail.  He had spoken at a morning breakfast meeting where he had no more than a cup of coffee while his listeners ate.   He had then skipped lunch altogether to meet other duties,  consoling himself that his last scheduled event on the trail was at a church barbecue.  He arrived a bit late and was relieved to see food was still being served.  The Governor  was really hungry. The queue was quite long but he resisted the temptation to be recognized for special treatment and stood at the end of the line.  The day was coming to a close, he was tired, he was hungry and everything smelled so good.  As he moved down the serving line he held out his plate to the woman serving chicken.  She put a piece on his plate and turned to the next person in line.

“Excuse me,” Governor Herter said. “Do you mind if I have another piece of chicken?”

“Sorry,” the woman told him. “I’m supposed to give one piece of chicken to each person.”

“But I’m so hungry, I haven’t had a bite all day.” 

“I’m sorry,” the woman said again. “Only one piece to a customer.”

Governor Herter thought of himself as a modest and unassuming man but he suddenly decided to throw his weight around just a little bit. He pulled himself up to his full height and asked the woman behind the platter of barbecued chicken, “Excuse me, but do you know who I am?” 

“Why, yes, Governor, sir, I do.  Do you know who I am?”  she replied. 

Governor Herter had to confess that he didn’t have any idea who the lady was.

“Well, I’m the chicken lady, and it's one piece per person. Now please, sir, kindly move along.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

A thought or two on "Charles Dickens A Critical Study" by G. K. Chesterton

I did , in January, read this

1929 Dodd Mead & Co printing
of the 1906 copyright of
Charles Dickens 
 A Critical Study
 by G. K. Chesterton.

Thumbing through my notebook I see that while I fell short of writing a proper review of it I did jot down a few thoughts.

I was given this book a number of years ago and it has languished on my shelf primarily because I have not read much of  Charles Dickens.

Mr. Chesterton's writing often references
the luminaries of his day and the political social and literary climate of the time. In addition to not knowing much about Dickens, there is all that  I have never learned about England's history, as well as that which I may have once encountered and have now forgotten and yet, I was amazed at how much there was to glean, how much was still available to me in Chesterton's narrative, even when ensconced in specifics for which I had little reference. Though I often couldn't place or affirm many of  Chesterton's allusions and references,  I was, like a bird at picnic, well fed on crumbs.

Take for example this little gem found on page 161:

He could not help falling into that besetting sin or weakness of the modern progressive, the habit of regarding the contemporary questions as the eternal questions and the latest word  as the last....He could not help seeing the remotest peaks lit up by the raging bonfire of his own passionate political crisis." 

~the contemporary questions as the eternal questions and the latest word as the last~  

There is just a big lovely breath in that little phrase, isn't there?  

Here is a link on google's free Ebook site to some pages where Mr. GKC discusses "this thing we call fiction." Peek in around page 83.  The whole book is available there. 

Well I must away...and make some serious preparations for some very special visitors! 

Until next time....

May Thoughtful Honest Public Dialogue Prevail

     It's generally considered a good thing to be an assertive person; I don't mean aggressive, that's different.   If being assertive looks like standing up straight, aggressive would be a forward lunge and passive might be leaning backward.

   And me, I must admit that I find myself leaning back in the public conversations of the day.  I find myself wondering about the scope of my vantage point, the validity of circumstances as presented and the possibility of hidden implications and unforeseen consequences of the proposals and platforms of the day.  It is a lot to sort through.

    I find myself listening carefully to others' assertions and though I believe that well-honed common sense is often enough, I recently ran across some notes from a class my husband took years ago with a more formal review of how assertions can be sorted out. I decided to flesh the notes out with some examples and found it helpful to put names on what I tend to do intuitively.  Perhaps you might find it helpful too.

To begin I started thinking about the word "assertion" and made a list of synonyms:  
 a declaration
 a contention
 a claim
 an opinion
 a pronouncement
 an avowal
 a protestation
 or simply a statement.  

Judging the acceptability of specific assertions begins with recognizing what type of statement it is.

*What's the assertion based on?

* Is it a description, an interpretation or an evaluation? 


 Three general types of Assertion  with an example in italics

1. Description  (based on the senses, or       experience)
    a. 1st hand     This is what happened to me...
    b. 2nd hand   This is what he told me...

2. Interpretation (based on various derivations of meaning)
    a. Internal states  I know what he was thinking.
    b. Causal relationships.  Causality is, by definition, interpretive, the answers we can give to "why" questions involving such causes as material, form, agent and end. In other words,  physical realities, circumstances, human actions and choices, overarching purposes or agendas. I had no choice, I had to build the fence strong enough to keep my cows home and it was the only material I could afford. 

    c. Comparisons and contrasts  Scales of 1-10, less or more... This is more important than that... 
    d. Categories or alternatives:  qualities or chain of events according to type. What might be appropriate for adults may not be for children.

3. Evaluation  (based on approval or disapproval - emotive language) I don't care if it is legal, it still isn't right.
     
Of course one assertion could and often does involve all three types of assertions; a first or second hand description, interpreted and emotionally evaluated. 

And then there is the matter of whether a statement is:

1. Presumably true ( in favor) 
2. Questionable (creating a burden of proof) 
3. False

Vouching sources for determining validity include:

A. Our own sense experience/ reason
B. Personal Testimony  
     (While sources A & B can receive
     presumption, that is, be assumed true unless further information  proves otherwise, neither A nor B sources can speak for assertions of interpretation or evaluation.) 
C. Common Knowledge
D. Expert Opinion ( sources C & D can ameliorate the burden of proof)

The likelihood is, even without formally thinking about such distinctions, they are operating in your daily listening and responding; but if you'll allow me an assertion of opinion, it's worth the effort to renew and increase our communication skills consciously, for no matter the issue, our public dialogue needs thoughtful and honest tending. 


         
      
      

Always Expose for the Shadows of the Subject even When you Aren't Taking Pictures

A reposting from a few years back...

"Always expose for the shadows of the subject..."   so says my 1948 focal guide retrieved from storage a few weeks ago.  Somehow the advice suggests other connotations....the realms of metaphor... " always expose for the shadow of the subject."

The other day it was the Walter T. Foster painting book  Seapower that got me thinking this way.
I had looked at the  10" x 14" teaching book  with absolutely no intentions of trying to paint the ocean or the cliffs I live above and yet

 I enjoyed perusing the step by step paintings and the tips and clues to doing the same.

"If you continually think in large masses of light and shadow ..."    "Always think and paint the large masses first..."   "...pick out the lighting...then you will know exactly where you are going."

  So if you know from where the light emanates, you will know where you are going.

That makes more than sense to me. 

Later in the day, out and about on the land,  I found  the painting advice impacting how I saw the ocean waves, the light on the rocks, the blue of the sky.  Lessons for painters are first and foremost, lessons for the eye.

Writers must see carefully too and one's eye must be attuned to many realms.  It's good to be able to see one's own framework of understanding, to filter the light from the dark.  Every heart frames reality in its own terms, its own limits.  To have an impact it needn't be large, but there must be an intersection with other frames of reality other than one's own.

I look at the sea.  Clouds are stretched like peach tinged taffy along the horizon. Light is scattered across the waters so white and shimmering  in areas that the eye can barely absorb the beauty without reflexively looking away.   I can change my visual perspective and for a moment the waters in front of me appear like a bowl, but I know the horizon is distance beyond my scope.

There's a boat out there carrying its own reality across the waters, but to me it is little more than a dark speck.  We are often in each other's view, but seeing eye to eye, well the eyes and the heart can take a lot training.

Such are the topics that have been on my mind lately.  You might enjoy the essay I  wrote this week and posted on Write Purpose  "Why We do the Things We Do "

Now that I have read  my old focal guide, I want to see if I can translate it to my digital camera.   My  notes to my self need to say.."Always be aware of your tendency to just point and shoot on automatic..."   and of course that too has metaphorical implications; I'm not just talking about taking pictures.

 ~~~~~~~~~

The Shelf Life of Love

A friend recently asked me to remind her where my blog sits.  It isn’t that I haven’t been writing, but I haven’t been posting.  I write and read to Mark and he tells me “ put that on your blog…”  I think about it and then the day passes and the world’s crazy energy swirls me around and I think how weak my words are and I leave them, just ink in my notebooks. But I know  that it isn’t good to capitulate to the thought that small offerings don’t matter. I have received  single sips of water from others that made all the difference in difficult terrain.

 To overcome my “sharing block,”  today I took a photo of my morning’s scribble :

A Passage of Light

Morning shadows of the trees and birds outside the small high eastern windows that flank our fireplace are cast on the inner wall. 

As the sun moves slowly day by day the morning picture moves through the house.

The Free Milk of Human Kindness ...from Silicon Valley to Rwanda

Friendship is certainly boosted by proximity, but over my lifetime there have been a number of people who I have been destined to respect and love and yet not get to have anywhere near my neighborhood.  Such are my friends Roger and Faith Shaw.

Visiting with Roger and Faith in 2007

When we lived in Carmel on the cliffside estate, our employer had us host a fundraiser for visiting Rwandan cyclists who spoke every manner of smile but very little English.   Faith, who at that time lived in San Jose, was hired to translate their Kinyarwanda so the guys could tell their stories to the  invited guests.

Faith and I had one of those instant bonds; we found that we spoke the same language indeed.  Over the next few years my husband and I had some very dear encounters with Faith and her husband, Roger. For a time we lived close enough to visit each others homes.

While time and distance came between us, for Roger and Faith left California and moved to Rwanda, my appreciation of who my friends are and what they are doing continues to grow.

I hope you will watch an unsophisticated but fascinating video of Roger, learning about his larger neighborhood and showing why he wants to give milk to Mwendo neighbor children, but before you do, from their web page  in Rwanda, here is a bit of Faith's background:

First and foremost, she herself was a refugee separated from her parents after fleeing Rwanda's first genocide. She was taken in by another family, but was shamelessly exploited. They told her that her parents were dead, that there was no hope and they forced her into servitude.
A year later, Mrs. Hindley, an English missionary rescued Faith and hid her under blankets in the footwell of a vehicle and drove her to freedom. Mrs. Hindley re-united Faith with her parents. Later, growing up as a refugee in Uganda with very little money in the family, an unknown sponsor paid her school fees. 
Faith eventually attended Makere University. One evening, outside her college dorm, she discovered an abandoned baby crying in the trash. She took him to hospital and made plans to adopt him. Unfortunately, despite Faith's efforts, the little boy died a few days later. 
Sometime after graduating, Amin's soldiers arrested Faith on trumped-up charges and held her in a cell where she was certain to be raped that very evening. However, a man who described himself as a friend of her father's saw her in jail and somehow negotiated her immediate release. Neither Faith nor her father ever identified the man.   
Faith left Uganda and moved to Kenya and took a job as a teacher. Later she won a scholarship for post-graduate education for refugees. She moved to England to become a student again. It was here that she met and married her husband, Roger. They had two daughters, Zoe & Murika, and later the family relocated to the USA. In 1994, they watched Rwanda's second genocide unfold on the TV news. It was a horrifying event resulting in the murder of 800,000 people. The aftermath was heart breaking. Among many awful tragedies, thousands of children were left without anyone to care for them. This painful reality weighed heavily on the hearts of Faith & Roger and they recalled how someone had helped Faith when she had been a child in need. They couldn't quite reconcile their comfortable family life in California with the suffering of so many abandoned children in Rwanda.

In 2000 Faith visited her homeland and saw children in need in the aftermath of war.
In 2003,  Roger and Faith bought a four bedroom house in Ruhengeri.

They hired a nanny - Judith, and a cook - Gatzinzi, and they accepted the first four orphans, Ruzindana, Anne, Mutoni & Alice. Faith's dad did a great job of running the home and being a role model for the children and staff to look up to. Sadly for all of us, he passed away in 2006. 

In 2006 they incorporated and children kept coming...if the cook
didn't find another orphan, one of the children did.  Faith sold her paintings and jewelry she made to support the children and her church helped too. She would fly back and forth from their home in San Jose, California where Roger was still working in Silicon Valley... but it wasn't the vision they had.  They wanted the children to  live as a  family and they decided together to give up their work and home in California to become  Mom and Dad to an ever growing family in Rwanda.


In 2012 they relocated the rescue home to Bugesera. The website has wonderful pictures of the home they built there and the children who are growing up. It isn't accurate to call the Ishimwe rescue home an orphanage, for the children who live there are sons and daughters.  Faith and Roger have eighteen children!


 In the years since,  Roger has built a fish farm, a whole other story in itself, to help the area be more self sustaining.   Faith started Pioneer School, a place where the Ishimwe children can learn amongst other children of the community, broadening their sense of belonging and purpose.  The Ishimwe children learn at home to grow their food, and raise animals. At school they study reading, writing, arithmetic, computers, music and art and they are learning how knowledge, work and cooperation can call forth abundance enough to share.

Which brings us again to  Roger's latest hope and his video.  The children at Pioneer School all get a big fresh glass of milk each day from the cows at the Ishimwe home.  Roger wants to bring free milk to the neighboring school and several homes where the children are not able to attend school.

After watching Roger's video, I  remembered an advertising slogan from an American bread company of the 1950's, "build strong bodies twelve ways."  We can laugh now at white Wonder Bread with its 12 added nutrients, but Roger's milk will build strong bodies and it is also likely to kindle love and good purpose in the grateful recipients.

And to think of the promise that is attached to giving even a cup of cold water to a little one.


hoping the best for you,

Jeannette
ABOUT DONATIONS!
Some people have asked if they can donate...yes, that would be lovely!
  If you click on the video link that is in the story and I will provide it again HERE you will see to the right of the video picture is a donate button through an organization that Roger chose called Generosity.   They do not charge a fee to either side, but they do make a space to give Generosity a donation as well, if you so choose.  This site requires a credit card.

I gave my donation via PAYPAL to the Ishimwe website  with a note to specify that this particular donation was for MILK MONEY  for ROGER,  You simply click on the button to make a single donation and the option for PAYPAL will come directly up as well as other choices.

Over the Threshold...When Does One Grow Up?

"Girl child", a very free verse poem that I wrote last century and then left buried in one of my many notebooks, surfaced in my mind today because of a friend who is generating conversation on that notorious platform called Facebook with this question:

 "How does one know when one has crossed the threshold into adulthood? An act, a thought, a rite of passage, an event, a milestone...Thoughts?"  

My poem was in response to a similar query in a writing workshop I took to meet continuing education units that the state required of my profession.  The workshop leader shared a prompt and set a time limit and participants scribbled away. After the set ten or twenty minutes of writing we were free to share or not what one's heart and pen had produced. 

Queried, "When did you know you had become a woman? "

this is likely only one of my answers,

but that day, it came out, just like this:

GIRLCHILD

I was very clear about being a girl child,

a girl child who could run and climb and dig and build,

a girl child who could sew and color and read and write poems.

A girl child who must come in now

and wash your hands and help

in the kitchen cutting piles 

of even circles of carrots, 

tiny disks of burning color 
while the orange sun sank 
without me 
into the Pacific fog of hill and shore
and the thin blue line of the horizons,

that by their very unattainable distances, 

were always inviting.

Then childhood itself was torn asunder,

or was it rolled up like a rug?

No, the carpet lay on the floor, dirty and now mine to clean. 

No woman in the house 

but this thirteen- year-old girl no longer a child 

with the work of my mother fallen to my limbs. 

How did she make that sauce? 

Do I unplug when the washer overflows? 

Will it electrocute me? 

Run to the neighbors. 

“Oh honey, why doesn’t your father hire a woman to help you?”  

There was no woman that could be hired
to help this girl at her real task.

What could make me a woman? 

Was it shoes with heels 
that made me feel the strength and length of my legs?  

Was it the jobs in the city,

the hunger in men’s eyes?  

The woman was hidden
in the girl child,

but the child fled
and no woman appeared. 

I suppose there were glimpses of her along the way

that a keen eye might have seen,

but she snuck up on me, 

sometime after college. 

When the ardent second childhood waned, 
she emerged;

neither as optimistic nor as angry, 

neither as guileless or as selfish,

not as foolhardy or as frightened. 

What made me a woman?  

When need gave way and 

the force of love 

forged through me

with eyes for others, 

and I forgave.

~~~~~~~

I didn't mention playing dress-up with my neighbor, but I did that too.

                                     
                                         

Morning Prayer

     The cat wanted out and so I saw the sunrise, the eastern sky uniformly orange as if one heavy stroke of a paint laden brush had been applied.  The foothills of Mt. St. Helena were still stubbed  in  muted shades of shadow.

      I returned to my darkened room and lay back on my bed but soon the memory of the color bright sky drug me up to go out and look again.  The morning was now older, I found only a pale  version of that fiery view I had so quickly  taken in.   The colors of light coming wait for no eye.

      I had not, in fact, seen the sunrise, but only the angle of one fractional moment. I had seen no more than a freeze as if captured by a  camera’s lens or a painter’s interpretive palette. I had taken  only one spectral glimpse of a majestic particulate parade that casts its bouncing rays from ever greater height as surely as one’s breath travels to and from the lungs, which breath is sometimes also, sadly, as summarily hailed.  Ah, yes, a new day, sunrise, life….

     I’m reading a memoir that Ivan Doig wrote, This House of Sky.   Speaking of one of his professors he says, “…I was given encouragement and I answered with effort.”    

     Let me answer with my efforts the primal encouragements so readily available with wakening.

By Design, the Wonders in a Garden

One gardener's dead vines hanging from a tree is a hummingbird's swing set.

Hummingbird on a swing of dead vines in May

I can't get very close and none of my photos have quite captured it, but I see this hummingbird daily from my deck and kitchen window as it swings on dangling dead vines that escaped cleanup and trimming two years ago.  Our tenants had let vines grow crazy on all the fence lines, choking out roses and meandering into the redwoods. We pulled and pulled and got most of them out at both ends..but some were so out of reach.

 The vine remnants used to occasionally irritate me hanging down in my line of sight.

A Fuzzy Zoom

But this little bird has made me love the tangles that hang down, for everyday this bird comes and sits and swings and preens in the shade of the Sequoia tree from which the dead vines hang.  

These photos just can't convey so I just now saved my post and, camera in hand, walked into the kitchen on the chance that my little pal might be again swinging in the breeze. 

                                       

The window view

And yes, (s)he is there!

Camera to the glass...see him?

And take off!

Why have I gone to the trouble of posting these admittedly inadequate photos?  I need the reminder and plot it  here in gratitude for the sweet solace this little bird has brought me day after day. Clearly there is the reminder that many times there is purpose that we do not at first and perhaps on this side, ever see.  And then there is just the contrast...the world heats in sorrows and still the birds find a perch where they can have a quiet moment. 

And so should we...so should we. 

Two Years Before the Mast by R.H. Dana Jr. Classic California Lit & History

(Monday, March 16th)

To read a classic such as

 Two Years Before the Mast

by Richard Henry Dana Jr. and not share a little about it seems selfish.  If one finds a treasure, why not share it?

I have been trying to be a bit more generous about reflecting on books I have truly enjoyed.



It's tempting to dive right into another book,  but I know my good intentions to write up at least an encouraging note for others to consider the merit of this book would then more easily be derailed.  I know that it's more likely to happen the sooner I try to distill my thoughts and before I'm too far immersed in another tome.

I have only moments this morning,  but I will leave this opener here for myself  as a magnet to draw me back to write a bit more on Dana's tale of shipping out of Boston  'round the Horn to California in the year 1835.


(Wednesday, March 18th)

A student at Harvard, Dana's eyesight suffered from a case of Measles,  so he took leave of intense studies and rather than voyage as a passenger, he signed on a merchant ship as a common seaman.

The change from the tight dress coat, silk cap and kid gloves of an undergraduate at Cambridge, to the loose duck trousers, checked shirt and tarpaulin hat of a sailor, though somewhat of a transformation, was soon made, and I supposed that I should pass very well as a jack tar.  But it is impossible to deceive the practiced eye in these matters; and while I supposed myself to be looking as salt as Neptune himself, I was, no doubt, known for a landsman by everyone on board, as soon as I hove in sight. ( page 2- The Harvard Classic Registered Edition) 

He  kept a daily brief diary of his experience and when able also wrote out his experiences at more length in a different journal.  His sea chest, where he kept his more extensive writings,  was lost upon his return to Boston. Happily for posterity, while back at law school, he rewrote his narrative from the framework of the daily log which he had  kept with him.

His determination inspires me.


 (Sunday, March 22nd)
Before I go on,  I admit that not only did I not discipline my free time to write on Dana this last week, I read a Pushkin story,  "The Captain's Daughter."  Pushkin was born in Moscow in 1799 to an old noble family.  Pushkin was sixteen years old when Dana was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts to a family who had distinguished themselves in young America, so my excursion into Alexander Pushkin's tale of a young man coming of age in a remote military outpost was not totally removed in time from Dana's true tale.  Each story is told in a young man's narrative voice as struggles with self, nature, and the shifting hierarchies of mankind are faced and both  men esteemed honor and purpose.

This was my first reading of  Two Years before the Mast from cover to cover.  I was familiar with excerpts of it from my studies at University of California at Berkeley when obtaining  an undergraduate degree in American Studies.  I was reminded of it again several years ago as my eye doctor, as has been true of many an oculist over the years, used  passages from Dana's journal to test acuity of vision. In other readings of histories of the peopling of the West, quotes and commendations of Dana's work finally spurred me to read him in full.

Thus far, I realize I have primarily documented that I am often slow to pursue challenges, but this is, after all, my web log so I might as well tell the truth.

( Tuesday March 24th)
Dana was acutely touched by the day to day dangers and difficulties faced by seamen and profoundly touched by an unjust flogging he witnessed.   He vowed that if he were ever in a position to be a help to them, he would be.  His desire for equity and justice inspired his writing.  He noted that while there were already masterful of tales of sea voyages, "a voice from the forecastle has not yet been heard."

Dana has such fine powers of description in his clean prose that I was glad to travel over the seas with him, but I was even more pleased when the brig Pilgrim docked in ports I know and love.  Have you ever been to San Diego, San Pedro, Santa Barbara, Monterey, or Yerba Buena,  San Francisco?
Dana spends long periods of time on shore. It isn't an all "...aloft to furl the sail..." story.  One of the striking aspects of Dana's recollections of California in 1835-36 is how brief the lifestyle he encountered on the coast of California was to be.  He saw California and met many of her inhabitants and visitors before the 1849 Gold Rush and huge influx of overland migrants.

There are three basic editions of  Two Years Before the Mast.

1.The original 1840 edition.
2. The 1869 edition - this is a revision by Dana when the copyright reverts back to him. He removed  the "sharply unromantic opening paragraphs" and the final chapter and he added a new chapter "Twenty Fours Years After."
3. The 1911 edition - prepared by his son Richard Henry Dana based upon the 1869 edition. His son adds research about the Crew, and a Dictionary of Nautical Terms based on Dana's "The Seaman's Friend" as well as an Introduction and a new chapter "Seventy Five Years After."

 The book is available online from Project Gutenberg.

(Wednesday, March 25th)

The edition I read included  "Twenty-four Years After" where Dana revisits California.
How often do we see our own place and time in the world and not realize how fast it is changing?
When I look back through my own private journals I see notes I have made of national and international events which I have almost forgotten about in the rush of new developments, yet the impact of those events and changes is deeply shaping today and the future.

One of the sentiments Dana expressed that I found very powerful is that while social troubles need attention, the changes needed are not always the ones brought about by  the exertion of more control or the enactment of more laws.

I know that there are many men who, when a few cases of great hardship occur, and it is evident that there is an evil somewhere, think that some arrangement must be made, some law passed, or some society got up, to set all right at once.  On this subject there can be no call for any such movement; on the contrary, I fully believe that any public and strong action would do harm, and that we must be satisfied to labor in the less easy and less exciting task of gradual improvement, and abide the issues of things working slowly together for good. ( page 361- The Harvard Classic Registered Edition) 

There was one regret I experienced in reading this book, for there was a passage where I wished Dana had not been so focused. In his final chapter he begins to describe his  excursions to various parts of the state, traveling in coaches, in boats, and  on horseback as he radiates out from San Francisco into the interior, to Santa Clara and San  Jose,  up the San Joaquin river,  crossing the Tuolumne, Stanislaus and the Merced, to Mariposa, the big trees, and as he called it, Yo Semite Valley. He is briefly in full descriptive force and then he writes:

 These visits were so full of interest, with grandeurs and humors of all sorts, that I am strongly tempted to describe them.  But I remember that I am not to write a journal of a visit over the new California, but to sketch briefly the contrasts with  the old spots of 1835-6, and I forbear. ( page 392- The Harvard Classic Registered Edition) 

I hope I have conveyed enough enthusiasm about this classic to tempt you to add it to your reading list.
with best wishes,
Jeannette