An Omen

I was graced with a visit from a couple of friends this weekend. They were in the state for a wedding and were heading back to Pennsylvania Monday night, so they stopped in to say hi, and one other important thing.

“So, when are you two getting married? Do you have a date?” I asked. And she told me.

“You have to be in the country,” were the very next words out of her mouth, her demeanor denying any argument.

It’s settled. The fates have decreed that I may not leave until after this very important occasion. And I think immediately after would be appropriate.

PS - Happy Birthday, Mummy Dearest!

Organic Personals

Searching the WWOOF directory is a lot like browsing personal ads. I almost feel like I need to write my own ad: ‘Single White Volunteer seeks organic farm. Looking for a compatible host with learning opportunities and a warm bed. Fun-loving, giving and can eat vegetarian.’ However, some farm descriptions sound so loose and inviting that I wonder what kind of crazy thing must be wrong with them, while others are so brutally specific I find myself apologizing (to who?) for not being qualified.

The WWOOF organization provides its members with a directory that can be searched a lot like an online catalogue, with keywords and eliminations based on member-entered preferences. I thought I would be clever and adjust my options with as many variables as were available. For example, I could say that I’d like to work in a community or with individuals. I’d like to work with animals or vegetables (or both). I’d like to speak Spanish or English. And I would get six results out of 157. How many small farms out there are run by a corporation and work with minerals? Apparently 151. So it has become my task to download the whole database and sift through it one at a time.

I’ve found a couple of nifty ones, however. One farm also runs an adventure sports outfitter and they use their WWOOFers to help during the busy season. I figure even in the off-season, they must still do those things, so possibly when I’m not harvesting olives or milking goats, I could be climbing or kayaking my way around Spain! Then there’s the farm that’s also into “relating and responding to what shows up in our daily reality... enjoying.” What does that even mean? My favorite so far may be the “ancient monastery perched on the mountainside with hundreds of olive trees.”

One other spiffy little piece of information that makes me scratch my head in wonder: most of these farms are not owned or managed by Spaniards. They seem to be the projects of expatriates who have retired or decided to play at organic farming in Spain. I guess in some cases I may have to give up that idea of living in an authentic cultural experience and go and find one instead.

My First List! (Help)

It’s actually raining today. The rain has been threatening since Thursday, and now it’s finally arrived. It’s a perfect opportunity to clean my house. But I think I’ll make a list instead. Here are some things I need to start thinking about in earnest:
Find some farms to volunteer on
Plan a route
Research visas
Research traveler’s insurance
Research transportation options

I guess those are the biggest “chunks” in my to-dos. A list like this would build a skeleton of a plan, yes? And then I flesh it out with the details. Am I missing anything?

I just heard about a former community member who is bumming around Santa Cruz. He’s been camping out in the woods and hanging out on the beach. Food is obtained from the nearby UCSC campus, where I guess he gets either hand-outs or cast-offs. He claims to be having a blast, and apparently hasn’t had to pay rent since he headed west several months ago. I wonder about how he’s actually doing, but if I know him, I’m sure he really is having a great time. One of his resources (for his rent-free existence) is couchsurfing.com.

While all that sounds fun and romantic, I’m not sure how sustainable that lifestyle would be for me. Here’s where I need to start making real plans so that this doesn’t happen. Or, when it does, I know why and that I’m able to end it when I want.

Spring and Home?

Ah, it finally seems like Spring! It feels funny to write that, as the weather has been pretty warm for the past few weeks. The change is that, since we’ve had a few big rains, the leaves are now actually appearing on the trees! It looks like this outside all of my windows:

Oh! And I’ve been in my house for a year now! Two days ago was the anniversary of the first night I slept in Hitchin’ Post. It doesn’t quite seem like a year has passed. For heaven’s sake, I still have dried beans and grains from when I moved in! How many times have I cooked for myself? How many events have I hosted? I can count those things on my two hands (and that’s an upward estimate). I suppose one thing is indicative of the length of time I’ve been here; it’s time to change my shower curtain.

Speaking of my house, this seems like a good opportunity to explain a little about where I live. At the Farm, part of our compensation package is room and board. Based on our job level and tenure, we are assigned one of the Farm’s several housing options. Here’s what mine looks like:

Ok, not really, but I did find out last week just what my house is worth as part of my salary. Apparently, for my position I can afford to live in the Berkshires in a two-ish room plumbed cabin for $400 a month. Part of me thinks my little piece of heaven here is worth just a little more than that. But I guess I’m partial.

So for those of you who don’t know, I live on the property, just down the lane from where I work, and a stone’s throw away from our clients’ houses. As a matter of fact, I do believe my neighbors up the hill could look right in my bedroom windows.

Hmm. In other news, I’ve been reading the blog of a group of women (I've put a little linky right over on the sidey) who are currently globe-trotting. What I’ve learned from them has been both exciting and discouraging. I was inspired by their courage to drop everything and hit the road for a year. And then I read about their travel budget: $15,000. I have managed to save one-third of that. In a year and a half. The worst part is that they are specifically avoiding expensive countries. Like all of Europe. They do live a little more highly than I was planning, and I’ll be volunteering, which is something they are not doing, but I’m still a little worried. I shouldn’t be so worried; I still have time to plan, and what I want to do, for less than a year, shouldn’t be too expensive. Of course, as long as I’m smart and don’t stay out there until I run out of money, I should be ok. Right?

This is how we say goodbye...

Two nights ago, we said goodbye to another community member. It’s almost always a bittersweet experience to see off somebody who’s ready to move on. On one hand, I’m proud and excited for the person who’s made great strides and is ready to try their hand at the world outside. And on the other, I’m sad to be left behind to experience the void left in the community by their absence.

Well, sad or ecstatic, the send-off party was a blast! There was a hayride! And Jell-O salad! And jumping rope! It was E’s idea to have a unique party, so she figured a hayride would be nice and we could all enjoy some Minnesotan cuisine, hence three varieties of Jell-O salad. And because things weren’t different enough, we could all jump rope.

So here’s the run-down. Picture it: at least 20 Gould Farmers climbing onto a rickety hay-wagon that’s covered in the most loosely packed hay bales that were left in the barn from last season. It’s a wonder we didn’t all roll off when the tractor lurched out of the driveway of Main House. The whole ride was fun, despite the seemingly constant danger of tipping. The weather was beautiful for a ride, and the sun was setting through the clouds just as we approached the farm.


Now, when was the last time you jumped rope? Everybody got in on the action. It was so amusing to see a bunch of adults try to jump rope after years of not having done it. And we even had a four-year old jumping for the first time with her mother. Nobody was bashful, and some were fantastic jumpers. We tried multiples, different games, and eventually settled into just plain counting how long we could keep it up. For two hours!


I guess we say goodbye so often here that, by now, we’ve learned how to do it with pizzazz!

Detroit By Night

Saturday evening began with dinner at a restaurant in Greek Town, the Greek section of Detroit. After driving for a ridiculous amount of time looking for reasonably priced parking (I can’t even believe I’m typing that), we found a space in a lot for $7. Dinner happened in Hellas, a restaurant with a dancing Greek on the door. I kid you not, there was a wooden man in a baggy linen and boots with pom-poms in relief on the door. Not only that, but we were assaulted with flaming cheese. The restaurant’s insurance payments must be astronomical; I don’t know how many plates of Saganaki were set on fire around the room while we sat there. Of course, we always knew when it happened: if we didn’t see the flare, we’d feel it and hear the announcement. Opa!


Following dinner we walked, oh I don’t know, two miles to the Majestic Theater, where we saw Ben Gibbard in concert. The walk itself wasn’t as bad as the anticipation for the walk back. Late. Through quiet, poorly-lit streets. By ourselves. Because our time in the desolate North didn’t do enough for our imaginations, we decided to envision the various ways we could be murdered on the streets of D-town. As it turns out, the walk back was neither as long as we remembered, nor as dangerous as we anticipated.

The concert itself was… kind of like two sides of the same coin. And the coin was very crowded and very young. Our hike from Greek Town brought us to a line that stretched at least two blocks from the door of the theater. Well, we climbed right into that line, not a little self-conscious about our ages. Ok, I exaggerate. We weren’t the only ones over the age of 22. There were the chaperones. So, we finally make it inside to discover that there are no seats. I guess that’s how concerts happen these days. Anyway, the kids were everywhere, and Amanda and I decided to play the listen-for-the-dumbest-quotes game. Here are some winners:
“I, like, never have money. And when I do, I buy things for everybody, and then I don’t have money.”
“Who would want to rape her? Why wouldn’t you pick someone else?”
“He’s a Jew?! He’s a Jew?!”

Well, after that, the concert started and the two openers were wasted. Not even in a particularly entertaining way. They were just semi-incoherent and lukewarm performers. Ben Gibbard, however, was fantastic. The whole show was acoustic, guitar and piano. For as sparse as the stage and music was, the sound and presentation were great. Most of the songs were originally recorded quite plugged in, but the acoustic treatment was enhancing in nearly every case.

However. The standing and the people and the standing near all the people was not my idea of a good time. One girl in front of me kept backing up until she was indeed inches from my face. Ew. And there was no where for me to go! No where! People, all around me! I couldn’t even back away from her! Amanda said she was watching my eyes, and was actually afraid for me at times. So, standing. And people. And standing near all the people. With no where to go. Thank heaven the concert didn’t last past 11:00. Good grief! How old am I?!


So that's what I did in Michigan. Thanks for reading!

Michigan - Culture Issue

I spent my last day seeing some of downtown Detroit more up close and personal. We visited a farmers’ market, which was a nice little thing for a city’s market. It mostly consisted of stands selling flowers and vegetable plants for folks’ home gardens. We made a circuit about three times, trying to find nasturtiums. Well, I was looking for nasturtiums. Amanda had forgotten what they looked like and I figured I could find some. Alas, that was about the only flowering plant that wasn’t there. There were also a handful of overpriced “organic” plants that weren’t even old enough to be charged the amount people were asking. I guess that’s what it’s like in the city; people are willing to pay top dollar for a little green.

After a quick tour of the campus grounds that surrounded Wayne State University Graduate Library, I headed off to see the Ansel Adams exhibit at the Detroit Institute of Art. Adams is best known for his photos of landscapes, particularly of the West. However, in this exhibit, many of his other photos were on display. For instance, there were a couple of portraits he’d done, either on the fly, or for commission (he supplemented his art sales by doing photo-work for businesses and the movie industry) and some “abstract” pieces of still-lifes. The exhibit chronicled his career from some of the first pictures he’d taken in his teens to work he was doing in the seventies. He did a lot of early landscapes in a style known as pictorialism, in which the scenes were slightly blurred to make the picture look less realistic, and more like a painting. Later, in a complete turnaround, he started a group of photographers that devoted their time to developing scenes in utter sharpness. As a young photographer, he started by shooting landscapes for the Sierra Club, and he later worked for the Department of the Interior. I was impressed by so many of his pictures! He was good at composing landscapes and also shots on a much smaller scale. Some of my favorites were texture studies of stumps and plants, sometimes juxtaposed for contrast. I think my most favorite out of the whole exhibit, however, was a shot of Georgia O’Keefe and Orville Cox. It looked kind of silly, but very relaxed. It seemed to capture the friendship between those two, and even Adams who was obviously outside of the frame.

My next stop was to the Detroit Science Museum to see “Our Body: The Universe Within.” It was a little anticlimactic to me, but worth seeing. I think the guide said that 25 people’s bodies, which had been donated to science, were “plastinated,” a process by which the fat and fluids were replaced with a latex-like polymer, which later hardened after the bodies were posed in different positions. I think the greatest thing about that exhibit was that it presented the human body in a way that not many people get to see, unless they’re studying it. So often, people don’t realize just how complex we are inside. While approachable, that exhibit was quite educational and even light-hearted in a way.

The Great Lakes State, Take 2

The next day, Amanda and I ventured to the Sleeping Bear Dunes. We had all kinds of confusion about which towns were where, and how close said towns really were to the Dunes. So we decided to set out with a fresh perspective, an adventurous spirit, and no map. We figured we had all day; what could go wrong? Well, several things could’ve gone wrong. We could’ve headed south too far, expecting to find one of the towns from yesterday’s trip. We could’ve discovered that the Dunes really weren’t that far from Traverse City, as we were led to believe from a poorly scaled map. We could’ve left that map, or any other we had, at home. We could’ve gone in search of that first town we were looking for, now believing (oh, how naive) it was closer than we originally believed. We could’ve tried to then find our way home from this town with convoluted directions and (again) no map.

So. All in all, not an uneventful day. To the day’s credit, we did find the Dunes, Benzonia, and our way home after several stops and one map purchase. The Sleeping Bear Dunes are an interesting geographical feature. According to Native American legend, their formation is ascribed to a bear and her two cubs that were swimming away from a fire. The mother landed on the shore across Lake Michigan, but the cubs were not strong enough. In distress, she lay on a hill looking out over the lake waiting for her cubs to arrive. After years had passed and her body was covered with sand, the Great Spirit took pity on her and raised her cubs out of the lake in the forms of North and South Manitou Islands. What actually happened was the glacial deposits that were left at the lake’s formation have been flowing from wind erosion back inland, increasing the lake’s area and decreasing the breadth of the shoreline; the dunes flow backwards at a rate of four feet a year. We took a scenic drive around the Sleeping Bear Dunes State Park, stopping at several overlooks and running into old people at every turn. We also hiked a loop around one set of dunes at the tip of the shore, just in sight of the Manitou Islands.

Our next trip was to the Southfield Library, back near Detroit. Now that was something else. It was analogous in my mind to the great library at Alexandria. And for all it’s vastness and ridiculous décor, it embodied everything I think a public library should be. Its collection was huge! It had at least three floors, with a reference section that took up half a gallery. There were many public computer stations, and a children’s section that was divided by age group, and further subdivided by interest. The library had in circulation several weekly newspapers and several rows of magazines. Amanda was very impressed by this library, but also noticed some of its shortcomings, such as the difficulty for non-residents of the town to get a card. Also, many of the programs that the library hosted were only open to card-carriers. It seemed to be part of a system to keep the social service the library provided within that particularly affluent community. I guess the taxpayers feel they should have that right. But do they? The library and a talk we had later got me to thinking about my interest in community revitalization. How does one do that? Can you get a degree in that? Can you get paid doing it? Do you need to be independently wealthy to build a healthy community in a place that doesn’t have one? Just what does it take to get people interested and mobilized in building up a social and economic center in their own neighborhood? Can a single business or service, such as a café or library, attract people to a place? Or do other incentives need to be provided by the town itself, such as lower-cost building options for small business owners? And what kind of people can build community? Does it take people who have money already to start the pump? Or can people from a poorer socio-economic background strike out and make a success for themselves and the town?
Wow, I ask a lot of questions.

The Great Lakes State

I couldn’t figure out which was more important right now: to report on my trip to Michigan, or write a little about my life here. I decided to start with a summary of my most recent vacation, but this is a long report, so I’ll break it up over the next few days.

It all started in an airport. Airports are so full of people! Single people, groups of people, families traveling together. There are tall skinnies, short skinnies, round folk, attractive and not-so-attractive people. And we’re all trying to get somewhere on business or for pleasure. Or both. I wonder myself what we’re all up to. I like to follow my fellow travelers in my imagination to their anticipated rendezvous, the business meeting in Philadelphia, the Vegetarians of America conference in Madison, or the grandchildren waiting in Trenton. Let’s not forget, then, the airport staff. I wonder what they think from day to day. Do they look at us and wonder where we’re off to? Do they follow us in their imaginations to our exotic destinations of San Francisco, DC, or Columbus? Or do they just get annoyed that we leave the tables a mess, put our feet up on the pleather chairs, and try to groom ourselves in the miniscule automatic bathroom sinks? And airports are so full of possibility! You can get there from here! The boarding gate is the gateway to anywhere! I think about that as I consider my future traveling. Hopefully this fall I’ll be flying to Spain and then, who knows? I’m thinking of picking up and checking out. If I can screw up my courage enough, I’ll buy a one-way ticket and a guidebook, and hit the road. Anytime I travel, by plane or train, and sometimes by car, I get that same excitement that anything could happen. I could begin with the intention of going to Pennsylvania, or St. Helena, or Detroit, and wind up in Malaysia! Ok, maybe not by train. But the point is made. I wonder what it would take to live on stand-by, to put my life at the mercy of the open seat. Who would I meet? Would I have fun? How much could I see? Where could I make it to on a shoestring budget? How much of that shoestring should I tie up in the security of hotel reservations and an itinerary? I could survive by my wits, I think. At least until my savings runs out! And then? And then I get a job? And then I charge a ticket home? And then I sleep under the stars, busking for food? I try to consider how much discomfort I could live with in the face of seeing the world on my own terms.

I met my friend Amanda at the Detroit airport late, and the next morning we went to Traverse City and the cabin “up North.” We started the day with breakfast at The French Laundry, a fantastic little bistro in Fenton, near Amanda’s parents’ place. It was spacious, with mismatched tables and chairs in the dining room with the bar. The walls were decorated with old advertisements painted billboard-style, and gerbera daisies in brown- and green-glassed bottles graced every table. I ordered the Raspberry Beret, a sandwich of smoked ham, Swiss Gruyere cheese, and raspberry preserves, on toasted semolina bread with peach nectar to drink. It was one of the most delicious breakfast sandwiches I’ve ever had!

Later that day, we arrived at Uncle Tom’s Cabin (no joke) after nearly running out of gas and giving ourselves up for lost on the frighteningly desolate roads. Luckily, we found both a gas station and the cabin, but not before speculating on just how many ways we could be murdered and nobody would know. The rest of the afternoon was pretty slow, with a short walk to the river, and then a drive into nearby Kalkaska and Traverse City. We wandered around the town, spending most of our time in a bookstore and walking along the shore of Lake Michigan at Traverse Bay. We had dinner that evening at the picnic table outside the
cabin and amused ourselves by imagining being murdered by the hillbilly neighbors who have a deer head suspended from a tree at the end of the driveway. It seemed that a good deal of the talk that day had to do with our violent deaths at the hands of the Northerners….

Welcome!

Welcome! If you’re reading this, you are family, friend, or some stranger that stumbled upon this blog. This is my note to you about what I’m up to. I hope not to disappoint you. And by that, I mean to say, I hope to be reporting on my life in the big out-there in an entertaining and informative way.

I can start by saying that for the past three years, I’ve been living and working in a therapeutic community for adults with mental illness (check out the handy link to the right). It’s been an amazing experience so far, and I think the time has come for me to move on. While I’ve been here, I’ve developed a bug for traveling, seeing new places, and trying my hand at new things. Just here, I’ve learned about cooking, mental illness, managing people; I’ve co-managed a restaurant, worked in childcare, changed jobs (three times), changed houses (three times), and seen more people than I can remember come and go. I’ve baked bread, dealt with a restaurant staff shortage, thrown pottery, thrown fits, and played countless games of soccer, softball, and pick.

And now, I guess I think it’s time to get going. For too long now have I been on the fence! The time has come to leap over and see what’s on the other side.

So here’s what’s coming. I hope. I want to WWOOF (see the link). I want to do some backpacking. I want to buy a one-way ticket to anywhere and see where I can get from there for cheap. Oh, dear God, what am I thinking? Help.

Well, anyway, this blog is meant to be both a communication to you and a tool to prompt me to get on with it! Along the side, you can find more information about me and some links to sites I’m either reading or using for planning. Check them out and please let me know of any other leads I can be chasing down. Thanks for wandering in, and don’t be a stranger!