Our Cupboards Are Bare No More

The final coat of paint is on our kitchen cupboards.

They're no longer bare like this,














but painted in a high-gloss oil base.

I painted the whole room myself. Mike would come in and point out where a second coat was needed or a spot was missed.

Like that bare baseboard at the bottom.

As it did for the walls, the cupboard color palette evolved. At first I thought of doing the trim in yellow, even going so far as to paint the trim of the cupboards above the sink. But I realized how bright the wall was going to be. So I switched to red, to complement the Twister carpet.

One of these days we'll be back up in Bruno. I want to stop at the thrift store because they have the largest collection of curtains I've ever seen. I can visualize the curtains I want, a red and yellow and brown lava lamp–type print. But the poultry valance will do for now.

And to think the kitchen started like this...

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School Supplies Stress Syndrome Sets In

It happens every late summer.

You get the list of supplies for your child's new school grade. You put it off as long as you can, not wanting to wade into the throng of parents. Finally, realizing you can't put it off any longer, lest the store will be stocking Halloween merchandise, you dive in.

Peace signs are girly, I'm told. Flickr photo, hartsdelights

Feeling lucky that I have one student to buy for, and not two or three or four or more, I gamely try to help. "What about this one?" I asked my 14-year-old son Wyatt, showing him a notebook with peace symbols on the cover.

"The peace sign has been co-opted by girls," he said.

Maybe that's why peace eludes the men who are in power.

Ready, Set, Shop
This year it took two trips, one with Wyatt and one without, to acquire everything. My solo excursion took just under an hour. I kept one eye out for the supplies on my list, one eye on the time as I had to meet Wyatt in town, and one eye on my barge of a shopping cart. I was reluctant to leave the cart unattended, for fear the merchandise would be returned by a sales associate or mistakenly spirited away by another customer. And I did not want to start from square one.


Really, I get it. Schools are getting their budgets whacked, so they're passing expenses onto the parents. But sometimes I feel the need to test what they request. Wouldn't a three-subject notebook work just as well as three one-subject notebooks? Students would be able to carry one book instead of switching out different ones. Or is there a reason someone requested three one-subject notebooks?

If you've ever had your cubicle set up by someone who doesn't share your brain type or organizational style, you'll understand the reluctance to slavishly follow a school supplies list that someone else created. It may work for the person who created it, but not necessarily for your student. I realize the organizational system has to work for the student, not for the parent. But considering the number of papers that get misplaced, some parental intervention is necessary.

Don't Have a Meltdown Over School Supplies

Perhaps School Supplies Stress Syndrome has taken hold of me because crayons are no longer on the list. But really, you're never too old for crayons.  Supermarket Spa author Joey Green suggests keeping a box of crayons for their aromatherapeutic benefits, and for the stress relief that coloring offers.

Suerae Stein wrote an absolutely delightful post on her blog over at RedBarn Artworks. She doesn't write about school supplies per se, but about crayons. Suerae collected images from all over the Internet, including this melting rainbow image from etsy.com. You can't not smile when holding a crayon or even thinking about them.

To all parents who are faced with School Supplies Stress Syndrome:
This too will pass.

Peace.

A Place Where Ideas Can Grow

Mike and his dad are finishing assembling my studio. It was the first thing on his list, even before the kitchen and bathroom renovation. It’s as important to Mike as it is to me that I have alone time. I don’t take it personally. I can be hard to live with when I'm writing.

He has thoughtfully planned it and located it, under a tree which I call the Whomping Willow, on the north side of the house so I won’t bake in the sun.

I love this idea from The Artful Blogger by Suerae Stein at Red Barn Artworks because I’m always looking for storage ideas that make sense to me. 

A pre-fab garden shed is all it is, but it's my studio, my alone place, and it's mine, mine, mine. 

Let's Dish About Creativity

It's no coincidence that when dishes pile up in the sink, ideas pile up in my head.

I've suggested to my son Wyatt that him washing dishes would allow me more time to write. He said he'd be willing to if I'd get him rubber gloves, as he doesn't like the feel of the dishwater.

Rubber gloves. I haven't heard a person mention them in years. Rubber gloves used to be a staple of 1960s daytime television advertising, shown during the soap operas my mom called "her stories." On the game show Let's Make a Deal the audience would ooh and ahh when the prize behind the curtain included a Hotpoint dishwasher. Sometime between then and now, a dishwasher morphed from gracious-living luxury into goes-without-saying necessity.

I've used dishwashers before and don't care for them.  They don't save time because you still have to scrape, rinse, load and unload -- and often have to rewash dishes that didn't get clean. Also, dishwashers remove a hands-on component that I find essential to creativity. At one workplace when I needed to think things through, I was tempted to go into the cafeteria and ask if I could help wash dishes.

I remember seeing a wall plaque at a Michigan Renaissance Festival years ago: A creative woman has cobwebs in her corners but never in her mind. There comes a point, though, when cleaning the cobwebs, or emptying the sink of dishes, results in clarity of thought and creativity.

What are the daily rituals that feed your creativity? Let's dish about them here.

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The 12 Days of Recount: Complete!

Twelve days ago I started goofing around with the lyrics to The Twelve Days of Christmas, rewritten for each day of the 2010 Minnesota election recount. The actual recount of ballots ended on December 4, but having gotten the lyrical ball rolling, I couldn't stop it. The song was popular on my Facebook page so I thought I'd share the completed version here.

On the 12th day of recount my true love gave to me,

12 batons a-passing, 

11 Dems a-cheering,

10 pols conceding,

9 bloggers scooping,

8 pundits spinning,

7 lawyers grousing,

6 judges ruling,

FIIIIIVE OVALS FILLLLED...

4 calls at table,

3 stray marks,

2 overvotes

& a challenge made fri-vo-lous-ly.

What to say for the twelfth day required serious mulling over, but the answer came from the title of this video by Craig Stellmacher for The UpTake. 

Bloggers of a Feather Flock Together

Friday Feather Party

This has been a significant week for Poultry & Prose. Reblogs and retweets and referrals, links and likes, and comments.

The latest Poultry & Prose follower is Greg’s Eggs, via Vinton McCabe. (Like my chicken coop, Greg's blog is under construction. Watch for it this month.) While life pulls me in as many directions as Jerry on a walk, Greg’s follow reminded me that poultry is the heart of this blog. Because chickens have been disappearing on the farm and scarce on the blog, I’ll be starting a series called Poultry I Have Known and Loved. In the past 10 years we’ve raised many chickens, turkeys, ducks, and even geese whose memory outlives them. In the case of one turkey, I still tear up whenever I hear a particular song on the radio.

Friday Feather Party will be the day I thank everyone who has helped this small flock grow during the past week.

Martha Garvey's My Fat Cat

Deb's Sand Creek Almanac

Vinton McCabe's blog

Carolyn's Roundtop Ruminations

Tripawds.com

Check them out and give them a follow if you like what you see! And have a great weekend.

Smelly Bugs Are in the Air.Smelly Bugs Are Everywhere.

A few years ago I was raking leaves on a day very much like this one: unseasonably warm and sunny, except it was after the winter instead of before it. A cloud of Asian lady beetles surrounded me as I raked and grumbled, with this poem effortlessly taking shape:

Smelly bugs are in the air,
Smelly bugs are everywhere.
They look like ladybugs, I think,
But boy oh boy! Do they ever stink!
They fly, they bite, they cover the door,
They're like a carpet on the floor.
Smelly bugs, I hate them so.
I almost wish we still had snow.

Asian lady beetles have been known as smelly bugs at our house ever since.

The smelliness comes from a defensive reaction known as reflex bleeding, according to a  USDA fact sheet  that tells  you more about Asian lady beetles than you ever thought you'd want to know. The best way to trap them, says the USDA, is attract them with light, then sweep or vaccum up. Better still, keep them out by caulking exterior cracks and crevices.

But once you go out, they'll be waiting for you.

Flickr photo credit:  Burnt Umber  Poem was printed in the Askov American and appears here with editor Colette Stadin's consent. Read an Askov American column  by former editor Marlana Benzie-Lourey and reprinted in MinnPost. 

Becoming a Social Media Hound

Owning a high-maintenance Weimaraner rescue puppy means time away from the computer, but not time away from the job.

While I walk Jerry, ideas that may not have made sense while staring at the computer screen suddenly come into clarity.

Social media is about engaging with people and keeping them coming back regularly to your space: Facebook page, Web site, Twitter account. Blogging is one way to do it. Another way is with lists. Author Brandon Lacy Campos has his  One-Liner of the Week Award.  Artist  David Berube  recently displayed a series of mail art cards on Facebook, each depicting a letter of the alphabet. Twenty-six cards, twenty-six reasons to come back and see what's next. Outgoing Minneapolis School Board member Chris Stewart featured a list of fifty best love songs on his Facebook page. People came back to see what was next, and to add their own ideas.

I've been pleasantly surprised at the outpouring of interest over Jerry, and have wondered if his own Facebook page could be in the future. For now, he can help me become a social media hound. There's no shortage of lists that a rescue Weimaraner with issues could inspire:

• The Things That Make Jerry Nervous

• Jerry's Daily Self-Esteem Journal, which chronicles the one small feat he accomplishes every day
   that helps him expand his comfort zone

• The Smelly Things Jerry Likes to Roll In

The other day I was at the computer and Jerry was at my side, nosing the mouse, causing the cursor to move on the screen. He was either saying "Let's go for a walk" or "You've been on long enough, it's my turn on the computer now."

Beans, beans, the tyrannical fruit

When the green beans on the vine are in danger of getting too tough and the temperature threatens to dip below freezing, you don't merely jump. You ask how high.

Beans, beans, the tyrannical fruit,

They force me to pick before I compute.

When the vines are bare, how good I'll feel,

With beans in the freezer for many a meal.

Composting and computing

There's something about being away from the computer that makes ideas come to the computer.

When I'm cleaning out the barn, for example. I put on my barn boots, pull on my gloves, gather up my implements: rake, pitchfork, shovel. 

Within five minutes I've put the implements aside. I'm going back up to the house, taking off the boots, pulling off the gloves, scouring my hands, and firing up the computer to capture an idea before it's gone.

It's like a moment from the TV sitcom The Big Bang Theory. Sheldon, an eccentric physics professor and a character I identify with more than I care to admit, was able to figure out a complicated problem by working on the waitstaff of The Cheesecake Factory.

I've added a new function to my volunteer service at The UpTake, transcribing gubernatorial campaign debates. It's plodding, methodical, unsexy, but necessary work, much like cleaning out the barn. Sometimes slinging muck and political debates are one and the same. Both activities enhance each other. Both offer value.

Transcribing debates sharpens your listening skills and political awareness. The downside, you tend to feel like a pod person at the computer. Cleaning out the barn, well, the downside is obvious. But the value: your skin is browned and your muscles work and you get a tangible, visible sense of accomplishment. And no one ever needed their partner to rub Tiger Balm on their shoulders after a hard day at the computer.

When does your creative muse appear? Share your story in a comment.

 

Blogging Between the Raindrops

Note: When I exported my blog posts some of the photos made a left turn at Albuquerque. I'm re-publishing those posts with photos intact. This one is from August 2010. Since then, David Swanson launched his design services Web site. Check it out!

Nothing sharpens your blogging skills like frequent thunderstorms and a telephone connection that's susceptible to lightning strikes.

My friend David Swanson, when I'd call in from my farm to discuss a creative project, would ask if I was calling from the top of a telephone pole. (Green Acres fans will get the reference.) Sometimes it feels that way. But once struck, twice shy. Several years ago our modem fried out in a thunderstorm and it took eighteen days for a repair crew to replace it. So what if I feel like my grandmother, who unplugged every electrical device in the house during thunderstorms. Elders have wisdom.

But the upside is, frequent thunderstorms bring frequent rainbows. And I've learned to blog faster.

Fifty Ways to Love Your Blogger

I've been thrilled with the feedback from readers of Poultry & Prose. New followers. Praise that has left me grasping for words at times. Thank you, all.

Similar to kicking up my skills in digital photography, I now need to grow comfortable in asking readers to take the next step. A song always works. Think Paul Simon.

Give it a Like, Mike,


Mark it a Fave, Dave,


Just comment away, Ray,


It's easy to do.


Give it a tweet, Pete,


More traffic is so sweet!


Just ShareThis wide, Clyde,


And I'll do it for you.


The latest bit of blogger cred: having Poultry & Prose included in the MinnPost Minnesota Blog Cabin program. Which means it may appear on this page someday. Would you like me to link to the latest news in your life? Give me a call, y'all!


_{Lyrics adapted from Paul Simon's Fifty Ways to Leave Your Lover from his 1975 album Still Crazy After All These Years.} 

Beaning and blogging

Summertime Sundays have become my favorite mornings for preparing garden vegetables. On Sunday mornings Mike is hosting his country gospel music program on WKLK-AM. Wyatt usually sleeps late. That leaves me alone in the kitchen, free to play whatever music I wish without eye rolling from others. And my music of choice is usually The Deep End with Nick Michaels. It's a syndicated program of deep-cut classic rock, the B- and C- and D-sides, with a sprinkling of classics you never tire of. Only 41 affiliates nationwide carry The Deep End. Duluth is the only Minnesota affiliate and only one of 16 nationwide to air the extended four-hour program.

That means a busy morning. I tend to work in time to music. In Minneapolis I discovered Ice-T provided a good backdrop for punching yeast dough. Last year I rhythmically shredded zucchini with a thrift-store kitchen contraption that resembled a countertop wood chipper. This year it's beans, green and dragon tongue: trimming them, blanching them, freezing them. Today, I was chopping beans to ZZ Top's La Grange. I stopped before the Ahow-how-how-how led to ow-ow-ow. 

And during this dance of chopping, blanching, and freezing, that's when the blogging ideas flow. During the summer harvest, ideas often must wait their turn. Ripened beans on the vine are harsh taskmasters.

That's why it feels good to have several blog posts in the can, as good as it feels to have fresh vegetables in the freezer. Both are stores against less plentiful and productive days. 

Knocking the Misplaced Apostrophe

I recently was gifted with a number of small items, among them, a door nameplate.
Giving the gifts was a lovely and thoughtful gesture. 
But being a proofreader makes it awfully hard sometimes to be a gracious recipient.

Not only is the nameplate incorrect, it is incorrect in its incorrectness. It of course should read The Maricles, a plural noun, as in "You will find the Maricles at this address." A plural possessive, as in the sentence "The Maricles' ability to work together is a thing of beauty," takes an apostrophe after the s. This site is a good one for punctuation rules presented with authority and aplomb.

The Maricle's opens up a dimension of Donald Trump–like grandiosity. "The Maricle's time is short. Therefore, she will grant you five minutes."

I’m used to getting my name mispronounced: MarKILL, MarSEEL, MARkel,
MERkel. (For the record it’s MARE uh kl.) But misplaced apostrophes—I can’t help
but knock ‘em. 

Ideas. Well incubated.

Long before Sears rebranded themselves to represent “Life. Well Spent,” even before they revealed their Softer Side, they sold farm incubators. Like these, from the 1951 Sears general merchandise catalog. The incubator I have at home is the first one on the page; it sold for $18.50 in 1951. My husband Mike bought ours for $20 eight years ago at the Moose Lake chicken swap. There’s one right now on eBay for $149.99. You can see why I’m starting a business with this guy.

With the exception of one industrious hen, our free-range chickens tend to lay eggs with the forethought of squirrels burying acorns for the winter. They’ll start a nest, walk away, and begin another nest somewhere else. That leaves it to Mike and me to collect forgotten eggs from atop hay bales and from inside every nook and cranny imaginable.

It takes 21 days for chicken eggs to incubate. A person using an incubator is providing the same nesting functions as a hen. Keeping the eggs warm. Turning them over regularly. Moistening them with water so the chicks have an easier time pecking their way out of the shells. 

A few days before Hatch Day we prepare a container, a cardboard box or perhaps an old cooler, for the new arrivals. The container is lined with a layer of pine shavings, is equipped with a waterer and a feeder filled with chick starter, and has a heat lamp trained on it. No matter how many clutches of eggs you’ve incubated, the first peeps heard from inside the shell never cease to delight. By the time the chick pecks its way out of the shell it is exhausted, slumped on the bedding like a person who has washed up on the ocean shore. If you're thinking of starting a summertime project with your kids, this site has good information about the hows, whens, and whys of successful incubation.

It doesn’t take 21 days for an idea to hatch, but all ideas benefit from an incubation period: overnight, an hour, or even a few minutes working on something unrelated to clear your mental palate. Letting an idea steep—or as my friend Richard calls it, marinate—allows you to return to the project with a fresher perspective and the ability to find a solution that you may have not seen before. 

Being an extreme commuter takes drive

The U.S. Census Bureau defines extreme commuters as people age 16 years and over who travel 90 minutes or more each way to work. For almost 10 years, my one-way commute was 79 miles and 90 minutes on the nose. I had three radio presets programmed to NPR stations: Duluth/Superior, St. Paul, and western Wisconsin.

New York ranks first in the Extreme Commuter Nation with 5.2% of its workers having a one-way commute of 90 minutes or more. Next comes New Jersey, West Virginia, Maryland, and California. Minnesota shows up 46th in the rankings. Which explains why I received so many incredulous reactions from Minnesotans when I described my commute from northern Pine County to Chisago County.

Before my husband Mike and I closed on our five-acre farm, I made sure I had the okay from my supervisor about working from home a couple of days a week. That’s how I learned my optimum hours for creativity are from 4:30 to 8:30 a.m. At 4:30 Mike and our 13-year-old son Wyatt are still asleep. The only other souls up, it seems, are a couple of early-bird roosters warming up in the front yard, and the crew on a freight train that’s chugging through nearby Kerrick.

Once that prime slice of time passes, I move on to task-oriented projects such as revising and reviewing. The simple act of stepping outside to throw corn to the chickens can result in an idea that never would have occurred at the computer. By the end of the day, an eight-hour workday has stretched into a 10-hour day, and often longer. If I were queen of the world, every workplace would have its own onsite hobby farm.

In 2003 3.4 million Americans had a daily extreme commute, according to the U.S. Census American Community Survey. With the 2010 Census approaching, it will be interesting to see if the number of extreme commuters changes. There are fewer jobs today than in 2003, but I suspect more people who are willing to drive far: people whose partners can't relocate from their own jobs, people who don't want to disrupt their kids' school year with a move. 

It’s never great news to learn that your job has been eliminated during a recession, or after a recession, depending on your point of view. But whatever curves are thrown my way, I dig deep and look for the positive. And despite the fact I never minded my commute – it was something I did without thinking about it – I was extremely glad I no longer had to do it.

Are you an extreme commuter? What has your experience been like? What makes it work for you? Share your experiences below.

 

The Picture-Perfect Rural Life and Other Myths

I recently heard a Minnesota Public Radio interview with Michael Perry. He’s the author of Coop: A Year of Poultry, Pigs, and Parenting. Many of the callers said they were, or wished they were, a writer who lived on a farm.

Couple that fact with the 70 million people who play FarmVille on Facebook, and I realized that yes, people might actually want to read my rural ruminations.


I live on a five-acre farm in the east central Minnesota township of Bruno. It’s a name that elicits one of two responses: “Where in the heck is Bruno?” or “I know exactly where that is! I go fishing/hunting/berry picking there.” If you haven’t heard of Bruno, the nearest big cities (meaning populations of 1,000 and over) are Hinckley, Sandstone, and Moose Lake. And if nothing rings a bell yet,  there’s always Duluth, population 86,000-plus.

The popularity of FarmVille made me realize there may be misconceptions about farming. My own conversations with others have confirmed it. Here are some of them.

Farm life is quiet.
Keep that in mind the next time you hear the chatter of guinea fowl or the honk of Embden geese. Both have a fondness for conference calls.

Roosters only crow in the morning.
That’s when they start. See above.

Stop by a farm and there will be a piece of pie and a cup of coffee waiting for you.

True, there are moments when I’m going full-tilt Aunt Bee, like when I’m baking apple pies for the Kerrick Volunteer Fire Department’s annual turkey dinner. Other times, stop by unexpectedly and you may find yourself impressed into service unloading hay bales or stringing electrical fence.

Fox cubs are cute. Howling wolves sound cool.
In nature documentaries, yes. On a farm, though, the context changes. A wolf that’s howling in the distance could be celebrating the kill of a neighbor’s sheep or goats. Someday I’ll tell you about a not-so-fantastic fox and its brood who came across a turkey hen and her young.

Farm life is pretty and tidy.
We live in a shrink-wrapped, sanitized world where someone else does the dirty work. On a farm, unless you have Eb the Hired Hand on call, the muck stops with you.

In future posts I’ll be talking about egg laying and idea incubation, extreme commuting and optimal hours for creativity, and striking a balance between living on and off the grid. I invite you to stop on back; catch me on a good day and I’ll have a slice of pie waiting for you!