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Summer Reading: Two Memoirs

7/29/2016

It wasn't intentional, but I read two memoirs back-to-back last summer. Each was written by a clever youngish white American woman, each describing the choices that set her on an unusual path, each was thoughtful and entertaining –– but how different one from the other!

But books are not like friends –– where I might weigh the quirks in one against the charms of another when planning a night on the town or a weekend road-trip. Nope, books will just wait peaceably until you have time to get together. And they rarely squabble.

The Dirty Life is a memoir that dives right into the hard choices that bring a person to discover her life's work.

A New York writer, Kristin Kimball went to interview a pioneering young farmer in Pennsylvania for a magazine story.

At the forefront of a movement in local, organically sourced food, the young farmer captivated her. In a few short months, she is ready to give up her tiny Manhattan apartment for the "dirty life" of working a small farm in Northern New York.

This story about life in sustainable agriculture is not without its moments of humor, but it's a serious story about someone finding her purpose.

If this book were a friend, it would be that smart one who is passionate about topic you don't know, but who is open-hearted and more than willing to teach you.

The one who's not always comfortable to be around, but who is inspiring and just plain interesting.

Mennonite in a Little Black Dress by Rhoda Janzen

Mennonite in a Little Black Dress, however, would be the kind of friend who makes you laugh even as your life is falling apart around you. The sort of pal you want others to love, even though you also –– a little –– want to keep her all to yourself.

Rhoda Janzen starts the story with a series of really dreadful disasters including a terrible car wreck and the desertion of her husband for "a guy named Bob from Gay.com." An English professor and poet in Michigan, she ends up back with her parents in California.

But these aren't just parents, these are Mennonite parents. Don't know Mennonites? Well, Janzen, who had long since left the church and community, is glad to tell you.

And you will be glad she does. Just be careful about –– as my actual friend Lois says –– snotting coffee all over yourself. The book is that funny. And pity the person sitting next to you calmly watching Sports Center, because he is going to have to listen to you read aloud some of these wonderful paragraphs as you chuckle and wipe up spilled coffee.

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Piecing

7/26/2016

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To spell piece, you start with pie.

Or so I learned. Spelling as a topic seems itself to be made up of random wedge-shaped bits of knowledge –– spelling "rules" notwithstanding.

I have to look up everything; Google's predictive typing is a blessing for those times where I barely know how to begin. Such as with the word "turquoise." Every time.

Anyway. Pieces and piecing.

Sidebar

As a word-nerd (and a terrible speller) I've enjoyed listening to the History of English podcast.

It goes a long way toward explaining "night" vs. "knight" and "kite" vs. "kit." Et cetera.

Not to be all Steven Wright about it, but it's odd to me that "piecing" is not the process of making pieces, but instead the practice of putting pieces together. Separately from sewing that is. It's about putting specific pieces together in a particular way. As in making quilts.

I've been making quilts lately. Kind of a lot of quilts. Probably more of them than might be strictly called a hobby.

Full disclosure. I admit it: I have been sewing with manic intensity (being "in the seam allowance" as cousin Jean Jones says of that trance-like flow-state of creation) as a way of not thinking about writing.

It makes some sort of sense: like writing, where one pieces together a narrative from scraps of conversation, specific detail, and overarching themes, quilting is a way to make something new.

It's the same impulse: to create something substantial, to create something that will comfort or envelop someone, that will please someone else also. One might spend these hours with imaginary friends and their tribulations, or one might think about color, pattern, texture, and size.

But when I'm done and it's bound, instead of selling it to a reading public (or editor/agent), this finished product can be used or given away on an individual basis. Or maybe –– rather like the stories I haven't sold yet –– they'll wait on a shelf until the time is right for them to move along.

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The Would-Be Farm: Rocking Out

7/22/2016

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Every spring on the Would-Be Farm, I go on rock safari. Not like it's a real challenge to locate stone –– the hilly landscape was created by glaciers and its only half a joke to say that the Farm's three most reliable crops are porcupines, burdocks, and rocks.

But in the spring, small boulders appear as if by magic in the middle of the fields. It looks as if a bear has come along and pried chunks of granite from the ground. Maybe cranky from the long sleep? Perhaps searching for grubs? What if it's a mysterious ursine ritual feat of strength? And, not for nothing, they've got a problem with you people!

But no, this is "frost heave" at work. A prosaic name for the kind of amazing thing that happens with sub-zero temperatures, wet clay soil, and rocks.

As anyone who has ever left a bottle of beer in the freezer knows, liquids expand on the way to becoming solids.

In clay soil, water tends to pool. A small bit water pooling between a rock and the soil around it will expand and widen the gap between rock and dirt. A cycle of thawing and freezing allows more water in, which widens the gap farther and farther until there is enough volume for ice to pop the rock (this one pictured about 45 pounds of lower-back discomfort) clean out of the ground.

The field doesn't care where the stone lands. Grass grows up –– and the next thing you know, you're clanking into the chunk of granite with some surprisingly delicate part of a large and expensive piece of mowing machinery.

Smart money says to relocate the thing before the grass hides it.

Call it rock safari and make it yearly event (along with the annual Burning of the Burdock and Spot the Porcupine) and you have yourself a new neural pathway.

Ironically, this activity strongly resembles what we called "rock picking" when some of us were young farming types. Everything old is new again!

But there's a limit. Seems like frost heaving tops out at around 50 pounds. Or perhaps that's just around the same point where human effort runs into a wall. It's simply hard to hoist anything heavier and stagger it to a better spot by hand.

Enter the Bobcat. This summer's unexpectedly large project involved culverts and ditches (that thrilling tale to be told another time) and rental equipment. Because the cost of a week's rental is the same as four days, we ended up with a small diesel Bobcat for a week.

Only a couple of frost-heaved (frost-hove?) rocks appeared over this past winter, but the rockiness of the Farm seems nearly endless. At least four outcroppings of pink granite lurk around Base Camp, just waiting to catch a blade on the weed-whacker or trip a distracted walker.

After attending to the thrilling culvert and ditch issues, we still had a few days custody of the equipment. Rock safari went into a higher gear: we cleared the rocky path to both old orchards, we dug up inconvenient boulders, we nudged large stones into more desirable spots.

We both learned that operating a mini-excavator is as mesmerizing and addicting as any video game. Only when you look up, there's a wall, or a set of stairs, or something that will be scenic in a season or two.

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Holding the place

7/1/2016

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Back soon. Just gathering more material while on family vacation.

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Summer Reading: Two Memoirs

Piecing

The Would-Be Farm: Rocking Out

Holding the place

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