An essay redux: Shielded from the world; Polarized times and personal decisions
Ten years ago I wrote this column for Flagstaff Live!. It was my coming out story. Prepublication, I was terrified of telling the story of how I came to decide to have an abortion. Afterwards, I felt committed, brave, vindicated. People told me their stories, and I made the Kevlar Kimono that I reference at the end of the essay below. It became a public art piece. I’ve gone on to make more works that address controversial topics. And yet, we are still fighting the same fight. A decade later, unbelievably, women are losing the right to make...
read moreFive hundred stories strong; a celebration of authentic Flagstaff voices
Flagstaff Letter from Home recently posted its 500th column on the website FlagstaffLetterfromHome.com, where each column has been archived since late 2009. Ten Flagstaff writers, usually five at a time, have been rotating on a weekly basis since the column first appeared in May 2008. This week, two of the original writers – “homer”s – reflect on that milestone. To be a homer is like being a member of a secret society. To each other, we pledge our troth: to have faith in one another’s writing, to step up when crises arise, to edit when...
read moreBarn raising and crowd sourcing; What’s the formula for accomplishing grand projects?
A little more than 10 years ago, Michael Wolcott was writing a weekly column for Flagstaff Live!, but he needed a break and floated an idea to Tony Norris: “I…would like to generate a column that uses each of our voices….Our voices are representative, I think, of a certain cast of characters who’ve chosen to live on this great ocean of sedimentary rock, the high dry plateau we think of as home. We have lived in communes and in tents, in high-rises and vehicles….We have worked on the river, waited tables, opened...
read moreJust another train song, part 2; Many rivers converging and the way things get done
I’m on the Metro in Washington, D.C., in a crush of pink-hatted (mostly) women, many carrying protest signs. We are really doing this. We are feeling our power, many of us for the first time. It is an extraordinary thing to witness and be part of. Successive subway platforms are jammed with more people in pink hats. There seems to be enough space on our train for everyone who wants to travel with us: woman, man, child, white, brown, black, lesbian, trans, queer, grey, whatever. We squeeze in to make room. This is what democracy looks like: no...
read moreJust another train song, part 1; White noise, dirty windows and bending the space-time continuum
Here’s almost everything I know about trains. Trains are great generators of white noise. This is good if white noise helps you sleep. Trains and the people inside them also generate plenty of the other kind of noise. Is black noise the opposite of white noise? You’re never quite still riding a train. That makes it nearly impossible to write legibly on the train even when you try really hard to make it so. The windows, your main contact with the landscape, are usually dirty, which makes it hard to take decent photographs. I often see things I...
read moreBorrow, quote, steal, trade; How things really get created
Sometimes the best we can do is quote the smart, funny, insightful people we know. In the early 1980s, when Mike was in grad school working as a teaching assistant his roommate, Harry, who worked as a bartender at the Pinckney Street Hideaway in Madison, brought home jokes for Mike to tell his class. I wonder, when was the last time I had a truly original idea? With apologies to Bob Mankoff: “How about never? Is never good for you?” From Austin Kleon’s book Steal Like an Artist, I learned that, “Harold Ramis … once laid out his rule...
read moreBig bird sunflowers in my front yard; An homage to yellow
This week’s Letter from Home is brought to you by the color yellow: egg yolks from free-range chickens, aspen leaves in the fall, and sunflowers that bloom along roadsides in August in northern Arizona, in fields and yards all over town, playing against the clear blue sky and swaying when the wind comes up. And tiny goldfinches and pine siskins perching on those tall stalks, hanging upside down and helping themselves to the seeds. All this yellow makes my heart sing. And also sink, knowing that those sunflower blossoms signal the beginning of...
read moreWhen I go sailing ‘round the room; Relics of a well-lived life
Eight weeks ago, I began what should have been a three-day project to empty my studio, clean and vacuum, spray for spiders (I know, but the studio’s been infested with black widow spiders, and I have a zero-tolerance policy on that score), then sort and replace the contents. I worked for the three days, and then realized it was a bigger project than I’d imagined. It’s not uncharacteristic for me to start something and not quite finish, but I usually get back to it sooner rather than later. Alas, the clutter wizard has been absent, and so the...
read moreBook of the Year; Every day is Mother’s Day
Enclosed you will find your copy of the 1959 Britannica BOOK OF THE YEAR … This handsome book provides you with unbiased, accurate information on every important phase of world affairs. It enables you to discuss current events and world developments with authority … At my mother’s urging, my parents stretched their meager budget to buy a set of encyclopedias just before I was born. The set was given away years ago, but I kept the 1959 Book of the Year documenting the state of the world the year I was born. I recently cracked it open, and out...
read moreDoing battle with squirrels; On writing and not writing
My first grade teacher was scary. That’s what I remember, anyway. Mrs. Appel was old, for one thing. (Probably about my current age.) I remember her as intimidating, and not gentle or particularly kind. She was doing the best she could (aren’t we all), but she was harsh. Shouldn’t a first-grade teacher be sweet and young? Or at least sweet and middle-aged? First-graders need sweet and kind teachers—a Miss Honey—the way they later need a Miss Frizzle, of Magic School Bus fame, who took her students on a field trip to the alimentary canal. But...
read moreWhich wolf will you feed? Working with your back to the world
Over the past couple of weeks, I’ve been thinking about snow, and about the color white, which led me to think about Agnes Martin and her serenely abstract (and mostly neutral) paintings. The simplicity of them caused some to discount her work, but in the end, she was awarded a National Medal of Art in 2004 for her contributions as an abstract expressionist painter. In an interview, she said, “I paint with my back to the world.” What could we all accomplish with that kind of fine focus and stubborn grace in pursuit of our own work? Imagine...
read moreSuccess and failure; learning not to sell myself short
This past weekend I participated in a panel discussion: “Life as a Successful Artist.” When I was first asked to do this a few weeks ago, I balked. I thought about what it means to be a successful artist. And whether (or not) I feel like one. Sadly, the success label can kill the creative impulse for some of us. I have to be very careful to apply the label only to my creative projects, but not to myself: success isn’t something I AM, it’s something I HAVE. It’s critical for me to start from scratch with every new project. Beginning with...
read moreTrail religion; Hiking with the Order of the Pearly Everlasting
Now that I’m finished procrastinating – the dishes are washed, the laundry is done, and my desk is cleaned off – I can sit down to write with a clearer head. Today is a day for being inside. After a temperate fall, snow has at last coated the bare aspens: white on white. Late in the afternoon the sky cleared enough for a peek of blue. In the northwest, they call that a sucker hole, but here it’s a promise: tomorrow will be clear and cold, with sunlight glinting off the snow, and the streets clearing off nicely. The solstice is nearly here and...
read moreEngage and discover; Why art residencies are important
My friend, René, is on her way to Oregon, where her husband has a new job. I met René years ago in a workshop. She handed me her card: “René Westbrook: Gluing Things to Stuff Since 1989.” I laughed, and knew immediately that I wanted to be her friend. After living at the South Rim of Grand Canyon for 11 years, she moved to Flagstaff so her daughter could attend high school at Flagstaff Arts and Leadership Academy. Lucky me. During the time she lived here, we showed our artwork together, and met sporadically for lunch, studio visits and...
read moreLearning to fit; Ebb, flow and sometimes falling over
My mother taught me to use her putty-colored electric Singer sewing machine when I was 4. The toy sewing machine she bought me didn’t work right, and being practical, she figured she might as well teach me to use her machine. In the years after, I learned well how to follow a pattern to construct a garment from yardage. When I was in college, I would stitch up a dress or a pair of pants on my grandmother’s ancient, gold-embellished black electric Singer when she brought me home to Tipton, Ind. for the weekend. I had my own machine at my...
read moreHome Run; Recent brushes with real estate
My mother has always been deeply interested in houses: their layouts and locations, and most importantly, how they function. She would have been a really good architect, I expect. Instead of studying architecture, though, she married my father and spent many years moving around the world. They bought, remodeled and sold several houses in the 17 years I lived at home. During the four years my dad was stationed in Belgium, my parents rented 34 Rue de France, in Obourg, from the wife of the owner of the local cement factory. It seemed palatial,...
read moreInterstices: Minding the gaps between the words
Three deer grazed in the forest behind my house, skittish but hungry. One headed for the penstemon flowers growing in our yard, but seeing Mike and me, and Kelly the (unthreatening) Labrador, opted out. A yellow swallowtail butterfly was briefly trapped under the shade shelter on the patio, fighting the winds that signal yet another red flag warning. Craving water, a handful of us took various watercraft – my kayak (Martha), Alan’s new McKenzie boat, and an assortment of paddleboards – out to Lake Mary to paddle around at dusk. Later, after...
read moreNo regrets; Arranging for summer vacation
Vacation planning always feels like such a hopeful thing to do. We’ve been working all week to prepare to leave. Mike’s built a fabulous platform/storage box for our new-to-us vehicle. I’ve been working at my desk so I can leave with a clear conscience. At last, we’re nearly there. I’m in that halcyonic state of having only a few last minute things to do, knowing we’ll drive away in the morning with our most basic needs met. And to hell with the rest. I view a vacation as a chance to attend to the things I love that sometimes get pushed aside...
read moreSeason of wonder; A head full of questions
A home movie of my sister Dana, taken sometime around 1967, shows her enthusiastically hunting Easter eggs in our backyard in Springfield, Va. Her 6-year-old self is wearing her pink Easter dress, pink Mary Janes and a navy blue straw hat. Captured by my dad on film with his Brownie Fun Saver movie camera, she was so full of joy, and watching her leap like a gazelle brings back such a carefree time in our young lives. My mom always set up an elaborate Easter egg hunt for Dana, Kristin and me, hiding treasures in interesting places—some so...
read moreCreative intervention; Rebuilding and rediscovering our hometown
When my husband Mike and I moved to Flagstaff in 1986, the town was sweet, but somewhat shabby. It was most certainly not the happening place it is these days. We temporarily rented a house out by the old fire station just west of Cosnino Road, then bought a house near the intersection of Fourth Street and Lockett Avenue. Our local grocery was the Bayless (the current location of Coconino Community College’s satellite campus). Where Heritage Square now sits, Babbitt’s Department Store sprawled over the block, having been added onto piecemeal...
read moreInfamous Angel; Rescued by minutia
What is this book? What is anything? Who am I? Who are you? Stop it. Forget it. This quote on the front of my current journal is a direct lift from the inside flap of Maira Kalman’s book, The Principles of Uncertainty, in which Kalman gives equal treatment to trash cans and flower arrangements, bedrooms and bathrooms, and the hats, coats and shoes of strangers walking down the street. As long as its form interests her, any object can be worthy of notice. I’m following her example, taking her words as an imperative to observe the trivial in my...
read moreA mind at rest; Flickers of contrast at Kane Ranch
The four of us stood on the porch admiring the last glimmers of light on thunderheads over the Echo Cliffs. A few moments later, the moon rose from behind those same clouds taking our collective breath away. This is a fact: at Kane Ranch the contrasts often leave me breathless, sighing over light and dark, or gasping aloud at something I never even imagined was there. The stone building is a record of this place’s history. The worn threshold reminds us how many boots have crossed over. The back door’s paint is crackled with age. The latch on...
read moreNew land; Finding center and inspiration
It’s morning. Dense fog rises off the river in the valley below, though the sky is clear. Drops of moisture diffuse the sunlight; the traffic sounds are muffled. The daylight burns off the fog, but sometimes not until noon. Everything seems to take longer, moving through the dampness. The trees are ghostly and unfamiliar. The wall heater kicks on just before sunrise, but the rest of the day the sun heats my humble cabin. I barely notice the sloping floor anymore, or the lack of walls in the shower. The kitchen is minimal. It’s not Walden, but...
read moreLost and gained; the power of resilience
What if bridges – your only connection with the outside world – washed away in a torrential rainstorm and the ensuing floodwaters? What if the Colorado River ran muddy as the Mississippi from the Glen Canyon Dam down to the Little Colorado River? How resilient could you be? The river did just that this past week, as the sands picked up by Wahweap Creek sneaked through the penstocks of the dam, subversively clouding the water in Marble Canyon. (Being a little subversive myself, I imagined the dam gone altogether and the current slowed,...
read moreLeave-takings; the endless circle of accepting and letting go
The road construction crews at Lee’s Ferry have signs posted along the road indicating where it’s safe for them to pull out with their heavy construction equipment: TURN AROUND. Lacking the hyphen to make it a noun, I read it as an imperative: GET OUT WHILE YOU STILL CAN. The message was clearly meant for me that particular day.
read moreTropical Ireland: Tripping over the weather
I packed for Ireland with my mind on my last two trips: I could never quite get warm here. This time, even though it was July, I brought a warm jacket and clothes I could layer, plus a brand-new, purchased-just-for-this-trip rain jacket. Boy, was I surprised. Since I arrived it hasn’t rained a single drop. More remarkably, for over a week a heat wave has gripped the island. Daytime highs hovered around 85°. There have hardly even been any clouds or fog, though humidity still dampens the ardor of the sky. It’s blue, but nothing like that clear...
read moreLife edit; clearing out the clutter
At the conference I attended last week, one of the presenters recommended editing as a technique for achieving focus in one’s artwork. While I know the value of reviewing and culling my activities, I often forget that doing too much – and the requisite switches in attention – takes enormous amounts of brainpower. Even a tiny task, like making a phone call, can take a disproportionate amount of energy when it’s an interruption to my workflow. Attention is like the stainless steel thread I bought last week: fine and shiny and flexible, but...
read moreMeditation in walking: reconnecting with the self
Eight miles. That’s how far I walked along the south rim of Grand Canyon today. My hands are puffed up like little Vienna sausages, and my feet felt for a while like they would burst out of my shoes, but for the moment I’m sitting on the porch at El Tovar with my shoes unlaced, drinking a tumbler of club soda and a glass of Irony, a lovely Cabernet Sauvignon. The sun pours through the wine onto the table leaving a red stain of light. Morning and evening, elk feed on the grass lawns at the south rim, leaving the place smelling vaguely of...
read moreAlto; Taking it slow to sort it all out
Listen to the author read this essay. Thanks to John Grahame and Radio Sunnyside for this recording. It began like this: our family made an epic journey through the colonias of northern Mexico, past irrigated fields and wood-and-metal shacks, surrounded by burros and horses, goats and chickens. These homesteads were nestled against earthen berms, the only barriers against canals of fetid-looking water. Outhouses twenty feet from the shelters drained into God-knows-what watershed. We drove through tiny border towns, where schoolgirls in...
read moreWafting smoke; old habits wandering back
A few weeks ago, I started doing something I thought I’d left behind many years ago: I took up smoking again. (Before you jump to conclusions, let me say I’ve quit already.) Since I quit all those years ago, I’ve smoked about one cigarette a year. But the brain is a funny thing: for years after, I had dreams that included finding cigarettes in my purse, feeling shocked at not having quit after all. Unlike Betty Draper, who appallingly and provocatively smoked straight through her pregnancies, I stopped smoking in 1985 when I became pregnant...
read moreThe path of passion; creating a life full of meaning
Coming home from the Calexico concert the other night, the moon was a grinning Cheshire cat, mocking me with his over-large smile from a perch in the sky-soup of stars and darkness. That blackness resonates with me, especially on these short winter days, but music soothes my dark inner beast. A few days later, I headed south for a warm respite in Blythe, to warm my bones and hear some bluegrass. Through the late afternoon and into the evening, I traveled south through the desert, then headed west for the state line. In my rearview mirror, the...
read moreFailing in order to succeed: Infatuation with the new and nebulous
I’m trying to learn to be better at making mistakes, and more willing to fail. On the face of it, that seems like a bad idea. But I’ve been reading about how failure can ultimately lead to success. I’m not convinced that’s the only requirement; success probably grows out of a combination of persistence, opportunity and a whole host of other qualities and attitudes. Regardless, being paralyzed by fear of failure isn’t likely to be helpful. A few months ago I started working on an art project for which I had a vision, but no real sense of the...
read morePrint immersion: Becoming the very books we read
Last week, I stopped by Starrlight Books in downtown Flagstaff to visit with the owner, Evan Midling. I’ve been curious to know how he learned the book business and came to own the place. I wondered how he manages to stay afloat in these seemingly tough times for independent booksellers. Between bookshelves, kachinas and framed art decorate the walls. Evan showed me one of his prized books from the rare book cabinet, a first edition of Wallace Stegner’s Beyond the Hundredth Meridian with a fold-out map in the front. He pulled out a few other...
read moreYou may say I’m a dreamer
A few weeks ago, I dreamed of flying, not in an airplane, but mysteriously under my own steam. In my dream, I pedaled a winged contraption quickly enough to get and stay aloft as I soared over Wheeler Park and the roof of Federated Church. I used to have flying dreams when I was young, as late as my high school years. They were rare enough that I looked forward to them as one might a birthday or Christmas. In one particularly memorable version, I flew over the town of Rothenberg, Germany. (We were living in Belgium at the time, and I’d...
read moreShielded from the world: Polarized times and personal decisions
I have two sisters. Between the three of us, we’ve had a range of reproductive experiences: miscarriages, near-misses with miscarriages, false positives, and the birth of live healthy babies. During her second pregnancy, one sister was told that her child would likely be born with Down Syndrome. In spite of that possibility, there was never any question about whether she would continue the pregnancy; further testing reversed the diagnosis. And one other thing: I had an abortion. I was a sexually active, contraceptive-using college student in...
read moreRollng thunder: many opportunities for misadventure
In an effort to entice myself back into the studio, I’ve been preparing scraps of fabric for collage, willing myself to do anything, as long as I’m in the studio. And it works: even these mundane tasks awaken a new appreciation for the fabrics, and remind me why this medium has always felt like home. These days I’m especially drawn to the fabrics with some degree of translucency, setting them aside for some future project I’ll work on at some future date I will have with my future self, when my days open up a bit. Music has the same affect on...
read moreIn a dream state: Allowing oneself to be carried away
After Maurice Sendak died last month, I was reminiscing about his books, and then about all the children’s books that made an impression on our family. Found in the stacks at Bookman’s, Sendak’s In the Night Kitchen, so quirky and fantastic, was one of our favorites: “Milk in the batter! Milk in the batter! We bake cake! And nothing’s the matter!” Our weekly trips to the library yielded good stuff, too, but some books needed to be owned and savored. Bookman’s was our favorite because we could exchange often, essentially trading up for not...
read moreWays of seeing; Potential waiting to be revealed
A couple of weekends ago, I drove south to meet my youngest sister, Kristin, at the Phoenix airport. We’d hatched a plan a few weeks prior for her to fly from St. Louis to surprise Dana, our middle sister on her 50th birthday and our mom for Mother’s Day. We haven’t all been together for Mother’s Day since I left home in 1976. It felt momentous. We had to lie to pull off the surprise: I pretended to be so swamped with work that I couldn’t make the drive south to Tucson. Kris pretended to be home when she was really on her way to the airport....
read moreFour wheels of freedom; Learning to let go of control
Unlike most American teens, I didn’t learn to drive when I was 16. We lived in Belgium where the legal driving age was 18, so when I returned to the states I was uninitiated to certain Midwestern rituals. My first summer back, in central Indiana, I had one date with a guy who drove a Ford pickup with a bench seat. He thought it was weird that I didn’t sit in the middle next to him. I didn’t know the protocol. It seemed to me that every other 18-year-old in Indiana had learned to drive a tractor at age 12, and got their learner’s permit at 14....
read moreIn the air; The complex tapestry of human life
“It’s easy to focus on the sky on days when you are flying through the air from your home to a distant place.” That’s how I started my journal the day I left for Ireland a few weeks ago. I left Flagstaff on a Saturday, flying through clear blue skies, the airplane wing angled in contrast against a line of haze at the horizon. I bought a brand new Moleskine journal a few days before, wanting to collect on paper the fresh impressions born out of a heightened awareness, knowing that those words will bring the experiences flooding back, even...
read moreArt of the superhero; Being oneself is the ultimate power
The other day I spent a couple of hours with Jean Rukkila, who is one of my personal superheroes. We sit at the bar at the Monte Vista, looking across Aspen Street to West of the Moon. She confesses, “I used to fantasize having my little press in one window and massage table in the other window and a little sign, like those private eyes have, written on the door:” Jean Rukkila Therapeutic Massage & Sonnets I can picture it. I first got to know Jean when I owned a gallery in that same building. She brought me matchbox books that she’d...
read moreStop the war; Stories from the front lines of resistance
David lives in west Oakland, Calif., just across from the BART station. On the night of Nov. 2, he was one of 92 people arrested in protests in downtown Oakland. When he called the next night, he said, “Mom, I just wanted to let you know I’m OK.” Clueless, I wondered aloud, “Why wouldn’t you be alright?” I was kind of glad not to have known that he’d spent the night in an Oakland jail. His dad and I are proud of his commitment to his ideals, understanding of his desire to be in the thick of it, and at the same time concerned for his safety....
read moreLife and times; Carefully crafting the right narrative
A dream: I’m in the middle of an open field. In the distance is a swarm of bees, flying 30 feet off the ground, a humming, pulsing river of insects. In the middle of the field is an old swing set. I’m hanging off it, like I did when I was 10 years old, upside down with my knees locked over the bar. A few bees land on me, but don’t sting me. I drop to the ground, and try to cover my hands and neck. A blanket is nearby; I unfold it and throw it over me to keep the bees off. I yell for help, but no one hears me. When I was 10 or 11, I was in...
read morePainting the invisible; Abstraction and cuing memory
What do you see when you turn out the light? When I was younger, I thought this was a nonsense line, but as an adult I suddenly realized that John and Paul used this line as shorthand to ask all the questions about what delights and motivates us, what fills us up, what empty places and sorrows there are in our lives. It’s key to self-knowledge, this question, to learn what art appeals to us, and how we developed those preferences. How do we ground abstract concepts in concrete expressions? Is it possible that visually important moments have...
read moreQuiet observation; Taking notes for the moment of creation
In the beginning, in 1998, we held Flagstaff Open Studios to make art more accessible to the general public and the art-making process less mysterious. People came to our studios, and we did it again the next year. Fourteen years later, we’re still making our art and telling our stories. I’ve missed a couple of years, once because I had a brutal bronchial infection and once because I went to see the Dalai Lama in Tucson. Good excuses, both. Artists might have a few more creative bones than your average Joe-Sixpack; what sets us apart is that...
read moreGood sleeping weather; The dreaminess of midnight in the summer
When the days turn steamy, there’s nothing better for sleep than the cool night air humming over you. Before the rains started, my parents visited to escape the Tucson heat. We gave them our bedroom and slept outside on cots and sleeping pads. The night air was cool, almost cold, and I slept with my down bag zipped up and relished the chilled air that comes down off the mountain into our neighborhood. I awoke periodically and noted the constellations’ changing positions, the way the dipper pours out its contents over the course of the night....
read moreTime travel; Walking through the centuries
Far from the fires around Flagstaff, we’ve been in chilly Ogden, Utah, this past weekend. It was green almost beyond belief—the only gaps in the lushness are where snow still covers the mountainsides and peaks. The reservoirs are brimming, and the rivers are running at full tilt: falling over cliffs of quartzite and granite and crashing down mountainsides. Wednesday, we hiked up Waterfall Canyon, just east of town. From the top of the canyon, snowmelt plunged down 200 feet to where we were standing. A wind kicked up from the rush of water and...
read moreAn ill wind; Always-shifting seasonal disturbances
At the front window, the dogs stand with their tails in the air and a ridge of hair raised along their backs. They are on alert, poised to protect us from the dangers posed by blowing bits of paper and leaves, and whatever else might happen along on this windy day. They pace the floor. They follow me around the house and never quite settle into their usual mid-day naps. I have no claim to experience with the harsh Flagstaff spring winds, really. In 1986, the first year we lived here, we rented a house east of town, near the old fire station...
read moreCreative work; The art of every day
After the Viola Awards a few weeks ago, a bunch of us traipsed over to Uptown Billiards in search of closure and whiskey. Poet and owner of Uptown, James Jay, had just won the Viola Award for Literature. Upon receiving the award he recited a beautiful poem (not even his own) that brought me to tears. Several of the acceptance speeches that night were eloquent, but his poised, elegant delivery captivated us. James showed up at the bar just after we arrived. First thing, he started clearing tables and filling orders, wearing the rolled-up...
read moreCreative types; Fostering art in all abilities
In “Finding Flow,” Mihalyi Csikszentmihalyi writes, “The quality of experience [is] a function of the relationship between challenges and skills. Optimal experience, or flow, occurs when both variables are high.” When you address big challenges with high skill levels, feats of creative genius are possible. This is true for any field. Even within the rigid structure of mathematics—my husband is a mathematician, and he tells me this is true—there’s room for divergent thinking that leads to new discoveries and innovative ways to think about old...
read moreLiving with resolve; New words for a new year
It feels to me that things are falling apart, like the poem: “the centre will not hold.” We’re trapped in a socio-political centrifugal machine, where the heaviest mettle gets spun to the outer edges of society and separates into its most irrational component parts. Last Sunday I drove into spring: down I-17, first past dun-colored hills and ghostly pale cottonwood trees, and then brittlebush blooming on the side of the highway. Spring’s still far off, I know, yet I got a preview of it as I descended to the desert. In this period...
read moreSweet times; Baking cookies with the family
After my grandmother died, my mom and my Aunt Nina took up her holiday cookie-baking gauntlet. This was not an undertaking for the faint of heart. Grandmére was a prodigious baker of cookies; around the winter holidays she spent hundreds of hours filling tins with sweets to pass along to her family, friends and neighbors. I’ll go out on a limb of memory—likely exaggerated by the fact that I was a child with a sweet tooth—and say that she made at least a dozen different types of cookies, decorated and plain, plus divinity, peanut brittle,...
read moreCapturing wonder; Flagstaff through fresh eyes
Last weekend my 18-year-old niece, Taylor, came to visit. She’s graduating next spring and looking at colleges. Though I’ve known her all her life, I didn’t feel like I really knew her. I was afraid it would be awkward, but instead, her visit became a sweet opportunity to get to know her. Taylor is a photographer. Her high school offers photography classes, including darkroom training. Over the past two years, she’s discovered that she loves the printing process, the smell of the chemicals, the magic of making images come to life on paper....
read moreShut up and go to sleep; A conversation about lullabies
Tony: I’m in the planning stages for a new CD of lullabies, those songs intended to calm the fretful child and persuade him to fall fast asleep. It seems all my younger friends have babies and toddlers. Having raised five of my own and boasting eight grandchildren, I want to record a collection of soothing tunes that might make bedtime a little easier for these young ones. Darcy is consulting with me on the project, and helping keep me to the straight and narrow. In our discussion the other day, I suggested that lullabies grew to fill a need;...
read moreAwaiting winter; Reflections on faith and generosity
Roberta and I motored out Highway 89 today to visit Judy, who lives with Pete on a sizable spread in the pinyon-juniper forest north of Flagstaff. We drove out to see the remnants of her garden, but Judy gave us the home tour, too. I’ve decided: the expansive greenhouse is my dream home, lack of toilet facilities notwithstanding. Near sunset, we reveled in the warmth and moistness that abides in that protected space. “Do you just come out here and sit in the winter?” I asked. “I bring my garden books out, and dream about next season,” Judy...
read moreReal life ‘Mad Men’; Lessons in flaws and brilliance
I’ve been missing the steady tone of a good novel, so when my book club decided to read Barbara Kingsolver’s newest, “The Lacuna,” I felt relieved to be given the assignment even though the book is long and time is short. Plus it gives me something to do in the middle of the night. One of the best lines I’ve read so far is this: “Mother is a museum of bad words.” I wonder what I’m a museum of? These days, I am a museum of unrepentant desire. Fortunately, my appetites are pretty benign: chocolate, sleep, red wine and hot showers. Sometimes my...
read moreThe fame allure; Lessons from the ‘cowboy lifestyle’
“After four decades devoted to informing fans about the cowboy life style of Roy Rogers and his wife, Dale (Queen of the West) Evans, the family museum in Branson, Missouri, has shut its doors … Christie’s (Auction House) will be selling off most of the collection July 14-15 … (including) … Rogers’ trusty costar Trigger, in the flesh.” –The New Yorker, July 12, 2010 I’ll admit that I was irresistibly drawn to the Christie’s Web site to delve further into the spoils of the museum’s dismantling. I wondered who in his right mind...
read moreBuried treasure; Digging in the garden, in the past
This morning I took the dog for a walk up the urban trail. Gilia, milkvetch and dalmation toadflax were all in bloom. I pulled up a few of the invasive toadflax plants, making a tiny action toward weeding the forest. In my own wild yard, the iris blossoms are spent. Columbine, sage and lavender are flowering now, and beneath the thick mulch, the soil is still cool and moist. The lamb’s ear will be next, bringing bees and sphinx moths. After that, there will be tickseed coreopsis and echinacea flowers. Almost everything I planted last fall...
read moreLove letter; Understanding the great unconformity
Through a fortunate set of circumstances, I recently spent 10 days living at the south rim of Grand Canyon hiking, making art, writing and then, on the last two days, sitting on the jury panel for the park’s Artist in Residence program. Though I feel I barely know the canyon, I am enthralled. Also, intimidated, curious and profoundly impressed. Each dawn, through my second-story bedroom window, the clouds, light and atmospheric conditions put on a different show at the rim. I could barely take my eyes off the place. I discovered that I...
read moreBrevity and back story; All that you need to know
“If you do not intend to stipulate that marks of punctuation be transmitted, write your message without punctuation and read it carefully to make sure that it is not ambiguous.” –Instructions from a 1928 pamphlet intended to help people write more effective telegrams. I’ve been thinking about texting and telegrams lately, and wondering what we might learn about texting from that older form. It seems that people took language more seriously back then, when a telegram was an event. We get so many transmissions these days, via text (and all the...
read moreTrajectory: In the path of the earth
There’s snow falling—again—but I’m starting to get my annual urge to dig in the dirt. This is a dangerous impulse in Flagstaff in early March, but considering the possibility raises some hope in me. Years ago as newlyweds, we lived for two years in an Iowa farmhouse. All things seemed fertile there, including me. That summer I was pregnant with our older son, Keenan. Being out of work at the time, I’d toddle out to the garden every morning with my hoe, and attempt to hack back the weeds that had sprouted overnight. Our garden was a...
read moreAwake; Visiting the early morning moon
A few weeks ago I was in Mexico, and slept nine nights in my sleeping bag on my friends’ front porch. My sleep was not without middle-of-the-night wakings, but I easily released back into sleep after each one. The rhythm of a life lived mostly outside, and mostly without a timepiece, agrees with me. While there, and against the odds, I got some of the best sleep I’ve had in years. If you’re between 40 and 60, and you or someone you know is getting a good night’s sleep, raise your hand now. I bet a million bucks you didn’t raise your hand, and...
read moreWake up to beauty
I’m sitting in my studio today stitching on a project that has no intent. It doesn’t need one: it’s simply beautiful. And that makes me happy. My needle moves in and out of a sandwich of rayon challis and silk chiffon, a repetitive meditation on color. There’s no other point to it, which is a nice break from my usual, content-driven artistic pursuits. The world is slapping me upside the head with beauty pretty regularly these days: the way that wood smoke carves light into the hollows of Flagstaff in the early morning; the stark paper-white...
read moreRemodeling my life: Starting from scratch in a space
Fall makes me greedy. I want to capture the light and the colors and the smells for safekeeping, so I can enjoy them in the dead of winter, when the light is too low, the days are too short and the colors are not so vivid. The sun streams into my studio this fall morning, at that rare angle perfectly designed to show off the yellows and reds of the leaves still clinging to the trees. My yard is especially good at this, with native roses and big, old aspen trees that just blaze. The natural world is a little too showy in the fall, don’t you...
read moreRoad of clouds: Traveling an ever-changing path
Audria is a massage therapist and a painter. She’s well-known for her lovely cloudscapes, having studied clouds closely and painted them for years. She’s painted clouds on the ceiling of her massage room in greys, yellows, browns and blues. It’s one of the favorite moments of my month: to be on her massage table, and roll over onto my back and study her interpretation of the sky. There seems to be no limit to the forms clouds take, particularly this time of year when they pile up for monsoons. I imagine them as shape-shifting beings that...
read moreContra dancing with chaos
A couple of Saturdays ago, I unintentionally went contra dancing. And though I’ve been before, I never understood the appeal of it. This time, though, I really enjoyed myself. I needed to get out of my head for a while, and while I’m not sure why this time was different, it worked. At one point, the caller said something that made my ears perk up: “It’s more fun when the dance almost falls apart, but not quite.” And so it was. We were all out on the edge of competency. Okay, maybe not the experienced dancers, but those of us who didn’t...
read moreGet Dirty: Doing the hardest thing
In our family of girls in the early ‘60s, my two sisters’ and my primary jobs appeared to be staying clean and staying safe, not necessarily in that order. In my mother’s defense, these two principles – cleanliness and safety – were deeply embedded in the culture of that time. The edge of that generation of women raised to be housewives and mothers barely grazed my sisters and me, but as adults, we’ve still had to bust through the prohibitions against independence, risk, dirt, and everything else that comprises real life. My friend, Wendy and...
read moreFinding Contentment: When less is more
“The true antidote for greed is contentment.” The Dalai Lama The yard demands my attention. A neighbor walked by as I was gardening last weekend and said, “You’re doing the meditation of one thousand dandelions.” In my case, it’s more like one hundred thousand dandelions, and soon to be more, since every one is going to seed at this exact moment. In Rush Limbaugh’s world, my dandelions represent a nightmarishly overpopulated third-world country bent on destroying the American Way of Life. If you’re a third world country, those same dandelions...
read moreGrief and grace
A vague sadness seems to be endemic in my circle of friends these days. No one’s really talking about it, but there it is, just under the fabric of our daily lives. It’s not suffering we want to make public. At its worst, tears stream down your face, mascara runs, and your features contort, making you look like Tim Curry’s character at the end of The Rocky Horror Picture Show. On good days, a net of grief hangs over us, blocking the sun just ever so slightly. We’ve been led to believe that loss and change are unnatural, but that is a big fat...
read moreChanging my mind
I believe that – if we’re lucky – we’re always in the process of becoming our true selves. Sometimes it happens slowly, with baby steps, then, suddenly, by giant leaps, like some weird game of psychic “Simon Says”. This is the story of how a red leather purse could effect one tiny transformation. My friend Laura brought this incredibly beautiful, tomato-red, hand-tooled leather purse over to my house around the beginning of the year. She asked me what I thought of it (wow!) and then asked me if I wanted it. I said, “No.” One of my core...
read moreFinding the tribe: Traveling the unknown path
In my album of baby photos, there is a photograph of my granddaddy taken sometime in the 1950s. He’s standing inside a rustic cabin, holding up a fish that’s about two feet long, and wearing a plaid flannel shirt underneath a canvas jacket. The jacket was probably lined with more flannel. Flannel played a leading role in Granddaddy’s wardrobe. Granddaddy was an auto mechanic. He and my grandmother had a series of springer spaniels, all of which (I’m pretty sure) were named Spike. In the thirties, he raced cars at a track in Alexandria,...
read moreSine Wave
The noise from my roof sounds as if it’s either hailing or a herd of small rodents is running across it. Neither is true: A single yellow aspen leaf has landed on the skylight above my head, backlit by the mid-morning light. The next second, it’s gone. The wind is blowing the leaves off the aspen tree in back. These fall days feel so aimless. Lifeless artworks lay in the studio. I consider slaughtering or burning them, like sacrificial lambs or virgin maidens. I pray to the muses: <span style=”font-style: italic;”>give me a...
read moreLife on the edge
I am living on the edge. No, not that edge. My edge has a chain-link fence along it, so I won’t walk over the cliff in the middle of the night, I guess, and sue the State of California. We are at a state beach in southern California, living both the paradise and the nightmare that is urban camping. Our neighbor’s radio is blasting Ryan Seacrest, counting down the American Top Forty, but there’s a stiff ocean breeze coming off the Pacific Ocean, which is anything but peaceful. This is our middle-aged version of the beach. The thrills we seek...
read moreHoping for sleep on the Coatimundi Highway
A few years ago, I spent the month of March strolling around Santa Fe, camping on the beach in Baja California, then trekking through Araviapa Creek on my first-ever backpacking trip. In Mexico, I slept on the beach. The night sky was at once astonishing and consoling, and I spent hours stargazing, trying to memorize the arrangements, reconnecting with the universe. I wanted to be able to stay there forever, but knew that eventually the perfection would crumble. Still the experience felt miraculous and comforting: my faith in the earth as a...
read moreAbout my hands
Here is what I think about while I’m working with my hands: everything. For that fact alone, I love working with my hands. While I peel carrots, drive long distances, wash dishes, I also woolgather. Those sorts of tasks make a connection to my brain that doesn’t require the involvement of my conscious self. That state — a sensation of simultaneous emptiness and fullness — leaves my mind free to wander. Today, I’m peeling wallpaper, which comes off mostly in irregular one-inch sections. It’s been painted over with cheap white paint, making it...
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