tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-86563466298072767032024-02-02T14:33:39.438-08:00middleWestEmily Walter Seitzhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12106131542493719969noreply@blogger.comBlogger55125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8656346629807276703.post-33948989826684873392011-01-20T09:21:00.000-08:002011-01-27T07:50:43.757-08:00Every Sailor needs A Sea<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjpMoBRCFYRQOQ-BsxizyxLBFh16nWK43MJOCy9jHKQSBPldSeZsOInNqxzcPvzc00KXbxLttUPG-AH-E9jPdK8bhdawKAlV83FEKAqXsfXFTk0SPuM4bm0SMkp_qesgt6qHJ9EHSWcE7I0/s1600/IMG_0292.JPG"><img style="display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 240px; height: 320px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjpMoBRCFYRQOQ-BsxizyxLBFh16nWK43MJOCy9jHKQSBPldSeZsOInNqxzcPvzc00KXbxLttUPG-AH-E9jPdK8bhdawKAlV83FEKAqXsfXFTk0SPuM4bm0SMkp_qesgt6qHJ9EHSWcE7I0/s320/IMG_0292.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5566891350737112674" border="0" /></a><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjlnra1wOLfjx9C7VDkM3Fo-rs8sN_rbE0CtusLvHkFRd2Wz5sWT-BxBFDzZzfs8z5ySfAe3XWooEIxyH-AxIws7ROLAAYVC6TTym3nghAMWWQlFuqdZRi4dWMVXXZ7bQC7uv6VRIdAp4YT/s1600/IMG_0291.JPG"><img style="display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjlnra1wOLfjx9C7VDkM3Fo-rs8sN_rbE0CtusLvHkFRd2Wz5sWT-BxBFDzZzfs8z5ySfAe3XWooEIxyH-AxIws7ROLAAYVC6TTym3nghAMWWQlFuqdZRi4dWMVXXZ7bQC7uv6VRIdAp4YT/s320/IMG_0291.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5566890072137368658" border="0" /></a><br /><span style="font-family:georgia;">When the snow falls between the hours of December and January, a new year turns. Just like that. A sleep later and you will need to remember to write the date differently, to remember you will turn a year older and to remember that winter has just begun in a sea of white. The second hand moves to the pulse of snow falling outside your window.<br /><br />Luckily this past new year as the clock arched it's way to midnight, I was standing in an American Legion Bar in Libby, Montana. We, my husband, our friend Ian and his girlfriend, Kassi, all had weak drinks in plastic cups to cheer as the country western band kept playing a slow Merle Haggard. The whole scene of aged couples--women with newly coiffed hair and men with worn cowboy hats danced with belt buckle to sequined top in a twirl like a long poem songed on a worn-out dance floor. We cheered as the neon clock clicked to midnight. We welcomed our luck having set sail out from a winter storm and landed in a warm north western Montana bar.<br /><br />The next day we moved slow to put our layers onto ski. Our destination was a ski hill, Turner Mountain, which none of us had ever been to and some of us had never even heard of. The night previously as Ian and my husband, Greg, checked into the hotel the owner said, "you guys know what you are doing goin up there to Turner? It's like.." And he used his right hand, angled at a pitch of 90 degrees. "It's well, it's pretty steep."<br /><br />As we slowly made our way up to the mountain on a crisp clear January 1st morning, we were headed into an area referred to as The Yaak. I have no idea why The Yaak is called this for no animals of the sort live there at least that I know of, but in a way, the name suits the place: mountainous, northern pitch of snow and wilderness. The winding road was densely forested on either side and that morning we weren't too anxious to get anywhere. We went slow. We climbed west in the minivan, but as we looked up to the rising mountains out of the trees we could see a lone ski lift, slowly moving chairs into the clouds. Or so it seemed. We couldn't believe our luck. Again.<br /><br />We finally reached the parking lot and realized we had all spent our cash the night before and wondered if we could use our cards. Kassi and I headed into the lodge where a modest wood stove pumped heat and a kiosk of sorts had one person behind an aged cash register. The lodge had views of the Cabinet mountains and a few skiers were sitting on long school lunch room tables drinking cocoa from white styrofoam cups. I couldn't decide if we had landed in paradise or a part of the eighties? Some odd whimsical world where the new year was a clock turning back, back and back. I half expected a yak to walk up and want to be fed.<br /><br />But when the kid behind the kiosk said, "yeah, we take cards." He pulled out what I used to use at my mom's clothing store back in the early 80's for credit cards, a boat anchor of what you could barely call a machine. We signed our carbon copies, gathered our tickets and went out to ski. The day was bright and bold. Beginning our new year in a place we all felt we could have been before. Not a place we had passed in our youth or a place we would have placed as some distanced memory. A place we would want to return to over and over again. The kind of place where you visit before you fall asleep and all you see is bright light from a numb sun. Crystaled light glittering off waves of white. Smiles from your lover in silence backdrop. Memory of your private sea you keep for nights of restlessness.<br /><br />And that day was endless. We skied all day into the sun, into the leeward drifts, through the glades of open trees and open to what the new year had in store for all of us. We put our faces to the sun as the slow lift brought us up to the top. We just kept saying how amazing our luck had been to find such a place. As if we had found some place we had always wanted to go, but didn't know had exisited before. A place to turn over a year and feel the westering in our lungs as we looked at mountains and clear air.<br /><br />For many a new year arrives with fog from the night before and a mirror of resolutions. January first arrives with the resolute intention to mark change, newness as if we begin to do push-ups for our brain--to muscle out the old voices and actions we might have grown comfortable with, but know are no longer healthy. But really, in January? In the beginning of the wintering, the new tide of snow that just begins to rise. January really isn't the time for abrupt change. It is a time of quiet reflection of wintering and feeling placed.<br /><br />For years, I have kept a piece of paper my father gave me that hangs next to my desk. Sent to me in a lone envelope. It's a quote from Emily Dickinson from a letter she wrote to Thomas Wentworth Higginson, 1862.<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">The Sailor cannot see the North</span><span style="font-style: italic;">,<br /></span><span style="font-style: italic;">but knows the Needle can.<br /><br /></span>And for years, I kept thinking the needle was something outside of me-some device or some <span style="font-style: italic;">thing</span>. I believed in the metaphor, the meaning, and of course the messenger, but I questioned what was <span style="font-style: italic;">my</span> needle? What mechanics did I have in me to be set in the right direction. Maybe it seems a bit odd, but that day, that first day of January as we rode up into the sky of what seemed like the end of Montana and maybe the end of this earth and into some other world, I had this feeling of direction. I felt placed in a cloud of snow. The needle came to me not some apparatus, but rather a deepening of faith in what I cannot always see, but know is there.<br /><br />Simply, the needle is awareness in being present...whatever we do to help us be, here. And this is my wish to you, to do what you need to do to be present. To be here even if you cannot see where you are as a place of purpose, know and trust that the needle can. Every sailor needs a sea. Every person needs faith that they also contain a needle in them. And really, north is not the only direction worth heading towards.<br /><br />So whatever it is skiing, reading, cooking, sailing or singing may you do it with earnestness and faith. May you all feel placed. Happy New Year.<br /><br />Enjoy the poem.<br /><br /></span> <style>@font-face { font-family: "Garamond"; }@font-face { font-family: "儷黑 Pro"; }p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal { margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }div.Section1 { page: Section1; }</style> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.25in;"><b style=""><span style="font-family: Garamond;">Earnest Ode</span></b><span style="font-family: Garamond;"></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.25in;"><b style=""><span style="font-family: Garamond;"> </span></b></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.25in;"><span style="font-family: Garamond;">When the sailors are sick of seal fat and salt,</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.25in;"><span style="font-family: Garamond;">the captain leaves his men like urchins, sails </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.25in;"><span style="font-family: Garamond;">with a carpenter to South Georgia Island </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.25in;"><span style="font-family: Garamond;">to climb a mountain in Wellingtons. </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.25in;"><span style="font-family: Garamond;">Boots suited to plant hydrangeas in the spring </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.25in;"><span style="font-family: Garamond;">mud of London. He crawls up a glacier of rock,</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.25in;"><span style="font-family: Garamond;">ice hinged on the South pole. Spring never arrives here</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.25in;"><span style="font-family: Garamond;">with signs of dirt. It unbuckles from the island of ice</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.25in;"><span style="font-family: Garamond;">the captain staggered over with twenty-seven men </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.25in;"><span style="font-family: Garamond;">and the cook’s cat, Mrs. Chippy, the only one left for dead.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.25in;"><span style="font-family: Garamond;"> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.25in;"><span style="font-family: Garamond;">Another hunches over his typewriter, thumbs</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.25in;"><span style="font-family: Garamond;">his beard and tries to write from a spit of marsh</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.25in;"><span style="font-family: Garamond;">land in Florida. His night sweats smell of hotel</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.25in;"><span style="font-family: Garamond;">sheets in Cuba, where he never writes or sleeps.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.25in;"><span style="font-family: Garamond;">So he returns to the Keys, stales the day </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.25in;"><span style="font-family: Garamond;">with his six-toed cat, Diego. Sure, there’s gazelle </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.25in;"><span style="font-family: Garamond;">heads, the tiger from Bengal, but he doesn’t like to look </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.25in;"><span style="font-family: Garamond;">at cats. He likes to say the word nada, <i style="">Our nada</i></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.25in;"><i style=""><span style="font-family: Garamond;">who art in nada </span></i><span style="font-family: Garamond;">and sees his father</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.25in;"><span style="font-family: Garamond;">as an old man on a bridge, somewhere with snow. </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.25in;"><span style="font-family: Garamond;"> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.25in;"><span style="font-family: Garamond;">And yet, it’s the puppet that gets us. </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.25in;"><span style="font-family: Garamond;">More monster than man, muppets live together </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.25in;"><span style="font-family: Garamond;">on one street, where all animals speak. </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.25in;"><span style="font-family: Garamond;">Unlike Mt. Olympus, muppets don’t travel</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.25in;"><span style="font-family: Garamond;">much. They teach us to share, like the one </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.25in;"><span style="font-family: Garamond;">who lives with his partner in a small apartment. </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.25in;"><span style="font-family: Garamond;">He ruffles Bert’s hair, buys him pajamas, </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.25in;"><span style="font-family: Garamond;">and writes him songs he sings in the bath, </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.25in;"><span style="font-family: Garamond;">keeps the door open enough, so Bert will hear </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.25in;"><i style=""><span style="font-family: Garamond; color: black;" lang="EN">Yes, I'd like to visit the moon<br />But I don't think I'd like to live there<br />Though I'd like to look down at the earth from above<br />I would miss all the places and people I love.</span></i><i style=""><span style="font-family: Garamond;"></span></i></p> <br /><span style="font-family:georgia;"><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;"><span style="font-style: italic;"><span style="font-style: italic;"><span style="font-style: italic;"></span></span></span><br /><br /></span><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /></span>Emily Walter Seitzhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12106131542493719969noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8656346629807276703.post-52527061881024261072010-12-15T08:49:00.000-08:002010-12-29T08:52:57.939-08:00Santa wears a Speedo and swims with CarpI must confess, I have not tried Christmas carp. Yes in many countries in Eastern Europe the Christmas Eve meal, usually a thirteen course feast, celebrates the prized carp. Now for anyone who may think I have mis-translated the celebratory fish as perhaps salmon or even sol. Nope. Carp.<br /><br />The winter of 1999 in Europe came in epic proportions of cold, snow and relentless storms. I was living in Kielce, Poland just over an hour north of Krakow in the rolling dales which claim to have the cleanest air in the country as well as being coined the "knife city." Luckily, I rarely saw anything more than men crying in public and pissing while they walked in circles in snowed parks. But what I vividly recall that winter were the women bundled in multiple head scarves, slowly walking from their homes to the city center where a large vat of cold water kept a collection of carp. Not your typical lobster tank with glass, rather more like a large metal garbage container with a step ladder. A man stood with a shovel and a large net, to break the occasional ice that would form a film above the sleepy slow carp, to scoop for pointing bare-fingered babcias.<br /><br />Most days like others in the city, I walked to work. That week before Christmas it was like a repeated scene, a woman pointing, a man breaking some ice and scooping out a slow fat carp, weighing it and then wrapping it in plastic. The women would lug their wriggling fish back to their home for their annual Christmas Eve clubbing and then eating a celebration of fried fish.<br /><br />As I confessed, I never had Christmas carp. I went home to Michigan that Christmas. But that last week of school, I finally broke down and asked my students, "so why carp?" They looked at me, all of them from the six to 17 year-olds, as if I had asked them Why Santa? Now, you have to remember, one must be very careful in asking about traditions in a foreign country for you might be asked to defend your own publicly noted "tradtions". Take for instance our gun laws and obesity. All of my students said with blank faces, carp is for luck. "Emilika, fried carp is neeca, really. Ees looki. You know, good fortune. Happy days. Luck in the future."<br /><br />Now, don't get me wrong I have seen a lot of carp in my days. But nothing that seemed festive or even edible. The carp of my youth were alien fish in the bottom of Lake Michigan gorging on garbage and too often surfaced showing odd bulbous tumors. They seemed like the last fish, perhaps more like a dare really to ingest and perhaps not anything to celebrate, rather to feel sorry for. But really, how would you defend the Thanksgiving turkey when for all that we all know the poor Pilgrims really ate shellfish and nut meats. Hell, maybe they even ate carp?<br /><br />I've been lucky to have lived in many different countries over the holidays from eating what seems a bit easier to ingest, panatone in Italy, fried cheese in Slovakia and even recall, shrimp on a barbie in Australia. But it is truly the time I spent in Poland, I cherish the most. Because the carp just seem like a metaphor. To search out a carp, kill it in your bathtub and serve it for family and friends seems more about having some kind of faith. Some faith in appreciating what you already might have and not what you hope to get.<br /><br />So this holiday I tried to make goodies with what I already had around the house. Here's a recipe for Bourbon Pecans. They could be considered a holiday treat. However, when you try these you will be inventing your own private holiday to make more. This recipe is from the Los Angeles Times and feel free to spice it up some more for your own taste.<br /><br />Bourbon Pecans<br /><br />1/2 cup top-quality bourbon<br />1 pound pecan halves<br />1 tablespoon canola oil<br />1 tablespoon Worcestershire sauce<br />1/2 teaspoon angostura bitters<br />1/2 cup sugar<br />1 teaspoon ground cumin<br />1/2 teaspoon cayenne pepper<br />1/2 teaspoon salt<br />1/4 teaspoon finely ground black pepper<br /><br />1. Preheat oven to 325 degrees.<br />2. Simmer the bourbon in a small saucepan over medium heat until it's reduced by a quarter, just a few minutes.<br />3. Blanch the pecans in boiling water for one minute, then drain.<br />4. Combine the bourbon, oil, Worcestershire, bitters and sugar in a large bowl.<br />5. Add the hot pecans and toss. Let stand for ten minutes.<br />6. Spread the pecans in a single layer on a large baking sheet.<br />7. Bake until the nuts are crisp and the liquid has evaporated, 30 to 40 minutes, stirring every ten minutes.<br />8. Turn the nuts into a clean large bowl.<br />9. Combine the cumin, cayenne, salt and pepper in a small bowl.<br />10. Toss with the nuts and serve.<br /><br />YIELDS: about 4 1/2 cupsEmily Walter Seitzhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12106131542493719969noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8656346629807276703.post-72239243467015915532010-11-02T09:10:00.001-07:002010-11-04T09:22:45.845-07:00What if Jesus brought a basket of fish tacos?Don't quote me on this, but the word taco isn't in the Bible. Sure, fondue is mentioned in the <span style="font-style: italic;">Iliad</span> or a reference to melted cheese in a goat's stomach with wine. Of course there are many references to beef in the 8th century Irish poem, <span style="font-style: italic;">The Tain</span>, and as you might imagine, <span style="font-style: italic;">The Inferno</span> has limited if any references to food. Despite the lack of edibles in epic poetry, it doesn't make them any less epic, just less epicurean. I have been wanting to have a series of cooking classes that pair literature with food, but haven't quite figured out what we would do--besides sit around and eat and talk about books, which frankly sounds good enough to me.<br /><br />People often assume I went to culinary school since I run a cooking school. It's a logical assumption and one that I quite often feel shy about clarifying. I tell people I have my M.F.A in poetry, but while working on a manuscript in Northern Michigan, I decided a way to curb my loneliness would be to spend my nights cooking. If you feed people, they are more likely to come over and fill your sparse apartment. Plus I missed food. I missed food I had had while traveling and living abroad and in Marquette, Michigan your options are limited for ethnic cuisine. Not unless you consider midwestern food such as Friday night fish fry, ethnic or even cuisine. So I cooked, fed others and learned some very elementary culinary skills.<br /><br />This past month, I had a rare opportunity to share some of these skills. I was asked by a quiet spoken social worker if I would teach some cooking classes to veterans in a local group home. I went to visit the facility and the men had a garden, a communal kitchen and plenty of frozen entrees in their freezer to last through another recession. So for two Wednesday evenings, I went and taught a group of men how to make butternut squash soup with a riata, seasonal green salad with a quick ginger vinaigrette and fish tacos with an apple pico de gallo.<br /><br />Picture this. Four men wearing ill-fitting plastic gloves de-veining shrimp and talking about their most memorable meal. Each of them had one. No one said they couldn't remember. One man had a memory of a salmon he had caught in the rivers of his childhood, another fondly thought of fresh marlin cooked in the Keys of Florida and another revered a bowl of oatmeal. It was amazing how quickly these men shared with me without having to go through all the social worked steps of getting people to "open up."<br /><br />This happens so often around a table. People easily share their food memories without a sense of judgment and often without hesitation. And telling stories? It's a way to create collective intimacy. In a few short hours, I learned a lot about these men from injuries to ex-wives and of course, their fondness for food. And maybe this is why teaching cooking is as rewarding as teaching poetry, you get to show people the beauty in being able to feed yourself. Either your stomach or your soul. And maybe on rare occasions, you get to teach people how to feed both.<br /><br />I'm not sure if I changed any of these guy's cooking habits or interests, but that's okay. It doesn't matter. What matters to me is that for a few hours these guys laughed, told stories, learned how to de-vein shrimp and how to hold a knife and mince an onion. But most importantly, these guys got to feed themselves. And without referencing any crochet quotes about teaching a man to fish or being too cliche about helping others so they can help themselves, really, it's just real. It seems far more realistic for a group of people to sit around and eat together and chat than to sit in folding chairs around a circle in some basement and confess fears and frustrations. Sometimes it's good to get everyone involved. Maybe this is why Jesus brought food to all his gatherings and shared it. Just think if he had brought fish tacos.<br /><br />Here's a simple pico de gallo recipe with apples that's great with fish tacos this time of year.<br />Enjoy.<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">Apple & Avocado Pico</span><br /><br />1 apple, cored & minced (Gala or Fuji work well and even Honey Crisp)<br />1 avocado, sliced<br />1/2 red onion, minced<br />1 lime, juiced<br />1/2 bunch cilantro<br />Dash or two of hot sauce<br />Salt, to taste<br /><br />1. In a bowl, combine ingredients and salt to taste.<br /><br />Here are a few tricks. Cut an avocado in half. Lay cut side down on cutting board. Slice avocado in half again. Peel off skin with your fingers. Slice avocado to desired size. It's easier to slice an avocado outside of it's skin. Also, with cilantro, hold bunch of cilantro in the opposite hand you hold your knife. Shave cilantro leaves with you sharp knife. Yes, shave cilantro. It's much easier to shave herbs like cilantro and parsley since you can eat the stems than it is with picking each individual leaves.Emily Walter Seitzhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12106131542493719969noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8656346629807276703.post-38422280322781331482010-10-27T06:10:00.000-07:002010-10-27T10:04:55.055-07:00Autumn Hen<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjAql0Ucdoa7qaVl7QIr1IyKopY_ron_0QGG6UZQLvKf8ImsDU4l-udwOLZ7X24zbpd3nVx-l7oYMDpXGP028N3KbAgyfkkNBlQbh40PlBnBA7RSvCx4khpMGfwKpHaqf3TX_MtkCkF5KMN/s1600/DSC01052.JPG"><img style="display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 240px; height: 320px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjAql0Ucdoa7qaVl7QIr1IyKopY_ron_0QGG6UZQLvKf8ImsDU4l-udwOLZ7X24zbpd3nVx-l7oYMDpXGP028N3KbAgyfkkNBlQbh40PlBnBA7RSvCx4khpMGfwKpHaqf3TX_MtkCkF5KMN/s320/DSC01052.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5532759452809971122" border="0" /></a><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjhK5G_VWW82hNmXmrS3Mwqp8V8NQ112asSrJTKDEPkGnuEYFsuWCoJr9-ZD-W7zB5_bKUtEYDE5rQiKZR0HMdW7g94BHZgv7VSUt0xJtDl6jAeInMJwzSdz910ZpOpvYjwLnDCCGkw20Uw/s1600/IMG_0208.JPG"><br /></a><br />Trees surprise you. Across the street two maples, which I must have noticed in the three years I have lived here, yet perhaps ignored, suddenly glow. Golden, misted amber leaves with a hint of harvest grape green stand quietly behind my neighbors fence. So vibrant on this day of gray. Trees change, fields dull to muted shades, summer blossoms wilt and even my indoor furry friends get a bit furrier. Autumn arrives in <span style="font-style: italic;">medias res</span>, to begin in the middle, in the middle of change.<br /><br />Yet what about the chicken? What changes do they rely on to understand the coming cold, what harbingers of this season do they have? For example, this fine photo of our very own Polish Hen, whom I refer to as the Wandering Pole, knows nothing of winter to come. Sprouted this spring, her fellow layers and sister, Queen Louise the 15th, also know nothing of days kept indoors, hours of white on windows and the wind that doesn't stop for the domesticated. Chickens continue to lay, cluck and roll in now colder dirt, doing their chicken duties and doing them well.<br /><br />We have six chickens and this past weekend while raking leaves and then putting them in their coop, the chickens acted grateful. They continued on with their chickening without any fear of cold winds from the north. We who have cultivated this animal for the past 10,000 years all for our own needs have failed to inform them or give them something to note the change in seasons. Perhaps knitting chicken sweaters is about as publicly insane as walking your cat in a sweater while on a leash. Sure we give chickens heat lamps as their own private sun during cold nights, but really, the poor bird is quite literally left in the dark.<br /><br />Recently, I watched a documentary on the history of the chicken, which really could have been called "the stupid things humans do to forget they are animals". One such chicken lover in Maine gave her frozen hen left for dead mouth to well, beak resuscitation and brought her favored fowl back to it's chicken life. Another woman in Miami bathed her hen daily and believed her chicken was her soul mate, dare I say fowl mate. Regardless of the absurdity and extreme in chicken ownership, I do think about these little beings despite their bead of a brain need a bit more credit.<br /><br />For regardless of an occasional molt, chickens are incredibly trustworthy and reliable creatures. Perhaps even loyal to their duties in producing eggs. Roosters have long been more than useful in time management and what could be more bucolic than a pasture with a few hens scratching in the background. From the practical to the artful, hens surely have their place. This place is usually side lined or in the back drop unless you have lived your life as Gonzo from the <span style="font-style: italic;">Muppets </span>who was not shy or bashful for his love of chickens. <br /><br />And so, it is the middle of the week and at the end of autumn that I want to pay homage to the spirited bird, which lives without expecting to fly. The underdog without even practicing a song. Chickens, you are the falcon of humble acceptance. Enjoy the poem.<br /><br /> <style>@font-face { font-family: "Garamond"; }p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal { margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }div.Section1 { page: Section1; }</style> <p class="MsoNormal"><b style=""><span style="font-family: Garamond;">Autumn Hen</span></b></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><b style=""><span style="font-family: Garamond;"> </span></b></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Garamond;">September crowns each crest of larch with gold,</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Garamond;">geese mold the sky and maple, with their hands</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Garamond;">wave to the sun, waning the horizon red. </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Garamond;">And the hen cares not for falling leaves.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Garamond;">Their bodies preen slow knitted winter</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Garamond;">warmth as feather sweater.<span style=""> </span>While your cider </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Garamond;">skin, no longer bare, demands covering. </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Garamond;">You try to hold the passing of your longing,</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Garamond;">try to keep August as your private yolk </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Garamond;">to feed off February fates.<span style=""> </span>But you, more chicken</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Garamond;">than god, season your days in dirt and grass.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Garamond;">You learn to quiet yourself by raking leaves,</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Garamond;">your fallen heart, you cannot keep green.</span></p>Emily Walter Seitzhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12106131542493719969noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8656346629807276703.post-83220731683728084052010-10-21T07:33:00.001-07:002010-10-21T09:46:08.249-07:00October Cosmos<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEharPgTUrN0kByFixhjtHi1flxQxfkjk3g03GDX9F1yOG42slaLMLqjEDd4q-TgfnWm0TB7iokFi5ILonDA2rr5khV1Cx9i71SA6L88FLcyX68C1-hkzjavx54NBPt9_1sOJvuwKX9cwUVT/s1600/IMG_0269.JPG"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 240px; height: 320px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEharPgTUrN0kByFixhjtHi1flxQxfkjk3g03GDX9F1yOG42slaLMLqjEDd4q-TgfnWm0TB7iokFi5ILonDA2rr5khV1Cx9i71SA6L88FLcyX68C1-hkzjavx54NBPt9_1sOJvuwKX9cwUVT/s320/IMG_0269.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5530509681626498290" border="0" /></a><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj5JR2nUCeFmiT-TMrID6xpiUCRTP3FtkGzV_qRITswqbFJIhamdfq51Oqnzo-9irV5zKz41N-ztjvLISKwgrzX8Dq8bEtA5mcBj-1si75e7xmpkl-iK_8eaOzE9Z4wzZNkc43mdzEpG-38/s1600/IMG_0208.JPG"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj5JR2nUCeFmiT-TMrID6xpiUCRTP3FtkGzV_qRITswqbFJIhamdfq51Oqnzo-9irV5zKz41N-ztjvLISKwgrzX8Dq8bEtA5mcBj-1si75e7xmpkl-iK_8eaOzE9Z4wzZNkc43mdzEpG-38/s320/IMG_0208.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5530508534621266978" border="0" /></a>I've started a new habit which involves Carl Sagan. After countless searches for small tidbits of daily aspirations, I found videos mostly from the early 80's of Carl Sagan. Sure, we usually associate this parka and turtleneck wearing scientist with earnest and larger ideas like the cosmos. But I started to dig a bit deeper into his lesser known clips on whale communication for example. I started listening more to his well enunciated speech and found moments of unabashed poetry. I even started to find myself mimicking his words in my head. But really, it's his enthusiasm for the unknown which struck me as something worth noting, something worthy. Something fresh in a world of handing out digitized facts.<br /><br />But there will always be facts. The facts are, October is here. Here in Missoula, we have a few trees changing, enough for a midwesterner to feel a sense of the familiar. I often joke that I wonder where in the world is it autumn all year long? For the colors, the paling sun, the occasional warmth that feels so welcoming and really a gift before all the coming gray. We've had one of the nicest Octobers with a lot of warm days, so many that my cosmos (pictured first) stayed open and vibrant up until two days ago. Up until two days ago, we hadn't had a frost. The other photo shows how green our late summer into fall remained with all the August rain. And what does autumn have to do with Carl Sagan?<br /><br />Carl Sagan seemed to have a desire for more questions, didn't quit with just facts. It's like his mind was an autumning of questions. A limbo of transition and wonderment. So often I flip through information like I am sure so many of us do only to land in a sea of facts on weight loss, facts on happiness, facts on better communication, facts on deals, facts on more facts. So much information to drown in instead of swim or even just a casual float with a view of stars. The internet can really drag someone down with web-entangled searches only to have spent an hour lost to the universe, lost to the god of wasted mental space.<br /><br />But I must say, I am grateful for all the clips of Carl on the web. Watching Carl clips feels like reading a good poem. Sure, we know stars and the word galaxy or whale, but with Carl at the helm, it's usually a safe and surreal sail. So I want to share with you a great clip of Carl doing a whale song. http://youtu.be/elw-459P8kE The vulnerability seems present, but purposeful. I love it. Just Carl against the wind and the mast with his song of whales. It's like some ancient bard coming up from some sea to give us a hint of what is going on below. And maybe that's just it. Carl gives us a look into something we have known since birth, the moon, stars, seasons and the once report each of us gave on Pluto in front of our first grade class. We cut out planets and paper rings of Saturn, but it was during a time when we were open to wonderment. With so many facts, we can lose our wonderment, our openness, our body as atrium to what it beyond our computer screen. Enjoy the clip. Enjoy the poem.<br /><br /><br /> <style>@font-face { font-family: "Garamond"; }p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal { margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }div.Section1 { page: Section1; }</style> <p class="MsoNormal"><b style=""><span style="font-family:Garamond;">Atrium</span></b></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><b style=""><span style="font-family:Garamond;"> </span></b></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:Garamond;">I stopped believing in birds for awhile.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:Garamond;">A nun said my heart was broken, before </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:Garamond;">I even started dating.<span style=""> </span>A parrot </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:Garamond;">in an unlocked cage waits to start singing. </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:Garamond;">To mimic off-key is song, but not song </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:Garamond;">of yourself.<span style=""> </span>Before the cross of Romans,</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:Garamond;">men followed the flight of swallows to build </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:Garamond;">temples as nests for their gods. But I can’t </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:Garamond;">live in city gardens, more poppy </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:Garamond;">along train tracks in Poland. I’ve learned </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:Garamond;">to field myself in countries, to rejoice </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:Garamond;">the potato is to see the pigeon </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:Garamond;">as dove. Divorce yourself from the body</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:Garamond;">as burden. You’re an atrium of love.</span></p>Emily Walter Seitzhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12106131542493719969noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8656346629807276703.post-73861029416058872232010-09-08T06:10:00.001-07:002010-09-09T07:22:00.266-07:00Hill of Content<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgyabwRHPgB3V4j3ioFmf1Q3Q_acbdDVTJpB5HX9d-UZMOVZPkIy8p9N2wvFnc-Mlddf2vQRafHyJuLjX3Rj6JEF5tZZFKVjoSxCpsmA0vOei_txuJ6lm1Y5X8fjY3UKCjPF6f-QvArmCW5/s1600/400px-TrapperPeakMTfromRt93.jpg">
<br /></a><p><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhG3TtYn3nqbj4LIPCk8XlB3pCAuG8-0pXZBm17wYtQyQV-N3UDGJRt-JOzFiI1ivdTIjPHAq77uV6FfAXKhiUv9JiHTyRdKLR3zl6MxdLdxcyPlejmZinYomY0QGxh4r47GmbLXHvRIxAO/s1600/IMG_0228.JPG"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5514529760845384802" style="display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; width: 320px; cursor: pointer; height: 240px; text-align: center;" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhG3TtYn3nqbj4LIPCk8XlB3pCAuG8-0pXZBm17wYtQyQV-N3UDGJRt-JOzFiI1ivdTIjPHAq77uV6FfAXKhiUv9JiHTyRdKLR3zl6MxdLdxcyPlejmZinYomY0QGxh4r47GmbLXHvRIxAO/s320/IMG_0228.JPG" border="0" /></a><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhEBGuJPZ7DP4ulT_Jhy3VUdmBny3c60q66SZRA_M_yP7fjctEtOO67OYkeO7r94izu43NC47mDXGozKGRQ3LGmvM8djSo1IuGZF3iaf503rPVaOtzIfiliExZijELq3XJIuSnaT2vi0w78/s1600/IMG_0234.JPG"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5514530343857461010" style="display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; width: 320px; cursor: pointer; height: 240px; text-align: center;" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhEBGuJPZ7DP4ulT_Jhy3VUdmBny3c60q66SZRA_M_yP7fjctEtOO67OYkeO7r94izu43NC47mDXGozKGRQ3LGmvM8djSo1IuGZF3iaf503rPVaOtzIfiliExZijELq3XJIuSnaT2vi0w78/s320/IMG_0234.JPG" border="0" /></a><span style="font-family:georgia;">
<br />Summer somehow didn't find it's way to Montana this year. Perhaps the weather gods decided to give the good people of the Western Rockies a taste of why many of us moved here, for the snow. Snow in June, snow for July and even snow on Labor Day eve. Yes, the white behind me is indeed freshly fallen, but I feel I should give this peak a chance. It's Trapper Peak, which stands slightly over 10,000 feet beaconing the Bitterroot valley just south of Missoula.
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<br />I've heard more conversations about the weather this summer than I can ever recall. Even more than than the summer when the temperatures never crested over 60 degrees along the shores of Lake Superior. The summer of 2004 in Marquette, Michigan when I wore turtlenecks to teach in and napped under heavy blankets while I stubbornly slept on rocks yearning for some warmth. But Midwesterners, if they complain at all, would say something about how it could have been worse that summer Lake Superior had ice during July. "We could have had 100% humidity, black flies, feral mosquitoes and tornadoes," to convince ourselves we were somehow better off with gray skies and cold winds.
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<br />But out here in the west, people don't exactly cry in public, but they do complain...openly. I don't have any Slavic or Nordic ancestry, but when people get heated up about lousy weather while standing around a fire at a potluck, I quietly stare at my shoes, obviously too cold for sandals. My midwest inner nasaled voice thinks, <span style="font-style: italic;">you people are whining, aren't you embarrassed? </span>I still cannot believe someone can openly complain and actually not feel guilty about it. It's just a mind twist for me. Isn't anybody going to say, "well at least it hasn't snowed in the Missoula valley this year?" But they don't. Nor did I. I just kept quietly talking to my internal midwest voice while focusing on my boots.
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<br />And really even during the wettest day of August this year, I didn't complain. Mostly because I was too busy exploring the Western Rockies to be bemoaning. Luckily, I had some visitors to take up hiking in Glacier, some mountain bike riding in Sun Valley, a too quick trip home for swimming in Lake Michigan and even wet suited river days down the Alberton Gorge. Summer happened, but it just didn't look like what the good people of Missoula wanted or more specifically, what people expected. And so with this cursor as my witness, I can write, I've been really happy this summer. Mostly because I didn't really have any expectations. Maybe I am turning more Danish than just a midwest transplant. Or maybe I'm just learning how to climb the hill of content(ment).
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<br />Let me explain. If you'd like a far better explanation, then watch this video. <a href="http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=4181996n&tag=related;photovideo">http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=4181996n&tag=related;photovideo</a>. Or listen online at </span><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgyabwRHPgB3V4j3ioFmf1Q3Q_acbdDVTJpB5HX9d-UZMOVZPkIy8p9N2wvFnc-Mlddf2vQRafHyJuLjX3Rj6JEF5tZZFKVjoSxCpsmA0vOei_txuJ6lm1Y5X8fjY3UKCjPF6f-QvArmCW5/s1600/400px-TrapperPeakMTfromRt93.jpg">http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2010/01/podcast_the_awesomest_economy.html. </a> <span style="font-family:georgia;">NPR's podcast about the study of not just money, but happiness. According to numerous studies by both economists and psychologists, Denmark is considered the happiest nation. Yes, these herring hungry blonds are surrounded by healthier Swedes and richer Norwegians but they are actually happier. Why? When their weather is pretty glum and their greatest claim to fame Dane after Hans Christen Anderson would be the prince of doom and gloom, Hamlet. So what <span style="font-style: italic;">really </span>makes Danes so happy? (just in case you don't have time to read or listen to either story, let me sum it up for you.) Danes have a sense of contentment because they have realistic expectations. And furthermore, contentment is not a weakness in their culture. It's a goal.
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<br />But where in American culture is contentment valued? Where is the glory in being happy with what you have? What are we to do with the American Dream now that we've worked so hard to never be satisfied? Take it from me, someone who has spent more time believing and working at <span style="font-style: italic;">life is elsewhere and probably better</span>. Contentment is really more of a mind twist for me too than complaining about the weather in public. What's my back to school essay, "what I learned this summer?"
<br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family:georgia;">Let's start with the greatest </span><span style="font-family:georgia;">albeit fictitious </span><span style="font-family:georgia;">Dane, Hamlet for a starting point. <em>To be or not to be?</em></span> To be or not to be, <span style="font-style: italic;">happy</span>? Sure, go into any college library and you'll find more criticism about this clause than probably any other in the English language. It's existentially dense. And I would imagine a clause we ask ourselves in some form or another, everyday. True or not, but what is fascinating is that the most crowded class at Harvard is taught by a psychologist titled, the positive psychology of happiness. Students might be skeptical of all these self-help books, but they are certainly signing up in droves for some answers.
<br /></p>Personally, I don't have any answers. But I do have stories and poems. I do know this, happiness is as elusive and subjective as love, but there are concrete elements that psychological and economic researchers study and what is being taught at Harvard. If you don't have time to watch the video, then let me break it down to you. Happiness is having <span style="font-style: italic;">modest</span> expectations. Danes still have ambition and goals, but humility and modesty are traits most associated with success in their culture. Perhaps even being able to except something as simple and as impossible as allowing the weather, well to just be, is having more realistic and modest expectations. Sounds too simple?
<br /><p>Today as I write this, it's gray and cold. Today, I look out over our front lawn and I see our white mini-van. A car I laughed at when my husband brought it home earlier this spring. There's nothing mini about this van, but it's everything modest. It's a great metaphor for contentment or in being happy enough with what you can afford. And frankly, I drove the mini van to Trapper Peak and it was great. And the weather at 10,000 feet, was better than I had expected. Here's a poem about modest expectations of happiness and as you might guess, mountains and mini vans. Enjoy. <meta name="Title" content=""> <meta name="Keywords" content=""> <meta equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"> <meta name="ProgId" content="Word.Document"> <meta name="Generator" content="Microsoft Word 2008"> <meta name="Originator" content="Microsoft Word 2008"> <link rel="File-List" href="file://localhost/Users/gregseitz/Library/Caches/TemporaryItems/msoclip/0clip_filelist.xml"> <!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <o:documentproperties> <o:template>Normal.dotm</o:Template> <o:revision>0</o:Revision> <o:totaltime>0</o:TotalTime> <o:pages>1</o:Pages> <o:words>85</o:Words> <o:characters>489</o:Characters> <o:company>Hungry Beaver Timber Contracting</o:Company> <o:lines>4</o:Lines> <o:paragraphs>1</o:Paragraphs> <o:characterswithspaces>600</o:CharactersWithSpaces> <o:version>12.0</o:Version> </o:DocumentProperties> <o:officedocumentsettings> <o:allowpng/> </o:OfficeDocumentSettings> </xml><![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:worddocument> <w:zoom>0</w:Zoom> <w:trackmoves>false</w:TrackMoves> <w:trackformatting/> <w:punctuationkerning/> <w:drawinggridhorizontalspacing>18 pt</w:DrawingGridHorizontalSpacing> <w:drawinggridverticalspacing>18 pt</w:DrawingGridVerticalSpacing> <w:displayhorizontaldrawinggridevery>0</w:DisplayHorizontalDrawingGridEvery> <w:displayverticaldrawinggridevery>0</w:DisplayVerticalDrawingGridEvery> <w:validateagainstschemas/> <w:saveifxmlinvalid>false</w:SaveIfXMLInvalid> <w:ignoremixedcontent>false</w:IgnoreMixedContent> <w:alwaysshowplaceholdertext>false</w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText> <w:compatibility> <w:breakwrappedtables/> <w:dontgrowautofit/> <w:dontautofitconstrainedtables/> <w:dontvertalignintxbx/> </w:Compatibility> </w:WordDocument> </xml><![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:latentstyles deflockedstate="false" latentstylecount="276"> </w:LatentStyles> </xml><![endif]--> <style> <!-- /* Font Definitions */ @font-face {font-family:Garamond; panose-1:2 2 4 4 3 3 1 1 8 3; mso-font-charset:0; mso-generic-font-family:auto; mso-font-pitch:variable; mso-font-signature:3 0 0 0 1 0;} @font-face {font-family:"儷黑 Pro"; mso-font-charset:81; mso-generic-font-family:auto; mso-font-pitch:variable; mso-font-signature:1 0 16778248 0 1048576 0;} /* Style Definitions */ p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal {mso-style-parent:""; margin:0in; margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:12.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman";} @page Section1 {size:8.5in 11.0in; margin:1.0in 1.25in 1.0in 1.25in; mso-header-margin:.5in; mso-footer-margin:.5in; mso-paper-source:0;} div.Section1 {page:Section1;} --> </style> <!--[if gte mso 10]> <style> /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:12.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-ascii-font-family:Cambria; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Cambria; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} </style> <![endif]--> <!--StartFragment--></p><p>
<br /><span style="font-weight: bold;"><span style="font-weight: bold;"></span></span></p><p><span><span style="font-style: italic;">Happy Enough</span></span><span style="font-weight: bold;">
<br /></span></p><p><span style="font-weight: bold;"></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.25in;"><span style="font-family:Garamond;">At first he picked me up in what his wife<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.25in;"><span style="font-family:Garamond;">left him. My fate to fall for a man who <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.25in;"><span style="font-family:Garamond;">drives a mini-van. At least he didn’t chew<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.25in;"><span style="font-family:Garamond;">his words, smell of olives like the last guy.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.25in;"><span style="font-family:Garamond;">He arrived right on time, but when he tried<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.25in;"><span style="font-family:Garamond;">to unlock my door, it stuck. He swore<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.25in;"><span style="font-family:Garamond;">it was already funny when he drove<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.25in;"><span style="font-family:Garamond;">up looking like a carpet cleaner, tired<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.25in;"><span style="font-family:Garamond;">but shaven. And sometimes it’s that easy, <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.25in;"><span style="font-family:Garamond;">the awkward sexy moment when a man<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.25in;"><span style="font-family:Garamond;">offers his gloves in a hail storm, you fall<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.25in;"><span style="font-family:Garamond;">for him, his ill fitting sweater, uneasy<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.25in;"><span style="font-family:Garamond;">pause before speaking, the way one person<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.25in;"><span style="font-family:Garamond;">sees you like the capital of Nepal.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.25in;"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgyabwRHPgB3V4j3ioFmf1Q3Q_acbdDVTJpB5HX9d-UZMOVZPkIy8p9N2wvFnc-Mlddf2vQRafHyJuLjX3Rj6JEF5tZZFKVjoSxCpsmA0vOei_txuJ6lm1Y5X8fjY3UKCjPF6f-QvArmCW5/s1600/400px-TrapperPeakMTfromRt93.jpg">
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<br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.25in;"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEghWkO_ow1gHcLUzqYv6JPigIgBrB96cnvnLidMuJgf0Zv7q_3M_7Vo_-2W1s1qQzk9ilyniBnciCYYBc8zpGqldxae_O3rpXoeb02WrmDufcjbNhxnTXcYN7vK_Dy9XBCPgJTf0sJa6qBw/s1600/Trapper_Peak_Min.jpg"><img style="display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 222px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEghWkO_ow1gHcLUzqYv6JPigIgBrB96cnvnLidMuJgf0Zv7q_3M_7Vo_-2W1s1qQzk9ilyniBnciCYYBc8zpGqldxae_O3rpXoeb02WrmDufcjbNhxnTXcYN7vK_Dy9XBCPgJTf0sJa6qBw/s320/Trapper_Peak_Min.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5514897659149568210" border="0" /></a></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.25in;">
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<br /></span><p></p>Emily Walter Seitzhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12106131542493719969noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8656346629807276703.post-32618727364546595202010-08-18T07:34:00.000-07:002010-08-18T07:35:18.644-07:00I padding for the planetEmily Walter Seitzhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12106131542493719969noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8656346629807276703.post-41980537703500561362010-07-08T07:23:00.000-07:002010-07-23T19:45:29.975-07:00Watermelons for every season<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgsgG2QygT1WpQMF5TP2d7yAkL_NiusuGl5XHybsMl3D8344j-7L_rC3I7ZCaqe7MWdZRXmcNEIRFoJwS_Yzncr2Oaxkdh3btAuf3peiZSqmuu9AVGy0kFeFgSlCTx2zNpgInkQf-PmCKLq/s1600/IMG_0149.JPG"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgsgG2QygT1WpQMF5TP2d7yAkL_NiusuGl5XHybsMl3D8344j-7L_rC3I7ZCaqe7MWdZRXmcNEIRFoJwS_Yzncr2Oaxkdh3btAuf3peiZSqmuu9AVGy0kFeFgSlCTx2zNpgInkQf-PmCKLq/s320/IMG_0149.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5491541884508413762" border="0" /></a><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgHMWUNMAmFpoMVU5jUxftyoQV2qw6Xd33whJaoVII1arP-vIHL7m_CxNE9QW-nmCmnekBUnNlh_TL3JoCU4wy-ni33KH6ikR6ptOTVc_t999Aw3j4SNcJNR3-Tuw1uK_SAciIlZmh_9v3c/s1600/IMG_0157.JPG"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgHMWUNMAmFpoMVU5jUxftyoQV2qw6Xd33whJaoVII1arP-vIHL7m_CxNE9QW-nmCmnekBUnNlh_TL3JoCU4wy-ni33KH6ikR6ptOTVc_t999Aw3j4SNcJNR3-Tuw1uK_SAciIlZmh_9v3c/s320/IMG_0157.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5491541602005776210" border="0" /></a>If I had any idea how much fun it is to have an albeit tiny and modest garden, I think I would had started one in my college dorm room. Well, maybe not quite. But seriously, let's talk about lettuce. Let's talk about arugula, mache, endive and mixed baby greens. Let's talk about how one day I planted seeds and now I stand in front of these little leaves and think, "oh my, you're growing so big and green, but we've only just met."<br /><br />But really, now is the time to spend more time with your favorite greens. Last month, my boss and I team taught a vegetarian grilling class. I did a simple Caesar salad with grilled romaine which started off the season with what I would like to say, well, expanded my green horizons.<br /><br />And it's what I love about the entire large and flavorful family of greens, it's a template to use for seasonal veggies and yes, even the roasted sweet potato in the cold hours of February finds itself on a momentary summery bed. A respite from being blanketed by all the packed dirt and snow. Whereas now in the heat of July, everyone wins with watermelon, cantaloupe, grilled peaches or fresh baked salmon all floating over shades of seasonal summery green beds in a bowl.<br /><br />I recently made this salad I want to share with you for a Raw Foods potluck. I was looking for something simple, obviously raw (no pork in any form found its way to that party) and something with a bit of a kick. I am by far more of a vinaigrette gal over heavy dressing, so I wanted something light but not shy in flavor. I like my salads bold in taste and above all, I like to think of salads as aesthetic pursuits--the closest form of still life painting I will probably ever get close to.<br /><br />I must admit that I have made this salad a few times this summer season and it has been devoured before any photos were taken. The best version of this came with the gift of greens from my cousin, Eric Wittenbach and his lovely green-thumbed wife, Cameron Green (I am sure you can understand by her name it is just one of the many reasons I feel so close to her). We were visiting their amazing homestead in the Methow Valley, the banana belt on the eastern slope of the Cascade Mountains in Washington in early June. My father came out to visit us in Montana and we rallied to Washington to help in their garden, float down the mighty Methow and have some good ole family fun. The morning we left, Eric ran out and cut some of their early greens and we stored them in our cooler which we drove over the flat plains of eastern Washington, over two mountain passes in Idaho and finally they made it happily to our crisper in the valley of Missoula.<br /><br />If you don't have any cousins who are amazing gardeners or little shoots of your own, please find someone else's cousin at a farmer's market selling greens, a local produce stand or barter some cherries in your back field for a bag or head. I'd like to think of greens as the sun's greatest currency. The bright reminders of rain or maybe just a really easy and great way to get some fiber in your diet.<br /><br />And finally, one more long winded reason why I adore this signature salad: watercress. I mean, how can you not adore something that grows wild in Ireland along streams and creeks and with a name like watercress, it sounds more like a verb. Part water, part plant this green finds itself in salads all shy in appearance, but then in flavor, it fills your mouth with a tangy pepper pop. Seriously. Make this salad with or without mint, but please not without some watercress. And not without the watermelon. Maybe you could send me some photos of the salad you make and call it <span style="font-style: italic;">still life with summer greens</span>. Or not. Just make it to beat the heat and lose the fear of your kitchen on days with rising temperatures. Or just enjoy cracking open a melon all green with a hidden heart of red and please support your local farmers (I know this sounds as annoying as some bumper sticker, but really, it's true). The farmer you get your greens from is someone's cousin, brother, dad or some kid you used to baby sit for while his mother weeded her garden.<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">Watermelon Salad with Watercress</span><br /><br />2 tablespoons rice vinegar<br />1 1/2 tablespoons vegetable oil<br />3 teaspoons fresh ginger, peeled & minced<br />1 1/2 teaspoons grated lime peel<br />2 garlic cloves, minced<br />2 cups watermelon, 1/2" pieces<br />1 bunch watercress, thick stems trimmed about 1 1/2 to 2 cups packed<br />2 cups mixed baby greens<br />4 green onions, thinly sliced<br />1 cup cucumber, peeled, seeded & cut into 1/2" pieces<br />1/4 cup fresh cilantro, chopped<br />1/4 cup fresh basil, chopped<br />1/4 cup fresh mint, chopped<br /><br />1. Whisk vinegar, oil, ginger, lime peel, and garlic in large bowl to blend.<br />2. Season to taste with salt and pepper.<br />3. Add watermelon, green onions and cucumber to bowl of vinegar and let marinate for about three to five minutes.<br />4. In a large salad bowl, add greens and fresh herbs. Toss greens and then add watermelon mixture and toss to coat.<br />5. If you are going to take this on a picnic or not eat it right away, then I would not add the watermelon until right before you serve it or you can place the greens on individual plates and top with watermelon mixture.<br /><br />This recipe originally came from <span style="font-style: italic;">Bon Appetit</span> in June 2002, but I have made a few adjustments.Emily Walter Seitzhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12106131542493719969noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8656346629807276703.post-69014167566569594532010-07-06T08:26:00.000-07:002010-07-09T06:52:25.433-07:00Revise for Reason<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhTidw42F2fBCL-yERt3UNKwAKP5e0Ch4XtyeIBjWXEBg_03aBTCCo7BZR3j0UuAaBbb6VpV2KFmEuwwuugHweki4LM7YJXbn7owFEB_7pJf2OssK0Ok3bRlX6SaYDntBTkbutTDqmUAqto/s1600/IMG_0164.JPG"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhTidw42F2fBCL-yERt3UNKwAKP5e0Ch4XtyeIBjWXEBg_03aBTCCo7BZR3j0UuAaBbb6VpV2KFmEuwwuugHweki4LM7YJXbn7owFEB_7pJf2OssK0Ok3bRlX6SaYDntBTkbutTDqmUAqto/s320/IMG_0164.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5491518141629599762" border="0" /></a>
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<br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgCe7kPY11DduxVvgWS8u2OVIgUmt7Nce7gjiAVb1yeM10Nl08F-_ut6x6oUqHJb-86P2jJXbghjSa_gTmPyrY0hDTQs8lhFIrhyU45kI2RkZZB2KVeW2DID0iiWt_5cSCiXmuH1R5iw4Zu/s1600/IMG_0171.JPG"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgCe7kPY11DduxVvgWS8u2OVIgUmt7Nce7gjiAVb1yeM10Nl08F-_ut6x6oUqHJb-86P2jJXbghjSa_gTmPyrY0hDTQs8lhFIrhyU45kI2RkZZB2KVeW2DID0iiWt_5cSCiXmuH1R5iw4Zu/s320/IMG_0171.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5491517249153699490" border="0" /></a><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhht-pjw9CvS0iuQfz0mO76ERQKuk5ZNs4DB7U5lxv3_EoW8a3y19HAX4KVXvcFq95oscKTiLuEPs4E0VREpZl3V54noM_gn1ZtM0Pp52jdguX7m2le0Wnc65HdOfZ7jlx_ACJPjrD1Qyjp/s1600/IMG_0177.JPG"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhht-pjw9CvS0iuQfz0mO76ERQKuk5ZNs4DB7U5lxv3_EoW8a3y19HAX4KVXvcFq95oscKTiLuEPs4E0VREpZl3V54noM_gn1ZtM0Pp52jdguX7m2le0Wnc65HdOfZ7jlx_ACJPjrD1Qyjp/s320/IMG_0177.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5491517502290736354" border="0" /></a>My father is an architect. I've enjoyed being able to say this for many reasons. As a child, I didn't have to explain anything, translate acronyms or find other verbs for what he does. He designs. Simply, he designs homes, churches, schools, banks, wineries and even prisons. But really, if I had to say what my dad taught me about architecture, it would be the importance of, what he calls, the sequence of time and space. Space isn't only the physical world around you, but your experience in that world that defines how you feel about that space. "Architecture is about 90% psychology and 10% math," he'd say. And I believe him.
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<br />I believe him because I used to go to work with him. I literally used to tag along with my dad some days while he went to meetings, helped tie ribbons on trees that needed to be cut down and sat in his office playing darts while the onion skin paper would pile on the floor. But mostly, I adored watching him draw. Even later in life when we'd have lunch and I'd be rambling about what to do as a career, my dad would pull out a yellow legal pad of paper and make notes of points I took way too long to make and take something as abstract as my aspirations and make them into concrete images. He never told me what to do, but what he found helpful and purposeful in having a job that forces you to <span style="font-style: italic;">do</span> something for others. If I were to say, I feel lucky. It would be an understatement.
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<br />What I can say is that I have a long list of Robert Frost quotes and poems in my head, ice-fishing jokes as well as a need to not just nest where I live, but to get out and experience some place on a daily basis that feeds me. These photos above are taken from a place I try to go daily and the sequence of these shots goes from the beginning to the point where I usually turn around and head back. To my father, these photos would be a series to show a sequence of time experience--from the start of the dirt road that is flat and rising to the view of Lolo Peak that stands over this valleyed city I currently call home.
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<br />Currently, this trail that I run, bike and sometimes just walk has taken on a new experience. I'd love to say it is because with all this rain there are more wildflowers in the meadows than ever before or the watery song of the meadow lark seems even clearer this year, but really it is the view of Lolo Peak that has shifted for me. I know it has shifted for many Missoulians. Over three weeks ago, a dear friend of ours died in a wet slide avalanche while skiing a couloir down Lolo Peak. He was a very dear friend to many. Someone whom you feel lucky to know, someone who teaches you a lot about time and space sequence in how he lived his life. Someone who never told you what to do, but asked a lot of questions. Someone who loved this world, struggled with darkness, but I'd like to say knew there was always light, somewhere.
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<br />Chris Spurgeon was a wild and beautiful man. The first time I met him was briefly at a bar. It was the first weekend I had moved to Missoula and I asked my now-husband. "Who was that?" I asked because I thought I had just seen someone suited for a 18th century French film, someone rugged and worn with refined features. Someone quiet with most likely a lot to say.
<br />"That man," Greg said, "rides his motorcycle 200 miles to run a 50 mile trail race. Wins the race and gets back on his motorcycle and rides back to Missoula and closes Charlie B's. That man is Chris Spurgeon and he's legendary."
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<br />And he is, legendary in so many ways--in so many ways that you cannot take a picture of. Someone's spirit has yet to be photographed I believe. But we take photos of views and vistas. Mountains and childhood friends. Moments we know we cannot take hold of, really. But we try. Today, Lolo peak isn't a monument as much as I see it as a reminder. Chris was someone who took his time--I mean took time to nap, read books, took long runs, needed a lot of time alone and thought it silly to kill dandelions. Aren't they flowers too as much as weeds? And so this view, this peak that stands and will stand longer than I know any of us will be standing is more of a reminder. It's a physical and beautiful reminder of how much time it really takes to get where you want to go. To say life is a sequence of events sounds all too easy and vague, but really maybe Wallace Stevens said it the best, "Death is the mother of all beauty."
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<br />Death is not the point where you turn around or even an end as much as it might just be part of the time and space sequence my father speaks so clearly about in design. This point or destination that lies beyond us is only speculation. We just don't have any pictures of this place. We don't know what lies after meadows, mountain peaks and buildings we call home. But we get sunrises, elephants, fathers who teach us and give us immeasurable gifts and if we're lucky, friends who live their lives as John Muir and hopefully maybe too, time to revise even ourselves.
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<br />Last year, I had an art show of poetry and photographs of natural landscapes of Western Montana with my friend Kelly. Chris Spurgeon with the only one of my husband's friends to come. I recall watching Chris quietly read every poem, lean in to every photograph and really look. Really take his time. Later he walked up to me and wanted to talk. He had a lot to say about poetry. I listened. He asked for a poem from that show and I want to share it. But I want to tell you is that I have been revising the poem. I have been revising it with Chris in mind, with Chris as a reason. So often we write from images or brief moments that might not make any sense at first. Sometimes it takes weeks, months, or even years or some event to help guide meaning into the poem. Or so I hope. As Robert Frost said, " A poem begins in delight and ends in wisdom." I can only hope someday to be as wise as Chris. For now, I will focus on delight. For now, I will write and revise.
<br /><meta name="Title" content=""> <meta name="Keywords" content=""> <meta equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"> <meta name="ProgId" content="Word.Document"> <meta name="Generator" content="Microsoft Word 2008"> <meta name="Originator" content="Microsoft Word 2008"> <link rel="File-List" href="file://localhost/Users/gregseitz/Library/Caches/TemporaryItems/msoclip/0clip_filelist.xml"> <!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <o:documentproperties> <o:template>Normal.dotm</o:Template> <o:revision>0</o:Revision> <o:totaltime>0</o:TotalTime> <o:pages>1</o:Pages> <o:words>104</o:Words> <o:characters>595</o:Characters> <o:company>Hungry Beaver Timber Contracting</o:Company> <o:lines>4</o:Lines> <o:paragraphs>1</o:Paragraphs> <o:characterswithspaces>730</o:CharactersWithSpaces> <o:version>12.0</o:Version> </o:DocumentProperties> <o:officedocumentsettings> <o:allowpng/> </o:OfficeDocumentSettings> </xml><![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:worddocument> <w:zoom>0</w:Zoom> <w:trackmoves>false</w:TrackMoves> <w:trackformatting/> <w:punctuationkerning/> <w:drawinggridhorizontalspacing>18 pt</w:DrawingGridHorizontalSpacing> <w:drawinggridverticalspacing>18 pt</w:DrawingGridVerticalSpacing> <w:displayhorizontaldrawinggridevery>0</w:DisplayHorizontalDrawingGridEvery> <w:displayverticaldrawinggridevery>0</w:DisplayVerticalDrawingGridEvery> <w:validateagainstschemas/> <w:saveifxmlinvalid>false</w:SaveIfXMLInvalid> <w:ignoremixedcontent>false</w:IgnoreMixedContent> <w:alwaysshowplaceholdertext>false</w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText> <w:compatibility> <w:breakwrappedtables/> <w:dontgrowautofit/> <w:dontautofitconstrainedtables/> <w:dontvertalignintxbx/> </w:Compatibility> </w:WordDocument> </xml><![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:latentstyles deflockedstate="false" latentstylecount="276"> </w:LatentStyles> </xml><![endif]--> <style> <!-- /* Font Definitions */ @font-face {font-family:Garamond; panose-1:2 2 4 4 3 3 1 1 8 3; mso-font-charset:0; mso-generic-font-family:auto; mso-font-pitch:variable; mso-font-signature:3 0 0 0 1 0;} @font-face {font-family:Georgia; panose-1:2 4 5 2 5 4 5 2 3 3; mso-font-charset:0; mso-generic-font-family:auto; mso-font-pitch:variable; mso-font-signature:3 0 0 0 1 0;} /* Style Definitions */ p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal {mso-style-parent:""; margin:0in; margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:12.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman";} @page Section1 {size:8.5in 11.0in; margin:1.0in 1.25in 1.0in 1.25in; mso-header-margin:.5in; mso-footer-margin:.5in; mso-paper-source:0;} div.Section1 {page:Section1;} --> </style> <!--[if gte mso 10]> <style> /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:12.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-ascii-font-family:Cambria; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Cambria; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} </style> <![endif]--> <!--StartFragment--> <p class="MsoNormal"><b style=""><span style=";font-family:Garamond;font-size:11pt;" >
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<br /></span></b></p><p class="MsoNormal"><b style=""><span style=";font-family:Garamond;font-size:11pt;" >City Horses<o:p></o:p></span></b></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 20pt;"><span style="color: rgb(51, 51, 51);font-family:Garamond;font-size:11pt;" ><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 20pt;"><span style="color: rgb(51, 51, 51);font-family:Garamond;font-size:11pt;" >Behind fences in the noon sun, they look tired<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 20pt;"><span style="color: rgb(51, 51, 51);font-family:Garamond;font-size:11pt;" >from all the work they haven't done,<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 20pt;"><span style="color: rgb(51, 51, 51);font-family:Garamond;font-size:11pt;" >left alone too long from boys who only fall<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 20pt;"><span style="color: rgb(51, 51, 51);font-family:Garamond;font-size:11pt;" >in love with women sixteen feet tall,<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 20pt;"><span style="color: rgb(51, 51, 51);font-family:Garamond;font-size:11pt;" >screened lips that flicker red. Even in Montana, <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 20pt;"><span style="color: rgb(51, 51, 51);font-family:Garamond;font-size:11pt;" >horses look silly in cities, slowing traffic down <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 20pt;"><span style="color: rgb(51, 51, 51);font-family:Garamond;font-size:11pt;" >to parade some past. A Pow Wow bridled <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 20pt;"><span style="color: rgb(51, 51, 51);font-family:Garamond;font-size:11pt;" >on a college campus. Up river, children learn to hide <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 20pt;"><span style="color: rgb(51, 51, 51);font-family:Garamond;font-size:11pt;" >without the long shadow of barns, spend nights <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 20pt;"><span style="color: rgb(51, 51, 51);font-family:Garamond;font-size:11pt;" >with the sky of parking lots instead of fruit<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 20pt;"><span style="color: rgb(51, 51, 51);font-family:Garamond;font-size:11pt;" >orchards to feed Appaloosas. The west,<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 20pt;"><span style="color: rgb(51, 51, 51);font-family:Garamond;font-size:11pt;" >harnessed by a lone billboard, preaches<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 20pt;"><span style="color: rgb(51, 51, 51);font-family:Garamond;font-size:11pt;" >the burnt word from a church's shot gun, <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 20pt;"><span style="color: rgb(51, 51, 51);font-family:Garamond;font-size:11pt;" >held in the hands of someone's twelve year old<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 20pt;"><span style="color: rgb(51, 51, 51);font-family:Garamond;font-size:11pt;" >son. <span style=""> </span>But horses, even in their shoes,<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 20pt;"><span style="color: rgb(51, 51, 51);font-family:Garamond;font-size:11pt;" >find fields open to be alone.<span style=""> </span>Alone to run. <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:Garamond;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <!--EndFragment-->
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<br /></a>Emily Walter Seitzhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12106131542493719969noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8656346629807276703.post-32926544604652516932010-06-15T22:19:00.000-07:002010-06-22T15:44:16.634-07:00Beaufort: The Lost & Found MountainI had a poetry professor once tell me any poem about the loss of a pet were the only poems he feared critiquing. Murder, Auschwitz and even incest were potentially tricky, but poems about pets dying--were practically off limits for him emotionally. It was as if, he said, dying pet poems were too emotionally driven making them inherently too difficult to write well. It's very hard to write between the thin line of sentimentality and vulnerability. I took his words as a challenge.
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<br />Now don't get me wrong, I didn't take his words so seriously as to want to coin myself as the dead pet poet, but the idea of pets and their emotional place in our lives- the sentimental or naive to the vulnerable and human-has been a topic of much thought. And really, let's be frank about it, some pets--perhaps like the hermit crab, gerbil and snake might be the ultimate challenge to write about since they are neither cute nor cuddly. But regardless of what kind of animal we've had, pets are markers of our life's events--they are the living penciled lines on a door frame of our emotional growth. The dog that lived in our childhood home, the cat who stayed after a divorce or the pet who out lives a spouse. Perhaps pets are too poetry worthy. And maybe because they don't talk, we get to look at them and remember what <span style="font-style: italic;">we</span> want from our past. But in poems or not, pets are the valiant and important bystanders to our human experience. Or maybe they are our personal soothsayers dressed in fur suits.
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<br />This past Sunday, my husband and I and some friends went out skiing in the Pintler Mountains. We drove on dirt roads to the base of Warren Peak, just outside of Phillipsburg, Montana and while parking our car at the trail head, a dog came running up dragging a leash attached to his collar. No tags or name known, this black and tan hound dog whom we called Beufort, we assumed was lost. Before we began our hike to ski, my husband tied Beufort to the trail head. As we started to walk away, the dog just howled. We were at least four miles into our hike when Beufort showed up, wiggling his body and only having on his tagless collar. He stayed close the entire 14 hour day. He summited. He kept up. Even when it was post holing through rotten deep snow. He seemed happy and as if he couldn't imagine being anywhere else.
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<br />When we returned to the car, we had expected some note, some sign from Beufort's owners looking for him. There was nothing. And the leash that had been used to tie Beufort to the trail head was gone. It was dusk, we were exhausted and so we put Beufort in the back of the car and headed back to Missoula--over an hour drive home.
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<br />The next day we called every Humane Society in a three county radius. While on the phone with a woman from Butte's Humane Society, she told my husband, "sounds like someone was dumpin' a dog." It had never occurred to me that Beufort might have been intentionally left. Left to be found or left for wolves? I couldn't understand either. Our local Humane Society was closed on Mondays, so Beufort stayed another day with us. A day where we had to take him everywhere, even in the car to get groceries for he just howled and howled if left alone.
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<br />On Tuesday, I took Beufort to the good people at the Missoula Humane Society and I won't lie, it was hard. I felt conflicted as if I wanted to keep Beufort but knew in our tiny house without fields for him to run, he'd be miserable. Or so I told myself. Sure, I had read <span style="font-style: italic;">Where the Red Fern Grows</span> to know hound dogs just want to hunt or really, they just need to run. And so I left Beufort with the hopes of a home.
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<br />As I got back into the car, I placed his makeshift leash on the passenger seat and drove to work. I tried to tell myself that I wasn't being melodramatic or indulgent, as I teared up. I was still shocked that someone thought it okay to just take a dog out to the wild for mountain lions or happenstance. I cried and told myself to be grateful for being part of Beufort's happenstance.
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<br />I'm also grateful for the sentimentality I felt for this lost or left dog. I'm grateful that logic and rational thinking hasn't plagued me of emotions or moments of pure and unabashed sentimentality. As Richard Hugo stated in his essay, "Writing off the Subject" in the <span style="font-style: italic;">Triggering Town</span>, "If you are not risking sentimentality you are not close to your inner self." And really, that's what I believe my professor was really saying is the hardest place to write from and even harder to write well. But really where else can you write from? To write from your inner self--the place that holds memory, childhood, fears--is a place that we all have in us. It is nameless and without an address in this world. I believe it is the place we must go to when we want to write not for ourselves but for the Beuforts in this world. And really at some time in our lives we are all like Beaufort, dropped into this place to run and find a home. May we all risk howling to be found.
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<br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh8rkSrEo6wF3VJcMJ-8oAFLR6xd1A6Xl92M8woW9ftiH5voHgtumxEG1cj0L_3ILfgTCdsjuBo9nC4SlJyuJtYKPy3ma-sl5L8BunpwXvHPzHtUroUGp2j8m4PrOZULOlXSfukDBeylz4G/s1600/IMG_0144.JPG"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 240px; height: 320px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh8rkSrEo6wF3VJcMJ-8oAFLR6xd1A6Xl92M8woW9ftiH5voHgtumxEG1cj0L_3ILfgTCdsjuBo9nC4SlJyuJtYKPy3ma-sl5L8BunpwXvHPzHtUroUGp2j8m4PrOZULOlXSfukDBeylz4G/s320/IMG_0144.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5485619909306669314" border="0" /></a>Here's the only shot of Beufort I have from the day on the lost and found mountain. I also give you this poem that I wrote long before I lived in Montana. It is also my only pet dying poem as of yet. But really I'd like to think it is more about living and being found than getting lost and dying.
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<br /><meta name="Title" content=""> <meta name="Keywords" content=""> <meta equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"> <meta name="ProgId" content="Word.Document"> <meta name="Generator" content="Microsoft Word 2008"> <meta name="Originator" content="Microsoft Word 2008"> <link rel="File-List" href="file://localhost/Users/gregseitz/Library/Caches/TemporaryItems/msoclip/0clip_filelist.xml"> <!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <o:documentproperties> <o:template>Normal.dotm</o:Template> <o:revision>0</o:Revision> <o:totaltime>0</o:TotalTime> <o:pages>1</o:Pages> <o:words>126</o:Words> <o:characters>723</o:Characters> <o:company>Hungry Beaver Timber Contracting</o:Company> <o:lines>6</o:Lines> <o:paragraphs>1</o:Paragraphs> <o:characterswithspaces>887</o:CharactersWithSpaces> <o:version>12.0</o:Version> </o:DocumentProperties> <o:officedocumentsettings> <o:allowpng/> </o:OfficeDocumentSettings> </xml><![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:worddocument> <w:zoom>0</w:Zoom> <w:trackmoves>false</w:TrackMoves> <w:trackformatting/> <w:punctuationkerning/> <w:drawinggridhorizontalspacing>18 pt</w:DrawingGridHorizontalSpacing> <w:drawinggridverticalspacing>18 pt</w:DrawingGridVerticalSpacing> <w:displayhorizontaldrawinggridevery>0</w:DisplayHorizontalDrawingGridEvery> <w:displayverticaldrawinggridevery>0</w:DisplayVerticalDrawingGridEvery> <w:validateagainstschemas/> <w:saveifxmlinvalid>false</w:SaveIfXMLInvalid> <w:ignoremixedcontent>false</w:IgnoreMixedContent> <w:alwaysshowplaceholdertext>false</w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText> <w:compatibility> <w:breakwrappedtables/> <w:dontgrowautofit/> <w:dontautofitconstrainedtables/> <w:dontvertalignintxbx/> </w:Compatibility> </w:WordDocument> </xml><![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:latentstyles deflockedstate="false" latentstylecount="276"> </w:LatentStyles> </xml><![endif]--> <style> <!-- /* Font Definitions */ @font-face {font-family:Garamond; panose-1:2 2 4 4 3 3 1 1 8 3; mso-font-charset:0; mso-generic-font-family:auto; mso-font-pitch:variable; mso-font-signature:3 0 0 0 1 0;} @font-face {font-family:"儷黑 Pro"; mso-font-charset:81; mso-generic-font-family:auto; mso-font-pitch:variable; mso-font-signature:1 0 16778248 0 1048576 0;} /* Style Definitions */ p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal {mso-style-parent:""; margin:0in; margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:12.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman";} @page Section1 {size:8.5in 11.0in; margin:1.0in 1.25in 1.0in 1.25in; mso-header-margin:.5in; mso-footer-margin:.5in; mso-paper-source:0;} div.Section1 {page:Section1;} --> </style> <!--[if gte mso 10]> <style> /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:12.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-ascii-font-family:Cambria; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Cambria; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} </style> <![endif]--> <!--StartFragment--> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.25in;"><b style=""><span style="font-family:Garamond;">Montana</span></b><span style="font-family:Garamond;"><o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.25in;"><span style="font-family:Garamond;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.25in;"><span style="font-family:Garamond;">You drove me out of the dog dish<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.25in;"><span style="font-family:Garamond;">of Missoula and into the country<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.25in;"><span style="font-family:Garamond;">where we got lost in the threading<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.25in;"><span style="font-family:Garamond;">of our voices with the windows open. <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.25in;"><span style="font-family:Garamond;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.25in;"><span style="font-family:Garamond;">Everything was open then. We talked <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.25in;"><span style="font-family:Garamond;">about the winged man in <i style="">Brazil,<o:p></o:p></i></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.25in;"><span style="font-family:Garamond;">your cat Lulu, my dog in Michigan,<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.25in;"><span style="font-family:Garamond;">and ignored the Bitterroot River.<span style=""> </span><o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.25in;"><span style="font-family:Garamond;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.25in;"><span style="font-family:Garamond;">The dirt roads kept us from lunch.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.25in;"><span style="font-family:Garamond;">We sat on a rock wanting to undress <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.25in;"><span style="font-family:Garamond;">each other down to the skin <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.25in;"><span style="font-family:Garamond;">we would later learn<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.25in;"><span style="font-family:Garamond;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.25in;"><span style="font-family:Garamond;">to sink into. And when we stood <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.25in;"><span style="font-family:Garamond;">on top of the butte, I stared <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.25in;"><span style="font-family:Garamond;">at your hair, dark like a stone too heavy <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.25in;"><span style="font-family:Garamond;">to move. As a child I collected agates, <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.25in;"><span style="font-family:Garamond;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.25in;"><span style="font-family:Garamond;">smooth and black. Tadpoles <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.25in;"><span style="font-family:Garamond;">in a desert pool. I thought I could take the darkness <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.25in;"><span style="font-family:Garamond;">out of water. Today, I sweep up hair <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.25in;"><span style="font-family:Garamond;">from my dying black lab and I cannot stop <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.25in;"><span style="font-family:Garamond;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.25in;"><span style="font-family:Garamond;">thinking of you. I cannot stop <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.25in;"><span style="font-family:Garamond;">the cancer chasing her while she dreams <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.25in;"><span style="font-family:Garamond;">of squirrels. Dogs are smart. <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.25in;"><span style="font-family:Garamond;">Or not. Either way, they don’t look back.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.25in;"><span style="font-family:Garamond;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.25in;"><span style="font-family:Garamond;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <!--EndFragment-->
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<br />Emily Walter Seitzhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12106131542493719969noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8656346629807276703.post-50620358396158602352010-05-25T10:02:00.001-07:002010-05-27T10:16:55.314-07:00The Sounds of GoatsSome people have fetishes or obsessions that might seem slightly reasonable: shoes, Japanese women in cartoons and maybe even expensive cars imported by appointment. Me, I like ears. I've always liked ears and can even tell you it's not the shape of ears as much as thinking about all that happens inside of them. As if each of us posses not just one, but two black holes that are somehow connected to our inner selves. Or something like that.<br /><br />What impresses me the most with ear usage are people who can hear perfect pitch. My grandmother, Anita, could be sitting at least 50 yards away while I was practicing the piano (as quietly as I could mind you for fear of her) and yell out if I was flat or sharp. I think it was her savant trait that she was never too shy to show off, well maybe not show off as much as make sure you were aware of it. Sure enough, she'd be listening to a radio program and tell you when someone was off, correct them by humming it correctly and then go back to listening. Just like that. Correct it and move on.<br /><br />I cannot say I inherited anything remotely close to Anita's skill, but I 'd like to think in the handing down of genes, I share Anita's short stature and at least her attention to sound, minus the savant category. Musically, I never really showed much promise, I think Moonlight Sonata was my peak at the piano and for the clarinet, I think that peaked in eighth grade along with my interest in playing it at all. Despite my stint as the lead singer for a band, "Beige is the Color of Love" yes, that was in the 90's where we'd play songs like "My Mother's Broken Vase" I cannot say I've ever remotely excelled in music.<br /><br />Despite all these attempts, I would like to think I could get myself out of a real sonnet bind if I needed too, Italian or Shakespearean. And like having the ability to hear perfect pitch, it's a skill rarely used for anything employable other than teaching. But really, let's face it, sonnet binds are quite rare if at all real. As you might imagine, I am completely making up "sonnet binds" in order to give myself some kind of credit for something.<br /><br />What I do know is I can look at pictures of the Trevi Fountain, but it is the sound of an Italian ambulance or the scent of chestnuts even people yelling over each other in Italian, water running on concrete and falling onto cobblestones at night that make me miss Rome. You have to experience the sounds of a place to gather details that have an intimate connection to memory. And smells, well, that just takes you further into the black hole of nostalgia.<br /><br />Nostalgia is something I associate with sounds as much as scent. This past week my mother, who recently purchased two goats, was talking to me on the phone and in the back ground I could hear her little baby kids talking back to her. It was all it took and suddenly I could smell the acid scent of their hair, see their beady black eyes and suddenly, I was back at the goat ranch.<br /><br />Like my short stint as a lead singer, I once milked goats for a short period of time. Just one summer on a ranch in Southern Oregon. The plot isn't important behind the story of why I was there as much as how much I learned about goats. From milking them, to feeding baby goats with bottles to even learning their sounds and personalities. Goats are not pets. They are people dressed in fur suits with big ears. Yes, as you might imagine it, I was fascinated with their ears and with their sounds.<br /><br />I will refrain from tangents or stories about the ranch at this moment. But what I do want to share is a poem. I know it is not a sonnet, but at least it is a poem about goats, for my mother, who's listened to my endless stories and rants and would bring home stethoscopes from work so I could practice listening. Enjoy.<br /><br />Growing Up with Goats<br /><br />The summer I chased a ghost out in a field<br />of cornflower blue, I learned to milk<br />a goat. No machine to rely on, just hands<br />finally not too small. And the ghost, or boy<br />more suited to Steinbeck, is nothing<br />but a backdrop to a barn full of ears<br />alert to all the wind sounds of goats.<br />Rough purr munching chip up to sky,<br />a rush of waves in a full stomach<br />giving all they have made in a day<br />back to hands above a glass jar.<br />When empty, goats want nothing to do<br />with you. They don't even want to look<br />at you, which is when I started to think<br />of my mother, when I started to be grateful<br />for my mother who has given all she has made<br />back, even when I just ate and left.<br />Sitting alone in a barn on the Oregon coast<br />with night shutting down sounds. Ghosts<br />silenced. The goats just keep eating. Stars turn up<br />their lights and the milky moon smiles<br />back with blue eyes, like you. You, so full.Emily Walter Seitzhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12106131542493719969noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8656346629807276703.post-6038089161293366622010-05-20T07:58:00.000-07:002010-05-20T09:26:33.659-07:00Beets, The Back Story<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh15yAP6-IBp_NY_N6XIeUnyJyQN8R4ifAAY8ZeUYsVeYdQfjkocBIG92f-zQTAmLl1eIZ2tQkO53Glf3o7x4RM9bLeV9HUa8trNOYwYmGdbW6DqVvQEKqXx7UxArIfDJcEJ4NdUwXiKliT/s1600/IMG_0126.JPG"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh15yAP6-IBp_NY_N6XIeUnyJyQN8R4ifAAY8ZeUYsVeYdQfjkocBIG92f-zQTAmLl1eIZ2tQkO53Glf3o7x4RM9bLeV9HUa8trNOYwYmGdbW6DqVvQEKqXx7UxArIfDJcEJ4NdUwXiKliT/s320/IMG_0126.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5473367549235602322" border="0" /></a><br />Last night's picnic is today's rain. But I'd like to think of rain as the back story of spring. Behind all the blooms of cherries and scents of lilac are gray days of pressed clouds. Without days like today, our green would not be as vibrant. Thus is true for the beet or beetroot (to hopefully broaden our audience here) who sit long under ground and then rise to be unearthed in muted tones and once roasted--bleed all over your plate and fingers. The phoenixed root vegetable.<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">Beta vulgaris</span>, the common beet, has an interesting history or back story as I like to imagine it. The first recorded history found beets along the Mediterranean in Europe and Northern Africa. And like most food, it spread thanks to violence, riots and a rise in popularity during war when roads were shut and people had to eat what grew in the ground--wild in their backyard. Yes, even our cozy chestnut folks, we can give thanks to Alexander's army storing them and throwing out their shells as a trail to mark their conquests. The beet, as you might imagine, have a far less glamorous past or story.<br /><br />The Romans were the first to eat the actual root. Previously, just the greens were eaten by the Greeks and used for medicinal purposes--digestive benefits mostly. Conquering Europe was just part of the Romans claim to fame really as much as it was spreading the notion that the common beet root was edible. But perhaps my favorite back story lies in a wanna be Roman, Napoleon, who opened a school directly for the study and uses of beets--mainly for its sugar. And as you might have guessed it, the Napoleonic Wars helped for beet notoriety when sugar cane was no longer being shipped to France via England, something needed to be done.<br /><br />Yet some could argue that beets have another history, quieter and with even less pomp. The common beet grew in monasteries and in peasant farms all across Europe and thrived in sandy soiled Poland where is grew wild. Borscht has kept Poles and Russian warm and fed since the 14th century. Somehow I see the beet living more in the flat fields of Poland then the gardens of Babylon.<br /><br />Regardless of which back story you want to believe, beets certainly leave an impression even if it is the day after--as my plate above shows. Their modest shy appearance somewhat bulbous-ugly become poppy-pretty on a plate. Please don't limit your love for beets as a mere winter vegetable roasted in a pot pie. Think winter's white is summer's bloomed red. So in honor of the Romans who weren't too proud to eat the bulbs, here's a salad maybe even Napoleon would have eaten somewhere taking a break from conquering half of Europe. Enjoy.<br /><br />Roasted Beets & Orange Caprese<br /><br />6 beets, washed, roasted & sliced 1/4"-thick<br />2 oranges, supreme<br />8 ounces fresh mozzarella, sliced 1/4"-thick<br />3 tablespoons fresh mint, chiffonade<br />Salt, to taste<br />Olive oil, drizzled<br />Balsamic Vinaigrette, drizzled<br />1 tablespoon orange zest<br /><br />1. Wash and trim beet greens. Wrap in foil, individually, and roast in the oven at 400 for one hour.<br />2. Let beets cool for ten minutes, then peel and slice them. Reserve.<br />3. Supreme an orange is really just cutting the peel and pith with a knife and then segmenting each section.<br />4. Chiffonade the mint, here's to pay homage to Napoleon. Chiffonade simple means ribbons. Remove the mint leaves from stem. Lay each leaf on top of one another, roll like a cigar and then with an knife or scissors, cut into thin ribbon-like pieces.<br />5. Arrange on a plate: first beet slice, orange supreme, mint.<br />6. This also looks good as a tower, as my friend-chef Benjamin Freemole, who will soon be famous (trust me), tells me, "the higher the tower, the more expensive it will look."<br />7. Sprinkle with a bit of salt, drizzle with olive oil and balsamic vinaigrette and end with a garnish of orange zest.Emily Walter Seitzhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12106131542493719969noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8656346629807276703.post-68975448033096713832010-05-13T11:31:00.001-07:002010-05-14T07:10:28.373-07:00An Elephant, Tulip & Chickens<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjYx8NLnWUoj1SnC8Aw5IecVH9S-A4JiaA1-m9R4W1Lebdgk22YjdQRm5v5kzaaa_gDtb5Tqlyix_z0XsGokvn8-de5apU7Go322gOioJR8_EvJQ7XN8x5nhlQv9qhmy5jYGc1L3w66yOBq/s1600/IMG_0115.JPG"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 240px; height: 320px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjYx8NLnWUoj1SnC8Aw5IecVH9S-A4JiaA1-m9R4W1Lebdgk22YjdQRm5v5kzaaa_gDtb5Tqlyix_z0XsGokvn8-de5apU7Go322gOioJR8_EvJQ7XN8x5nhlQv9qhmy5jYGc1L3w66yOBq/s320/IMG_0115.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5470986985028922594" border="0" /></a><br />There seems to be few things in this world that you can title without tripping on metaphor. It might be why I like how children decide on names. For example, a friend of mine has a son who is two and named their four chickens, <span style="font-style: italic;">grandma</span>, <span style="font-style: italic;">snake</span>, <span style="font-style: italic;">pumpkin</span> and <span style="font-style: italic;">river</span>. As if all that he knew, either good or bad, could be explained in those birds--which too often as adults we don't even see as birds, but eggs, pastoral, a Sunday meal, soup stock, compost.<br /><br />Most days my head wakes long before my body, but I try to sometimes remind myself to name what I see, to catalog the concrete-wood floor, robe, teeth, water and peppermint. I feel lucky currently because this naming game is easy with what I see each morning from my window--elephant, tulip and chickens. The elephant I unearthed out of the Tiber, the tulip was picked by my husband and the chickens are a strange but playful reminder of daily living. A trilogy of sorts. But here I am getting metaphorical. Let's go back to naming things and being present.<br /><br />Presently, I am approaching another birthday. I tend to be, if possible, more contemplative around birthdays as if they are some personal "new year" or time for resolution and reflection. So in times like these, I do what any almost sane person would do to avoid the usual malaise of aging, I make chocolate mousse.<br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg8dU8QxESbTxlcf7PIrFGuvSvOYyONiDtUlIMR_ibC9aU6yAUI3hzS9HNCVb35Z1ADXx0vUepdbGq0uCh7_NAQ2GWEUtJE5ig9_6G1adsw2GEIAyGReqJQFgWfm6Kvs_sTDZLMfPBxLwGU/s1600/IMG_0118.JPG"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 240px; height: 320px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg8dU8QxESbTxlcf7PIrFGuvSvOYyONiDtUlIMR_ibC9aU6yAUI3hzS9HNCVb35Z1ADXx0vUepdbGq0uCh7_NAQ2GWEUtJE5ig9_6G1adsw2GEIAyGReqJQFgWfm6Kvs_sTDZLMfPBxLwGU/s320/IMG_0118.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5471117805665883810" border="0" /></a>See, here I am being grateful for having chickens because good eggs make good mousse. Mousse interestingly enough translates as <span style="font-style: italic;">froth</span> or <span style="font-style: italic;">foam</span> in French and if you have fresh farm eggs, your frothed chocolate might even be French worthy. Maybe.<br /><br />Thankfully, I have both chickens and a simple recipe , which only has five ingredients. Thanks to my mother via the Grand Rapid Press, I'd love to think this recipe came from some dutiful Dutch lady diligent in not just her perfectly placed blond bobbed hair, but also in making a perfectly bouffanted mousse. But what I like even more about this mousse is the fact that my mother would make this dessert at random, if she had extra egg whites or just because she wanted to use her fancy green glasses. I recall opening the fridge as a child and looking for some snack say after school on a Tuesday and there I would see five green glasses filled with a shadowy richness. I recall just staring at them and naming each glass slowly: chocolate mousse.<br /><br />And maybe that's why I have wanted to make this treat, not for showmanship, but some dessert during a weekday night to pause a moment. It is another reason I love this mousse, served in a tiny bowl or glass, each person just stares and I think hopes each spoonful doesn't disappear as if naming the experience with their spoon: delicious.<br /><br />This chocolate mousse is certainly birthday worthy, but I like to carry on the tradition of the modest cook, who just happens to have too many egg whites? Enjoy.<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">The Modest Chocolate Mousse</span><br /><br />6 ounces chocolate (I like to use a mix of dark and semi-sweet)<br />3 tablespoons cold water<br />2 tablespoons sugar<br />1 teaspoon vanilla<br />5 eggs, separated<br /><br />1. In a double boiler, melt chocolate. (Be sure to not get any boiling water into your chocolate)<br />2. Using a wooden spoon, stir chocolate until smooth.<br />3. Add cold water and blend well, then add sugar and incorporate until smooth.<br />4. Remove chocolate off boiling water and add vanilla. Be sure to blend well and let chocolate mixture cool slightly, about three minutes.<br />5. Beat in egg yolks, one at at time, into chocolate mixture. After you add each yolk, stir chocolate until smooth.<br />6. Beat egg whites until stiff peaks form. Fold egg whites into chocolate. Be sure to do this in batches to not have any streaks of white. <br />7. Place in ramekins, champagne glasses or heck, even jelly jars would do in the fridge for at least two hours.<br />8. Serve with fresh whipped cream, fruit, mint leaves or just plain.<br /><br />Yields about five to six champagne glassesEmily Walter Seitzhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12106131542493719969noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8656346629807276703.post-58940340435173749582010-04-27T10:15:00.000-07:002010-04-28T09:37:41.064-07:00The Democracy of BicyclesI wouldn't ever consider myself a political poet. I wouldn't want to be. It's partially what I adore about poetry-- a land that exists as words shyly hugging the left side (no pun here to politics, well, maybe a little) of the page. Sure, there are great political poems, <span style="font-style: italic;">Easter 1916</span> by Yeats to name a well known example, but I'd like to think it has "stayed alive" in the political poetry archives due to it's sound as sense instead of just sloganed language with political intent. Sometimes shouting is just noise and not words you want to carry in your head or heart.
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<br />I used to be much more politically driven, now, I'd rather work on my garden. I'd like to think that the quiet movement of making a tiny plot and home in this world more green <span style="font-style: italic;">is</span> a political stance. My stance is my body bent over pulling weeds and planting arugula, nasturtiums and basil. As if my flag is nothing but the leaves on my sage bush that outlasted a gray Missoula winter. My country is filled with people who consider themselves hardy perennials in a world that wants plastics and perfection. We the hardy, we the greened are imperfect in our becoming. Because that's what nature gives you, it gives you metaphors of becoming. The pear tree outside your window now in bloom will be fruit, the blue birds building a nest will bring flight and the trilliums on the forest floor are now spring's perfect white to summer's green. All <span style="font-style: italic;">become something.</span>
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<br />But now I am getting too metaphysical, so let's turn to the poetry of Robert Frost instead. "Nature's first green is gold, her hardest hue to hold." The gold of spring forsythia cannot stay gold but will be the green of summer shade. Maybe even our political shouts of our youth will be our quiet acts of gardening as adults. Maybe most character traits you develop as a young adult, seem to just shift to some other place as you age. So my once political nature to save anything that looked cute and mammalian, has turned into a different focus. Now, I am pro-bike and I pedal.
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<br />Really, there are few things in this world that move me like libraries, post offices and public transportation. It's as if regardless of any <span style="font-style: italic;">ism</span> a country holds at least they can all agree on these three. I cannot say our country has a grand example of public transportation systems, yet in our small town of Missoula we do have Bike, Walk, Bus Week. This week, thanks to the good people at The Way to Go Club or http://missoulainmotion.com/ we are a city that cycles, commutes and carpools, or tries to all year long.
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<br />Even as I sit here at my desk watching the cool rains of late April, I will ride my bike. I will join the democracy of bicycles and quietly pedal to work. Really, I don't do it for any political purpose as much as I do it to have some quiet before the business and noise. It gives me twenty minutes to breath and pedal to a rhythm to remind myself I am not in a box, that I am becoming something too. Viva La Bicycle!
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<br />Enjoy the poem.
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I wanted to shelve it away <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.25in;"><span style="font-family:Garamond;">with the pencils or ship it to Caracas,<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.25in;"><span style="font-family:Garamond;">but clocks are endangered there. <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.25in;"><span style="font-family:Garamond;">I leave my house before the sun finds<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.25in;"><span style="font-family:Garamond;">the alarm, ride my bike to work and flirt <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.25in;"><span style="font-family:Garamond;">with cars to nudge me into curbs, alleys or dirt, <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.25in;"><span style="font-family:Garamond;">so I can start my day face first to the morning <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.25in;"><span style="font-family:Garamond;">light and ignore people moving in boxes <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.25in;"><span style="font-family:Garamond;">of metal. I turn up the wren housed in my heart <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.25in;"><span style="font-family:Garamond;">who warbles from its perch on my desk<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.25in;"><span style="font-family:Garamond;">and sings with each tick of my pencil. <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.25in;"><b style=""><span style="font-family:Garamond;"><o:p> </o:p></span></b></p> <!--EndFragment-->
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<br />Emily Walter Seitzhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12106131542493719969noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8656346629807276703.post-55833547384974924752010-03-16T09:39:00.000-07:002010-03-17T07:27:18.397-07:00I am the Walrus of MichiganI hate to say this out loud, but I read a lot of poetry that makes me want to read less poetry. But when I find someone I really adore, I am loyal. Perhaps even stubbornly loyal. Yesterday on Poetry Daily, www.poems.com, Bob Hicok's poem, "Watchful" reminded me of why I am a loyal reader of poetry. It's like listening to music on a radio station you know might have some good songs, but for some reason hasn't been playing any of them. Sure, you could turn on your i-pod or put in a CD, but you don't. You just stay tuned and just about when you tell yourself you really are silly to still be listening to this station, something finally plays. And you want to stop the car, even if you are driving on the expressway. You want to savor the music and you want to savor the moment you are having savoring the music. Such is this poem or most poems by Bob Hicok. Please check it out. Check him out, he's from Michigan and didn't have a degree until after he had four books of poetry. He's both stunningly funny and stark in his insight. I'll say it again, I am a loyal fan.
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<br />With this said, I feel shy to post a recent poem I've been working on, yet perhaps under the tall balding shadow of Bob Hicok the Michigander, I too can try to be a poetic voice for Michigan. Maybe someday, Bob and I could bring back the ever popular campaign our home state had so aptly titled, "Say Yes, to Michigan!" Frankly, I am not sure what we were suppose to be saying yes to? Say yes to the Great Lakes, sure. Say yes to Vernors, double sure. Say yes to the U.P. yup. Say yes to unemployment and shadowed Detroit, not so sure.
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<br />You see, my feelings of poetry are very similar to how I feel about Michigan. I am loyal, stubbornly loyal to writing poetry and to the state where I was born, raised and educated in. Yet I find myself not fully able to "Say Yes, to Michigan" and well to say yes to poetry, all the time. For now, in Montana with a lot of flat grass and rock between me and Michigan, I long for lakes and the light of spring in thick birch-oak forests and the smell of wet earth unfolding. But sometimes you just have to write a lot of bad poems to work at one good line of poetry just like maybe you have to live a lot of places to work at your loyalty to where you were born. As I live far from Michigan and write poems about my home, I find myself finally being able to adore the state.
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<br />I've never been one for watching sports and I truly don't understand rooting for teams on television, but it is how I feel when I hear of any positive news about Michigan. As if I am cheering from the sidelines for this state that seems to be making headlines as Hicok has said as, "the poster child for our recession." And maybe it has been, with a 24% unemployment rate and a long list of disappointments in the auto industry, Michigan could be photographed on your milk carton. But in the Michigan of my mind, it is beautiful, broad in changing landscapes and there is always water, a "water winter wonderland" ( another more poetic campaign slogan).
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<br />And so, I give you this poem, Michigan. I am sure there will be plenty more, I hope. And maybe this is just a clumsy poem to hopefully get closer to writing a good one someday. But I give this to you as a token for all the time I spent staring at your water and dreaming of myself as coming from another state, somewhere not so in the middle. But I thank you, Michigan, for teaching me to accept what we are. We are middleWest. And even if we see ourselves as walruses, may we be beautiful in our seal suits.
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<br />(Please note: there aren't any walruses in the Great Lakes. Despite the questions I used to field from tourists who would ask, "Are these shrimp fresh from Lake Michigan?" Sorry, just lakes of fresh water.)
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<br />Enjoy the poem.
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<br /><meta name="Title" content=""> <meta name="Keywords" content=""> <meta equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"> <meta name="ProgId" content="Word.Document"> <meta name="Generator" content="Microsoft Word 2008"> <meta name="Originator" content="Microsoft Word 2008"> <link rel="File-List" href="file://localhost/Users/gregseitz/Library/Caches/TemporaryItems/msoclip/0clip_filelist.xml"> <!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <o:documentproperties> <o:template>Normal.dotm</o:Template> <o:revision>0</o:Revision> <o:totaltime>0</o:TotalTime> <o:pages>1</o:Pages> <o:words>110</o:Words> <o:characters>627</o:Characters> <o:company>Hungry Beaver Timber Contracting</o:Company> <o:lines>5</o:Lines> <o:paragraphs>1</o:Paragraphs> <o:characterswithspaces>770</o:CharactersWithSpaces> <o:version>12.0</o:Version> </o:DocumentProperties> <o:officedocumentsettings> <o:allowpng/> </o:OfficeDocumentSettings> </xml><![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:worddocument> <w:zoom>0</w:Zoom> <w:trackmoves>false</w:TrackMoves> <w:trackformatting/> <w:punctuationkerning/> <w:drawinggridhorizontalspacing>18 pt</w:DrawingGridHorizontalSpacing> <w:drawinggridverticalspacing>18 pt</w:DrawingGridVerticalSpacing> <w:displayhorizontaldrawinggridevery>0</w:DisplayHorizontalDrawingGridEvery> <w:displayverticaldrawinggridevery>0</w:DisplayVerticalDrawingGridEvery> <w:validateagainstschemas/> <w:saveifxmlinvalid>false</w:SaveIfXMLInvalid> <w:ignoremixedcontent>false</w:IgnoreMixedContent> <w:alwaysshowplaceholdertext>false</w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText> <w:compatibility> <w:breakwrappedtables/> <w:dontgrowautofit/> <w:dontautofitconstrainedtables/> <w:dontvertalignintxbx/> </w:Compatibility> </w:WordDocument> </xml><![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:latentstyles deflockedstate="false" latentstylecount="276"> </w:LatentStyles> </xml><![endif]--> <style> <!-- /* Font Definitions */ @font-face {font-family:Cambria; panose-1:2 4 5 3 5 4 6 3 2 4; mso-font-charset:0; mso-generic-font-family:auto; mso-font-pitch:variable; mso-font-signature:3 0 0 0 1 0;} @font-face {font-family:Garamond; panose-1:2 2 4 4 3 3 1 1 8 3; mso-font-charset:0; mso-generic-font-family:auto; mso-font-pitch:variable; mso-font-signature:3 0 0 0 1 0;} /* Style Definitions */ p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal {mso-style-parent:""; margin:0in; margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:12.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-ascii-font-family:Cambria; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:Cambria; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-hansi-font-family:Cambria; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} @page Section1 {size:8.5in 11.0in; margin:1.0in 1.25in 1.0in 1.25in; mso-header-margin:.5in; mso-footer-margin:.5in; mso-paper-source:0;} div.Section1 {page:Section1;} --> </style> <!--[if gte mso 10]> <style> /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:12.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-ascii-font-family:Cambria; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Cambria; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin;} </style> <![endif]--> <!--StartFragment--> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:Garamond;"><span style="font-weight: bold;">The Walrus in Us</span><o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:Garamond;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: georgia;">
<br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:georgia;">Winter houses gulp people whole<o:p></o:p></p> <p face="georgia" class="MsoNormal">like a broad mouthed whale, curtained teeth<o:p></o:p></p> <p face="georgia" class="MsoNormal">and chimneyed tails, beached in drifts of snow<o:p></o:p></p> <p face="georgia" class="MsoNormal">and stale forced air.<span style=""> </span>Most days, not even mail <o:p></o:p></p> <p face="georgia" class="MsoNormal">brings relief, just pages of catalog-fresh strangers <o:p></o:p></p> <p style="font-family: georgia;" class="MsoNormal">smiling barefoot on a distant shore. You forget <o:p></o:p></p> <p style="font-family: georgia;" class="MsoNormal">your feet on sand, now slippered fins you walk <o:p></o:p></p> <p style="font-family: georgia;" class="MsoNormal">as horse whale.<span style=""> </span>Your body, walrused in months <o:p></o:p></p> <p style="font-family: georgia;" class="MsoNormal">of winter, sinks in the ocean of your youth.<o:p></o:p></p> <p style="font-family: georgia;" class="MsoNormal">So you build a raft from scraps of summer, <o:p></o:p></p> <p style="font-family: georgia;" class="MsoNormal">where you want to live as winged instead <o:p></o:p></p> <p style="font-family: georgia;" class="MsoNormal">of pinniped. No longer couched to routine, you float <o:p></o:p></p> <p style="font-family: georgia;" class="MsoNormal">and crest over waves of middle age, sprouting<o:p></o:p></p> <p style="font-family: georgia;" class="MsoNormal">grey hair, until you hear a choir barking <o:p></o:p></p> <p style="font-family: georgia;" class="MsoNormal">in tune and find yourself comfortable in a seal suit<o:p></o:p></p> <p style="font-family: georgia;" class="MsoNormal">looking zoo cute, even with long whiskers.<o:p></o:p></p> <p style="font-family: georgia;" class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <!--EndFragment-->
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<br />Emily Walter Seitzhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12106131542493719969noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8656346629807276703.post-62579216420561926432010-03-11T08:27:00.000-08:002010-03-11T09:38:20.951-08:00Som Tom For SpringLast week, we had spring. It was a lovely day. I spent it with a shy crocus while I ate lunch outside jacketed out of the wind and under the budding sun. I think the crocus was smart not to bloom quite yet for winter returned and suddenly spring went white again. That nature, it sure is smart.<br /><br />Unlike me, who quickly found my feet again and boxed up my boots and found my flip flops to click around the house. But that was that one day last week and now we are back to slippers and warm oats for breakfast and a drizzle of honey instead of the sun.<br /><br />And so we March on in March where we have time changes and spring dated to arrive, but the flip flopping of winter to spring and back again continues. It's as if we are in seasonal limbo when we get these glimpses of green, a bold mud puddle pushing away ice and even the faint smell of earth under melting snow. And yet we must carry on, still layered. We tell ourselves we love oatmeal and woolen hats after all these months while catalogs start to arrive with tanned people all dressed in their catalog-fresh beachwear on "holiday." Maybe you even pass people at work who find it cute to say, "Aloha". No, not so cute.<br /><br />So perhaps you are like me and you're not going on vacation to some palmed destination and cannot seem to muster a love for anything baked or roasted while you tell yourself you are not deep in cabin or suburbian fever. No, you are simply bored with even your favorite late winter recipes and cannot seem to muster a sense of cravings. You know you want something fresh, something with a pale shade of green. Something with the hint of coconut on your tongue. This Thai salad might not solve any seasonal limbo malaise, but it certainly helped me.<br /><br />Last week, the day spring came, we also had Thai week at our cooking school and this salad developed from some ingredients we special ordered; however, I'd like to think you too could find some of these even if it isn't Thai week in your world. Perhaps you could invent some type of week for yourself and come up with something even more creative such as a week dedicated to the coconut. Or maybe "everything has gone galangal". Instead of the adage of when in Rome for a week of Italian food, why not make it "when in Cambodia?" Something off the mark, but close enough.<br /><br />For example, I taught a group of Indian priests, who told me that they didn't have Valentine's day in India, but a day loosely translated as, "The Day I think of You as my Sister." Frankly, I don't think anything got lost in translation, rather a better idea developed. Such is true with this recipe. It calls for green papaya, but if you cannot find it you could use cucumber instead. The important part is to get the flavors of the tangy sweet well deserved vacation in your mouth from anything melted or mashed.<br /><br />This simple dish called <span style="font-style: italic;">Som Tom</span> in Thai is, according to one food blogger who traveled through Thailand, a favorite among Thai ladies. Maybe I should call it, "My Spring Salad I would serve to my Sister if she could come over for Lunch." Whatever you call it, I hope you make it. Enjoy.<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">Simple Som Tom</span><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">1 Thai chile</span> (these are really hot, you could use a small red chile for color and they are a bit milder in heat than the green ones)<br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">4 garlic cloves, minced<br />1/4 cup lime juice, freshly squeezed limes<br />2 tablespoons fish sauce<br />4 tablespoons palm sugar </span>(you could use brown sugar instead)<br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">1 pound green papaya, julienne<br />1/4 cup bean sprouts<br />1/4 cup toasted coconut<br />1/2 cup toasted peanuts<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;"></span></span>1. In a small bowl, add the chile, garlic, lime juice, fish sauce, palm sugar and mix well until the sugar dissolves.<br />2. In a large bowl, add papaya, bean sprouts and coconut and mix well. <br />3. Add dressing to papaya mixture and blend to coat. Add peanuts last and mix well.<br /><br />Enjoy your food vacation.<span style="font-weight: bold;"><br /></span>Emily Walter Seitzhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12106131542493719969noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8656346629807276703.post-47567915742828585742010-01-13T08:55:00.001-08:002010-01-20T08:25:23.518-08:00The Citrus Among UsNo matter what form they sprout into as satsuma or pomelo, citrus satisfies during the gray days of January. I'd like to claim that I only eat seasonally but due to the fact that I now live in Montana, I have more than just an earnest interest in eating only beets. Although I have a fondness for these sanguine and hearty veggies, I do have a dwindling root cellar that I have been currently avoiding. Even my strong Irish taste for potatoes seems subdued. Currently, I am boycotting anything boiled and mashed. All I want are blood oranges as an afternoon snack, grapefruit juiced with carrot and ginger and backpacks that hold southern reminders of warm days to come. While out skiing in the cold, the perfect fruit--snug in it's down jacket of rind and pith--manages to keep shape, perfectly sweet in the winter sun. I love to watch the peels curl on the snow. Sometimes I imagine that even birds find the thrown rinds as a treat to store as incense for their nests. Here's proof of the heights I will climb to eat an orange in the cold sun.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhwDLob9tzzIhMGOIs0clJzxcsQiq9mHq45-p9UIyXK4wS4pofN1wFA-2QddbAJy6ldKOtrIz7RCIgsWamALPGsfafgXslrp7Sm4LeWXFjzEEaV5YvCOpYAlymzyBccFhOJEx1PHs8nn2ID/s1600-h/DSC00901.JPG"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 240px; height: 320px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhwDLob9tzzIhMGOIs0clJzxcsQiq9mHq45-p9UIyXK4wS4pofN1wFA-2QddbAJy6ldKOtrIz7RCIgsWamALPGsfafgXslrp7Sm4LeWXFjzEEaV5YvCOpYAlymzyBccFhOJEx1PHs8nn2ID/s320/DSC00901.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5428840028317426514" border="0" /></a>There's something about the smell of citrus in winter that makes me feel like I am holding some token of warmth, some reminder that somewhere someone might be sweating not under just layers of wool. This past week we received a package of such a reminder thanks to my aunt Jan, who sends boxes of Honey Bells to her northern family members. We've been devouring them to say the least and finding ways to integrate them into meals in salads, but mostly they've simply become a coveted dessert.<br /><br />My favorite use of the Honey Bells--besides eating them out skate skiing--was with a salad I adapted from this month's <span style="font-style: italic;">Bon Appetit</span>. I turned it into a rice dish and added a vinaigrette. Also, thanks to my brother in law's salmon we brought back from Alaska, this meal felt like something we truly should bow our heads in thankfulness. Enjoy.<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">Salmon, Fennel, Mint with a Hint of Sun</span><br /><br />1 cup rice, rinsed, cooked & slightly cooled<br />1/4 cup sugar<br />1/4 cup rice vinegar<br />2 whole star anise<br />4 cups of water<br />1 one pound salmon fillet with skin<br />2 Honey Bells or navel oranges<br />4 cups fennel, thinly sliced<br />1 cup fresh mint, chiffonade<br /><br />1. Place sugar, vinegar, star anise and four cups of cold water in a large deep skillet. Season with salt and pepper.<br />2. Bring to boil over high heat and stir until sugar dissolves.<br />3. Add salmon fillet, skin side up, cover and turn off heat.<br />4. Let stand for ten minutes, then turn salmon over. Cover and let stand for five to six minutes or until salmon is opaque in center.<br />5. Remove salmon from liquid and cool.<br />6. Meanwhile make vinaigrette:<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">Vinaigrette</span><br />2 tablespoons olive oil<br />1 tablespoon rice vinegar<br />1/4 teaspoon fish sauce<br />1 teaspoon honey<br />1 teaspoon brown sugar<br />1 tablespoon juice from orange<br /><br />7. This vinaigrette is really just a template, play around with sweet and sour and yes, fish sauce is a key ingredient here even though there is a small amount.<br />8. Segment your oranges. First cut the bottom 1/4 inch off each orange. Stand orange up on flat end and using a sharp pairing knife, cut off peel and white pith. Hold peeled orange in one hand over a large bowl and cut between membranes, releasing segments into the bowl.<br />9. Add fennel, mint and flank salmon into bowl and toss with vinaigrette.<br />10. Season with salt and pepper and first place cooled rice on a plate and place salmon salad on top.<br /><br />I seriously thought about taking a photo of this because it was so lovely, but by the time I went for my camera, both my husband and myself had devoured this dish.<br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><div><br /></div><div><br /><div><br /></div><div><br /><div><br /></div><div><br /></div></div></div>Emily Walter Seitzhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12106131542493719969noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8656346629807276703.post-50761655059369954272010-01-05T08:48:00.000-08:002010-01-05T10:09:27.034-08:00To The WaterfallI've met few people who've vacationed to Mammoth Cave in March. Most Midwesterners head to Florida or the Texas shore for spring break, but one year our family headed to the hills, the Kentucky hills with a stop off at the state's National Park. I might have been seven or eight, I don't remember, but what I do recall was being hesitant of the smell of wet earth and the quiet of all that darkness so far below the ground. Sure, I recall the folklore and some stories of the caves discoveries, but mostly I remember a hike we took to a waterfall outside of the park.
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<br />It was gray and slightly raining. We cloaked ourselves in parkas and started heading towards the trail map. I was fumbling with my jacket and fell behind, I recall passing another family debating to hike or not. Their voices were calm, but concerned and the debate was about their young daughter and if she could handle walking over all the wet rock and slippery earth. She looked my age, my height and she too had heavy glasses. I recall listening and wanting to interrupt and tell them that they could come with us, but I didn't. I just stared. The little girl stood between her parents saying nothing. The parents decided against the hike. The girl didn't argue, she followed suit and watched as her mother helped her take her jacket off and climb back into the car.
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<br />I caught up with my family and really, I cannot tell you more details of the waterfall other than the cold wet rock layered in moss was dotted with spring flowers. While I stood with wet tennis shoes and damp socks all I thought about was that little girl, somewhere in her warm car looking out the window. I thought that if I knew her, I would send her a picture, a letter or some detail about the waterfall. I didn't want her to feel like she was missing out.
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<br />This past week, my book was rejected yet again and this time I was given comments in regards to my poems. I am beginning to think I would rather have a sterile letter simply stating the rejection in polite business English. No, not this letter for this editor found it an opportunity to be more personal and to tell me that my poetry is arbitrary. I responded in polite business English myself, but found her word choice a bit harsh.
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<br />And what does this story of the girl at the waterfall parking lot and being rejected have in common? Frankly, I write poems for that girl. I think and hope I will always write poems for her. In my mind, she's my audience or the person who maybe didn't go along with me and I want to do my best to show, explain, share and hopefully give her an opportunity to experience too.
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<br />I'd like to think that this desire doesn't come from my ego as much as it is from a belief that if you want to write than you need to have a story worth sharing, a poem with a point. Something to give to this world as an offering and not as some absolute. So here it goes, a new poem for a new year. Enjoy.
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<br /><span style="font-style: italic;font-family:georgia;" >Sirens at 31o</span>
<br /><meta name="Title" content=""> <meta name="Keywords" content=""> <meta equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"> <meta name="ProgId" content="Word.Document"> <meta name="Generator" content="Microsoft Word 2008"> <meta name="Originator" content="Microsoft Word 2008"> <!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <o:documentproperties> <o:template>Normal.dotm</o:Template> <o:revision>0</o:Revision> <o:totaltime>0</o:TotalTime> <o:pages>1</o:Pages> <o:words>93</o:Words> <o:characters>532</o:Characters> <o:company>Hungry Beaver Timber Contracting</o:Company> <o:lines>4</o:Lines> <o:paragraphs>1</o:Paragraphs> <o:characterswithspaces>653</o:CharactersWithSpaces> <o:version>12.0</o:Version> </o:DocumentProperties> <o:officedocumentsettings> <o:allowpng/> </o:OfficeDocumentSettings> </xml><![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:worddocument> <w:zoom>0</w:Zoom> <w:trackmoves>false</w:TrackMoves> <w:trackformatting/> <w:punctuationkerning/> <w:drawinggridhorizontalspacing>18 pt</w:DrawingGridHorizontalSpacing> <w:drawinggridverticalspacing>18 pt</w:DrawingGridVerticalSpacing> <w:displayhorizontaldrawinggridevery>0</w:DisplayHorizontalDrawingGridEvery> <w:displayverticaldrawinggridevery>0</w:DisplayVerticalDrawingGridEvery> <w:validateagainstschemas/> <w:saveifxmlinvalid>false</w:SaveIfXMLInvalid> <w:ignoremixedcontent>false</w:IgnoreMixedContent> <w:alwaysshowplaceholdertext>false</w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText> <w:compatibility> <w:breakwrappedtables/> <w:dontgrowautofit/> <w:dontautofitconstrainedtables/> <w:dontvertalignintxbx/> </w:Compatibility> </w:WordDocument> </xml><![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:latentstyles deflockedstate="false" latentstylecount="276"> </w:LatentStyles> </xml><![endif]--> <style> <!-- /* Font Definitions */ @font-face {font-family:Cambria; panose-1:2 4 5 3 5 4 6 3 2 4; mso-font-charset:0; mso-generic-font-family:auto; mso-font-pitch:variable; mso-font-signature:3 0 0 0 1 0;} @font-face {font-family:Garamond; panose-1:2 2 4 4 3 3 1 1 8 3; mso-font-charset:0; mso-generic-font-family:auto; mso-font-pitch:variable; mso-font-signature:3 0 0 0 1 0;} /* Style Definitions */ p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal {mso-style-parent:""; margin:0in; margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:12.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-ascii-font-family:Cambria; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:Cambria; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-hansi-font-family:Cambria; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} @page Section1 {size:8.5in 11.0in; margin:1.0in 1.25in 1.0in 1.25in; mso-header-margin:.5in; mso-footer-margin:.5in; mso-paper-source:0;} div.Section1 {page:Section1;} --> </style> <!--[if gte mso 10]> <style> /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:12.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-ascii-font-family:Cambria; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Cambria; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin;} </style> <![endif]--> <!--StartFragment--><span style="font-family:Garamond;">
<br />Clara hangs blank CD’s from cherry trees,<o:p></o:p></span> <p style="font-family: georgia;" face="georgia" class="MsoNormal">to blind hawking magpies, while her daughters<o:p></o:p></p> <p style="font-family: georgia;" face="georgia" class="MsoNormal">wait for wind to turn the silver in sun<o:p></o:p></p> <p style="font-family: georgia;" face="georgia" class="MsoNormal">to catch seconds of rainbows without rain.<o:p></o:p></p> <p style="font-family: georgia;" face="georgia" class="MsoNormal">The three trees weight heavy in late summer<o:p></o:p></p> <p face="georgia" class="MsoNormal">like Clara’s girls grown, still living under her<o:p></o:p></p> <p face="georgia" class="MsoNormal">eye and locked screened door. A window opens<o:p></o:p></p> <p style="font-family: georgia;" class="MsoNormal">at dusk lifting hints of radio to fill the orchard <o:p></o:p></p> <p style="font-family: georgia;" class="MsoNormal">with pitched notes in the off key of dance halls, <o:p></o:p></p> <p style="font-family: georgia;" class="MsoNormal">tight jeans and slow smiles from boys under hats.<span style=""> </span><o:p></o:p></p> <p style="font-family: georgia;" class="MsoNormal">The girls sing louder than a meadow starred <o:p></o:p></p> <p style="font-family: georgia;" class="MsoNormal">with flowers.<span style=""> </span>Louder than drown out owls.<o:p></o:p></p> <p style="font-family: georgia;" class="MsoNormal">As if their song were a car filled with gas<o:p></o:p></p> <p style="font-family: georgia;" class="MsoNormal">each chord a knitted feather to lift the past.<o:p></o:p></p> <!--EndFragment-->
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<br />Emily Walter Seitzhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12106131542493719969noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8656346629807276703.post-21096485786960510652009-12-15T08:39:00.001-08:002009-12-29T08:21:20.544-08:00The Warm Room<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhtTRz8YKKQzncnnzZa01TZW37fKx2vWZVncod5fH4KXPrKRxGNHnzvjz7_Gp5FFmDPCsyNWnZ03YQA0N7KAYt-lD8x5cWPYrs5yu15MRmuqLNDQxNDHih2zLdAxTycftb9FxJ21uWHoleQ/s1600-h/trainstation.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 221px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhtTRz8YKKQzncnnzZa01TZW37fKx2vWZVncod5fH4KXPrKRxGNHnzvjz7_Gp5FFmDPCsyNWnZ03YQA0N7KAYt-lD8x5cWPYrs5yu15MRmuqLNDQxNDHih2zLdAxTycftb9FxJ21uWHoleQ/s320/trainstation.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5418229086294333298" border="0" /></a>
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<br />Until not so recently, I spent a lot of time around the holiday season waiting in train stations, bus stations and I even camped out for four days, (yes, four days ) in an airport terminal waiting for a storm to pass. Luckily, the four day hiatus was post-Christmas and it did not look like this train station. Most people I know find waiting in random locations tiresome and annoying. Franky, I miss it terribly. Yes, I miss even places like this train station in Poland where the task of traveling sometimes felt more like an act of faith than an activity. Traveling in Poland was more of a crap shot as to where you might really end up, but even more improbable to predict was the duration of time it would take to go anywhere. Thankfully, a lot of places I ended up looked like this. <a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiQDqOZ0RSQ_untuhiLV6ioo2gULMCx0Y14QcCYzJGfsJe5aoZIOEwfYL_VLuFNrvRx9rF2HMvc2ZekV_SnvEowSnuxSSF6CGPZlHExiJzekBbUy6iwoV8oXvm6R8n8bKQ_Dluspy-gf6KN/s1600-h/poppyplace.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 215px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiQDqOZ0RSQ_untuhiLV6ioo2gULMCx0Y14QcCYzJGfsJe5aoZIOEwfYL_VLuFNrvRx9rF2HMvc2ZekV_SnvEowSnuxSSF6CGPZlHExiJzekBbUy6iwoV8oXvm6R8n8bKQ_Dluspy-gf6KN/s320/poppyplace.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5418231876538386706" border="0" /></a>
<br />This is the place I wish all trains would end up. Maybe they do. Maybe in the locomotives of our minds we each have some preordained destination where one day at random like the Polish train system we will crank open the doors and find a spring field and one bold poppy, waiting. Just like us. Just like us.
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<br />And this is why I like waiting at stations, somehow it's like a democratic purgatory of sorts where everyone is alike, everyone waits just like everyone else. No one can out wait another or one up someone's ability to wait. Although I recall watching a group of Serbian men one New Year's try to out wait the world by singing the longest song that latest seven days. They seem to have been seated in a warm room of an Austrian train station for a entire week or seven bottles of vodka which ever came first, just waiting. Perhaps they were waiting for a train that would take them to some other time and not just some distant town.
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<br />I've also witnessed people who think they can out wit waiting. A cellphone in hand and one in a protected pocket and laptop in tow, shouting into one of their cellphones to some poor customer service person at an airline company. I've heard sentences shouted, such as, "Do you have any idea who I am," while not so secretly purchasing a ticket on sidestep.com. These people are amazing to watch and I cannot believe their hasn't been a coffee table book of photos taken at airports, to show the agony of defeat or the triumph of home comings. I guess there are just some moments of vulnerability that are just too much to see.
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<br />And odd as it might sound, maybe it is just the vulnerability of waiting that I like, the fact that people will strike up conversations with you and openly discuss their views of politics or hope to exchange personal philosophies and all with or without knowing each others first names. My fondest of conversations happen when both parties were speaking different languages and somehow, something got communicated. I recall getting relationship advice once by a man who only spoke Hungarian, I don't speak Hungarian. But somehow, we managed to find ways to learn about each other. It's amazing what you can only learn from hand gestures. I'm sure if any of you who are reading this are mimes then you can really back me up here. I quietly applaud you.
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<br />But sometimes, all it has to be is a phrase, a simple gesture that you hold on to. So I send this poem to you as a reminder. If you get stuck somewhere this holiday season, look around, take off your i-pod and maybe you'll have your own moment in limbo that feels surreal and thankfully a gift from the warm waiting room. Happy Holidays. I hope all of your travels end up in a field or as least may it feel like it. Enjoy.
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<br /><span style="font-style: italic;">Stop Request</span>
<br /> <meta name="Title" content=""> <meta name="Keywords" content=""> <meta equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"> <meta name="ProgId" content="Word.Document"> <meta name="Generator" content="Microsoft Word 2008"> <meta name="Originator" content="Microsoft Word 2008"> <link rel="File-List" href="file://localhost/Users/gregseitz/Library/Caches/TemporaryItems/msoclip/0clip_filelist.xml"> <!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <o:documentproperties> <o:template>Normal.dotm</o:Template> <o:revision>0</o:Revision> <o:totaltime>0</o:TotalTime> <o:pages>1</o:Pages> <o:words>102</o:Words> <o:characters>583</o:Characters> <o:company>Hungry Beaver Timber Contracting</o:Company> <o:lines>4</o:Lines> <o:paragraphs>1</o:Paragraphs> <o:characterswithspaces>715</o:CharactersWithSpaces> <o:version>12.0</o:Version> </o:DocumentProperties> <o:officedocumentsettings> <o:allowpng/> </o:OfficeDocumentSettings> </xml><![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:worddocument> <w:zoom>0</w:Zoom> <w:trackmoves>false</w:TrackMoves> <w:trackformatting/> <w:punctuationkerning/> <w:drawinggridhorizontalspacing>18 pt</w:DrawingGridHorizontalSpacing> <w:drawinggridverticalspacing>18 pt</w:DrawingGridVerticalSpacing> <w:displayhorizontaldrawinggridevery>0</w:DisplayHorizontalDrawingGridEvery> <w:displayverticaldrawinggridevery>0</w:DisplayVerticalDrawingGridEvery> <w:validateagainstschemas/> <w:saveifxmlinvalid>false</w:SaveIfXMLInvalid> <w:ignoremixedcontent>false</w:IgnoreMixedContent> <w:alwaysshowplaceholdertext>false</w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText> <w:compatibility> <w:breakwrappedtables/> <w:dontgrowautofit/> <w:dontautofitconstrainedtables/> <w:dontvertalignintxbx/> </w:Compatibility> </w:WordDocument> </xml><![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:latentstyles deflockedstate="false" latentstylecount="276"> </w:LatentStyles> </xml><![endif]--> <style> <!-- /* Font Definitions */ @font-face {font-family:Garamond; panose-1:2 2 4 4 3 3 1 1 8 3; mso-font-charset:0; mso-generic-font-family:auto; mso-font-pitch:variable; mso-font-signature:3 0 0 0 1 0;} @font-face {font-family:"儷黑 Pro"; mso-font-charset:81; mso-generic-font-family:auto; mso-font-pitch:variable; mso-font-signature:1 0 16778248 0 1048576 0;} /* Style Definitions */ p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal {mso-style-parent:""; margin:0in; margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:12.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman";} @page Section1 {size:8.5in 11.0in; margin:1.0in 1.25in 1.0in 1.25in; mso-header-margin:.5in; mso-footer-margin:.5in; mso-paper-source:0;} div.Section1 {page:Section1;} --> </style> <!--[if gte mso 10]> <style> /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:10.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman";} </style> <![endif]--> <!--StartFragment--> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.25in;"><span style="font-family: Garamond;">
<br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.25in;"><span style="font-family: Garamond;">You wouldn’t mistake your mother<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.25in;"><span style="font-family: Garamond;">for a woman who walks through glass<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.25in;"><span style="font-family: Garamond;">and sits beside your book. <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.25in;"><span style="font-family: Garamond;">So you pass the time and frame <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.25in;"><span style="font-family: Garamond;">the woman’s face, the one who<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.25in;"><span style="font-family: Garamond;">isn’t your mother. She’s like a Budapest tram<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.25in;"><span style="font-family: Garamond;">ticket you carry in your wallet <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.25in;"><span style="font-family: Garamond;">next to the taste of oranges <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.25in;"><span style="font-family: Garamond;">shared with a boy whose name <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.25in;"><span style="font-family: Garamond;">you don’t remember. You watch her hands brush <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.25in;"><span style="font-family: Garamond;">a bit of hair away from her brow while she opens <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.25in;"><span style="font-family: Garamond;">a can of beer. Not cheap beer either <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.25in;"><span style="font-family: Garamond;">and rinses her teeth. The warm yeast fills <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.25in;"><span style="font-family: Garamond;">the room like the smell of sex on cotton. She spits <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.25in;"><span style="font-family: Garamond;">on the floor. In that moment you love her <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.25in;"><span style="font-family: Garamond;">more than your mother, who would never spit. <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.25in;"><span style="font-family: Garamond;">When you leave the room, she shouts<span style=""> </span><o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.25in;"><i style=""><span style="font-family: Garamond;">Happy New Year</span></i><span style="font-family: Garamond;"> in German. And you believe her. <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.25in;"><span style="font-family: Garamond;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <!--EndFragment-->
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<br />Emily Walter Seitzhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12106131542493719969noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8656346629807276703.post-54869574819627017142009-12-01T10:00:00.001-08:002009-12-09T08:16:45.962-08:00SkiJøring for Sissies<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEimrAv-gqCYsq8kgtAg67WLOpsrCQtEBdXtDNFzEI79FX1qVhHqBuyKmG01eDI6uTcB0I6_RvhaG6QVQX29Gn3uSGQAxD_SQv8cg3e-VLAa4mG0Ra1_H_lAZvpJKf8dg-fZjDIaov-mWdWA/s1600-h/IMG_0048.JPG"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEimrAv-gqCYsq8kgtAg67WLOpsrCQtEBdXtDNFzEI79FX1qVhHqBuyKmG01eDI6uTcB0I6_RvhaG6QVQX29Gn3uSGQAxD_SQv8cg3e-VLAa4mG0Ra1_H_lAZvpJKf8dg-fZjDIaov-mWdWA/s320/IMG_0048.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5412896970574312482" border="0" /></a><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg1VY80VbJG6Yu7gdqmSttbmFOADAuOeiNODRfDw-P2nGX_RDkeJe2gsN9cQdS39T9t81g8J5QZQGW1opHHWF5a2q-M9lHM8gDbV-WP_EMKSt9cWpctNxu5hivP1jL74-OGOgxMVFOkulF9/s1600-h/IMG_0063.JPG"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg1VY80VbJG6Yu7gdqmSttbmFOADAuOeiNODRfDw-P2nGX_RDkeJe2gsN9cQdS39T9t81g8J5QZQGW1opHHWF5a2q-M9lHM8gDbV-WP_EMKSt9cWpctNxu5hivP1jL74-OGOgxMVFOkulF9/s320/IMG_0063.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5412239847294289202" border="0" /></a><br />I've never felt bad about using the word sissy. Sure, I've been known to enforce word restrictions in class, but sissy has never been one of them. Perhaps it says more about me and my desire to be willing to jump into any physical test or at least try--even if it is badminton. I cannot say I was born an athlete, nor would I say I was born a poet, but it's surprising how little talent you need to actually feel good about just giving something a try--be it writing or flailing your body. Even if it is as odd as being pulled by a small dog in arctic temperatures around a snow-filled golf course, attempting a sport directly translated from Norwegian to mean "ski driving," Skijøring, I must admit, is very inspiring. Plus, you get to use such strange letters as the sliced o to make you feel better about your linguistic skills if you aren't that sporty.<br /><br />And in the history of poetry, you rarely hear about sporty poets climbing mountains or circumnavigating anything but their own brains in search of themselves. The Hemingways of this world seem suited to fiction, riding out their days in Western backdrops along the backs of horses or venturing off for years on end whale hunting, sailing, pirating with nothing but bags of wind and the hope to return to stable shores and typewriters. Their romance with taming nature resembles the task of trying to tell a good story--a long affair of battling odds and time. Included above is my own (failed) attempt to look like I know what I am doing with a gun. I know, I will stick to a pencil.<br /><br />But poets? We are an odd bunch. We usually work erratically spending long hours of the day or night alone, then sleep it off and go to our jobs that might not resemble anything poetic in hopes that we'll feel like writing again. If we were to be put in some sort of police line-up, a poet might be hard to identify. Minus the tendency towards tweed, poets are really hard to sum up physically. It's not like some genetic disposition like basketball or swimming where the body might guide the path. No, poetry doesn't work like that. I cannot recall hearing someone examine a baby's hands or feet and claiming their destiny, "My that furrowed brow will make him a fine thinker, maybe he'll be a writer?"<br /><br />Nor is it as mysterious or mythical as some might try to persuade. Actually, if anything being a poet is like being a farmer. Seriously. There needs to be a whole lot of faith in something as temperamental as the weather and a stubborn and sometimes overly prideful belief in your efforts amounting into something, if anything at all. Yet in the case of poets, not farmers, the faith lies in something even more elusive than rain, ( I shyly pause before saying this to not sound too trite), you have to have faith in inspiration and your own capabilities to find it--even in the dark. I like when asked if Faulkner wrote everyday he said, "I only write when I'm inspired, and frankly, I get inspired everyday." Sure, he wrote fiction, but some of the most poetic fiction, so I think it works.<br /><br />But what works the most for inspiration, isn't waiting for it to come or chasing it across lands and sea, I like to use the analogy of skijoring. Skijoring is a sport based upon a simple principle. You have a harness, the dog has a harness and both of your harnesses are connected and if you move fast enough on your skis and the dog moves fast enough pulling you, you'll find an odd rhythm. Sure, you have sort of forced this rhythm, but it feels somewhat liberating and endless all at the same time. <br /><br />Now, unlike my husband who holds a world cup in Skijoring, I recently tried it for the first time. I must admit I was oddly displacing my memory of learning to water ski with the idea of skate skiing behind a dog that resembles the size and appearance of a juvenile seal. I had these visions of being pulled into snow banks and being drowned in cold temperatures and arctic winds. Thankfully, I was wrong. I was gracefully given a small female dog, named Mabel, and we were harnessed up and after thorough instruction such as, "Just keep skating. If you fall, the dog will stop." I shyly called, "okay Mabel, lets....um..go?" And that's all it took. Suddenly, this seal leaped and we took off with a short tug and oddly enough some sort of rhythm began.<br /><br />As I've stated previously, I really cannot claim any physical talent in sports, but I can occasionally keep rhythm and in the bitter cold and still skies of Fairbanks, Alaska little Mabel and myself started moving, together. Yes, I did fall. And yes, Mabel did stop. But we got up and kept going, kept trying to tap into that feeling of some closeness to breath, beat and bray of our hearts pounding under all those layers, skating away from all that disbelief. I wanted to keep doing laps around that golf course or really I felt inspired despite all the doubt and darkness.<br /><br />And that's what poetry does or tries to do at its best. It can take the simplest of situations and turn them into moments you keep as coveted memories, to tap into, to get close enough to feeling your heart and head aren't at odds, but simply a harness connecting them, moving together in hopes your efforts might just move or inspire. But the real task? It isn't just feeling this, it's trying to put this rhythm into words in the hope you can do it well enough to also inspire someone else. I hope I am not too much of a sissy to keep trying myself.<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;"></span>Emily Walter Seitzhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12106131542493719969noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8656346629807276703.post-42408036528758375182009-11-19T07:30:00.000-08:002009-11-24T03:49:08.428-08:00The Souffle in Each of Us<span style="font-family:georgia;">It has been far too long. Far too long since I've written and I bet far too long since you've made a souffle. Now I am sure you can come up with a variety of reasons why you haven't made a souffle in awhile or if ever just as I have a variety of reasons why I haven't written. It doesn't matter. Now, you are here and I am here and so, let's be thankful for being present. But really, let's really be grateful for butter and eggs. Regardless of what you find to bind these two sentient creatures, such as chocolate or cheese, butter and eggs do their modest magic to create the true showmanship of any souffle.<br /><br />Let's get it straight. Souffles are rather existential creatures. Seriously, they demand a lot of attention to make and they aren't intended as a dish to sit alone in the fridge as leftovers. You make souffles to be eaten right away. Despite their French origin, I tend to think of souffles as being more Italian in personality especially in their completion as if they come out of the oven all puffed up and wanting to grab the recognition of everyone in the room. Saying, "Look at me, look at me, look at me. Tell me how wonderful I already know I am." But let us not forget their humble beginnings, especially this souffle that I send to you. It is far more pilgrim than pomp.<br /><br />This souffle hails from perhaps the most solemn and least showcased vegetable, the carrot. Please don't expect this souffle to puff itself like Napoleon on a white horse nor will this be a dish that you might want to make for some hot date. This is Middlewest where we honor the quiet and stable creatures of this world. Here in Middlewest, the carrot is king. Yup, this carrot souffle comes off as not even the supporting side dish on Thanksgiving, more like the gaffer, the electronics guy who makes all the others shine, letting even the one hit wonder brussel sprout roasted in balsamic accompanied with dried cherries take a moment to be the Turkey's coveted sidekick. This carrot souffle is more of a mediation than a simple side. It's more of a dish to make while you are married than dating.<br /><br />But for me, this carrot souffle symbolizes Thanksgiving in tastes and cultural texture (if that could be a term) For now, just roll with it. Thanksgiving is a time to be gracious, slow and mindful. To feel comforted in all that you presently have and have achieved. For years, my father would place five kernels of corn on each of our bare plates as a reminder that actually after the first Thanksgiving in 1621 was a period of great hardship and starvation. The five kernels symbolize how for days some Pilgrims were rationed just five kernels of corn, like some poorly dealt hand of even worse luck, to survive a whole days work of toiling on frozen soil and cold pews to pray. Don't get me wrong, my dad wasn't trying to make the day a real downer as much as a time to remember how little you can live on and still be grateful.<br /><br />Thanksgiving is a such a modest holiday, a time to just eat and perhaps nap and read a book and slowly let the warmth of the room allow you to slip into memory or mediation. Perhaps one of my favorite Thanksgivings took place in a kitchen the size of a shoe box, seriously, I am sure most of you have larger closets than this kitchen. I was teaching in Poland, living with a British vegetarian and for some odd reason I wanted to bake a Thanksgiving meal in my Russian oven that sometimes worked.<br /><br />What did work that year was the carrot souffle filling our apartment with the foreign smell of America, a whiff of what I wanted to try to show my roommate, that America had a quiet side, a humble beginning of sorts and that once a year our culture actually remembered and rejoiced. As if our own pomp could be dulled at least for one day in honor of the tastes of rosemary, turkey, cranberries, cinnamon, onions and juniper berries. Somehow these smells communicated more than my stories or family photos of what I wanted to try and share or show about being American.<br /><br />I recall my roommate, Anna, walking into the kitchen confused yet drawn by the smells I had somehow managed to conjure up from bartering at markets. That night despite the fact that Anna hadn't eaten meat in over three years she ate her entire plate clean. I had a few Poles over and listened to music on our cassette player and tried to explain national holidays to each other, but mostly we talked about food.<br /><br />How Anna would only needed to smell the faintest hint of an orange to be in her nona's (who lived outside of Rome) garden, Tomek said if he smelled warm strawberries in butter, he knew his mother was filled with spring and happiness, while she made berry pierogies. Each of us had some flavor that wasn't just a national dish or icon rather some memory of humility and grace. And food is like that, a little bit of attention and care and you can recreate something to fill a distant room far from your home, your family, your culture to share something as simple as carrots. Without translation.<br /><br />Happy Thanksgiving. Enjoy.<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">Carrot Souffle<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;"></span></span>2 cups carrots, peeled & diced<br />1 stick of butter<br />1/2 cup sugar ( I don't add sugar b/c the carrots are sweet enough)<br />3 eggs<br />1/4 teaspoon cinnamon<br />1 tablespoon flour<br />1 teaspoon baking powder<br />1 teaspoon salt<br />1 cup milk<br /><br />1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees.<br />2. Cook carrots in boiling water. Drain carrots and let cool for about five minutes.<br />3. Place carrots in blender and add butter, sugar, cinnamon, salt and eggs.</span><div><span style="font-family:georgia;">4. Add flour, baking powder and milk. Blend again.</span></div><div><span style="font-family:georgia;">5. Bake for 45 minutes or until fork ready, like a cake. Remember this won't puff.</span></div><div><span style="font-family:georgia;">6. Share and enjoy.<br /><span style="font-style: italic;"><span style="font-style: italic;"></span><br /></span><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /></span></div>Emily Walter Seitzhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12106131542493719969noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8656346629807276703.post-84481280429477829082009-10-13T10:07:00.000-07:002009-10-26T08:57:28.020-07:00A Jar of GarlicThis coming week marks a two year anniversary with moving to Missoula. The story of how and even why I moved here is either too long or too simple to tell. Frankly, I can sum it up in just one word: hope. But I must clarify. I cannot say I moved West with the idealized hope of finding gold, wealth or even the antiquated idea of homesteading. Nor did I have the kind of simple hope in greeting cards such as, "Hope you are feeling better" with a picture of a fluffy cat wearing a beret. I would like to think I didn't move with a suitcase full of naive intent thinking life is always better somewhere else. Nor would I say I was searching for a different version of hope that was once lodged in a jar, Pandora's Jar, and circled out along with the other abstracts such as destruction and grief. The darker side of hope was surely not my intention either. The hope that I was chasing was simple, a hope to start again in my mid-thirties in a town I liked the sound of. Simply, Missoula has a high concentration of both writers and mountains and all I wanted to do or hoped to do was write a lot and ski a lot. <div><br /></div><div>For most people, hope seems to fall to the positive side if life, offering one last chance in a mired of desperate feelings or a state of chancelessness. It can be that undeniable glimpse or fraction of light that can surprise even the darkest of hours--when even stars betray you and seem like just some other light for someone else to wish on. Yet hope strikes us when we least expect it and when we fundamentally need it the most. Now, I am not going to take this into a metaphysical realm, not completely, nor will I start bringing in religion either, but the complexity of hope fascinates me. </div><div><br /></div><div>Perhaps my first sense of the difficulty with hope came from one of my ninth grade students, Maggie MacAlpine. Maggie spoke with a slight lisp and carried herself with an awkward stance of confidence. She always caught every error I made on any of her Greek Mythology quizzes and had the maturity of a thirty year old trapped in a young and awkward preteen body. During one of our readings of Epimetheus, the one who ignored the warnings not to take any gifts from Zeus, blindly took the gift of a woman who also came with a rather questionable jar. Now, I have to pause here to say how difficult it is to <i>really </i>teach Greek Mythology to ninth graders without having to go into polygamy, sodomy, rape or try to explain wife swapping? Basically with Greek Mythology you are teaching unedited sex education. Seriously, try to teach anything about Zeus PG-13. </div><div><br /></div><div>Luckily I was teaching in Rome where billboards are unrated and mythology still makes sense in understanding Italian laws of attraction. There might not be a Zeus, but there are labels like Prada, Gucci and Dolce and Gabbana or controlling Italian nonas and mamas that wield some power over the city's men. So mythology was more like teaching sociology and Maggie MacAlpine was a quick study. After we had read how Epimetheus blindly doted over his mail ordered bride (via Zeus the all knowing post master), Epimetheus was more than smitten and basically let Pandora do anything, such as release all the evils of the world from her jar. So watching the new world that he and his brother, Prometheus, had so carefully made fall apart with the simple opening of a jar, Epimetheus finally realized the meaning of his name, "after thought." Concluding the fact that he was an idiot. </div><div><br /></div><div>It was tempting at times to say, "okay kids, so what did we <i>really</i> learn from this myth?" Hoping to hear something along the lines of "Well, Ms. Walter, this myth clearly shows the problem with power dynamics between men and women and how you want to be sure not to be controlled by another person's motives especially if you are persuaded by superficial aspects like beauty and charm." This was a challenge. They were fourteen. They didn't even really like the opposite sex yet. Luckily though, I was in Italy and these were budding clones of fashion and sexual impression. I'd glance in the teacher's edition for the "right" answer and find something like, "Epi means after and this story clearly illustrates the power of afterthought or hindsight." <i>What? This is so dumb, these kids read 10 pages for this answer, </i>I thought to myself. What good would this answer really do for these kids in life? Do I tell something like, "Basically kids, you can tell yourself that your heart was broken and that you were mislead by this person whom you trusted for basically, linguistic reasons. Be sure to know the Greek root of your name and remember kids, It's called hindsight." Or maybe I could say, "Basically kids, never trust people with jars." No, they needed something more and Maggie MacAlpine was going to help us.</div><div><br /></div><div>Maggie raised her hand and said, "Mthss Walther, thes is odd. If Pandthora released all the evilths in the world, then why was hope in there? I thought hopthe was good?" I paused. Looked out the window and smiled. I didn't want to interject or release my own dark side for these desk-seated, freshly-washed pink cheeked fourteen year olds. So I asked, "What do you think of Maggie's question, is hope a positive or negative feeling?" Looking around at blank and nervous faces, I said, "Or is it both?" "Have you ever felt "tricked" by hope?"</div><div><br /></div><div>And I must say, what followed will go down in my mental history as some of the most fascinating discussions of metaphysical dilemmas posed. Yes by 14 year olds. Seriously these kids understood dilemmas and the temptation of hope that can blind them. Sure, they referenced buying video games they thought were going to be cool and ended up being lame, but at least they started to understand the importance of cause and effect of their actions brought on by the slippery duality and temptation of hope. No, I wasn't trying to form small jaded skeptics in my classroom. Rather, I wanted them to think through the repercussions of their actions especially if they were using naive or shallow reasonings. What were the results they were creating by their actions? Basically, I wanted them to learn accountability. I wanted them to think through what they were being tempted by and if they were willing to accept the possible results. Or so I hoped. </div><div><br /></div><div>And so, even out of the classroom, hope finds me yet again today in this place that I feel grateful to not have been lead by shallow or simple reasons. This place is Missoula, but more importantly or metaphysically speaking this place is my heart for while I was driving into the darkness over mountain passes and along rivers lit by moon and October stars, I found myself falling into a city where I would also fall in love. Luckily, I wasn't led by own blindness brought on by superficial reasonings nor by shallow intentions. Not this time. Happily, I can say in these two years of living here, I've had to deal with both the darker and lighter side of hope and thankfully I've had to learn and keep learning my own answer I finely gave to my class in regards to Pandora's box: Each of us posses the power to choose how we want our gifts to be used, for positive and creative means or for negative and destructive results. We might not choose correctly all the time, but remember we aren't the gods and that makes us lucky: We get to choose which hope we want to live. </div><div><br /></div><div><i>Cold Storage</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div>Most days are either beef or wildflowers,</div><div>brief moments of sustenance or sun</div><div>filling the gardens of my mind with nothing</div><div>but garlic, whole heads posing</div><div>as papery fists that never bloom or hit</div><div>the surface without the hint taste</div><div>of swollen rain and tart onions. Even </div><div>when neglected, my heart, the bulb</div><div>of my body never rots, no matter</div><div>how hard I try. Forget about farmers'</div><div>almanacs, French techniques or thinking</div><div>the sky of soil pearls just you a private moon.</div><div>Your heart, bitter onion of your being, roots</div><div>in the basement of your neglect. Your savored weed.</div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div>Emily Walter Seitzhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12106131542493719969noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8656346629807276703.post-24888120813938589412009-10-08T06:46:00.000-07:002009-10-14T07:44:20.847-07:00The Loyalty of RecipesSo you're at a pot luck and you notice the chard and kale torte you bring seems to be one of those dishes that could so easily arrive and act happy as just the supporting side dish, passively sitting by the louder Mexican or Italian dishes. But it's not. People find themselves coming back and less publicly polite with their second time around portions. You notice the first timers took gracious sizes perhaps apprehensive of limp greens blanketed in goat cheese. The second and some third timers cannot help themselves, both in the amount and in their compliments. Someone finally turns to ask you, "Did you make this?" <div><br /></div><div>This brings up one of my favorite moments in cooking, no, not the ego in saying, "why yes, I did actually make that fontina and goat cheese torte you seem to be stuffing in your face," feeling as if you won some ribbon for best hot dish. No, I am not that Midwestern, but hopefully Midwesternly modest. Rather, I enjoy continuing the statement with, "It's my mother's recipe, do you want it, I'd be happy to e-mail it to you." And so the physics of loyalty in cooking lives on. The sharing of recipes that were once written out on small note cards with stenciled wagon wheels or creeping lilies of the valley as a header and most likely written in an archaic and illegible handwriting that included the line: Recipe from: <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'trebuchet ms';"><i>Ester or Judy. </i></span></div><div><br /></div><div>The other favorite part of this interaction is how giving credit to someone else who most likely lives far away offers some validation or even a whiff of lineage and secrecy to the most basic chocolate chip cookie. But really the question is, how long must you claim your prized peanut brittle as laying honors to someone else? Until just when does it become <i>yours</i>? When do you have to stop claiming a dish as being inherited by your aunt in Houston, your mother in Michigan or your grandma, who bless her soul has passed on long before you wield her sweet Christmas buns each December. When are they really <i>your</i> sweet buns? When does the loyalty of invention seem to rest on your laurals?</div><div><br /></div><div>This question of loyalty recently came to head when I was given what seemed at first as a just a bag of home made caramel corn. I must admit I do not have a compulsive sweet tooth that I need to keep in check, but what I was most taken by with this bag of salty sweet was how perfectly each kernel was coated. I examined the bag, put it up into the light and gently turned each piece to see any variation or trace of some blemished or burnt marks. But none were found. These observations occurred all before I had even opened the bag. And when I did, seriously, this could be claimed as Pandora's treat. I gently untied the ribbon and to find at first just a faint hint of sugar, enough as if to say, "just eat one, a sample per say." I ate one. And another. And as if I had been possessed but some sugar sultan, I couldn't stop. It was embarrassing. I was at work. And I was stuffing my face and probably making a lot of noise in the process. Soon I was not looking at each kernel as much as how much I could try to hold in my palm and stuff in my face without looking like I was a refugee displaced at a boulangerie. </div><div><br /></div><div>As I noticed half of the bag was emptied in less than ten minutes, I turned to see if some whiff of cold air had come into the room and if I was going to be visited by something or someone who would demand I make some sort of life decision like keep eating the caramel corn or give up my first imaginary born child. It was at this point, I knew I had to do two things. One, share the rest of the "treat" with someone else and two, find out how to make it. Obviously, the first task was easy to do, but finding out the recipe was a bit more a challenge. The caramel corn was made by my boss, Cheryl. Now, I work at a non-profit natural health food store and frankly my boss is so modest that I am not sure she would even like to be called "my boss." She was once claimed (jokingly of course) as being "the ceasar of the grocery store", but that seems a bit totalitarian. I like to think of where I work as being a mini Sweden. Here, in our Sweden people are treated equally and fairly, most of the higher positions are run by women and even the furniture in the deli is a higher quality but similar Ikea design. My boss is a tall and willowed blond, who is fair and humane, so she's more like a prime minister if Sweden or The Good Food store were to have one. </div><div><br /></div><div>I peered in Cheryl's office to see if she was busy and if I could get her recipe. Little did I know, that this caramel corn was usually made for the holidays and no, there was no amount of begging or flattering that was going to give me the recipe. Now you need to understand that I didn't leave the room and go back to scheduling cooking classes and hope whom I had shared the caramel corn with had more restraint than myself and might have left a few kernels. I stayed in Cheryl's office because I was incredibly curious about this recipe's history and more importantly, Cheryl's loyalty and her calm refusal to give me or anyone for that matter the recipe. Ever.<br /><br />Cheryl told me her sister, Marsha, brought this recipe to her house one Christmas to make together as a sisterly gesture. For years after, Cheryl continued to make the caramel corn and claimed the fame and fabulousness to "Marsha in Helena". As the compliments came, Cheryl started to wonder, when is this Cheryl's caramel corn? Cheryl decided the logical step was to ask Marsha the time frame of recipe acknowledgment. The answer, simply Marsha stated, was three years. So as I sat in Cheryl's office still a bit rushed from sugar and curiosity, Cheryl in her sturdy and deliberate tone said, "Emily, people have even threatened to break into my house when they know I am not home to try and steal the recipe." I just nodded and said "whoa, that's serious." Yet in my mind, I could see someone dressed in black, searching through a drawer of recipes and a furrowed brow under a black hat change with intense relief in finally finding a fix to what may seem on the surface as just caramel corn. But really, it's caramel crack.<br /></div><div><br /></div><div>And so, you may have guessed it, I won't be including Cheryl of Missoula's caramel corn, but maybe for some of you the loyalty of recipes only needing three years will free you this coming holiday season. No longer will you feel entangled with explanations or the obligatory need to write long titles on your jars of coveted homemade pear butter first made by your Aunt Rita. Remember, if it has been longer than three years you can take claim, sit with pride, watch how that sweet potato and cumin side dish is <span style="font-style: italic;">yours</span> and answer, "why yes, I did make this. Would you like <i>my</i> recipe?"</div><div><br /></div><div>Today I give you a recipe that I have been working on for some time and I think I may be close to wanting to lay claim as mine. I am on the pursuit of crafting a tangy, but home-style mac and cheese and I think I found the combination. Of course, I first adapted it from Bon Appetit, but was mostly inspired by memories of eating something similar back in Portland, Oregon at <span style="font-style: italic;">Montage</span>. I tell myself, I only have three years before I can change the title to Aunt Amelia's mac n cheese. Until then, I will lay claim to someone else, keep cooking and remain modest with this hot dish. Enjoy.</div><div><br /></div><div><i>Northern Italian Macaroni and Cheese</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div>6 tablespoons butter, divided</div><div>1 cup onions, chopped</div><div>3 garlic cloves, minced</div><div>1/4 unbleached all purpose flour</div><div>3 cups whole milk</div><div>2 cups Fontal, finely grated ( Fontal is like an elegant Monterey Jack as my good friend Cicelia says) </div><div>2 cups goat cheese, crumbled</div><div>2 cups Parmesan, grated</div><div>1/2 teaspoon cayenne pepper</div><div>1/4 teaspoon ground nutmeg</div><div>1 1/2 pounds Rainbow Chard</div><div>12 ounces macaroni</div><div>1 cup panko breadcrumbs</div><div><br /></div><div>1. Melt three tablespoons butter in a large pot over medium heat. </div><div>2. Add onions and saute until translucent, about five minutes. </div><div>3. Stir in garlic, then flour and stir constantly for one minute.</div><div>4. Gradually whisk in milk. Cook whisking occasionally, until mixture begins to boil, about five minutes.</div><div>5. Add cheeses and stir until cheese melt, about two minutes. </div><div>6. Stir in cayenne and nutmeg. Season with salt and pepper.</div><div>7. Preheat oven to 350 degrees and butter a 13x9x2 inch baking dish.</div><div>8. Cook chard in large pot of boiling salted water until tender, about one minute.</div><div>9. Remove chard with slotted spoon and place in a colander and let chard cool.</div><div>10. Reserve pot with water and let it come to a boil and add macaroni.</div><div>11. Meanwhile squeeze water from chard and finely chop.</div><div>12. Cook macaroni until al dente, drain and stir macaroni in to warm cheese sauce.</div><div>13. Place half of macaroni in dish, smooth and layer chard.</div><div>14. Top with rest of macaroni and spread evenly.</div><div>15. Melt three tablespoons of butter in a sauce pan and then drizzle over panko and mix well.</div><div>16. Spread breadcrumbs on top of macaroni and bake for 40 minutes. </div><div>17. Let stand for ten minutes and serve. </div><div><br /></div><div>Yields: I would say at least six hunger people who can take a lot of cheese </div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div></div>Emily Walter Seitzhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12106131542493719969noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8656346629807276703.post-62194888439953433862009-10-06T07:58:00.000-07:002009-10-06T09:35:06.072-07:00The Autumn GardenCool mornings with frost and afternoons with slow sun have always meant one thing for me: sweater weather. Contrary to poetical history, autumn is not a season of melancholy for me. Quite the opposite for I find myself more awake and more capable of sitting at my desk for longer periods of time. Maybe I don't feel sadden by this season for the mere fact that unlike during the era of Yeats and Rilke, I have central heating and can throw a sweater on with the faintest hint of a chill and get to writing. Writing seems to make more sense this time of year for when the sun is shinning and warming the rivers, I feel guilty taping out my fingers to syllables in my head instead of swimming and putting my face to the sun.<div><br /></div><div>Plus, I think it is too expected to be melancholy during the fall. If you only see the shades of trees rising like some phoenix to only fall in order to die, then perhaps your life may feel like you are walking in some battle field, some lone survivor on a sidewalk crowned by maple and oak. Yet this seems rather Victorian and indulgent. What if the leaves were reminding us more to merely let go? What if sugar maples find pride in their dark red October hues and wait until winds lets them move on, or leave (no pun intended). </div><div><br /></div><div>Growing up surrounded by birch and maple forests, I had certain favorite fall trees. Trees that during the spring and summer seemed to just meld themselves into the mass of woods, but once autumn came the slow sense of change reminded me to take notice of each individual tree, as if each species offers a slightly different shade to the whole horizon. I like to watch time unfold itself in colors. As if slow moving waves reach their crest and then fall into sand, each tree peaks and then fades into just bare bark and limbs. Winter ready. </div><div><br /></div><div>I haven't been to a more autumnal place than Poland. It wasn't the contrasts of color as much as it was the shades of gold that seemed to rise out of all the fields and cobblestone city gardens. Gold against brick or warn out grey blocked houses, gold in forests outlining smoke choked cities, gold in a single tree outside my class room window. And at night, the shades of rich yellow under lights illuminated streets and lightened shadows. It was a time of such light in what has been to easily seen as such a grey country. </div><div><br /></div><div>The golden autumn of Poland wasn't just a time for trees, but also lovers. I recall public gardens being a common meeting place for dates. Some man wearing what sadly seemed like his dead uncle's suit with a long stemmed rose, would pace and run his thumbs under each fingers' nail, walking off nerves and anticipation. You see, when you live at your house (which often consisted of three rooms including the bathroom) with your entire family; physical space is an issue. So public gardens were open spaces waiting to be filled with couples entangled on park benches. PDA or public displays of affection in this context probably felt more private than stealing kisses over the kitchen table with your grandmother staring at you over a plate of boiled potatoes. </div><div><br /></div><div>And so this poem I include today may not have autumn shades, but the autumnal flavor of rising from some fall. My favorite kind of love poem. Enjoy the leaves, the small reminders of learning to let go, and to embrace the season of sweater love. </div><div><br /></div><div><i>In the Public Garden</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div>Every gym class, Stevie Flowers pissed </div><div>his corduroys. He hated dodge ball,</div><div>stood in the corner or hid </div><div>from the bigger boys who broke</div><div>anything or anyone small.</div><div><br /></div><div>He read <i>Make Way For Ducklings</i></div><div>sat on his knees with Buddha's</div><div>slow smile. I knew even then</div><div>he would be the one who loved me.</div><div><br /></div><div>I still remember the metallic</div><div>taste of the bat that summer</div><div>we played softball. He cupped my face</div><div>while my nose bled, told me later</div><div>he'd tape my glasses.</div><div><br /></div><div>But later it was others who stood</div><div>outside my window, holding</div><div>a book of Yeats, fly open</div><div>with a half-drunk grin.</div><div>It's always a simple request</div><div>at first.</div><div><br /></div><div>In the Boston Commons, I pause</div><div>at the ducklings in bronze, still</div><div>like the boy who read to me.</div><div>Somewhere there's a man</div><div>I'd never think to run from.</div><div><br /></div>Emily Walter Seitzhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12106131542493719969noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8656346629807276703.post-81591512256880676232009-09-15T07:25:00.000-07:002009-09-21T08:51:24.862-07:00Poet as WaterRecently, I saw a trailer for a film about John Keats' life. Or perhaps I should say, about his love life, which is much more film worthy than an hour and a half of someone coughing and sitting in a dank room in Rome trying to write poems. The irony of Keats being sent to the eternal city was that he arrived in January when all was wet with river and even the cobblestone streets under sun held ice all day long. I cannot tell you the cold I felt while living through two winters there and I certainly figured out how to say "bone cold" in Italian and purchased a coat that looked more like a sleeping bag with a fur collar to wear even in my apartment at night.<div><br /></div><div>While I was teaching twelfth grade British English at the American School in Rome, I took a group of students to the Keats' House which overlooks the Spanish steps. We were taken on a tour by some overly-British Keats scholar who seemed to know the scent of the young poet's breath. While this scholar brought out artifacts and books, I couldn't help but notice how bored my students seemed. It's hard to convince a group of Italians that some meek man of 24 could contend with the likes of Virgil or Dante. They didn't even seem fazed by the fact that Keats was sent by his doctor to go to a Mediterranean climate, a respite from all the grey of England, only to find himself more ill-suited than ever while his more popular poet friends were off traveling in Greece and being Lord of something. Nope. Not even drama and death seemed to pique their interest. Not yet.</div><div><br /></div><div>All the students acted sluggish and foot-heavy until we were lead into Keats' bedroom and shone his death mask. The students crowed the plaster and moved in closer. Finally a bit of curiosity filled the room while our tour guide's voice became a soft whisper. Keats had both a "life mask" and "death mask" and they were side by side each other under glass. Questions arose and suddenly I didn't feel like the outing was a complete loss. I stood in the back of the room, which is what you do as a teacher: you monitor and ask questions during the dull silences, feigning interest for everyone. But thankfully, everyone was engaged and I was silent. Trying to see over the heads of my students I couldn't identify which mask was which. I waited until everyone had left so I could get a closer look. No wrinkles, no lines, just lips and eyelids. Closed.</div><div><br /></div><div>I'm not sure what I was expecting to see. As if images of death would be one of grief or anguish, but under the dusted glass of the case were two small faces of calm. As if they were just napping side by side; each other waiting for all the visitors and tour guide to leave them alone so they could wake up, look out onto the city and watch all the fashionable and beautiful people below.</div><div><br /></div><div>We toured more of Keats' spots that day, including a cafe he used to frequent, and ended at his grave. We had another tour guide through the Protestant Cemetery and found Keats' tombstone with the inscription, "Here lies One Whose Name was writ in Water." It was the most decorated grave with fresh flowers and my students just kicked gravel around with their shoes and pulled out their cellphones from their pockets to check the time and for texts. I admonished one of my students, "Orlando, please get off your cellphone. It's a cemetery, you'll make all these dead people envious that you can talk and they can't." Maybe I didn't say that exactly, but it was usually humor I used with "disciplining" Orlando.</div><div><br /></div><div>Orlando Miani stood at least six foot three, had a shaved head and large curled wooden earrings in both ears. Orlando was the kind of student that other teachers would say in passing, "Good luck with <i>that one</i>, Ms. Walter" and keep walking away. I had to meet with Orlando's father once. His father spoke of all the "bad things" Orlando had done in the past holding my eye contact as if looking for my compliance, looking like an overgrown child sitting in a student desk. His father appeared and acted more Germanic than Italian and perhaps was why Orlando stood as some Italian giant amongst the shorter Romans in his class. I cannot say Orlando become my favorite students, nor did I make some major breakthrough with him leading to some "after-school special" moment. And despite his father's catalog of horrors, Orlando pleasantly passed my class. But what happened that year which is far more impressive than passing was that Orlando understood Shakespeare.</div><div><br /></div><div>I had decided not to teach Lady Macbeth as their textbooks had suggested that year, but Hamlet instead. My class of mostly twelfth grade boys, who were not in the AP English class and were most likely not going to Harvard or Oxford or even the voc-tech if Italy had one. These students were barely passing anything and not because they were ignorant -hardly the case, they were all just too busy enjoying life already, perhaps too experienced one might say. Such was the case with Orlando. While discussing Hamlet's need to do something and yet his inability to act on it. Orlando started talking. He didn't sit there and talk about his personal life or how Shakespeare made him feel, Orlando was both too cool and too private for that, but what he did say was that Shakespeare created this character of not acting to prod us, the audience to act. "It's as if he's (Shakespeare) giving us hindsight," Orlando just blurted out one day. Perhaps even surprising himself. </div><div><br /></div><div>It's hard as a teacher sometimes not to jump up and down and scream, "yes, you crazy kids, yes you are finally thinking and not just feeling." I recall nodding, looking at Orlando and saying, "interesting point, does anyone want to expand on that idea of audience giving hindsight?" Yet privately, I knew Orlando was finally present in class. Privately, I wanted to tell him that he was right.</div><div><br /></div><div>Later that year, I went to graduation and watched tall and bored Orlando collect his diploma and walk with his long gait off stage. I was getting ready to leave the courtyard after the ceremony and I felt a heavy tap on my shoulder and turned to be shadowed by smiling Orlando. </div><div><br /></div><div>"Meez Walter, you are here. Thank you, really, you know you got me here." </div><div>"Oh, no Orlando, <i>you</i> got yourself here. We are all just players, just players Orlando, even me."</div><div>"Die Meez Walter, really thank you."</div><div>"You're welcome, Orlando" nodding I just didn't know how to even navigate hugging someone so big or so tall so I just smiled and walked away.</div><div><br /></div><div>Had I had hindsight myself, I would have hugged him. I wished I had. Years later, I was informed by another student via a letter that Orlando had died in a car crash in London. He was only 22 and I believe going to art school. </div><div><br /></div><div>I'm sure if you were to ask any of my former students from that twelfth grade class if they remember any lines from, "Ode to a Grecian Urn" or even our outing that fall day to follow Keats life, I'm almost sure they wouldn't. But I doubt any of them have forgotten the masks or if they have forgotten Orlando. I know I haven't. Nor have I ever written a poem about either. It is just too much. There are some things you don't put in poems, some things you let live as they are, without the encumbered task of being weighted by metaphors. For sometimes, we are capable of being and living in uncertainties. Sometimes we don't have hindsight, so we can ignorantly appreciate what we have, today. </div><div><br /></div><div>Enjoy the poem. </div><div><br /></div><div><i>Sweat Pants</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div>Seattle swallows rain for a month </div><div>straight. Gutters fill, water parts in alleys</div><div>where men wrestle with cardboard boxes</div><div>and disappointment. A man waits</div><div>by the bus stop without an umbrella, exposed</div><div>when a few of us hunch under a store front, slickered</div><div>in rain jackets, while this man stand reading</div><div>without a coat, just a grayed Henley and a pair</div><div>of sweat pants. The sweats are blue, flap </div><div>at his calves. His socks hiked up, once white. None of talk</div><div>to one another, sulked in silence.</div><div>The man in sweats turns his paper, reaches</div><div>under his belly to scratch himself. Not a hesitant itch</div><div>or rub. A dig. He reads the <i>Times </i>and I wait</div><div>for something. A slight twitch, a nervous cough, </div><div>or shrug. Instead, for the first time in thirty-six days</div><div>I forget it's raining. I want to forget about everything,</div><div>expect for this man in sandals, who stands back</div><div>when the bus arrives, letting a mother and her child,</div><div>who's dressed like a lady bug, board first.</div><div>The squelch of tires pushes water onto curbs,</div><div>trucks grind back up. The girl turns and waves</div><div>to the man. He tucks his paper and waves back</div><div>with both hands.</div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div>Emily Walter Seitzhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12106131542493719969noreply@blogger.com2