La Chica couldn’t fit all her stuff on the plane when she headed back to college after her semester in Mexico, so we were supposed to pack up a few last items.  And then I recalled her saying that she can’t get “good” chocolate on campus.  So I thought I’d stick some in the mailing tube with the posters.  I had the posters all packed, prepared myself with a plastic zipper-type bag and stopped for the chocolate on the way to the post office. The chocolate bars did not fit in the mailing tube, so I tried to crack them down the middle, but then they didn’t fit in the baggie.  (Yeah, I only brought one with me.)  So I broke the bars up even more, stuffed it all in, threw away the wrappers, and sent it off 2-day delivery.  And didn’t hear all week.  So I asked if she’d opened the tube before leaving it on the heater for the week and her answer still makes me laugh: 

I can’t believe I didn’t call and say thank you!  It was actually way funny – I got the poster roll and was sitting on my bed, and S-A [roommate] was on hers, and I open it and I go “Hmm.  This smells kind of funny…”  And I keep sniffing it.  And S-A is like “Well, what’s it smell like?”  And I sniff again and say “Hm.  Stale chocolate…”  And I’m thinking to myself ”Now, did Mom package this while she was in the cupboard, or what?!”  And S-A goes “Well, is there chocolate in it?”  Which just wasn’t a thought which had crossed my mind.  And so then I turn over the tube and out falls some chocolate.  

I gather it didn’t wreck the posters, and she did enjoy eating it.  So that’s good.  

Jennifer

Michael,

Sorry this is so long in coming. Here is a smattering of the 700 pictures of Hannah & Willie’s travels in Italy. They are in no particular order and she has not had time to comment on them. We need to find the time to sift through them and put them into recognizable albums to share, but I pulled my favorites. They visited Milan, Positano, Rome, Florence and Venice. She loved it so much that she has decided to attend Franklin College in Lugano Switzerland. Please share with the blog.

Jen

I almost forgot what day this is.

We’ve had some conversations about typos on MaineCourse.  My sister, the editor, sent me this YouTube link — The Impotence of Proofreading. 

Jennifer

On another subject: my favorite Astronomy Picture of the Day: but it might only be my favorite because I figured out what the analemma was myself, and I figured out that the moon would be “behind” by about 50 minutes every day myself, and I figured out that there should be, essentially, an analemma of the moon myself, and I’d figured out when (where) the moon is orange all before I ever saw the photo, so it was a nice confirmation of what I had figured out.

Michael

I’m not sure how hard up for blog content you are, and whether you’re still speaking to me so: I got invited to high tea on Saturday at the home of a retired colleague. (She made all the food from scratch except the scones.)  Another retired colleague not only took photos but sent them to me, so I don’t have to figure out anything about downloading and attaching. 

Jennifer

Peeps

Ask and the blogmeister receives.

Michael

Maybe if I send things for the blog you won’t have to do dangerous stupid things to fill space. So, the promised “eggs”. 

The summer I turned 13 (1971) my older sister invited me to join her on the archaeological dig she would be working on. The previous summer the archaeologist she had studied with had an exploratory dig which was small – the people were trustworthy and food had been terrific. My summer, there were about 50 archaeology student volunteers and graduate student leaders and a dozen or so paid day-laborers and me. We slept (not the day-laborers, but everyone else) 4 to a room in just-slapped-up two-room cabins (with no furniture) that would fall apart within 4 years, and ate in a similar, but larger space. It was in the northwestern corner of New Mexico. ( “Salmon Ruins is an over 250 room Chacoan Anasazi site, constructed in the late 11th century along the San Juan River in northwestern New Mexico, approximately two miles west of Bloomfield. Recognizing the research and public education importance of this site, the citizens of the Bloomfield area, through the San Juan County Museum Association, have protected and interpreted Salmon Ruins for over 30 years. Originally preserved by homesteader George Salmon and his family, the site and surrounding 22 acres have been owned by San Juan County since 1969.”)

We all worked eight hour days. (Since I wasn’t an archaeology student I didn’t have my own plot; I helped those lowest in the hierarchy screen the wheelbarrow loads being removed by day-laborers from areas that were thought to not have much of archaeological interest.) Meals were at set times; I forget now whether 7AM, 11AM, and 5PM, or what. Evenings we hung out at “Armpit International,” one of the guys’ cabins, and they didn’t smoke until after I’d gone to bed. I now realize my sister may have invited me along to have an excuse to shake a persona developed the previous summer, because we went to bed together.   

The cook was the same as the previous year but he couldn’t handle the number of people so every breakfast was two fried eggs and toast slathered with already melted butter, every lunch was two baloney sandwiches with iceberg lettuce and mustard and mayonnaise, and too many dinners were barely barbequed chicken with iceberg and unripe tomato “salad”, mashed potatoes and canned carrots with vanilla sheet cake and canned fruit for dessert. But there was nothing else and we worked hard and I was always hungry. 

So one morning I got my food and sat down, and found myself across from someone in cholesterol-lecture mode. The food we were being served was terrible and we were all going to have heart attacks. The eggs were the worst part. He went on and on, all the way through me eating my entire breakfast. At some point … I guess I was done eating, he paused and looked like he expected me to say something. So I did: “Does that mean I can have your eggs?”

Jennifer

My sisters and I visited the Museum of Glass in Tacoma while nearby for a Quaker conference this summer. (To check out why one might be interested, browse some Dale Chihuly-related sites. Remember, we’re adults. We had a semi-disastrous visit at the Museum because the exhibits weren’t nearly as good or interesting as the free-to-see Dale Chihuly work we’d already seen elsewhere in the area and two of us lost the third (or first) sister and the staff — despite being asked two or three times politely where else someone might have gone besides the Gallery — did not mention their live showroom where visiting artists directed a work involving glass. Which was where that other sister was for an hour or so — too enthralled to let us know where she was.

At almost closing time, after two of us had wasted that hour looking for her over and over again in the small Gallery, going out to ask the information desk about where she could be, etc., we found her and she decided to efficiently show us the best work in the whole museum, which was in the hallway to the bathrooms. (Neither of which had been mentioned by the staff, either.) In the long hall there were about 10 cases with one work in each which had been created by a different visiting artist. Some artists used glass just because they were supposed to, but there were several quite beautiful and interesting pieces. As we approached the best piece, two people came out of a door not open to the public … they seemed to be on break of some kind. They stopped at that case and continued a long conversation. They put their bags down. They all but leaned on the case. We went all around the nearby cases … they didn’t budge. We approached that case. We peered at the case from as many angles as we could without physically pushing them. They didn’t budge. Two of us started to talk as loudly as we could about the rudeness of people standing in the way, making it impossible for others to see works of art in a museum.

Then we fought all the way back to the conference about whether our rudeness had been justified.

Jennifer

So, you wanted tales from college. This is a tale from middle school. 

First of all, you have to know that I am apparently known for my “Um”s. Students tally them. Two years ago I let on that I knew, and that didn’t improve the situation, so I’ve gone back to pretending that I have no idea why a pair of kids might be listening intently while simultaneously, apparently totally distracted by a tally sheet between them with, um, 40 – 80 tally marks on it. 

Earlier this week I noticed the students were oddly distracted in a different way. Something to do with their hands. Watching each other, not me. Suddenly I remembered “zap” – a student writes a time on the back of someone else’s hand, and a name on the inside. If the zapped student looks at the name before the time indicated, he/she has to … I didn’t know what. I thought maybe kiss the person, or ask them out, or something. Are you-all familiar with this game? 

Sure enough, that’s what they were playing. I couldn’t really find out what the rules are, because they know they shouldn’t be doing it. (Although they’ll claim it’s fine to play, they’ll lie about how it works.) Some students will challenge your authority to disallow it at school. But I did a pretty good job, I thought, both telling other teachers to be on the lookout for it, and telling the students they had to stop and there had to be no consequences to the zapped students for quitting NOW. 

One colleague decided to play it cool. She found out from older students (who play less innocent games) that if you look at the name before the indicated time, you have to ask the person out and kiss them. (Duh.) Then, in the next class, she got various students to show her their hands without letting on she knew about the game. I think she may have inflicted permanent psychological damage, because apparently she started laughing so hard she couldn’t teach when she saw the principal’s name and her own name – but those poor kids couldn’t check why she was laughing because their times weren’t up.      

Location/occasion: Late summer of 1998, Branbury State Park, Vt., – between Brandon and Middlebury, in case you’re curious, or have ever been there. Car camping.

Husband: bad knees, needs electricity or at least a car battery to run the machine to help him breathe at night, but eager to see (and show the kids) the night sky without much light pollution, scared of heights, a worrier and a careful planner.

Me: happy to assure husband I will “be careful” … no clue what that means. Generally my first thought when something goes wrong is, “What will I tell Lew?”

Kids: 10 and 12. Not the least bit scared of heights. Quite agile.

I think we stayed there two or three nights. Nope, must’ve been just two; the car battery couldn’t last three. One evening, husband explained over dinner (with a Styrofoam plate) what a galaxy is and why the stars you see are all in our galaxy and in all different directions, but the Milky Way IS our galaxy and appears as a band in the sky. (“How could a star over there be “in” the Milky Way?” Thinking back to the thick plate helped.) Then he had us stay up until it was late enough and dark enough to see the “teapot” constellation (which spews steam which looks like it becomes the Milky Way (which I hadn’t seen as well we could that night at any point since I was a kid in Western Mass.) and ALSO another galaxy (the only thing we could see which wasn’t in our galaxy) with the naked eye and also through the telescope he had brought. Great science lesson. (Is this why neither of them has any interest in science?)

This was the next night or the previous night. I noticed the rangers were leading a “sunset walk” to a nearby outlook at say, 6:30PM. I wanted to go in the worst way, and the girls were interested too. Bad knees/scared of heights husband couldn’t come. “Be careful. Do you have everything you need? Don’t let them … ” Of course, of course, of course not. (It must be safe; the rangers are leading it.) We got there … what, a few minutes early? No, must’ve been a few minutes late? In any case, no one was there. But there was only one place it could be; Cat had been there before. So we started the climb. The first part involved a lot of boulder scrambling. I figured we’d meet the ranger and the group on the way up. Then there were choices and Cat had crossed that stream, gone through that meadow – but the other way was the only one reasonable way to a sunset view.

We finally got to the place where you could duck under just a few bushes and be on an outlook. I can’t remember – was it a 45 minute climb? I don’t think it was over an hour. I hadn’t expected it to be more than a half-hour because I knew when the sun would set, and I figured the rangers would have planned for us to get there in time for the moment of sunset, let us admire it for a few minutes because isn’t it always best afterwards? and then head us back down, not wanting us to be hiking in the dark. We must have been just behind the group the whole time. We got on to the ledge/rocky outcropping. The view was just incredible – over 180 degrees with the color going from orange to deep blue; the layers of mountains in the distance each a different shade … just gorgeous. (“It’s nice to be here without Lew worrying the girls will fall off. Hey, if we cross to that ledge we would be able to see better. Good thing Lew isn’t here to be freaking out. It’s really quite safe – steep but not unstable.”) It started to rain a bit, then stopped. People appeared from the other direction than I expected – without a ranger – we chatted for a bit and they moved on. It started to rain again.

“Hmm. The ranger group still hasn’t come back and now that rock we crossed is wet and slippery. It must be closer back to the campground in the other direction – where those folks came from. It would be a bad idea to go back the way we came – we’d have to go up and over this bit and there were some pretty steep places other places … and we don’t have a flashlight.”

I’m not at all sure that we ever found the right downward trail. If we did, we lost it several times. It wasn’t rocky and steep – I was right about that. It was borderline swampy. It didn’t seem like it could get dark so fast but of course, we were no longer on a rocky outcropping. And where there had been a nice breeze before, now there were amazing mosquitoes. (Are you wondering about bug stuff? Look, we didn’t bring food, flashlights, or rain gear, you think I thought of bug stuff?) We could hear people in the campground, but a very different part of the campground, and we didn’t get to it for a very long time. I couldn’t see my watch, so I don’t know how long.

At some point the worry shifted from “Will we get back ok?” to “What will my frantic husband do?” Then the realization hit that he – bad knees and all – would start up after us, the way we weren’t going down. Ultimately we did get back, and first I tried to find the rangers who (I was sure) would help me retrieve my husband. That’s when I found out that the ranger-led sunset hike had been the previous week (which also explained why the hike started as late as it had … sunset had gotten noticeably earlier since then). And no, rangers do not hunt for missing husbands.

Jennifer

Loyal readers of the blog may think I’ve forgotten that I already wrote about calling the young man who killed my grandmother in a car accident, but this is a different grandmother and different phone call. 

***************

My mother should have realized by December ’87 that there was an important reason she had been losing weight for a year or so and had begun to have difficulty in keeping food down, but she refused various medical tests which she had previously vowed never to have again. By March ’89 she was diagnosed with untreatable stomach cancer. In April, May, and June pagan spirituality became increasingly important to her. The Goddess was going to save her. Also in that period of time she talked for hours on the phone with all kinds of people about the exciting connections she was making between things she heard on the radio about physics, observed about birds, saw in art shows, remembered learning about the native people of ___, etc. When I overheard snippets of those phone calls, I wondered: What would my experience be on the other end of the phone? Clearly, I would listen because she was (my sister / my daughter / my best friend from college from whom I hadn’t heard in 10 years), but would I be excited by the connections she was making or would I think she was crazy? Would I have any idea, on the other end of the phone, that this 5’ 7” tall woman now weighed 85 pounds?

My mother had read, and had asked us all to read, Bernie Siegel’s Love, Medicine, and Miracles. We weren’t supposed to think that she was going to die. This from a woman who had considered euphemisms to be way worse than many people consider swears – she never could respect people who said “make love” instead of “have sex” or “pass away” instead of “die”. (I know, I know, Bernie Siegel wasn’t suggesting we use euphemisms, but that we all live love and hope. Screw that.) Despite that, it was not too hard for us to tell those who asked how she really was. But my grandmother (her mother) didn’t ask any of us.

My mother asked for and we planned a big solstice celebration. Just as the sun would turn, would travel the other way, at the summer solstice; the Goddess was going to begin healing her then. We double-checked with the hospice worker who came to the house, “How long?” I didn’t really need to double-check. I was gaining 20, 30, 40 pounds and making a new life inside me, due to be born just after the solstice, she was losing 20, 30 pounds and … (no euphemisms, now). Her favorite creation myth had been the Wintu Indians’ story about how birth and death came to be, because the gods had first planned humans to experience neither one, but ended up with both: “They will know the gladness of birth. They will know the sorrow of death. And through these two things together people will come to know love.” (Take that, Bernie Siegel.) So I knew. But we really weren’t sure her mother knew.

So I called my grandmother. I haven’t been able to reconstruct the words I chose, but I suspect I thought that by focusing on the cycles my mother so appreciated, I could pretend I wasn’t using euphemisms. The conversation wasn’t quite as hard to have as it had been to anticipate – my grandmother did know. I learned then that there is no age after which it becomes easier to lose a child. (Or if there is, it isn’t age 88.)

We had the solstice celebration. My mother died four days later. Three days after that I had a terrifyingly brief labor and m’hija, La Chica, was born.