Liturgical Space for Rent

The Catholic Church has a yearly rhythm, called the Liturgical Year, that starts in Advent (4 Sundays before Christmas) and ends, obviously, the Sunday before Advent begins. There are seasons within the year—Advent, Christmas, Lent, Easter, Ordinary Time. Each season has its own color, celebrations, songs, words. It’s all very regimented and hierarchical. No big surprise there. And as much as I am drawn to the Quaker idea of living, I just can’t quit this rhythm. So much of our lives are without beat—we have climate-controlled buildings, electric lights, grow lights, produce from Chile. We could eat, drink and dress the same all year round, just about. So liturgical rhythms are nice reminders for me that the year does turn. Things do change, and come around again.

In our church, St. Pius V, banners, altar cloths, incidental table cloths, and plants and flowers get changed according to season (and if there’s a wedding or funeral during the week). The woman who has done this for several years is stepping back from these duties, and many others (like vacuuming and refinishing the seats of the pews). Guess who is taking over. That would be me. I really don’t want to screw up. Maura says nobody but the priest, and perhaps a few fussy people, will even notice if you screw up. As long as there’s something there—the altar is dressed, there’s a plant or a couple of banners—they will think it’s nice.

It’s a bit nerve-wracking, actually. Not the linens—I can figure out that it’s Easter and therefore we need to put out some white. Ordinary time is green, Advent and Lent are purple (though I prefer blue for Advent—perhaps I’ve been at too many order parishes). But I’m a bit intimidated by the flowers. I will have to go to Flower Row, pick out the right kind and number, and then bring them back to the servers’ sacristry and arrange them in a pleasing fashion. Get them assembled and put on pillars in front of the ambo (also known as a lectern) and altar. The first instance of this will be the memorial mass at the beginning of November. I may have several nuns go with me to tell me what to do. Four years from now this will be old hat. But right now, a little tricky. I expressed this nervousness to Maura when she showed me the mushy foam stuff you use for floral arranging—I ain’t no kinda flower-arranger—and she said I didn’t have to be. The flowers will tell me where they want to go.

But I’m the woman who doesn’t put up a Christmas tree until the week before. And then I leave it up until St. Blaise’s Day. Each year I think, wow, we should really do an advent wreath. And each year, it’s the third Sunday before I get it together. Secular or Sacred, I tend to not get it done. I do put out a pumpkin around Halloween. But even though we’re both Irish, there’s no sign of St. Pat’s anywhere. I’m just kind of not on the boat when it comes to adornment of space.

So it’s kind of funny that Sr. Mary Henry thought I’d be good at this. Funnier still that Maura agreed. And downright hilarious that I said yes.

I’m excited, though. It’s kind of like seeing your new classroom in August for the first time. St. Pius is a 90 year old church, traditional in appearance, but not as big as some of our neighbors. We have a main aisle and two side aisles. Two side altars to Mary and Joseph, and room for a statue to each side (Theresa and Anthony—don’t you wonder how churches decide these things?). But overall, not very big. There are German stained glass windows, done by Emil Frei here in town. And we have a mosaic of Christ the King (Deus Rex) above the altar done, I believe, by the same artist who did the New Cathedral. St. Louis Catholics, correct me if I’m wrong. Top it off with a gorgeous rose window framed by the organ in the choir loft. It is a church that lets you know it’s a church. There is no question—“was this the old gym?” that I could ask about many churches I’ve attended, Catholic and Protestant. St. Bernadette’s was the barracks theater at one time, I think I was told. And Holy Cross down in Dallas was designed to eventually become the gym, once they built the “real” church.

Frankly, the best mass I ever participated in, from an atmosphere perspective, was on the beach near Corpus Christi. I’ve got a little bit of that Earth Momma in me, too. But standing up at the altar watching Maura raise and lower the banners, I had this sense of awe, sort of a Marian “but who am I….” moment. Who am I to keep this place beautiful? Who am I to decide if the congregation gets to look at that weird banner with the palm leaf and bowl of ash, or the nicer plain green with a wheat stalk? Who am I to walk through Flower Row and decide what adorns the altar and ambo? Who am I, anyway?

Later, I was thinking about Benedictine (and Shaker, among others) attention to small things, and realized this will be a nice challenge for me. If I can put the efficiency I use when I clean my kitchen to good use in the sacristry, and then take the awe and reverence I will find myself using at the altar, back home to my garden, things will be twice blessed. And just to remember this is God’s house, and maybe Someone Else (besides the flowers) will show me what needs to be done.

I don't care what Fibonacci looked like

Math.

I’m tutoring again. Been on a bit of hiatus of late. Rachel finally finished up math, forever and ever and ever, back in June. Wow, that’s a long time ago. She made an A+, which is a great way to end that career. It’s like JD Salinger or James Dean. She ended before she became fat Elvis. Before she hit a trig course that made her crash and burn. Because it would have.

I worked with Ben a little bit this summer, I think just enough to keep his teacher believing that he got some tutoring this summer. I don’t think he really needed much more than a straightening out about how to convert a mixed number to an improper fraction, but he also was polite and easy to work with. Did the homework I assigned, too. No excuses. But this summer. You know. I missed, completely, two sessions with him. I’ve NEVER done that. And he slept in a couple times...I think we met 4 times.

My Rosati girl hasn’t called me yet—it’s Algebra II this year, and much of the beginning of Algebra II feels like Algebra I. She was also one of those students whose brain was still growing. It was going to catch up and click soon—so I don’t know if I’ll hear from her or not. It was taking us a long time to develop a rapport, but we were getting there.

But now I’m working with Ann’s daughter, who is in 8th grade and is very sweet. She wants to be at my house working on math with me, which is refreshing. I mean, Rachel wanted to work with me, but it was out of sheer desperation. Most of my other students, while glad of the help, would rather be shoveling manure than doing math. I used to agree. I’ve come around to my latent math-philia. Out of the closet and everything. But it wasn’t until my second year at St. Pius that I realized, hey, this isn’t bad.

Which is why I had to get out of the classroom. I had vowed to myself that I would never be that kind of teacher. It sounds backwards, but if I’m going to teach math, I don’t want it to be easy for me. I want to work it through and then show how I did it. I want to be able to foresee the stumbling blocks. As Dale at Preston Art Glass says, I want to know how I know. I don’t want to be the expert, I want to be the guide. And there wasn’t challenge in Algebra I anymore, obviously, and so I was going to lose my knack. Leaving, and re-entering tutoring was the best way to keep my mind struggling: trigonometry, geometry, pre-calculus do not come easy to my head the first dance through. Not even the second. And if enough time goes by, I have to relearn. It’s perfect.

Ann’s daughter is in a mixed bag of pre-algebra and “last ditch moment to learn all the basic math we’ve been teaching you for 4 years” textbook. I am going to say right now that it is a lousy book. At coffee last week, Ann commented that if they took out all the photographs of politically correct individuals (and astronauts, I noticed), little happy triangles pointing at the problem numbers, and cool fun graphics, the book would be light enough to carry. As it is, it’s the size of the calculus book above me on the shelf. No, it’s bigger.

College math texts, unless they have watered down even further in the ten years I’ve been free, I mean graduated, sometimes had a graphic or a drawing of a vector example, something like that. Chapter headings occasionally had a splash of turquoise or red. But there weren’t any Asian paraplegics happily working on their laptops with all their able-bodied, but diverse, friends, taking up a quarter of the page. It was math, start to finish. Mind-numbing, scary, dry math.

Math remains mind-numbing, scary, and dry if you are phobic. It doesn’t matter how many cheerful dead astronauts are depicted. The number of photos and quotes from Einstein talking about how hard math was for him do not help folks who don’t understand the explanations. It does not inspire.

That stuff belongs in history textbooks. We talked about this at coffee as well. Cram that history textbook full of pictures of Sojourner Truth (I think there’s one photo of Sojourner Truth, and it is in every history textbook). First-person diary entries from the high plains and pictures of dust-bowl era women clutching their dirty children. You know what I’m talking about. Give the full text of the Magna Carta on the yellow (to look aged) pages in the center of the text. Graphs and family trees and tables showing how all the European kings were really their own grandfathers. Go for it. Make that book 20 pounds and give it wheels at the bottom for those kids to drag it to and from their lockers.

But math. Please. Math is not going to come alive with charts of Pascal’s triangle. Go ahead and mention Fibonacci’s sequence, but don’t have a half page illustration of a conch shell or pussywillow branch. In my perfect textbook world, this is what math books would do:

1. Introduce the topic with a concrete example.
2. Demonstrate how to solve it using symbols as well as words.
3. Give three or four more examples.
4. Begin the problem set with concrete problems with easy numbers.
5. Have a large set of rote practice.
6. Two or three harder problems.
7. A second set of problems, perhaps half as long, of review that also looks forward towards what will be covered next.
8. Not in every lesson, but occasionally, a longer problem that might require research. In case you’re teaching a room full of nerds.
9. After a grouping of similar lessons, either in topic or degree, a review section and a self test.
10. Repeat 9 or 10 times, such that the school year is easily divided into the book’s lessons.

There would be no fun pictures, no catchy graphics. And it would be a better world with fewer sore shoulders from the heavy backpacks.

When I taught math at Pius, I was lucky enough to be given the freedom to teach from whatever textbooks I could beg, borrow, or steal. I chose the University of Chicago School Math Program, 1990 edition. St. Monica’s had given us their discarded textbooks. There are some pictures, usually random and definitely meaningless. Also easy to ignore. The chapters all begin and end the same, the lessons begin and end the same.

Another book that’s excellent, although done slightly differently—incrementally as opposed to topic-driven—is Saxon math. It is similarly satisfying to teach from and learn from, especially in the younger grades.

Everything else I’ve seen pretty much bites. Is it a case of the giraffe: a horse designed by a committee? Have we just fallen so far into the laps of “experts” that we can’t see clearly enough to write a book like Leithold’s The Calculus? These new textbooks seem so clumsy and out of touch with their subject. Elegant is not a term that can be used. Neither is comprehensive. Don’t even mention “transparent” or “helpful.”

I think Ann’s daughter and I can make it work. I know where she’s going to high school, and the geometry teacher, at least, is a good catch.

Too bad I couldn’t write my own. Although, saying that, I must admit that the best chemistry textbook I ever had was written by my high school chemistry teacher, and then we each paid $10 for photocopying fees. That one was “elegant” and “transparent.” And guess what. Not a single picture of native Lapplanders solving math using knitting patterns.

Love is where you find it

On this trip, along with one rock my parents picked up in Ouray, Colorado, I have started a heart-shaped rock collection. I have a whopping 4 rocks right now. This led me to farmgirlfare, which is a blog I read because it makes my heart sing. No real information, just a beautiful daily picture from the author's Missouri farm. She has a few dozen heart rocks. And through her comment page, I found Rick Ruggle's site.

Ever find something and think, "I want to do exactly that!" That was my immediate reaction. Not from the monetary gain point of view--although I've put the calendar on my Christmas list--but from the fact that a collection of natural heart pictures is wonderful, quirky, and just like me.

The white granite heart is more heartshaped the way I depict it above, but on the "back" of it, completely unnoticed until Mike pointed it out, is a natural cruciform. Talk about examen.


At Daniels Summit Lodge, where we stayed in Utah on our trip, there was a framed picture called "The Life of an Aspen." It was simply a collection of 10 identically-sized aspen leaves. The first was lime green, moving to darker green, spotty yellow, bright yellow, brown, and finally the famous skeletal aspen leaf appearance. Simple, gorgeous, and just like me. Except mine would be oak.

More ideas that are made possible by a grant from "Bridgett Ain't Movin Never Again" Foundation.

Ordinary Time

It’s feeling pretty green. In the Catholic Church, as I believe is true in other churches with liturgical years, it is smack dab in the middle of ordinary time. We won’t have a color change until Advent, which is the 4 Sundays preceding Christmas. Advent is purple. Or blue. Or blue and purple and white and a pink candle thrown in for good measure.

But right now, it is green.

Coming home from California on Saturday, we were pulling onto Halliday and I said to Mike, “I don’t want to be home. I’m not ready to deal with all this stuff again.”

All this stuff. You remember. The summer. Oh, all that stuff.

But I’ve been home for 6 days now and it’s been exceedingly ordinary. Bevin started her new job. Sophia went to City Garden for her Tuesday afternoon class. The weather broke. Which is another way of saying the weather fixed (it is 70 degrees out right now). Kids play. Tomatoes get eaten. Dara escapes from the backyard and waddles around our neighbor’s yard. Ordinary. I went to the bar the other night and talked with Peggy and Katie (and Bevin!) and some other folks from Cabrini or Pius. We talked about topics ranging from the Brady Bunch to homosexuality to quilting. You know, ordinary stuff. I went to coffee on Wednesday with Ann, Carolyn, Janet and other folks from Ambrose or book club. We talked about sex ed at Ambrose (shocking sex ed at Ambrose), my devil child, husbands—also very ordinary. Sophia rode her bike home and did pretty well. Right now she and Maeve are eating popcorn and waiting for the schooled friends to come home. Just like me when I got home from St. Bernadette’s in 3rd grade and Patti, from St. Martin of Tours, was waiting on my front porch. Completely everyday.

Zzz.

I am embracing the ordinary. I’m going to go snooze on the couch and have the girls watch some bugs bunny on DVD and not do any thinking for a few moments. Except, of course, overanalyze how nice it is to not do any thinking.

The Tree of Life My Soul Has Seen

Thanks to Alyssa, who lived for a great long time during her formative years in Utah (she was Episcopalian (or Anglican? I can't recall, Alyssa, but I think the former), and then her mother converted to Judaism while they lived there. I think that takes formidable courage--like living in Saudi Arabia as a Hindu and then spontaneously deciding, hey, I want to be Baptist!), we now know the story of the creepy non-cell tower. Oh how I wanted it to be a cell tower creepily "disguised" as some weird tree with tennis balls on it.

But no.

It is sculpture. Twenty-four years ago, a Swedish sculptor you've never heard of went out to what is probably the least habitable place in the United States (even central Nevada had some people...Death Valley has a national park with campgrounds--the Bonneville Salt Flats have nothing except references to Buckaroo Bonzai), and built a strange modernistic statue called the Tree of Life. Or rather, Metaphor: Tree of Utah. Read about it further here. What did you have to google to find it, Alyssa?

I am starting a list of strange places. Bonneville Salt Flats and the Salton Sea are the first two items. Warm Springs, Nevada struck me as pretty strange--at the intersection of US 6 and the "Extra-terrestrial Highway", it's a ghost town originally built around a hot spring. The bath house is still there.

I know there are others floating in my brain. How about you? Know any strange places?

You Must Be This Tall

So driving through northern Nevada on Highway 80 is no visual treat. It is barren. Kind of shockingly so, although not as much as the Bonneville Salt Flats right afterwards in Utah. Not there yet. We went from Winnemucca to Heber City, Utah, in one day. Heber City was beautiful--the earth changes there from salt flats to mountains and lakes and trees. But first, we have to cross a scrub desert. Luckily, again, we had the DVD player in the car and our kids didn't notice the monotony. Mike and I talked and had a nice time. The whole time--the 2 weeks--was just a really nice time. I want to go somewhere else. Soon.

When you're on the road all morning, by the time you see this creature, you're pretty slap-happy. This is Wendover Will. Or, as some refer to him, Bendover Bill. And, while this is not family-friendly in any way, Mike decided that his outstretched halt signal and the other hand hanging in midair suggested the following: "Halt! You must be this tall to ride Bendover Bill!" Lots of snarky laughter ensued and Sophia kept asking us what was so funny.

So we stopped in West Wendover, which is Wendover, Utah's "Suburb with Gambling." Here is one of the points on earth where you can see the curvature of the earth as I-80 heads east, crossing over the salt flats. The pictures do not do it justice, but I've included one just the same.

The salt flats are kind of alarming. This is where land speed records are set. It is flat and no one lives there. I don't think anyone can. The southern stretches are "proving grounds." Meaning the military does stuff I don't want to know about. Also, somewhere in the flats is this thing. Cell phone tower? Random scary sculpture? Any ideas? The whole salt desert is filled with car travelers' messages to themselves, written in rocks in the sand and salt. Nothing cryptic or worthwhile--we seem to be a nation of "Joe loves Deborah" and "Kyle". I was glad we did this during the day. Two hours of this by moonlight would have been alarming for me. The ghost town trip through southern Nevada was enough.

I-80 crosses the flats in a sharply straight line until
you get to the swampy edges of the Great Salt Lake.

Haiku to the Salt Flats:

Salt flats are salty
Evaporated water
Leaves white salty crusts

We stay, like I said, east of Salt Lake City, where things look more habitable, in an off-season ski lodge near Heber City. Very nice. Couldn't afford it during the snowy season. The following day, we go to Vernal, Utah, where all the Mormons are busy storing up their nuts for fall (the grocery stores were having a case & flat sale--alarming amount of food being carted off in vans by grim looking young women). I eventually make my way through the grocery store with picnic stuff, and, as we're headed east on US-40 towards Dinosaur National Park, we see this spectacle:

Pink Vernal Welcome Dinosaur, we have a Nevada Cowboy we'd like you to meet. We think you might be tall enough.

Here's to you, Oakhurst, California

September 6, 2006

John Muir Lodge
Kings Canyon National Park

Today we woke in Yosemite, still sore and exhausted from yesterday's walks and hikes. But feeling good. We packed it all up and headed out. On the way, we stopped at Mariposa Grove, where the famous tree you can drive through was (it fell in 1969—but there's still one you can walk through). Giant, giant trees. We'd seen redwoods before on our honeymoon but never sequoias. Beautiful.

We got back in the car, and every time Mike applied the brakes, it made a scary chunky noise. Scary. We called my dad, and then our mechanic in south city, Advanced Auto. Jim suggested we take it easy on the brakes, stay in 2nd gear down into the valley, and go to a Meineke as soon as we could. Fresno was 67 miles away. A long time to be in 2nd gear with Missouri plates. Mary is always referring to protective coloration—like when you pretend you don't listen to new age music around your country-western relatives, or when you pretend to like football because you're a guy, etc. Missouri plates combined with our flashers on, being passed by every angry Californian on vacation, was NOT protective coloration. Not. So we stopped at the final ranger station and asked a couple of the traffic guys (there was some construction along the Wawona Road). They suggested Oakhurst, only 16 miles away, and even recommended Yosemite Smog. “Just past the the Sweetwater Barbecue, which is a little white building. Oh, and a vet clinic.”

We drive. It is harrowing in a way that I have not experienced before. We keep turning off to let the fast drivers past. Mike isn't as worried as I am, but I'm envisioning something out of Deliverance. We finally make it down into Oakhurst, dropping about 4000 feet in those 16 miles. We see Sweetwater Steakhouse and a vet clinic. We turn left, and see a sort-of garage, no real signage except for a banner reading “All-Auto Smog”, surrounded by a chain link fence. This is no Advanced Auto, which is clean and bright and prides itself on catering to women motorists. This is the real deal. I have this sinking feeling. We are trapped in this crappy town and will have to sell one of our children to get the repairs done on the car.

Mike gets out and I stay with sleeping Maeve and whining Sophia. At that very moment, a Carquest car parts truck pulls up. A balding burnt-by-the-sun Californian in his 40s or 50s steps out. “Are you looking for John?” he asks us. Mike explains the situation.

“Oh, no, John's on vacation. On a cruise in Alaska. Gordon's doing a little work—were you looking to get it done right away?” Mike explains again. Carquest guy takes out his cell phone and calls his store. Asks his dispatcher to call all the mechanics around town, see if they can find someone to do a fast brake job for a guy on vacation. The office calls back. Big John isn't answering his phone (sometimes he leaves early) but Little Joe can get us in tomorrow morning. Little Joe. Carquest guy tells us he'll take us over to Little Joe's if we'd like. Mike thanks him and introduces himself. Carquest guy is Eddie Gilmore.

Little Joe's is just three properties away. We pull in, and it's also a Hertz rental place. I tell Mike that we could rent a car, continue to Sequoia/Kings Canyon as normal, and it would only be a 45 minute detour tomorrow to pick up the van. He goes to find out what's going on. Eddie is still with us, and he introduces Mike to Little Joe and tells him, on the side, that this guy is reliable—and he delivers to all the mechanics in the area, he could tell us stories. We can't believe our good fortune mixed with bad luck. Just amazing.

But the Hertz gal on the same property, but run by a separate family, doesn't have any cars. Eddie says he'll run down the road and check with Enterprise. Mike goes into the Little Joe office and fills out paperwork. Little Joe's wife, who also works as his secretary, walks over to the Hertz office to see if they can work something out. Hertz Lady says they physically have two cars, but they haven't been vacuumed, washed, or had an oil change recently. But they chat and Hertz Lady waives the maintenance when she hears both our situation and that it's only one day. When Eddie gets back, Mike thanks him for his time, and Eddie tells us that Hertz is a better idea than the local Enterprise anyway. Cheaper and easier to deal with. You know, small town knowledge we'd never have, right there in a white pick up truck. Eddie goes back to work, and we get a super-cheap rental car out of the whole situation.

Little Joe tells us he's got our car as number one for tomorrow morning. We consolidate our bags, leave the laundry and the basket of towels and sheets (for our KOA nights) behind and hop on in the small, but serviceable, four-door chameleon car. We now have protective coloration: California plates. We stop at a gas station in town and fill up. Mike's phone rings, and it's Hertz Lady calling back. Could we check the side door pocket and see if a license fell down there? Indeed, I find a California license for a woman from Mariposa. We drive back down the road to Little Joe's and deliver it. On our way back out of town, with McDonald's for the girls and a vitamin water for me, I notice that the barbecue place and veterinarian combo actually repeats itself later in the town—and this one actually is a white stand alone building as originally described. And the car repair shop right behind it is actually Yosemite Smog.

So we were at the wrong mechanic station when the delivery guy from Carquest pulled in behind us for no delivery since John was out of town and Gordon was only thre working on his own boat – not doing business. And Eddie the Carquest guy took time out of his day to find us a mechanic (since he knew them all), reassure us that the one we got was decent, and hunt down a rental car for us. If we'd gone to Yosemite Smog, Eddie the Carquest guy would not have been there. He was at John's closed-for-vacation shop.

I've been practicing the examen at night. It's a Benedictine practice, every evening in bed, lights are out, falling asleep, and you focus on where God was present in your life that day. It isn't an examination of conscience--it's not about you, it's about God. The idea is that the more you do this, the more you recognize the divine in everyday situations. And when I was watching the correct barbecue place, veterinarian, and mechanic go past out Mike's window, I had one of those moments. Call it good fortune, call it creepy coincidence, or call it grace. We were at the wrong place and that's what made it all work out for us.

Little Joe's mechanic Duane called us before we were in Fresno. He'd already checked out the van, to see what he might need to order to fix it tomorrow. The right rear brake shoe was disintegrated. This teaches me two things: a) don't rely on your brakes coming down out of the mountains (instead, switch into lower gears and let your engine slow you down—we figured out how useful this was a bit too late but still in time for more mountain driving on the way home), and b) trust that at least when I'm with Mike, all will be well. I mean, talk about someone who falls in s**t and comes out smelling like a rose. If I'd been the one trying to do the talking in this situation, we'd probably be at the Oakhurst Comfort Inn with two grumpy kids and no car for two days instead of lying in bed at John Muir Lodge under a handstitched quilt, the full moon rising above the conifer trees all around us, the German Harley riders playing cards on the front porch, and the sound of the fan in the window lulling babies to sleep. Ah, California.

Go West, Paradise is There

[Note: Written in present tense, but over a week ago while on the road].


I'm sitting at Mono Lake, an alkaline salt lake sitting just southeast of Yosemite National Park. It is impossibly blue, ringed by mountain ranges on all sides. It is a basin—no water leaves here except throuh evaporation. And 50 years of diverting it into Los Angeles tap water. That ended in 1994, after the lake had dropped several hundred feet and had become increasingly alkaline. A court battle made Los Angeles have to look elsewhere for its water. Oh promised land. Wouldn't California be nice without the Californians? I'm too harsh--it's just such a beautiful place. And jam-packed like crazy in places that people probably aren't supposed to live: deserts, geologic faults, salt lakes. Actually, most of the west feels like that. There's something about bucolic Missouri, Illinois, Iowa, that says "farm me. Live here and survive by my rivers and streams and deer in the woods." I just don't hear that voice in California. More of a "Be careful, watch for the high cliffs and the tremors and the barren deserts. Look at me in awe. And then go home."

The south end of the lake is filled with calcium carbonate deposits that rise above the waters like towers. They're called Tufa, gray and white otherworldly structures. Nothing lives inside Mono Lake except brine shrimp. Lots of things live off the shrimp, though—alkali flies and tons of birds. The whole southern edge is ringed with sage and yellow flowered puffs like proto-tumbleweeds. The odor is something I've never experienced before—is it the salt? The plants? The flies? I saw a little ground squirrel scampering up one of the tufas that is now on the land due to the water loss. There is good news, though—snow melts from the surrounding mountains have increased the level in the past 12 years. It's getting better. It's always nice, as a conservationist, which I consider myself (as opposed to a scorched earth policy or a radical environmentalist), to see that human actions can not only destroy but also rebuild. The whole tend the earth thing. We're not here to eat up all the resources as quickly and as cheaply as possible—we're here to tend.

Tend.

Big Sur, Home of Beef Rocks

I'm sitting here upstairs in my library/playroom/computer den, comfortably back home in St. Louis. In front of me is a red rock about the size of a baseball, streaked all over with white quartz trailings. It looks, when wet, like a hunk of raw beef, I kid you not.

We found it on a beach in Big Sur. Took a short hike through a beautiful meadow right off Highway One, which is just as alarming as advertised. Got to the beach, and besides two crazy surfers out in the freezing Pacific, we were alone. The beach was sandy, with some washed up seaweed (why is it, in the movies, there is no seaweed on the beach? It has been on every beach I have ever visited--Atlantic, Gulf, and Pacific. But it never shows its face onscreen). And then ahead of us was the rock pile. Rocks, fist-sized to head-sized, washed up on the shore. The waves would crash around them and you could hear them grinding against each other. Mike and I just stood on the rocks picking up one after another and gaping in awe. There were common sedimentary gray rock-beach kind of rocks, but there was so much more--granite boulders, jade chunks, this pretty purple igneous thing, white milky skipping stones--and the beef rock. Mike just about freaked out when he picked it up and handed it to me. It seriously looked like a chunk of meat, marbled through with lines of white fat.

I have no idea what it is. I don't have a streak plate here at home or a hardness kit, to check what the red might be. One website suggested it might be vulcanized jadeite--jade that has been under the iron-rich sand long enough to rust, essentially. The things you learn.

We built a sand castle and then Sophia
investigated the little driftwood shelters that dotted the beach where it met the dunes. Spent a solid hour with no whining about what we were doing next. And on the trail going back out, we found a grinding stone, where ancient people would have ground nuts or roots into paste or flour. The Miwok Indians are known for this, further in from the coast. Don't know if it's related. Big chunk of boulder with hollowed out fist-sized divets.

Big Sur has changed not a whit since we were there ten years ago on our honeymoon. Fabulous. I got sandwiches to-go for the walk to McWay Falls at the same gas station-deli-bakery-convenience store where Mike and I picked up the Bonterra wine we drank back at the bed and breakfast in July 1996.

Oh, and have to leave you with a picture of McWay Falls. Yes, it's a freshwater creek that spills out into a 40 foot waterfall directly onto a cove beach. Did I mention it was fabulous?

Back in the Saddle Again...

We got home from California yesterday afternoon. Most of you knew that we were going; I didn't have a lot of time, obviously, to blog. Well, across central Nevada, I DID have a lot of time, but not a lot of wifi.

We had an amazing time. I know that vacations are only interesting, for the most part, for the people who take them (though provocative things are always interesting to learn, like Ann's torture museum visit when she went to England).

I do have a couple of things to say, though. Our visit to Oakhurst. The beach at Big Sur. Mono Lake is not a disease. The Bonneville Salt Flats. Wendover Will (back in the saddle indeed...). Anyway, these will make more sense in the next few days. Just to leave you with this, though: if you're going to be travelling 5000+ miles in a van with preschoolers, break down and admit it...borrow a DVD player from somebody if you don't own one. It made this trip really bearable on days like US Highway 6 through southern Nevada.

Don't want to be back...but dealing with it...

More to Come...

Hey. Things are busy right now. Just wanted to let you know that there's more to come. Give me a week and I'll inundate you. But right now is some family time and learning time and I'll tell you more when I have the chance! ~Bridgett