Zounds! How much has happened in the intervening time. Ulric visited over Christmas and also Cousin Rebecca. I have travelled to Seattle to visit Alkelda and Bede and little Lucia. And I went to PA for nephew Bernz's wedding, and on to Puerto Rico, which was wonderful. The difficult and challenging part of the intervening time has been moving from Kindergarten Assitant to Lead teacher. I had wanted to post my first pedagogical story (and it was pretty long!) but I guess that will wait.

Where has the time flown? I thought I would have more leisure in Santa Fe. WRONG!

Oh fiddle-dee-dee. I wrote a post yesterday and it got lost. I wish I could use language the way Brad the Gorilla does, but NO, I am now a Waldorf kindergarten teacher (assistant), which is even more straight-laced than a children's librarina. Well, just for that, I will NOT tell you that last evening we went to a (free) concert by the Santa Fe Pro Musica sponsored by our bank, First National Bank of Santa Fe, complete with an exquisite buffet supper, totally unparalled by anything we have experienced in the East. There is much to be said for the quality of life here.

This morning i went for a check-up by my new doctor and waited not one whit in the waiting room. The restrooms are clean and un-locked. Everything was there under one roof. The receptionist, the nurse, and the doctor were all wonderfully friendly. I so wish we all could livelike this.

Yikes. I thought that moving to Santa Fe from Washington DC would be... getting away from the frenetic Eastcoast ratrace to a more civilized way of life. In many ways that is true. This evening we (Ricardo and I) went to a lovely, intimate chamber music evening with the Santa Fe Pro Musica. The bank manager knew us and had issued the invitation.

But earlier in the day a colleague, new, at the Santa Fe Waldorf School , had expressed frustration at the nice-sounding words of fellowship and inclusion, but what for her was the reality fo everyone being too busy for each other. And some other new teachers chimed in with assent. And an old-timer said that the tension upon returning to Santa fe from parts more relaxed was palpable and visceral. Well, well, well. Oy, gewalt. Something to ponder.

Today is the 3rd anniversary of Bartzy's funeral, which was both wrenching and glorious. A movie was suggested for this evening - we had not been to one together for quite a while - and "World Trade Center " opened today. I agreed to this one with alacrity. Normally I might well avoid it, but to join my sorrow to those who grieved at that time and continue to grieve (and don't we all?) seemed just right.

I am beginning to get my new little workspace cum guest room (at least for one person) in shape.The little shrine to the beloved departed who have gone to the other side of the veil is metamorphizing. But it is coming together. On a related subject, I am beginning to use the dishes which had belonged to my grand mother and great-grandmothers. I understand that the gnomes (or root beings) chortle with glee each time someone breaks a dish.

Just a postscript. I wrote this on the 12th, but it didn't get uploaded until the 13th, which accounts for the discrepancy between the date and the anniversary of Bart's transition into Grace.

Here I am in Santa Fe. It is hard to believe that a year ago I had never been in Santa Fe, let alone thought about living here. It is a miracle! And I believe that I have a job, which is no small thing when one moves to Santa Fe. It is just what I wanted - to be a kindergarten assistant in the Waldorf School. Deo Gratia!

In looking back at the previous entry, I see that my hopes were not so naive. This landscape supports a different way of being in the world, and I hope that quite soon (after the unpacking) that the elemental life will seep into my very bones.

Well, blogging once a month is better than not blogging at all (I hope). How can one write, though, in the midst of a vast allergy attack/cold?

Nevertheless, I will say that life is very strange right now. I am living in a rental space. in a sense. We have sold the house we have lived in for seven years, a beloved space, and fortunately have sold it to people who will love it similarly, I trust. Rent back through the end of July. And we have a contract on a high-desert equivalent to this moderate-rain-forest house.

What am I hoping for? A different rhythm to my day. Haiku responses to the surroundings. A ritualized spiritual discipline. Why should it be different? I realize we take ourselves wherever we go. But I also do not underestimate the power of the elementals, the surroundings.

Already I have initiated some things new. Besides the daily exercises for my wrist, I exercise daily on the lyre.

Aaaaargh! I promise, I promise to blog.... tomorrow!

OK. In the middle of the night I realized my cunning plan might have a flaw in it. I am so curious about how these blogs work, and I am naive. What would happen if I simply wrote the words "Santa Fe Public Library"? This is another test, at 19:21. Tomorrow I will try hyperlinks, and perhaps the next day, inflammatory language! (Is this just my pain talking?)

What! Twice in one day. I am going to have to write short posts more frequently in order to get back in the habit, and so I don't get too tired. When I have more two-handed mobility, I will start attempting to put pictures up too. One of my presents for Christmas was a package of rechargeable batteries for the little digital camera that Ulric gave me last year. Fortunately he also gave me a charger. I have a few details to master and then WHAM... you shall be dazzled.

And now, I have a cunning plan, as Baldrick would say. I am going to link to one of the few blogs that I check every day, the library blog that is my model for what a library blog should look like. Here it is, ICARUS.

The cunning plan has to do with ascertaining whether the ICARUS master picks up this reference to the blog and if so, how long will it take for there to be some response. It is about 6:15 Eastern Standard Time, or to be more exact,18:15.

My last post was on the evening before a big change in my life. I had not a clue as to what the morning would bring. In a nanosecond, a patch of invisible black ice transformed me into a one-handed person. My right wrist, my write hand, had been broken in 5 places. Surgery was on the 19th. Thank goodness for Brigid, my sainted sister, who took me in for surgery. Ivanhoe has been very, very supportive, and my friends and colleagues are truly wonderful. And I am learning to augment the use of my left hand with...teeth, right elbow, and either foot (usually not both at the same time.) I can wash my own hair, but I cannot file my nails easily. I cannot drive, at least not yet. (I have a stick shift.) Why am I writing this? It is hard to write anything nuanced while pecking the words out with three fingers. But I guess there are those who have written whole novels by tapping a keyboard with a stick in their mouth.

But an inspiration for me is one of my favorite illustrators, Glen Rounds. I had noticed that his more recent work was bold, with heavier black outlines than his previous pen-and-ink drawings. And in some illustrations one could detect that elements had been cut out and pasted in. But they were still wonderfully and unmistakably by Glen Rounds. Later I learned that
he had had a stroke and subsequently learned to draw with his non-dominant hand. I think he had been a right-hander, but his illustrations remind me forceably of my father's drawings, and Dad was a lefty. Brigid says my left-handed printing reminds her of Dad's printing, though he had a flowing cursive (usually.)

Right now I wanted to record a different on-line trnslation site which worked a lot better for me than the babelfish site did, at least for German to English.

I am continuing to have problems with my WILL (as in, motivation to do things, though I also have lacked the will to make a will, I admit.) Nevertheless, though I deserved no reward, I endulged in a movie tonight at the AFI (American Film Institute). I am not sure whether it was a movie or "un film" - Good Night... and Good Luck about Edward R. Murrow. It was obviously very timely ...and very, very sobering. The audience sat in silence at the end, just sitting there watching the credits.

The Ricardo said afterwards "Nobody is saying these things the way Edward R. Murrow said them -with simple eloquence." But then we remembered Bill Moyers.

OK - third attempt today to write something.

It is snowing here and thus we needed to cancel our library program tonight. Not that the weather was insurmountable, but enough people wussed out that we postponed it.

Life was rather slow in the library this evening and I actually resorted to playing solitaire ( I had forgotten how) in between chapters of a book which is actually quite good, but whose title I have forgotten. What a mess am I!

There was a message on my work machine today, from the children's librarian in Santa Fe, giving me the name of their director. It seems rather odd that when one goes to the library website, there is no place for finding out who the staff are or if there is a human resources division. But with some careful sleuthing and extrapolation from my own situation, I realized that the library is a division of the city government and probably all job postings and hirings get filtered through the city HR department. At least I know now that they have a new library director, Patricia Hodapp, who (I think) used to be with the Denver Public Library. She is also an artist and is on the board of Pandas International. I can relate to this since one of my young colleagues is totally obsessed with the new panda cub at the National Zoo. The baby's live cam is bookmarked on the toolbar of our Library's reference computer.

What should I report first? This is the second Sunday of Advent. I cannot find my most precious box of Christmas things, though I have put up the large Creche (inn, etc with lots of camels from the East}.

This afternoon I participated in the Advent/Midwinter Garden at our Waldorf nursery school. We filed into a dark and hushed room with only lyre music playing softly and one candle burning in the middle of a spiral path outlined by evergreens. We adults watched with glistening eyes as each child walked the path into the center, lit his/her candle (mounted in an apple) from the center candle, and placed it somewhere on a silver star along the spiral. I am sure the parents were a bit tense ... "Will my child know what to do? Oh, agony, her candle went out and she is going back to re-light it!" We teachers, on the other hand, apart from our eagle gaze that no-one set himself ablaze, etc.. watched each time to see how this particular child is incarnating. How does he or she move toward the light? What happens after the candle is lit? How confidently/slowly/ thoughtfully/ impetuously/ does this child bring the apple cum candle home to its star, and where on the spiral does the child place the apple? It is not that one analyzes all of this.... just noticing!

And then old friends over for supper, some of it left-overs (or carry-forwards, a useful concept from the Trinidadians). What a jolly evening. Lynn and I hardly mentio9ned politics (what a change from our customary conspiracy theories, perhaps because it all is so over the top these days) but she did Totally Agree that living in Washington is NO WAY TO LIVE.

Aha. Two postings in one day. I have decided currently to go for quantity, not quality. Mozart is blaring in the background as my house-mate tries to recreate the score of the 2005 movie version of Pride & Prejudice,which stubbornly refuses to reveal the originals of the soaring music in the background. Ahhh. I love each and every Mr. Darcy. Am I so fickle - or am I so very, very loyal?

OK. So now I need a link in this posting to make it worth your while, dear accidental reader. Today at work I was busy (totally busy work, believe me) translating the computer-use policy into German. Aaaaargh. Finally I was introduced to a short-cut. You still need a decent conversance with the language into which you are translating. But this is a nifty aid, believe me. The trick is to write the English into straight-forward, non-slangish language before pressing the button to translate.

The Mozart swells in the background as I reveal this wonderfully powerful tool to you, gentle reader.

http://babelfish.altavista.com/

Voila! Mozart sublime.

I just got home from a day at work. 8 hours of serving "the public." Among "the public," however, were old friends - a wonderful poet, craigy-faced and handsome, who looks like he could be a cowboy but has a passionate soul (though I guess some cowboys are of the poetic passionate soul genre); a old friend/journalist who has recently adopted a teen-aged girl who was a child/soldier in Sierra Leone and who is now flourishing in the barren soil of Blair High School - so perhaps it is not totally barren; etc etc. Those were the two connections that come instantly to mind from the 8 hours of manning the Desk. There were more. A few frustrating encounters, but that is to be expected. I am so fortunate... and so exhausted.

I will just wiggle my fingers on the keyboard to keep the dust from settling. ho, ho.

I am desperate. I have not blogged for a very long time. I need to say something, even if it is not edifying, just to blow the dust off of Pipers. I have been in New Mexico for a little while, and it is beautiful. I have seen and experienced art. I have heard coyotes in the night. The full moon was still in the sky yesterday morning. I smelled the creosote bushes. I could "do" all sorts of links here, but I will rest my case until tomorrow.

Ho ho ho. Melangell is distracted by this weekend's events (something about a wedding), so I have hacked into her blog. I am unstoppable!

--Brad the Gorilla (pictured with Filbert, his pet mouse)

This old story is posted here in response to Alkelda the Gleeful's suggestion that stories are more important than the physical objects that remind us of them. Maybe I will even figure out how to take a picture to illustrate the story.

Think of Me

Life in the southern coalfields of West Virginia was very hard. I was lonely, living at the head of a “holler,” with a small child for whom I had to care without benefit of nearby friends, family, or even neighbors, and without the comforts of hot running water, indoor bathrooms, or central heating. My marriage was not happy. Every day I cried.

My parents were faithful visitors several times a year, and it was my father who helped me cope with the winter cold in a practical way. He fashioned a door into the concrete block pump house so that I could still haul water when the pipes froze. He screened in the back porch and then put up plastic to cut the cold winds that would whip down the mountain side. But he couldn’t change the hideously mis-named “Warm Morning” coal stove that spewed forth its tarry smoke until settling down to warm the little house from the living room, blasting out heat at first but then through the night, dying down to pitiful little embers by the cold, very cold, morning.

Mom, on the other hand, told me horror stories of her own early days of marriage and motherhood. I remember how she waited for Dad to get home from the little country school he taught in rural Nebraska when my brother Jim was an infant. She too was cold, and the coal stove was burning low. But when Dad got home, he had a sprained ankle. She still had to struggle out to the coal shed to fetch coal for the stove. At least Dad was there to watch the baby. And, I thought wistfully, at least she was glad that he was home. I think that was the Nebraska winter when there were 40 straight days without the temperature rising above 0 degrees Fahrenheit. That sounded so Biblical, and so depressing!

The stories of my parents’ suffering didn’t really alleviate my current travail. Nor did meditations on the unimaginable hardships of women and children in 3rd world countries make my own troubles seem small. Rather, they all seemed to join together into a dumb, hopeless morass of anguish at the lot of so many on this poor Earth, whatever the time period, wherever the location. On those cold, cold mornings, when the “Warm Morning” glumly sulked and I stayed curled up with my baby in under three massive comforters, I would chant litanies of prayer for all the suffering of the world, but I rarely felt blessed in comparison.

Other than visits from my parents, my sister, or from close friends, my primary comforts were music, reading, and (in warmer weather) the Great Outdoors. And it was in reading that I discovered in the theological thrillers of Charles Williams, the Doctrine of Substituted Love. This was to become an unusual source of strength to me. In the book Descent Into Hell Williams suggests that one person might literally bear another’s burdens (as the Apostle Paul exhorts) and that this act might not be beholden to time or place. In this book, for instance, a descendant of a person put to death for his faith by fire and torture actually takes on much of the suffering of her forebearer out of compassion, and that willingness to do so not only alleviated his suffering centuries before, but her suffering was less than his would have been because it had been taken on willingly and upon another’s behalf.

This Doctrine of Substituted Love really captured my imagination. Maybe the suffering that I felt each day could actually be joined to someone else’s suffering and made meaningful. As it was, I was heartily bored with my own suffering which seemed to have no purpose. It was just there, always and always, and I was tired of my own tears.

The opportunity for Substituted Love which thrust itself to me upon me was the story of my Great-grandmother Maggie. My mother’s mother, Grandma Viola Cooprider, was the oldest child of Grandma Maggie. In the later part of the 1800's, my Grandma Maggie and Grandpa Reuben, along with a number of other family members, had travelled to Kansas by covered wagon and had settled there. On day, when my own Grandma Viola was 6 , Grandpa Reuben and another member of the family (my Mom would know who though I have forgotten) went into town, McPherson, to purchase supplies. They tied up the horses for the day at an establishment where there was reported illness, though “only measles” was the reassurance. The measles sadly turned out to be the dreaded smallpox.

All of the family contracted smallpox, and Grandma Maggie, though sick herself, nursed them all. Neighbors, of course, made a big detour around the farmhouse, afraid of contracting the disease themselves. What seems unimaginable to me, both then and now, was that Grandma Maggie not only nursed her husband, Viola, and Celesta (age 4), but also a 2-year old little boy who died. Grandma Maggie gave birth during this terrible period to another little boy who also dies, so she was faced with the heartbreaking task of burying two babies while sick herself and in the aftermath of having given birth. She must have been able to go on only because of having the two little girls to care for. But years later, all she would allow herself was the wistfulness of having lost the smoothness of her beautiful skin. The other must have been too difficult to touch upon.

Every day after taking the vow to take on some of Grandma Maggie’s suffering, I prayed for her, though this was close to a century later. Could prayer work retroactively through time? It was a matter for faith. The prayers had helped me, but I earnestly hoped that they had helped Grandma Maggie as well. I would never really know.

Years later, after my Aunt Eva died - Eva, who was the caretaker and dispenser of many of the artifacts and memorabilia of the family - I was given several boxes of linens and china that had been earmarked for me. All of the nieces and nephews were given their carefully thought-out portions.

Amongst the newspaper-wrapped treasures that I carefully examined, I came upon a solitary, ruby-colored glass cup, which I later realized came from the Civil War era.. Inside was a paper in my Aunt Eva’s hand. “This is for Jill. It belonged to Maggie and was given to her by her father when she was a young girl.” Etched on the side of the cup was my answer.... “Think of Me.”