The Other Turning

Images of Haiti

2011-05-26T16:29:00.000-07:00

From April 3 to 10, 2011, I along with 12 others from The Gateway Church traveled to Port-au-Prince, Haiti to partner with Builders International to help rebuild what was destroyed in the earthquake. Here are some pictures of my time there.

Here is a little gecko crawling on the ceiling of the deck where we stayed. One thing I love about traveling is seeing all the animals and plants that are native to that area that I never see in Iowa.

As you can see, there is a tent pitched on top of this house. Many Haitians are afraid to move back into their homes lest they collapse because of damage from the January 2010 earthquake or because of another earthquake. Many still live in tent cities. Some have put tents on their houses, thinking that if they do collapse, they can ride it down to the street on the roof.

This is the yard across the street from our job site. In front of the blue barrel is a well. There was a pink bucket on a rope they would lower down to get water. Three different families live in the building in the background. Most Haitian houses are about 10' x 12'.

We had to sift the gravel to get sand for the concrete. That was my job one day. When we were driving to and from our job site, I would see Haitians doing this also.

On Monday, while we were waiting for the presidential election results to be announced, we did various projects around the compound where we were staying. Here we are working on the wall of a 10' x 10' storage shed.

I am in blue, snapping a chalk line across the board.

This is the truck we road everywhere in!

We'd pack the generator, ladders, and other tools we'd need for the day in the center of the truck, and we'd sit on benches along the side.

We laid the corrugated metal floor of this school.

We put a roof on this building, which will one day be the school office.

On Wednesday, while we were waiting for Stephen to come back with all the lumber we would need for the rafters of the roof, we filled a leather glove with gravel and set up two cinder blocks opposite each other. The goal of the game? To toss the glove into the holes of the cinder block! Let me tell you, it is much harder than it may seem! If we had had to wait 2 1/5 hours for lumber in the US, most of us would've been on our phones, texting, checking email, etc., but we were in Haiti, so we invested in our relationships with each other!

A wall of paintings in a Haitian market. We saw these in a number of different places throughout Port-au-Prince.

Because we efficiently completed all our work, on Friday, we drove up into the mountains. Here we are at 4,000 feet, looking down on Port-au-Prince.

Here we are relaxing at the beach. It was gorgeous! I am so glad we were able to see more of Haiti than just Port-au-Prince. On our way to the beach we drove through smaller communities and past some of the tent cities that were established outside the city.

Home Again, Home Again

2010-06-12T19:47:00.000-07:00

And just one week ago about this time, I was driving the final miles to my parent’s house in Lincoln, the first stop on a short vacation that ultimately took my mom and me to Colorado to visit our respective friends. Now, one week later, I have returned from my trip, had my first days back at work, tucked my suitcase back in my closet, and restocked my refrigerator with lots of fresh veggies.

Here are a few highlights from my whirlwind trip!

Having breakfast with my brother and sister-in-law Sunday morning. I saw Brooklyn’s recently finished nursery, save for the closet door, and all the little baby things they have for her so far, including a half dozen pair of Air Jordan’s in all different sizes – my brother’s contribution to her wardrobe! She should be set for a year or two at least.

Driving too and from Colorado with my mom. At seven hours each way, one would think it a long and tedious drive, especially since the Western Nebraska landscape isn’t inherently exciting, although we did see a camel out in the panhandle, but the drive seemed to go quickly as we had lots of talking and reading to do!

Cooking with Clarissa. No sooner had I arrive Sunday night then she put me to work helping her to finish our dinner of beans and rice. Monday night we had our “official” cooking date, making rigatoni, oatmeal bread and banana cake. Yum! Good thing I brought my Wii along. We had several less than stellar games of tennis and bowling after dinner. (This is the only picture I have of my time with Clarissa; I'll have to remember my whole visit with her by our oatmeal bread.)

Visiting the Byers-Evans House in Denver with Clarissa. We were given a personal tour, because no one else was there to take the tour with us, by one of her classmates of the Italianate-style home, which was built in 1883 by William Byers, who was the editor of Denver’s first newspaper. William G. Evans, the son of a Colorado territorial governor, bought the home in 1889. The house was restored to the period between 1912 and 1924 – I loved the bold Art Nuveo wallpapers! The Evans women led very intriguing lives. For example, Josephine studied art in Paris, specializing in weaving and leather work. She also served as a nurse during WWI. Her boyfriend died during the war, and she returned to her family’s home in Denver, devoting herself to her art, never marrying.

Reading a 1922 Larimer County Extension Report at the CSU archive. Clarissa stumbled across it as she was doing research for one of her classes and took me to see it as a surprise! Several millinery classes had been taught in the county, and the report contained several pages describing the number of hats that were made or refurbished and the number of silk and organdy flowers made by the various participants. As evidence of the participant’s success, the woman preparing the report also listed the awards several won at the county and state fair for their millinery work. My favorite anecdote was about an older woman who prior to the class wore quite “unbecoming” hats, which were from 1908. However, she made a new hat and wore it into town that day, receiving many complements on it. (Several other women also work their new creations into town that day also.)

Being with Halley. I last saw Halley and her family in September, and it was delightful to see her again. Halley and I were able to catch up on many recent happenings as we knitted and played with her daughter. Livi just recently turned one and has started walking! It was fun to see how much she has grown and how her little personality is emerging.

And the baby is....

2010-05-18T19:52:00.000-07:00

May 18
6:05 P

From: Peter Simmons
Its a little baby girl

Niece or Nephew?

2010-05-17T20:37:00.000-07:00

My brother, sister-in-law, and I have been exchanging a flurry of texts over the past few hours about little Baby Simmons. Today they went in for their ultrasound to find out if they are having a boy or a girl. They’ve decided to keep it a secret for 24 hours, so I wont actually find out until tomorrow, but here are the texts we exchanged in the meantime…

May 17, 2010

3:05 P
From: Liz Simmons
Guessing time! What do you think our baby is?

3:28 P
To: Liz Simmons
Dreamed you had a girl, but I think you are actually having a boy. Am excited to find out!!

3:28 P
From: Liz Simmons
so your guess is Boy?

3:31 P
To: Liz Simmons
Yes indeed! What is the current tally for boy vs girl?

3:33 P
From: Liz Simmons
6-boy 9-girl.

3:34 P
From: Liz Simmons
7-boy 9-girl * just got an update

3:37 P
To: Liz Simmons
Oh, it is getting close! You two must be having fun with this – leaving us in suspense! 

3:38 P
From: Liz Simmons
Yes! I’m going to put this in the baby book too!

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

5:41 P
From: Peter Simmons
The baby looks very healthy

5:48 P
To: Peter Simmons
So glad to hear that! Must have been exciting to see your baby again.

5:51 P
From: Peter Simmons
Yep

5:52 P
From: Peter Simmons
Saw the little hands open and close

5:52 P
From: Peter Simmons
9 ounces

5:57 P
To: Peter Simmons
Oh, wow, that is so amazing! Makes my heart so happy to hear that! I am still smiling thinking about Baby Simmons’ little hand.

What do you write?

2010-05-04T19:30:00.000-07:00

Tonight I attended a writing group at a local bookstore. It was a feeble step in my attempt to become more connected to other writers in Des Moines and perhaps find some motivation to write more consistently on my own. In college I wrote all the time. I had too. I was a History and Writing & Rhetoric major which meant semesters filled with research papers and essays. After graduation, the deadlines disappeared, and my writing lagged. It’s not that I don’t want to write, but there are always so many other things to do. (I don’t know whether or not I should take comfort from the fact that most writers say this.)

I wasn’t quite sure of what to expect from this gathering. I knew we wouldn’t be workshopping any pieces, but I wasn’t sure what type of discussion we’d have. So, I can’t exactly say I was disappointed by my experience – let’s just say it was interesting.

There were ten of us there, all were forty something and older expect for one girl who was my age. The atmosphere was perfect. We were tucked in the corner of the bookstore, so we were surrounded by shelves upon shelves of books! The gentleman in charge of the group began by passing out plastic champaign glasses of Sangria and handouts about writing quarry letters, cover letters and blogs. We didn’t talk much about them. From there the conversation wandered as participants asked questions and shared experiences. One gentleman is in the middle of writing a sequel to a novel he published last fall. Another is expecting a book out next month. One writer offered some suggestions about working with agents. Another talked about an authors’ conference coming up in September. Another talked about her appointment with an agent at a Wisconsin writing conference next week. This will be her chance to sell her book!

Of course, since I was new, they wanted to know what I write. Who are you? and What do you write?

I was dreading this question. Write? What do I write? The who I am is easy enough, but how do I describe what I write, what I want to write and more importantly that I don’t really write which is why I have such a vague notion of what I write in the first place. I know that what I say will push me into a genre box of sorts, which is ok, but in my first meeting, how do I want them to think about who I am. If I told them I wrote memoir or romance or mysteries, they would readily understand that.

I told them I write essays. Nice broad brush stroke. I should have known it wouldn’t be enough. Well, what kind of essays, they want to know. Ummm…essays about some of my life experiences, I say, I’d like to write about the museum where I work and history and my own experiences working in the past although it really isn’t like what it was like in the past. It sounds flimsy, like I have no idea of what I’m doing, which would be accurate. I really don’t.

To be honest, most of my recent writing has just been writing exercises. Some of my writing prompts have resulted in fiction. Some have the feelings of an essay, others are autobiographical and some are just descriptions of things. I’m just trying to put in some training miles, trying to make writing a habit, something I need to do everyday.

Of course, now that I am home and writing about my experience, I’ve figured out what I should have said to the question of, What do you write?

I write creative non-fiction, I'll say next time. Are you familiar with Annie Dillard? She writes brilliant things about life by writing about insects and clouds and sand. I want to do something similar, but by writing about historic moments and objects and connecting those objects to the past and the present. I wrote about a fountain. I want to write about hair and desks and penmanship. I wonder what they will say then.

A Rainy Day

2010-04-24T17:09:00.000-07:00

Tonight as I was driving home from work in the pouring rain, tires splashing through overflowing gutters, slowing to a stop for two rain soaked girls to run barefoot across the street, I was reminded of something that a friend and I did years ago……

Back when I lived in Ft. Collins, CO, on another rain filled afternoon, my best friend Halley and I were playing at my house. (My guess is we were in kindergarten, but even if we had only been in preschool, we were only in school in the mornings.) As it was nearing the time for my older sister to get out of school, my mom decided to let Halley and I walk the two blocks to school to meet her. Because it was so rainy, we decided we should wear boots lest our feet get soaked. However, we did have any rain boots, so we decided to wear my parents’ moon boots.

Off we set. Instead of walking on the sidewalk where our feet would have been sure to stay dry, we found it more adventurous to slog through the overflowing gutters. It was probably an accident at first that some water got into our boots. They were too big after all, and we were splashing through the gutters, but after the little bit first got in, we began to plot. We decided it would be funny to fill our boots with water, so that when we took them off when we got home, water would spill all over the floor. Of course, we would pretend that we had no idea there was even any water in our boots! We started doing knee bends, dragging our boot tops through the water to fill them up. I pictured little worms being swept up inside the dark corners of my boots. I could feel the water squishing around my toes.

We met my sister and walked properly home with her.

Then the moment arrived - the moment when we would execute the final piece of our scheme. Off we pulled our boots. Out poured the water…all over the linoleum of the entryway floor, into a puddle between the long, pseudo stained glass window and our hall tree. My mom’s surprise and dismay, our shoulder shrug and “We don’t know how that happened! It was really wet outside.” Mom grabbed some towels to begin mopping up the mess. I don’t think we were punished for it. Perhaps Mom really did think it an accident, after all, why would we intentionally fill our boots with water?

Several years later when Halley and I were reminiscing about this incident, Mom said she had absolutely no memory of this ever taking place. Nothing we said could even jog the slightest hint of this memory in her mind. If it happened, she must have blocked it from her memory. Were we sure we really did that? But if Halley and I both remember it, it must have happened, right?

He is Risen!

2010-04-04T16:10:00.000-07:00

Now after the Sabbath, as it began to dawn toward the first day of the week, Mary Magdalene and the other Mary came to look at the grave.

And behold, a severe earthquake had occurred, for an angel of the Lord descended from heaven and came and rolled away the stone and sat upon it.

And his appearance was like lightning, and his clothing as white as snow.

The guards shook for fear of him and became like dead men.

The angel said to the women, "Do not be afraid; for I know that you are looking for Jesus who has been crucified.

"He is not here, for He has risen, just as He said. Come, see the place where He was lying.

"Go quickly and tell His disciples that He has risen from the dead; and behold, He is going ahead of you into Galilee, there you will see Him; behold, I have told you."

And they left the tomb quickly with fear and great joy and ran to report it to His disciples.

Matthew 28

2010-04-02T07:13:00.000-07:00

When I Survey the Wondrous Cross

By Isaac Watts

When I survey the wondrous cross

on which the Prince of Glory died;

my richest gain I count but loss,

and pour contempt on all my pride.

Forbid it, Lord, that I should boast,

save in the death of Christ, my God;

all the vain things that charm me most,

I sacrifice them to his blood.

See, from his head, his hands, his feet,

sorrow and love flow mingled down.

Did e'er such love and sorrow meet,

or thorns compose so rich a crown.

Were the whole realm of nature mine,

that were an offering far too small;

love so amazing, so divine,

demands my soul, my life, my all.

Japan: Kingdom of Dolls

2010-03-29T11:20:00.000-07:00

Last Friday I saw an exhibit of 70 Japanese dolls currently on display at the Iowa State Historical Society Museum. (By some crazy coincidence I happened to be there at the same time probably 75 to 100 Japanese students were touring the museum. Almost everyone who was viewing the exhibit with me was speaking Japanese!) I’ve always been fascinated by dolls. Growing up they were one of my favorite things to play with, and even now, when I spot a doll in a museum exhibit or antique store, I am drawn to it, wondering about their lives when they still belonged to someone. Japanese dolls are not exclusively play things, as they are in America, but the have a rich heritage in the country, thus making Japan, a “kingdom of dolls.”

There were over a dozen different categories of dolls on display: Hina and Gogatsu dolls are used in the celebration of the girls and boys festivals each spring, Noh and Bunraku dolls that depict different aspects of Japanese theater traditions, Oshie Hagoita are cut from thick paper and then wrapped with silk or cotton, Hakata dolls are molded from clay and then brilliantly painted, Ichimatsu dolls specifically depict Japanese children.

Despite all these different categories, nine times out of ten, Japanese dolls have very serene expressions and their clothing will point to the richness of Japan’s ancient costumes and pageantry. (Also, one interesting tidbit, the dolls’ faces are made from layers of pulverized oyster shells.) There was one doll which should have had anything but a serene expression on his face as it appeared he was about to be blown away by a gust of wind! He was balanced on the toes of one foot with his other leg kicked up at an angle in front of him, almost if he was preparing to step to the right with a flourished kick. The blue and white paper umbrella he was holding was thrust almost completely horizontal. There wasn’t a hint of shock or surprise registered on his face. He just looked like he was out for a pleasant stroll.

I was most drawn to the Kokeshi and Oyama dolls. The Kokeshi dolls are made from blocks of wood using Japanese woodturning techniques. The traditional dolls have long, rounded bodies with large rounded heads placed squarely on top. They are all uniform in size, shape and expression, and look like bowling pins all lined up, just with a slightly different silhouette! I like the creative Kokeshi dolls better. They began to be crafted after WWII, born of the craftsmen’s desire for free imagination. Some of these dolls are cylindrical while others are round and others are more square. Some have distinctive heads carved above the body, while others have a face that is just carved into the one piece of wood. Many of these dolls had intricate designs carved into their bodies. I was amazed to see the variety of emotions created in these dolls with a few lines and dots of paint for their facial features. The Oyama dolls wore elaborate hairstyles and costumes, depicting the fashions of Japanese women. Their clothing was vibrant made from reds and oranges, patterned with elaborate embroidery.

I certainly felt like an outsider trying to look in and understand the Japanese culture in a bit better through the frame provided by these dolls, but they certainly kept hidden more than they revealed. I left wondering about other cultures where dolls were important and how something that is just a plaything in one culture can take on such significance in another.

My Favorite Flowers

2010-03-16T17:03:00.000-07:00

Today was the gloomy variety of March days, and I was thankful to have these cheery daffodils, given to me by one of my friends, to brighten my table. I think part of the reason I love daffodils so much is because they seem to herald the beginning of spring. You can watch them bloom in a matter of hours, and they seem to be so full of eager life when their petals have fully opened.

MOMCC in Kansas City

2010-03-07T18:53:00.000-08:00

Yesterday I returned from three days in Kansas City, KS, where I attended the Spring MOMCC conference (Midwest Open-Air Museums Coordinating Council). Not only was I able to enjoy three days without looking at any snow, I was able to spend time with employees and volunteers from a variety of other museums and historical societies. Each spring and fall since I began working at Living History Farms, I’ve watched some of my coworkers head off to MOMCC and return excited about the people they’d spent time with and the workshops they attended. I was excited when my supervisor told me she wanted to send me this year. MOMCC ended up being a very different experience than I anticipated. A lot was packed into the three days, so the following are just a few highlights.

The conference was hosted by Mahaffie Stagecoach Stop & Farm Historic Site. (This is the only intact stagecoach stop left on the Santa Fe Trail.) On Thursday I took a slat sunbonnet workshop. I started sewing it while I was there, but it’s only about half finished. We were able to look at several historic sunbonnets while we worked on ours to see the variety of things that were done with them. My favorite bonnet was the doll slat sunbonnet, which was constructed precisely how we were making ours – just smaller! We also read some primary accounts of mid-nineteenth century women talking about how annoying it was to wear this large bonnet, with wooden slats in the brim to make it stand straight out from their faces, but how very practical it was at the same time.

Friday I attended workshops on the different costumed interpretation traditions, the history of “Bleeding Kansas,” and the importance of your museum’s mission in planning programming. I also went to the foodways, clothing/textile, and artisans resource groups. Saturday I went to workshops on how to incorporate research into your interpretation and on how to fold and pack nineteenth-century clothing for travel without it getting all rumpled and wrinkled. This is quite the feat if you’ve ever seen some of the fancy 1870s overskirts people wear!

Friday night we toured Mahaffie and rode in their reproduction stagecoaches. We crammed five women into our stagecoach, and it was quite cozy. I couldn’t even sit back in my seat. I can’t imagine traveling any sort of distance in one! My friend Lucy and I spent a lot of time in the kitchen looking at their cookbooks, several of which we have at our museum, and exclaiming over their tiny woodstove that they were managing to bake biscuits in. It certainly made me thankful for the large six-burner woodstove I get to cook on at Living History Farms. We discovered that they had a round woodpile also! We take great pride in our round woodpile at LHF, so I took a picture of Lucy next to it just as two Mahaffie interpreters rounded the corner. The gentleman proceeded to give us a hard time about it, saying we were only taking the photos to showoff to our co-workers how much better our woodpile was than theirs. They threatened to confiscate my camera later in the evening over it too! Honestly, I just thought it was neat that they also had a round woodpile, although it is true that ours is about four times bigger than theirs. However, they justified its size by explaining that they just butchered four pigs, so they had to burn through a lot of it. It was much bigger several weeks ago.

After several days of talking with other museum folk about where they work, I must say I am glad that I work at LHF. I love my museum, and I am thankful for my place there.

Happy St. David's Day!

2010-03-01T19:24:00.000-08:00

I smiled when I turned my calendar this morning and saw that today is St. David’s Day! Whenever I hear of St. David, I am reminded of leeks, daffodils, and my semester abroad in Wales during my senior year of college. While there I studied at Trinity College in Carmarthen. There were about a dozen American students in my program. While we were encouraged to take classes that were apart of Trinity’s regular course offerings, thus getting to be in class with Welsh students, we were also required to take a Welsh culture class that was just for the American students. It was in this class that I first learned of St. David, the patron saint of Wales, and the tradition of wearing leeks on St. David’s Day.

St. David was born in Wales in the 6th century and made his mark by founding monastic settlements and churches as he helped spread Christianity among the pagan Celtic people of Wales. He also became the arch bishop of Wales. The leek became his symbol because of the strategic role it played in a battle between the Welsh and Saxons. In order for the Welsh to not confuse friend with foe, St. David told them to wear leeks in their hats to distinguish them from the Saxons. The Welsh were victorious as a result!

St. David was canonized in the 12th century, and as the Welsh began celebrating his feast day, it became tradition to wear a leek on March 1 to commemorate him. At some point, though, the women started pinning daffodils to their bodices, perhaps deciding that wearing a type of onion was not very feminine. (Our instructor told us that if we were in Wales during the spring semester we would see fields and fields of daffodils blooming.) Our instructor told us of a humorous contest that eventually became part of this leek wearing tradition – that of the longest leek! It was quite simple; the gentlemen would measure their leeks to see who was wearing the largest/longest one. I’m not quite sure what you received if you won or even what it proved to win this contest; I can’t quite see it being a mark of your masculinity, although I think that’s what it originally signified!

(I have a great photo of one of my friends holding a leek, but I can't find it right now, so I put in a picture of St. David's Cathedral in Wales instead. It was a beautiful place to see!)

Oh, I should also add that remembering St. David and leeks also reminds me of cock-a-leekie-soup and my dear friend, Clarissa, which makes me smile too!

Time to be Active!

2010-01-25T15:25:00.000-08:00

If you had told me a week ago that I would buy a Wii, I would have laughed and said that I would never have any reason to spend that kind of money on a gaming system. Well, that reason came in the form of snow and ice upon snow and ice which has prevented me from going out for my daily walk for much too long now. I like being active and dislike going to a gym. Last week I reached the breaking point. I’ve been doing way too much sitting recently, so I started looking at compact exercise equipment that would give me a good work out without taking up much space in my small apartment. I talked with one of my friends about what I was thinking about getting. He told me I might think it a crazy idea, but he thought a Wii Fit might actually be the best option. His family has it and loves it. As I looked into it further, it seemed like it would be the best fit. It’s compact, has variety, and would get me moving again. So off to the store I went. I set it up successfully last night, which is a small feet in and of itself since I am not too technologically oriented, and I love it! Last night I went for a short run and played some tennis and baseball. This morning I did a hula-hoop activity and some strength training. The Wii has confirmed that I still have bad hand-eye coordination, a poor sense of rhythm, and not the best balance. Ah well, things to improve on I suppose as I watch the 50mph winds swirl the falling snow around outside once again. Perhaps I should try some yoga!

The Lion King

2010-01-21T17:58:00.000-08:00

Last night my sister and I attended The Lion King. I’d seen the Broadway musical when it was in Des Moines four years ago and was excited to see the performance again! My sister and I were about a dozen rows from the stage – far enough away to see the entire stage and close enough to see the performers’ facial expressions as well as the details of the costumes and puppets! It is amazing to think of all the individual talent that went into the creation of the show and was shared with us.

After the performance we stayed for a short Q&A session with four of the performers: two individuals from the ensemble, Tony Freeman who played Zazo, and Ben Lipitz who played Pumba. From them we learned that they actually have two complete sets. While one is being used, the other is in transit to the next location and assembled so when the show closes in one city, the performers can fly to the next city and be ready to rehearse/perform the very next day while the set is being torn down in the city they just left. Something usually goes wrong every performance. Last night, for example, the black curtains blocking the backstage from the stage quit working. The performers had to be extra quiet and had to be careful to stay out of the audiences’ line of sight. While one of the ensemble members, who is single and doesn’t have a mortgage, loves to travel all of the US performing, Freeman expressed how hard it can be to be separated from his wife and daughter for long periods of time. With their performance schedule, if the performers want to see their family, their family has to come to them. The performers only get two weeks vacation a year and often aren’t able to make it home to celebrate the holidays with their families. Despite these challenges, they love what they do. Freeman has been Zazo for nine years, and Lipitz has been with the show for seven years. They each mentioned what an exciting experience it is to tell this story each night in live theater. Hearing more about what it takes each individual to perform their part made me appreciate the show all the more.

Oh, I should also mention the other exciting component of our evening – the weather. When I bought our tickets about six weeks ago, I did so with the realization that with it being January, we could have a lovely evening for the performance or we could have a terrible storm which would prevent Rachel from driving to Des Moines from Lincoln and from us attending the performance at all. I crossed my fingers that it would be the former rather than the later. Unfortunately it was the later. Rachel came a day early to make sure she arrived before the forecasted ice storm. Yesterday morning we woke up to a world encased in ice. We had to skate, quite literally, across the parking lot to my car to chip all the ice off of it so we could go to dinner and then the performance. Fortunately, the roads were not slick, and we did not fall traversing the ice going to and from my car. The storm certainly added an element of danger to the experience, turning it into an adventure

A Truck, the Tree, and a TV

2009-12-26T08:52:00.000-08:00

A Truck:

Almost two weeks ago, my brother bought a new truck after planning and talking about doing so for the last several years. It’s a large Ford F150, with an extended cab and 5 ½ foot bed. With two wheel and four wheel drive, he feels his truck can get through anything, and indeed it seems it can. With his truck he is more than willing to play the hero, transporting us through the ice and snow that our little cars are helpless against. It was his truck that enabled our family to have Christmas this year.

I drove to Lincoln Monday, thankful to be able to arrive ahead of a massive storm system that was preparing to move through the Midwest. It moved slowly, arriving in Lincoln later than scheduled but living up to its potential, dropping rain, ice and snow all across the state. Christmas Eve services went ahead as scheduled in Lincoln, although they were cancelled in many communities west of us. The weather was deteriorating as the time for us to leave for church approached, and Dad didn’t want to risk it. My mom, dad, sister and I had our own little service at home, while my brother and sister-in-law went to church.

They arrived in the midst of swirling fluffy snow a bit later in the evening for our traditional meal of clam chowder, cheese and crackers, and snowman roll. When it was time for my sister to leave at 10pm for her overnight shift, my brother was more than happy to give her a ride there and to take me for a ride in the new truck. The roads were bad but not horrible, and he was quite pleased to demonstrate just how effective four wheel drive is compared to two wheel drive when driving through snow-filled streets. He laughed at me when I still grabbed the handle on the door, certain that the back end of the truck would still swing out and smack one of the cars parked quietly on the road!

Christmas morning, Peter and Liz picked my sister up at work and came over for gifts and dinner. The roads had become quite horrible overnight. Without the truck, Liz said, they wouldn’t have been able to make it across town. Peter had bought his truck just in time.

The Tree:

Growing up, we had always had a live Christmas tree. Getting poked by pine needles and having sap residue left on your fingers as you decorated was just part of the festivities. When I went to college, my parents started using an artificial tree. I missed the fresh pine smell the most, but I had to admit that not having hundreds of pine needles to clean up once we took the tree down was a nice change. We wouldn’t have to worry about the tree falling over and soaking our gifts either as had happened on past Christmases

This year, in Victorian fashion, we didn’t decorate our 5 foot, artificial tree until Tuesday night. Dad had actually set it up about two weeks ago with Mom adding lights a week later. It was finally time for the ornaments to be hung! We hung beaded angels, stars, umbrella, gazebos, and icicles. The finished effect was quite nice. But not two hours later, as Mom and I sat at the dining room table, we heard a rustle, a whoosh, and a plop as the tree landed on its side. We picked it up, Mom weighted the base, we redecorated the side that had smashed against the carpet, and we rearranged the gifts under the tree, thankful that none had gotten wet. All seemed to be well.

Christmas Eve morning I was awakened to Mom’s hurried whisper, “Allison, the tree fell down again! Can you come help me?! I was just sitting at the table and there it went.” I crawled out of bed to embark on our mission to rescue the tree, but it was not to be. We tried taping the base with duck tape, but when I’d let go of the trunk, it just listed to the side, pulling the duck tape up with it. We tried tying it up, but there wasn’t an effective place to tie it to. Finally, we just decided to give up on the tall tree and nab my sister’s small two foot tree so we’d at least have something to put our gifts under!

“The fake tree fell over?!” my brother said later. “How is that possible?!” How indeed.

A TV:

Six weeks ago my brother called me to see if I would be interested in going in on a flat screen TV for our dad for Christmas. He thought it would be an awesome gift for him; he would never suspect it in a million years, and he would absolutely love it. I agreed. It would be the perfect gift.

We set our plan in motion. The day after Thanksgiving, my sister-in-law braved the 5am Target crowds to secure a spectacular TV at a great price. The day before Christmas Eve, my brother delivered the 32” Sony TV to our house and hid it in my mom’s closet.

On Christmas morning, Mom kept Dad busy in the kitchen so Liz and Peter could hide the clues and Peter could set up the TV in Dad’s study. The surprise was almost spoiled when Dad decided he needed to go upstairs to get a hat to wear during gift opening. His head was cold. Rachel, Liz and I looked at each other trying to figure out how to stop him without giving anything away. Fortunately Peter came down the stairs as Dad was just getting ready to head up, blocking the way. He forbade him from going upstairs and found Dad’s stocking cap for him to wear.

Gift giving proceeded as usual. Finally, there was just one gift under the tree – Dad’s first clue. He unwrapped one clue and then another, making his way upstairs, the rest of us following along behind. When Dad opened the last clue, the instruction manual for the TV, Dad opened it and said, “Are you serious, you have to be kidding.” He just stood by the study door, disbelieving. “Open the door and see!” Mom said. He opened the door a smidge, hardly believing his eyes. “Wow,” was all he could say. “Wow. Wow.” Then a round of hugs. We all admired the TV before traipsing back down the stairs to get our turkey dinner on the table.

We played Wii that afternoon on the big screen and later the guys watched basketball. Dad watched Lord of the Rings last night. Everything is so much sharper now and that much better. He is looking forward to watching his PBS specials in high definition. He most certainly is set for years to come, and how special for us to be the bearers of such a gift!

Good-Bye to Kinko's

2009-11-19T17:47:00.000-08:00

Today I officially closed the FedEx Kinko’s chapter of my life with a good-bye note and plate of chocolate chip cookies to my coworkers.
I began working at Kinko’s in October 2005. As a recent college grad, I had landed an internship at Living History Farms for the summer. When my internship ended, there was a position open for me to continue on as a floater. However, as summer turned to fall, and the last day of season drew closer, so too did my guarantee of full time work at the museum. My winter hours at LHF would depend completely on the number of individuals who decided to book a historic dinner or bring their students out to participate in one of our education programs.

A part time job would be necessary to supplement my LHF income and guarantee the bills, and the student loans, would still be paid. I started at FedEx Kinko’s in October. That winter, if I wasn’t at LHF, I was at Kinko’s filling paper, helping customers run double-sided copies, taking orders, and learning how to run the auxiliary equipment.

When the season began again on May 1, 2006, I returned to LHF full time and only worked two nights a week at Kinko’s in order to keep my job for the following winter. For the next two years, I expanded my hours at Kinko’s during LHF’s winter season, and then scaled back when I could work fulltime at LHF.

However, as my job responsibilities increased at LHF, I found the two evenings a week at Kinko’s to be just a little too much for my packed schedule. My manager was gracious enough to let me take a leave of absence from June until November. He then allowed me to begin my leave of absence in April for this past season. I was to have returned this month, and I had every intention of doing so, but last Thursday, I called my manager and officially terminated my employment.

Last week I was hired to be the Lead Town Interpreter- 1875 Walnut Hill Shops at Living History Farms. It is a promotion of sorts, although I will continue doing much of what I’ve already been doing over this last year: making schedules, planning trainings, supervising the professional sites. Some of my new responsibilities include advising and being a resource to the supervisors of the General Store and Drug Store. The most significant difference is that now instead of being hourly and full-time seasonally, I am salaried and full-time year round!

Ever since I started working at Kinko’s I wanted to be in a position to just have one job, but now that I can have just one job, I feel a bit sad and not as excited as I thought I would be. In some ways, I feel that I am losing a bit of my identity. I had carved out my place at Kinko’s, built relationships with my co-workers there and had regular customers that I enjoyed chatting with. Now, in order for me to move forward in my new role at LHF, I have to say good-bye to that part of me.

So, first, what I won’t miss one iota about Kinko’s:

Enforcing copyright law, particularly for family photos at Christmas and Senior photos in April.
The long lines of impatient customers who are upset that it is taking so long to pick-up their order or place their order.
Apoligzing profusely to an irritated customer that their job wasn’t done correctly even though I had absolutely nothing to do with their order.
Throwing away old family photographs that were left on the copier because they had been held in lost and found for the prescribed amount of time.
Wearing my uniform of navy pants that never fit quite right, a belt that was too big and a black and purple shirt. (They are getting new uniforms soon, so I don’t have to turn in my current ones. I suppose I can always put them on again if I do end up missing them!)

But then there are things I will defiantly miss:

Chatting with Dianna and Heather during slow periods by our register near the doors. Dianna always had something interesting happening with one of her kids or grandkids, and Heather was always thinking about something interesting or wondering about some topic we could discuss.
Seeing some of our regulars: the elderly lady who made color copies of her watercolors of flowers and gardens, the woman who copied all the brochures for these group tours, the gal from Earl May Gardens and Nursery down the street, the guy who tried to get Heather and I to caucus for Ron Paul during the 2008 election and kept informing us of the latest conspiracy for the US to become one country with Mexico and Canada.
Knowing about concerts, conventions, restaurant openings, etc. in the Des Moines area simply because I helped the customer run their job.
The quiet activity of getting the store ready in the morning: filling copiers, straightening paper, dusting, cleaning glass, etc. I could usually just think about my day and all the things I wanted and needed to do – usually at LHF!
My discount (I didn’t copy things that often, but when I did, it was nice to have!)

Kinko’s was a great place to work. I have no doubt that it was God’s provision for me during the time I needed it, but now He has provided a new job and with it, a new challenge, for me. It’s time now for me to drop the title of Kinko’s employee and dive headfirst into my new role at LHF!

Signs of the Season

2009-11-03T18:38:00.000-08:00

The change in weather is, of course, one of the first indicators that the seasons are about to change. For example, the leaves turned yellow, orange and red. I began walking out my apartment in my morning into crisp, fall air. There was condensation on my apartment windows. Fall had arrived. But there are other, more subtle things, which poke into your consciousness too, and say, “Hey, things are changing; the next season is just around the corner!” And which season is it that all these little things are pointing to so strongly? Christmas!?! In the two days following Halloween, I noticed these harbingers:

Sunday, November 1:

At church they passed out the CD of music for the preschoolers to begin learning for the Christmas program.
When I bought something at Border’s Bookstore after church (and I must admit it was a Christmas present. Hey, I had a 40% off coupon, and it does pay to plan ahead!), they asked me if I needed a gift receipt. Now I don’t shop at Border’s often enough to know if they always ask you if you need a gift receipt, but it was another indicator that our gift giving season is upon us.
Amazon now has a lovely Christmas tree swirling across the top of their home page.
The Toys-R-Us complete toy catalogue was tucked in the newspaper. I guess it’s time for all the little children to begin writing their Christmas letters to Santa!
The grocery ads are filled with kidney beans and black beans and chili beans and everything you need to make those yummy winter comfort foods! Hot dog buns won't be advertised again until May! Coupons for cold medicine and Kleenex and cough drops abound. Coupons for bug repellants and sun block will return once again in the spring.

Monday, November 2:

As I was out running errands, I drove by a church which now has their entire Christmas tree display set up in their front lawn. They have dozens upon dozens of trees of all heights surrounding the building. During the day, the trees are very reminiscent of a Southern belle's hoop skirt as the strings of lights stretch from the tip of a pole to a circular base. When I drove by on my way home from work tonight, they didn’t have them lit up yet; maybe they’ll actually wait until after Thanksgiving for that!
Hy-Vee had deposited all their Halloween candy in clearance carts at the front of the store and was restocking the empty shelves with bags of red and green M&Ms and snow-flaked, silver-foiled peppermint patties.
I received my first red and green Bed, Bath, and Beyond coupon in the mail. No more of their traditional blue until January!

So it appears that Dairy Queen with their oh, so delicious pumpkin pie blizzard is the only one remembering that Thanksgiving does indeed lie between now and Christmas. Otherwise, hang on, because it appears that it is now full-steam ahead to December 25!

Spices Galore!

2009-10-12T15:03:00.000-07:00

I was a bit taken aback yesterday when I opened my kitchen cupboard that contains all my spices, canned food, and general baking/cooking ingredients. The entire bottom shelf is completely filled with spices! Now I know this shouldn’t come as a shock; after all, I have commented about my expanding collection of spices. I am also the one who purchased them and arranged them just that way in the cupboard. Be that as it may, I was still a bit overwhelmed by all the little canisters sitting in neat little rows, staring back at me. How did I ever reach this point, especially considering my culinary training?

Growing up, I believed the only spices you needed to have a well stocked spice cupboard were: 1. Salt - mostly so Dad had some to put on his popcorn. It never appeared on the dinner table unless we were eating corn on the cob
2. Pepper - for the very occasional scrambled eggs and hamburgers
3. Minced onion – once again for the hamburgers
4. Italian seasoning - for our weekly ground turkey spaghetti sauce
5. Sage – for our holiday turkey dressing
6. Chili powder – for my brother to dump, and yes, I do mean dump, on his chili
7. Cinnamon – for the crumbly coffee cake I loved to make at least twice a month
8. Nutmeg – for apple crisps and our Thanksgiving pumpkin pies
9. Cloves – same as above

These nine spices, and there may have actually been one or two more, would suffice for any and all cooking needs. I didn’t even consider a recipe that required any more than two or three spices, and it certinaly didn't recieve a second glance if it required things like “fresh ginger” and “cloves of garlic.” Very occasionally, I would get adventuresome and try something that called for a more unusual spice, and Mom would have to make a quick run to the grocery store to get it. (This is how Five Spice made it into my mom's kitchen cupboard.) Overall though, I passed a happy childhood eating foods flavored only by the above.

I remember once in high school, I contemplated jazzing up our everyday chicken and pasta dishes by experimenting with different herbs and spices. But then it seemed much too complicated to actually get the right combinations without having a specific recipe to follow, so I didn’t contemplate this idea for very long.

When I left for college, I began building my spice collection. I had cinnamon, cloves, nutmeg and Italian Seasoning. (You can also see from this list that I liked baking much more than cooking!) Then I moved into my own apartment, and my little store of spices began to grow a bit. I added things like salt, pepper and garlic powder to the mix. They all fit into a little corner of one my cupboard shelves.

Then I became roommates with Clarissa. She loved spices. She was the spice expert. Her spices filled an entire shelf of one of our kitchen cupboards. Whenever she was cooking, or we were making something together, she knew exactly how much of which spice to dump in to add just a little more unique flavor. If Clarissa used a recipe, it was just the basis to which she added or omitted various herbs and spices as she saw fit, with very successful results. She inspired me, and I endeavored to learn as much as I could from her.

The second contributing factor to my current level of spice ownership was Clarissa’s and my decision to give Indian cooking a try. We both loved Indian food, and since we loved eating it so much decided it would be a great idea to try making it. We got a cookbook and discovered that we owned very few of the spices needed to make any of the recipes. Not only would we need fresh ginger and garlic cloves, more of a shock to me than to her, we also needed things like cardamom pods, turmeric, and coriander. So these spices were purchased and added to the neat little rows in Clarissa’s spice cupboard.

After Clarissa got married and I moved into my own apartment, I, of course, had to purchase my own of all the spices we had been able to share while roommates. We continued to be cooking buddies and frequently tried new recipes, some of which required various spices, which one or the other of us would have to buy. Then there were also the times we’d be cooking at Clarissa’s apartment, and I would comment while digging through her spices for the fenugreek, “Oh, I don’t have this spice.”

“What?!” She would exclaim, “I can’t believe you don’t have it! Allie, you really need to get it. It’s amazing.” and I would make a mental note to pick it up at the store the next time I was there.

So, I suppose that is the long and the short of my spice journey, and why I own all the dozens of spices I do. It comes in handy, having such a stash, because now as I look at recipes, I am more likely to eliminate a recipe that only calls for three spices and uses powdered garlic rather than garlic cloves. I love the layers of flavor that come from all the spices melding together, and I love the variety of the textures and colors of the whole spices! I think that is actually one reason why I love Indian cooking – just look at the whole spices needed to make a wonderful dish of Royal Chicken cooked in yogurt! I get the feeling that I am actually creating something as I cook.

Now that I cook with all these different spices, my next goal is to train my tongue to discern all which specific spices were used to make my food whenever I go out to eat – just like Clarissa. Now I can pick out some of the more distinctive flavors, but not as many as she can nor as quickly. I have many great memories of us eating somewhere together, and she’ll have taken not two bites of her meal before she is saying, oh, I think it has this in it and that as well. Now I think it might have this; she’ll take another bite, chew thoughtfully and then state her final opinion. Once she names it, I can taste it too. After a bit, she may say, “I like it, but I wouldn’t put as much turmeric in it. Or, I think it would be better if they had added more coriander.” I always believe her, even if I can’t quite taste it, because she is still the spice expert, and although I’ve come a long way, I am still learning.

Colorado Vacation

2009-09-16T19:03:00.000-07:00

It is hard to believe that just a week ago I was in Colorado, playing Dutch Blitz with my friend Halley and her husband Joey. Now I’m back in Des Moines, having just finished two days of work during which I made toilet water (Victorian perfume) with 100 local 7th graders!

My trip to Colorado was a well-timed break from the busyness of LHF. The season truly transitioned from summer to fall while I was away, and I am thankful for the slower pace that we’re now in for the next month. My trip was relaxing, rejuvenating and quite eventful. All in all I traveled approximately 1,350 miles and slept in four different beds as went from place to place visiting family and friends! What follows are just some of the highlights.

I spent most of Sunday and Monday with my good friend Clarissa, who moved from Des Moines to Ft. Collins in August. It’s the first time in eight years we haven’t lived in the same town! Sunday night we cooked together once again and tried several new recipes from one of our favorite cookbooks - Quick and Easy Indian Cooking. While we chopped onions and garlic and made sure the milk didn’t boil over, we discussed my latest work happenings and the articles she was reading for her grad classes. In keeping with an unintentional tradition, we didn’t eat until about 8:30 pm. As usual, the meal was well worth the wait. I will certainly be making the dill rice with peas and the mushroom curry again!

Monday Clarissa and I went exploring. She took me on a tour of the CSU campus. Things were pretty quiet since it was Labor Day, although we did have to dodge a few runners participating in some sort of road race. Then we were off to Whole Foods, one of the most wonderful grocery stores in the world! I saw foods there that I’ve only read about in cookbooks but never been able to find in a more typical grocery store. The loaves of bread piled along the counter were baked to perfection; their tops perfectly crusted along the lines slashed into the dough before they were baked. The pastries and cakes were too beautiful to even think about eating! Unfortunately high prices accompany such delightful foods, so I would never be able to actually do much or any of my grocery shopping there, but it certainly was fun to browse!

After this we went searching for All Sweets, an international chocolate shop family friends, who also live in Ft. Collins, told us about. It is a very small shop. Chocolate bars labeled with their country of origin sat on the shelves lining the perimeter of the shop. Bright wrappers stood out against the white walls and shelves. Clarissa exclaimed when she discovered the chocolate she ate when she was in Russia, and I was happy to see the chocolate bars I ate when I traveled in Europe. We were most excited, however, by the bowls and bowls of konfyeti sitting on tables in the middle of the shop. (Imagine individually wrapped Russell Stover chocolates and you’ll get the general idea of what konfyeti is. Clarissa ate lots of konfyeti in Russia.) The owner let us try any two we wanted, so, of course, we ended up buying 2 lbs. worth of them! I was able to read English descriptions of each piece when I picked out which ones I wanted. Unfortunately, now that my konfyeti is at home, I can’t tell what anything is! I can’t read the Cyrillic on each wrapper and Clarissa isn’t here with her Russian-English dictionary to translate for me. Each one is a surprise – and very good surprises at that!

Monday evening to Thursday morning I stayed with Halley, Joey and Alivia. What a delight it was to finally meet little Alivia, who just turned four-months-old. She has an infectious smile and light fuzz for hair. She spent a good deal of time playing with her toes, which she had only recently discovered. I made her a quilt and was happy to see it fit the décor of her nursery perfectly. Livi actually pit up on it the first time she laid on it, which seemed fitting somehow. While I was there Livi sucked her thumb by itself for the first time. Being a former thumb-sucker, I said it must have been due to the quality time we had spent together and my good influence. Halley and I also had some knitting lessons while I was there. I was thankful she got the hang of it before I had to leave.

The drive to and from Colorado was a highlight as well, which I think may surprise many people. When you live in Iowa and tell people you are driving to Colorado they tend to cast you a pitying glance and make some comment about the endless miles you will be driving across Nebraska. However, when you make the drive with your mom - at least my mom - the endless miles become an open space ready for great conversations and reading good books. Although I was happy to arrive at our destinations at the end of each drive, part of me wished we had had just a little bit further to go.

Saturday I was back in Lincoln and able to celebrate my sister-in-law’s birthday with my family. This was the first time since she and my brother started dating six years ago that I have actually celebrated with her in person! Every year prior to this I was either in school or working in Des Moines. I made her a brownie cake, which turned out perfectly. It can be a tricky cake to have come out right, and I was so thankful it did for this special occasion. Dinner was followed by a trip to their house to see Peter’s latest remodel job. Last time I was there, the living room and hallway were torn apart down to the studs; everything is now restored to order. The walls are dry walled and beautifully painted. Liz now has a large hallway closet and a tiled kitchen floor. I’m glad to have such a talented guy for my brother.

Now it is back to the quiet of my apartment in Des Moines and my familiar routines. As glad as I am to be away, I am always thankful to return safely home again. Now it is time to start planning the next trip! Where should I be off to next? Hmmm…you know, Boston has always been a place I’ve wanted to visit….

Pelmeny

2009-07-04T15:56:00.000-07:00

Pelmeny – a Siberian dish of small pockets of dough filled with seasoned, minced beef, lamb, or pork and served boiled, fried, or in a soup.

I first heard of pelmeny about a year ago. A family friend was teaching English at a Russian university and received so many questions about what he was eating that he posted a short video series on his blog of him preparing his favorite meals. The final episode was dinner; the entree - pelmeny. In fact, he liked it so much that he wanted to figure out a way to export it to the US once he left Russia so he could still eat it!

I showed the episode to my friend Clarissa, who studied in Russia for a semester in college. She vividly remembered eating pelmeny and wished she could enjoy this Russian comfort food once again. We decided then and there to be on the lookout for a Russian grocery store so we could buy some pelmeny. She could eat it again, and I could see for myself why she and Daniel loved this little filled “dumpling” so much.

“There’s a Russian grocery store!” I exclaimed as my parents and I drove to church on a Sunday morning several weeks ago. Just a few blocks north of my parents’ house on the corner of a little strip mall was a Russian and European grocery store. Why hadn’t I noticed it before? “We should go there,” I continued. “We need to see if they have pelmeny.”

Monday afternoon before I left Lincoln for Des Moines, Mom and I stopped at the grocery store. Shelves lined the perimeter of the small room. Large burlap bags of something, I am assuming a grain of some sort?, sat piled on the floor in the center of the room. A small upright freezer stood against another wall. A tall, broad shouldered woman came out of the back room and greeted us. Her thick accent strongly suggested that she was indeed Russian, and I assumed she was also the store owner.

Mom and I began looking at all the bottles, cans, and boxes – clearly labeled in Cyrillic. We could figure out what most things were either by the bright picture on the front or the bits of food we could see in the glass jars around the labels. “We have to buy something you know,” Mom said. I was crossing my fingers they’d have pelmeny. “Oh look! There’s the box juice that Clarissa raves about. I wonder which was her favorite,” I said.

We finally made our way around to the freezer and there, filling one entire section were the bags of pelmeny. There was veal pelmeny and beef pelmeny. Hmmm…I wonder which the most popular kind is, I thought.

“Sorry I am out of pork pelmeny,” the woman said. “It should be in Wednesday night.” Pork - that must be the most popular then. Not having until Wednesday to buy any, I settled on veal and took it up to the counter to pay. The woman was in the middle of a boisterous conversation on the telephone – all in Russian of course, so I glanced at the bags of bread and little cooked pastries on the counter.

“Sorry about that,” she said, hanging up. She rang up my pelmeny. “Do you know how to cook this? You take it and” she started banging the frozen bag against the edge of the counter to break up the pieces! I am sure I must have looked quite surprised and startled.

“I am going to make it with a friend who lived in Russia for a while.” I managed to get out. “I think there are instructions on the bag too.”

She stopped hitting the bag on the counter and slid it into another sack, taking my money and clinking it into the cash register. “Thank you and enjoy!” she said as Mom and I left.

Two days later Clarissa and I had our biweekly cooking night. Pelmeny and tiramisu were on the menu. She was thrilled we were having pelmeny. We carefully read the instructions, boiled the water, dumped in the pelmeny, stirred until the little pelmenies floated to the top of the water, and then cooked them for twenty minutes.

Although not a soup per se, Clarissa dished the little puffs into bowls with some of the broth. The traditional way to eat pelmeny was with sour cream, which seems to be a staple of most Russian soups, and dill. Not sure of what to expect, I scooped up one pelmeny and slid it into my mouth. The dough casing was thicker than ravioli. Suddenly, hot broth and peppered seasoned veal filled my mouth as the pelmeny broke open. “Hot, it’s hot.” Clarissa warned, waving her hand in front of her mouth. I nodded; it was soooo tasty.

“Now imagine eating this when it’s freezing cold outside and you’ve been working in an old cathedral turned car factory all morning,” she said when she could talk again. I could understand why she ended up loving it so much. As we ate one pelmeny after another, Clarissa reminisced about other times she’d eaten pelmeny in Russia, and we planned our trans-Siberian railroad trip that we dream of taking someday when we are famous and someone will pay us to go write a book about our experience.

When Clarissa and her husband were coming and going from Colorado two weekends ago, they stayed with my parents, and my mom bought several bags of pelmeny to have for Clarissa to bring back to Des Moines with her. And now, I think, a trip to the Russian and European Grocery store will become a mandatory stop on any and all trips I take to Lincoln.

A Time to Write, Part 2

2009-06-23T15:03:00.000-07:00

In retrospect, I had a valuable time at the Iowa Summer Writing Festival this last weekend. I say retrospect because while I was there, I wondered if I truly was benefiting from my time at the festival. It was so different from last year. Six sessions of workshop spread over six days compared to four sessions of workshop crammed into two. A very general brainstorming workshop versus a more specific genre workshop. Entire mornings and evenings to work on assignments compared to one evening and barely part of a morning. No expectations verses expectations.

And yet, as I continued to talk with my mom yesterday about my workshop, I realized that I did glean small nuggets from my workshop that should prove quite useful as I continue to grow as a writer. In fact, it is okay that I didn’t have monumental breakthroughs or learn all sorts of new things about writing anecdotes. So, here briefly, are some of those nuggets:

1. Anecdote is a slippery word to define. According to The American Heritage Dictionary, anecdote means “a short account of an interesting or humorous incident.” And yet, it can be hard to pin that word on a piece that you are reading or writing. Some anecdotes we read were one paragraph in length, others were three pages or so. Overall, I think an anecdote can best be summed up as a story you would tell a friend over the phone: “You’ll never believe what happened to me today!” Or a story you would share during family gatherings: “Do you remember the time when?” with perhaps a little or a lot more detail thrown in!

2. The spaghetti must be in the back of the boat, meaning, one must give enough clues in the first few paragraphs, so that the last paragraph or two are as powerful as can be. Set-up, set-up, set-up! The piece should be structured like an arch with secure beginning and ending points.

3. Sometimes one must write 30 words and then eliminate all or almost all of them in order to find the precise phrase to capture between the lines the word or description that is precisely right.

Attending the festival always reminds me of how much I love language. Here are a few of the phrases spoken/written by my fellow writers that stood out to me:

“beef fed Iowa boys”
“attitude short of beautiful”
“ghostly traces of my wisdom from yesterday”
“talking way too loudly about way too little”
“my kids may be sick, or my husband may be sick of my kids”

So, all in all, the weekend was different than I expected, but valuable and fun nonetheless. I had a great time with my mom. There were several instances when we just about died laughing recounting stories both from our growing up years and from the weekend itself. Mom loved her workshop, “The Art of the Interview,” and passed along all she was learning to me. She took me out for my birthday Saturday night to a wonderful Indian restaurant in Iowa City. And by wonderful, I mean that their naan was just a half point shy of being as good as the naan at India Star, which serves the best naan of any of the eight Indian restaurant I’ve been to!

Now that I am home again, the real work of the workshop begins. I began several pieces in my workshop that must now be developed and revised as I move them toward publication – even if it just means posting them here!

A Time to Write

2009-06-16T06:19:00.000-07:00

Hooray! Just four more days, and my mom and I will be in Iowa City for the University of Iowa’s Summer Writing Festival! Mom and I are just going for the weekend, and that means I will get to write all day Saturday and Sunday! (I will be returning in July for a week long workshop, but I’ll write more about that next month.) Mom is taking the Art of the Interview workshop while I will be in The Art of the Anecdote. We decided to divide and conquer, so it’s almost like I’ll be taking two workshops at once.

I pulled my registration and letters out thte other night in order to refresh my memory on the exact details of what exactly I signed up for way back in March. Yep, still excited about this workshop! Shannon Olson, my instructor, writes in her introductory letter that she “built [The Art of the Anecdote] on the premise that a lot of great writing has come from small sources, those brief anecdotes that we share with friends and family,” and I will learn how to “bring to life small personal moments and shape them into something that means more.” I will be reading pieces by Erma Bombeck, Garrison Keillor, Jim Heynen, David Sedaris and others to learn just how the anecdote can work.

With all the little interactions my co-workers and I have with our visitors and each other at Living History Farms, I figure I should have enough little incidents to write about for a long time! Speaking of little incidents, during my two and three-year-old Sunday school class this morning I learned that one of my little guys only wants to be called Super Man and wont answer to his actual name. Hmmmm… I wonder what I could turn that into! I’ll have to keep it in the back of my mind for this weekend.

Des Moines Snapshot

2009-03-06T19:37:00.000-08:00

The balmy weather and my antsy legs propelled me outside after I got home from a busy day of helping people make copies at Kinko’s. Needing laundry detergent in preparation for Monday’s laundry, I decided to take my walk in a productive direction to Family Dollar. I had driven by the store several times and thought I could walk the nine blocks in a decent amount of time.

University was filled with the closing activities of the day, the street crammed with cars commuting home from work or out for a night on the town. The gentlemen who sell rugs from the back of their large white “moving” truck in the auto parts parking lot were rolling up their merchandise and stowing it away on the shelves lining the inside of the truck.

An elderly woman climbed down from a brightly illuminated bus, clutching her purse and shopping bag. A teenage boy ambled by a sagging house in need of paint and new windows to replace the plywood coverings.

Family Dollar sat back from the street; its parking lot providing a buffer zone from the speeding traffic. I walked into the store behind two Hispanic teens who picked a bag of Cheetos from the rack sitting right next to the door. Easter candy, curtains, children’s cloths were crammed onto the shelves and scattered around the store helter-skelter. I looped around the side of the store and wandered my way back to the laundry detergent.

As I was comparing the unit prices of the four different sizes of Extra laundry detergent a voice began making announcements in Spanish. Feeling slightly guilty for not having kept up with my Spanish, I tried to pick out a few words, understanding “gracias” and “Family Dollar.” After a half-minute lag, the announcement began once again in English.

“All your activities in this location are being monitored for your safety. Thank you for shopping at Family Dollar.”

The announcement repeated several times in the ten minutes I was in the store always beginning in Spanish and ending in English. As I glanced around at my fellow shoppers, I noted that the majority were Hispanic. What a contrast from my stop by Hy-Vee after work, in which I was not a minority, all the announcements for dinner specials were in English, and everything was stocked and displayed in a tidy manner.

As I walked West down University back to my apartment, I felt as if I were walking through a different community entirely, although 801 Grand, which is the tallest building in Iowa, illuminated against the darkening sky, reminded me that was still in Des Moines.

How many Des Moinesians understand that this community exists in their city? Of what benefit is it to me to live in this part of my city? How should it impact my view of my community and world?

2009-02-10T20:24:00.000-08:00

This year I am listening to the Daily Audio Bible podcast each day with the goal of listening to the entire Bible by the end of December. I read through the Bible in a year while in college, but I always seemed to get behind and had to catch up at some point in the year. Listening to the Bible has erased this problem for me because I can always listen as I am brushing my teeth in the morning or cooking my supper or doing my dishes! Listening to Brian read from the Old and New Testaments, Psalms and Proverbs on the Daily Audio Bible is actually one of my favorite parts of the day. It is so interesting to see how the different readings link together, illuminating each other and the larger story God is telling throughout His word – a story I am apart of.

Today I was struck by the relationship between Matthew 26:47-68 and Psalms 32:1-11. In Matthew 26 Jesus is betrayed and arrested, sent to trial before Caiaphas the high priest and then beaten and mocked. It is a sobering set of verses. Psalm 32 begins with David exclaiming, “How blessed is he whose transgressions is forgiven, Whose sin is covered!” It is only because of the suffering and death of Jesus, which is just beginning at this point in Matthew, that I can make this statement with David and experience this blessing. What a profound, humbling and impacting truth it is! Saying I am thankful for this truth doesn’t even begin to adequately convey the depth and intensity of my thoughts and feelings to this reality in my own life.

“For if the blood of goats and bulls and the ashes of a heifer sprinkling those who have been defiled sanctify for the cleansing of the flesh, how much more will the blood of Christ who through the eternal Spirit offered Himself without blemish to God, cleanse your conscience from dead works to serve the living God?” ~ Hebrews 9:13-14

The Other Turning

2009-01-31T09:07:00.000-08:00

January is ending on a very warm note – at least here in the Iowa! It is only 10:30 am, and I believe we have already hit the mid-30s! I know winter is not over yet, but it certainly is nice to have a bit of a respite and to have some of the piles of ice and snow shrink before more arrives. (I don’t know when it will come, but I’ve lived in the Midwest long enough to know that it is certain to!)

A month ago as I was thinking back over 2008 and looking ahead to 2009 my mom mentioned a quote to me from a sermon by John Henry Jowett in which he says that we may make decisions in our lives which take us in a direction we wish we had not gone. God, however, is not limited by our failings and can bring healing and restoration even in the midst of these decisions. Jowett terms this regret of ours and desire to have made a different choice, “the other turning.”

While he speaks of “the other turning” specifically in relationship to choices we would like back again in our regret so that we may make a different choice, “the other turning” seemed an appropriate phrase to apply to life’s journey in a broader sense, especially at the start of a new year. As I look back over my life, there are a number of instances where significant decisions were made that set me on a trajectory that has brought be to this place, to my little apartment in Des Moines, Iowa. If another decision had been made at one of those junctures, is it possible that I would be writing this post from a completely different geographical location than I am now?

For example, when I was 10 and living in Scottsbluff, Nebraska, my dad had applied and interviewed for high school counselor positions in Colorado Springs, Colorado, and Lincoln, Nebraska. He decided that whichever school offered him the position first he would take. Lincoln Christian offered him the job first, so off my family moved to Lincoln where we/they have been ever since. Living in Lincoln certainly impacted the experiences and relationships I’ve had since then.

The second example that comes to mind, my senior year of college I applied for internships at both Living History Farms and at Deerfield in Massachusetts. Both were great programs, and I would have loved to go to either museum. I was accepted as an alternate at the Deerfield program and offered a position at the LHF program. I had to decide about LHF before I would know for sure about Deerfield. I accepted LHF and then was told a few days later that someone had dropped out of the Deerfield program, and there was a spot for me. I’d already sent in my acceptance to LHF, so off to Des Moines I went and here I still am.

I certainly see God’s hand in both situation, guiding my family and I to the places He wanted us to be, but sometimes I wonder what my life would be like if my dad or I had taken “the other turning.” Now I suppose one could become paralyzed wondering which direction they should turn, trying to figure out all the possible outcomes of either decision beforehand. Fortunately though, God calls us to live in faithfulness to Him each day, and as I do that, He will direct my steps in the turning He has for me. As I follow Him, I need not regret my decisions or wish I had taken “the other turning” because the plans He has for me will bring me purpose and fulfillment and Him great glory.

As I prepare to embark on this second month of 2009, I am excited to see what God has for me as I walk in faith, listening to God, trusting Him to guide me to take the turnings He has for me this year. Now they could be quite normal, mundane things, or perhaps it will be something completely life changing. No matter the case, a year from now, I know will be able to rejoice in His faithfulness and not regret the other turnings. I anticipate the journey and am looking forward to sharing it with you on my blog.

New Year's Prayer

2009-01-19T16:17:00.000-08:00

"O Lord my God, to you and to your service I devote myself, body, soul, and spirit. Fill my memory with the record of your mighty works; enlighten my understanding with the light of your Holy Spirit; and may all the desires of my heart and will center in what you would have me do. Make me an instrument of your salvation for the people entrusted to my care, and grant that by my life and teaching I may set forth your true and living Word. Be always with me in carrying out the duties of my faith. In prayer, quicken my devotion; in praises, heighten my love and gratitude; in conversation give me readiness of thought and expression; and grant that, by the clearness and brightness of your holy Word, all the world may be drawn into your blessed kingdom. All this I ask for the sake of your Son our Savior Jesus Christ. Amen."

~ The Divine Hours: Prayers for Autumn and Wintertime
Compiled by Phyllis Tickle