we're moving a whole 4 doors away...how do you pack for such a small move? well, you don't. you just walk back and forth a lot.

we'll be in our new home (well, apartment) by tonight.

if i don't show up here tomorrow it's because

the internet guys were late.

photo via here.

manifesto monday: meal sadhana

i grew up in a family that gave thanks for and blessed food before we ate it. usually that's all we did: thanks for it, bless it. amen.

there were a few other scripted lines that crept into our blessing over the food, but length was most important...especially when we were starving.

in the past few years as i've read books written by michael pollan and others written by "slow food" champions, i've began to say more sincere and far-reaching prayers over my food. thanks for the farmers who work so hard. thanks for the soil and the earth that bring forth such tasty and nourishing food. thanks for the weather, rain and shine, that play a part too. bless that we'll be more aware of our food and where it comes from. help us to support farmers, local farmers especially. bless the food to digest in an optimal and pleasant way. thank you for food nourished by the heavens and the earth. etc.

then i began going to an ayurvedic practitioner. she prescribed meal sadhana. what? sadhana is a sanskrit word that means to make an "everyday" or "simple" act sacred. not only should i offer a sincere prayer of thanks and blessing on my food, but i should take a deep breath before each bite, offering up the food to the altar that is my body (a temple of sorts). each flavor, spice, fruit, vegetable is an offering. no computer during eating/offering times. no angry conversations. slow eating, conscious chewing, and pleasant conversation.

food tastes much better. i am ever more grateful. this i believe.

photo by me. dining table. june 2009. strawberries from the farmer's market. bowl from grandma whittaker.

the obama wars...

manifesto monday will come later today. in the mean time, read this article here. very, very good.

only once a year...to cj's dismay

every year for the summer solstice i make the most delicious cupcakes you've ever had. yup. i'm being quite serious. they're like nothing you've ever had. i got the recipe from this book. the entire book is delicious. you should probably invest in it. people are shocked when i tell them these little babies are vegan. cj's co-workers rememberd them from last year, and have been hounding him for some this year. cj tries to convince me to make them more often. but i'm a stickler for traditions...if you make them all the time then they lose their excitement. it's so worth the wait! so here's the recipe:

mexican hot chocolate cupcakes

ingredients:

1 cup coconut milk

1 Tbsp ground flaxseeds (seriously!)

3/4 cup all-purpose flour

2 Tbsp corn flour

1/4 cup almond meal

1/2 cup cocoa powder

1 tsp baking powder

1/2 tsp baking soda

3/4 tsp salt

1 tsp ground cinnamon

1/8 tsp cayenne pepper (this is the best ingredient!)

1 cup granulated sugar

1/3 cup canola oil

1 tsp vanilla extract

1 tsp almond extract

directions:

1. Preheat oven to 350 and line muffin pan with cupcake liners

2. whisk together coconut milk and flaxseeds and allow to sit for 10 minutes

3. in another bowl, sift together all-purpose flour, corn flour, almond meal, cocoa, baking powder, baking soda, salt, cinnamon, and cayenne.

4. whisk sugar, oil, vanilla, and almond extract into coconut milk mixture. gently add wet ingredients to dry. fill cupcake liners three-quarters of the way. bake for 22-25 minutes until a knife or toothpick inserted through the center of one comes out clean. transfer to a colling rack to cool completely.

5. sift a layer of confectioner's sugar onto the tops of the cooled cakes. then sift on cocoa, then lastly sift on a layer of cinnamon.

summer solstice: the beach, part three...il mare!

these are the last of the summer solstice photos...
there was so much foam from the waves...
it was shaking like jell-o from all the wind.
i couldn't help but giggle at it like a kid!



really, the foam was everywhere.

same old, same old...cj and his graflex

blue skies...deep breath

ceej had good times playing in the ocean waves...

trying not to get too wet.

that water was coooooooold!

i love when the waves look like a sort of marshmallow meringue.

so very yummy indeed!

i can't wait until we go back to the beach.

hopefully next time it will be a few degrees warmer

so we can put on our swimmers,

read books all afternoon,

and go for dips.

when i finish her book i'll stop quoting her...at least for a bit. but for now i can't get enough...

she uses an analogy that i thought i had heard too much. but i like it. see if you recognize the analogy...

"we should always, especially when it is difficult, exercise our freedom of speech and assembly, and i mean the word exercise. Rights are like muscles: they atrophy and aren't there when you need them if you don't use them. The First Amendment is in trouble not just because of U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft and the USA Patriot Act, but because of a pall of self-censorship--some have spoken up with great courage, but many have been silenced not only by the acts of the authorities but by the prison of their own fear. Still, if people could stand up to Pinochet, if the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo could march in Buenos Aires during the time of the generals, if people could speak up in Prague in the 1980s, we can here, far more than we do. An atmosphere of repression exists speicifically because people don't speak up against it. When you speak up, you are not repressed--you might be supressed or punished, but you have freed yourself. Too, a tyranny can rise more easily by shutting up a thousand people than a million, and that's a reason to speak out." -rebecca solnit

rights are like exercise? sound familiar? it should. i hope we all resolve to use our rights daily.

photo by karin nussbaumer

summer solstice: the beach, part two

"he went to sea for a day

he wanted to know what to say

when he asked what he'd done

in the past to someone

that he'd love endlessly

now she's gone, and so is he..."

words by lisa hannigan. still in love with this song.

photos by ann marie. more to come.

check ceej out...

ceej has a great post. really. truly.

check it out here.

(and make sure not to miss his awesome header!)

this was no tuesday with morrie...

my neighbor, nanci, called me yesterday to ask me to help. she asked me to sit with another neighbor, donna, whom i have never met before this afternoon.

donna has cancer. only 2-3 months to live. she needed someone at the house for four hours to make sure her needs were met, and she was comfortable.

ok. i would do it. happily.

i knocked on the door. another person i had never met answered the door...she was on her way out. i would be taking her place for the next few hours. nanci was there to introduce me to donna. donna did not want to meet me. a few more minutes, and she had to meet me.

nanci wheeled donna out into the family room where i sat on the couch. there was the introduction. no smiles from donna. just wandering eyes. avoiding another connection that would only leave her in more grief to leave this earth.

just donna and i. i tried not to sound unnatural or awkward. failed. we faded in and out of conversation. she constantly stroked her hair, and rubbed her chin. she told me she was insecure about her looks...so much older looking. i don't think she ever stopped touching her hair and face the entire afternoon.

i listened. but there really wasn't much to listen to. she would talk every now and then. rarely did she actually answer my questions, or comment on my stories. she would only comment when she wanted to tell me how miserable life is for her. i tried to listen intently to her at these moments. i never gave advice. i listened because she didn't talk much at all.

there's not much hope in her, and she isn't prone to give sage advice. she's dying, and that's what's killing her.

(names have been changed)
(photo by me)

summer solstice: the beach, part one

it took us 5 hours to get to the beach...

it usually takes us 2 and a half hours...

that's california traffic for you.

we were a bit put out by all the bumper to bumper

(you'd never have this problem in good ol' utah!)

but, in the end, it was worth it.

the water was amazing,

the breeze was cold

but life-giving.

more photos and commentary to come...

stay tuned!

photos by ann marie. south beach, inverness. summer solstice 2009.

Manifesto Monday: dusk

photo by me. south beach, inverness. summer solstice.
for years i used to wake up easily at 4:30 or 5:00 a.m.

i thought of myself as a morning person. these days i no longer wake up much earlier than the sun does, though, in some ways, i still believe i am a morning person.

last night i realized that i am a dusk person as well. we watched the sun set beneath the waters of the ocean...the last people on the continent to see the end of day. all alone. once we saw the sun set we savored a few more moments on the beach before we slowly moved back into our car. we had a long drive home ahead of us.

as we drove i felt at rest in the light of dusk. it is a slow time, a contemplative time. dusk tells me it is okay to breathe, to observe, and to listen. slow.

what is it about the coming of darkness that is oh so beautiful to me? i have yet to put my finger on it. is it the defused lighting? is it the first sightings of night stars? is it the cosiness of nearing bedtime? whatever it is, i welcome it.

often we are attracted to the metaphor of a sunrise...that we get to begin anew. it is indeed a good metaphor. but, i too am attracted to the coming of night, to darkness. when everything is quiet and still. there are a few things to see: stars, perhaps the moon, and what is immediately in front of you. and there is something that is quite relaxing about not seeing much else. your ears hear more, you taste the air more accutely, and you feel the slight breeze or stillness of air. perhaps we are truly more aware when we are not overstimulated by sights. night is simple.

dusk rolls in the night, and rolls in calm. now, after the solstice, the days grow darker. and that is a good thing too. this i believe.

when the day is as long as night...

so i know most of you are thinking of

fathers' day on sunday...

i am too, BUT

i am also thinking about the

summer solstice!

can't wait to spend a day

honoring ceej (as a future father...someday)

and celebrating the phases of

the earth.

happy, happy weekend!

photos by me. june 2009. by the window.

surprise distance, weather, meals, & bon jovi

last weekend we went backpacking in the desolation wilderness
here in california.
the plans were to go to camp at one lake...
but
we couldn't get the permit that morning,
so we had to go twice as far as we had planned!

i had planned for cold temperatures,
but had not planned for higher elevations,
which meant: SNOW

our final destination at the other lake was beautiful,
though very, very cold.

ceej and mark took the polar-bear-plunge...
we were all freezing just watching them!

while mark & robin cooked us a very gourmet meal,
i serenaded everyone to my folk renditions of
"it's my life," "livin' on a prayer," and other goodies!

here is ceej and i at the end of the trip...after we the rain and hail had soaked us through and through.

it was a difficult trip in many ways,
but oh so worth it.

photos by ceej and i. desolation wilderness. june 2009.

world refugee day

take some time today to do at least one of these things:

01. take the IRC's quiz...for every person who takes the quiz a generous donor will donate $1 for each quiz taken to the IRC's work, up to $15,000. this one's so easy. please do it.

02. donate money to the IRC (or another organization you trust) so that refugees can have food, water, shelter, and education.

03. sign up to volunteer to help refugees in your area.

so sad what war does to the people on the ground, yes? too bad our leaders think that war is good for their wallets.

poor nevada...poor west

photo by me. january 2009. I-80.

i am learning so much from Solnit's book of compiled essays. i wanted to tell you what she tells us about mining because i want you to know what it does to the earth and to the people who live near it. hope you find this information useful, and i hope it moves you to action.

~ by 1857, California gold miners had extracted 24.3 million ounces of [gold], but they left behind more than ten times as much mercury, along with devastated forests, slopes, and streams. Today, there's a new gold rush underway on the other side of the Sierra Nevada, and it too is racking up huge bills for the public, bills that will be coming due for centuries to come, bills that we will pay in taxes for restoration, and bills that can never be paid, for pure water, cultural survival, wildlife, and wilderness. (page 115)

~ the California Gold Rush wasn't an anomaly; it was the beginning of modern large-scale gold mining, which is still going on. In America's new gold boom in Nevada, the dimensions are staggering...Nowadays, Nevada produces nearly 10 percent of the world's gold and three-quarters of the nation's...The first big new open-pit mines came in 1965, but it was the rise of gold prices in the 1980s...and the invention of cyanide heap-leaching that made mining such low-grade ore profitable. (page 119-120)

~Gold is now mined on a scale none of those men in the sepia-tone photographs could have imagined, from ore far more low-grade than they could have considered worthwhile. The Mary Harrison mine, which opened in 1853 in Coulterville, near Yosemite, yielded about one-third to one-half an ounce of gold per ton. In 1997, the Toronto-based Barrick Corporation's Betze/Post mine, in the center of the Carlin Trend, mined 159 million tons of rock and earth to produce 1.6 million ounces of gold--about a hundredth of an ounce per ton..."invisible gold" leads to mines that can be seen from space. [talk about extortion!!!] (page 120)


photo by tom schweich

~One way to describe modern gold mines is to say that they are displacing earth and water on a gargantuan scale and producing and dispersing toxins in smaller quantities, with gold a proportionally minute by-product of this disruption...in Nevada water is being both contaminated and used up...A deficit of 5 million acre-feet is being created in the Humbolt Basin, 1.6 trillion gallons, the equivalent of twenty-five years of the river's annual flow. (page 121)

after reading her essays on mining in Nevada, i was oh so sad for Nevada. not only is their land and their health being destroyed by mining companies (many who are foreign companies), but they have had to put up with decades of nuclear bomb testing. it is oh so frustrating to me that people think a desert is a wasteland; that there is nothing worth saving there. they are dead wrong. it is a fragile landscape that has intensely beautiful spaces of mountain ranges and sagebrush fields.

it also made me very glad i don't live in the Salt Lake Valley development known as "Daybreak." I've always been suspicious of how that land has been contaminated by the mine that has developed the land. i've also always despised the eyesore of that huge mine. it's ugly. it makes me ill.

and another thing, utah is a place, too, where people think they can dump nuclear waste...and we even named the sports arena after a nuclear waste company: "energy solutions arena." that makes me very ill.

i hope you learned a little something. i hope you want to buy and read Solnit's book. it's got so much varied information about so many important issues. you'll love it. you'll feel more motivated to take action. to make this earth better.

farmers, friends, & flowers

some friends stopped by to see us on their way to yosemite.

so we made a stop by the farmer's market

we ate delicious tamales...mmmm
and chitter-chattered non-stop.
you do that when it feels
difficult to find soulmates...
somedays soulmates seem to be something of dreams
other days, they show up on your doorstep.



we were oh so happy to have
ashley visit.
she makes us feel sane
when most days we feel quite the opposite.

can't get enough of the farmer's market.

it's cheap, fresh, and just lovely to be part of.

hoping for safe travels for all our friends!

photos by ceej and i. june 2009. sacramento farmer's market.

those were the days: "knives etc." (part 1 & 2)

PART 1

parents usually find these kinds of things out fifteen years after they've taken place. some parents encourage these kinds of things.my family moved into our house in 1980, almost a full year before the autumn when my body landed on the ground. the house was in the western frontier of the valley...not yet developed, open fields with lizards to catch and dirt clods to be thrown. land.

even kids know what land is for. owning."get off our property!" my brother threatened the next-door-neighbors (who were usually their best playmates)."the circle is ours!" they screeched back.the "circle" is the lawn in the middle of the culdesac where both homes sit next to each other.
my brothers knew how to settle this heated argument. they returned with a kitchen knife--butter knife or steak knife, nobody remembers. they snaked their weapons through the air with curled lips, repeating their initial warning, "get off our property!"
brothers love telling this kind of story--barely able to tell it for all the laughing going on. it is a funny story. and we usually end up asking, "where was mom?"
out of seven kids, four of us owned impressive knife collections--they were "rambo" knives. i was at least seven-years-old when i had my first knife. we earned them. most kids get paid to do chores around the house. if there was ever a day off at school, we were forced to dad's tool warehouse to sweep floors that would never be cleared of dust and to file papers that were added to our pile quicker than we actually file them. at the end of our 8-hour workday (keep in mind we were seven years old when we started) we could choose how we would be reimbursed: $2 or a knife. we usually chose a knife. what kid wouldn't?
perhaps we could gain more property with our knives.

PART 2
when no one was looking, we spent our time examining all the knives that could potentially have been ours at the end of the day of our working-with-dad day. sometimes we wasted a good half an hour picking them up individually, and telling each other what made each knife irresistably awesome.
dad was usually up front in his office listening to talk radio. hopefully he was on the phone with a customer, which would require more of his attention and would make more noise. the last thing we wanted was to get caught slacking from our endless sweeping of the concrete warehouse floor.we should have had a plan. if we were to get caught drooling over the knives rather than dutifully working, what were we to do?i, unfortunately, relied on instinct.
my dad's tall, gray-haired partner, Hutch, stealthly turned down the knife isle. there was no warning footsteps, no rustling of papers, no nothing. knives in hands, what were we to do? there was going to be eternal sweeping for us. so i did the most reasonable thing i could come up with.
i quickly slid my knife back onto the shelf, and to shield my slower younger brother from getting caught, i began to walk toward hutch like a robot. with blade hands, slicing through the air. knees mechanically lifting one after the other. and chanting, "hachacha-cha-cha, cha." i made it up. improvisation. genius.we didn't get in trouble.
i can't remember what happened after that. but i've always wondered what in the crap Hutch thought i was doing. "what is this strange little girl doing?"like i said. we didn't get in trouble. mission accomplished.we went home with our new knives.

had to share...

photo by me. summer solstice 2008.

was just reading from storming the gates of paradise: landscapes for politics. really, rebecca solnit says everything i want to say. she's oh so brilliant like that. she moves the heart effortlessly through the voice. here's a little something she writes--my heart has been feeling this for a couple years now, and she finally put it into words for me:

Ursula K. LeGuin once noted, "To light a candle is to cast a shadow." Conversely, it's in the dark that faint light shines, starlight, candlelight, fireflies, the bioluminescence of the sea. I don't want to reverse the binaries, to make darkness good and light problematic. I want a language and an imagination where they are not enemies but perhaps dance partners, whirling each other around this globe that spends half its time away from the sun in night. I want people to remember how photography works, the medium that depends on perfect darkness within the camera to capture the image, for an image of boundless light would be purely black, and exposure in perfect darkness would show just the white of unexposed paper. The visible world depends on both.

Wonderful, isn't it?

Manifesto Monday: reading & writing

photo by me. june 2009. by the window.

somewhere, somehow, as a child i lost my enjoyment for reading. i remember reading "nancy drew" books. those seemed to keep my attention. i also recall reading a book about a kid who turned into chocolate. people read to me, and that was okay. i remember nice giants going from window to window handing out dreams to sleeping children, kids who lived in box cars, and a story about a futuristic earth. i sort of liked listening...it was better than reading.
but, immediately following my entrance into middle school the tiny reading bug that had somewhat inhabited my awkward brain left. it simply abandoned me. i didn't finish one novel from 7th grade all the way until my senior year in high school.
grapes of wrath: maybe i read the first 100 pages.
heart of darkness: only got through half of this short, but dense novel.
the good earth: i think i may have read the whole thing, but i can't recall even the plot.
crime & punishment: my first attempt at an audiobook, which i also failed at completing
strange indeed. i had no appetite for books until my third year of college. i'm not sure how the love of reading left so discreetly, and came back with such loudness.
so what happened my third year of college? i learned how to read. yes, it seems a little late to be learning how to read, but that's the truth. of course i could read the words on the page, but i didn't know how to wrap my head around the bigger picture. i didn't know how to make connections. i didn't know that there was something bigger than a straight story line. it took an incredibly complex history course with an incredible kind professor who showed me how a book was to be read...and consequently, how a person should write.
reading came easier. writing is still painful, yet liberating. there's something about reading great ideas and great plots that compels you to write your own words in a way to reveal your version of the world, its people, its history.
it is interesting to me that i have hardly any memory of those years when i wasn't reading. my memory is much more alive during the years i have been voraciously reading and writing. these gifts keep me exploring, they keep my mind questioning and learning. reading and writing are gifts indeed. we should use them more often.
this i believe.

i read...lots, perhaps too much, but i don't think so!

well, i'm still reading.
can't get enough.

we'll be leaving early in the morning
to go camping!
i'll see you on Monday.

enjoy all 4 posts today!

i make photographs