Vashon

Nice time at Vashon with son & daughter-in-law, visiting, reading, relaxing, listening to this, the best Saturday night program ever. Son/chef made sourdough bread, a vegetable-and-smoked salmon frittatta, and a salad with greens & beets. Lots of the ingredients fresh from the farmers' market that morning.

Later we checked out the hot tub, listening for splashing out on the water that might or might not be marine mammals. You never know. (One Christmas we were entertained by four harbor seals that cavorted and vocalized near the beach.)

Best wildlife sighting this trip came when DIL and I had to slow the car to let a cock pheasant strut across the road this morning.

It was very early - we were on our way to the 7:10 a.m. ferry, so we could be on time for choir practice and two services. This is true devotion to music!

Spring - finally?

Snow is NOT predicted this weekend -- at least not here! It may at last be possible to put away the silk long johns and Smartwool socks.


I'm celebrating by heading for Vashon Island, a place close by but a little removed from ordinary life because you can only get there by ferry. World War II interrupted plans for a grand system of bridges to link Vashon to the mainland and then to the Kitsap Peninsula. Now no one suggests this kind of construction (though a few new ferries would be nice!)

Chickadees have definitely moved in. For a couple of weeks they have been flying back and forth, in and out of the box, but I could never see that they were carrying nesting materials. Today one of the birds paused on a favorite perch - a handy potted privet - long enough for me to see the piece of fluff in its beak.

From my bed, I can see the the chickadees approach the box, then watch it swing while they busy themselves inside. Sparky does a lot of birdwatching from her cat tree (safely indoors), making chattery hunting noises.

Part of blogging fun is to check all that fascinating information out on the web. I am always attracted to stories about archaeological excavations, especially when the finds include jewelry. This necklace is from Peru - read the story here.

Catching up with Transylvania

This morning I got e-mail, the first in a very long time, from a friend who lives in Kolozsvar (Cluj Napoca) Romania.

I first met Rozsa five years ago, in Torockószentgyörgy, a tiny Transylvanian village where her family has lived for longer than any of them can remember, or even guess. She was one of our "scholarship girls," a handful of bright, ambitious students who studied English diligently enough to be our interpreters during week-long stays in the village.


(Why Transylvania? Why a week-long stay in a village that isn't even on most maps? Long story, most easily summed up like this: The Unitarian Church was established in Transylvania in the 1560's, and has hung on, through war, famine, pestilence, and countless changes of government and borders. Today, most Transylvanian Unitarians are Hungarian by ethnicity and inclination, Romanian by citizenship, a double minority. Before WW2, a few American, Canadian and English Unitarian churches had connections to some Transylvanian churches. After the fall of the Ceasescu regime, in 1990, American Unitarians re-established partnership with Transylvania. Because of the strong interest of our former minister, my church became one of the earliest partners. More about the UUPCC here. Since 1999, our Partner Church group has sponsored a trip to the village approximately every two years. )

So - Rozsa. Torockószentgyörgy. In contrast to our other scholarship girls, whose goals ranged from "work in tourism" to "communications" and "computers," Rozsa had a specific vocation in mind - to be a pharmacist. "My family had to sell a cow to pay for my first year," she said. "I have to be able to find a job."

She finished her training and found work in a pharmacy in Kolozsvar. The work is hard, and even with credentials, life is not easy in Romania. This morning she wrote, "I'm still working in the same pharmacy,but I have so much work to do,and learn a lot of new things. At the begining of December the program it changed a lot. . . now at the begining of this month the prescriptions for the patients changed,and now I have an extra thing to do, cause they are mking huge mistakes,and we are talking about a human life. Like everything in our country is going backwards."

Last year Romania entered the EU. For the villages, this is good news and bad news. Good, in that EU funds have been available for several years now to make needed improvements to infrastructure. Bad, because EU agricultural rules create huge difficulties for the subsistence farming culture of small Transylvanian villages. This article says it better than I can.

Transylvania is a beautiful place. Ignore the Dracula babble - the attraction, for me at least, is this "pre-industrial" (to quote the article) landscape. There is little sprawl, there are woods and green fields and hills and twisty mountain roads that snake through villages where people have mined for gold since the Romans. And incredibly hard-working, resilient, hospitable people.

Here's one of the local landmarks. "14th century," someone said - but who knows? It commands a splendid view of the village and its valley.

Poetry class.

Every Monday night since March 17 I've attended the poetry class, and I'm already sad about the conflict that will keep me from it next week.

It's a diverse group, that includes some experienced poets, some experienced writers who have not previously tried poetry, and one or two who seem new to both writing and poetry.

Everyone has something interesting to offer, and now, well into the class, we're comfortable enough with each other to bring very personal poems to class. Tonight one of the good poets, a woman in her 70's, said, "I never thought I would write a poem that referred to breasts and nursing."

But she did it. Very well, too.

The other amazing poem was a three-part, three-page elegy, called a choreography, for a daughter, born three months premature, who lived three days. I marveled that the poet could read it without tears - I could not have begun to get through it aloud. (I could barely offer a comment without feeling tearful.)

It was a brilliant piece. The poet, a former singer, writes operatic verse - I imagined this elegy, full of musical references, being sung to a huge audience that would have remained quiet to the very end, for fear of missing a single note.

Both these ladies are utterly humble when offered praise. It is hard to convince them they have knocked our collective socks off.

"Waiting for Godot"

Last night I had the pleasure of watching my son fully inhabit the part of Vladimir ("Didi"), one of the two main characters in Beckett's well known play. It's a challenging part in a challenging play, and all four actors got well-deserved applause at the end.

I enjoyed the play far more than I expected (and not just because my favorite actor was in it!) Years ago one of the local professional theaters did "Godot," with a Famous New York Actor as the star. The production seemed so pointless and distasteful that I left at intermission.

In this fringe theater staging, I could finally see the humor - and real pathos - inherent in the play. Anyone who has ever tried to communicate with an Alzheimer's patient will get reminiscent jolts from much of the second act interplay between Vladimir and Estragon ("Gogo.")

The venue is a classic "black box" theater - an irregularly-shaped basement space, furnished with second-hand ranks of seats, enlivened (?) by ambient noise from the restaurant upstairs. (Rumor has it that the theater bought felt stick-ons for the restaurant chairs and tables.) The foyer, separated from the performance space by black curtains, has enough room for small cabaret performances. Last night its collection of miscellaneous chairs was distributed along the walls. On the most comfortable-looking one, a hand-made sign said "No. Don't sit here." In an alcove, strings of muliple white Christmas lights outlined a tiny bar.

The things we do for love give us our full humanity.

Knitting with Cats (while listening to French pop)

(Or perhaps "Knitting in spite of cats.)

When Sparky was a kitten, it was impossible to work with yarn when she was awake. Now that she is older, she often seems content to leave my knitting alone, provided she can sprawl across my lap. Aside from forcing me into some rather cramped knitting positions at times, this is progress. Sometimes she even ignores yarn running under some part of her - until she suddenly wakes up and decides it's time to attack.

Tonight I think she just wanted to keep warm. Outside the temperature is in the low 30's, and earlier in the evening we had snow, sleet and hail, as a major cold front blew in. More snow may fall tomorrow. This weather is wearing everyone down.

I've been playing music by my favorite French pop singer, Francis Cabrel, whose songs I first heard in 1993, during a month spent studying French in Villefranche-sur-Mer. Music of all sorts played a big part in classes throughout the day - teachers often started class by playing a favorite song, as a way to focus student attention. A couple of staff members were professional musicians, who could sing along with their favorites.

Listening to French songs is the best way I know to learn the subjunctive - if you can sing the line the conjugation sticks in your mind forever! Cabrel's songs take on the world - from love and family life, to depopulated French villages, to the life of immigrants, to the melancholy of a seaside resort "hors saison" - out of season. One of his biggest hits is "Corrida," a description of a bullfight - from the point of view of the bull.

Bits and pieces.

First, a bit more about public radio.

-- KUOW reached its pledge goal in a bit less than a week, and, as promised, immediately cut off the drive. Reassuring that fund-raising went so well in gloomy economic times.

-- Daniel Schorr continues to make trenchant, forthright analyses of current events. Someone suggested a few years ago that he be named a National Treasure (as the Japanese do for eminent persons of advanced age.) Just in case you didn't hear it the day it was broadcast, here is a commentary on the urgent need for oversight and regulation and adult supervision in our current government.

And an enjoyably snarky article about M. Sarkozy,aka "President Bling Bling." The most recent issue of Paris Match was packed with pictures and adulatory prose about the visit he and Carla made to London a couple of weeks ago. Example: a cover line: "Carla wins the Battle of Britain." It's just as silly in French.

Reward for reading this far: a link to my favorite web cam - in Venice.

Happy imaginary voyaging.