WiFi=fotos!

One never knows exactly what order these will appear but I will describe briefly and you put together, comprendes?
The turgoise cross covered with fresh greens for upcoming fiesta in San Juan Chamula was an early Mayan symbol before the Spanish arrived. Must have really pissed them off to see it desecrated with plants and stuff.
You see the church I told you about, and some detail of how the indigenous folk have painted it.
Sunset on the streets of San Cristobal. Looking into our hotel courtyard with a cool mural map of Chiapas and Guatemala.
Other crosses and funny looking saint.
A solid amber Marimba (complete with insectos. Think about Jurrassic (sp) Park) at the Museo del Ambar.
So. We're both feeling like we will try the 6am, 4 hour bus ride tomorrow for Palenque. It is my 55th birthday. I believe San Cristobal is the patron saint of travelers among other cositas.

C

Church

We have visited a bunch of churches over the years, Christian and otherwise, but our trek into the "country" from "town" the other day takes the cake. We spent a good hour with a very knowledgable guide walking up one "road" just taking it all in as he told us about the local idigenous people.
It is notable to mention here that no photos may be taken of the people themselves, and that coincidentally we cannot find any WiFi signal to upload what photos we do have. We will post some at some point in the future.
Of course you hear about all the incredible churches of Mexico, of all sizes and shapes, but the bright sunlight leaves you quite blind as you walk into this (one and only) church in Chamula. It is an old Spanish church on the outside so you are umprepared for what you see when your eyes adjust. First, the light of THOUSANDS of candles...on the floor. No pews. The entire, rather dark interior quite smoky with incense. Ancient banners hang from the ceiling, and after a moment, you hear a low chanting sound of prayer. Many families are on the floor (covered with fresh pine needles), with their candles, rum, coca-cola (as holy water) and maybe a chicken to have it´s neck rung in the ceremony. You walk around in quiet awe, and you see the vestiges of the Catholic church, pushed off to line the walls with. The many saints in their wood and glass boxes symbolize other deities now. The priest comes to town in once in awhile for baptisms but otherwise....
I could go on with details but I think I´ll stop here. Anne and I were in tears more than once later in the day.
Yesterday I had a fever and though I felt better today, I´m still not quite right this evening. We have cancelled a 4 hour bus ride (in a van with no bathroom)for tomorrow and hope to maybe do it on my birthday on Monday.

C

From Chiapas...

We arrived in San Cristobal de las Casas, a town at about 7700 ft in the center of the state of Chiapas, after flight to Tuxla Gutierrez and taxi through the winding mountain roads. Soon after leaving the large city of Tuxla we were in hills that looked like the dry Sierra foothills of California, with different kinds of pines and cedars. Corn is planted on the steep slopes, women and young children in walk along the roads carrying wood or backpacks from school. Immediately we notice the bright woven cloth of the women and girl´s dress, each color and design signifying a different village or community or language group. ¨Curvos peligrosos¨ read the signs, every mile or so, and our driver has to slow down because I (no surprise here) am getting woozey. We pass small communities with more traditional mud brick houses and tile roofs, and newer homes made of the cinder block and aluminum roofing that is so common. Stretching in a valley below us, we see what look like large warehouses, actually greenhouses of frame and plastic where many local flowers are grown for market (like the calla lilies of Riveras murals...). As we enter San Cristobal I am amazed to see the population is over 100,000 (I had thought much smaller) and that there is an SUV next to us at the traffic light with Minnesota plates and a canoe on top! This is our first indication that we are not actually at the end of the world, and that in fact, we are in a place that is known especially throughout Europe and Latin America as a popular eco-tourist destination. The center of the city is filled with narrow, cobble-stoned streets and homes, shops, small hotels that are all connected with one block-long facade. Many have interior patios and courtyards, as does the hotel Casa Margarita where we are now staying. Rooms are simple, a bit small and rustic, but clean and adequate. It is a relief not to be fighting the night-time mosquitos (how much "Deet" is really good for you, I wonder...) and heat of Puerto Escondido. We are several blocks from the town "zocalo," the plaza where their are government buildings and a gazebo in the center where we hear live marimba music in the early evening. SC has 22 churches, and the one in the center has a large plaza in front of it where the Sandinistas arrived and held forth back in ´94. There has been no visible military force evident in town until yesterday, when we spotted a big green humvee with several soldiers near the zocalo, and noticed a big crowd in front of the church. A taxi driver told us it was a special saint day but he couldn´t say which (or my Spanish was too limited!), but after talking with a young waiter later in the day I learned that it was the national ¨Dia del Banderia," Flag Day, and the schools were out. The teachers of the region had come to SC for a large demonstration against the governments current push to privatize all education in the country. The waiter explained that the private schools are of better quality and there are more of them, and the government wants to farm-out the rest of education, which the public school teachers obviously don´t want. There was another rally later in the day, as I walked back to our hotel, with banners and speeches (the speaker spoke "muy rapido" - I could only make our a few words like better education, parents, teachers, children as I walked by. We have learned that many of the indegenous local people feel that classroom education is only a small part of their children´s necessary education needs, and that learning about their indegenous Mayan culture, religious rituals, spirituality and history is at least as important as ABC´s. The other very interesting piece here is the impact of ¨evangelicos¨ from the US who began coming here in the 1950s, started a language institute to translate Bibles and have caused quite an uproar in the indegenous communities. Converts are basically cast out of their communities, and have drifted into town where they no longer have the strong community connections of their pueblos. What is really disturbing is that many of these evangelicos are now converting to fundamentalist Islam....which is not surprizing if you feel uprooted and disconnected without community in a city of 100,000. One of our guides (when we went to Chamula, which we will describe later) informed us that these Islamic fundamentalists are coming from Spain, obviously speaking Spanish and appealing to these people. He said that he believed that this will become quite problematic for the city in the future. This all reminds me of Karen Armstrong´s insightful book, ¨The Battle for God,¨ in which she compares the common authoritarianism and ¨black-white¨ thinking of fundamentalist Christianity, Judaism and Islam. We hope to add more later...think we have located a wifi site where we can add photos, as I am on our hotels computer and can´t download our pictures from our laptop. We are doing well, are overwhelmed by the beauty and complexity of this region (I´m ready to keep going, and board a bus to Guatemala!) and feeling so blessed to be on the journey together.

-ASG

The Birds

I wish I could show you all photos of some of the birds we've seen. But how? They flit hither and yon. Excepting Los Grandes Negros...I called them Skuas in an earlier blog. ..they are Magnificent Frigatebirds. Not to be confused with the Greater Frigatebird, which is smaller. And then, the Yellow-winged Cacigue, the White -throated Magpie Jay, and the Social Flycatcher, all fairly common and avaiable for viewing.
Here you see us with our friends Gina and Sheila at the Manialtepec Lagoon, having breakfast. We just picked Gina's Place off of a website, and after a few emails, decided we would rent a place from her. We had no idea she would be so fabulously knowedgable about Puerto. In fact, she runs a tourist info. kiosk on the main drag "downtown". Friends of hers have set up a party tongiht (our last) with a grand piano (quite out of tune but a Steinway and...it's a party!) and dinner.

More from San Cristobal next Sunday.

C

ASG here: Somehow C's photos didn't upload to the site. Signal waxes/wanes here; we will try again tomorrow. This being our last day on "Mar del Sur," I am feeling a bit overwhelmed by how much I do not yet know about the Oaxaca coastline and its complicated history. Gina is both well-read and curious about the indigenous past, and has been a wonderful resource. Shared a haunting book with me called "The Edge of Enchantment: Sovereignty and Ceremony in Huatulco, Mexico" written by one of the staff with the National Museum of the American Indian which C and I visited last month in DC. The displays we saw there of life in Latin American "Before Cortes" (a different kind of "b.c") have come to life as a I read and listen to people down here....of a coastline that has been a thoroughfare for peoples long before the Spanairds. Rich in resources of gold, silver, cochineal (red dye the Spanairds later sold to all of Europe...think "Red Coats" of the English infintry), blue dye from mussels, pearls, seafood carried by hand by relay runners to Moctezuma in Mexico City, a coastline visited by traders from Peru and out in the Pacific (along the helpful currents), later sacked numerous times by European pirates....the lush coastal strip and high mountains have endured boundary disputes and been the subject of litigation for eons. Zapotec, Mixtec, Nahua peoples (to name just a few...so little known about them now...Spanairds destroying temples,records, art, etc), all with different languages, finally subjugated (and paying tribute/taxes) to the Aztecs and then quickly descimated within decades by European illnesses after Pedro de Alvardo (one of Cortes cohorts) arrives in 1523. Now to hear of the expropriation of lands for tourist development...and how to maintain ties with your young people who must migrate Norte to seek employment that pays more than 50 pesos a day (about 50 cents). Our current host Sheila, who is now a citizen after living here 16+ years and runs a language institute, tells of bright, former students of hers who have needed to leave, as there is little sustainable work. Gina explains: it's as if our government does not recognize a middle class; only the big companies and the lowly people who work for them for nothing. So, I watch and listen and ponder these things....and realize my adult education about this vast country has been so limited. I will stop there for now..

-ASG

Valentines day on Playa Manzanillo

Just had to add a few more photos...me eating oysters with lime at lunch, after watching several men hauling them up the beach dripping with seawater after they pulled them off the bottom of the bay and then seeing them cracked open by an older man feet from our table. We ate under an awning of the small restaurant in the next photo, enjoying the sight of familias mexicanos splashing, laughing together in the shallow waters, as fishermen brought in tuna off the boats you see. And the fish soup, sopa de mariscos, was pretty amazing...filled with whole shirmp, octopus pieces, tuna, and a broth that was like drinking the ocean...yum. Did some snorkling, seeing mostly dead coral close to shores, some colorful little fish...and also quite a few tiny jellyfish which left us with a stingy rash (an unusual occurance, which we hope has drifted out to sea today). That's when we retreated to other side of the beach for lunch!

-Anne

Finding WiFi...

Ah...it all seemed so easy when we thought of it...posting blogs daily and keeping you all in touch with daily doings. WiFi is quite scarce around town, and is needed in order to download our photos onto our blogsite. We dragged the laptop to supper last night, hoping to use the Santa Fe Hotel router again (long, dusty, hot trek across town) and somehow couldn't get a signal. Frustrating, when you are all ready to send news! And...it's all part of being somewhere that is mostly "off the grid." From now on we will attempt Sabbath Blogs on Sundays, so you all will not get too frustrated checking for us and will know when to visit the site!

The first photo is our beloved "palapa" above our first residence near Playa Carilizallilo, accessed by an interior spiral staircase up to the roof. It is there that I sketched and painted daily, until we moved across town to our new dwelling (photos soon). I would go up there early and watch the sunrise, for quiet reading and reflection, then retreat in the heat of the day after morning swim for artwork and writing.

The second photo is "un artista" (same for male/female) who spreads his wares on the street, holding a painting of his we purchased. Notice, if you can see the details, the ubiquitous skeletons (this time playing saxaphone!) which are so much a part of Mexican folklore, spirituality and art. I met a woman artist from Chicago who was working on a wonderfully bizarre watercolor of dog skeletons (inspired she said by all the Crazy Dogs of Puerto, which run all around town).

Then you see me working on a small watercolor of some pinkish flowers I spotted in a poolside pot, and then a gecko inspired by the numerous geckos who skitter across the walls and night and eat mosquitos. They emit a loud "chirpchirpchirp" that sounds like a bird, and totally incongruous with their small size. They are actually almost "albino" in color (the green is "artist priviledge").

I am hoping that you each had a sweet Valentine's Day. Chris and I exchanged homemade cards near the beach at sunset....still in love, and so grateful to be here together.

Bienvenidos a Puerto Escondido

Oh boy.....it sure is lovely and warm here. Such a sweet little series of bays and lagoons. And birds galore of course. Excepting the huge skuas floating above, almost all of the birds are hues of yellow! And we haven't been on the birding tour yet! Our little casita has a palapa on the roof overlooking the hood and some of the ocean. Yes, we did watch sunset from our hammocks last nite. Wow. Our "landlord", Gina turns out to be a local gem and treasure trove of local politics, history and info in general.
Our routine doesn't amount to much, which was our plan. Down to our little beach (Playa Carrazalillo, 170 steps) while the sun is less intense, and body surfing. Then, resting for evening exploration. Superbowl on the fairly loud and uncouth surfing beach, Zicatela, was not near as interesante as Coretta's tribute with Maya Angelou, et al, that I happenned upon at a hotel TV one day while hunting for WiFi signal (Mac is tough for some reason).
We move from our beach casita into a friend of Gina's lower level in town soon, overlooking the Playa Principal and town proper. Anne will fill you in there. We hope all of you are doing well and think about you often.

Chris

Uncle Chris goes to Florida to visit Capt. Al & Heidi

Yes...I did have a lovely respite from the DC area just last week staying with my old buddies, Alan and Heidi in Ft. Myers, Florida. Sitting on the Gulf, it was in the high 80"s when I got there and felt very nice indeed.
And yes, we did get out fishing twice, into the flats and "backcountry" as Al says. Man, his boat is a real peice of work. VERY fast and that was in choppy water (it was windy and a little chilly the days we went out) and still handled well....sitting up top of the waves. Then, back in the mangroves, it was warm and quiet. Except for the osprey that exploded right next to the boat while I was reeling in my fish and almost getting it! Then we had three or four bottlenose dolphin harassing us until we had to move somewhere else. The next time we were out, we had a Manatee sitting down in the shallows below us just munching away quietly. Until we started the electric trolling motor. He/she didn't much care for that.
The wildlife in general was thick. White Ibis, Anhinga, Black Skimmers, and great shelling n Sanibel and Captiva.
But the highlight was a birthday party for Al where he and Heidi cooked several Mexican dishes that were out of this world including homemade tamales. All washed down with copious quantities of dark rum and fresh squeezed grapefruit juice. Check out Heidi's pond in the backyard and Al's nice redfish (barbequed with lots of friends).
Today we finish packing and drive to Baltimore airport early for our lights to Puerto Escondido. We'll be checking email regularly but sorry, no cell phone. Love all you guys.

Chris

Feast of Epiphany

It is grey and chilly here in Washington, DC and I sit at my sister Wendy's desk thinking about this day that marks the end of the Christian celebration of the Christmas season. Traditionally, on this 12th Day of Christmas, Christians around the world celebrate the "late arrivals" in the Nativity Story: The Three Kings (aka, WiseOnes). I have always been fascinated by how different gospel writers in the New Testament include different characters in the birth stories, probably to strengthen their own different theological perspective about the person Jesus. Only the author of Matthew mentions these star-followers in his/her version of the story. The author seems bent on making the point that even the "outsider" (the Gentile person, in this case) from afar and from a different religious tradition (probably Zororastrian) is included in recognizing Jesus as a new manifestation or revelation ("epiphany") of God's ongoing connection with humans. I have always thought of Epiphany as a good reminder to deepen my awareness of the presence of the Holy in my life, and to consider what "new thing" God is doing within me. This was always a favorite time for me in the local church, where both at the Carmel Valley Community Chapel and later at the Community Church of the Monterey Peninsula, we would haul dried wreaths and even whole Christmas trees down to Carmel beach for our annual "burning of the greens." Surrounding the huge bonfire, we would sing "We Three Kings," sip hot chocolate, and talk about our hopes and intentions for the new year ahead.

These photos on this blog entry are taken at National Cathedral (Episcopal) in DC, where Chris and I attended a number of services filled with colorful pagentry, gorgeous music and insightful preaching through Advent, and then a playful children's nativity pageant with both Marcella and Nic right before Christmas.

One final note on the Nativity Story. My youngest neice, Madeline, has at age 3 become a devotee of the story about Jesus' birth. After unpacking several creche's at her family's home (my youngest sister, Penny's in New Jersey), Madeline and I re-enacted the story with numerous stuffed animals throughout the house. "Can we do the Jesus story again, Aunt Annie?" she would plead. She had learned about the story in her preschool at a local Presbyterian Church, and her mother marveled at how her youngest Unitarian Universalist child was so focused on the unfolding drama about Jesus! We pinned a rubber baby Jesus to Mary's stuffed tummy under a dishcloth, and one of the Kings was played by a blue Elmo character from Seasame Street. When the whole Swallow clan (22 of us!) was assembled in St. Michael's at my parents for Christmas, I directed a re-enactment of the story, with all the older cousins graciously serving as King Herod, WiseOnes, shepherds, angel, my brother Pete as a cow, with everyone singing carols accompanied by Chris (keyboards), cousins Joe (bass) and Nic (guitar). Madeline played a solemn and attentive Mary with her baby doll Jesus, and her daddy Mike as Joseph. And so closes the Christmas season, 2005. A peaceful and joyfulled New Year to all our family and friends out there!

-Anne

The town that fooled the British

Saint Michaels, Maryland. This is where Anne's folks, Chandler and Edith live, on the Eastern Shore of the Chesapeake. An historic small town with rippled brick walkways that connect the neighborhood charm. They foiled the Brits plans by hanging lanterns in the trees so the cannonballs overshot the actual houses during a night attack.
There is a wonderful Maritime Museum, a crab house out over the water you can motor (yes, in a boat) up to in the town harbor. Chan & Edie's house sit on a small channel, with it's own dock and davits for lowering the mahogany speedboat "Sputnik" into the water. This is a sailing family though, with several different small craft and most everybody knows how to use them.
Welcome to the family center. We (now 20) have been meeting at either July 4 or Xmas for the fifteen years that Anne and I have been married. And we're at it again, with everybody rolling in over the weekend.
We plan on having a very merry Christmas, and wish you good health and Light for you and your families.

The Red Lion Inn

We stayed with Natalie Shiras, an old friend of Anne's last week in Lee, Massachusetts while she did her three day interim ministry training. This is the Berkshires, lovely rolling hills and their towns and Congregational churches ( one of which Nat is the minister).
Snow was predicted for the day we were leaving, but we didn't expect 14"! We got an hour down the road (we were going to mosey along through the hilltowns on a two lane road) to Stockbridge, because I wanted to show Anne the great old hotel I found a few days earlier, The Red Lion Inn. Since 1773, it is the longest continuously running hotel in the country. We got there and realized we would be foolish to continue our trek. Snow was coming down like, well, look at the photos. All the merrier for us. I played piano with a guitar player in the tavern and we were safe and cozy for the night. We took off the following day in fine weather and returned to DC.

Beef

See Aunt Wendy in the pretty red jacket. See Rex the Wonder Dog in white and Bull, in brown. That's one of the family herd of artisanal beef cows. Actually the name is Bull Run or, technically, First Bull Run. Or, if you're north of the Mason Dixon line, First Manassas. Get where this is going? Yes, yes, they're named after civil war battles! Many battles were named differently on both sides. You might spy Chantilly, one of other calves (there are three now, and more on the way....to fill out the list of battles of course). We say beef "cows" because the herd is all impregnated cows, with the male calves sent off after a year to be fattened for.....
All this at Charlie & Wendy's 93 acre farm in Virginia. They live in DC and have a wonderful couple who take care of the property and the herd, living in a space above the barn. The farm "house" is a lovely renovated building, in the Tuscan/Appalachian style, with a fabulous pool. So, a few of us went out for the night, tucking into turkey leftovers and various libations. Back to DC and on to St. Michaels.

C

five degrees.....

Yes, that was the temp at the cabin on the day we left. Froze the water the day before. I mean our pipes, not the river although the river was halfway there too. The plumbers were able to come in a few days later, after the cold front passed and drain the system properly.
In fact, it was a fairly wild ride all the way to Michigan, along the south shore of Lake Superior. Seventeen inches of heavy snow had just fallen in the area and not only created white-out driving conditions, but was bending and breaking the young white pines along the road. Volvo's are nice. Our various stops in Michigan and Washington, DC were fun. We just simply adore our big, fat family.
Here on the Eastern Shore (we'll tell more) it is almost seventy degrees as a WARM front moves through, bringing rain now after a lovely sunny day yesterday.

C

Snowin' and BLOWIN'

It's always somthing here at the cabin! We awoke to high winds this morning, having struggled with quite a bit of smoke from the woodstove through the blustery night, and could see steady flurries of tiny snowflakes outside. Fortunately, the electricity stayed on and we had felled several large, dead pines next to the cabin in early October. Chris decided to head down to town to meet a new friend from the UCC church for lunch (who will be with us on the delegation from that congregation heading to Chiapas, Mexico in February). Chirs then returned 3 minutes later, announcing there was a tree down across the road. Of course, we have no gas for the chain-saw (live and learn), so we went out and sawed it up with Frank Gillis' old "swedish saw" and dragged the pieces into the woods. See photo for details!
We are now just a week away from leaving Grand Marais, returning mid-May after daughter Marcella graduates from American University in Washington, DC. How in the world do I figure out what to take with me for the next 6 months! Well, for starters, there is the file for '05 taxes, my alb and stole, files marked "weddings" and "funerals," (who knows what pastoral functions I might be invited to perform?!), photos and northshore gifts to take to mission partners in Chiapas, Christmas gifts for family, winter clothes, summer clothes, my pillow, books for my first interim ministry training in December, files for my American Association of Pastoral Counselors meetings in January and April....oh, yes, and all the emergency supplies one needs to drive in winter storms through isolated regions like the Upper Peninsula of MI (flashlight, down sleeping bag, food, water...). This list is getting ridiculous...
I am really falling in love with the whole North Shore, and this remote yet lively community. It's difficult to be leaving right now, yet the temperatures are dropping, the cabin is NOT winterized, family is waiting for us and new advertures are just around the bend! Stay tuned....
-Anne

Downtown Grand Marais!

Good morning! Welcome to Tom Eckels fishhouse. Right behind the Angry Trout Cafe (now closed for the season along with many business'). You wanna fish sandwich? Come on in! And yes, that's herring "caviar" in the bucket.
Things are winding down for us as we finish the last few chores around the cabin before we leave next Thursday the 17th. We head for 3 stops in Michigan visiting family on both sides and then to Washington for Thanksgiving with most of our close family. We will be in St. Michaels, Maryland with Anne's folks until Feb. 1 when we fly to Puerto Escondido, Mexico.
Blog posts may be a little more sporadic as we move around. And the camera seems to be acting up a little. We've already had the new Powerbook laptop go back to the factory under warranty. A ghost in every machine it seems. Next post from me should have some shots of the trio in the tavern. We're there this Fri. and Sat. for the fourth time this fall.

Chris

Blog This!

You know, I've tried for some time now to photograph the dozens (yes) of eagles who are still floating past the cabin every hour (so it seems) or so and then write a really cool story. Or...waiting for a shot of the local fishouse when they just got in a load of herring ( that are all destined for a plant in Wisconsin to be processed for gelfiltefish....then shipped to the EAST coast.) But, it's been some weeks now and I can't seem to capture it all.
So, hell with it, I offer you something to consider without the camera running. My three new piano students. Boys... nine, twelve and fifteen. Willy, Kirin and Bradley. The community heard I was in town and parents have called them all in. And I'm having a ball. They are all gifted and hungry. They all want the WORLD on a platter ( and by God... I think I can give it to them!). It's only a matter of scales and arpeggios. The same thing that kicked my ass when I was their age. They don't like it. But I must, I MUST deliver it to them with a spoonful of sugar somehow. Otherwise...they don't KNOW music. Who else will "give" it to them?
Forget about a photo and instead...imagine my students. Hungry to get what you have to offer. Wow. For once, a thousand words might be worth a few pictures.



Chris

Frost on the Deck and Grass

Temps drop into the 30's at night now, and skies have been overcast for a few days. All the red maple leaves are gone now, as are most of the golden birch and poplar, leaving only the deep blue-green of the spruce, pines and cedar. Several of you have asked what I have been reading. I move between relaxing with novels and not reading newspapers (except the local Cook County Herald) which is odd because I come from a family of newspaper readers and I always "eat" the paper with my breakfast. We find we are "channeling" our parents, and are into a nightly habit of early evening news before supper and then late night wrap-up with the BBC. Fiction-wise, I found that reading both Marilyanne Robinson's "Gilead" and Alice Hoffman's "Blue Diary" have pushed me to think in new ways about forgiveness....about premature or unrealistic forgiveness and the difference between admitting/confession and real repentance (Hoffman), as well as forgiveness when the offence is once-removed from oneself (Robinson). Interesting stuff, and got me thinking about our IPC program on forgiveness with Fred Luskin (probably our most popular forum). I've also been plowing through my required reading for my first interim ministry training in December, which has alot to do with helping congregations in transition (which invariably involves all different levels of confession and forgiveness, now that I think of it). One of my Yale Div School classmates in Minneapolis loaned me the funny and poignant "Children of God Go Bowling" which I enjoyed. When I want to just drift a bit, I read cookbooks and have re-discovered a great receipe for a six-onion soup (can you guess what they are?) from "The Silver Palate Cookbook" which tasted delicious. Grey October days make great soup weather, as the evening darkens sooner and we stuff more logs in the woodstove.

-Anne

99 Pieces of Wood on the Ground...

I have been working on this pile of maple for several weeks now. Actually, "pile" does not quite cover the magnitude of my task. We're talking 1 and 1/2 cords of green maple dumped in our driveway, and that stuff is HEAVY! I'm stacking it up in our woodshed, where it will be ready for fall '06. I am learning that dried maple is the heart of a good fire in the woodstove, which can last all night at low temps if you pack it right. While I have always prided myself on my fire-making ability, having won a prize in my Girl Scout troop in Coronado for "fastest lit and biggest fire from wood shavings and two matches" in 4th grade, I have alot to learn about woodstoves. Kindling, then pine and birch for starters, then the maple. Over-identified with the need to feel productive at this stage of my sabbatical, I actually count the number of logs I stack each day, usually going for a nice round "100." So, who needs a local "Curves" when you can build your biceps (and strain your back if you're not pretty careful!) with daily wood-stacking! And we haven't even gotten to the wood-splitting part of this operation yet.....well, first things first and let's get this pile OUT of the driveway!

-Anne

Like Yellow Confetti

I am amazed at how the fall colors are lingering, and the locals comment on the mild temperatures and drawn-out autumn we are having. All this vibrant beauty is such a contrast to the awful news from far away, where more and more regions throughout the world are overwhelmed with new natural disasters. On my way down the hill to worship at the local Congregational Church (UCC) this morning, I was listening to the NPR program "Speaking of Faith" with host Krista Tippett interviewing Dr. Rachel Naomi Remen about the powerlessness we feel in face of an increasingly hurting world. "Heal the world that touches you," Remen said. I've found myself pondering this all day.....what of the world, that I touch right now, needs healing? During announcements at church, a member stood to talk about their congregation's mission partners down in Chiapas, Mexico, where they have been helping financially empower women with literacy groups and a craft co-op. Hurricane Stan (of which we have heard little up here) has heavily impacted both southern Chiapas and Guatemala, with hundreds of thousands of people displaced in the flooding. Chris and I have talked of visiting this region in our winter/spring travels, and are glad for Grand Marais contacts who can help us plan. I'm already grateful that this small, remote, UCC congregation is already helping me see and "touch" new parts of the world.

-Anne