From Metaphor to Reality of LOST

Have you ever been lost? I know in today’s world speaking of being lost is often the metaphor of choice for trying to navigate our way through a complex culture. I used this metaphor many times but never really appreciated its impact until once when I was seriously, physically, lost.

We thought we would take a walk through a park, Petroglyph Park, in Michigan’s thumb area. The park at that time was a rough wilderness with overgrown paths and unmarked trails. Woods were easier than fields. We found some objects identifying the messages of elders long gone - a stone circle, rough hewn images on rocks. No other visitors to the park came our way. At one point we sat on the ground to rest, when my good man decided he had to use the outhouse about 15 minutes behind us.

I said I would wait for him here at the convergence of the field with the woods. He was gone a very long time. I knew we had somehow broken our memorized path for reconnection. I inched my way in the direction of path he took consciously trying to establish land marks. This was supposed to be just a little walk. We brought nothing with us but our happy selves. No compass (though I’m not sure I ever accomplished learning its use), no water, no tools.  

I began to move farther down the path calling to him. In just a few minutes I increased my pace and my call, feeling for the first time – lost. I checked the sun, mid afternoon. Calling his name loudly now, I wondered just how far the range of my voice would reach. In the moments of silence I could hear car tires humming on asphalt in a distance. I began to question myself about where we were when we started. Calling again, louder still, but there was no response.

A thumping of anxiety began to send adrenaline through me to alert the cells of impending danger. Walking and calling, clapping, trying to make as much noise as I could, I wondered, Why doesn't anyone hear me? What if I am taking the wrong path? I even began to question our relationship (which I knew was stronger than this encroaching fear), still the curious thoughts like little devils taunted me, What if . . .

When we saw each other, we hugged, he anxiously asked why I didn't answer his calls, we chattered about the feeling, the intense confusing feeling of actually being lost. Now when I claim being lost such as in a jungle of techno-speak or financial percentages, I think of that summer afternoon, a weary sun starting to set and I remember  understanding the questioning and frustration of truly being lost.

Friends, I love sharing the experiences of life and hope you may encourage your circle of friends to consider reading A Homestead Decade - How Crunchy Granola Changed My Life, Amazon Kindle, (though it can be read on almost any digital device), cheap - $2.99.

Thanks for stopping by,

affectionately,

Helene

Kindle, I-Pad, the New Books - READ!

        Today I read that in 2006 there were 7,000 published e-books and in 2011 there were 87,000 authors publishing their own e-books. Wow. The technology of book publishing for the e-reader has democratized the anxious need to tell a story. Authors no longer have to wait months on end for a word, encouraging or devastating, from a big publishing house where busy “readers” plow through endless manuscripts in the “slush pile”. When the word is rejecting, the author tries another publishing house and waits again for months in the same game. Theodore Geisel, Dr. Seuss, reportedly endured 27 rejections before his wildly wonderful To Think That It Happened on Mulberry Street was finally accepted. The first criteria of acceptance by the big publishers has been money; how much of the market share will a book provide? But most writers just want to share an instruction or tell a good story.

Those who were brave enough, or financially able to by-pass the publisher and print their own book had to also endure the public stigma of not passing the literary judgment of the big houses indicating the work is not really worthy reading. The century old power of the publishing industry controlled the market for stories until this fantastic digital revolution.

          We are humans, after all, and telling stories is as much a part of us as preparing a meal. As we get older we have a big collection of stories including favorites that we like to tell as often as possible, or so my kids tell me. Not all of us write our story, however, which reaches a wider audience and gives a sense of permanency.

       The e-book format not only allows a much greater number of authors the opportunity to share their work, but readers experience a much easier way to read more stories (or personally reject undesirable work instead of depending on a distant editor). The e-book is cheaper to publish and should be cheaper to read, though some publishers still grip e-book sales with higher prices. The books are environmentally friendly, no trees are sacrificed, much less oil is consumed in delivery, and storage/discard is minimal. The reading itself can be managed to the comfort of tired eyes. Both publishing and purchasing are incredibly fast. Literally speaking, we are living in exciting times.

       I published AHomestead Decade, How Crunchy Granola Changed My Life based on  encouragement from those who listened to our “back-to-the-land” stories. We chose the e-book format because producing was made easy by Kindle Direct Publishing, we could keep the price low ($2.99), and readers could get the book instantly through Amazon. So far we are very satisfied. We do have some folks who want a printed copy and we are working on that, which has also been easier through the new publishing of print on demand.

            If you haven’t had a chance to read the Crunchy Granola book please check out a sample copy for free at Amazon.com. You can read any of the e-books on a great electronic reader like Kindle or on most tablets, cell phones, computers, one friend even read hers on a tiny little MP3 player. My, my. I appreciate all the reviews and personal comments. Thanks for sharing and don’t forget to eat your granola.

Love,

Helene 

Guindon Responds with a New Year Greeting

After I published the blog on getting organized I received a lovely greeting from Richard Guindon himself and he has given me permission to share with you. If only we can construct a great new year. As for my getting back to work - so far so good.

Best to you all,
Helene

Guindon Encourages Me to Get Organized!

     It’s January and I’m trying to “get organized”, You know what that means: determination, frustration, dawdling. Where to start, of course and that is with the priorities. I think about a cartoon by the Detroit cartoon artist, Guindon, called something like, “The Task”. In four small panels he began The Task as a little lump in the corner of the room, while his funny little character procrastinated. As the panels progressed so did The Task until it turned into a full grown monster filling the room and terrorizing the character. I get it. Getting Organized means getting at that annoying task before it becomes unmanageable and even something that could consume the procrastinating character living inside me.

     The presence of a new year with its goals and resolutions can be helpful – new clean calendars, new files for all the business of our new year, and hopefully for us who live in the cold slow northern winter, Time to accomplish the task of organizing.

     It starts with tax receipts and gathering the important papers for taxes. But we still haven’t cleaned the corners and surfaces and behind the faucets and the floors all trashed from a busy holiday season. Okay that done, let’s set up the tax table and start in. Wait, just a moment, the seed catalogs have come in. We have to spend a little time dreaming . . . sigh . . . lovely flowers, clever vegetable stands for very very small gardens. I do miss the big garden of our crunchy granola days.

     As garden dreams begin to fade I find myself staring at the little black folding table that I put near the computer about two hours ago. What’s that for? I ask myself briefly, uh-oh The Task is growing. And so it goes. All the data from our income will be organized and sent to our able tax accountant, but maybe one more cup of coffee, one more granola bar, one more moment to linger on garden days.

Wishing you a great new year and smooth path through your ominous tasks.

Helene

Author of A Homestead Decade - How Crunchy Granola Changed My Life

Tale of the Gingerbread House

One of the joys of getting ready for Christmas is the day to create the beloved Gingerbread House. When our children were at that magical age of wanting to do everything Christmas – popcorn and cranberry garland for the tree, Holiday cookies, print our own wrapping paper with potato stamps, they also begged to make their first gingerbread house.    

Karla, the ten year old baker, meticulously measured out the construction pieces of each “cookie” wall. Guy and Jessie whipped up the cement frosting for the walls and roof.

Once the pieces were baked, cut, and cemented into place, the plain house was ready for the candy decorations. The memory of watching little hands pressing candy chips on the roof and around the frame still sends a thrill through me. They decorated the cardboard platform with cookie bushes and green coconut leaves on cookie pine trees each carefully placed to the rhythmic song of child talk.

Once their very own unique ginger house was completed we gave it a proud place on the dining room table flanked by two candles. In the morning we happily ate our crunchy granola admiring the beauty of the previous day’s creation.

A few days went by when one of the children noticed a hole in the back wall of the gingerbread house along with nibbles out of the bushes and outside the newly created doorway - little black . . . well, mouse turds. It’s a week before Christmas and a mouse has moved into our beautiful gingerbread house!

What a fine mess this is! 

We called a family meeting with children lobbying for the new resident of their creation to happily enjoy the place. We adults explained the whole cleanliness thing to which they countered (while munching on other pretty cookies), that they were not intending to eat the structure anyway. We agreed to move the house off of the table and implement an eviction in the case of excessive mouse partying or if mouse relatives moved in. Recognizing this was a seasonal decoration we also agreed to move the house outside along with the Christmas tree and its edible garland when we entered a new year.

Each morning the children checked on the interesting disintegration of their ginger house. We imagined the mouse ecstatic at his good fortune. We never saw the little creature but only knew him through his leavings. Though there are those who would criticize our parental decision to allow the mouse to live with us in our house, the situation remained benign.

Our gifts from this curious animal visit included humor, imagination, cooperative decision making, and eventually our mouse in the house became part of a delightful repertoire of family stories.

Wishing you all a wonderful holiday season and a healthy new year.

Helene and family

p.s. Happy Birthday Leon, Jim, John and Tyler, fine December men.

Thanksgiving Ghosts

            At this time of year I often think of our first country-grown, free barnyard rambling turkey. Our neighbor, a quarter mile down the road raised a few hundred turkeys for the locals in the Thanksgiving season. He also raised Hereford beef cattle that grazed and lounged on the hill outside our east-facing kitchen window. And milk cows, large Holsteins, housed in the big old Sears designed white barn across the road from our newly built homestead.

            After a grueling year surviving the near-tragedy of moving in too soon to our unfinished house, we were finally living upstairs. Joel built bedrooms for the children in the walkout downstairs while we slept in the upper level.

The story of the turkey as described in the book, A Homestead Decade, How Crunchy Granola Changed My Life goes like this:

One moonless night we woke to strange sounds outside our window – rustling grass and deep animal sounds. Trying hard to draw up some light from the darkness all we could really see right outside our window were free form white shapes moving slowly one way and another. The sounds intensified - deep low grumblings – as if the mass of whatever it was, was growing. The white spots lurked around all the south side windows. Joel grabbed a small child’s baseball bat and lantern flashlight. In a surprise move he flung open the door only to see several large startled Holstein cows staring back at him.

I called our farmer neighbor who seemed grateful to be notified of his naughty girl cows. At two o’clock in the morning we helped round up the giant explorers and escorted them back across the street to their barn.

We talked into the sunrise about how our urban roots had not prepared us with enough data to determine the mystery of floating free-form white blobs attached to heavy animal snorts.

In late November, about a month after our strange encounter with errant Holsteins, we heard a light knock at the door. Our farmer neighbor sent his shy young 15-year-old son to deliver a 22-pound freshly harvested, cleaned, and bagged turkey for us. “Here’s this,” he almost whispered as he plopped the big bird in Joel’s grasp.

We were equally as grateful for this big thank you compared to our small neighborly gesture of rescuing cows. We have yet to find another Thanksgiving turkey to match the incredible taste of that big Tom. In the years following we discovered that all subsequent Thanksgiving meals remain attached in our minds to the confusion of ghostly grumbling forms in the night.  

No matter how you celebrate the launching of this holiday season, we wish you opportunities to enjoy the mysteries around you, and a place of comfort to tell the stories.

If you want to read more about our country life discoveries, you’ll find lots of humor and insights in A Homestead Decade, How Crunchy GranolaChanged My Life: 2.99 Amazon Kindle. We hope you check it out.

Affectionately,

Helene

Garden Tomatoes - MMMMmm

                Harvest season is almost over in these parts of the country. We’ve become so used to green house and transportation technology presenting us with fresh vegetables all year that we tend to forget the foods of the season have a time limit . . . except for garden tomatoes. Yes, we can get tomatoes all year long, beautiful perfectly formed red globes. Still the exclamation from August through September rings loudly as we sink our teeth into sloppy, artistically formed, scarred and deeply colored clowns of the harvest  – “mmm there’s nothing like the taste of tomatoes from the garden” we exclaim.

                The thing about garden fresh tomatoes is the metaphor for the garden itself: from early summer to the intense heat of late July, early August, tomato plants grow tall and wide singing sweetly, showing their delicate yellow blossoms soon to turn into little green shiny balls.

As the new green fruits grow larger and fatter, we hopeful gardeners begin dreaming in anticipation of all the harvest. Green beans come on quickly and soon scream at us to get out there and harvest! We eat the sweet first fresh strands and store the rest. Beans are gone as swiftly as they come,  while those puffy tomato plants continue to grow bigger with still green globes. Sniffing the air with their pungent fragrance, we linger on anticipations of summer meals decorated with a plate of tasty, very tasty, sliced tomatoes. Not yet. Wait. Wait. We are taunted by their beauty and the memory of that luscious taste.

Then sometime in mid-August the green becomes painted with pink, light orange, soft red, and suddenly, BAM! Tomatoes! Eat eat until you never thought it would happen but you get sick of them. C’mon eat! Soon they will be gone. And so they are.

                Yes, they are canned and frozen and combined with other great flavors into sauces and salsas. Yes, we can buy some pretties at the grocery store all winter long. But too soon, the mouth-watering fruit that tantalizes all our senses even to the kinetic dribbles down our face and arms are done. With much sighing, we rescue a few of the lingering green ones and stretch them out on an available window sill in October for one more chance to absorb that succulent flavor. Ahh. 

Hope you enjoy other garden stories in A Homestead Decade, How Crunchy Granola Changed My Life, Amazon Kindle (also good to read on iPod and computer), cheap - $2.99.