Tomorrow's Adventure

First of all, a big thanks for postcards to Becky, Carrie & family, Chris & family, and an old postcard from Kristin, Brian, and Elvis which arrived recently via Madagascar and Washington, DC. And thanks to Maggie and Alisa for origami paper so I can do a crane-folding lesson with volunteers.

Tomorrow, instead of having a weekend off as normal, we meet our work counterparts for the next two years. They are all coming to Targoviste for a conference with us on Saturday and Sunday. We will conduct activities meant to ease our transition into our sites and our jobs. Then on Monday we will go to our sites for a few days with our counterparts. We will return the end of next week for a debrief and then finally a weekend. It will all be exhausting, but of course this is what we've been waiting for. I expect to have a good look at the city of Tulcea, as well as seeing my park and meeting some of my coworkers. Also it will be my first experience riding a Romanian train. I promise to take pictures of all.

Meanwhile we are having a bit of a heatwave complete with humidity. We sweat profusely, almost as much as in Hawaii. Not quite. But nor do we have a beach to go to, and there is no snorkeling around here. There is a really great chocolate bar at the store with chili pepper and sea salt which sort of simulates (and hits the same button as) the sea salt carmel truffle at the Whole Foods on the way home from the beach on Oahu.

One other note about PC life in Romania, lest you think I've got it too soft: last week our Country Director, Ken (whom we all really like and respect), told us that of all the countries he's worked in with the PC--including Mongolia, Romania is the hardest to get things done in. So despite flush toilets, stores selling chocolate bars, an extensive train system, and faster mail delivery than Independence, CA, the attitudes here--the legacy largely of communism--are severely devoid of hope, of belief in change, and of community spirit. Civic engagement appears to be dead. That is why we are here. So it's really true that my number one job is to be happy. That sea salt chocolate will be an important crutch!

A Day at the Monestery

Yesterday we had a small adventure, about seven of us. We went up the hill outside of town to visit a historic monestery of the Orthodox Church. Churches here are called biserica (beesayreecah). We got a ride up from MaryAnn's gazda who is a Baptist minister and had the church van. Then we toured the grounds and the beautiful church itself which was painted floor to ceiling in paintings of biblical stories and of the saints. Outside were beautiful gardens and a funny bell hanging from a tree that looked an awful lot like a car part, like last year after I changed the brake drums on the Jeep and turned one into a petunia planter.

Today it rains and rains. Este ploua, a fost ploua, o sa fie ploua. It rains, it rained, it will rain. Asa. Fortunately our trip yesterday was rain-free until we got back into town. And in the spirit of interdenominational fun, we spent part of the afternoon with Sister Celestine, the nun at the Catholic church here. Veronica and David (pictured below) attend the C.C. here and needed to stop by to see what time mass was this weekend. So we had a nice chat with the sisters, Celestine being British by birth. Turns out she loves puffins as much as I love white pelicans (which are plentiful in the Delta) and we all had a nice chat.

I was handed a Gabriel Garcia Marquez novel the other day and have been terribly lax on both language and site investigation. Asa. Coping mechanism, I suppose. But in a week I get to go visit my site for a few days with my work counterpart there. All will be revealed. And not much to do on a rainy afternoon and evening now but to study and get ready for a new week.

A short note about V & D. They are from North Carolina. David is teaching English and Veronica is working with special needs children and has an extensive background in therapy, often using music and art.

My New Home

Here it is, my site assignment (trying to contain my over-the-moon-ness): Tulcea. Tulcea is a moderately large city on the, drum roll, Danube Delta. I will be working at Parcul National Muntii Macinului. That's the Macin Mountains National Park. It's a bit west of the delta and the headquarters is in Tulcea. Here are a few reasons why I'm so happy: the Danube Delta is the largest and best preserved delta ecosystem in Europe (although it's quite polluted); my park has incredible biodiversity (900 species of butterflies); it's a big birdway, with a concentration of really cool raptors; our mountains are the oldest in Romania (or maybe even Europe--which of course means they're pretty small); and there's a lot of community outreach that needs to be done over pollution/biodiversity issues. Plus I'll get to explore the delta, my Mom will get to see the Black Sea when she comes to visit, and I'll probably have lots of visitors who want to see the sea.

In about two weeks we all get to visit our sites and meet our counterparts. We will have both a work counterpart and a community buddy to help us get around our first few months. I'm having fantasies of kayaking and hiking and generally never leaving my site. It will be very hot at my site, but I think it is rather a dry area and not completely humid. I hope, but it's not bad either way.

I will post more once I've had a chance to translate all of my site information. Cheers.

The Sock Vortex

Southern Romania, including Targoviste, has a bit of a trash problem. So last week when we were having a session in environmental education, our instructor brought a number of trash items and asked us to rate them as to which decomposed fastest/slowest. One of the items was a sock. Turns out randomly disposed socks litter the Targoviste landscape. Funnily, the kids rated the sock as an item that decomposed very slowly. Everyone, it seems, believes that socks are everywhere and long lasting. I can't prove them wrong. Where do the socks come from, I wonder? Clotheslines? But no one here wears socks, or at least not this time of year. Then it became obvious that there must be a great underground network of pneumatic tubes that quietly ferry socks from American driers to the streets of Romania. Fear not, America. Your missing socks are slowly decomposing down at the end of my street.

Homesick

We have now had two different class sessions talking about what we do and eat for 4th of July. The reason for this was yesterday’s trainee/gazda picnic that we planned as a day to share American culture with our host families. It poured rain on our picnic, but that is another story. Meanwhile back to class, sharing with everyone that I used to live in a town called Independence. You really don’t want to try to out-4th-of-July a town called Independence—the pancake breakfast, the 5k/10k run/walk, the art fair in the park, the dance in the park the night before with Sandy and Clayton and Victor playing Brown-eyed Girl, the parade complete with military overflight, the pie social, the barbecue with beans by Rose (the Bean Queen of Independence), and finally the fireworks. Of course other towns have their fun, but you must know by now how much I love the people of Manzanar and of Independence, and with the 4th of July comes the anniversaries of our fire and our flood. And add to that my belief that I will not live their again, and you see where I’m going with this. Of course I like Romania and I will make new traditions here and will be terribly sad when I go. That’s not the point. My Old California Home. Stunning, da? Thanks, Brian-the-Ranger.

So Friday, during a break from class, I was sitting a moment alone in my classroom when Amanda walked by. She’s the wonderful young woman who was bathed. She stopped and told me how much she enjoyed hearing me sing the day before (we have a loaner guitar in the office, to my great relief). She paid me a very nice complement that went beyond the singing. I should have had a dozen ways to thank her and return the complement, deservedly. But instead I just wanted to cry so I mumbled a lame thank you. I will explain to her tomorrow. Of course, I’m well trained so I waited until about 3 in the morning to actually cry.

Don’t worry, I really don’t want to be anywhere else. Well, OK, I can’t wait for training to be over and get to my site (I have the best gazda I could have, but alas I’m never really alone-this training time is very intense). But as great as change can be, we all know it’s hard. And every now and then the weight of all the hundreds of lives we have chosen to not lead or to leave behind gets heavy. It’s the price, and I asked to pay it. Asa.

On the up-side, upcoming this week—site announcements. We find out Wednesday where our Romanian destinies lie. I know that I’m going to a National Park. Isn’t that amazing that I joined the Peace Corps and I really do get to work at a National Park in a foreign country? THAT is why I waited all these years to do this. I think I know where it is because Daniella, who will be my boss, gave me some clues. There is a significant water resource whose biodiversity is threatened by agricultural pollutants, there are some mountains in the park, the climate is warmer there than here (ugh—OK, I can take it better than most, I guess), and there is great cultural diversity although not the typical Romanian cultural diversity of Hungarians and Gypsies. I think my work will concentrate mostly on outreach regarding this biodiversity issue. I’m thrilled to pieces because one of my passions is biodiversity. And I have lots of experience and training in outreach. So it’s a logical fit. Win-win, as they say—wherever it turns out to be. I’ll post again mid-week so you can all get out your maps and start planning your visits. While I had a fantasy of working in the Danube Delta, that’s not near any mountains so I’m guessing it’s not there. Asa.

Asa should have a squiggle on the s, and is pronounced ah-shah. It means “so” but is also used frequently as a punctuation. There it is, so it goes, well… Asa.

See, if I sit here typing long enough I come back around to not being homesick. But it was bound to happen, and will happen again. Fortunately, there are a few people like Amanda, and David and Veronica and Maryann (my Sunday homework/lunch-mates) who are pure gold and make me feel like I’m not alone in this. There are more, and I should do a post about some of the remarkable individuals sharing this journey with me. Although the Owens Valley is incredibly beautiful, I miss it so dearly because of the very special people there. I wouldn’t mind a postcard (hint…)

How Romania is like California

1. Dang if fruit doesn’t grow on trees. We have a great diversity of fresh local produce.
2. People talk about great beaches but I can’t seem to get to them.
3. Amazing civic pride and beauty juxtaposed by evidence that they’ve run out of money to fix the roads.

4. Mountains in the middle.
5. Good people make it a great place to live.
6. The Romanian word for governor is “guvernator.” Really.

More about the Unisex

Alas, dear reader, there will probably end up being more in this blog about bodily functions than you may require; it's the nature of the Peace Corps. Today, though, it is simply a funny anecdote. The other day I walked into the unisex mid-conversation with a man also headed for a stall. We joked, over the stall dividers about how the end stall was the best because the door closes, the flushing handle works, and there's a window--and really, who doesn't want to tinkle next to a tree and a breeze. As we were washing our hands, we laughed that we have crossed the boundary of chatting on the toilet with members of the opposite sex who are not related. Such simple funny things that define, pretty accurately, what it means to be Peace Corps. Stay tuned.

A lot of study groups this weekend, both for language and for my practicum project that I'm doing with three other PCTs. I'll talk more about that later, maybe if we ever figure out what we're doing. But I can guarantee you there's pizza in my future. It's a popular thing to go out for, and very delicious. Similar to pizza in the states except the toppings may vary. We get blue cheese as one of the four on our quattro formaggio. Yum. Somehow I think that's supposed to relate to toilets, but the pizza makes my tummy happy.

Around Targoviste

The city where I am living during my eleven weeks of training has plenty to offer in addition to all the flowers, Gina’s good cooking, and the general hospitality of the Romanians.

Saturday I visited the Chindia Tower and its associated medieval ruins. Targoviste was, once upon a time, the capital city of Romania. The first buildings of this historic site were built around 1400. The tower was later raised by Vlad Tepes (Vlad the Impaler, later to be immortalized in fiction as Count Dracula) for surveillance and defense. At some point in the 16th century the capital moved to Bucharest and the buildings here endured fire, flood, poverty, infighting, all the usual challenges. About a hundred years ago, a program of restoration began and continues today. Today you can pay a few lei to see the tower. I climbed up the narrow circular staircase to the top – a very European pastime free of those pesky American safety standards.
Then I wandered around town past a beautiful theater building and to the end of that street, at the edge of town, to the train station. The train station is much nicer than the bus station—I think that’s a worldwide phenomenon. This is the train station

Targoviste feels very much like a modern city. Some residents feel like not enough has been done to maintain employment levels here, worse than in other parts of the country. And many people live in Communist era bloc apartment buildings which have little to no charm on the outside. But inside people keep them nicely, as observed by my PC-mates who live in them with host families. I’m happy with my garden paradise, but I know I could end up in a bloc when I move to my site—all but the smallest villages have these apartments.

I haven’t been out late so I can’t tell you about Targoviste after dark. Evidently there is salsa dancing and beer drinking to be had. There are lots of outdoor cafes and restaurants. We have a couple of favorites for pizza and lemonade. Mostly I get bubbly water because I like it and it’s the cheapest. You can also get plain water in a bottle. We are instructed not to drink the tap water because although it is properly treated, the pipes are old and usually leach lead and other minerals. All of our gazda’s homes have been equipped with water filters for us.

Today I sat at one of our favorite restaurants for about 6 hours with PC-mates eating pizza, studying together, and basically being Americans. At one point we had a waiter help us with our homework which he was happy to do.

Goin' to the Country

I should have more to say about our action-packed four-day field trip to the countryside. But since I didn't get a weekend, I'm a bit exhausted. Here are a couple of pictures for now. Also had an afternoon trip last week to a nearby national park. Heaven, and great hospitable staff.<

The Unisex

Do you remember the TV show Ally McBeal? Her law firm had a unisex bathroom. So do we at our school. One of Ally's coworkers keeps a remote flusher in his pocket so he would always have a fresh bowl.

One element of cross cultural exchange that is inescapable is the toilet. I'm happy to report that we have them, and they are readily available. It's Europe, after all (although we are not a bidet culture, alas). But there are some curious differences. Often there are no toilet seats, often no toilet paper. And yes, we share at school. There is a large room with sinks and mirrors and another room with a row of five toilet stalls with doors that don't stay closed. And there is little we can do to guarantee a fresh bowl. Toilet paper should not go in the toilet, but rather in the waste basket. And if one of us forgets or isn't on board yet, the toilet she no flush so good.

Humor is also required in the bathing department. We have tubs with a shower head on a flexible hose, but no shower curtains. Our hosts complain that we splash water around, and we hunker in the tub to bathe. Somehow, despite the heat, we all smell just fine.

The prize in the category of personal hygiene, however, goes to PC-mate Saint A. the Heroine who, while attempting to take her first bath, was intruded on by her host mother who proceded to bathe her. Very kind and motherly, no? A. laughed her way through it and won our admiration. I think she's worked this out.

Ah, we take it all in stride. We carry our own toilet paper, put on more deoderant, and keep on laughing our way to Peace Corps success.

The First Week

I should start by saying that I am very happy here in Romania, and I must congratulate myself on all of the hard work to get here and for letting go of all that I have left behind. As I hope is apparent in the next few paragraphs, every indication says that this is where I should be. There have been bumps along the way and will continue to be, and certainly the challenges are great. But, dang!, what I great life I am leading!

Let’s begin with scoala (school). I walk about 15 minutes each way to scoala every day. The mornings are spent in language class which I actually enjoy now that I’m getting used to them. I think I’m doing well and I try very hard to use my newfound words out at cafes and in the magazine (store). I am blessed in that I am entirely unselfconscious in my language use, ie, I don’t mind making a fool of myself in the attempt to practice my language. Hence I find that I am usually the one elected to ask where the bathroom is. (Unde este baia?). Fortunately, of course, the answer is usually a gesture.

After language classes, we have lunch in the cafeteria at scoala. They feed us a very nice lunch, and always a have a veggie option. The vegetarians among us sit at a special table so I generally have the same seat mates every day.

Then the afternoons are spent in sector-specific class. Of the 37 of us (two of us quit and went home after the second day—I’m sorry for them) seven are in my sector (environment), eight or ten are in youth development, and the remaining twenty of so are in TEFL (teaching English as a foreign language). The TEFL group actually visited classrooms this week. We ENV and YD folks have had small group sessions with our program directors. We also had one-on-one interviews with our PD’s. While it’s not certain, I have reason to believe very strongly that my PD, Daniella (lovely, caring Romania woman—physicist by training), has chosen to send me to a national park when we are done with training. I think she’s had me pegged for weeks! This next week we will begin small group practicums (practica?) with local agencies. We will attempt to accomplish a small practice project in the next ten weeks. When they first started talking about this in session, I thought, “Ugh, just when I was getting comfortable with language class, now this! We can’t catch a break.” And the truth is we won’t be catching a break this entire ten weeks. But that is the point. And I have it on good authority that training is the hardest part of our whole tour of duty. So we must also work hard at supporting each other and being good to ourselves.

Next weekend, we have a four-day fieldtrip to visit a current volunteer working at a National Park somewhere in Romania. The element of surprise seems to be a favorite tactic of the Peace Corps. I’m doing well with this, but many others struggle. I feel like my experience so far is exactly what I expected because I didn’t know what to expect. I am trying to go with the flow and be happy at what appears. I’m actually being wildly successful at this.

The food continues to be delicious and overly plentiful. I have to be very firm sometimes with my gazda (host) Gina about not finishing my meals. She is really wonderful and we get along well. And her cooking is delicious. But… So a few words about what I’m eating. Breakfast is always accompanied by a cucumber, a tomato, and often some green or red pepper. She’s made omelet which are yummy, but who do you know who could eat a five-egg omelet? Often it’s ham and cheese with bread. Now I’m also getting yogurt, but it’s along with not instead of. The yogurt here is a bit runny and completely unflavored or unsweetened. But it goes well with banana, which are ubiquitous, and her muesli (cereale—chee-ray-ah-lay). Then for lunch at scoala, it’s usually soup to start and then fried cheese or fried chicken or fried soy patty or fried eggplant and cabbage salad or tomato cucumber salad or potatoes. Dinner at home usually starts also with soup and then maybe a stew or potatoes, always with that chicken leg. Lots of vegetables and herbs, particularly dill. Today Gina made one of her favorite foods—yellow peppers stuffed with a pork/rice filling. Very yummy, although it’s hard for her to accept my dislike of sour cream.

Saturday
Yesterday was a full day and a good day. After breakfast told Gina I needed to go to a post office and could she point it out on my city map. She said instead that she would take me there. We ended up being out for three hours while she sold her Amway products around town. So I got to visit pharmacies, book stores, a department store, and other sites. We walked to the central square with beautiful rose gardens and historic buildings. Lots of flowers and history both here. I’m in Targoviste and it is the former capital and a very nice place. Then we went to the piata which is our version of the farmers market and bought lots of vegetables. People were selling Dixie cups of wild strawberries.

After a mid-day nap, I went out to meet friends at a pizza garden. They supposedly had wireless internet and pizza. Alas, while they were open for drinking the kitchen was closed because of a private party. And the internet did not work. But it was a good excuse to get out and the restaurant was next to the large city park. There are medieval ruins in the park that are preserved and available as a tourist attraction. I did not go in, but will soon. Eventually, those of us who were hungry broke off and found a lovely pizza restaurant and chatted the afternoon away.

Sunday
Today is a slower day. Gina has been away most of the day working a big election—Romania’s representative to the EU. So I washed my hair and did laundry, only to find out when Gina came home for lunch that we don’t do laundry on Sunday. Oops. Many little things like that to negotiate. But I think I’m doing OK with not being too offensive! Later this afternoon, I’m meeting up with friends to do tema (homework).

The weather got hot yesterday. Maybe upper 80s. It’s going to reach 100 here sooner than later. Not terribly humid, although we did have a rockin’ thunderstorm one night this week. And if you’re in the shade, we generally notice a good breeze. Alas, here a crossbreeze is called curent and is generally thought to be bad for your health. So no crossbreeze. Yikes.

I’m happy here. All that meditation is paying off. Everyone comments that I’m always smiling. Before I came here, I had a stated goal that if I brought nothing else to Romania it would be my happiness. Of course it helps when friends send me nice notes. So thank you to all my friends and family for that.
Amsterdam street near where we had lunchGina's house and garden
Buying flowers for GinaInternet cafe with non-working internet and no food
City Park of Targoviste with the date in plants

To Begin at the Beginning

Dispatch from Dulles
I met my group of 39 other new PCTs (Peace Corps Trainees) in Washington, DC, last Wednesday afternoon. Washington was as wonderful as ever—humid, full of schoolchildren, loud boisterous men on the bus who instead of bothering me helped the aged woman off the bus. We had some free time on Thursday morning so I visited the Lincoln Memorial and the WWII Memorial. Then a long afternoon of packing the bus and making our way to Dulles. Alas a long wait (2+ hours) on the runway as the weather did something over the north Atlantic. KLM staff were wonderful and fed us snacks and let us use the toilets. They also plied us with warm moist handtowels and decent food inflight.

Amsterdam
Because our flight was late, we missed our connecting flight and—oh darn—had a ten hour layover in Amsterdam on a beautiful sunny day. We found lockers for our carry-ons and figured out the quick, easy train into Amsterdam. I say quick, easy—but it took us some effort to figure it out at first. Luckily, everyone in Amsterdam spoke English and was nice to us. We were exhausted, but my group of six had a chance to wander the historic downtown, eat yummy lunch at a café (vegetable omelets for some, merguez for others), wander around, and catch a boat tour on which most of us caught at least a catnap. We did see the outside of the home where Anne Frank and her family hid during most of WWII, but the line was long to get in. I was completely charmed by this city; it was a gift of a day. Also a fun way to get to know some of my new PC mates. Stumbling tired, we boarded our plane at 8 p.m. local time and flew on to Bucuresti.

And then I stumbled into Paradise
We spent the weekend in a hotel in our training city which is not Ploiesti as we had assumed. Because the PC asks us not to identify our location too exactly, I will call my city Not Ploiesti. It is a small city of 70,000 inhabitants and was chosen for its representational qualities of the rest of the country. Sunday afternoon we met our host families and were taken to our new homes. Gazda is the word for host and I may use that term frequently. Although I can also say that my gazda is a woman named Gina with whom I’m getting along well. Her house is the paradise of this paragraph. The house itself is simple, but her family has a stunning garden with fruits and vegetables. I will tell you, Mom, that the peonies here are all but gone. Alas. The garden is in a courtyard framed by three buildings and the street. Gina’s house is to the right upon entry. Along the whole length of her house is a grape arbor. She has already made me a variation on stuffed grape leaves. Her parents live in the house in front as you enter. Like Gina, they speak no English, but have responded very pleasantly to my efforts at saying hello. Then in the house on the left, I believe one of Gina’s daughters and her family normally live but the house is being renovated. They have a young daughter named Annamaria with whom I have practiced numbers and letters. She is charming and I gave her crayons. My room is perfect, with a bed, a large armoire, a small table, and two bookshelves stuffed with books that I cannot read but appreciate their company. The best story of my first day at Gina’s was when it was time for Sunday afternoon nap (blessed event). Grandma took her cushion outside and put it down between the rows of tomatoes and onions and took a nap in the sun. I took my nap on my bed, but really who could blame her. It was a beautiful day.

Give us this day our daily chicken leg
Not doing so well on the vegetarian front, although some people who want to be strict are succeeding. On my homestay questionnaire, I was much more adamant about smoking, drinking, and privacy. So my gazda does not smoke, drink, or overengage me. But she does feed me meat at every meal. At some point I will have enough Romanian to let her know I don’t need that much meat. But til then, I can have a vegetarian meal at school every day and do just fine. And Gina’s cooking is very nice. Actually all the food I have found to be delicious. We have a lot of vegetable soup. When Gina makes it, it has a chicken leg in it. Also, the stuffed cabbage is around. I forget the name. Gina made hers with the grape leaves instead, filled with rice and spiced pork. I’ve had a risotto-type rice dish twice, fried cheese a couple of times ( I wish Gina would make this but I don’t know how to ask for it), the ubiquitous potato (which I love in all its forms), and blessedly a lot of vegetables. Breakfast is bread, ham, a local cream cheese-like product, two whole tomatoes, cucumber slices, olives, and tea. Gina has a bad stomach so she has muesli for breakfast. I bought some yogurt and am trying to transition from the ham sandwich back to my normal banana/yogurt/muesli breakfast. Tonight for dinner I had mashed potatoes, the chicken leg and thigh, and a delicious vinegary cabbage salad. And plenty of it. I have yet to finish all the food she gives me, but if it’s not my imagination she is starting to serve me less. I feel a bit badly because it really is all so delicious. I think I’m conveying that properly.

Durere de Cap
Which translates to headache which I’ve had the past two evenings after class. The language barrier is the hardest part right now. Fortunately Gina speaks mediocre French, as I do. So the two of us are butchering the French language regularly. But it really has been a help. She has two daughters who live locally who speak some English, which helped the first day immensely. But I’m confident, after our language lesson today, that I will learn Romanian in due time. It’s hard and will be a lot of work, but I’m up for it.

Oh, I have to go to bed now and I haven’t even started with the stray dogs, my beautiful PC mates, our kind PC staffers, and our patient language teachers. Internet access is still not great. But I would love to get a postcard at the address listed to the right.

La Revedere.

The Woods are Lovely, Dark and Deep

But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.

Had a very green and rainy last walk in the woods today. Tomorrow I awake very early to catch a flight to Washington, DC, where I meet my Peace Corps group. Then Thursday we are away. With promises to keep.

Family

I felt like a concerned parent when I gingerly cleaned the big clump of crusty poo off the backside of one of our new chicks. Evidently when it gets like this, the little chick can actually cease to excrete and die. He/she is doing fine, one of about 50 chicks that arrived in Dad's mail a week ago. Good practice if I get to have chickens in Romania.

But more to the point of human family, I've enjoyed really great last hurrah adventures with family recently. First up was attending Steam-Up with my dad at his club's track. With bad weather looming, we were the only ones to actually steam, and he probably wouldn't have but I wanted to see it. Pretty impressive, and a nice group of club-mates. Yes, that is a fully functional steam locomotive. It uses kerosene to heat the water.
Next up Mom and I drove out west to Letchworth Park, on the Genesee River. It's called the Grand Canyon of the east, and certainly the downcut shale and sedimentary rock make a great show. But I'm thinking more the Black Canyon of the Gunnison of the east or the San Juan of east or the Virgin of the east. Hey, it's impressive anyway and a great day trip with Mom. We had lunch at the grand old hotel overlooking the middle falls.
Finally I've had a Memorial Day weekend full of family. Started out Friday evening with a delightful dinner with cousin Becky who saw me last when I was three or something. Then all day Sunday with more cousins and their kids and playing in the creek like old times. Except now we're the adults who sit around all day just talking.

Oh, and one more thing. My grandmother, Ruth Harlow Enck, wrote a column for decades for a monthly farm magazine. She commented once how much the children liked to see their name in writing. So the other night when my dad asked me when the locomotive picture would be appearing in the blog, I guessed that things haven't really changed much.

Mornings are Hard...

...when you're a teenager.

Storm King Art Center

Last Sunday I took a little drive down to the Hudson River where I fetched Chiemi and Jared from Metro-North and we all went on an artventure. After getting slightly lost and having a mediocre brunch (their menu looked so good on line...), we got to spend the whole afternoon rambling around the 500+ acres of rolling fields, woods, and world class sculpture -- oh, and the mansion/museum that Chiemi and Jared are currently plotting ways to move into. Highlights include a new Maya Lin work entitled Storm King Wave Field which mimics ocean waves in vegetated soil, like little hills but with human-designed purpose. We also saw an Isamu Noguchi, some Richard Serra, Nam June Paik, Alexander Calder, and Mark di Suvero (one of his pieces encouraged us to beat on it with a mallet). We were entranced by two rotating columns of shiny metal, quite thin, that looked like romantic synchronous snakes.

The highlight for me, however, was Andy Goldsworthy's stone wall. He's a Scottish artist who specializes in integrating humanity and nature. He takes delight in rearranging nature slightly to leave a small human fingerprint. Please check out a beautiful documentary about him, Rivers and Tides. Having recently seen this movie again, I was in touch with his motivation for the Storm King stone wall which winds around trees, as if a stream through a pasture. Having watched him among his stone walls in Scotland and now having done my own walking in the woods here among the ubiquitous old stone walls of New York state, I felt such a sense of place associated with this wall. More than beautiful, more than useful, this wall felt personal: the personal history of a natural landscape, or the natural history of a personal landscape. I loved the wall and couldn't touch it enough - got yelled at by an overactive docent. Bravo, Andy.

Oh, and if good friends and great art weren't enough, the dogwoods were in bloom.

Chiemi and I surf the Maya Lin wave.

Two Week Countdown

Two weeks tonight I am scheduled on a red-eye east with thirty-five of my soon-to-be closest friends. We will spend the first ten weeks of our Romanian adventure together in training in a small city outside the capital. At some point during our ten weeks, we will receive our permanent assignments. My job title is Environmental Organization Development Advisor. Sounds important, but I don't really know what that means, as I think it could mean many things. I've been oddly uncurious about the details. Really, the details of the whole thing. I've made a lackluster attempt to learn a few phrases. Partly this is because of my disappointing Madisaster experience, partly because I will embrace whatever it is and feel no need to build false expectations. Anyway, the bottom line is that I am ridiculously excited in an overly calm way about my upcoming assignment. And in the meantime, I've really tried to enjoy this latest chapter.

Friends and Neighbors

What's a girl to do who has the luxury of time to walk in the woods and write essays? Go visit the bard of the Catskills, a writer who spent much of his life walking in the woods, writing about it, and persuading captains of industry to care about. Alas John Burroughs is near ninety years passed from this fragile earth. But his house, his grave, and his boyhood rock remain intact and preserved as a state historic site just outside, and up the mountain from, Roxbury, over in said Catskill Mountains.

Here's a snippet illustrative of Burroughs' appeal: "If I were to name the three most precious resources of life, I should say books, friends, and nature; and the greatest of these, at least the most constant and always at hand, is nature. Nature we have always with us, an in exhaustible store-house of that which moves the heart, appeals to the mind and fires the imagination -- health to the body, a stimulus to the intellect, and joy to the soul."

The house is Woodchuck Lodge, Burroughs' summer home later in life. I've included shots of some other neighbors of mine. We find it uncommon to go out these days and not see a snake.

The Whole World is Abloom

I have many adventures of which to update my little blogosphere. But for the moment, here are more photos of flowers, particularly exciting for me since I finally found the macro setting on my camera (hmm, perhaps I should have read the manual). These are followed by a remarkable collection of shots from the Owens Valley, specifically up the Bee Springs Trail to the Betty Jumbo Mine in the Inyos, kindly submitted to this homesick desert rat by Brian the Ranger (and former co-devourer of artichokes - also in season). B. writes, "Cactus flowers are ridiculously 'over the top'. The colors are a bizarre combination of subtle and tacky. When you look close, they are like a little world; that's why I like the picture with the beatles' rummaging around in the forest. The blooms reek of sex, with all of that pollen and the whorehouse colors (not that I've ever been to a whorehouse). The asters and mallow are much more subtle, delicate and ephemeral looking; like cherry blossoms." Indeed. What a lovely gift to receive in one's inbox.

A Run on Pileateds

As I said to my dad the other day, on yet another lovely woodland walk, I'm sure not every large black and white bird in the forest is a pileated woodpecker, but dang! if there doesn't go another one. Growing up in these mixed woods east coast forests, pileated weren't unheard of, but I do not remember them being common. Not like the Lord Gawds! of down south, of course, which we all believed extinct until recently. But certainly a rare treat to see. So I'm incredibly pleased to report that the pileateds are here. Even today, looking out the dining room window at my mom's, over to the grove where the turkeys usually come for the neighbor's handout, there is a pileated poking around in the evergreens. If we must endure the ever-present Canada geese, let's have a little of our own Lord Gawds!