Season of the Fox

Last summer was the season of the bobcat when this animal came 'round teaching me about patience. Now it is the season of the fox which, according to my readings, is about prioritizing family relations. As I say with frightening regularity, you can't make this stuff up. My mom has a family of fox pups living in a culvert in her driveway and sending us over the moon with their playful antics. Having now witnessed them up close, I have some revisions to make in my descriptions of the fox pup in my little fox script. And you too can get a closer look because they have not yet developed much fear.

Yes, little foxes, I am listening. Thank you for your kind message and your beautiful essence.

The Perils of Spring

Be careful what you wish for. "Spring" hit 90 degrees yesterday which made all the little black flies very hungry when we went to snap flower pictures this morning. And worse, somehow I got into poison oak and got it on my face. I'm guessing it's from hugging and kissing on the neighbor's big shaggy yellow dog who runs around in the woods. So one side of my face is swollen and red and goes from oozy to crusty and back again regularly. I'm really quite a sight today. Perfect for my week of birthday lunches coming up. But we did succeed in getting pictures. So here is a small taste of my new favorite place. In addition to the flowers, this morning we saw a mink swim across the creek and run up the hill, and we heard a raucous conversation of pileated woodpeckers.

Spring!

With almost unmanageable relief, I report that spring arrived today in the form of 70 degrees and sunny. We took advantage of it by taking what I hope is the first of many Friday family walks along the Finger Lakes Trail. After saying hello to our neighbor Fred who was out clearing some brush and looking for dragonflies, we continued to the section of trail that follows the Cayuta Creek gorge south from the lake. A lovely deep and green gorge it is, popping with spring flowers in bloom or about to bloom. We identified bunch berry, blood root, trillium red and white, wild ginger, and more. And left unidentified those who will reveal more as the season progresses. We delighted in a small garter snake along our path who graciously posed for inspection. And of course we got good exercise and precious sun upon our too white skin.

I've been horribly remiss in the picture department, but I have vowed to return to the gorge soon, camera in hand, to document the abundance of blooms.

Manzanar Store

I must put in a plug for the new online version of the cooperating association's store at Manzanar. Manzanar History Association runs a really first rate store at the historic site's interpretive center: books, dvds, educator resources, clothing and bags, toys, unique culturally themed gifts, notecards, and more.

The store deeply rewards those interested in internment and the Japanese American experience. But it's also a great place to shop for old fashioned toys and unique gifts. Also, who couldn't use some Sam Ono notecards?

So yes, this is a shameless plug for a place and people who are near and dear to my heart. Check it out at www.manzanarstore.com.

That's a replica of a Takahashi bird pin available for purchase on the website.

Open Your Wallets

Dear Blog Readers,

You may recall that last June I participated in a great Relay for Life event to raise money for support of people with cancer. This year I am devoting my time to Multiple Sclerosis research in honor of my friend Holly who was diagnosed two years ago.

As you may know, this disease attacks the coating around the central nervous system - the spinal cord, brain, and optic nerves, creating a lifetime of unpredictable, painful, and often debilitating symptoms. The existence of MS is the bad news. The good news is that science and technology have come a long way. MS is no longer a sentence of paralysis. Because of ongoing research, treatments and expectations have greatly improved. Learn more here.

About 400,000 people in the US have MS, and 2/3 of them are women. Most people are diagnosed between the ages of 20 and 50. Caucasians are most likely to get MS, although it certainly exists in most ethnic groups. No single cause has been determined, and there is no cure.

We need more research, and this is where YOU come in. My walk is on May 3rd (sorry for the short notice!) and I'm asking each one of you to reach in your wallet, pull out $10 and mail it to me (or mail a check to me or the MS group) so that I can reach my fundraising goal of $300. This money goes to the National Multiple Sclerosis Society to be used for research.

OR find your own walk to get involved with. I'm walking in Oneonta, New York.

OK, here's where you can mail your ten bucks (or certainly more if you've got it, but I do understand times are tight). Make your check out to National MS Society and leave a comment here so I can add your name to my pledge sheet:

National Multiple Sclerosis Society
Upstate New York Chapter
Money Processing Headquarters
1650 South Avenue, Suite 100
Rochester, New York 14620-3901

(write in the memo line "Gretel Enck - Oneonta")

Feel free to spread the word. And thank you from the bottom of my heart for sharing in this fun and worthwhile endeavor with me.

I Have Clay!!!

The writing process for me goes something like this: research, read, nap, distract myself reading people's blogs, more research, outline, go for a walk, make notes, copy notes, play some guitar, chicken scratch more details into the outline, vomit up some bad paragraphs, distract myself by cooking, finally vomit up a very rough draft and call it clay, edit, edit, edit. Oh and always keep distracting myself with books, movies, guitar, and food.

The most important part and the hardest part is getting the clay, the raw material that I can then, with hope, shape into a text worth reading. So I am pleased today to feel that I have coughed up 11 single-spaced pages of clay about the fire of 2007.

I'm reading Elie Weisel's memoir, partly because he is from Romania. He writes, "To write is to plumb the unfathomable depths of being. Writing lies within the domain of mystery. The space between any two words is vaster than the distance between heaven and earth. To bridge it you must close your eyes and leap. A Hasidic tradition tells us that in the Torah the white spaces, too, are God-given. Ultimately, to write is an act of faith." Weisel knows about the unfathomable depths because he survived the Holocaust and became one of its essential voices. While my subject is not nearly as important to chronicle, I do feel pressure to get to the truth of the experience.

Norman Maclean wrote a book titled Young Men and Fire about smokejumpers killed in the Mann Gulch fire in Montana in 1949. Maclean writes, “A storyteller, unlike a historian, must follow compassion wherever it leads him. He must be able to accompany his characters, even into smoke and fire, and bear witness to what they thought and felt even when they themselves no longer knew.” I will not prove to be the storyteller that Maclean was, but again, this is not just my story. And I must work very hard to get it right. But, too, I am not trying to tell all the stories, and there are many.

So this is really what I'm up to, as I distract myself with yogurt, music, farmers markets, and new dresses.

Why I Get Up In The Morning

I do love my morning walk, uphill through gray forest with occasional wildlife. But really that is just the price I pay so that I may indulge in my incredibly delicious breakfast. In the past (and future, I expect) the reward for the morning walk was really good coffee. Right now, however, I have to go to town for good coffee, and I am happy with a cup of tea for breakfast. No, the showstopper of my current breakfast regime is Siggi's yogurt, preferably in orange ginger flavor. Start with a chopped banana, add the yogurt plus a drizzle of honey and granola or grape nuts. Heaven in a bowl. I can and do eat this every day of the week. And if being yummy weren't enough, it's made from the milk of cows from Chenango County, where I grew up.

A New Trick

Joe Pug - Hymn 101 from LaundroMatinee on Vimeo.

I'm learning how to embed video. This is Joe Pug. I'm in awe.

Sometimes you get the Presidential Suite...

...and sometimes you get the San Francisco hostel with 11 other patrons in your room. This observation is from my government travels where, yes, once I checked into the historic Broadview in Wichita to find their only remaining room was the aforementioned Presidential suite, the one with the wide screen TV viewable from the jacuzzi tub.

I'm reminded of this truism as last night I scored a last minute front row seat to the Flatlanders at the State Theater after last month's back row seats for 3 Girls and their Buddy. Literally, the wall was behind us and the performers were really, really tiny. The Flatlanders played a great show - Texas music in all its humor, adventure, and longing - as did their astonishing opener, Joe Pug.

And for some reason, it ties in with my flood. One of these days, not everything will remind me of the mud flood, but not yet I guess. Here's the tie: Sometimes your house gets taken by a mud flood, and sometimes you attain enlightenment, however briefly, in ankle deep warm Pacific waters on an all expenses paid trip to Hawaii. The universe doesn't seem to walk a middle path, so we find it in our own way: give cheer to your bunk-mates, love that you were able to get any seat for 3 Girls, and when the Red Cross offers YOU money, take it and say thank you.

Izzy Awards

Last night I attended an enjoyable and important (and free!) event in town. Ithaca College’s Park Center for Independent Media gave out its first annual Izzy Awards for excellence in Independent Journalism. The award is named for I.F. “Izzy” Stone, a legendary journalist who spent his life working outside of corporate funded media, providing a forum for diverse voices, and basically getting in people’s faces. Among other fights, Stone stood bravely against Joe McCarthy and the Tonkin Gulf lies. Last night’s brochure featured a great Stone quote:

“The only kinds of fights worth fighting are those you are going to lose, because somebody has to fight them and lose and lose and lose until someday, somebody who believes as you do wins . . . Go right ahead and fight, knowing you’re going to lose. You mustn’t feel like a martyr. You’ve got to enjoy it.”

The recipients of this year’s award are Amy Goodman and Glenn Greenwald, who were both on hand and made very powerful speeches. Greenwald started the blog Salon.com which I haven’t read but I guess I’d ought to. He made the point that the phrase independent journalism should be redundant but alas in this age of corporate sponsorship most journalism and media simply serves to preserve the status quo. He had some really frightening examples of how clearly many journalists and news organizations act simply as mouthpieces for whatever administration is in power. As Izzy said, “All governments lie.” The question for the journalism profession is what will we do about it. One of Glenn’s issues has been the fight against torture and the defense of constitutional rights.

Amy Goodman is a legend, and we let her know repeatedly that we appreciate her courage. Her TV show, Democracy Now!, runs on hundreds of stations nationwide. She is known for not letting anyone off the hook, particularly the status quo. She is known for exposing human rights abuses and the complicity of US corporations and government. Bill Clinton called her combative, and she was arrested at last year’s Republican National Convention. Amy’s motto is, “Go where the silence is and say something.” She too delivered a powerful speech about the importance of bringing everyone to the table, that every perspective must be heard – not just the voices of those in power.

I’ve listened to and watched Democracy Now! on and off for nearly ten years. It’s not always pleasant to know what really goes on, but it is always valuable to have a healthy distrust of what the mainstream media feeds us. While the evening news is entertaining and shows us shiny color pictures of what goes on around the world, take the coverage with a grain of salt and know you’re missing half the story.

Foxes

Spring comes slowly and not without a fight, it seems. But glimmers of hope abound, and my morning walk offers some good nature sightings. Stormy mornings, of which there are many, often lead to quiet woodscapes. The birds don’t want to get up any more than I did. Crows may be the only thing I hear. But other mornings offer the sounds of chickadees, robins, blue jays, red winged blackbirds and the flittering tails of juncos in the roadside shrubbery - the usual suspects, and all very welcome. Less usual this morning was the call of a loon from the lake.

Yesterday Dad walked me over to a couple of small ponds in the woods where the frogs were going nuts. We don’t know what kinds of frogs they are, but I have never heard such a raucous chorus of amphibious joy. I have a favorite passage by Ed Abbey from Desert Solitaire that I will share. His frogs are desert dwellers, perhaps spadefoot toads, whereas mine have been wintering down in the mud for months. But I think the same sentiments apply, and the same lessons may be drawn:

“Why do they sing? What do they have to sing about? Somewhat apart from one another, separated by roughly equal distances, facing outward from the water, they clank and croak all through the night with tireless perseverance. To human ears their music has a bleak, dismal, tragic quality, dirgelike rather than jubilant. It may nevertheless be the case that these small beings are singing not only to claim their stake in the pond, not only to attract a mate, but also out of spontaneous love and joy, a contrapuntal choral celebration of the coolness and wetness after weeks of desert fire, for love of their own existence, however brief it may be, and for joy in the common life. Has joy any survival value in the operations of evolution? I suspect that it does; I suspect that the morose and fearful are doomed to quick extinction. Where there is no joy there can be no courage; and without courage all other virtues are useless.”

Alas, this morning my dear friend the great blue heron flapped over me on my walk. She heard the frogs too.

Another great sighting yesterday morning was the red fox. My walk takes me up a small hill across the main road from the lake. It’s on a hard packed dirt road with very little traffic except the school bus. Most of the time I’m in the woods, but near the top I come out into open pastureland. Then I top out where the power lines cross the road and come home again down the hill. Yesterday I spotted the fox in the dead grass, unexpected movement and coloration in a drab March field. She spotted me, trotted a bit away up a facing hill, and proceeded to watch me all the way up to the power lines. As I descended, she moved parallel to me, keeping an eye, until I disappeared down into the trees.

While this would have been a wonderful nature moment all on its own, it was made more significant to me in that I had been thinking, for about 24 hours previous, about another fox. A favorite author of mine, Loren Eiseley, has a story about a fox of his own. After loving this story for years, it only recently occurred to me that it would make a great short film and that I should write a script. So I was slogging up my hill yesterday morning thinking about Eiseley’s fox and St. Exupery’s fox when I came across my own fox. And so the fox story is underway. And the walking is good. And one of these days the hope of spring will mature.