Fall riding successful with Aikido

I want to do that, too.

Fall provides the greatest opportunities for beautiful trail riding. Who can resist the soft rustle of leaves and the fresh smell of tannin in the air? From the horse's perspective, the temperature is cool so they don't overheat and there are few flies or other nasty bugs. From my perspective, it is not too hot, not too cold, just right.
I am lucky to live in the country, and have neighbors who allow me to use the trails they maintain through their woods. The trails are for ATVs, but for private use, so they are wide and groomed with few obstacles in the way. I'm taller on my horse than the average ATV rider so I need to deal with low branches now and then, not a problem.
I previously wrote about how I used my Aikido training to lessen the impact of a fall from my horse. Aikido has other techniques that make working with horses more enjoyable and safe. A basic principle of Aikido is to be able to receive challenge, blend with it and redirect the energy in the way you choose.
My horse Eddie is somewhat barn sour. He is the leader of the herd and feels it is his obligation to stay with them. This leads to some interesting discussions between us when the ride starts.
I've learned that it is never a good idea to start a fight with a horse. They are bigger, stronger and more obstinate than a Viking warrior. So, when I want to leave the herd and Eddie does not, I use the "I want to do that too" technique of redirecting energy. Here's how it works:
I ask Eddie to go forward, leaving the herd. Eddie takes a few steps forward and turns to go left. Instead of yanking on the rein to correct his behavior, I accept the challenge and blend with it by saying, "I want to do that too." I pick up the left rein and go with Eddie. However, instead of stopping when we are facing the herd, I redirect his energy and continue the rein to make a 360 degree turn. We are now facing forward again.
Usually, the first time I catch Eddie off guard and he continues for a few steps forward before turning back toward the herd. Again, I want to do that too. I pick up the left rein and we do another 360 degree turn.
Now, Eddie gets the idea and he doesn't want to stop at 360 the next time, he goes for an additional 180 to face the herd, but guess what? I want to do that too. Another 360.
I vary the circles. Some are small, almost a reining spin, while others are large. Some are round, some are egg shaped. Some are done at a walk, some at a trot. Eventually, Eddie realizes he is only making more work for himself by not following my lead. He straightens out and we go on our ride. Once we have left the herd, Eddie is ready to go.
Conventional wisdom would say I'm letting my horse get away with something. Or I'm 'giving in' to him. Or you should never let your horse disobey, make him do it. I often find my style is not conventional. I could have 'made' him do it by yanking on the rein, kicking him, getting angry, setting up a fight. Maybe I would win the fight, maybe not. However, even if I won the fight, I'm now riding on a horse who feels he has lost. My horse and I are a team and I don't want my team members feeling like they lose when they follow me as their leader. I want my team to win. I want following my lead to be my horse's idea.
Also, we've had the opportunity to practice riding in circles, following my feel, turning on the hind quarters, turning on the forequarters, stopping, moving forward and backing up. These are all basic elements of riding and I've been able to practice them while putting a purpose into it. The result is a horse who willingly rides forward, stops easily and turns on cue.
I ride the horse who presents himself that day. Some days our routine may take one turn, some days it may take ten, and some days we don' t need it at all.
A few days ago, I hopped on Eddie, turned him away from the herd and we walked off without a hitch. We ventured into the neighbor's trails and had a lovely ride to trail's end where there is a beautiful field. I let Eddie stop and eat some grass as a reward. I sat with him, enjoying the sun on my face and the call of the crows overhead, grateful for the day and my wonderful horse. Eddie was grateful for the chance to eat on a new field of grass. When it was time to go back, I asked Eddie to go forward.
"No, I think I want to eat more grass," he said, and lowered his head. I said, "I want to do that too, but I want to do it over here."
I directed him to a patch of grass about a foot away. He complied and ate grass. I asked again and we went forward a few steps and Eddie decided to turn. I want to do that too. So we turned, we circled once and he remembered.
"Let's go home instead," he suggested, and we walked back down the trail together. No fight, no fuss.

On weaving and life

I found this in an old cookbook from the Three Rivers Weavers Guild, it is written by K. Alexander from Viroqua:

"The Creator weaves life in myriads of patterns - of worlds and stars and galaxies: of earth and air, fire and water: of people, families, cities and nations; of flowers and birds, kittens and puppies, life and death and love and sorrow.
I weave beauty with fibers of cotton and wool, linen and rayon, colors and textures in intricate design. I weave lullabies and legends into the hearts of my children, dreams and visions into their minds. I weave chicken pot pies and chocolate chip cookies, nourishment for my family; and the cords of love and mutual sharing twine around us and bind us into a unified design.
The weaving is a gift and a process, always changing, always new. One pattern is finished and a new one begins. We do not sorrow that the weaving is done for a new pattern always lies waiting. We look at what is finished and see that it is good, it is complete, and it is time to start anew. What was woven is woven, and what lies ahead beckons. And we weave our lives on the Loom of Life while the song of the weaver of the universe flows through us and all the patterns come together in one vast harmony."

I find this particularly appropriate as we end the old Mayan calendar (on Oct. 28) and begin a new cycle. Let's weave our world with love.

Evergreen

Future of entomology could be secure

I’m not a fan of spiders. I know spiders are essential to our environment. I know I’m much bigger than the average spider and I know most spiders don’t hurt people. I still am not a fan of spiders.
Being afraid of spiders is a common thing among girls. I remember children’s stories when I was small and the spider was always the bad guy, sneaking around and scaring children in the woods. Spiders are silent creatures and good at sneaking andpopping out when you least expect them.
There is one person I know who is not afraid of spiders, my four-year-old, budding entomologist granddaughter Wren. Wren revels in anything creepy, crawly, slimy or jumpy. Spiders rank right up there with fairies in Wren’s world. And fairies rank pretty high.
I had the chance to view the world from Wren’s eyes this past weekend when she and my sister Linda came to visit. Our first adventure was taking Wren for a tour of our new farm.
We started in the back yard and proceeded through the woods to the creek, looking for frogs. Our frog hunt presented only one find, a dead frog lying belly up on the creek bed. Most children would shy away from such a stinky, slimy specimen, but not Wren. Wren reverently sniffed the dead frog and touched the smooth skin, then allowed us to give it a final resting place near a rock.
Our next find was a slug, crawling on a leaf in the tall weeds. Wren picked the entire leaf, and carried it and the slug along until we got back to the house. The slug was given a new home in an old pickle jar, along with the leaf.
On Saturday, Wren, Linda and I packed into my car to enjoy the South Shore Pottery Tour. Wren’s first experience on the ferry to Madeline Island seemed fun for her, but there weren’t any creepy things involved. However later that day, Wren found the black cricket which had been living in my car for several days. It took her only a few minutes to catch the cricket and deposit it into an empty water bottle, also with a leaf to feed on. Wren carried her cricket through the rest of the pottery tour.
At home, the slug and the cricket took up residence, each in their own jars, in the kitchen. I’m not sure where the dead bee Wren picked up later ended up and I’m not asking.
My husband came to me that evening and asked, “how long do they need to stay in the house?”
“Until Wren goes home,” I said.
Luckily, we didn’t find any of Wren’s recent favorite spider, the Black and Yellow Garden Spider. She has them near her house and revels in seeing these patterned beauties which can grow to be over an inch long. The most we could come up with were a few Daddy Longlegs, and a small house spider making a web on my hedgehog fruit (which is supposed to repel insects.)
Luckily, Wren took her slug and her cricket home and my kitchen is now bugfree once more. It was probably a better deal for the cricket who would have ultimately died of starvation or heat stroke in my car.
For Wren, entomology isn’t a chosen profession yet. She doesn’t even know the meaning of the word, though we are trying to teach it to her. At present, entomology is more like an obsession for Wren, or a lifestyle. Her house is filled with bug boxes, jars and a dead bug collection. She’s been known to carry dead crickets in her pockets.
Hopefully, entomology is an obsession she will continue to foster as she gets older. I see her studying everything that moves, crawls, or slithers. She is a bright child, and if she continues to enjoy the world of bugs, she may grow up to be an internationally renown expert on these smaller specimens of wildlife.
I would be glad if this happened, because even though I know insects and bugs are an important part of our ecosystems, and need to be cherished and preserved, I still don’t like spiders. So, I’m glad there is someone out there who does, even if she’s only four years old.

Add a little salsa to your life

Fall is the time of harvest, bringing in the bounty of the summer’s labors. Though the first hints of the chilly weather to come have been felt, I’m still waiting for all my tomatoes to ripen.
This spring, a friend gave me several heirloom varieties she grew in her greenhouse. I planted them in our newly tilled garden and watched as the spring rains nearly drowned the fledgling plants. My heirloom tomatoe plants withered and drooped through most of the summer, until I thought there was no hope. For safety, I planted a few other varieties in a separate bed.
But I’ve found these heirloom tomatoes to be a hardy lot. Perhaps that is why they have survived over the many years it takes to earn the moniker of ‘heirloom.’ My tomatoes decided to grab on to life during August and now have sprouted up to tall plants with green leaves and green tomatoes. Slowly, they are getting the first blush of ripeness. Meanwhile, my other tomatoe plants, who showed better signs of survival through the summer, aren’t any further along.
I examined the heirloom plants and found three slightly orange tomatoes with black and brown lines and spots on them. Not being familiar with the variety, I thought this meant fungus or insect infestation so I picked the less than ripe looking tomatoes to prevent further damage. I took them into the kitchen to see if I could cut off the offending parts. With paring knife in hand, I sliced through a thick skin to find brilliant red inside. These tomatoes were not only ripe, but delicious, with a thick, sweet inside.
They were the inspiration for the first batch of fresh salsa of the season.
I am horse-sitting for a friend who also asked me to water her tomato plants while she is gone.
“Go ahead and take home the ripe ones,” she said.
My salsa recipe is the kind you make up as you go. Whatever tomatoes you have go in and the more varieties, the better the batch. I mixed my heirloom jewels with some small orange tidbits and cherry tomatoes. Romas went under the knife with Better Boys. My favorite addition are the yellow, bell-shaped tomatoes and I was able to find several ripe ones in my garden.
My onions didn’t fare very well this year (probably due to the weeds I didn’t get around to pulling every day), but I was able to find about ten small heads hidden in the weed bed. I added in some yellow and green peppers from the grocery store. My pepper plants are all leaves and no peppers.
The one abundant thing in our garden is summer squash. I had three large, yellow specimens on the counter.
“I wonder what salsa tastes like if you grind up summer squash,” I asked my husband.
I ground and he tasted, finding the squash did not have much taste on its own. We decided it might add texture to the salsa and I needed to do something with the squash so into the bowl it went. Finish up with some cilantro, salt and lemon juice, and stir.
The result was quite colorful with reds, greens, oranges and yellows. The onions, though small, were powerful and the squash added a light crunch. My husband is the taste-tester for salsa and he proclaimed it, “the best batch ever.”
I will take this compliment, even though he says it about every batch of salsa I make. Perhaps it means I’m getting the recipe perfected. Or perhaps he just loves fresh salsa. That’s a good thing because if all the green tomatoes have enough warm weather to ripen before frost ends the garden season, I’ll be making many batches of salsa for the freezer.

Art lessons from a four-year-old

My four-year-old granddaughter Wren is not only an amateur entomologist, she’s also an artist. She was doing a painting of an ocean a few weeks ago with acrylic paints. She mixed peachy pink and lavender and exclaimed, “This is the perfect color for the ocean.”
My sister, also an artist, looked at Wren’s concoction and agreed. It was the perfect ocean color.
How a four-year-old could not only know the color of the ocean, but mix that color from two different colors, is amazing to me.
This past weekend, my sister and I went to Grand Marais, Minn. on a camping trip. My sister was taking a pottery class at the Grand Marais Art Colony, and I was taking a three-day class in pastel painting.
It seemed the water theme followed us.
Grand Marais is along Lake Superior, where stunning water meets black rock and green landscapes. We parked our camper in the municipal campground. Getting into town from the campground was a few blocks walk along the lakeshore, then two blocks up the hill to the Art Colony. The walk was beautiful, whether it was in the fog of early morning, the bright sun of afternoon or the calm at dusk.
I had brought along several photographs to work from in my pastel class and chose a picture of five women sitting on Bay View Beach in Washburn. I wanted to explore painting people and the instructor was a former figure and portrait artist.
We began our paintings and my sky turned out quite nice. Next came the deep section of Lake Superior, again not too hard. The middle section was the shallows, with small waves not quite breaking over the sand bottom, which was visible through the water. Getting just the right color for this section proved to be difficult.
In class the next morning, my instructor informed us we were going to learn how to make our own pastel sticks. Pastel sticks are made of pure pigment with a binder. Our task was to crush parts of our pastel sticks, mix with water, then add either white or black pigment with the binder to create new colors. The new pastel was rolled into neat sticks and set in the sun to dry.
When taking a class at the Art Colony, you have access to the studio 24 hours a day. After class was over that afternoon, my sister and I went back to the camper for supper. When I told her about my experience with mixing pastels, she reminded me of Wren’s recipe for the ocean, peachy pink and lavender.
We walked back to the Art Colony, and while my sister threw pots in the clay studio, I went upstairs to work on a new pastel color for my painting. I found a stick of peachy pink and a stick of lavender then wondered what proportions Wren had used in her mixing.
When exercising my adult brain proved unhelpful, I decided to think like a four-year-old. I split each stick in random halves, crushed them, added water and stirred. Comparing the resulting color to the photograph of Lake Superior, I was surprised to find it was the exact color I needed.
I left the stick to dry over night.
Our morning was spent with a plein aire demonstration by the instructor on Artist’s Point. The instructor perched her easel on the rocky shoreline and painted a multi-layered rendition of the outcropping rocks and lake while we sat in the sun watching the changing colors and listening to the tourists watching us.
After lunch, we again gathered in the studio and I was able to try out my new, ocean colored pastel stick on my painting. When I was finished, the instructor said, “I wasn’t sure how you were going to do on that water section, but it looks very good.”
Thank you, Wren, for saving my painting.

Abundance

I am learning that when you buy a foreclosed, abandoned property, you never really know what you are going to get. We officially moved into our new home last Saturday and I am beginning to discover what we got.
Abundance.
We made our offer on the land in February when snow covered the ground and the earth held its treasures in stillness. We waited and watched. First to be revealed was the abundance of things no one else wanted. Rusted metals, trash, and the remains of old buildings began to surface as the snow melted.
We began to clean up and waited more.
With spring came the abundance of things planted in the past. Peonies, bleeding hearts, lilies and other flowers showed their faces and burst open in radiant color through the season.
Summer grasses began to grow in abundance, warranting a search for a new lawn mower.
Underneath a section of those grasses was a garden plot, long abandoned. A weekend’s worth of tilling brought the garden back to life. With a large garden space, we planted seeds to our hearts content and now we are experiencing another kind of abundance. We have an abundant supply of deer who love to nibble at the contents of our garden. Our fence isn’t high enough yet; the mother and her Bamby are not detered. While the mother savors the bean plants, her youngster is content to ravage my newly planted hostas.
While rummaging through the remains of an out building, I found an abundance of honey bees who have apparently made a hive in a stack of old window screens. Maybe we will have an abundance of honey?
Behind the ramshackle buildings that serve as a garage, we found an arbor of grapes. In the winter, it looked like a tangle of brown vines clinging to old posts. Now, summer has brought us a lush green arbor with an abundance of maturing grape clusters. They are green right now, but when ripe will be a deep purple delight.
The back pasture brought forth delicious wild strawberries and along the hillside behind the grape arbor, raspberries give us a fun evening treat.
To my amazement, four trees in the back yard along the creek bed have brought forth ripe, bright red cherries. The trees are tall and I picked as much as I could from the ground, then resorted to a ladder. To reach the majority of the harvest, I’m going to have to put the ladder in the back of the pick-up truck.
Last night, I was contemplating the abundance of our new home while enjoying the tranquility of dusk in our back yard. I heard a rustling sound in the cherry trees and saw several crows flying away. The rustling continued and I approached with caution. I have heard bears like to climb cherry trees and bend the branches down. I know we have a bear in the area because we found a den dug into the earth in the back of the pasture.
The branches weren’t shaking enough to warrant a bear, unless it was a cub. I sneaked closer and listened. I heard a rustling on the ground near the creek and stopped. Was it the mother bear? Nothing attacked, so I continued.
I was almost under the tree when I spotted the culprit. Clinging to a high branch, hiding behind leaves, was the masked face of a small raccoon. The raccoon held still and I heard the gentle trill of the its mother coming from behind the old out building.
There are enough cherries in our trees to share with the raccoons, who can climb to the highest branches better than I can. I assured the raccoon I was not there to harm it and gave it my blessing before going into the house for the night.
Abundance. It comes in many forms and is all around us when we take time to be still and feel it.

Two Sisters Design Team

It started as Two Sisters Landscaping. My sister Linda, who lives in Iowa, came up to visit this past week. I was in the process of transplanting my perennials to our new house and Linda joined in. We dug up hostas and columbines, and a seriously entrenched false indigo, put them in boxes and loaded up the back of the Gator for the three-mile trip.
At the new house, we chose the perfect spots for each plant and lovingly nestled them into their new home. When we were finished landscaping, we went into the house. She hadn’t seen my new house yet and I was eager to hear her ideas for renovations. We began to measure rooms and windows. Two Sisters Landscaping turned into Two Sisters Design Team.
When renovating an old house, Linda is a good person to have on your design team. She has an artist’s eye and years of experience renovating her own homes. She recently purchased an old house in Iowa and did the gut out and rebuildroutine. My talents are confined to pounding in a nail now and then and slapping on a coat of paint. Linda knows her way around the workshop.
My limited measuring talents mean I can’t be trusted to cut a piece of wood to size. Linda can measure to a sixteenth of an inch and use a compound sliding mitresaw to make the cut in one try.
Where I would try to pound a nail into sheetrock and expect it to hold 100 pounds, my sister knows how to find a stud and has the smarts to know when reinforcement is needed. Linda can lay tile, put up drywall, add texture to walls, and install curtain rods that are level. While I thought I was doing good by being able to tear out the old, soiled carpeting, my sister can tear out complete walls and use a sander to refinish wood floors.
I had previously purchased a closet organizer from Menards, only to find out it was designed for sheetrock walls in closets that are square. I have neither, so with measurements in hand;we headed to Menards in Superior. Another talent my sister has is knowing how to navigate in Menards. Whether it was sink stoppers or curtain rod hardware, I pushed the cart while she led the way. We found the perfect drapes for the bedroom, rods for installation, and a carpet remnant the exact size to finish two bedrooms.
Back at the house, I was the ‘here hold this’ and ‘go get me a (fill in the blank tool)’ while Linda was on the ladder installing and on the ground making perfectly measured cuts in the carpet roll.
However, even with my sister at hand, the Two Sisters Design Team got Tom Sawyer-edby my husband.
We were contemplating how to install the perfect curved shower curtain rod on bathroom walls of questionable origin when my husband Paul came in. He looked at the walls, tapped with his fingers and had the look of consternation on his face only a seasoned carpenter can muster.
“This is going to be a tough job,” he said. “Trying to find something behind these walls to attach to is going to be very difficult. We may need to re-inforce behind the wall.”
It sounded like a job that would challenge even my sister. Paul had just finished installing shelves in a kitchen closet and was about to begin painting the interior of the closet.
“I’ll try to find a way to hang this rod if you want to paint the inside of that closet,” he offered.
Seeing hours of work to hang the rod in front of me, I grabbed the chance to spend the time with a paint brush instead. The closet was a tight space, and I didn’t have my painting clothes on, but it sounded much more doable than the enormous job my husband seemed to think the rod was going to be.
I got the painting supplies and had about one wall done when I heard my husband say, “Oh, this wall seems to be some kind of wood. Looks like I can put these screws into it anywhere I want.”
Within five minutes, he had the rod installed and was off on his next adventure.
By the time I finished painting the inside of the closet (picture a space just big enough to barely turn around in with about an inch of head room), I had paint in my hair and on my shoes.
The good news is that while I was ensconced in the paint job no one else wanted, my sister had been busy washing my windows.
After spending the day with my sister, the one-woman contractor, I spent some time watching her fix the cover for the box of her truck. Then I spent the evening helping her weave handles on the Raku pottery she had made and fired in her own kiln.
I know there may be many of you reading this who will want to borrow my multi-talented sister, but she’s mine and you can’t have her. I sent her home with extra perennials, two bags of horse manure, and some nice rocks to put in her garden. And I offered to babysit her aged dog for a week in August. It’s a small price to pay, and hopefully enough incentive to bring her back for another visit, soon.

Drop and roll

I lie in the tall grass, wondering how I got there. Oh, that’s right, I fell off a horse.
If you are going to ride horses, you are going to eventually fall off. It is a rule of the horse world. Even the most highly trained, docile mount can spook at an unusual object. Even the most balanced rider can get distracted at an inopportune moment. It will happen.
My goal in life is to be riding a horse when I am 90 years old, so falling off needs to be a less traumatic event for me. To this aim, I decided to study Aikido, a non-violent martial art that also teaches balance and how to fall without getting hurt. I’ve been going to Tim Doyle’s dojo in Cornucopia on Thursday nights for several months now. One of the first things I learned in the class was how to roll.
As a child, rolling was easy. I was more limber then, less afraid of injury and closer to the ground. In Aikido, we start with rolling from a kneeling position, slowly and on a mat. We graduate to rolling from a standing position, then rolling backwards. My forward rolls were clumsy at first, but with practice, I can now roll forward effectively.
Backwards rolling took more time. I found I could roll backwards to one side nicely, but the other side was a mess. An image of flopping jellyfish comes to mind. I learned to roll forwards, then immediately backwards in the same direction to develop the muscle memory, instead of trying to think my way through it.
A few weeks ago, our class was visited by two young men just out of high school. Though it seemed to be their first class, they were natural rollers. Forward, backward, sideways, all in fluid movements. I commented about the age difference to my instructor. He told us a bit of ancient wisdom about Aikido. You don’t get really good at it until you reach age 60. Why? As with many things, it’s not the years you put into the art, it is the art you put into those years. Because Aikido is a non-aggressive form of martial arts, to do it well, you need to conserve your movements and do more with less. It requires concentration and wide-spatial awareness all at the same time. These are abilities that become refined with age. As we get older, we become more interested in conserving our energy, doing things to avoid conflict and knowing how to deal with conflict without getting hurt.
Concentration and spatial awareness, avoiding conflict and dealing with conflict without anger or injury are all traits needed in life with horses. So, back to the fall.
I was riding Eddie bareback. It was the kind of ride not meant to go anywhere, only to spend quality time together. I was mostly a passenger, letting Eddie choose our destination and which patches of grass were the finest for his treat. My job was to flow with his movements, refining my balance and working on patience with non-demanding riding. We had already explored the winter pasture, the driveway and done a couple laps around the arena. Eddie was doing well, and enjoying the outing with me.
We decided to venture into a pasture that hadn’t been used this year. The grass was waist high in places. From on top of Eddie, it reached to my heels. Eddie was sure-footed, traversing ditches and avoiding gopher holes hidden under the verdant pasture bed. Blue sky was beginning to return after a day of cold and rain. The air had the smell of freshness only spring rain and growing grass can produce.
We walked farther into the pasture, nearing the spot where my husband has stacks of wood covered with old metal sheets to keep it dry. While Eddie dipped his head into the grass, I looked ahead and spotted a piece of metal lying partially hidden ahead of us. I remember thinking it would not be a good thing for Eddie to walk on unexpectedly. Just as I had that thought, Eddie looked at the metal, and instantly stepped sideways, as if reading my mind.
They say that when you are about to die, your life flashes before your eyes. It’s about that way with falling off a horse. It only takes about two seconds to fall off, but those two seconds are separated into many minute milliseconds.
I remember the moment when I felt Eddie shift. I remember the moment when I thought I could still save my balance, then the split-second later when I realized I was going to fall.
The good thing was, while I was falling I was thinking, “I have to remember to roll.”
Even though I don’t consider myself very good at Aikido yet, those hours of practice in the dojo paid off. Had I been falling head first, I could have done a forward or backward roll. However, I was falling straight sideways. I hadn’t practiced that one yet. So, I did the next thing we learn in Aikido; I let my body become soft and landed in a balanced way.
The not-so-good thing was, Eddie had stopped spooking and was standing still. I fell so close to him that I hit my side on one of his legs. Ouch. Eddie must not have like it either. He decided to walk back to the barn.
As I lay in the grass, breathing away the pain in my side, I had the most insightful, enlightened thought cross my mind, the kind of thought yogis spend years in meditation trying to achieve.
“I’m really going to get a lot of ticks lying here.”
So, I got up, retrieved my horse, and walked him back to the scary metal. He did circles around me while I stomped on the metal, making scary metal noises. After a few figure eights, Eddie decided to stop and sniff the metal calmly. I got back on and we headed home to the barn.
Other than a bit of stiffness in my side, I am unscathed, thanks to Tim Doyle, Morihei Ueshiba (the founder of Aikido), and Eddie. I ended my horse session by doing some Reiki on my mare’s swollen eye, during which she stepped on my foot.
I think I need to go back to the dojo.

Trash or treasure, sifting out photos

Our new home is officially ours and the cleaning and packing has begun. There are still repairs needed before we can move in, but while I work on painting, cleaning and organizing, my motto is “don’t drive to the new house without bringing something with.”
Because we won’t be officially moving until at least July, I am packing things that do not get used very often. I’ve already taken over several garbage bags of my yarn stash, but don’t worry, if I get an emergency knitting attack I still have plenty to choose from.
The other area I’m working on is photos. I’ve been taking photos since I was a child. My first introduction to the art of taking pictures was my grandmother using her Kodak Brownie camera. The Brownie was introduced in 1900, cost only $1 and was easy to use. It was the start of our love affair with all things pictured, leading up to the current day when photos of anything can be found on the internet.
I started taking photos with my own Brownie back in grade school. My favorite is a photo of my dog Buck standing with his front paws on the picnic table. I’ve taken photos of trips, pretty scenery, all my pets, family and friends.
Oh, the days of black and white and negatives. In the days before digital, each subject was taken several times to make sure at least one shot was not blurry and the subject’s eyes weren’t closed. Film came in rolls of 12, 24, and 36 shots and it was nearly sacrilege to get a roll developed without using all the shots available. It was also nearly sacrilege to throw away any of them.
As I began to pack the limitless supply of photos in my home, I decided it was time to break that rule. My husband and I sat in the livingroom with a garbage can and began to sort. There were rules to this sorting. Each of us had a stack of photo envelopes. All negatives went in the trash. All photos of scenery that were unidentifiable went in the trash. Photos of people we barely know, in situations we couldn’t remember, went in the trash. Duplicate photos went in the trash. Unfocused photos and red eye photos went in the trash. If we were unsure about a photo, we could consult each other, but only if it looked really important.
We also had rules for photos to keep. Anything that made us say, “Ohh, look at this,” was kept. At least five photos of each deceased pet were kept. Several shots of special occasions, weddings, birthdays, family gatherings, were kept. One or two blackmail photos were kept. (Blackmail photos include really unflattering photos of a relative, or a relative or friend doing something foolish).
These were just the loose photos. Last night, I began to go through the photo albums with the same rules. It felt a bit more invasive to throw away a photo I had put in an album, but it was needed.
I felt good about this cleaning project done. Then I began to go through a storage cabinet and found all my cameras. I have a large case with my deceased father-in-law’s old 35 mm film camera along with extra lenses, tri-pod devices, filters and more. I haven’t used this camera in years, but I couldn’t bring myself to part with it. There was also my old compact 35mm film camera with the optional flash attachment and my first digital camera.
An old camera is like an old friend. We had been through adventures together, and shared memories. In this fast-paced world, my old cameras let me stop time and save that fraction of a second for the future. And even though I had just thrown away many of those moments in time, the device that saved them didn’t go in the trash.
I now use a digital camera for nearly everything and I rarely get the photos printed. I have some saved on my computer but I’ve learned that when you allow time to pass and look back on the photos in your camera, they don’t seem as important as they did in the moment you took them.
I still have some archives of photos my grandmother took which I haven’t gotten the nerve to throw away yet. Her photos seem like history; mine are just memories. There’s a difference.
Perhaps it’s a sign of the times. In a constantly changing world, I’ve learned about the importance of the present moment, and the dangers of living in the past. Perhaps that is what enabled me to throw out the unneeded photos. I know all my experiences of the past have led me to who I am in the present. The memories remain, but we can’t go back.
I’m glad my grandmother kept the family photos, and I’m also glad I didn’t inherit her throw-aways. Perhaps when I have lived my life fully and gone, someone will say the same about what I leave behind.

Ballet recital revisited

Some of you will remember a previous column where I described my granddaughter Wren’s first ballet recital. Remember the distracting feather? Last weekend, I attended her second recital. Just as before the first recital, her mother insisted this was her last performance. Dance lessons were too expensive and took too much time. She was not going to be enrolled in dance next season.
Wren is four years old. The recital was held at the Viterbo Fine Arts Center in La Crosse and it was a full house. The recital began at 7 p.m. and ended at 10 p.m. Wren’s part in the event lasted about three minutes.
As I sat in the audience, watching other people’s children perform their segments, part of me was bored. Each dance looked like the previous one, with different costumes. If you’ve ever been to a ballet recital, you know it is not exactly fine art. Polina Semionova or Fernando Bujones were not featured. However, the better side of me realized that each dancer on the stage was someone else’s Wren. Each dancer had a mother or father, grandparents and friends sitting on the edge of their seat in anticipation of their child’s moment in the spotlight, just as I was.
When I remembered this, I began to see the performances in a new light.
One dance I will always remember was called Daddies and Daughters. About 20 fathers entered the stage wearing black pants, white shirts and black ties. They were from nearly every walk of life, some tall, some short, some wide, some narrow, some balding, others young. From stage left emerged daughters from grade school to seniors to meet their daddies and dance. The easy choreography was set to a country song about a daughter growing up.
Some daughters were young and needed daddy’s help with the steps. Others were older and helped their father make it through. The look of pride the fathers held for their daughters, and the daughters held for their daddies, brought tears to my eyes. And I wasn’t the only one in the audience drying my eyes.
Finally, the moment came and Wren’s group stepped onto the stage wearing pink ballerina costumes and holding matching teddy bears. My eyes were glued to Wren, who tried very hard to remember her steps. I heard the rest of the audience laughing and looked down the line of ballerinas to see what was the cause. At the end of the line was one boy dancer, in a battle with the girl next to him over a teddy bear. The battle began to escalate and a teacher came on stage. She lifted the boy under the arms and placed him between two other dancers, distancing him from the girl whose teddy bear he coveted. The teacher exited stage left and the dance continued.
It’s always something, but at least this time it wasn’t a feather.
Though Wren didn’t do all of her dance steps, her time was to come at the finale. During the finale, all of the dancers come back on stage for a group dance. The smallest dancers were in front, and Wren was front and center, right behind the teacher. This was enough incentive for Wren to dance up a storm, still holding her teddy bear. When she noticed her father and grandpa in the fourth row of the audience, Wren tried to run off stage to greet them, but was captured by a teacher and returned to the chorus line.
When you are four years old, it doesn’t matter what kind of performance you gave, you still get roses like any star ballerina.
In the car on the way home, we reviewed the performance. I mentioned my favorite dance was the Daddy and Daughter dance. I said I imagined Wren and her daddy up there with the rest of the dancers.
“I know,” said Wren’s mother. “Wren said she wanted to do it next time. Now, I have to keep her in dance class so she can do that dance with her dad.”
To be continued ... next year.

Generations of change remain the same

My grandmother was born in 1900 and passed away in 1998. I’ve often thought about those 98 years of my grandmother’s life and the many things she went through. She was born into a time of women’s suffrage, survived two world wars, various other wars, the great depression, the invention of nuclear weapons and energy, the telephone, radio and television, and the dawning of the computer age.
I was born in 1957. I remember racial riots, women’s liberation, putting men on the moon, Vietnam, economic booms and busts, global warming and constant inflation, walls crumbling and the first black president of the United States. And that’s only been the first 54 years.
My grandmother didn’t have a Facebook page and she never sent a tweet. She walked to the post office every day to get her mail and the latest news. She corresponded in writing with friends and relatives across the country and in Norway.
I have a Facebook page, a blog and email. I rarely send written letters, but I get email from friends in Europe and Japan.
My grandmother attended community events where she heard local people playing the music of the time. She had an old record player and a radio to listen to music and she visited the library for books and magazines.
I have two mp3 players, a Kindle and three computers. I have access to music from around the world and 3,500 books that I can carry with me wherever I go.
My grandmother started with horse drawn transportation. I have a photo she took on the farm of her horse Big King. She never had a drivers license and I don’t think she ever set foot in an airplane.
My horses are for recreation. I drive a car nearly every day, and am comfortable being lifted into the sky by a metal box and transported to another country. I won’t be surprised if transporter beams out of Star Trek are invented in my lifetime.
You can say that my life is very different from my grandmothers. And yet, I see similarities. So far, we’ve both lived through ages of transition and technological advances, wars, and economic ups and downs. And there are simple things that remain constant.
Living with horses, reading books, listening to music, visiting with friends, are all things my grandmother’s life and mine have in common.
My grandmother liked to do handwork, sewing and embroidery. I like to knit, sew, spin and weave. My grandmother liked to bake coffee cakes and cookies. I like to bake banana bread and chocolate chip cookies. My grandmother enjoyed tending to the flowers around her house and maintained a garden. I like to plant a garden and watch the hollyhocks bloom alongside the house.
My grandmother carried a basket wherever she went. I still have two of grandma’s baskets. In my house baskets hold my knitting, yarn, books, CDs, and kitchen utensils. I carry a basket to work with me containing my purse, my lunch, and whatever other things I need that day.
Hopefully I’ll have another 40 or 50 years to experience this life. I plan to be riding a horse when I’m 90. And no matter how much technology changes, I plan to remember those simple things I have in common with my grandmother. The smell of fresh mowed grass, the feel of sunshine on my face, creating beauty, good music and a good book, and the love of a good horse.

Mining the secrets among the debris

Buying land mid-winter can be tricky. You never know what will reveal itself when the snow melts. Sometimes it is great beauty, sometimes not so great. This time, our new land has quite a few of the not-so-great items revealing themselves.
Old farmland is notorious for having areas that could gently be referred to as ‘antique collections,’ These collections may be in a pile, or left randomly over the land. Ours is both. At our soon to be new home, the antique collections were scattered and left in piles in ravines. Even after the snow is melted, some of these treasures will still be hidden under the years of grasses grown among the remnants of someone else’s life.
Engines, old farm machinery, vintage snowmobiles, parts, tires, and more were discarded over the years.
One unique feature of this land is the burned-out mobile home vacated by the previous owners. It has been a somewhat surreal experience cleaning up this part of the collection of history.
As I stood in what was left of the bathroom, discarding the burned contents of the medicine cabinet, I started to think about the family who lived there before the fire. I realized I was not just throwing away old trash as much as I was removing the story of a family’s loss.
The abandoned combs and brushes, toothpaste, and various hair clips told me it was likely a family rather than a single person. In what is left of the living-room, I could tell they liked country music and had quite a collection of CDs, now melted into their packaging. A bookshelf of charred video cassettes remained, their titles now unreadable. The only book I found is a small copy of “Little House on the Prairie.”
They had a fully-stocked larder of canned goods at the time of the fire, including several cans of Dinty Moore beef stew. The rest of the cans are rusted beyond recognition, their labels charred. Their dishes were a mismatched collection of china and plastic. Though the trailer is now a mess of insulation-covered debris, the remains of a vacumn cleaner and the usual cleaning products under the kitchen sink tell me they tried to keep an orderly household. From the back bedroom, I ascertained that they wore jeans and sweatshirts and liked down pillows. And at least one member of the household did not adhere to the orderly scenario.
A half-full container of cat litter and a bottle of dog shampoo tells me they had pets. A circular saw hints that an occupant liked to work with tools.
From the burn pattern, I can tell the fire started in the livingroom, probably in the wall or near the small woodstove left behind. At least one of the two couches in the livingroom appears to have been a hide-a-bed. Perhaps the family had frequent visitors.
What is not left tells as much as what is. There are no crystal chandeliers, no piano, no crib or baby bottles, and no computer. We found several destroyed television sets and the remains of video game accessories. This was a family who lived on a moderate income, yet could afford food and a few extras.
Why was the mobile home left and not removed by the family? I’ll probably never know, but the expense of bringing in a dumpster and finding ways to dispose of the appliances and possible hazardous waste buried under the pile was a factor in what we offered for the property. Maybe it was a factor for the family, too. Perhaps they didn’t have insurance or the physical ability to remove the trash.
Perhaps after suffering this loss, they didn’t have the emotional capacity to look the fire in the eye. As I toss out what is left, piece by piece, I pray the family was not physically harmed by the fire and that Fido and Mouser were saved. It’s hard to imagine that having your home destroyed would not leave some emotional harm, and I hope the family has been able to rebuild their life in the years since this tragedy happened.
For my husband and I, buying this home is a challenge of recovery. We will renovate the existing house and wonder what happy celebrations occurred in the spacious kitchen, and what were they thinking when they painted the bedroom purple? I’ll look at the face of the unidentified soldier in the photo I found in a closet and hope he made it back from his experience in the military to enjoy home-cooked meals on the wheat-designed dishes gently packed away in a box in the upstairs bedroom.
We will wade through the ‘antique collections’ and other debris and find the spirit and beauty of the land once more. And I’ll gaze out my new kitchen window at the expanse of fields between us and the Penokee Mountain range and remember the ancestors who came to this land, built homes and farms, and have now moved on.

Old barns and haylofts

I’ve had the good fortune to spend considerable time in haylofts, some sizable, others sparse. There are as many different shapes and sizes of haylofts as there are old country barns. Still, most hay lofts have certain things in common.
Hay lofts smell the best in late summer when the fresh baled harvest of the year is piled high. It is the verdant smell of a season of sunshine, rain, breezes and mother earth leaking out the cut ends of each blade of grass. If you sit in a hay loft in mid-winter, there is still a lingering of those elements, mingled with the fine dust of old barn boards and gravel roads.
Hay lofts are not a place for the feint-of-heart. Old barn boards get creaky, announcing their age with every step. Knots fall out of pine floor boards, allowing rays of light to peak through. Old machinery, such as rusted elevators, hides in the recesses and dark corners.
Hay lofts are attractive places for the wild members of the farm family. Raccoons have been known to rear their young nestled between bales. Young pigeons take their first flight practice over the mounds of hay. And barn cats lie in wait to challenge intruders large and small.
I’ve been in hay lofts in early spring when most of the year’s hay has been consumed. Spring hay lofts are spacious and airy. There’s a feel of expectation for the arrival of the coming crop. I’ve been in hay lofts in mid-summer when the sounds are of young boys calling to each other as new bales are stacked, and the smell is the sweat of old men trying to keep up.
I’ve been in haylofts in early fall when the air is crisp and the smell of summer mingles with the falling leaves. One can sit in the doorway resting against a mound of hay and contemplate the changing seasons, sometimes watching the deer pick through the last morsels in the far-off fields. I’ve been in hay lofts where the smell of mold and decay represent the ghosts of a farm long neglected.
At The Equestrian Cooperative, where I am a board member, we don’t have a hay loft. And though we won’t be able to sit on the high perch of the hay loft door, we’ll still be able to enjoy the smells and scenes of a fresh crop of hay stacked and waiting for the horses’ pleasure in our hay storage building. Hopefully, some of that harvest will come from the AERC land; organic hay, maybe even harvested with horse-power.

Spring cleaning: watch for hidden trolls

As spring creeps in, melting snow reveals treasures hidden underneath. Many begin to think about spring cleaning. Those of us who are of Scandinavian descent know to watch for trolls.
After 13 years of having my grandmother’s nativity set on display year-round in my china cabinet, I decided it was time for a change. I rummaged through the upstairs closet and brought out the storage boxes for the set. One box is labeled with the contents and date of purchase of the original set by my grandmother. Over the years, new pieces were added and the set now requires four boxes to hold these treasures.
After affectionately nestling each piece in cotton and quilt batting, I put the boxes back in the closet. Now I was able to bring out the pretty dishes from their 13 year hiatus in the bottom of the cabinet. As I reached my arm far into the back corner, I discovered the trolls.
When I was a small child, one of my favorite toys was my trolls. I still have two of the four-inch high, plastic creatures; one male and one female. When you count their orange hair, they are a good eight inches high. Large ears, full cheeks, and a bulbous nose grace their faces and eyes bigger than a Disney heroine are prominent. Four-fingered hands reach out from short arms, as if ready to give everyone they meet a hug. Four-toed feed on short, stubby legs keep them securely upright, balancing their extended bellies above.
How do you tell a male troll from a female? By their clothing, of course.
My Norwegian grandmother sat at her treadle sewing machine (which I still have) and sewed clothes for our trolls as birthday and Christmas presents. These gifts were usually made from felt, with two holes cut for arms. I know which troll is female because her clothes are decorated with lace or ribbons.
My trolls have been waiting to take their place on display in the cabinet, but they haven’t been idle during those 13 years. I know this because along with them, I pulled out a small baby troll, about an inch high with pink hair and bunny slippers on her feet. Trolls multiply when left unattended.
There are many Scandinavian legends of trolls. Most legends talk of large, hairy creatures hiding under bridges, ready to eat small children who pass overhead. My trolls wouldn’t hurt anyone. I look at their wide, childish smiles and it makes me smile along with them. I spent many hours as a child dressing them, talking to them and having adventures with them. My trolls didn’t live under bridges with wet, rocky beds. My trolls had houses made from cardboard boxes with their own soft beds.
Children today may have fancy electronic games and dolls with digital cards to make them talk, but in my day, we had trolls. We had trolls on top of our pencils, trolls on our notebooks, and hidden in our lunch boxes. We were in charge of creating their lives, the games they played and their vocabulary, which I remember was at about the intelligence of a five year old.
My husband and I will be moving this summer to a new home, so spring cleaning has taken on a different tone for us this year. Packing up what is needed and throwing out what is not is on a larger scale.
When my husband saw me gazing at my troll family, he said, “I guess it’s time to throw those out, huh?”
Horror struck. Throw out my trolls?
“Not on your life,” I said.
There are a few things I may not use daily, but they are still needed. Things like my grandmother’s mixing bowls, her set of sleigh bells, and my trolls.
People may wonder what great age trolls live to be. Mine are currently about 50 years old, and they haven’t changed a bit.

Breaking the rules; an artistic perogative

There’s some old wisdom that says you first need to learn the rules, then you know which ones you can break.
I wrote a few weeks ago about talking a Navajo weaving class from Laura Berlage at Pine Needles Yarn Shop in Cable. I wrote about the story of spider woman that teaches us not to be perfectionists. I finished my weaving sampler pattern, and it has plenty of mistakes.
That’s the beauty of a ‘sampler.’ It is a sample of many different techniques, so the weaver can learn the rules. I once knit a sampler afghan where each square was by a different designer. I learned a lot of stitches and techniques. Many of them I haven’t used since, but the experience gave me confidence that I could knit from any pattern.
The weaving sampler is a mirror image, meaning the second half is a repeat of the first half. I was working the second half this week and began to break the rules. Instead of doing one row at a time, I was doing one color at a time, then filling in with the next color. It was going along great until I realized I had also changed how I interwove the colors. In fact, I hadn’t interwoven them at all. It wasn’t that I had done something wrong. I merely used a different technique and got a different result.
Here’s where the rules come in. When is it OK to break the rules? My sample is obviously no longer a pure Navajo technique. If it were found in an archeological dig 100 years from now, those in the know would not mistake it for an authentic Navajo weaving. So, did I unweave that section and start over? No.
My theory is, when we know the rules then choose which ones to break, whether it is by accident, as in this case, or deliberately, we are delving into the world of creativity. Art is creativity.
In the words of Ben Thwaits, a teacher with Northwest Passage who was referring to photographs taken by his students in the ‘In a New Light’ exhibit at the Cable Natural History Museum, “Art is something that communicates something emotionally that can’t be communicated in any other way.”
For as long as humans have been creating art, there have been those who were content to mimic artists they admired, and those who took the lessons of the masters and broke the rules to create something individual that expressed their own unique sense of the subject. Were it not for those individuals who stepped across the lines, art would not have evolved into what it is. Art is a creative force. Through their individuality, artists express their world, explore their demons, and sometimes succeed in communicating that world through their art.
We don’t have to go to the big city to see art of incredible talent, art that ‘hits’ us. I am constantly awed by the local exhibits such as the photography in Cable and the current CBAC show in Washburn. Seeing the work of good local artists inspires me to create, to explore, and to break the rules.
My sampler is now done. I have learned the rules, and broke some of them. And the result is a beautiful creation that is unique to me.

Wisconsin is party central

As grandma, I spent a weekend partying like a princess.
It was my granddaughter Wren’s fourth birthday. Each of us only turns four once, and when your birthday is in January, it’s a good enough reason to celebrate with a poolside princess birthday party.
The party was held at the Plaza Hotel in Winona, Minn. The hotel has a spacious pool area which features a large children’s pool complete with alligator and whale water slides. There is a separate adult pool and a large hot tub. The walls of the pool room are painted with a jungle theme mural.
I asked Sarah why they chose this particular hotel and she said, “Because it was the only one that would allow a children’s party.”
Hmm.
Wren’s party was attended by 15 friends and family, young and old. We discovered we were one of three children’s pool parties that day. Though the adults worried it would be crowded, the children followed the adage of “the more the merrier.”
Children splashed in the water, slid down the mouth of the alligator and the back side of the whale. A one-year-old party-goer was fascinated with the shooting spouts of water from the floor of the children’s pool. Brave parents donned swimsuits and ventured into the big pool with their children. Most of the adults ended up in the hot tub afterward.
A giant green dragon, with purple scales along its back, sat on the floor, silently watching as children climbed and sat on his colorful form. A sign taped to the dragon’s neck read, “Do Not Put This Dragon in the Pool! It is unsafe to put this dragon in the swimming pool. This area is monitored 24 hours a day. Do Not Put the Dragon in the Pool.”
Hmm.
Luckily, the dragon was so large and heavy, not even two adults could push it across the floor. It was safe for the afternoon.
We left the pool area when it was time to open presents and eat pizza and birthday cake. Wren’s other grandma, my sister Linda, used to be a professional cake decorator. Wren’s cake was a wonderland mermaid princess theme, complete with four mermaids, fish, sea urchins, dolphins, and a coral reef that must have taken weeks of careful artistic effort. I think there was cake underneath the frosting somewhere.
Children full of pizza and cake chased each other around the hotel lobby playing hide and seek, squabbled over various party favors and hid under tables.
Toward the end of the afternoon, when the children were corraled and taken home, Sarah and I were cleaning up and putting away when I saw four teen-age boys, probably part of a traveling sports team, walk innocently out of the pool area in swim trunks with towels hanging from their necks. The boys headed into the elevators and all was quiet in the pool area.
I wandered into the pool room to see if anything had been left behind and there was the dragon, quietly floating in the adult pool.
“Do Not Put This Dragon in the Pool,” in capital letters, was too much for a group of teenage boys to ignore. I know the only ones in that area who were strong enough to manhandle that giant dragon were those boys.
The dragon didn’t seem to mind. I think he liked floating in the quiet pool after an afternoon of entertaining small children on his back.
Since Sarah, Wren and I were staying at the hotel for the night, I wandered down to the pool later for a warm soak in the hot tub. Three other adults were there, one swimming in the pool with the dragon. An hotel employee came through collecting towels and one woman volunteered to help get the dragon out of the pool.
“It’s too heavy. Don’t worry about it,” said the employee. “It happens all the time. I’ll have the maintenance guys take it out in the morning.”
Hmm.
It happens all the time. Obviously the sign was more of a command than a deterent.
The next morning, Wren was back in the pool and the dragon was back out on the sidelines, the perfect adornment for a poolside princess birthday party.
• • •
Speaking of parties, a dragon in a swimming pool is probably mild compared to the partying which followed the Green Bay Packers winning the Super Bowl. I would like to let everyone know that the Packer’s win can be attributed to me.
It is another story of football superstition run amuck. It seems that every time I watch the Packers play, they lose. When the Packers began to lose mid-season, I stopped watching. Obviously, it worked, because they began to win again and ended up in the playoffs. I still didn’t watch. When the NFC championship game began, I stayed away for the first half. Checking in with my husband at half time, it looked like it would be safe for me to watch the second half, but when the going got rough, I got going, out of the room. I was able to watch the last two minutes without jinxing the game.
For the Super Bowl, I began to watch the first half, thinking the jinx had died. I was wrong. When the Steelers started gaining momentum in the second half, it was time for strict measures. I went to bed and tried to read. Downstairs was quiet until I heard my husband cheering and I knew, the Packers had won the Super Bowl. So, the entire state of Wisconsin has me to thank for my selfless deed of not watching the second half.
You’re welcome.

Dog literature and inspiration

The last few weeks have been typical January weather. I believe it may have snowed every day for as long as I can remember, and my dog Rocky’s agility equipment is buried beneath that volume of white powder. Rocky doesn’t seem to mind the cold and snow. He’s happy to run through the deep pasture, sniffing and finding frozen specimens to tunnel after.
As a human, I prefer to spend my time huddled next to the wood stove in my Bear Den with a good book. Training may have to wait until spring, but it hasn’t been forgotten.
Recently, I’ve delved into literature that has kept the fire of dog training alive thanks to Cisco, Peck and Slugger.
I started with “Smoky Mountain Tracks” by Donna Ball. In this novel, the heroine is part of a search and rescue team with her dog Cisco. Cisco and his handler are on the tracks of a kidnapped child in the mountain wilderness. Cisco is new to the game, though he proves to be under-rated by his owner. Cisco knows the little girl is hidden under the floor boards of the mountain cabin, but his owner can’t seem to understand his barks, so he turns to licking out a discarded can of beans instead. True to all good novels, dog finds child in the end, all are safe and happy.
From there, I went to “Search” by Nora Roberts. Roberts is well-known for her romance novels, so I was surprised at the depth of knowledge displayed in this story of a woman who survived abduction from a serial killer only to find the killer’s apprentice has her in his sights. The story begins with our heroine, who is a search and rescue dog trainer. She and her dog, Peck, are out on a search and rescue for a three-year-old boy who wandered away from home, now lost in the woods. Roberts’ description of the bond between dog and handler, and the terror of the little boy brought tears to my eyes.
Not only was it a good story, it gave me training tips along the way.
Could my dog Rocky be a search and rescue dog? He has the nose for it. He has the energy for it. He is trainable and loves people, treats and attention. Sounds like a good candidate, except ... he needs to come when called.
All the search and rescue dogs in these books are excellent at come when called, sit and stay, and keeping focus with distractions. Rocky is good at sit and stay, sometimes even with distractions. But come when called is still our sticking point.
I tried to explain to Rocky, “I know you like your freedom, but if you can learn come when called, it will allow you more freedom, not less. You won’t have to always be on a leash. You can run free in the yard without supervision if we know you will stay home and come when called.”
Rocky focuses his deep, brown eyes on me, as if to say, “Huh?”
So much for search and rescue.
My next book was “A Dog Named Slugger” by Leigh Brill. This is a personal account of the author’s journey with Slugger, her service dog. Brill has cerebral palsy and relies on Slugger to help her with balance, pick up dropped things, close or open doors, and keep her safe and secure in all situations. Who wouldn’t like to have a dog with that kind of training?
Even though I am not disabled, and don’t plan to become disabled, I’d love to have a dog with those talents.
“Rocky, bring me my socks. Whole, please.”
“Rocky, can you open the door for me.” (while I carry groceries in from the car).
“Rocky, is the person at the door friend or foe?”
There’s one problem. Slugger comes when called.
Perhaps Rocky could be a therapy dog, sitting quietly while small children read to him and elderly residents stroke his silky hair. He’d be like the therapy dog Pooka, whose picture has been in The County Journal, visiting local schools and libraries.
But, Pooka probably comes when called.
So for now, I remain by the woodstove, devouring books about well-behaved dogs doing great things, while Rocky dreams of running free and rolling in things that smell.
When the warm winds blow again, I’ll be ready.

Perfection

“I am learning that everything is perfect and to not be a perfectionist.” — From “Wokini” by Billy Mills

These words about perfectionism are good to remember when learning new things. On Saturday, I was at Pine Needles Yarn Shop in Cable for a Navaho Tapestry Weaving course taught by Laura Berlager.
Berlager began learning the method in 1998, when she was 13 years old. She is currently attending Goddard College in Vermont pursuing a masters in fine arts in interdisciplinary arts.
Our class began with receiving our portable looms, along with a shed stick and beater. Berlager made the looms and shed sticks and had a local craftsman make beautiful handcrafted beaters for each student.
Though I already own five different looms, I was happy to receive a new one for this new endeavor.
Next, we chose two colors of wool, one light and one dark, as well as a contrasting yarn for our edge work. I found a beautiful gold wool as my light yarn. I held it up to the other colors to find a dark yarn and my eye was drawn to a dark green. When I held the two together, I realized my woven project would resemble a Green Bay Packer’s theme. I let the gold go and substituted a lovely off-white heather. (Don’t get me wrong, I always cheer for the Packers, I just didn’t want to weave a jersey.)
We warped our looms with a continuous strand of cotton, chosen for its strength and ease of use. The sampler pattern began with an inch of plain weave, over and under. Berlager taught us how to incorporate the edge work twill into our woven edges. This process developed the first inch of our pattern.
I learned Navajo weaving is a long process. Each row needs to be tight so the warp yarn does not show through. This is where our beaters come in. Each woven row was beaten down with our lovely tool.
“Don’t be afraid to beat it like you mean it,” said Berlager. “Let it know who’s boss.”
We beat our yarns, not to be violent or cruel to them, but to create the proper tension.
“A loose weave will cause trouble as you get farther into your pattern,” said Berlager.
One woman lamented that she had made a mistake in her weaving.
“The Navajo have a story about that,” said Berlager, who is an accomplished story-teller as well as weaver.
“Spirit woman taught the Navajo people to weave,” she began. “One woman spent all the time she could at her loom and she was a perfectionist. She was about to finish the most perfect weaving she had made when she suddenly disappeared. The other women looked for her and could not find her. They called Spider Woman to help them find her. Spider Woman looked at the weaving, examining it closely, and pulled one strand out. The lady re-appeared.
“Let this be a lesson to all of you, she said. You must leave a doorway open in your weaving or you will weave your soul into your weaving. If you have a mistake here or there, don’t worry, you won’t get woven into your weaving.”
One in our group added, “I heard that the Amish have something similar. They always leave at least one mistake in their crafting because they say only God can be perfect.”
Whether you remember the Amish tradition or the Navajo legend, learning to not be a perfectionist, and being able to see the perfection of all things, is a good lesson. Having the patience to take your time and create a thing of beauty is a virtue. Causing stress to enter your life by demanding that it be perfect can take away the happiness generated from the creative process.
I’ve done a lot of knitting, weaving, and other fiber arts, and I’ve learned that a mistake can often lead to a new pattern, or an original design element in my work.
During our class, we talked about the many different reasons why people weave. Some weave to get the job done. Some weave because they like to socialize with other weavers. Some weavers may work on a project for five years or more, before completing it. Some may never complete their project. It doesn’t matter.
All are perfect, and each project is perfect, not because the result is perfect, but because of the lessons we learn and enjoyment we get from the process.
Winter is a good time for contemplative fiber work. The new exhibit at the Washburn Cultural Center is textile and fiber arts. I have several pieces in the exhibit including weaving, felting, knitting, spinning and quilting. Feel free to see if you can find the ‘doorway’ in any of my work.
May we all see the perfection of our lives.