March In Review

Joining here with Emily Freeman, Chatting At the Sky, and others, to share as we glance in the rear view mirror and prepare to move ahead into April, equipped with all we learned in March.

March Lessons:

1. Austin Kleon, author of Steal Like An Artist, (great book), wrote on his blog a phrase I love.

                                                          mise en place

Love the sound of that (even though I won't pretend to say it with a French accent). It is a French term chefs would use for everything in place, all ingredients in order and tools prepared and ready to create a delicious masterpiece. He writes..."For writers, I think it is equally important to have your workspace organized and ready to go, nothing in your way."

Actually, I can quickly find just about anything on my desk, even if it does look a mess, there is some order to the piles and it drives me crazy when I can't find something. But I love this phrase - wrote it on an index card to lean against the lamp as a reminder to create order, to think ahead of the tools I'll need, to be prepared. To work toward mise en place.

I know enough of myself, though, to know I do need to just start. Not wait until everything is perfectly in line - it is a goal - but the balance is to do something, to write, even in my messy place (the English mispronunciation).

2. Another blogger and author, Melissa Michaels of The Inspired Room, wrote of her definition of style. It is a style I can understand without worrying about color wheels or texture or whatever. Real life.

"When  I talk about style, I'm thinking about my authentic style of living at home, not how stylish I am (or am not!)...I don't need all the latest rules...I just need to learn to be more in touch with how my surroundings impact my life."

"My home is a reflection of who I am because I'm happy to be surrounded by stuff that matters to me and I can say good-bye to stuff that doesn't. What that means is: I have to continually refine my home to let go of the stuff I don't need, the stuff that distracts me, and embrace the things that inspire."

What inspires me?
books
plants
clean, uncluttered, uncrowded spaces
to know where everything is (even if it is in a pile)

She adds, "Creating an authentic home is a matter of personal reflection and the determination to make progress in letting go, as much as it is about what to add in."

I realized something. It may look like I collect books. What I am really collecting is words. I want to save them, savor them, remember them, and re-read them. More on this in #6.


3. Books I read this month:
Plain Simple Useful, by Terence Conran
Pottery Barn's Complete Book of the Home
The Power of Habit, by Charles Duhigg
The Happiness Project, by Gretchen Rubin
How to Grow More Vegetables, by John Jeavons
Propagation Basics, by Steven Bradley

In January and February, I read all fiction. The Hobbit, the Lord of the Rings Trilogy, and the first four Harry Potter books. It felt good this month to go back to all non-fiction, but I will mix it up a bit, for next month.


4. Thursday is my final class for the Colorado Master Gardener course. It has been so much fun to meet one day a week with like-minded plant lovers, to learn just how much we didn't know and still don't know about plants. Lugging our textbook around has built up muscle to prepare for the soon-to-be-here gardening season.

I am not a scientific thinker. Quick impressions and emotional response are more my speed. However, it has been fascinating to dig into the whys of plant growth, plant health, and plant identification.

At our mountain cabin, I recognized the trees are not all identical pine trees. I was able to use the identification key (like a computer flow chart) to discover we have three different types of conifers: Ponderosa Pine, Pinon Pine, and Rocky Mountain Juniper. Now, I see the trees in a completely different way, and around town I can recognize the variety of trees. Once the shrubs green up, I'll be able to identify and learn more about them, too.

On a Nasa website, they say, "Anyone can think like a scientist."

Science is . . .

• Observing the world.
• Watching and listening
• Observing and recording.

Science is curiosity in thoughtful action about the world and how it behaves.

Anyone can have an idea about how nature works. Some people think their idea is correct because "it seems right" or "it makes sense." But for a scientist (who could be you!), this is not enough. A scientist will test the idea in the real world. An idea that predicts how the world works is called a hypothesis.

Hmmm. Is my hypothesis correct?

If an idea, or hypothesis, correctly predicts how something will behave, we call it a theory. If an idea explains all the facts, or evidence, that we have found, we also call it a theory.

I came across this looking up something for my son's schoolwork.
It helps me realize I apply science in more ways than I thought, giving me a new appreciation for science and learning.
Observation.
Pay Attention.
Curiosity in thoughtful action.

5. I have written before of the benefits of aloe in treating burns. Do have an aloe plant in your kitchen? You should. The aloe plant I had before died, probably from overwatering. Three burns in three weeks convinced me I needed another plant.

Yes, I did. I grabbed a cookie tray fresh out of the oven. I can explain what I did, each step in slow motion - I can't explain the logic of it. Oh, it hurt. Six blisters on five fingers, my whole palm red and shiny. I split open a long aloe leaf, soaking my fingers in the cool, slimy juices. Over and over, wiping the fluid across my palm and fingers, gently rubbing it in. For an hour or so.

Our son, the day before, made some aloe jelly, a project from a Junior Master Gardener lesson book we are working through. The juice, scraped out of one leaf, mixed with hand lotion, kept in the refrigerator. I applied it to my palm and fingers several times during the evening.

The next day the pain was gone, the reddness gone, the blisters flat and soft, not raised or raw. Two days later, the two worst blisters were flat, brownish spots, the rest, gone. Amazing, especially as two of the previous burns were still ugly red lines.

Do you have an aloe? I will try very hard not to overwater this one. And, I will try not to burn myself (I do try not to, really!). I seem to have a knack for this - best to keep an aloe handy.

6. Paper. Pen. Pocket.
In "Becoming Jane", the movie biography of Jane Austen, she hears a phrase she likes, pulls a paper and pen out of the pocket in her apron, sits down on a nearby bench and jots it down. The grumpy lady asks, "What is she doing?" The young man, who understands her, answers that she is writing down words, or something like that, I don't remember exactly. Jane Austen was a collector of words, and she was smart enough to write them down immediately. I assume I will remember them later, but rarely do. I learned I do need to carry pen and paper, tucked in a pocket so they are always close at hand, available and ready to jot down a thought or a phrase or that perfect line. To collect those words.

That line she jots down makes it into Pride and Prejudice, "Miss Bennet, there seemed to be a prettyish kind of a little wilderness on one side of your lawn. I should be glad to take a turn in it..."
I love how the words she collected became the classic story.

Being a word collector, I collect quotes, thoughts, word images, stories, characters told in words. Why be a word collector? Because they are thoughts of people past and present - thoughts in tangible (sort of) form. Like being able to grab and hold a thought. Which I can't do, and which is why I write down the words. And collect them.

7. Our daughter shared with me a phrase she heard,
                                      THE EINSTEIN HOUR

That time of day when you are at your best, sharpest, most productive, most clear thinking. Plan for that time, use it for your best work. Right now, for me, that is 8 to 9 am. I mark that out on my planner pages and use that time to write. It helps me to have that hour set aside. Ideally, I would like to write much longer than that, but an hour done is far better than just intentions, and for me, real progress. The specific time may change as life changes, but think about when you are at your best. Pay attention to that productive time - use it for your best - it may mean reading with children, walking, cleaning - find your Einstein Hour and use it wisely. What is your Einstein Hour?

So, March accomplished.
April ahead.
Wonder what lessons April will offer?

Full of [ ]

Don't worry, this is G rated.

I wonder what my one-word should be for 2015?

What should 2015 be full of?

What one word best defines my goals-plans-hopes-dreams-attitudes toward this year?

I thought, perhaps, Edit. An on-going theme and process, part of learning to Travel Lighter through the maze of my days.

Or, perhaps, Listen. To listen - and hear, really hear - those around me, to listen quietly for the Lord's voice, to say to life, "I am listening."

But, those words didn't seem quite right.

Two quotes I recently read stand out in my mind:

"Pay Attention.
Be Astonished.
Tell About It."

                                                   -Mary Oliver

"Step One:
Wonder at Something.
Step Two:
Invite Others to Wonder With You."

                                                      -Austin Kleon, Steal Like an Artist 

Wonder at something.
The glitter snow falling during Christmas, sun reflected gold in the snowflakes.
Flavors and smells of an Italian meal, baking in the oven.
Puppy squeaking her tennis ball in her mouth, delighted with the noise.
Flour, yeast, water, oil, kneaded and rising under the towel.
Ocean waves, storm clouds breaking at sunset.

Invite others to wonder with you.

 What causes you to wonder?

I looked wonder up in the 1828 Webster Dictionary (a very cool fascimile edition that uses KJV Bible verses and classics to illustrate definitions). It used words like: surprise, astonishment, amazement, miracle, admiration, wondrous. All of these, expressed, point at the wonder of the daily ordinary. Because that is where I live. To pay attention to the difference between expectation and surprised by gifts of wonder.

I finished re-reading Ann Voskamp's one thousand gifts. At the end of writing about her journey, Ann says, "No, I'll never stop the counting, never cease transcribing the ballad of the world, the rhyme of His heart...His presence filling the laundry room, the kitchen, the hospital, the graveyard, the highways and byways and workways and all the blazing starways, His presence filling me. This is what it means to be fully alive."

To be surprised by wonder. Isn't that an oxymoron? Yet, we are surprised. Awed.

Another word in the definition: marvel.
The Marvel comics are revitalized by the movie industry in the Avenger series. Heroes doing wonderful things, doing wonders, saving people, the world, the universe.

What wonder-full things do I do? Fix dinner. Clean the bathrooms. Clean up doggie poo. Plant seeds. Knead the dough. Be patient when it would be "easier" to snap back a comment (sometimes, not always). Understand, learn.

What wonder-full things do you do?

Can we really learn to see the daily ordinary as wonder-full?

Full of wonder?

Would you like to be full of wonder with me this year?

Your Top Ten?

"The more that you read,

the more things you will know.

The more that you learn,

the more places you'll go."

-Dr. Seuss

My Ideal Bookshelf, edited by Thessaly La Force with art by Jane Mount holds over a hundred interviews with creative people from a variety of disciplines around the world. Each of the contributors interviewed  listed the books they would have on one small bookshelf.

The suggested categories:

• My Favorite Book
• the Book that Changed My Life
• the Book I Read Again and Again
• the Book I Love the Most
• the Book that Made Me Who I Am
• the Best Book I Ever Read
• the Book that Makes Me Cry Every Time

A sample page, sort of randomly chosen

The artist designed and drew the spines of each book, creating a variety of displays, books stacked different directions, sometimes with decorative props or bookends, each shelf a colorful, interesting display in itself. 

Some of the lists are predictable: the chefs are cookbook fans, the designers hold biographies of famous designers, the professors stack up the classics in their genre. Favorite children's books are lined up with difficult philosophical works. Fiction and non-fiction, practical and fantastical, science fiction, textbooks, political and spiritual - the variety was amazing. Many of the books were not familiar to me.

I did not make a list of to-reads. Mostly, I was fascinated with their lists, looking for a glimpse into the character, the loves, the interests, the education of each person. Each facing page includes an interview. I didn't have the chance to read them all. Some couldn't define why a certain book was on their list, why they loved that book so much. Some just liked the design of the cover. Others had life-changing, life-determining events inspired by the books. 

The last page is for the reader to fill in. With pencil, because your list today may be different from next month or next year.

Okay. This is the hard part. A challenge.

Make your own list. Your ten books to put on your one small shelf.

"Your favorite favorites. A snapshot of you in a moment of time."

Here is my attempt. If you know me at all, limiting the list to just ten is tough.

• the Bible
• My Daily Meditation, John Henry Jowett
• Lord, Teach Me to Pray, Kay Arthur
• L'Abri, Edith Schaeffer
• Winter Solstice, Rosamunde Pilcher
• The View from Saturday, E.L. Konigsburg
• Walking on Water, Madeleine L'Engle
• One Thousand Gifts, Ann Voskamp
• Square Foot Gardening, Mel Bartholomew
• Passionate Gardening, Lauren Springer and Rob Proctor

Okay. I did it, edited it to ten. Phew. Would be easier if I could do it by categories. Ten of each category. And this list is not written in concrete, but in pencil. These books stand the test of time, have been read many times, have made a difference in my life. Yes, there are more, but for today, this is my top ten.

What does your list look like?

Intentional Variety

When I plan, whether it is meals for the week, my monthly reading, tasks around the house, or writing projects, I attempt to make them all intentional. Not random, or scattered or winged, but designed, aimed, focused. Varied.

The weekly menu plan, which I have made the same way for years, back when we had a houseful, and now when we eat at a smaller table together, is based on a variety of meals: two chicken based, two ground beef, one vegetarian, and one meat (usually for barbeque). This week, our meals are chicken ole, chicken pizza, tacos, penne casserole, bean burritos, and meatball soup. Some weeks we end up with more Italian type meals, other weeks more Mexican, some weeks stir-fry Chinese style. Depends on my mood or how hungry I am when I plan the meals and the shopping list.

Each month, I plan my reading in a similar way. My goal is five books a month: one novel, one home/decorating/organizational, one biography, one related to writing skills, one motivational book, or one new or different style. For example, in February, I read Ray Bradbury's Classic Stories 1. Since I am writing short stories, it seemed good to read one of the masters. Normally, science fiction doesn't interest me, but I remember reading and enjoying some of his writing years ago. The stories were fascinating. Written in the forties and fifties, some of his futuristic ideas have already been exceeded. Some are still awaiting on the fringe. I am attempting to finish up Education of a Wandering Man, a memoir by Louis L'Amour by the end of the month. The guys have loved reading his prolific western fictions. I was excited to find this memoir, written by the author himself, at a library book sale. I read The Shell Seekers, a favorite re-read by Rosamunde Pilcher. Another novel, Veil of Roses, by Laura Fitzgerald, was an interesting story of cultural challenges as an Iranian young woman attempted to integrate and adjust into the culture here in the United States. Creative Journal Writing, the art and heart of reflection, by Stephanie Dowrick was my writing skills book. I also started Living Organized, by Sandra Felton. Seems after all these years I would have organizing down pat, but I'm afraid I still have plenty to learn. I picked up a couple of storage idea books at the library, too, but those are more picture books than reading, for the times when I don't have the concentration or ability to focus on reading.

Also, Bible reading, Old Testament and New Testament chapters and a devotional type book, most mornings. The goal is every morning, early, but sometimes I get sidetracked with random reading and lose my intentional focus. Working on that one by not turning on my computer until I have read the Bible and devotional book and journal first.

A wide variety of foods is the healthiest. For reading, learning and personal growth, I also try for a wide variety, for mental health and growth. As I put great ideas into my mind, hopefully I'll be able to produce writing that is intelligent, helpful, challenging and encouraging for readers, and also profitable for me (not just in a monetary sense).

What books are you reading now?

It's a Good Infection

Don't you love it when things you read or hear from a variety of sources end up having the same message?  Sometimes I wonder if it is just because I am already thinking along those lines that I "see" the same thoughts in something I am reading.  In this case, two authors from totally different genres and perspectives used exactly the same term, but illustrating it a bit differently: Brenda Ueland wrote If You Want To Write in 1938; still in print today, still considered a classic go-to book for writers.  Mere Christianity, by C.S. Lewis, also still in print and considered a classic in Christian literature and theology, was written in 1943. Miss Ueland's book is more toward the liberal, artistic, creative self-expression side.  C.S. Lewis writes with intellectual, logical expression, and seeks to glorify and honor the Lord Jesus Christ with his life and words.
Their common subject? Infection.  We can catch (and share) good things as well as bad things from others.

Miss Ueland's chapter, Art is Infection, quotes quite a bit from Tolstoy.  How am I to condense Tolstoy and Ueland (and C.S. Lewis) into a short blog post?

 "Art is infection.  The artist has a feeling and he expresses it and at once this feeling infects other people and they have it too," said Tolstoy.  When Miss Ueland taught her writing classes, she told her students, "...if you want to write, for example, about a man who is suffering from boredom, just quietly describe what your own feelings are when you have been bored.  Don't say the boredom was 'agonizing, excruciating,' unless your own boredom was, which is doubtful." 
 "I saw in their writing how whenever a sentence came from the true self and was felt, it was good, alive, it infected one no matter what the words were, no matter how ungrammatical or badly arranged they were.  But when the sentence was not felt by the writer, it was dead.  No infection."

This reminds me of an art lesson we had once.  If you are attempting to draw an eye, it is natural for us to draw the image we see in our head.

 To convey a true eye, an artist would draw every shadow, shade, line, wrinkle, hair, reflection of light, color, shape and freckle that would appear as the true-to-life eye of a specific person or animal, not a preconceived concept.

Don't you want to melt when you look at these eyes?

Or laugh when you look at these?

C.S. Lewis calls his chapter, Good Infection. He says, "Good things as well as bad, you know, are caught by a kind of infection. If you want to get warm you must stand near the fire: if you want to be wet you must get into the water. If you want joy, power, peace, eternal life, you must get close to, or even into, the thing that has them. They are not a sort of prizes which God could, if He chose, just hand out to anyone.  They are a great fountain of energy and beauty spurting up at the very center of reality. If you are close to it, the spray will wet you: if you are not, you will remain dry. Once a man is united with God, how could he not live forever? Once a man is separated from God, what can he do but wither and die?"

" He [Jesus] came to this world and became a man in order to spread to other men the kind of life He has--by what I call 'good infection.'"

Infection is a term we tend to think of in preconceived terms, catching something we do not want.  These authors and thinkers use infection as a good thing, something we want to spread to others, whether it is art, as in a drawing or the written word; or in our faith in the Lord Jesus, wanting to infect others with the love and joy and peace of the Lord.
Catch something good today. Draw close to the Lord, absorb some of His joy and peace and love. Look around you and see, really see the people and scenes.  Feel the emotions, not in a generic sense, but as perceptively as you can.

This is getting long, but one more thing.  Michael Hyatt, an author, and the Chairman of Thomas Nelson, a Christian publishing company, has a website available to bloggers using social media. Bloggers read the new books and write a review to post on their personal blogs, twitter or facebook.  As they looked for an appropriate, catchy title, the publishers came up with this phrase,

                          "Great Books are Contagious."

                            Their website?     BookSneeze.com

A HUGE thank you to littlebitzofart for her articulate drawings.
littlebitzofart.blogspot.com
littlebitzofart.deviantart.com

Pilgrim's Progress

                    The Pilgrim's Progress,
From this World to that which is to Come,
            by John Bunyan.
This classic in Christian and English literature is familiar to you, I'm sure.  It became a standard reference for students, and many of the English classics, like Little Women, refer to it. For now, I am re-reading some of the old devotional classics, favorites I read years ago. This copy, retrieved from someone's discard pile on its way to the thrift store, is missing its publication date, but the inscription in the front is dated June 1st, 1909.

In the beautiful handwriting of their day:

"Presented to
Miss Ida
As First Prize
in Spelling Class 'A'
By [her teacher]
Chickasaw, O
June 1st, 1909"

Somewhere in Oklahoma, in 1909, a young woman studied hard at her spelling and won this book, which I now hold in my hands, as her reward. There is no town of Chickasaw listed for Oklahoma.  The Chickasaw Tribe was one of the five Indian nations given territory in what is now Oklahoma, which became a state in 1907. Perhaps Miss Ida was from one of the families who settled in the Oklahoma Territory in the late 1800's. Or, was she a young Indian, learning English in a tiny prairie schoolhouse?

I love the evidence that she read and turned each page, marking favorite lines as she progressed through the book.

The illustrations by J.D. Watson, engraved by The Brothers Dalziel, are dark and sometimes frightening, typical of art from that era. The drawings support the message that Pilgrim's journey was fraught [a good Old English word] with danger and adversaries, yet also with those ready to help him along his way.

This book has to be handled carefully.  The binding is loose, the spine is falling off, the pages are yellowed and brittle. Each morning, I balance it carefully on my lap, one edge supported on the desk so as not to put extra weight on the weak binding.  The pages must be turned slowly, gently - a reminder to enjoy and appreciate and savor the precious [more Old English] words inscribed by John Bunyan from his prison cell.

This paragraph is from the Memoir of John Bunyan, by George Offor, in the front of my book.

"In The Pilgrim's Progress, the world has acknowledged one train of beauties; picture after picture, most beautifully finished, exhibiting the road from destruction to the celestial city; our only difficulty in such a display being to decide as to which is the most interesting and striking piece of scenery. The learned have ransacked the literature of all ages and countries to find the storehouses from whence these ideas were drawn. But vain have been their researches. Human wisdom is humbled before an unlettered artizan who never felt his own brilliant allegorical powers. His soul had been baptized into Scriptural truths conceived in the imagery of the Bible. His whole mind was deeply tinted with the sublime scenery of Job, of Isaiah, of our Lord, and of all the inspired penmen. This alone was his ample storehouse. The researches of nearly two centuries have proved the truth of his perfect claim to originality."

As I slowly read through the book, a few pages each morning, I think of Ida and hope she found her way to the celestial city as she traveled through life, ending her journey in this world with the assurance of knowing the world which is to come.