Aaltotude

As soon as I clean the dirt from under these nails, I will sit down and write, dear readers.

GBP: 1.00
USD: 1.918

We have an icon on the sides of our computers that keeps track of the dollar and its tango with English sterling. It’s a little like watching the stock market on an hourly basis. For nearly all of spring, I cringed when I saw it hovering at 2.13. But look! This is the lowest it’s been in more than five months — and it keeps falling. Now that other economies are suffering like the U.S., economists are saying, the dollar is improving. That, my friends, is key to much of our personal happiness. I could say to hell with the rest of the world — I want another farm, but that would be terribly mean.

“You moved, didn’t you?”

“Ohmygod! You’re back!”

“Katy!”

“Kathryn Aalto?”

“Heeeeeellllllo!”

“I saw Tess and I wondered, ‘Where’s her mom?’”

“Well. How’s England?”

Not the most pithy of sayings, but oh boy, do I love them. Everywhere I go — even when I run on desolate country roads — I’m encountering people I know. People I know. People I know. People I know. Moving abroad removes this sense of community that many of us can take for granted in everyday life. For the misanthropes amongst us, who cares! For others like me — and, really, I am not thee most social of animals — not knowing people feels suffocating. It’s these types of touchstones in townlife that take a while to develop and being separated from, confirms one’s outsider status — whether one moves to Europe or Seattle or even seven miles away to Snohomish.

For this reason — and it is the only reason — I like Monroe.

Teachers, librarians, cashiers, waiters, activists, administrators. Bank tellers, executive directors, gym rats, Harley Davidson riders, koffeeklatch philosophers. In my former life as a “contributing member of society,” I tried to change the cultural landscape of Monroe by forming an arts council here in town. Despite many hilarious “Waiting for Guffman” moments, the arts council has stuck and brought outdoor summer cinema, a Socrates Cafe, an annual arts auction, many murals and programs to the town. It has money in the bank. The MAC gives away arts scholarships and holds an annual arts auction. Forming it brought me into contact with assinine city council members, lovely librarians, the occasional middle-age, empty nest Czarina, and dreamers.

When I’m not catching ashes from bonfires in my hair, stirring raspberry liquere, and floating in the creek, I’m in town basking in this glow of being known in town. It’s the stuff of small towns and being known for making a difference and using some talents I had laying around the house. That balance worked then — being a community college teacher, a community volunteer, and as a land steward a part of the wild and rural community.

I want to be inside that light again rather than just watching the flickering glow.

We arrived in the Pacific Northwest at midnight about a week ago and though our bodies said it was morning, the darkness said it was time to rest and we slept through the night, waking up to the farm in its most glorious of states — a sunny summer morning, verdant from months of rain.

When he woke up, Stellan pronounced, “If the toilets don’t work here, we’ll have to go back to England.” At least he’s stopped saying “Engwan.”

Two short months lapsed since I had been here pulling up buttercups for my birthday — gardeners are a sick subset of people — but the change in the landscape was striking. To herald a little Homer, the rosy fingers of dawn tapped on the window and I was dressed to take in the place that, separated from, causes me so much grief and when home, gives me such goofy pleasure. I wish I could be like the couture designer Karl Lagerfeld who throws out everything — letters, photographs, books — from the past to keep moving forward into the future. (People are frequently included in this mix, but why sweat the details.)

Since we thought we would never come back here after our departure a year ago, stepping out the front door and into this space is, well, hallucinatory.

What first caught my eye was the growth — the enveloping and expansive space especially where back yard plants now weave together in a tapestry of Hinoki, honeysuckle, nandinas, laurels, a small-petal white rose planted twelve years ago, now arching over and through the lush plantings. A varigated box elder is now taller than our two-story house and is a grounding presence. Like every plant here, I remember putting this tree in the ground when it was a five-foot tall twig of a tree. The growth of its branches amazes me like the growth of my brother-in-law Emil — whom I first met as a 13 year-old twenty years ago and still see as a teenager though he wears a wedding band.

The promise of the climbing Peace rose on the barn was budding in May — now the plant is nearly spent with only three opened flowers. Strawberries are waning, raspberries are ready, blackberries are flowering. Cesario, our helpful builder from last summer, has beautifully maintained the lawns around the house and the trails through the woods.

Aside from three-foot tall pasture grass heavy with seeds, signs of an uninhabited farm were most clear at the hen house. Three chickens were pecking in the pasture and the gardens in May. Poof! They’re gone — eagles? coyotes? — and vines have swallowed the coop. I stood in dismay and then stomped to the barn for hand trimmers, returning to cut back the jungle. When chickens peck bugs on a farm, all the world seems good. Upwards of twenty-four common and rare biddies have called this coop home over the years, giving us endless joy as they hatched batches of chicks, groomed on fences, walked through snow, and gave us thousands of gold yolked eggs.

As I cut away the vines, an interloper caught my eye. A white-tailed deer was sauntering from the woods across the pasture to my orchard. I stopped trimming and watched it move through the dry grass to the fruit trees where it tore leaves off a plum and a peach. Why, it acted like it owned the place. Of course it was — where were the sentries? The wild turkeys, the geese, the German shepherds, the kids, the husband with the bazooka? After a couple minutes, the deer jumped the four-rail wood fence into our yard and disappeared around the front of the house. I felt a little like Elmer Fudd chasing Bugs. I crawled out of the coop and snuck around the back side of the house where I saw the deer had created a bit of a circuit: first the orchard, then he raspberry vines, and finally, the strawberry patch. Son-of-a-@#!$.

I picked up some strawberries and tried to spook the tick-mobile by gently lobbing a few its direction. Wrong ammo, wrong speed. I would have to change strategy and soon as this character was going to deprive me of taking raspberries back to England in little glass jam jars. I bent down and picked up a rock and pelted it on the head — hand-eye coordination does come in handy — and scared it back into the woods. At least for now.

Everywhere I look, I see our former lives and the difference in how we now live is both deeply saddening and wildly promising. The contrast makes me crazy. Our “everydays” are now more confined and cerebral as we live on the edge of Exeter while the farm enriched our spirit in ways that I don’t think I can capture in words. Our weekends in the past were spent maintaining this place while now we’re exploring a new and beautiful place. Yes, it’s adventurous and fulfilling in a completely different way but despite this, the joie de vivre that filled my life here is gone. Maybe when we have a place of our own again with animals galloping, gobbling, and pecking, that will return. Or maybe I’m just spent.

I don’t know …

Being here only a few days forces me to be a witness to our former lives. Rolf’s new position is perfect for him and allows him to grow professionally. This brings a security and a different happiness not present then. The kids — such malleable creatures — are flourishing in new and surprising ways. But the liveliness so central to my happiness here is not a presence at all in England. In some ways, I now feel like I’m a spectator to everyone else’s success but my own. Without my role as teacher and conservationist, gardener on a big scale and farm mom (for lack of a better word), it does feel like I’m on the wane.

The happiness from our time on the farm seems as elusive as a mirage on hot country road, and by nature impossible to grasp.

Tomorrow we leave for two months back in the United States. There is always so much to do to extract ourselves from our current lives and places of habitation, isn’t there? For nearly 15 years on the farm, I always remember frantically putting plants in the ground before departing for California, our usual destination. At least I finished that yesterday — a new border along the driveway filled with hebes, crocosmia, grasses, and euphorbias, along with a few last-minute autumn sunflowers. And given that we have swapped weather patterns — it’s forecast to be sunny and 76 degrees Friday and Saturday — there will plenty of immediate moisture to germinate seeds.

Bags are packed with clothes for canoeing in Canada and for summer camp on Orcas Island. Nova is back at Foredown Kennel in Kingskerswell — at least she’s not in lock-down like she was when in quarantine. Along with a few pieces of cooking equipment, two cookbooks are packed — one on barbeque and Fields of Greens, a cookbook now held together by tape. Some brass candle holders, favorite cloth serviettes (impressed?), and a tablecloth. Swimsuits for floating in the creek, legos for the airplane, and summer reading. A kitchen stool we thought we would use here, but never have, ready for its second trans-Atlantic flight back to the kitchen island. There’s a bottle of English mead and quince liquor to share with the willing.

Rolf has reserved a brush mower and we’ll be out cutting our pasture Saturday, the same day we’re giving a tour to a crazy horse person who found our place on the Internet. There’s been other interst in our place as well — when there’s something worthwhile sharing on the real estate front, I’ll mention it. One upside to this credit crisis is, of course, being able to return to the place we made by hand and experience the bicultural perspective we now have. On the simpler side, for five weeks we’ll jump back into our lives during summer — canning raspberries, foraging strawberries, and making cherry pies if that season hasn’t passed by. When I was back home in May, the nesting bald eagles were squawking a great deal, but I didn’t see any sign eaglets inhabited the nest. We’re hoping there has been some sort of eagle action.

I’ll continue to drop you postcards over the summer. If there’s a long stretch when I haven’t said hello in a while, it may be because we’re doing what you do in the summer. I want to have a conversation with that western edge of North America, and I’ll be sure to share with you what I hear.

The Maynard School has been celebrating its 350th anniversary all year. Saturday night was the last event, a gala dinner and dance at “Sandy Park,” the new rugby stadium for the Exeter Chiefs. (I am such a rugby groupie. At the framed faces of the gym hulks adorning the walls, I screeched, “Look! Rolf! My guys! My guys! They’re reeeeeal!”) It was a black-tie and flowing gown affair with hundreds of old Maynardians as well as many parents of current Maynardians sipping champagne and talking about the Maynard in the 1950s (or as far back as last week).

Months ago, tickets were bought at a table with fellow mums Judie, Becks, Bridgett, and Rebecca and their spouses. I pitched a fit when not long ago Rolf said he couldn’t go. He was leading American geologists on a fieldtrip to Dartmoor. “But … but … I want to play dress-up” has been my whiney refrain for some time. Friends talked me into going to the gala without him and, luckily, I found a sitter — my favorite Maynard girl named Kara, two days before. Fortunately, the Goddess of Glitter and Glamour ordered torrential rain and gales to blow them off the tors and into the house of the department chair where they huddled around cups of tea. Such paper Indiana Joneses! Rolf fell back into the house in time to toss on a black jacket and tie.

Since I never went to a high school prom — who could blame the boys as I was tall, cynical, and had 80s hair — this was an opportunity to take out my red satin gown and matching stoll. I made it from a Vogue pattern two years ago, figuring it would only be worn at Christmas, New Year’s, and Valentine’s Day because it is as form-fitting and revealing as I will ever get: strapless with a 24-inch slit up the left leg. Even so, the sense that this might be excessive dogged me all week, to the point that I planned to find something black to hide behind.

And then a $711.03 bill arrived in the mail and blew to smithereens the idea “something new.”

What? You mean I didn’t tell you about the gallon of gas I spilled in the rental car when I was back on the farm in May? In a nutshell: I bought the gas for the new lawn mower, the gas can surreptitiously tipped over as I drove two miles from the gas station to the farm, I was already late getting to the airport for my flight back home and despite soaking up as much of the fuel as I could with towels and speeding 75 mph down Highway 405 to Sea-Tac Airport with all four windows rolled down and my head out of the window for fresh air, I was sick and dizzy from the fumes. I nearly missed my flight — all for a lawn mower. The rental company couldn’t remove the scent of gas. The 2′ x 3′ replacement piece cost $711.03.

Hence, I couldn’t afford a new number. The Va-va-va-voom Dress, as Tess calls it, would have to do.

About half the women wore something safe and black — a strapless black this, a sequined black that. The other half wore turquoise or salmon or aquamarine or pink or cream. Red was here and there as an accent but mine was like a rope of red in a mostly black pack of licorice. The gala was sparkly with wine and champagne, duck breasts and truffels, and my shyness about the dress was short-lived as it was perfect: festive, dressy, and modest with the stoll — eventually ditched for maximum movement.

Over a delicious wild mushroom and vegetable entree for me and sea bass for him, Beck’s husband Ben, a dentist specializing in gums, and I talked about British teeth — always an engrossing topic — the purpose of aga stoves (”my father used to put newborn sheep inside to warm them up”) and sailing (he’s a former Royal sailor). After dessert, there was an auction including items like a week at a villa in the south of France and a painting of the Connamara coast. Again, the gas bill quashed any idea of leaving with more than ourselves.

Oh and then the music. A ten-piece band including three singers and three brass blowers played hours of music including … are you ready … superb covers of Queen. What? You don’t know I am one of the world’s biggest Queen fans? The male lead singer actually did a great job with Freddie Mercury’s operatic range. A whole crowd of otherwise respectable parents and old Maynardians boogied in the spotlight and seemed to know all the very fun (but innane, really) lyrics of “Don’t Stop Me Now.”

“I’m a rocket on the way to Mars
On a collision course
I am a satellite I’m out of control
I’m a sex machine ready to reload
Like an atom bomb about to
Oh oh oh oh oh explode

“I’m burning through the skies Yeah!
Two hundred degrees
That’s why they call me Mister Fahrenheit
I’m trav’ling at the speed of light
I wanna make a supersonic woman out of you

“Don’t stop me don’t stop me don’t stop me
Hey hey hey!
Don’t stop me don’t stop me
Ooh ohh ohh (I like it)
Don’t stop me have a good time good time
Don’t stop me don’t stop me
Oooh oooh Alright …”

Oooh oooh, alright. Sure, we were celebrating the forethought of John Maynard, a progressive lawyer who felt girls should be educated with boys. Secretly I was celebrating new friendships, the missed proms now more than compensated, and our year abroad. You could say the red dress, now stored away, fit the occasion. Even if I never wore it again — FAT CHANCE — I could say it has served a very good purpose indeed.

First a little science, then a little sport including an explanation of these silly photographs.

The annual conference of the British Society of Geomorphology took place this last week. Holy Toledo, have we had a full international house: Rolf’s advisor Tom in the guest room, Mike on the purple futon in the playroom, first Simon and then Anthony in Stellan’s room, Doug in August’s room, and Mikkal and Bruno from France in the playroom after Mike left. We are chuckling as the fourth Dunne student in a year has been offered a job in the British Isles — this time Jose at the University of Cardiff in Wales. Everyone finds this reverse brain drain mildly humorous as Tom is English and left for the other side of the pond decades ago.

July Fourth has come and gone. We didn’t celebrate it in the usual way of sparklers and smoke bombs, but August played Patrick Henry — “Give me liberty or give me death!” — in a minor school production. You try having seven brainy scientists in your house and saying there aren’t fireworks.
Sporting life continued »

When Stellan sleeps these days, he sounds like the ostrich who swallows Curious George’s bugle at the circus. His tonsils are the size of ping pong balls. We can hear him sleep from down the hall.

The rates of tonsillectomies have declined in the nearly — gasp! — 40 years since mine were removed, the only side effect for me being a proclivity for lime sherbert ice cream. Even so, 2 out of 3 children in the Aalto household elicit this response from conservative doctors: “Oooohhh! Those are biiiig.” Family gossip also seems to suggest this might be an inherited trait as spouses, children, in-laws, and pets of certain unnamed relatives must sleep with pillows over their heads.

Today’s postcard from Devon begins with a trip to our local clinic, the Mount Pleasant Health Centre. As it often seems to go with this virus, one day Stellan is long-faced and sleeping late into the afternoon, the next he is bounding into the surgery — the name for clinics — wearing his huge, blood-shot Archie McPhee bug goggles.

“I’m a fly!” he said to the 50ish receptionist molded to her seat behind the counter.

“How can I heeeeeeeelp?” she droned at her computer screen.

Uh-oh. Not this again. I waited. It will just take a moment. Wait … wait … hold out … her brain is beginning to sense something is amiss … her eyes are still locked on her computer screen … something in her brain fires … wait … wait … she slowly turns her head and Voila! Eye contact.
“How can I help (you)?” continued »

Every autumn the children’s portrait is taken. 

When our wayward container was unloaded in October, the box with these nine pictures was one of the first opened.  The movers in Washington snatched them off the walls when my attention was a million other places, so I hadn’t bid them a proper farewell.   (Then again sometimes it’s good to just pack it up and avoid the melodrama.)

When I opened the box, I wondered, Were all nine here?  Were frames and mounting still intact?  Were photos scratched?  Happily, all was well.  August at eighteen-months old.  Tess bald at six months.  Stellan barely awake at three weeks.

These last eight months, the walls and I have been locked in an odd contest of wills.  I have a strong will.  The walls are concrete but empty.   The photos record moments in time yet hanging them in a house like ungrounded drifters was a thought that kept the box lid shut.

Other walls here have paintings and masks and drawings hanging on them.  That was easy.  But reimagining this set of here created some static.  Well, the walls had my best interest in mind, and I finally blinked.

After they were arranged in chronological order, I stood back looking at their changing visages, and then I felt like making a chicken stock.  And strawberry rhubarb cobbler.  The house, now ordered, filled with familiar aromas, and was nice.

Wow.  One for the memory book.  Six or seven miles along the southern Cornish coast.  Fields of summer grass.   Coastal wildflowers.  Clean beaches.  A moody sky.  Castle? you say.   You’ve come to expect that haven’t you?  This one, further down in today’s travelogue, is more like a fort than a castle, built in 1510 by the townspeople of the ancient town of Fowey to protect them from attacks from the French.  Baguettes or pasties? We know how that one turned out.

Ah, the fresh Atlantic air – take a deep inhalation, you’ll smell it – helps to recall Willa Cather’s ‘Le Lavandou’:  “One cannot divine nor forecast the conditions that will make happiness; one only stumbles upon them by chance, in a lucky hour, at the world’s end somewhere, and holds fast to the days, as to fortune or fame.”

Wait.  We’re returning to America in three weeks? 

                                        oh.

By chance continued »

“Spirit of place!  It is for this we travel, to surprise its subltety; and where it is a strong and dominant angel, that place, seen once, abides entire in the memory with all its own accidents, its habits, its breath, its name.”

 – English poet Alice Meynell (1847-1922)

Blessed whimsy is in the air.

Within the ancient Roman walls and along the cobblestone streets and on the Cathedral green, puppets, stiltwalkers, comedians and dancers have dispersed like dandelion seeds for a time.  Music, dance, film, and street theatre are everywhere as the Exeter Summer Festival has begun.  For me, art reflects, suspends, and sharpens “reality” and I love it in all its many forms for those reasons.

On an afternoon when I wondered whether August, Tess, and Stellan would ever learn “The Star-Spangled Banner,” we joined this semi-alternative universe.  Without changing from their school uniforms, we wandered into the shadow of the Exeter Cathedral at the center of town for the two-day Arts and Crafts Festival, the first infusion of art in this two-week long festival. 

The wild side continued »

Entitled continued »

The White Garden

The Pillar Garden

The Fuscia Garden

The House and Courtyard

The Sanctuary in the Courtyard

A mid-June Border

The Old Orchard

The Stilt Garden

The Long Walk

Views from Garden

Old Roses

‘Black’ Iris

Anyone know the name?

Hidcote Manor Garden in Gloustershire continued »

It’s nine o’clock and the evening is heavenly:  golden, green, breezy.  I lean back in my chair and take in the sky where a flock of seagulls is flying over the River Exe toward the English Channel.  Soon the view will deepen into turquoise until the silouette of the Devon hills vanishes into the black night.  

I’ve been watching the evening sun inch across the horizon to where it now pauses above a particular Devon hill, about as far north as it will go.  Within a week or so, the earth begins tilting back and the days will start to shorten.  

Through the open glass door near my desk I also hear the thump of a soccer ball kicked between August and his friend Gabriel who lives next door.   In comes a light wind as well, bringing with it the memory of Delta breezes that arrived on the heels of scorching days in the Central Valley.   Oh, and that song thrush from March, the one that sounds like an American mockingbird?  Its song comes through the window.   This novelty has turned to annoyance as it sounds like a bird with ADD: a trill, a song, a chirp, no — a whistle, song again, whistle, chirp, chrip, chirp, trill…no, no, let’s do something else. Summertime continued »

Favorites continued »

During the recent May half-term holiday when Exonians jetted off to desinations far and wide, we sat at home and ate twinkies, watching an old wheelbarrel fill with rainwater while Rolf was in New Orleans.

If you hear a little whining about staying put over a break, it’s a little true.  A little out-of-line, I know, given the previous birthday week of debauchery backbreaking work on the Washington farm.

I know. 

But boy oh boy, do  t r a v e l l i n g   s h o e s  begin to feel comfortable, and you wish you could wear them more often and overnight the St. David Train Station is transformed from a place of unsettling transience to one of fluidity and mobility, and your outlook softens so people pulling suitcases along sidewalks toward the station and destinations beyond are now envied.  My friend Sarah told me her husband Rupert, a financial consultant, was taking a six-month assignment in Manhattan. One week here, one week there.  Such an existence, however temporary, filled me with a romantic desire for a trans-Atlantic lifestyle.  Devon and Manhattan — a study of contrasts.

When the rain subsided continued »

 http://xkcd.com/154/

A perceived high-level disdain for science in the United States, and the shortage of federal funding for research, are opinions of expert panels at the World Science Festival underway now in New York City as reported in this Washington Post article.

In opening the summit, New York Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, who majored in engineering, bemoans “a tendency in the United States to political science” which he called “the willingness to disregard or suppress scientific findings when they don’t confirm to a predetermined political agenda.”  

Scientists and audience members at the summit pointed to a loss of American power and prestige as a result of some U.S. officials still questioning the scientific evidence of climate change, the reluctance to federally fund stem cell research, and some U.S. officials still casting doubt on evolution.  The idea that China, a country educating 10 times as many students as the U.S., could soon eclipse the U.S. and challenge our long-standing reputation as the recognized leader in science was also a voiced concern. 

Here is a brief New York Times review of the summit. 

The Post article also brings up the concern that science funding has not been an issue for the presidential candidates.  This is important on many levels not the least is a certain American family’s return to the United States – eh-hem — is increased when science funding is increased. 

I miss the buffalo, the ranges, the cowboys.  The barbeques, the honky tonk trucks and, oh.  Hmmm.   No, wait.  I don’t miss that.  Nevermind.  This island life is okay for awhile but an administration with a little science in its life would be awfully nice to come home to. 

Oh, and one more thing: have you read about how the economy affects the waistlines of Wall Street bankers?  Beware:  your hot morning coffee with cream may go snorting through your nose reading this.

- Thanks, Dennis

“Angus Young does it like this, August, watch.” 

Gloating is bad. 

(Mothers should not gloat.) 

Cavalier is bad. 

(Mothers should not be cavalier.)  

That sort of thing happened this morning over breakfast — a new scone recipe from the Zuni Cafe cookbook, pots of creamy Greek yogurt with strawberries, blackberries, and currants.  It happened half-way through the cup of coffee helping me to shoo away lingering jet lag.  August brought out his chess board.  This is the chess-obsessed kid, the one who won 5 1/2 games out of six in a three-day chess tournament last weekend, the “classic Montessori child” thriving within the structure and tests of British schooling.  The one who studies famous chess matches and creates posters exalting chess pieces and hangs them over our balcony.  Who plays chess during lunch with dozens of other students. 

And it all came down to this: I cornered his sniveling king with a knight and a rook.  (And I did it with one hand tied behind my back because — of course — he had long ago captured my queen.)  And did I give him a second chance?  Oh no.  I pumped my arms in the air!  Hoo! Hoo! Hoo!

Where your thoughts take you continued »

I just assumed there would be Islamic terrorist attacks in England while we lived here.

Since the July 7, 2005 London Tube and bus bombings when 52 people were killed and 700 injured, I thought I would read about inevitable attacks in metropolitan areas such as Manchester, Liverpool, or Bristol — certainly not in this sleepy southwest college town.

On Thursday, a 22 year-old white Muslim convert with a history of mental illness blew off his eyebrow in the Giraffe Restaurant.  It’s a juice bar and casual restaurant about half a mile from The Maynard School in the Princesshay Shopping Centre I enjoy. 

It was supposed to have been a terrorist suicide bombing.  The man was injured when a nail bomb he assembled partially detonated in the restaurant’s bathroom; the device’s detonator went off but didn’t ignite the main charge.  Counter-terrorism sources from Scotland Yard are saying he was ”radicalized” to the point that he developed an “extreme frame of mind.”  Officials quoted in today’s Guardian are examining the idea this man may have been preyed upon in a “new tactic of recruiting vulnerable white men to carry out attacks.”  From what I’ve read, the glass front of the restaurant, which is located right near a solid red-rock Roman wall, was to have been blown out.  I imagine this was to inflict maximum damage to people who congregate on the steps near the pedestrian plaza. 

In sleepy Exeter continued »

During this week of widespread suffering from natural disasters — the cyclone in Myanmar and earthquake in China — writing about My Indulgent Birthday Week in the USA is a bit too much naval-gazing for me.   To preempt my favorite contrarians in the peanut gallery:  yes, I know there is always suffering in the world, there are different degrees of suffering, it’s all relative, you say.  

Doesn’t feel so good.

It makes me feel smarmy to write about going between two prosperous nations on the one hand.  On the other hand, writing about Myanmar or China is not related to the theme of this writing.  If one of my students switched writing topics mid-paper I would whip out my favorite red pen and scribble in the margin, “Redirect to topic at hand.” Oh how they liked that.

So.

I ask if you really want to hear about the nine bottles of wine I was given, the homemade birthday cake and lovely party Cindy hosted, the hours at a spa where I was facial-ed and massaged, the theatre hopping and gardening and crazy talk, the coffees, the flowers, the secret gifts taped to my door one Saturday night, the Indian and Italian and Thai food?  Oh, did I mentioned “L’Allegro”?  Did I somehow choreograph all this attention?  Shame on me if I did.  And the friends who showed up to help me with paint and spackle?  And then there’s beloved farm dirt still embedded under a cuticle and bit of rose thorn working its way through skin on my hand? That I did not miss England?  And the arrival to the ultimate conclusion that every mother (fathers, too) should have an annual week of re-booting to herself or himself?

It was a week of aversion therapy alternated with aromatherapy.  There is nothing like day after day of Paddington Station to the Pacific Northwest continued »

Taped to the kitchen wall is a 3 x 3 foot spreadsheet and time table of activities arranged for the family during my nine-day absence.  If executed in any way beyond adequate, it goes to show that I am not needed anymore.  There is a village here to raise the kids.  Or, at least, Tess will know how to do the laundry.

Friday I take an early morning train from Exeter to London and arrive in Seattle early evening to an empty house. 

Massage for the spirit continued »

August started playing cricket a few weeks ago.  I needed to buy him white cricket trousers and a specific cricket sweater.  I headed to Pinder & Tuckwell, a venerable High Street shop in downtown Exeter.  The top floor sells so-called traditional English clothing for men and women — wool skirts, scarves, coats, plaid shirts, vests, bow ties and other sturdy finery needed to combat the rain and cold in style.  The bottom floor is where I can find Robert, the real live Wallace of Wallace & Gromit fame, who has been selling Exeter school kid uniforms for decades.

May Day in Lustleigh continued »

An Utterly Impartial History of Britain, or 2000 Years of Upper Class Idiots in Charge continued »

The last three days at Casa Estival, the weather turned moody.  It went from a breeze to a huff-and-puff gust that rattled windows and blew hats into the whirlwinds.  August, Tess and Stellan were not deterred: they built forts of dried palm fronds.  They rerouted ant colonies. Tracked down a tortoise.  Adults, eh.  We hung around inside. Who wanted sand in contact lenses? 

What awaits: Valencia, Spain continued »

The Alhambra is intimidating.  Just at a cursory glance, one might regard her as rather plain; grounded, guarded, accomplished, quiet — but still plain.  (She’s the complex on the left in the very top photos, not the right.)  Do you see what I mean?  But then you walk through the door, and get to know her and realize not only is she all these things, yes, but she is also mysterious, sensual, and endlessly sublime, if not a teensy weensy moody.  She’s a hard one to capture in words, except to say she’s wearing a banner exclaiming, “World Heritage Site.”  A brainy but modest beauty queen with a complex and soulful interior — don’t hate her.

Unassuming: The Alhambra in Granada continued »

The first two days of our trip, we spent time exploring the sage and coral-colored mountains around Casa Estival. Tess and Stellan splashed in the frigid pool while others read and hiked.  Unlike forthcoming windy days, the blue skies were cloudless, the warm air still.   

Singularity: Arriving in Spain continued »

Two days before leaving for Spain, an unassuming but irritating guest arrived at our door.   It casually cme in the form of a simple white letter:  notification that the company managing this property would be conducting its semi-annual inspection while we were away. 

Now I know, dear readers, that you are aware of my fastidiousness and fondness for order.  You might think, Oh really!  Que sera, Katarina.  Just run a vacuum over the floor.  Like running a comb through the hair of a kid who hasn’t washed his hair in a month?  Like that?  Look, I still iron cloth napkins — unfolding a napkin with creases is a quiet pleasure I love and you can’t talk me out of it.  At least I’m not as bad as my grandmother who irons her pillow cases and sheets.  (Fess up, Granny.)  But a whole house inspection?  To see how we’re living? I’ve been a homeowner for 15 years — this feels like an invasion of privacy.

Alas, we are renters.

Some bull, some bat continued »

La bellaza continued »

It was nice imagining I was closer to you all for a few short weeks. 

But — sigh — that naive fantasy ended today:  we sprang forward an hour.  Just when I had gotten used to being able to make phone calls at three in the afternoon to hear your lovely voices, I see we’ve returned to the cruel eight hours of separation.  I know, I still sound like a travelling amateur. 

At two o’clock GMT, my mind still wanders back to the farm where the eastern sky above the Cascades is splashed in pink.  If it has recently rained — and I keep track of day-to-day Pacific Northwest weather — I know the daffodils under the wild cherry are tilting over with the weight of raindrops (or snow).  The creek is probably swollen and flowing fast.  If it’s sunny, at four o’clock my time, morning steam is rising off the tree stumps and barn roofs.  Ghosts of horses screech to a halt, ripping up yards of softened pasture.  

Maybe someday this will pass.

Bristol, briefly continued »

This entry should be better known as “Brief for the Grandparents.”  Be forewarned of the following content if you are not one of the six people who fall into this category.

You would have enjoyed the last week’s Exeter Junior School Concert.   There’s a concert once per term and features songs performed by classes as well as the Cantori choir, instrumental solos, music by the Junior Orchestra, and a condensed musical sung by all Junior School students.  

The Music Man continued »

Escaping cloudbursts at Killerton House continued »

Our good friend Mike Singer, now at St. Andrew’s University in Scotland, is visiting Devon for ten days.  He’s spent a lot of time with us on our farm and writing papers with Rolf.  We love him for multitudinous reasons — not the least of which is his laid-back Southern California surfer accent and his Favorite Camp Counselor status with the kids.  He is a geomorphologist like Rolf and the two work on the Sacramento River together and share Tom Dunne at UC Santa Barbara as their grad school advisor.  Mike is here as an invited speaker at the University of Exeter and in the last few days before he departs, we’ve had great fun taking him to some of our favorite places.  Fortunately for these geologists, it involves rocks and rivers: the Valley of the Rocks in North Devon and beloved Totnes through which the lovely River Dart flows. 

Norman Castle and Dartmouth Harbor … er, Harbour continued »

Why don’t you take a seat right there.  May I offer you a cup of tea — also known as Miss Tess Elizabeth Aalto?  First, Tess, please come here for a moment.  Would you recite a little poetry?  How about  “January” and “New Book.”  Does she sound like Julie Andrews yet?

Tea in England continued »

During a walk in the rain last night, I encountered this mellifluous bird — a song thrush, I’m thinking.  It sounds like a cross between a North American mockingbird and a nightingale.  What compelled it to break out in song on a dark and stormy night remains a mystery to me.  But what do I know — I’m walking the hills alone on a rainy night. 

Enjoy this evening song …

Evening song continued »

The main headlines are: “Darfur’s Return to Hell” on the conservative Independent’s front page, a story accompanied by a photo of a malnourished child next to the charred skeleton of a goat.   

The more liberal Guardian’s headlines include “Recession fear cuts Darling’s budget options” with tiny international news headlines: “Pressure grows on Spitzer over scandal.” 

On the other hand, CNN and the other major American networks must be having a hayday with Elliot Spitzer.  Come on, folks!  Part of me really really wants to put my feet up in an easy chair with a bucket of KFC and watch it all for 24 hours straight.  Instead maybe tonight I’ll sit down to see what the BBC is covering though the angle of ”The Daily Show” suits my POV.  I laughed out loud when Rolf’s New York cousin, Greg, yesterday said in an e-mail,  ”I just kept picturing Bill Clinton crossing his fingers and closing his eyes tightly, whispering, ‘Please don’t reveal Client Number 8.’” 

The corner market we visit on occasion has a flat-screen television with 24-hour FOX News blaring.  Whenever I am overwhelmed with sadness about leaving America, I just stop in there with the pretense of buying crumpets.  It’s really to see the latest L.A. car chase or school shooting or newscasters screaming about Clinton or Obama or McCain, and then I’m content with skipping stones from the pond’s eastern shores.

Two laps around the big green field

A Race, A Poem, A Change continued »

You may have thought I was too old to go to a rave.  I would have thought I was too old to go to a rave.   But I went to a rave.  And I didn’t take ecstasy, I took Tess.  You may have thought Tess was too young to go to a rave.  I would have thought Tess was too young to go to a rave.  But go we did Saturday night.   Let’s be honest: I’m just wishing I’ve raved.  I think I could have benefitted from a good rave or two in my youth.

Fest-Noz continued »

A brisk day in the country near Cerne Abbas in Dorset.

The Rude Giant, a 400 or 2000 year-old hill carving, is the biggest in Britain & located here.

A Shepherdess encounters sheep and Shetlands in the field of a manor.