Patterns about Town

You know that elated feeling you get when you're finally well after being sick for some time? That's kind of how I felt when I finally picked up my camera after a long break last week. Oh, the joy of having an instant art-maker in my hand!

Being a visual person is a blessing and a curse. Almost every room I enter I re-decorate in my head, and I've been known to swap two pictures in a public bathroom that just were not in the right place. True story.

On the other hand, I see interesting compositions everywhere. I found so many lovely patterns on my walk downtown last week.

I think Morgantown could use more public art, and I've been brainstorming ideas of how that might happen (please comment below if you have some!), but meanwhile, I'm trying to remember to notice the beauty in what already exists. It's here amid the gritty winter dirt.

The Way Forward

Here in West Virginia we've been wondering about the way forward for many years. People feel desperate about the state of things--the widespread loss of jobs, the incredibly scary drug epidemic, the tendency of young people to leave the state. As a Charleston attorney explained in a blog post that went viral last week, it's these lost opportunities and jobs that account for our state's recent election results.

Last week I listened to a documentary called Cedar Grove, produced by Catherine Moore, who says: "There's just kind of a feeling in the air, right now, in central Appalachia, that we have reached a moment, or a crossroads, where we're gonna have to choose a path for our future." Her piece is worth a listen, and her conclusion simple: it starts with us.

And while I like that sentiment (take the power back! be self-reliant! don't wait for someone to save you!), it does leave me wondering. What does that mean?

For my part I say, hey, check out our beautiful state. We got to see some terrain you can't access except on foot by taking a ride on the Cheat Mountain Salamander train outside of Elkins several weeks ago. Which I mention because tourism is one option we have here. Social entrepreneurship is another.  Regular entrepreneurship could also work. But how do we make that happen? Should we recruit?

Feels Like Home

A couple weekends ago my friend Athena invited me out to pick some of the flowers she planted this year at Harmony Farm. The farm sits up on a hill so that once you're there, it feels very isolated and lovely. There are some houses nearby, but not too close. The sky that day felt big and encompassing in a way that's somewhat rare when you live in the hills. She had grown beautiful long rows of sunflowers, zinnias, cosmos, bachelor buttons and nasturtium. 

I've read a lot about self-care over the last few years, and you'd be amazed how many people recommend treating yourself with flowers. These "feel better" lists get rather cliche after a while, but then again, cliches exist for a reason. Flowers can really make a girl happy.

I've been wanting to plant cosmos in my yard for years now, and this year, I finally did. I put a bunch of seeds in front of my shed, and all summer I watched the plants grow very tall and produce nothing. Not one flower. I have a particular affinity for cosmos because growing up my sister and I planted a huge row of them every year across the front of our vegetable garden. They're so delicate and beautiful, and they bloom all summer long. It's October now, and look who finally decided to make an appearance?

This is the second year I've grown dahlias. Last year I planted bulbs, and they produced a few flowers. I dug the bulbs up in the fall and stored them in the basement all winter. (I literally just threw them in a crate. I think you're supposed to take better care and store them in sawdust. It's an evolving hobby, this gardening.) I planted the bulbs this spring, and just like the cosmos, nothing happened for months. But this fall they emerged in all their glory. And they are so amazing. The perfection of all the individual flower parts is like tiny baby toes.

There's just something so good and wholesome about growing flowers. It makes me feel like home. As another friend said to me recently about (being old and) watching birds: Free Joy!

I'll take it.

Yard to Table: The Grape Shrub Cocktail

A couple of Christmas's ago, my mom introduced the cranberry shrub as her "signature cocktail" for that year (and endured a bit of mocking for using that term at home). While I certainly enjoy the occasional cocktail, I'm really more of a beer kind of girl. Give me a hoppy IPA any day over something sweet or liquor-flavored. But Mom was right about this one. The shrub has a unique appeal. Its sweetness is tempered by the tanginess of vinegar, resulting in a remarkably delicious sweet-tart combo.

I also enjoy this drink's practical history: in Colonial times before refrigeration, people cooked fruit down with vinegar and sugar to preserve it. You can basically make a shrub out of any kind of fruit. In addition to the initial cranberry version, which was amazing, I've had good success with rhubarb and just recently experimented with a slightly savory cucumber (you can find that recipe here). My favorite so far is the grape shrub.

This came about as a matter of necessity: there are two arbors covered in Concord grapevines in my backyard. These grapes have been plagued by what I'm fairly sure is black rot since I moved in (and probably long before that), which makes the fruit rot on the vine before it ripens, and apparently is quite common in humid climates. I pruned the vines as heavily as I could this Spring after researching and consulting a friend who used to work in a vineyard in Oregon, and I was hoping a heavy pruning would stop the rot.  It did not. The leaves are still browning, and the grapes are again shriveling on the vine. (Interestingly, I may not have pruned them enough; all the rotten stuff seems to be coming from the old growth. My friend also tells me I really need to spray them with copper, so perhaps more on that next year.) Nonetheless, in spite of the rot, I still got a decent sized crop last year and am hoping for the same again this year. Here's last Sunday's haul (plus some beautiful little yellow tomatoes): 

I've seen a lot of different recipes for shrubs online, but I haven't found one that's exactly to my liking. So, my mom and I made up our own simple formula, which relies on a 2-1 ratio of sorts. I had four cups of grapes this time, so here's what I put in a large pot to boil:

4 cups of fruit

2 cups of vinegar

2 cups of water

2 cups of sugar

(Some people suggest not using white vinegar, but it's worked fine for me.) Bring that mixture to a boil. Once it boils, turn the heat down to low and cook it for about 10 minutes. Then strain out the fruit and pour the liquid into bell jars.

Technically you can probably store these outside the fridge, but mine has plenty of room, so I keep them in there.

To drink, mix with seltzer and your alcohol of choice--I've had good luck with vodka, gin, and whiskey. And if you don't happen to have a bunch of fruit growing in your own yard, keep your eyes out for shrubs on the menu of your local bar. They're popping up everywhere and are often presented sans alcohol--I had a delicious peach version (though I added whiskey) when we went to Husk in Charleston, SC this summer. And a few months from now it will be pretty sweet to still have a taste of summer in your drink...

The Whole Fam Damily

When I was a kid, I read a lot. My sister and I would both leave the library with our arms full, each having checked out our 10-book limit. For many years, my favorite topics were Holocaust-themed resistance stories and tales about the Underground Railroad. And that is probably why as a little white girl living in the middle of No Where, West Virginia, I wished I were Black. Or Jewish. The characters I read about might have been in the midst of some very terrible times, but oh, did they have an identity. They had customs and traditions and a pervasive sense of community. They knew who they were and how they should be.   

My family and I, on the other hand, were on our own. My dad moved to West Virginia for college, and the rest of his immediate family lived hours away. They were in Connecticut or Maryland or Pennsylvania, where things were very different. They called Coke soda, not pop. They had brooks, not creeks. They played sports like lacrosse and soccer and swam on the swim team. And they certainly did not live up a holler in a tiny house with no air conditioning or central heating. My mom grew up in West Virginia too, but even so, her family lived in town, and their lives looked much more like those of Dad's brothers and sisters than ours. 

And so, while I always felt very much a part of our extended family, I felt very different too. We weren't quite like them, and we weren't much like the people we grew up around either. 

In adulthood I've seen a different side of the family. I drove cross-country when I was 21 and visited my Dad's Aunt Cami in Washington, where we took a road trip in her camper, crossing to Orcas Island on a ferry, both clad in two of her purple knee-length L. L. Bean parkas. From there, I went to see Dad's cousin Pete in Eugene, Oregon (who later let me live in his house the entire time I attended law school ), and then on to see Pete's brothers in Colorado, where we lounged in a hot tub with a view of snow-covered mountains. When I was in law school, we had a small family reunion in Tucson, and I got to drive by the rammed-earth house Dad's Aunt Mary Jo had built there years before.

A few weeks ago, we had a huge family reunion in Connecticut. My aunts spent months putting together an extensive family tree, a book full of photos, and a collection of clippings and documents--including a letter written to our great-aunt from Eleanor Roosevelt. While I'd seen hints of this before, their research revealed something a lot of us had never fully realized: We come from a line of very strong women. 

Against this backdrop, and after reconnecting with about 85 of these lovely people this summer, I now realize something else as well: we may not be Black or Jewish, but this family very much has its own identity. While most everyone else didn't grow up slopping hogs or chasing the neighbor's cows out of the woods like I did, these are still my people. And I'm so thankful for this huge group of interesting, loving individuals who value each other and make a point of getting together, even over long distances, even after many years.

Fishin' n' Floatin'

Even though we've officially got a few weeks left to go, it felt like summer started this weekend.  We were lucky enough to get to spend the holiday with wonderful friends in one of my most favorite places in the state: Seneca Rocks. The drive there is an event on its own--sweeping views of tall lush hills with rolling farmland nested in between, ridge lines topped with imposing, starkly beautiful windmills, and a twisting mountain road that makes me feel like a rally car driver.

And these boys were on the river about 30 minutes after we arrived.

I'm so excited for them to learn how to adventure at such an early age. I loved rafting as a kid, but I didn't get to start at 5. While I feel we're successfully imparting our adventuresome spirits here, they don't seem so keen on learning how to relax. But hey, good parenting is nothing if not setting a good example, right?

Not only did we get a personal raft tour down a lovely stretch of the North Fork of the South Branch of the Potomac, but Don lined up some amazing trout for us to reel in. Apparently this beautiful golden rainbow is fairly rare (and also amazingly delicious).

I spend a lot of time doing yoga and trying to remember to be in the moment. So refreshing to have a string of days where I didn't even have to try.

Forest Bathing, Anyone?

I grew up on a hilly 86-acre farm, surrounded by woods. My mom liked to identify wildflowers; my dad knew all the trees; and so I always paid attention to nature too. I have a distinct memory of taking a walk in the woods when I was feeling stressed in high school, Granny Smith apple in hand, and relishing its grass-like crunch as I sat quietly at the very top of the ridge and soaked in the calm. 

All this to say: I believe in the rejuvenating power of the forest, of even just being outside.  Studies show that spending time in green space has lots of potential health benefits, and some doctors are actually now prescribing time outside instead of medicine. 

But when I read that "forest bathing" is the latest fitness trend in the U.S.--that people in California are actually paying to be taken on calming hikes in the woods . . .  well. Cue eye roll here. 

Why must we import a Japanese philosophy in order to appreciate something beautiful and wonderful that has always existed? This is not new and revolutionary. This is nature. Yes, it's dirty. (I mention this for folks like my grandfather, who once asked me if I liked "that rough stuff.") But it's also constantly changing and magical, and by god, free.

Know what the best part is? This is medicine you can prescribe yourself. You don't need to pay money or take a class or have someone else guide you through it. You can just walk out and soak it all in; no training or prior experience necessary.

Let's just not call it forest bathing, ok?

Cheat Fest!

Turns out the way you approach Cheat Fest hasn't changed much since college. Step 1: Leave town early so you can get a good camping spot. Step 2: Open a beer early to make tent set up easy and fun! You get the idea. We knew it was going to be a good day when we arrived and found a private little music scene down by the river, away from all the action. So peaceful and lovely by the water. This is why we live in West Virginia. 

Not only great live music, and a whole slew of boaters, but also some really great hand-crafted goods. 

I love, love, love all these bright-colored kids clothes and animals. Apparently I was about the 70th person to say I wish I had a baby to go with these clothes . . .  

Don't these make you want to go straight to the Pacific Northwest? 

Kids got to paint this boat however they wanted. And have someone else paint their faces.

Keith McManus, aka Mac Daddy, was the MC and the leader of the kids parade. All the more hilarious because I've known Keith since childhood. He also single-handedly ensured that the tables I made in my college sculpture class actually function. Let's just say I did not inherit my father's wood-working skills.

Far and away my favorite art booth was this lovely collection by Adam Waddell. I really could have taken one of everything.

That's right. Those are teeth.

And you know I couldn't leave without procuring that cactus. Sadly, it suffered a slight injury and is now in two pieces. Hoping that will become part of its charm once I lay hands on my super glue.

The fun continued into the night, but I had to leave my camera in the car for that part. Because, dancing.

Cultural Textures: Reading Bringing Up Bebe

Ever have that moment when something you've always accepted as true turns out to be purely a matter of perspective? I find these sorts of revelations both eye-opening and a little unnerving. But that's what's happened since I picked up Pamela Druckerman's Bringing Up Bebe. 

While living in Paris as an American-ex pat with her British husband, Pamela starts to pay close attention to the way the French rear their children after she has her own baby.  I so wish I'd read this book before I had mine. I love the philosophy she explains, which turns out to reflect not just a strategy for raising children, but a way of looking at life in general.

She starts with a topic that's of interest to every new parent: sleep. And what she finds is so markedly different than what every parent I know here has experienced, I just can't believe we all haven't read this book. Apparently the French begin very, very early to teach their babies to wait. New mothers don't immediately pick up their crying baby, but wait just a few minutes. During that waiting time, they listen. This does two things: 1) it gives the parent an opportunity to pay attention to the cry and to start to learn what the various sounds the baby makes mean (this concept sounds vaguely familiar to me, though I never could discern the different cries myself), and 2) it teaches the baby to tolerate a bit of frustration. 

One huge reason to do this at night, she explains, is that babies, like adults, have two-hour sleep cycles, and if they learn to go back to sleep after they wake up between cycles, night waking ends much sooner.  Shockingly, most French babies are "doing their nights" by 2-3 months. This just floors me. (And for anyone with a new baby, the window to work this magic apparently ends at 4 months. After that, bad sleeping habits have set in and you'll have to wait the "normal" amount of time for your baby to sleep through the night.)

And, the author makes it very clear that the French are not letting their babies do that thing many people here call "crying it out," but are instead allowing the baby time to settle itself down, if that's possible, and to begin to recognize that it won't get everything it wants immediately. There's science behind this particular bit about the sleep, so read the book for details. But this seemingly small concept of not immediately giving kids what they want pervades every aspect of French parenting. Children learn from it self-control, patience, and the concept of delayed gratification. Apparently French children aren't big whiners. Can you imagine? This is probably the biggest perspective shift for me: we Americans largely take for granted that kids behave badly and whine and throw fits because they're kids. The French do not.

The French are apparently coming at this parenting thing with the goal of raising children who are aware,  "awakened," and have the self-control necessary to truly enjoy themselves. She talks about how they let children experience things slowly (e.g., letting them just play in the water from ages 2-5, rather than take an actual swim lesson) and how they teach them to enjoy the world around them (e.g., not much structure during the day for very young kids aside from eating and sleeping times). This is the part that speaks to me as an adult, rather than as a parent. I don't remember a lot of emphasis being placed on truly enjoying the little things when I was a child (no offense, parents). I love the idea of raising a human who will notice and appreciate what's around him and not simply put his head down and follow the Puritanical path to success. 

(I apparently have my work cut out from me. Though he does adorable things like exclaim, What a beautiful Spring day! when he walks outside, he also says "I won, I really won." after a baseball game where no one kept score.)  

A Weekend in the Country

Last weekend we returned to my homeland in Doddridge County. I went for a run Saturday morning, along the the same route my dad and I measured out when I first started running back in middle school. The half mile marker is the big sycamore right next to the road, and the mile marker is in a bend that overlooks the Jozwick farm. That farm has undergone quite a transformation over the past few years and is now home to a truly astonishing collection of outbuildings, animal pens, vehicles, metal scraps, and not a small number of cows and goats. The difference is so marked that I can't help but stare as I run by. Every time I get the urge to return and document it all with my camera. Same with the trailer down the road, which has recently been painted canary yellow, and is adorned by a collection of antlers and a confederate flag. (This is its second fabulous incarnation; just a year ago it was Pepto Bismol pink.)

I haven't taken these pictures though, because I'm not sure it's ok to do.  I'm having a hard time finding the line between documenting reality and perpetuating  existing stereotypes of Appalachia. Roger May discusses this issue quite a bit on his blog and on the site he created for his publicly sourced photo project, Looking at Appalachia. I've read his posts and I'm now sensitized to the issue, but I'm still not sure whether that means taking pictures of what is essentially poverty writ large is something I should do. And yet I want to, every time. It's just so interesting to me how these things look.

Temperatures rose this weekend, finally, and we took a lovely drive in my dad's truck, exploring an old family cemetery we spotted atop a hill, and stopping to capture these unbelievable tree shadows. 

After that we went to a friend's house just outside of Morgantown, where these two cowboys played and played. I love being in the country, where things seem so simple. But this is no charming bucolic landscape. The land where I grew up, and even here, in West Virginia's most touted metropolis, is tarnished by trash, yards filled with messy collections, and unfinished projects.

But what to do? Put on blinders like people do in the city where they come in contact with so many people they can't bear to notice all of them? Notice the reality but accept it as inevitable? Or try to "fix" the problem, imposing solutions on people who are set in their ways and may not have money to do anything other than what they've already done? I just don't know.

Angels Everywhere: The Baader-Meinhof Phenomenon

I drive past the cemetery in my neighborhood nearly every day, but for some reason, I noticed an angel on one of the gravestones for the first time on my run last weekend. Intrigued, I took Coban there the next day for a game of "find the angels."

Apparently some people take a good deal of solace in the concept of the guardian angel. Quite a few were part of the headstones themselves, but even more had been placed on top or worked into some sort of decorative arrangement.

The idea of seeing one angel and then finding over 20 once I started looking reminds me of that thing that happens so often, where you run into a person or a word or an idea and then keep seeing he/she/it again and again. And of course, this experience has a name: the Baader-Meinhof Phenomenon. I like the way this article explains it, which is essentially that the brain has a preference for patterns and tends to group like things together. So even though you may have seen 1000 things that were not like that other, you remember the one that was.  

Depending on your perspective, the realization that your brain is simply latching onto patterns rather than truly identifying a remarkable coincidence can seem good or bad. Bad, in that it seems to argue against the concept of fate, as science usually does (and there's that chick-flick-loving part of me that really likes the idea of fate). Yet in some ways, doesn't it also offer something hopeful? If you can find a re-occurring series of things just by looking, doesn't that mean you should probably keep searching for whatever it is you hope to find? 

Gratitude is supposed to work this way. Perhaps it's Badder-Meinhof at work, but the concept of gratitude as something that can transform your life seems to be everywhere these days. It seems the more you take time to notice what you're grateful for, the more satisfied you will be. I've been tryingit, and it seems to actually work. Mind trick or not, I love the idea that you might be able to find more good things simply by taking the time to appreciate the ones you already have.

Wabi-Sabi Streetview: Westover and Granville, WV

Cross the Monongahela River from downtown Morgantown, and you'll be in Westover, sometimes derisively referred to as Leftover. I went there for the latest installment of my Wabi-Sabi Streetview project. The photos above and below are both taken from Westover, looking back towards town, but the one above was shot from a hilltop. The idea that you can cast a place in a completely different light depending on your vantage point fascinates me.

This project is in the beginning stages and may change over time. Several projects around the country provide good inspiration. One very interesting collaborative take on neighborhood photography is the Portland Grid Project, where a group of photographers individually made pictures in a particular neighborhood and grouped them together. I love the idea of showing one place from multiple perspectives. 

The Oakland Neighborhood Project features portraits of the people who make their homes in the 164 neighborhoods within Oakland, California. In another Portland-based effort, Hello Neighbor, photographer Julie Keefe works with school kids to photograph and interview their neighbors and turn the results into posters that serve as reminders to take the time to really notice people. Finally, in an ongoing and wide-sweeping project, artist Paelo Cirio pasted images taken from Google Street View onto walls or buildings in 130 sites in approximately 22 cities where the original street view photos were taken, and then made his own photos of those pasted images in context. Meta.

This church is one of the first things you see as you enter Westover; so unique and unexpected, with its well-kept gold turret.

Not sure exactly what's on offer at the Office Shoppers Paradise, but next door to it is Bubba's Garage, which is packed with interesting finds.

A new apartment building atop the hill overlooks the main drag through Granville, not far from a coal mine and an industrial loading zone.

What is it about reflections? I spent quite a while with these trucks and this huge puddle.

I love that these regal lions guard a humble metal garage.

In the short term, my goal is to wabi-sabi streetview all the Morgantown neighborhoods. We'll see where it goes from there.