(a girl can do anything in red shoes)

Wow... 2008! This year I shall:

Get a fun, fulfilling, good-paying job with an amazing organization that does good work
Sell (or seriously produce and promote) a song/CD
Learn to play the fiddle and to play the guitar decently (like, with a pick...)
Run 11 miles with Annie in the fall
Get back on the spiritual track
Cross the ocean (Berlin? Spain? India?)

Surely these will happen, eh? (It's all about vision, right, Andrea and Beth?)

What's your wish list for 2008?

Amazingly enough, at 29, I've become a runner. OK, maybe I shouldn't claim the title just yet ;), but for the past week and a half, I've been running about 2 miles a day-- which probably seems like a pittance to you REAL runners out there, but for me it's huge! (I always felt, in previous running attempts, like I was plodding along, each step more painful and boring than the last-- even when I was crazyfit and big-time into cycling!) My theory, now, is that it's more of a mental thing than a physical one. Perhaps I'm running away from stress? From papers that are due in a week and a half? Or maybe it's just really nice to be out here in the country, with the sunshine, and no stoplights or sidewalks or fumes. Not sure. Regardless, I'm planning on running 11 miles with Annie, next fall (at Cades Cove, in the Smokies), and am in the market for great running music. So if you have any to recommend, let me know.

The Wild Geese

Geese appear high over us,
pass, and the sky closes. Abandon,
as in love or sleep, holds
them to their way, clear
in the ancient faith: what we need
is here. And we pray, not
for new earth or heaven, but to be
quiet in heart, and in eye,
clear. What we need is here.

Wendell Berry

Christmas Eve at Hoopin' Holler

the guys watching Star Wars...

Meg

the kitchen after a jam session
(Laura on mandolin, me on fiddle, Mom on harp, Natalie and Dad in the next room with their ears covered)

my baby sister :)

Shots from yesterday's photo shoot with Nathan and Laura. These are for a gig Nathan's got lined up for us this coming Friday in Bardstown... It's 8-10 at the Java Joint, and should be really fun!

Kentucky and sisters...

I'm sitting in the poetry room at Lamont Library, the undergraduate library on campus. I love it here. The room smells of warm old wood, and the lighting and decor of this space is some kind of modernism, but I'd call it 'timeless but 70s-inspired arts and crafts.' (I just read on the wall panel that the room was designed by Alvar Aalto, a "renowned Finnish architect, designer, and town planner." Interesting! He was a professor at MIT for a bit in the 60s.) Anyhow, The two books I borrowed last time are Winter Hours, by Mary Oliver, and In a Marine Light, by Raymond Carver. I highly recommend both. Here's one of my favorite poems from the Carver collection:

My Work

I look up and see them starting
down the beach. The young man
is wearing a packboard to carry the baby.
This leaves his hands free
so that he can take one of his wife's hands
in his, and swing his other. Anyone can see
how happy they are. And intimate. How steady.
They are happier than anyone else, and they know it.
Are gladdened by it, and humbled.
They walk to the end of the beach
and out of sight. That's it, I think,
and return to this thing governing
my life. But in a few minutes

they come walking back along the beach.
The only thing different
is that they have changed sides.
He is on the other side of her now,
the ocean side. She is on his side.
But they are still holding hands. Even more
in love, if that's possible! And it is.
Having been there for a long time myself.
Theirs has been a modest walk, fifteen minutes
down the beach, fifteen minutes back.
They've had to pick their way
over some rocks and around huge logs,
tossed up from when the sea ran wild.

They walk quietly, slowly, holding hands.
They know the water is out there
but they're so happy that they ignore it.
The love in their young faces. The surround of it.
Maybe it will last forever. If they are lucky,
and good, and forbearing. And careful. If they
go on loving each other without stint.
Are true to each other - that most of all.
As they will be, of course, as they will be,
as they know they will be.
I go back to my work. My work goes back to me.
A wind picks up over the water.

Some pics from the KSG Winter Ball, held at the truly gorgeous Harvard Faculty Club two weekends ago. Stay tuned for more schnazzy scenes from that very fun evening!

I think, in this photo, that I am pretending the amaryllis is an old-fashioned telephone?? Or maybe I'm just singing to it.

These are two of my favorite girls here at HGSE. Kendra and I just finished a Harry Potter presentation for our media class, and Liz is my empathy teacher (and my brilliant piano student!) for our T440 field work.

And here are ever-fabulous Claire and Anna. This was taken at the Cantab Lounge, where there's fun Bluegrass every Tuesday and an amazing motown group every Friday night!

A few recent scenic shots:

From the summit of Webster Mountain, in the Whites of New Hampshire.
Blustery beautiful cold!

Fall at Harvard Commons. This is where they used to graze the cattle. Now it's where people play guitar and ultimate (and a few times I saw folks practicing circus arts!). It's in the middle of Cambridge, beside campus and Harvard Square.

Plimoth Village, on Thanksgiving.

The roof-thatcher at Plimoth! This was amazing to watch.

Eating Lots of Meats Linked to Lots of Cancers

NPR Morning Edition, December 11, 2007 ·

A new medical study links high consumption of red and processed meats to an increased risk of different forms of cancer. Health experts already knew red meat increased the risk of colon cancer. Now researchers have found an increased risk for a number of other cancers, as well...

(Click green link, above, for the whole story!)

Oh my goodness. Just went to the gym (for the third time in a week...!), where the elliptical machine kicked my butt. So glad to actually get some exercise, though, after another day of mostly sitting (and walking. I always do a fair amount of walking!).

Claire and I went to a film screening and conversation called Raising Tomorrow's Naturalists, tonight. The film was about Edward O. Wilson, a naturalist (and extremely charming grandpa-type!) who's won two Pulitzer prizes (etc.!) for his work as a scientist and educator. Dr. T. Berry Brazelton, a crinkly-eyed, world-renowned pediatrician, was also on the discussion panel. It was a great evening! The film is called The Naturalist, and I think it's going to come to IMAX theaters soon. (The narrator we heard was a stand-in, b/c Harrison Ford is supposed to do it for the real deal!)

Here is a video from 3 or 4 weeks ago. It's Claire, Vanessa and Anna on top of Mt. Webster in the Whites, in NH. It was such a great trip! We rented a Prius, drove the 3 hours to get there, explored the beautiful new 'green' AMC lodge, hiked, sang, found our way to the Harvard cabin, made yummy dinner, then chatted and made collages and drank tea.

For Tess, by Raymond Carver

Out on the Strait the water is whitecapping,
as they say here. It's rough, and I'm glad
I'm not out. Glad I fished all day
on Morse Creek, casting a red Daredevil back
and forth. I didn't catch anything. No bites
even, not one. But it was okay. It was fine!
I carried your dad's pocketknife and was followed
for a while by a dog its owner called Dixie.
At times I felt so happy I had to quit
fishing. Once I lay on the bank with my eyes closed,
listening to the sound the water made,
and to the wind in the tops of the trees. The same wind
that blows out on the Strait, but a different wind, too.
For a while I even let myself imagine I had died-
and that was all right, at least for a couple
of minutes, until it really sank in: Dead.
As I was laying there with my eyes closed,
just after I'd imagined what it might be like
if in fact I never got up again, I thought of you.
I opened my eyes then and got right up
and went back to being happy again.
I'm grateful to you, you see. I wanted to tell you.

I have a collage on my wall that I made last spring in AK (when I was doing that Artist's Way book). It reminds me what I really know and am about. There are lots of flowers, smiling people (a mom and daughter, a woman with a kid, this grinning sort've bohemian outdoorsy-type guy beside a piano), cherry tomatoes, the prairie and ocean, a front porch swing, gardens, a few 'green' things, paintings and frosty mountains. One of my favorite parts is a quote that I tore out of an Oprah magazine article called "What I Know Now," a collection of letters written by women to younger versions of themselves. Such great wisdom! The little bit I tore out is, "I'd have smiled more, worried less and worn sexier clothing." So apropos for what I was about last year, and something for me to remember here in this sometimes stark academic city where people rarely smile as they walk down the street and don't say 'hello' or 'excuse me' on the bus. Earlier this week, I was excited to see that a book's just come out with all of those letters. It's called What I Know Now: Letters to My Younger Self. I think it might make a great gift for any woman on your Christmas list. (p.s. I've always wanted to ask the 'elders' in my family-- and the 'youngers,' actually-- to write letters like that. Wouldn't that be something amazing to read and have?)

My mama's a licensed pilot!!! Woo-hoooooo!