Next Visitor--Just as cute as the last ones

There are few things as precious as a friend for life. That's how I feel about my buddy Valorie (also known as Vinnie in private circles). If you were to look way back in the archives of Ohana Goes North, to May 2006, less than a week after we moved to Corvallis, you'd see stories of Valorie's last trip. As a housewarming gift she made our first garden plot (in which everything grew fully and happily) and bought us a half-wine barrel and planted it with lettuces and greens.

The timing for Valorie's last trip was great for our garden (and to help us make that transition from one world to the next) but poopy for her getting to know Ben. (He was born one week after she left.) So for the last couple years she's been saying I've got to get up there and see Ben before he graduates from high school! Also she hadn't seen our new home and neighborhood and I really wanted her to see if before all the leaves had dropped and we move into that stark look of winter. Hooray, she did it and it was great!

[Also I'll back up and say that when Courtney and I went to CA in August and stayed with Valorie and her family before going to Jer's and Pamela's wedding, Valorie sent a couple of boxes of stuff for Ben home with us. One big box was books for his age now and older. The other was filled with train parts and train tracks. And was that a hit!?! From that time on, if Maya was having any problem trying to get Ben to get in his car-seat to go home (sometimes a struggle), all she had to say was train set and he was hopping in that seat, ready to go. It was a toss-up between Ben and Eder for who loved the train set the most, but suffice to say, it was a hit.]

So the night that Valorie arrived she was unpacking her things in Aaron's room and came to get me. You've got to see this, she said, as she opened her suitcase and unfolded out of it the PlayHut below! It was fairly miraculous, but she did it! It had been, like the train set, a favorite of her kids (Forrest and Mirandi) for many years. And the next morning we were assured that it now had a new happy home, because Ben was pretty darned excited when he got inside there.





As you'll see in all three photos Ben is just a blur--he could not stop moving. He made us all go in, through, out, in, through, out--laughing the whole time. Poor guy has a bunch of old people for playmates but we did our best.




The PlayHut now lives in Ben's room, filled with stuffed animals and whatever else Ben can drag through the openings.




The night after Valorie arrived was Aaron's debut on stage as a Shakespearean actor. One of his electives was a class on Shakespeare and that night his class was performing "Love's Labor's Lost". Aaron's role was Dumaine, a lord for King Ferdinand of England. If you were to ask Aaron what's your five favorite things in life, acting on stage would not be one of them. It wouldn't even make it onto his top 100 favorite things list. But he totally rose to the occasion, learned his lines well, delivered them well--a true lord. Needless to say we were all pretty darned proud!



When Maya found out that Valorie and Courtney and I were going to Eugene to see her brother's debut she was not to be left out. So it was the four of us. We went to our favorite spot in Eugene for dinner, Laughing Planet, for burritos and then across the street to Sweet Life for the best treats and coffee. Then off to the theatre!!

Aaron's dad Eric, his new wife Susan, and her son Alex were there too so everyone got to meet and oooooohhh and aaaaaahhhh together over what a great job Aaron did. It's great to know he can always fall back to acting if his other careers fall through.

On the back page of the program was this wonderful note from the director (Judy Wenger, teacher of Aaron's 3rd period Shakespeare class): "The unique thing about this particular class is that some of them did not actually select this class. Having no other option, they toughed it out and I am proud of them. As is often the case in theatre, these students gained much more than simply stage experience. They helped each other learn not only lines but how to cope with deadlines and stress. They gained an appreciation for the hard work it takes to memorize and the courage it takes to be vulnerable among your peers. I thank you for sharing this experience. Please encourage them by laughing and having fun."

Now I don't know about you, but I don't remember any of my 8th grade teachers ever talking to us about being "vulnerable." Anyway, I included that note just to give you a flavor of Aaron's middle school. (Once again I want to thank Eric for his wisdom and generosity in moving from Monterey to Eugene and giving me the gift of seeing Aaron most every weekend. Plus the long hard work he went through to find housing in the right zone so that Aaron could go to that particular school.)

We brought Aaron back to Corvallis with us after the play. So it was the second weekend in a row that I spent much of the time blissed out, with our home full of family and friend. On Sunday night Maya had us all over to her house for dinner. Eder's parents came too, so it felt very celebratory.

The weather held for us, some leaves stayed on the trees, and even though it was cold, it wasn't terribly cold. Valorie and Maya and I were able to take a long walk around campus one day. Another day Valorie and I walked down to the Willamette, along the river and back through our neighborhood. We looked at gardens and talked about ideas, and had lots of down time by the wood-stove. Below is a photo of Courtney's winter garden in the first stages of getting a cover.



But just in case Valorie thought that vacations were all about rest and relaxation, I dragged her off to the Second Saturday benefit concert and put her to work--moving tables and chairs, and collecting money. Almost all of our concerts have been amazing and very rewarding to put on. But this one was especially important to me because the beneficiary was our friend Josh, who works in the South Hebron Hill in the West Bank village of at-Tuwani.

There's lots of ways I could say that night was a success. For one thing the place was packed. We brought in every chair that Sunnyside Up had to offer, and then we brought in the lawn chairs from outside. And still there was always 10-20 people standing in the doorway watching. I gave a very impassioned plea for people to give more money than they were comfortable with and to stuff that donation can while it was being passed around. We raised almost twice as much as any other of our concerts. Josh has strong community support and his community turned out in force.

But a big way in which it was a success was the combination of the two musical acts. During the welcome and introductions, I said that what we were doing that night is exactly the kind of thing we wish to see happen in the Middle East. We had traditional Jewish music (beautiful flute, drum and guitar music, lyrics sung in Hebrew) along with traditional Arabic music (performed by two young Palestinian students at OSU) and very passionate, political poetry written and performed by one of the students, Shady. Both musical groups performed so completely from the heart. There was such a good feeling in the room. So much appreciation for the music and musicians, and strong support for the very dangerous and courageous work Josh is doing in the West Bank.

It was great to have Valorie there that night at the Second Saturday concert--to share the experience with her and to have her included in something that is so important to me. All in all it was a wonderful weekend and full of memories I'll hold onto for a very long time.

Meanwhile, as we head towards the darkest part of the year, remember to light a candle to dispel the darkness. Stay warm and dry and enjoy the winter season. It'll be over before we know it!

Valori

Visiting Baby Steals Heart from "Heart of the Valley"

Yes, indeed. Cor-vallis means "Heart of the Valley" and Ruby Alice came to town and stole the hearts of all that met her. And here's the cutest-ever little baby signaling that dinner is nearing an end. One foot on the table means "almost done" and two feet up there means "all done". She's an excellent communicator, besides being a talented stealer of hearts.




Immediately there goes Poppi's heart...



...and Mimi's. And Ruby melted Aaron right away by giving him the big doe-eyed look and then a toothy grin of approval. That's all it took. He was there the minute that Ruby put out the call for anything. He was a splendid uncle and was willing to help with everything, short of changing diapers. Well, there's only so much that you can expect from a 13-year-old.




It's a good thing that Ruby works her magic so quickly because we didn't have much time with them. Jer, Pamela and Ruby arrived on Friday evening and left on Sunday morning. Boooo hoooo! Way too short. But they are major football fans (Ruby's already been to four games and has the complete Cal cheerleader outfit) and Berkeley was playing OSU, so that was the perfect excuse for them to come visit for the weekend.

Aaron and Jer and Pamela instantly bonded through their shared love of music and electronics. Below Aaron and Jer are comparing and contrasting Aaron's new cell phone with Jer's Google phone (he works for Google).




Saturday morning before the game was lots of fun. The deeply communal side of me is so blissed out when there's a house full of guests, especially ones as fun and easy as these guys. We spent so much time telling stories and laughing. And of course Ruby provided endless entertainment.



Many times during this busy and fun-filled weekend I thought about what a lucky girl Ruby is. She's landed in a family I would wish for every child to have. So much love and attention and laughter and creativity and just pure joy. If every child had this for a childhood, what a different world we'd live in.




Ruby's only 8&1/2 months old, and only 15 lbs, but that's not slowing her down at all. She's trying to walk (and doing quite well at it), wants to check out everything, watches and listens intently, and verbally communicates and makes herself understood. It's not all because of her own brilliance (of which there is plenty), but also because of the encouragement and stimulation she gets from Jer and Pamela. She sees that life is interesting.




Below is Pamela on Saturday morning busy whipping up breakfast for the gang before they headed off to the game. One small glitch in the weekend was that they couldn't get tickets to the game. Dang! Never did we think to mention to them ahead of time that this was Dad's Weekend at OSU. That means that everything about the weekend--hotel rooms, restaurant reservations, football tickets--were already nabbed by dads coming to spend it with their college student. The game was a sell-out--all 45,000 seats were taken! (As someone who organizes events and fundraisers regularly, I always wonder, what would it take to get 45,000 people to show up?!)




So that sounds like a disaster, huh!? They've come all the way from Berkeley for the game and can't get in. But, taaa daaa--Maya to the rescue!

It just so happens that her place of employment, the Hilton Garden Inn, is right across the street from the stadium and actually on the OSU campus. And for games they have widescreen TVs in the bar and restaurant, plus VIP passes for beer and hotdogs.

So Maya set them (Jer, Pamela and Aaron) up with a front row seat in the restaurant, made sure they got excellent service and all they could eat and drink. Meanwhile Courtney and I drove around with Ruby until she dropped off for a nap and then we parked and read and napped ourselves. Everyone was happy (except that Cal lost, but nothing we could do about that).

That night we had my mom, Maya, Eder and Ben over for dinner. It was admittedly tough on Ben to be so suddenly displaced as the object of all our attention--and by an out-of-towner at that! But he too loved Ruby and played sweetly with her--even shared his toys.

This was the first time my family had met Jer and his family, so it was really special. Everyone enjoyed each other so much and, though it was too brief, it was really good.



Then off they went on Sunday morning, and along with them went...you guessed it, our hearts.

Stay tuned. There'll be more soon,

Valori

What planet is this?

After the past month it feels like I've just recently returned to Planet Earth, having survived the life-absorbing world of Election Year 2008. For the entire month of October, every time I thought "I'd like to blog--just for a little while--or I'd like to...whatever," November 4th would loom large in my mind. Must...keep...going. Must...do...something...to...help...Obama's...campaign.

I guess it worked because millions felt that same way, and acted on it. But I must admit that it wasn't just Obama that inspired me to get involved. It was also Bush and Cheney and McCain and Palin. All in all, a very inspiring bunch.

[I have to take a moment here to say that way back in the spring, before Obama had even won the nomination, Aaron was adamant that Obama was going to be the next president. No, son, I said, this country isn't ready for a black man to be president. So...who's my new political guru?!]

Now it feels like we can take a tiny break, a little breather, and then jump in again. All the pieces of my life that I relegated to "after the elections" are now staring me in the face. So in order to avoid them a little longer, here I am back at Courtney's computer...blogging.




While I sat hunched over my laptop, furiously sending out emails and letters to the editor, donating to moveon.org and Brave New Films, reading Michael Moore's letters and who-knows-what-else, Courtney had the good sense to take his camera, get out on his bike, and document the gorgeous autumn happening all around us. Above's our little lane changing colors.




Everywhere there's such an explosion of color and daily change. Below is the last of our wonderful Romano beans that Courtney planted for three years in a row. I love picking them, the way they grow and how beautiful they look, how yummy they taste dipped in mayo (very healthy!) and the enormous amount of beans produced in a small space. Very efficient food.




Now our yard is a totally different color than it was a month ago. The former carpet of green grass is now red with oak leaves in the back and golden with maple leaves in the front.



Courtney's raking them into piles and using them for mulch on the new garden plots, right on top of the horse manure. Biomass, they call it. I love the idea of nothing being wasted in nature and everything having its use, in each different stage. And I love that Courtney's reading and learning and thinking about how to use what and where. Getting our little homestead in order.



On the right of the picture above is our side yard fence. This is the little path/neighborhood park that goes from Bell St (in the distance) to our street, Crystal Lake Dr. Lots of people in the 'hood use it for walking and biking. Our maple tree shades it in the summer and now provides it with a soft leafy ground covering.

We are fervently praying that at least some leaves stay on the trees for Jer and Pamela and Ruby, who will be here next weekend for the Cal/OSU football game. This will be their first trip to Corvallis and I oh so wish that they could see it with the fabulous colors of fall, rather than the less-fabulous gray of winter.

Speaking of visitors!! Below's a series of photos of a very scary visitor we had on Halloween night. EEEEEEEEEEE!!! A dinosaur at our door! And rapidly the dinosaur stormed into our house and pulled out our toy box and went to work.



How danged frightening can in get on Halloween?!?




Maya and Eder got this costume for Ben the day before and I think he kept it on for two days straight (all except the adorable hood that he'd have nothing to do with).





That couldn't be comfortable dragging that heavy tail around, but he didn't seem to mind one bit. He was one happy prehistoric creature.




Two days after Halloween comes another, much more interesting holiday, in my opinion: the Day of the Dead (El Dia de los Muertos) in Mexico. The belief is that this is the time of year when the veil between the world of the living and the world of the dead is the thinnest. People in Mexico, especially the indigenous in southern Mexico, spend all night in the cemeteries, Christmas lights strung everywhere, making alters for their dead ancestors and adorning them with food, liquor, flowers, candies, whatever the ancestors would want.

It just so happens that my birthday is the same day as the Day of the Dead (but that has nothing to do with why I'm so partial to it) and I've always wanted to be in Mexico for my birthday.

Alas, I still wasn't this year, but we did the next best thing. We had a Day of the Dead party at our house and invited friends from different segments of our lives--work at the Co-op, the neighborhood, and political circles. People didn't necessarily know each other at the start, but they met and mixed and all seemed to have a very good time. I know I did. (It was fun to see people exchanging email addresses and phone numbers as they hugged and said goodbye. A great bunch of networkers.)

I tried to make my birthday party more of a multi-cultural event than just a Swedish mutt celebrating a Mexican holiday. So I added to the mix that the party was also a fundraiser for the orphanage of Tibetan refugee children in northeast India, where Lobsang Dolma lives (remember her from the Dec 23, 2007 entry? And there's a great Prayer For Peace at the end of that entry, that's worth re-reading.)

So once everyone got here and had a beer or wine, relaxed, got hungry, I took advantage of a captive audience (plus they thought they had to be nice to me since it was my birthday) and got up on my soapbox, and gave a pitch for donations...


...with the faithful, hungry crowd dutifully listening (in the photo below, there's Ben and my mom on the right).



They were cheerful and generous (we raised $185!), and obediently poured into our living room for a group photo, which I'm sending to the orphanage, along with a card and a check.



Too bad that by the time we got it together for the photo Ben had already melted down and Maya, Eder and my mom had escorted him home, where he could recuperate in the privacy of his own home from a long night of partying.

So, November has so far been a fairly exquisite month. First my birthday, then the elections. Then on Thursday night I had the privilege of hearing Kathy Kelly speak. She's a three-time Nobel Peace Prize nominee, a teacher, author, peace activist/organizer who helped initiate a campaign to end the UN/US sanctions against Iraq. She's organized and participated in nonviolent direct actions and humanitarian efforts in Haiti, Bosnia, Jordan, the West Bank and Iraq. She's also served many months in prison for acts of civil disobedience.

Kathy's a petite, attractive Irish-American lass with a talent for story-telling. She had us all under her spell, telling stories of her 26 or 27 times in Iraq, or in front of a judge in Ireland, or walking from Chicago to Minneapolis in time for the RNC this August. (My feet finally quit hurting about four days ago, she said.) Her most recent book is titled "Other Lands Have Dreams: From Baghdad to Pekin Prison."

Throughout her talk Kathy had two re-occurring themes. One was "what will rise us up?" (said with her lovely Irish accent). In other words, what will fire us up? What story of suffering will make us say "Enough!" and compel us to work harder to end the suffering? She was speaking specifically about the suffering of the Iraqi people, and more specifically, the children.

The other theme was: Live simply, share resources, and always choose service over dominance. By living in that way, we cause less harm, less suffering, and we make ourselves available as part of the solution, rather than part of the problem. What a fabulous post-birthday gift, to hear Kathy Kelly speak, to feel her commitment, to be inspired and bouyed by her words. Now to take her advice....

Last but not least I have read so many wonderful books, late at night while worrying about the election being stolen, etc, and trying to put myself to sleep. One is "Original Instructions: Indigenous Teachings for a Sustainable Future", edited by Melissa Nelson, with contributions by Chief Oren Lyons, John Mohawk, Katsi Cook, Winona LaDuke, and Tom Goldtooth.

Another is "The Way We Will Be 50 Years From Today: 60 of the World's Greatest Minds Share Their Vision of the Next Half Century," edited by Mike Wallace, with contributions from Jody Williams, Kim Dae-jung, Richard Clarke, Lee H. Hamilton, Marian Wright Edelman, Leon Panetta, Carl Pope and Carol Bellamy.

Another great read is The Sun, a monthly literary magazine from North Carolina. All I'm going to say is check out their website www.thesunmagazine.org. and give them a try. Great stories and photos. Stuff to make you weep and laugh and appreciate life so much.

Also my friends and family make me appreciate life. That's you! Thanks for reading this very long piece. You'll be hearing more from me in this post-election world, and that's a threat,

Valori