Where the buffalo roam?

Whoever would have thought that they roam near mile marker 130 on route 80 in Ohio?  This is, in fact, very near where the Belted Galloway cows and calves romp, although on the other side of many lanes of traffic.  I look forward to driving back along that stretch on Tuesday, to see what else there is to see.  

I've been driving from Ann Arbor, Michigan to points east (Philadelphia, New Jersey, Massachusetts) for too many years now, and always see new things.  In the past several months, though, I have a new car (thanks, Deb!) which sits about 18" higher off the ground than does my beloved 18-year old Miata; it's a whole new world up there in the relative stratosphere.  I can see over bridge abutments, beyond the scrub growing at the roadside and what I see is often boggling.  Who knew there were beaver dams and ponds several yards from the screaming traffic?Makes you wonder what you'd see from the cab of an 18-wheeler.

  

Who knew a small herd of American bison graze in a pasture abutting the west-bound lanes of Route 80?  It was still on the early, foggy side when I drove past so they loomed suddenly and hugely out of the mist.  How could they be so big, so far away?  How large they must be if you were to stand next to them!  And to think man almost wiped them off the face of the earth, a depradation of incredible hubris.  I think of that scene in the movie, "Dances with Wolves", the buffalo hunt; Kevin Costner's character shoots a buffalo mere feet before it barrels into and over a child.  I remember reading about that scene, that the shot was set up with an elderly, very tame buffalo, to whom the child was feeding the equivalent of buffalo cookies.  Still, that kid was one brave person to get near that animal.  

Allow me briefly to digress and say how much better the book, "Dances with Wolves", is than the move.  Not to imply that I don't like the movie and have warm feelings toward Kevin Costner!  Especially since he appeared in a Mr. Stadium Laundromat t-shirt in "The Upside of Anger".  Mr. Stadium laundroworld is in the literal and figurative shadown of the University of Michigan football stadium and is where I spent years of my life, doing laundry.  Before I became a full-fledged grown-up and got my own washer-drier.  

I've long believed that having your own washing machine made you a grown-up; and that having your own fruit trees meant you were settled down.  I've had both at my lovely house, which we've just sold.   

Guard puppies in a cathedral

On Thursday, the class I just taught took a field trip to visit various historic sites and museums in Cebu City:  the Yap San Diego, the Casa Gorordo, the museum of the Cathedral, and the Fort San Pedro down at the harbor. 

The cathedral museum has a guard dog:  a large, beautiful animal who had had puppies within the past several weeks.  These puppies seem to have the run of the ground floor of the museum.  They followed up as we looked at some of the Cathedral's treasures, including an altar (10' x 4' x 4'?) that is encased in silver, cast in high relief with scenes of the life of Christ.  Here, too, was a wheel about 2 feet in diameter, fixed in a frame, which you spin by turning a handle.  Twelve bronze bells are affixed to the outside of the wheel's rim, with the open mouths of the bells facing outward.  As you turn the wheel, the bells ring.  It's a lovely sound. 

One of the guard puppies even tried to climb the stairs with us to the second floor. He made it only part way, stopped and yapped for a bit, and then went to sleep under the stair until we went down, at which he tumbled back down the stairs after us.  

Back in Cebu City, Philippines

I have been in Cebu City, Philippines, for over about 10 days - my second trip here in 13 months.  Because I am back in the same city, teaching at the same university, staying in the same wonderful hotel, I am not as mad-dog about exploring and experiencing the city.  Half-mad, perhaps. 

When I arrived at the hotel, some staff remembered me from the two-week stay last year.  I was welcomed "home".  The same at the library where I'm teaching:  warm welcome, catching up on what's happened in the intervening year, slipping back into relationships. 

I explored some new areas of the city, especially the Tabo An market.  This is smaller than the Carbon market, and seems to specialize in dried fish (it is very near Pasil, the main fresh fish market).  Heaps of dried fish, virtually every vendor selling the same things.  One would wonder how they all survive, but for the obvious fact that they do!  One stand sold a dried fish about 10" long, still colored a brilliant indigo blue.  You must wonder what it looks like alive, under the water, swimming:  it's enough to make one want to take up scuba diving, just to satisfy that curiosity. 

There was much at the market and, indeed, throughout the city, that can confuse and concern.  One sees what appear to be heavy bedsteads tucked into corners of the market or simply placed on the sidewals.  During the day, the bedsteads are covered with items for sale or with tools and materials of trade.  I've even seen a little forge on a bedstead on a sidewalk, with the smith pounding away.  (And, in a market, have seen charcoal burners producing the charcoal for the little forges and for street vendors' fires to cook food.)  At night, things of the day are stowed beneath the bedstead and screens put up around it, or curtains rolled down from a frame or the underside of the house against which the bedstead is pushed, and there you have it:  a place to sleep.  Lives are lived in a space not as bit as an American double bed.  

back in Cebu City, Philippines

Flat-chested in a breast-enhanced world

August 3, 1998 - the nurse-practitioner finds a lump in my right breast, a lump that hadn't been there in June (I don't know if I did my breast self-exam in July). 

August 8 1998 - I learn I have breast cancer 

September 3, 1998 - I have a modified radical mastectomy

September 4, 1998 - I start a post-breast life

I've never particularly identified my self with my body.  It was easy, therefore, to deide not to have reconstructive surgery after my mastectomy.  One breast here or there --what the hell?  It never, ever occured to me taht anyone - and I mean *anyone* - could in this or any other lifetime have anything to say to me about my decision.  Turns out that lots of people thought they had the perfect right and, perhaps, obligation to comment upon my decision and, by logical extension, me.  

Several months after my mastectomy, when all possible swelling had gone down, I went to a clinic that fitted me for a prosthetic breast.  This was a breaast-like object to slip inside a brassiere.  I wore it, opposing a true breast, one day.  I could not stand it!  It was cold, weird, slumping this way and than when a real breast would have gone that way and only then, this.  After a few hours, I reached down inside my shirt and took it out.  Now what?  It was an expensive thing, this externalized breast.  Looking to protect it, I put it into my very heavy, padded mitten, figuring it would be safe there.  True; and not true. 

At the end of that aday, I suited up to go outside and walk the 0.75 cold miles home.  I had stuff to check out at the library's circulation desk, so carried my mittens in my hand until I was really ready to got out into the cold, cruel world.  I put everything down on the desk:  the books I wanted to take home, my mittens.  And then, it happened.  The silicone breast-like object slithered out of my mitten, shimmied there on the circulation desk, hesitated on the edge, and then fell to the floor at the feet of a complete stranger.  

What does one say in such a situation?  Memory draws a convenient veil over it. 

And yes, this is the back story for what I'm trying to say. 

Some days ago, I took a taxi from a hotel in Makati, Manila, Philippines, to the airport.  The driver called me "sir" for much of the first kilometers.   (Let me fill in:  I had a second mastectomy, with no reconstructive surgery.  I am concave-chested.  The muscles above where breasts would be, ramin.  The absence of breast tissue below makes me look concave.)  During the course of the drive, the driver and I talked about this and that, and - out of the blue - my body.

"Are you a man or a woman?  You have no breasts," he said,  looking at me in the taxi's rear-view mirror.  

"I have money to pay you for the trip to the airport.  That's all you need to know."  I was shocked and, as a result, rude.

Minutes of silence.

"Excuse me, ma'am.  I am concerned about you.  Do you have a family?"  It was exquisitely clear that he thought me less a woman (let's not een talk about being less a person) for not having breasts.  I said that I was fine, strong, competent, secure:  even though his questions made me doubt all that.  

Belted Galloway Cow

If you've never seen a Belted Galloway Cow, do a Google image search now and take a look.  Is such a perfect thing true?  The strict delineation of black/white/black is, to my eye and mind, totally captivating.  Surely these must be happy-go-lucky beasties, if their physical aspect is so charming. 

A few days ago, I drove from Philadelphia to Ann Arbor, Michigan.  Wanting the most direct route, I drove route 80 across much of Pennsylvania and through Ohio to Maumee.  Somewhere vaguely west of Cleveland, I passed a farm on the south side of the highway.  A large field was full of Belted Galloway cows with little calves, probably only a few days old.  The coloration charming on an adult is mind-boggling on a tiny calf.  I wanted to pull to the side and dash across 6 lanes of traffic to worship at the fence line.  I won't claim that good sense prevailed:  it was the intimidating presence of tractor-trailer trucks that kept me moving.  And in Ohio, one tractor is allowed to pull three trailers.  This is as unnatural and baby Belted Galloways are supremely true to nature.    

Tulip Liberation Front

Tomorrow is May Day, and for many years I have cut bucket-loads of tulips from my garden on May Day morning and walked to work, handing flowers to whomever would accept them as a token of the day.  I will do so tomorrow morning, and with a twist.  

About a block from here, on the main street nearby, a 1950s house was torn down about 2 months ago.  Bulldozers and large earth-moving equipment was called in to tear down trees and shrubs, level the land, and make straight the path of the developer.  James and I walked over just now, carrying a bucket partly-filled with water, and picked every tulip and daffodil the developer had not buried beneath mounds of moved earth.  The house's gardens were not saved, not transplanted, not considered at all.  The tulips were at the eastern edge of the property, minimally protected by overhanding tree branches.  I'm betting that they'd be buried tomorrow - - just as the tulips, daffodilas, iris, peonies at the north and south edges of the property are already buried.  

Tomorrow, I'll give away the flower of a garden that will disappear by the end of the day.  I see this as a fitting May Day action.  

Bereft

Bereft is a small, strong word. And bereft is what I am today.

Today, I sold my home. I've lived many places in the past 40 years; in fact, I've moved - on average - every 18 months. In the time since I left my parents' home, I have lived in exactly two places that I would call home; Eld Street in New Haven, Connecticut and Brockman Boulevard in Ann Arbor, Michigan. I had gardens in both places, which is one of the connecting threads.

The Brockman house looks, to me, like a Hollywood set designer's vision of a Tudor cottage. It has a balcony over the living room fireplace, ogive-arched doorways from space to space within the house, pocket doors to the closet and bathroom in the bedroom above the garage, little hidie-holes throughout, a miniature flying buttress off the front porch, a Palladian window in the garage. I love it inordinately, and have since I first stepped through the door and saw the soaring ceiling in the living room - with that balcony over the fireplace. The world divides into two camps: those who see the balcony and coo, "Romeo and Juliet" and those who exclaim "Errol Flynn!" Guess into which camp I fall. I picture flinging myself from the balcony, catching onto and swinging from the antique Dutch brass chandelier, crashing through the 12' tall windows out into the front garden, shouting "Ha, ha! Take that!", and running away through the tall flowering shrubs out front.

And now, it's time to pack up what is left in the house and leave it to whomever comes next. I guess I can walk away; I know I have to.

Onyx's girl foal

I am in Saugerties, New York, staying with friends.  Billie and Richard live in a farmhouse that Richard has restored:  the kitchen he added on is bigger than most apartments I've lived in, and the deck off the south side of the house affords a view over the vegetable garden, some of the flower beds, a lawn, and the Thoroughbred horse breeding and training farm across the road.  

When I arrived here a week or so ago, I walked over to meet the foals.  I've been a fool for horses all my life and think I would happily have moved into the barn to be close to the mares and the foals, to smell that wonderful horse-ness, to hear the anxious whickering of a foal not sure where her mama was and the low, calm answering whuffle the mother makes.  How not fall in love?    

Last week, the youngest foal was three days; the oldest, two weeks.  The changes I've observed over the intervening days have been astonishing.  Foals who could totter around in their mothers' shadows can now run (not too gracefully yet), who could rear up (not too far off the ground, please) can now do a creditable job of it, who could buck (hesitantly) can now do a rodeo bronco proud.  Last week, the mothers would chase even the other foals away from their babies; now, those foals are figuring out how to play together, to understand that they are each others' natural foils, to test strength one against the other.  

My favorite is a little female foal whose mother is named Onyx.  The day before yesterday, Onyx's foal figured out how to lie down:  how to accordion up those impossibly long legs with the improbably big knees, to lower herself to the straw before rolling onto her side to lie in the hot sun.  Prior to that, she would bend her legs, get this perplexed look on her face, and just flop over like a tree falling to the ground.  No control, no understanding of simple mechanics - - just submission to gravity.  I think she was offended when I laughed.  

Onyx's foal has lost her hesitancy around me.  She comes to the fence when I appear, stretches up her beautiful little head for me to scratch the center of her forehead, switches her tail in time to the scratching.  I love her immoderately and am convinced she will grow up to be strong, beautiful, and fast. She will win races, thus proving her value as a broodmare; she will pass her boldness on to her own daughters; she will whuffle when those daughter foals wake up in the straw and wonder where she is.  

How I wish she were to be mine.  Go well, Onyx's girl foal. Show those males what you can do.  Run with ever-increasing grace, rear up tall and proud, and show those broncos what bucking is all about.  

My sister, Mary

My sister, Mary, recently had her second hip replacement surgery.  After the hospital, after the rehab at a nursing home, after staying with our mom for a while, she was recovered enough to be away from her doctor.  She traveled from Springfield, Massachusetts to Saugerties, New York to stay with her dear friends, Billie and Richard.  In fact, Billie and Richard have been such a mainstay in Mer's life for so many years that I, our other sister, Francesca, and my friends, Lorelei and Connie, are all good friends with them.  Mary has this way of sharing - whether it be friendships, family, houses, clothes, books; for her, sharing multiplies the delight.  

Mary retains childlike amazement at the every dayness of life:  the sun that comes up every morning, the gawky grace of newborn foals at the horse farm across the road, the way asparagus grows so fast you think you can see it happen, the fact that her sons have grown up to be good and loving men.  You can only stand there and watch her, marvel at her and along with her.  

My sister, Mary, is good in a way that I can only admire and cheer on.  Go, Big Honey, go.  

noise, sound, hearing

In the late spring of 1998, I finally took action to prove James wrong:  I was not hard of hearing - he was incredibly soft-spoken!  In June, the audiologist returned the verdict:  I am deaf as a haddock.  I got my hearing aids in the first days of August, and shortly thereafter learned I had breast cancer.  Of course, the two are unrelated but will remaim forever linked in my mind.

Tom O'Connor, the audiologist, and I talked at length about the nature of my hearing loss and the advantages of different types of hearing aids .  I finally decided o spend the big bucks and get things that well-nigh invisibly fit into your ear (the smaller, the more expensive), and to get one for each ear.  I realized that I would feel lopsidedif I could hear better out of one ear than the other; a decision I've been happy with ever since and which figures into the story to come.  

James came with me when I finally got the aids, since I'd asked Tom to tune the aids to the particular pitch of James' voice.    When that was done and, with the aids in my ears, I heard James speak, I thought he was shouting at me.  He was not, of course; it was me truly hearing him for the first time.  In the days that follwoed, I heard many strange and wonderful things:   the sound that bicycle tires make when you ride your bike to work, the sound of scissors cutting paper, the sound of my dog barking in the night.  Who knew?  Not me.  

Over time, I became inured to the onslaught of sound and of noise.  I filtered it out as anyone does (is that true?  Does everyone filter sound?  Or is only me, who didn't hear it for who knows how many years?)  And then, several months ago, my right aid gave out.  I took it in to the shop.  With only one working ear,  I felt constantly off-balance, continually out of whack, totally unhappy.  Over several weeks, I stopped wearing the left aid in an effort to regain some equanimity, some sense of physical and psychic balance.  I think that this slow remove of my connection to the hearing world - the failure of one aid followed by the conscious removal of the other - somehow blunted my perception of what happened.  I no longer heard, I no longer reacted to sound, I no longer had one of my essential connections to the world.  And I had no idea that any of this was true.  

For reasons I shan't go into, it took several months to get a new right hearing aid.  I did not put it in until I got home and could insert both the right and the left aids.  Sweet Jesus in the Morning!  The sound, the noise, the incredible volume of everyting that goes on daily in the world!  I asked James, I asked friends, I asked strangers:  can you hear the clock ticking all the time?  Can you always hears the squising sound that car tires make when they turn a corner?  Cne you always hear the gurgle of pipes in the bathroom two floors up?  Can you always hear the goddamned birds in the back yard even if the kitchen door is closed?  Is that thunderous noise really the refrigerator?  Is that the bus stopping a block and a half away?  

What about this sound?  That one?  

Yes.  People who can hear, can hear.  People like me, who cannot hear yet can be helped, rejoice in sound, in music, in random noise, in the sound of a great-grandfather's mantel clock ticking and chiming.  Mostly, in the sound of voices telling us that we are heard, are listened to, are loved.  

Thank you for listening, for talking back, for making a joyful noise.  

noise, sound, hearing

noise, sound, hearing

Mollie

Mollie is my adored god-daughter. I dedicate my life to being a bad influence on her! Her mom and dad are onto me, though.

When Mollie was one, I demonstrated to her how to pick things up with her toes and then forgot about it. At her second birthday party (at which I was a wrangler), she plopped herself down on the floor with her cake, took off her socks, and plunged her toes into the cake and very deftly fed herself that way. After a moment of silence, her mother sternly called out, "Carla!" Me? I was innocent - I'd merely demonstrated that one can pick up things with one's toes!

You call this rain?

This afternoon, I sat in a chair in the living room. I looked out the front, east-facing window and watched it rain. Very lightly, but rain it was. Turning my head, I looked out the side, south-facing window. It was not raining on that side of the house.

I went outside to be sure my eyes were working. Dry as a bone in the garden on the side of the house, wet in the garden in the front. Talk about localized weather!

I have never before been unemployed - other than those times I chose to be so. It is unnerving. I'm not sure how to start from a dead stop - previous job hunts had the security of being in a job, getting a salary, having a place to be every morning. Now, it is tempting to lie abed, reading, rather than search websites for leads, fill out applications for work while I find a job, figure out how to move forward in my life.

I spent this morning cruising the ALA job ads. The American School in Athens? Public library in Winsted, CT? Department administrator in the Sociology Department at Michigan?

9 months

I lived and worked in Philadelphia for nine months - the length of a pregnancy. But, to what did I give birth? The end of a career as a preservation specialist? Or, to the beginning of whatever comes next for me? I prefer the latter. A bit more positive a spin, no?

Perhaps I need also to become more declarative, rather than questioning. So - yes! On to whatever is next after a short nine months.

Hi All!

Well, this is Carla's trusty sidekick, Mollie.  I've just started a blog for Carla because she sends such interesting emails out to her friends, from time to time, that I thought it'd be cool to make her a BLOG! (That's a Web log for those of you who don't know.)  So now I'm turning the reins over to Carla herself!  Hope to see some fun stuff coming up!