Support for the Arts: A Small Commercial

Just a small commercial for this season of gift-giving.

Clem has two poetry books for sale: Prairie Sky Prairie Ground ($12) and Listen For the Silence: A Walk Through the Natural World ($14). Prairie Sky has a lot of memoir poems from Clem's growing up (or should it be said his first two decades of life, since he is still growing up). Listen For the Silence's poems are reflections on the natural world that is such an important part of Clem. Some of them are from his extensive travels, others from places near to home.

Elizabeth has one poetry book for sale: Waiting For the Heat to Pass ($14). Women especially gravitate to her writings. The best feedback she has heard was by a book store manager who told her about the woman who said "I have to have this book" and walked out holding her treasure close to her heart.

Clem and Elizabeth also have CD's of their collaborative effort with NUBE, a musical ensemble of musicians from South America. The CD's title is The Golden Bird ($15) and traces the journey of a mythological bird down the Amazon River.

The three books are available at these bookstores: Banfill-Locke Center for the Arts, Birchbark Books, Common Good Books, Loyola Spirituality Center, Benedictine Spirituality Center, Cokesbury Bookstore at United Theological Seminary, and St Martin's Table (until they close in December). Out-of-town stores are Beagle Books and Bindery (Park Rapids), Sister Wolf Books (Dorset), and Mound Bookstore (Sinsinawa, Wisc.) At this point in our writing lives, we have chosen to sell our books directly, at independent bookstores, and at nonprofit places who benefit from sales of books

The CD can be ordered from us or from Nicolas Carter (http://www.nicolascarter.com/).  Books also can be ordered from us. Contact us at cnagel@cpinternet.com.

And if you just can't think of anyone who would benefit from the gift of our poetry (and we can't imagine anyone who wouldn't), go to Banfill-Locke's annual holiday sale A Gift for All Seasons from December 2-18 There you can buy our photography as well as other gifts made by local artists.

Support your local artists this holiday season.

The Twin Cities is a rich place for artists of all kinds. When you give a gift created by one of them, you give three times - to the recipient of your gift and to the artist who lives and works here. And you contribute to keeping the arts alive in this great place where we all are fortunate to live.

Gratitude

The skies are white, the snow falls steadily - and it feels either like Friday night not Wednesday. Or December. Am I disoriented or what!

But I do know that tomorrow is National Stopping-Out Day, the day we take each year to bring all our activities to a halt to gather with friends and family. To say thank you and express our gratitude for the goodness in our lives.

I know that I sometimes get weighted down with all of the troubles in the world. Like shoveling snow off  the driveway, sometimes it is necessary to shovel away what falls on each of us to find signs of hope. Small acts of kindness. Advances in treating diseases. News that employment is up. Genorosity of people who bring groceries to food shelves. Laughter of children. The orange sled I saw coming out of a garage, hugged by an eager boy excited by the possibility of snow.

White skies and clean snow that temporarily transforms the world into a fairy land.

Weather Superstitions

If I had a quarter for every time this past week that I heard "it's payback time," I'd cash in my frequent flyer miles and go somewhere warm.

I don't know if it's a Lutheran-Calvinist streak infecting Minnesota or what, but people around here don't seem to be able to accept gorgeous weather. This autumn produced a whole string of flawless days - setting some kind of record, I think. And when the first blast of arctic air hit the state, I hear people saying "knew we'd have to pay for all those beautiful days."

As though the weather gods have been keeping score and it is time to punish us for enjoying life. A theology based on a God out to get us, if we forget that pain ranks above pleasure. Even my favorite weather man, Paul Douglas said it - and I know he doesn't hear this kind of stuff at the church we both go to.

My grandfather used to plant radishes on Good Friday. The trouble with his gardening schedule is that Good Friday slides around the calendar like cars on black ice. He was on more solid ground when he planted potatoes as soon as budding oak leafs in the spring were the size of mouse ears. Though I am not sure where he observed oak trees, since I grew up on the flattest place on earth and oak trees were in short supply.

Five thousand years ago, the Neolithic people who built Stonehenge in England and the Ring of Brodgar in the Orkneys were much more scientific. They constructed architectual markers that told them when the equinox was upon them and it was planting time. Likewise, the people a thousand years ago in the Southwest's Chaco Canyon. They knew the annual pattern of the sun and stars were reliable guides and not subject to the whims of weather gods. Today, we are more awed because they also marked the solstice with their architecture - when no one is out planting anything.

The first garden calendar arrived this week. I was offended! Don't those folks know that garden catalogs are to be shipped the week after Christmas? I tossed it. After all, there are some rhythms of life that should not be violated! No matter what the weather-superstitious folks suggest.

                dreamt last night
                it was bitter January cold,
                huge stacks of mail arrived,
                dozens of seed catalogs,
                pages and more pages
                of bright pictures,
                sweet promises
                from the fertile earth
                     
                            from "summer death
                                              winter resurrection"
                                  in Waiting for the Heat to Pass
                                                  (by Elizabeth Nagel)

Meanwhile, I can only dream of warm places as I take note of the pale grey sky this morning and the concrete-like snow that is slowly disappearing to reveal green grass beneath. Sigh, Costa Rica would be nice . . .

Where Are the Happy Warrior and Paul Wellstone When We Need Them?

Reading the newspaper this week was a dismal activity. Senseless violence, more threats to air travel, political mayhem and petty politics, the probable derailing of needed light rail in the Twin Cities. Further moves to the right by Catholic bishops promise renewed energy devoted to stopping all gay marriage and opposing health care reform as a step toward outlawing all abortion. And Sarah Palin and Newt Gingrich move closer to announcing their bids for president. God have mercy on us all.

Last night we listened to the PBS portrayal of Hubert Humphrey. I had forgotten his boundless energy, which he coupled with skillful use of political strategy.His moral passion generated a long list of legislation we now take for granted. Would the Civil Rights Act ever have been passed without the "happy warrior's" determined efforts.
Today, I have been thinking about Paul Wellstone. A man small of stature, he would literally bounce up and down in his passion for justice. People still keep his bumper stickers for re-election on their cars - in this time when people are driving their cars longer than in previous times.What more might this man and his spouse have given to this country if their plane had not crashed in northern Minnesota?

And news of the royal engagement. Like romantics all over the world, I read and listened to every tidbit of news. In good times, I expect I still would have paid attention to the announcement. But in this time of news as dismal as the grey November skies, they represent hope. Not just for a strong marriage for them, which William's mother and father did not have. Hope for decency and better times for all of us.

Moral passion and romance - badly needed in our world today. 

Article Published

Check out my latest publication in View From The Loft. There I described what I learned teaching a four-week course at Catholic Eldercare last spring. Going into the experience, I thought I knew how to teach poetry. What I found were a bunch of outspoken and avid students, who helped each other navigate their various physical obstacles.Such as limited vision, hearing, memories, or an ability to write! Click on the Loft link and go to the View and go to my article, " Prepared."

How fitting it was that my article was published on the fourth and last session of a second poetry-writing course at the same place. The first course was so popular that residents requested another opportunity to experiment with words.

It is one of the most satisfying things I have done in a long time.

The Last To Leave

The poem was completed at 11a.m. on Veteran's Day, 2010. This day in history was marked as being the "eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month" of 1918, commemorating the armistice (signed at Compiegne, France) between the Allies of World War I and Germany. While this official date reflects the cease fire on the Western Front, other countries in the region chose to continue the fighting and to be the last to leave.

              The Last To Leave

The climbing honeysuckle vine,
always last to drop its blossoms
before winter sets in,
blooms in mid-November's
quiet morning sun.

It is a favorite refueling stop
for hummingbirds.
Just a few weeks ago, I spied
one such feathered jewel,
        now - long gone
on its yearly journey to Mexico.

I stroll garden paths,
discover again freshly turned dirt where
daffodil and tulip bulbs lie buried deep.
Hopefully, their roots will grow
to anchor them before
a yet-to-come hard freeze.

A while back,
I watered their dormant,
naked forms, and left them
mulch-covered.

Perhaps - just one more
douse of water would be good.
It hasn't rained for some time.

I sit quietly on a bench
beneath a leafless tamarack,
almost hidden from
the sky's eyes.

Hearing geese moving southward,
I enter my house, not wanting to be
              the last to leave.

First Snowfall

On Wednesday, the temperature was just shy of 70 degrees. Today, the trees are laden with heavy wet snow. The forthysia has big balls of snow clinging to its branches. It looks like a giant cotton plant ready for picking.

Just like that - the world around me is transformed from one season of life into another. Almost as dramatic as the southern tip of Chile where the sun shone in blue skies, it rained, the fog came in, and there was a bit of snow in the air - all within an hour's time.

Some days, the news seems a repeat of yesterday's news, and last week's, and last year's . . . Disasters, wars, invasions, violence, political differences, greed. The list is long. It makes a person wonder if humans are hard-wired to never grow up. Where is the transformation that might move humanity to another season of life? When will we learn to live with each other in peace and compassion?

Over dinner, a friend shared his anguish over a NPR call-in radio show in which many callers declared no medical care should be provided to those who "are not useful." The instance being discussed was about a child with severe health issues. I wondered if those callers would include all those elder members of our society in nursing homes. Would they just wheel them out to the curb and leave them to die?

Then it snows. Big heavy flakes. And I ask myself what does it mean "to be useful." I suppose the snow would qualify as useful since it has not rained for weeks. It also is useful by providing seasonal work for those charged with snow removal and selling snow-blowers. At the same, I imagine many folks around town are entranced with the beauty of the first snow. Does beauty qualify as useful?


Lake Superior

 Sometimes my life has been touched by someone who will never realize what they have given me. It may as fleeting as the sudden smile on an infant's face as their parent carries the baby past me. Like the soft touch of snowflakes on my face. I'd certainly call that useful.

The Twinkie Diet

I am going on the Twinkie diet. No, I'm not going to start eating Twinkies, something I have never done. Nor Hostess HoHo's either, even someone dear to me confesses it has been her occasional junk food fix since childhood.

Yesterday I was perusing one of my favorite online news sources, which is 75% serious news and 25% supermarket tabloid items. My eye catches man loses 27 pounds in two months  on a self-designed Twinkie diet. Not quite ready to get to work on a writing project, I checked out what I thought must be either a joke or a gimmick.

No gimmick. A nutrition professor from Kansas State was seriously conducting an experiment with himself as the subject. BHE (before his experiment), he ate a healthy diet of whole grains, vegetables - you know, the whole healthy food routine.  His intent was to create a tool to use with his students.

He restricted his caloric intake to 1800 calories and ate junk food such as Twinkies, a daily protein shake and a can of green beans. He added a multivitamin to the mix. The results were unexpected. His weight dropped quickly (always knew there was no food value in snack food). But the biggest surprise came as he monitored his vitals over the two months. His cholesterol dropped. His good cholesterol went up and the bad stuff went down. His BMI decreased and put him in the normal zone.

The end result? On all counts, he was healthier at the end of his experiment than when he started. The conclusion - it's the calories stupid. We are all eat too much - and weigh too much.

So I said to myself: this is the diet for me. The Twinkie diet (minus the Twinkies). Eat less food. Stop trying to always eat healthy foods and guilting myself when something is not. The multivitamin is easy. I am already one of the superstitious, who take multivitamins under the belief that a pill a day keeps the doctor away. The green beans do have to go - a can of green beans has enough salt in it to make me gain 27 pounds due to water retention.

Going on a diet just before the holiday season starts is a good strategy. This way I will be ready in January for the new Congress to assemble and do their own attack on consumption by cutting taxes and big government (just don't mess with my entitlements). Who knows, I may be bikini shopping by spring!

The Color Blue

It's funny how those odd bits and pieces lodge themselves in some crevass in your brain, only to show up later in some entirely different form. When I was a child, my favorite color was blue. Not the sort of startling thing I would expect to turn into anything that matters later in my life.

But it has. Spread out like jigsaw pieces waiting to be noticed as having a pattern. The color blue is embedded in my present life.

There is the blue of New Mexico's sky, one of the few places in my traveling life where I return. Once when I was there, I struck up a conversation with a woman painting at an easel. I asked where she was from. Florida she said. I then asked her why she came all the way to New Mexico to paint. Her reply was that it was the particular blue of the sky, so different from Florida's blue sky.

Hmmm. I hadn't noticed. But she was right. Most of New Mexico is over a mile high, some parts a mile and a half above sea level. The air is thinner - and the sky is dramatically more blue. Just like the blue sky on the images on my earlier blog of Snows and Blues. (No photoshopping and the kind of film here - it is what my digital camera "saw.")

Salinas National Monument

And there is the blue ice of the glaciers that so intrigue me. Alaska's tidewater glaciers slowly traveling into the sea. 



Alaska

And there were those icebergs in Greenland, pieces of glaciers that have broken loose to flow toward open water.

It's bigger than it looks!
Iceberg in Greenland

And at the other end of South America, there is the remoteness of Chile's Avenue Glaciers.   

Glacier melt in Chile

Or perhaps blue continues to capture my attention because it is the color of my dear love's eyes.

Taking a snooze in the sun while waiting for the next glacier 

Now that I have begun thinking about those pieces of blue scattered throughout my life, I imagine I shall find many more!

Snows and Blues to Give Me Perspective

When Clem and I were growing up, we lived in the Mississippi flyway, one of the great migration routes for waterfowl. Every spring swans, Canada geese, and snow and blue geese would fly overhead in great clouds. It is a precious memory that sustains me when I begin to slip over the edge and become too caught up in political and world drama.

I did not have a camera then, which was capable of capturing these images on film - only my boxy Brownie camera. Now thanks to the digital cameras of today, it is possible for me to capture some of the essence of these wild creatures, who seem all but oblivious to humans, awed by their flight northward into Canada.



Wintering Snows and Blues

 

Bosque del Apache Wildlife Refuge
New Mexico

 One of their wintering places is in central New Mexico. Smart snowbirds!

Today, Minnesota waits to see who their next governor will be. A county by county map of the state reflects the disparity of election results across the county. The margin in each county is 10-20% for either candidate, even though less than 1% separates them statewide. Either folks in each county clearly liked one candidate or the other.

Another "throw the bums out" election, the third such election in four years, awaits the pundits' attempts to understand what the results mean. While Senator John Boehner tries to discover a strategy to herd cats in a coalition labled Republican, but consisting of Tea Party-ers and the ever present Sarah Palin. While bombs worldwide explode and children die of treatable diseases and malnutrition.

My perspective? I have grandchildren in public schools and the university. My neighbor across the street was laid off and my heart aches for their frantic fears. Arts and music disappear from school curriculums, affecting children I know personally and those who would teach them. My middle-class peers grow poorer. Stores where I sometimes shop are filled with goods for which my friends and I have little need, prolonging a stalled economy while people examine their consumer lifestyles.

An older friend once related what she experienced when her 90-some year old mother died. She looked out the door four days after the funeral. The mailman was making his rounds as if nothing monumental had happened. She had to resist the urge to holler at him, "don't you know my beloved mother just died."

Then I remind myself of the great flocks of birds who are flying southward to wait until the snow season passes. Some will not survive the journey. But the great flocks will fly north again in the spring and hatch new chicks. Huge flocks will swirl across the skies and I will listen for the deafening sound of them calling to one another. Wheeling and turning as if the whole flock is one giant organism.