The Descent of Woman, Or: Oh Holey Butt

(This is unfortunate. Here is an entry that should have been finished and posted last month: that bicycle ride from Wayne County back to Ithaca. But better late than never.)

May 25 2015.

Destination Bicycling is much more of an involved way to get back home. 

Involved in a way that is sensual, meaning senses participating more than just holding a steering wheel while under a seat belt. Instead sensations become perceptible thanks to the meditation of spinning along endlessly in the air.

To feel the air temperature change, dipping into a stream valley, like passing through a curtain and feeling the cold fabric of it brush against your body. The smells of a Laundromat, the honey suckle, the cows. 

To really know the wind. To have emotion for the wind, impeding my progress so thickly. In our houses and offices we can be removed. Look out the window and see the wind in the trees and know a storm is coming….completely different than grinding into it.

I wanted to bicycle back to Ithaca under my own power, to have awesome novel thoughts all the hours in the saddle, see my edge. To earn views and earn chocolate cake.

The ride started out powerfully, churning along at 14 mph (fast for me, #allsteel), from Canandaigua to Geneva. I lived in Geneva last summer, and returning there it felt recognizable but not familiar. It did not feel like I had embodied it as a home place. But I relished espresso and a second breakfast and rejoiced I was continuing on to my new home of Ithaca.

Midday, full sun, the adhesive air of pre-thunderstorm humidity. And the southern wind. I pointed directly into it, watching the leaves exposing their undersides in the flapping as I rode. The grain fields bending in huge synchronized dance numbers, the Memorial Day American flags waving vigorously. My pace slowed to grappling along at barely 9 miles an hour.

I was out of water.

I’ve stopped at places before, noticing someone outside and pleading for a water bottle refill. People have gone out of their way to get me ice. (With a bit of common sense, and excluding the hyper violence on the news, I choose to believe in a mostly nonthreatening world. Most of the time I get by excellently.)

There was a woman out gardening in front of her trailer home, and I pulled into her driveway hopefully. I called out my plea and she saw me and looked slightly perplexed, then started gesturing. Before I could stand my wits at attention, a throng of 17,000 terrible, gray, enormous, pregnant dogs rampaged from the side yard at me. The ugly kind of gray, bred for grumpiness, snarling and roaring and charging. I was on their rural plot of territory. I must die. The woman came to my aid--bless her; she was barking at them to get away and swinging her shovel, "they're breeders!" she explained to me. My bike became a shield and I spun with it, dancing in horror and fending off the dogs. But my butt—the only part of me offering a real purchase, padded in bike shorts and jutting out juicily--was too easy a target and I was chomped.  

Bitten in the butt by a dog.

That's a first. Well at least I've had my rabies shots. 

(after beating them with her shovel she finally dismissed them and did fetch me some plastic bottles of water, although a little wordlessly and, I assume, begrudgingly) 

I think next time I'm thirsty I'll avoid rural trailer homes.

Later: after the adrenaline receded. 

I pulled up at my aunt and uncle's place, surprising them in their afternoon projects. They fed and watered me, and we sat at the kitchen table as I consumed melon, and CHEESE, and bread, and peanut butter. I LOVE THESE PEOPLE I kept thinking inside, and want to tell them things! And share anecdotes. But all I could properly do was eat food.

Riding 70 miles in heat and unforgiving wind was a study in discomfort and also presence. I’ve done way more than 70 miles before, but usually in a group of others, where everyone is bonding together and encouraging each other on. The best way to go about it alone was to notice this house, to see that tree, to laugh at that road name. Not so helpful is to think, “so that was 2 miles…I just need to do that 10 times more.” 

The point where I’d reached the zenith between the lakes, where the ride into the southern wind was over, where I was just gravitating down towards the road running along Cayuga Lake…with the yellow road signs with the truck pointing down a triangle… the DESCENT. Flowing and flowing and not pedaling….I started to have normal thoughts again, cooling off enough that I could have thoughts. And then seeing the Ithaca 2 Miles sign….the arrival would have been more epic had I not been so tired.

But I can store it up and reflect on it later, drawing a little epic pride perhaps for when I need it.

To do something other than pedal, like to shower and eat sausage, was a change of pace after such single-minded focus. How fortunate that I could push my self this way on this day under my own volition….because for many people having to push is not a choice.

The earned lake views.

The earned, if very unattractive, chocolate cake. Note: best NOT to carry and serve in a.... bag.

Road.

Uncle's bike and niece's bike.

Pearls & Rain Pants (and Ithaca Fest!)

This weekend has been Ithaca Festival, perhaps one of the most notable weekends all year in this little city.  Blocks of downtown have been blocked off, a number of different music stages set up. Blues, folk, eastern belly dance, hip-hop….these fill the streets. Food trucks sell Cambodian pancakes, deep south grilled chicken, Mac N Cheese.

My Mansard roof is just one block from all this; from my window I can hear even the words to the music clearly, and see the food tents. I am positively gleeful to be living inside such a fantastic festival. Instead of waiting in line for a compromised blue plastic porta-potty, I can trot back to my very own bathroom. I brought friends up too, for ice water in this mugginess. I took breaks to make popcorn, to snuggle with Cat, to bake gingerbread, to nap.  And then down my stairs and out into the music again!

Saturday of the festival was thick with heat and humidity and I danced in the park, bare feet in the grass, until the rains came and I retreated up to my apartment.

I was in the parade Thursday, riding with the AIDS Ride For Life bicycle fundraiser ride. We wore matching blue tee-shirts and pedaled along following the bagpipers (which was a lot of fun). The other bicyclers and I looped circles around the banner, like a small smiling swarm of bees, avoiding getting run over by the following fire-truck. My chest got all swollen with happiness to see the faces of this city lining the sidewalks cheering on the parade. Glowing, eager faces. A high population of vegan faces, faces with many higher educational degrees, faces of professors, faces of professor children wearing paint.  

Unlike the wee town of Ontario parades I’ve accompanied my father’s cars in, this parade had no tractors but instead Planned Parenthood all marching in pink tee-shirts, and Save Seneca Lake! anti-oil group waving banners, and the local solar company.  Ithaca sure is a unique place.  And I’m happy to be living here.

I’ve spent the entire weekend padding about the festival, eating Lemongrass Meat On A Stick, running into just about everyone I know, and happily soaking up the music.  Sunday I finished out the festival with a high of newly-discovered band love. The gun poets. Can’t-hold-still hip-hop with poetry lyrics. Not jaded. Instead about life and appreciating and community and all to a fiercely grooving beat. I don’t know how anyone could be nearby and not be moving. For me it was involuntary, and I danced that glorious celebratory dance of existence. Dancing alone and not caring, but dancing with everyone too. Where the band knows they’re getting to people, and they have their souls on their instruments, and it’s this feedback loop of crowd upping band upping crowd. Little children wearing huge ear-muffs, highschoolers, the bottle-picking vagrant population, parents, students, everyone. Everyone moving and grooving together. All a heightened state of humanity.

Sunday morning I escaped the food tents and the crowds to be organist at a church for whom I’ve never played before. The United Methodist Church in Lansing, which wasn’t exactly convenient in time or location.  (#carfree) Their service began at the, erm, sprightly hour of 9am and choir rehearsal was before that as well. Nine miles away and up a hill….mercifully I discovered a bus that ran at 7am going partly in the right direction.

It was raining that morning. And cold. All the July sunny mugginess of Saturday had phase-changed into November.  Gray froth hung wetly over the land, and steam churned about the falls. The roads were dark with puddles. What could make bicycling in 7:30am cold rain worse? But wind. So I bicycled into a stiff north wind.

I’ve bicycled in miserable conditions before. I suppose that’s a thing to be grateful for having been such an incorrigible bicycler and traveler: that even if it’s a bit miserable now, it still won’t top the previous winners of misery.  So the pearls and the rain pants powered forth. I realized I was decidedly inward focused, because instead of watching much of the world go by, I was considering a drop of water sliding back and forth across the brim of my helmet. Right there in front of my face. Sliding to and fro with my left-right rocking action of driving into the wind. To and fro. It was like a hypnotist’s watch. Somehow this was incredibly irritating. My feet were cold, my hands were stiff and wet, I was pushing hard. But that droplet.  Grrrr.  I flicked it off.  Soon another formed.  I flicked that one off too.

And then. The smile once I turned downhill and out of the wind. The church in sight. Cruising…15 mph, 20 mph. YES. Oh, how earned that feeling was.

A country church. I arrived and cracked my cold hands from their handlebar grip and amazingly they warmed to play the pipe organ. A straightforward little instrument it was, two manuals, nothing fancy, but my feet connected effortlessly with the pedal board.  And within half an hour of warming up we were one.

Pastor asked if I could play “a little somethin-somethin-somethin” while people sat down before the prelude. What I call “filler” music, or “emergency backup” music. I hadn’t brought any, but was able to forage through the sliding piles of books around the organ and find something appropriate. “Noodle music”, as Mr. First Presbyterian Choir Director would call it.  I noodled away and watched the church fill.  And fill.

Every pew filled. The children brimmed all over the front steps for children’s time and I don’t think I’ve ever seen a congregation with so many brightly flowered dresses or bow-ties or suit-jackets in such a long time. I do enjoy the Methodists. And with my experience playing for Methodists before, I know they especially resonate with the happy and “boom-chunk” music.  I had fun. I had so much fun in church this morning.  I charged the hymns right along and people sang lustily.

“We’re so glad you’re not doing only soil!” said one of the choir members, when they learned of my actual day-job.

I played Emperor’s Fanfare for the postlude, all big chords and trills and DAH DAH DAH deep pedal notes. This piece takes no small amount of concentration and it is a blast, in all senses of the word. I landed the final chord, and surfaced back into the world, and heard something I’ve never heard in church before. The people weren’t only clapping, they were cheering. Cheering and hooting. I was blown away. I loved all those Methodists even more.

Mrs. Alto was standing at my elbow all smiles: “You PUMP IT, girl!”

A Portrait of the Organist as a Young Woman

I was guest organist at the First Presbyterian Church this past Sunday.  Currently, I am fortunate enough to have organist gigs booked at various churches until the end of August. I am usually pretty brimming when I finish a Sunday service—little descriptions and observations and feelings rising up wanting to be written—but there’s something extra brimming about this church.

Maybe because I’d come there as a wee granddaughter object, holding the hands of my grandparents. 

Or maybe because it is a tremendous echoing edifice, all bell towers and stony outcrops (I don’t have architecture terms for those things), and inside there are PILLARS. I’ve not played in churches with pillars very much. Tremendous marble pillars.

Or maybe because the instrument itself is over a million-dollar affair, with five manuals, and more buttons, levers, and stops than I actually know how to process. I’m waiting to push something and have a small genie come out and tell me off. I did push something the other day and a continuous tinkling of bells sounded, like an angel assemblage, and I realized the zimbelstern was in decidedly good working order.  

So I feel a little compelled to write about this church and my organ-izing within it.  

I slide onto the bench in this empty huge place before the people come in, flip the magic switch, and a huge beast breathes to life. You can hear the blower of its lungs taking a rich inhale, then the air moving through the entire length of its body, the little clunks and audible shudders and twitches that happen with this.

I realized I’ve built a mental association (just like my cat: an approach to the lower cupboard means food).  The sound of over a hundred people sitting down—slightly rustly and with subtle groans of the pews, maybe a few deep inhales after the singing—this to me is the sound of triumphant success and relief.  In a smaller space with a smaller crowd, this is much less magnified. But in this huge space it is echoey and majestic. It means I just finished a hymn, held the last resounding chord for as long as necessary for the weight to plumb deep, and then let off the keys to a wash of relief at having gotten through the thing, and these Sounds of Sitting.  

You see, this is not an unapologetic instrument, and I do not spurn the loudly encompassing foot pedal stops. But that means that if I do make a mistake, it is undeniable.   

The anthem for the choir this week was no insignificant affair, even on the piano, a lyrical rendition of Be Thou My Vision in 4 sharps (and then the occasional A-sharp thrown in for befuddlement). I had only a few days to learn it, and I had to work. I was marking sharps, practicing page turns, writing “aim!” over the unmanageable chords, singing lines to try and get them into my head. There were triplets, there were large hand-stretching chords.

But I did it. Having the perfectionist gene (or at least a similar one) means that this work is not always a choice for me.  (I guess I could get better at Faking Things and have more time for other pursuits…)

And then: Sunday morning, the choir sounded sublime, I didn’t burn my triplets, I remembered my sharps, I aimed my “aims”. And the final chord hung beautifully in the air…. and the thing was done. Over. Never to be played again.  The manifestation of all my work had 3 minutes of existence and no more. 

I think about it like its making a Mandala. Creating a thing with insistent carefulness for the sake of creating it, all those fine grains of sand in place, a practice, a focus on being present for a task. Others enjoy it for a bit, and then wipe-wipe-wipe its over.

And then the next Sunday you work for something else.

After the service I skittered downstairs to eat cookies (playing makes me undeniably hungry) and drink church-basement coffee.  Before I could escape the organ bench a few people approached, thanking me for playing, asking what year I was at the Ithaca College music school (“uhm, nope, I am a soil scientist at Cornell….”) and a Mrs. Norma Stevenson to send her regards to my grandparents. 

But I didn’t get a chance to chat with the pastor of this formidable church (a positively charismatic young woman, much beloved, incredibly positive and thoughtful). I had listened intently to her sermon about change. How change HAPPENS for us as people; we can become someone perhaps even nearly unrecognizable to whom we had been before. And this is natural and ok.

But later this week I was playing late at night in the pitch of the black space, just the organ overhead light on. I heard movement but could see nothing, blinded in my little orb of organ light. Then, like a radiant specter, she appeared by the bench and I could see it was Pastor. “I just wanted to say, I love it when you play,” she said. “It is so expansive. You obviously are not afraid of the instrument.”  This raised me about 3 feet off the bench, and I blustered a blushing thank you….and explained that once I had been afraid of it. Which is kind of why I felt I should learn how to play it.

After some thinking, I realized I have three levels of Organist within me. The first level is Faking It But Making It. These are the mornings where perhaps the night before was a little longer than probably proper, or where the week was busy and I didn’t have practice time. I can play hymns, I keep everyone in tempo, but perhaps I hit a few off-pedal notes. Perhaps I miss an entrance. My first few years of being a church organist were this level, whether I liked it or not.

The second level is Yes Right. Things aimed are landed accurately, music sounds good, it’s right. After a few years this was the standard. I focus and effectively make tidy neat music.

Now I’m realizing there’s a third level. It is called With Soul. This has been happening more and more lately. Where I am playing, and am able to take in and hear the music, not just play it. Where I can play a piece I’ve played 49 times before and suddenly here a phrase in a new way. With Soul is more likely to happen on sunny days, after beautiful bicycle rides or a special human interaction. I tend to play this content into my music. That phrase is the sunset view; this next phrase is being in love. I’m more liquid when I play this way; I can hear the congregation getting quiet for the prelude, or maybe singing more lustily on a hymn. If I sense this beginning to happen I get even more in it and thus begins a positive feedback loop. The Leo in me would argue I’m blissed out on the power of my own power. The humanist would say I’m grateful to be contributing something beautiful to the universe. Who knows.  I love it.  It’s also rare and I want to be wary of trying to control it. 

Biking With....

Biking with…..

(reflections on the strange loads I’ve carried on bicycle)

A fish tank. I was in Pennsylvania, the early college years. It was a small fish tank, plastic with purple top, found sitting roadside after someone’s cleanup venture. I’m not sure why I thought it necessary to collect it while on my bicycle ride, maybe because It Was There and I was stretching my newly-left-home wings and displaying feathers of my father. Growing up he’d routinely pull over in his...Mercedes to pluck through a beckoning roadside pile.

I remember balancing the fish tank between handlebars and seat post, hugging it occasionally with a spare leg. It was mostly downhill. I think I really enjoyed the stacked feeling of collecting resources in a resourceful manner.

Dessert plates. Pedaling out one night for pipe organning, and someone must have purged a kitchen. Sweet dainty china pieces in a dusty box, none of them matching, their intricate roses and gold trim and little stamps on the bottom (“made in England” or “made in occupied Japan”) appealed to me all Victorian.  So after rummaging around and making an attractive mismatched selection, I stacked them ill-fittingly in the corner of my wire bike basket (I was on the van) and pedaled sedately off.

I don’t think I’ve EVER heard anything so loud coming from my bike before. Clanks and crashes, miniature China cymbals, vibrations of the road magnified by the plates’ odd sizes, resonating off the houses. This was horrifying. How could plates make so much noise? I scooped them up to mediate this nonsense. Thus I continued through downtown Ithaca cradling a palmfull of plates.  (I’m eating chocolate off one of them now, as I write this. They really are very charming.)

Kitty litter AND potting soil. They were both at the bargain store and I couldn’t pass them up.  The heaviest saggiest bags of weighty material possible. And since I am now car-free, I hefted one bag into the front basket and wheedled the other under the back rack-strap. The suspension gave a visible uff and I laughed and mounted the rig. Stopping was a delayed and thick experience and turning could be magnified into a giant sudden swing of direction due to the weight in front. But no matter, I treated all with care and great awareness. (maybe one thing I especially love about biking, and also Biking With Items, the amount of focus and awareness necessary. Its almost a sort of balance meditation) I took empty back streets, plowing along like the Queen Mary. The laws of physics—namely inertia: that an object in motion stays in motion, no matter how massive.

Then: OH GOOD what impeccable timing to meet my sophisticated and attractive Downstairs Boys neighbors as I roll weightily home on this ridiculous rig. I couldn't really stop properly or turn around for a sufficient greeting, so I just yelled out something idiotic and incomprehensible as an explaination.

Bread. Why it is nice to have friends at the bakery, for day-old giveaways. Again, from the college days. Talk about voluminous though; bread is certainly, erm, spacious. Both back panniers full and a big poof of a bag strapped to the back rack. I then distributed to friends and neighbors.

Compost. This makes me feel very Ithacatious, biking my compost up THE HILL to the greenhouse compost collector. Especially if I’m wearing plaid and a vest.

Vegetables. Cabbages, kale, carrots, flower bouquets, garlic, and tomatoes. All at once.

Also are all those things so routine they’re barely worth mentioning: a clanky six-pack, a houseplant, half a batch of muffins, waaaay too much organ music, a tall curvy mirror, hefty much boots, a left-over sheet-cake. This number was in a clear plastic container on my back rack left over from church. All colored frosting right at child’s-eye level.  I pass a mother and daughter. “CAKE!” observes the little girl, all wistful and recognizing, as it rolls through her world-view.

I take an undue pleasure in all this. I don’t know where this pride in being resourceful and slightly unorthodox comes from, but I think I might cite my father. I’m grateful that I can see this transport of objects as an amusing challenge, rather than an inconvenience and reason to pine for a car.

We Are Now Four

We are now four. Which qualifies as a household. (A two-bicycle household.) We are: one organist/crop and soil scientist; Oliver, one ancient fish who’d previously been overtaxing my parents’ welcome (a residual from when I left for college and Mum would take care of him until he probably died 6 months later—6 years later he’s still with us); Otto, Oliver’s live-in cleaning service; and now Hildegard Von Bingen, someone of the feline persuasion from the local shelter.  

Last night was Hildegard’s first night as Mansard roof-mate.

I’m hesitant to become one of those people who rattles everlasting about her pet as if her pet were somehow The Most charismatic or eccentric creature. And if one hasn’t met the star of the story then you just may not quite get it, but wait patiently to glowingly tell your own pet stories.  Pets bring us such comfort and entertainment this way, that we want to share about them. But I’m realizing this is not a unique feeling.

(I only really like hearing Daddy talk about Myra. Because both of them are into the next universe of strange. For instance: my Dad made me a bed that fog-horns and Myra eats...items. “Myra ATE my yoga pants” my Mom stated, in full disgruntlement, and I could only laugh because of the ridiculous nature of those words.)

Hildegard is named after the first female composer (back in those men-dominated days) from 1081. She wrote beautiful chants and poetry. I’d been explaining her origins to my crop and soil science friends, and just about everyone else. Except I met with Awesome Musical Alyce yesterday (the soprano of the “AaaaAAAaahhhh-shit!-Aaaaaaaahhhh!” singing) and I said, “Her name is: Hildegard” and before I could finish Alyce jumped in, “VON BINGEN!!!”  Yes.  

Hildegard is small, in mid-life, rescued as a stray from Trumansburg, and has Tabby-Tortoiseshell markings. This looks like someone painted stripes on her, became disillusioned with that style and went swipe-smear-swipe to smudge them out. She has a tiny spill of orange, a little chest-plate of white, and the rest is that romantic gray mottled fog of an English countryside.

I was groggily lying in bed last night and it was almost surreal to see a cat sitting there regarding me, then pushing her head into my hand. Having a cat in my Mansard Roof is like trying to develop a relationship with someone you don’t even know yet, but doing so in your own previously-determined space.  There’s a few things we need to decide terms on: for instance scratching, and the popcorn popper, and walking in each other’s ways. Right now she is my writing co-pilot, sitting by my feet and looking serene.

She curls back and forth around my hand and head-butts it, occasionally standing like a kangaroo to gain improved leverage.

It’s fascinating to feel what it feels like to not be alone in this Mansard roof, that my movements now influence another creature. She watched me with composed regard as I grated beets and chopped onions last night. Thankfully she did not flatten in abject fear when I fired up the popcorn popper (because that is integral to existence here) but only sat in the hall looking wide-eyed and small. Then she watched me dance. 

"That toy is not enticing but YOU sure are."

Head-butts in action make difficult photographs.

The Stapler

Today at work my boss tasked me with the consequential task of….buying a stapler.

(day in the life of a crop and soil scientist, right)

As Cornell is a large, important, and unwieldy entity, the act of purchasing something using institution or grant money is no straight forward business. But I am authorized to officially deploy lab funds for purchases. So my boss appointed me the stapler (which we did need) as a fairly innocuous purchase to attempt before moving on to more advanced items. 

The purchasing system is a convoluted website with too many links, too many icons, unobvious codes, and hidden tabs. Cornell, as its own veritable planet, has such a large demand for everything that it has special relationships with many suppliers for bulk and discount purchasing, thus the convoluted special purchasing system. 

But, it’s just a stapler, right! No problem.

WELL.

The variety of available stapler breeds was astounding. I scrolled through pages of half strip staplers, full strip staplers, Modern Grip staplers, compact staplers, an antimicrobial stapler (?!?)…. Also one Medical Skin Stapler for $568.  (Hm, maybe I’ll get that number for our cover crops)

I used my executive decision and bought a neon green one.

Then came the actual assigning of funds to the thing: opening links, hitting “submit” and “calculate” hopefully and repeatedly, only to be returned some perplexing error symbol. Finally I got to enter an account number.  And a business purpose. One can’t go buying staplers (or plot flags, or legume inoculant) without proper justification. 

But to justify a stapler?

I got out my best academicese: “Necessary for fastening together informational sheets of paper to promote laboratory organization, drafts to be reviewed by PI, and printed journal articles.”

I wonder how I would have justify the antimicrobial option…

A Dinner Party

I hosted my first dinner party last night.

I've hosted jointly before. But this one was in my Mansard roof, in my kitchen. For my new Cornell lab group and boss.



Perhaps it was not a standard dinner party. It was mostly brassicas. And the justification of this party was a Website Launch Party. Specifically, one of my first tasks as employee was to revamp the website, hosted by wordpress. I got rid of the tall office buildings of text, the stacks of links, unburied the interesting photos lost in the depths and brought them accessible. I bugged my teammates for details about their projects and made little profile pages for each. I learned how to navigate wordpress platform and read countless well-designed blogs about designing blogs well.

(Please visit our site! https://scslabcu.wordpress.com/)

I was wrist-deep in bike grease and crud on the front porch, changing my rear flat, when Professor Boss arrived lugging two potted plants and plenty of beer.  How strange it is to have one's boss out of context like this. And good. So we opened beers with a bike tire lever and talked about things that weren't perennial grains, rolling soybeans, or collecting soil samples. I bumbled around my upside-down bicycle and he remarked how nice it was to have an expansive porch.

Then the rest of my lab group arrived. I am extraordinarily blessed by getting to work with a group of clever, motivated, interested and interesting young people. Their partners are lovely too. Tall Sophia arrived with her big plume of hair, wearing heels and saying she refuses not to not wear heels because of her height. Sweet Mariah told stories of the cats at the humane shelter where she volunteers. We laughed about the brassicas, gossiped a bit about some faculty and local growers, and dreamed of agronomy conferences held in Puerto Rico.

And it was indeed brassica night. "P.S. Remember it's Bring Your Wok To Work Day" I'd reminded my boss in the bottom of a logistics email; I was needing to borrow his wok so I could make Sichuan Pepper cabbage stir fry. Everyone leaned around my kitchen, talking animatedly, beers encased in my strange coozie collection, while I sprinkled and poured ingredients in the wok, making up a cabbage recipe. Professor Boss chopped a kohlrabi (more brassica) and Soil Master Chris had brought a kale-lentil salad (the final brassica).

I felt duly-dinner party-ry because I served my cabbage stir-fry in my cut glass bowl (gift from dear generous Aunt Marge) AND I had enough chairs and plates for everyone. We fit around my estate-sale special table.

It takes me halfway through the meal, however, to remember to offer out yellow cloth napkins (gift from dear Grandma June). Oh well, better late than never.

I noticed later one of those napkins sticking out of Soil Master Chris's back-pocket, exactly like the soil sampling rag that had been back there this morning.

Having them in my Mansard Roof was a pleasure; I'm learning I thoroughly enjoy hosting people. And I got to "play" (i.e., "sound") the organ bed and introduce everyone to Oliver the Fish and his efficient little cleaning service (algae eater). I had Celtic music playing on my Dad's boat-sized ancient boom box and evening sun cascaded into my Mansard. It was lovely.