Wedding Day: Here Comes The Organist

Mendelssohn's wedding march, some Handel, a little Mozart. 

I looked forward eagerly to being organist for a wedding in a small church outside of Ithaca today. The organ itself was kind of like playing a Conestoga wagon when you're used to a motor car. It is a tracker contraption, meaning that each key is connected directly to the pipes with a little piece of wood, so that adding more stops increases the force needed to sound a note. With full blast on the little thing I practically had to engage my entire core and glutes and channel that energy through to my fingers. Additionally, the bench was so short that my knees were in my ears to play the foot pedals; I originally rectified this by placing two bibles under each bench foot (perching on the word of God), but this proved to be immensely wobbly and thankfully by wedding-day someone had brought me some hunks of wood in their stead. 

The rehearsal had gone well yesterday, working out all those important timings that should be effortless, that no one but the organist should even notice. The organist has the responsibility to land cadences once the bride's maids have arrived at the front, to manipulate music so that the bride and groom aren't left standing in silence, manage time so that nobody has to wait for a lengthy song to finish. It's about momentary glances into the rear-view mirror (almost a given to be warped and thus a fun-house mirror) to monitor the progression of people down the aisle, hoping not to lose your place in the music when your eyes arrive back down. It's also about the opportunity to participate in a timeless ceremony celebrating love and gatherings of friends, misty eyed and full of promise and the connection between two people. 

I had my dress and pearls in my bike bag, a plan for arriving early and warming up, for strategically arranging my music, for being quietly in the space a bit before any guests arrived, starting the 20-minute prelude early. I bicycled to the church in the rain and rolled into the driveway. But, huh: sure are a lot of cars in the parking lot. Colored dresses under umbrellas filing into the church. Men in suits congregating. This evidence accumulated, the curtain in my mind opening to reveal the horrifying truth that the ceremony began at 1pm and not 2pm as I had unfortunately thought. 

I had about 11 minutes. Welcome to the ultimate organist's stylized nightmare, to arrive late to a wedding. The bride can be late and it's sweetly dramatic and understandable, but for the organist to be late.... That is just very bad. 

Never in history has there been such a rapid transition from rain spattered bicycle to poised organ bench. I charged in the back door of the church, flew into the bathroom, tore off my wet and gritty clothes and stuffed them in a corner, pulled on my dress, and galloped up the back stairs into the sanctuary. No time for pearls. 

I was spiked with adrenaline but playing Mozart's Ave Verum soothed my nerves gradually, as much as it provided prelude music--in what time was left--for the guests. The bridesmaids were a few minutes late themselves and I did have enough time to play a handful of serene wedding-like prelude pieces. The grand processional music timing worked out, the bridal party arrived at the front of the church smiling, and the service began. 

I was stunned by the 10 minutes of grace I had. 10 minutes later and the resulting disappointment and disorder would have been unimaginable. I was thoroughly disgusted and astonished with myself; I like to consider myself a prompt and astute person. I had had this idea of perfection, the details I envisioned, and then due to my own imperfection none of that could be pleasurably unfolded and instead there was scrambling and mild panic.  

Mild panic in my own sweat glands, at least. But nobody, except the pastor, was the wiser. "Thank you so much for the music!" "It was beautiful!" "The organ sounded lovely." And, "I LOVE your hair!" (hair serving as decoy) The bride and groom were all gratitude. They mentioned, with that "cool to cross paths with you" enthusiasm, that they had passed me coming in on my bicycle. "We passed you, and were like, 'you go girl!', riding your bike in the rain!" Little did they know. 

So it was a happy ending to a true nightmare. And from now on--you know it--I will be checking and double checking the start times of everything. 

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Observations in Missouri

I spent a few days in Missouri on my way to Kansas this month but I didn't expect I'd be inspired to write one of my classic "culture curiosity blogs" without even having left the USA. But a few days in Missouri and I had plenty to describe. Much of it is the observations of Mr Soil Science and Mrs Sweet Mom who I was visiting there, my relocated friends from the wheat fields in Washington state when I was in grad school and a TA for Mr Soil. Grading 96 soil science midterms until 2am is a certain bonding experience and I paid these lovely people a visit (including their 7 year old son, Bouncy Philip) in their new home outside St Louis, MO.

Welcome to suburbia. Midwest suburbia of long commutes, large treeless grass yards, massive houses.

The parallels and little concomitant differences between myself and Mr Soil are remarkable. A career in soil science (me at a sustainable cropping systems lab at a land grant, him at Monsanto), being a niche kind of musician and applying it (me pipe Organist, him in the world-renowned barbershop group Ambassadors of Harmony), and a sense of travel adventure (me bike tripping in tropical places, him hiking the Appalachian trail). I'm a native plant geek, he's a weather station geek.

But then you have me without car, living alone in a hippy city in a rented apartment, a cat, walking or biking to work. And him with a big house and a family and two cars and a yard and a commute. Neither of us covet at all the other's life but we are indeed happy and satisfied in our very different circumstances.

I love this stuff, case studies in the ways of living, which you can only experience with a visit.

They both spoke of the differences in suburbia outside of St Louis compared with the small town in the wheat fields of Washington state. Like all cultural observations, I can only share what I observed or heard myself, and make no claim that this is the actual general reality. But I'd like to share my impressions, as disorganized as they may be. 

1. No downtown in their community. There's a shopping plaza of all the big box stores but no central hang-out location. This made me feel very grateful for the Ithaca Commons.
2. In the world of young families, with stay at home moms, what constitutes your friend group is whoever is in your cul-de-sac. If your neighbors have a pool, that becomes the central point for all the neighborhood kids.
3. I was told about one mom in the neighborhood who would drive her kid 2 lots over to the bus stop. Not send him on his own, not walk him, but cart him there in the car.
4. Nobody recycles, instead its just those big industrial sized garbage totes out by the road. Mrs Mom once engaged with a neighbor to share aboht recycling, and the neighbor said it was too much of a hassle to rinse out containers.
5. Mrs Mom and Mr Soil are considered "too redneck" for the neighborhood, because they spend time at the shooting range and like hunting. Compared with WA, where many of the men and women hunted.
6. At a dinner party, one of the Monsanto guys was talking about the Lake of the Ozarks, and how just about every year there's a BillyJoe JimBob who electrocutes himself on his dock from trying to string up lights in the water or some such.
7. Fireworks are legal in MO, so I enjoyed a very nearby display from the neighborhood collection of about a thousand dollar's worth of colored explosives. The only stipulation is that you can't shoot them off after 11pm.
8. They never see their neighbors to the right outside. Big yard and porch and everything, but there's no activity at all. Mrs Mom and Mr Soil have a beautiful raised bed garden, with trellises and a fence, and their neighbors complained about having to look at it. I can't imagine anything more delighting and hopeful to look at than a tidy garden.
9. Mrs Mom has a replicated sample population, because she joined a Bunko group (people who come together to play a card game, much like a bridge club) in both WA and MO. A study of card game groups in two states. Snacks were brought, and the differences: in WA the majority of the snacks would be homemade (hummus and hand cut veggies for instance), in MO the majority were store-bought (crackers and cheese dip perhaps). Most of the members in the MO group were 10-20 pounds overweight. In the little WA town people passed the time with generally outdoor activities, hiking or gardening. In MO, it is indoor things like shopping or going to the movies that are leisure activities.
10. Interestingly, homeschooling is quite popular in MO with lots of support and curriculum fairs and such.

Basically, there seems to be a striking difference in value systems between suburbia Midwest and definitely where I live in Ithaca and where we used to live in wheat-field college town WA.

When I wasn't doing a cultural study, the rest of my visit was spent: happily spending money in the funky shopping district of St Louis (The Loop), padding warmly around the Missouri Botanical Garden ("you've smelled an orange flower recently, havent you" said Mr Soil, pointing out some pollen on my nose), shooting a gun for the first time at their shooting range, watching fire works, and eating elk meatballs from the other piece of the taxidermy on their wall. An enjoyable and fascinating visit indeed.

The elk.

Missouri Botanical Garden, the quiet and moist rainforest enclosure.

For my Grandaddy. St Louis.

Graffiti in a women's room. Never seen it like this before.

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Impressions of Kansas

Written Saturday morning:

I write this reclining against my backpack (aka “Rick Steves”), waiting for a flight, my laptop splayed on my thighs. But I am doing something that NO ONE DOES. I am outside the Wichita airport, outside in the ornamental grass planting display, by the flagpoles. I’d much rather wait out here than inside. Why? The tiny blip-town of Wilson was 2 hours away from Wichita, and my colleague had the rental car, and his flight was much earlier, so there I was waking at 3:45am to get here to wait. I think I’ve learned over the years that it's not worth worrying about things like this. Rather, sally forth and sit by the grasses and spend time writing. 
 
I was in Wilson for a conference on the  perennial grain, "Kernza" (Intermediate Wheatgrass), hosted by The Land Institute. I've been reading about TLI for years, fascinated by the hugely sustainable prospect of a "perennial" grain, and thrilled when my lab group at Cornell started to work with Kernza. And then Professor Boss said he was sending me to this conference.

It was pretty magical for me to visit the Land Institute, but also in that way where something that has seemed so awesome and mystical actually shrinks a bit, becomes less impossible and more accessible. To be in the greenhouse, full of perennial grain plants, and realize that very greenhouse was the backdrop to photos I’d seen on the Land Institute website or in bulletins. Eat dinner next to the famous researchers there, chatting with them about Ithaca (small world) over a beer, seeing the research plots. I even bought a T-shirt (which I also don’t think I’ve ever done) because I am so excited about their work and want to be a flag for them.

I may be only a “technician” (although Professor Boss referred to me as a "SuperTechnician" recently), paid so much less than the professors, and with less future hope than a PhD student, but I feel I am still fully contributing to the work on this crop. I wrote most of the grant that got us funding last year to work on this. After two days of this conference—which felt much like summer camp with us staying in the same historic building, eating meals together, and then all hanging out with Kansas-made beers on the patio—I feel like I have so much of a better idea of the “bigger picture” of Kernza, this first best stab at a truly hopeful perennial grain. Wes Jackson (TLI director) thwapped me on the shoulder and said how happy he was that I was there. Of course he had no idea who I was probably, but I think he’s just thrilled to have researchers all coming together over his dream.

There were about 30 people at this meeting, and we all gave a little talk about our work with the crop.  Everything from researching the QTL gene, creating genetic maps, testing fertilizer needs, trialing it in baked goods, and brewing it for beer. I spoke about agroecology and the plans for our new grant. So you could say I was “an invited key-note speaker at the first international Kernza Conference.” Which is to say, they asked me to give a talk, and there were guys from Australia and Canada there. 

I took the evenings to go on bike rides or walks around the pop. 781 town. The bike was “rented” ($1 per day!) from the hotel: a “cruiser”, meaning it had tires like oatmeal, a seat like a parking lot, and handlebars spread wider than a longhorn’s. I dug into muscles deep in my hamstrings, muscles that should not be used for biking ultimately (the thing was not ergonomically effective), and creaked along at 2.5 mph. But I could ride out of town, along the empty roads, gazing at clouds and fields, just enough rolling to create contours in the landscape viewing. I met a Horny Toad, saw dead snakes, wondered at the native weed species in the ditches, and reveled in the huge sweeping glory of the windmills. One wouldn’t think there would be a fantastic way to pass time, out there pedaling about on a slow bicycle, but I saw all these little notes that would be otherwise missed.

With the sun setting down into the endless stretch of the interstate, I stood on an overpass and did that activity that I love abashedly so much, no matter whether I’m 14 or 28. It's called “Overpass Truck Honk Inducing.” International pump your arm sign, honk the air horn sign! Woooooo!  I love how truckers so easily oblige this, I can see them reaching up and yanking down as they fly beneath me at 70 mph, TONK TONNNNNK! The Doppler shift in the sound as they shoot below. I like to imagine it adds a particle of interest to their endless drive too.

Pedaling around the town of Wilson, however, was silence. House after house, all the little roads in a grid—east-west, north-south—little yards, maybe some worn bikes leaning in the grass, maybe a small garden. One bar, one squat library, one antique shop, one Grannie’s Soda Fountain. The houses were so still, blinds drawn, nobody on porches, nobody in yards, nobody walking. It felt like being on an empty theatre set for a play. I did see one woman in bright pink workout top, slowly riding her bike around town, I imagined for her nightly constitutional exercise. And a guy with a cigarette mowing his lawn. But where is everybody else? How do you spend your time in rural central Kansas? What do you look forward to? What makes you happy? Is it truly all that different from my Ithaca town experience or does it just appear to be?

An old maroon sedan floated past, two young males in the front. They rolled down the window. No matter, I’ve been hooted and honked at and questioned all over the world from car windows, and usually its worth no more than an eye roll. But these two leaned out the window a bit and simply said “good evening.” And drove on.  That was it. A polite simple greeting. Incidentally, just about every other car that passed gave me a little wave as well. “Look Mary-Joe, a human walking!” I could imagine Farmer Hank saying to his wife.

A conference, experiencing a different place, and the little ways of traveling. Even though mundane, the little support systems I set up for myself while traveling I find indeed satisfying. The little planned-ahead details, the home-making while mobile, the provisioning for travel with that quiet pleasure in self-sufficiency. I’ve always had this, whether it was a bag of tuna fish in the Seattle airport (“I’m saving space and getting protein!”) or sneaking into a continental breakfast on a road trip (“how scandalous and I don’t need to buy breakfast!”). Today its my little stash of snacks in my bag, as I take issue with spending money on food at an airport (I do it occasionally, when pantingly desperate only, for, say, a weakly-warmed piece of $7 pizza, or a foamy plastic-wrapped apple). But yesterday during the conference I thought ahead all day, and since I know too much about food and know that leftovers will be wasted, I happily started gathering. Two pieces of bread gleaned from breakfast. An extra trip from the lobby to bring a load of tangerines to my room. Eating only half my pesto-pasta last night to save the rest for today.

I got the vegetarian option last night (we were doing set-plate, not off-the-menu) and instead of chicken, the vegetarian option was pesto pasta. Which means: I had pasta with a side of rice. Would you like a carb with your carb?

But the other night it was off-the-menu, and I asked about the Large Salad vs the little Side Salad, how big it was.  “I don’t know”, said the server, “nobody’s ever ordered the Large Salad before.” 

Kansas sky by bicycle

In The Land Institute's field of Kernza

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Amtrak

"Hot hot HOT coffee!" trilled the conductor's voice over the loudspeaker, which is what finally woke me this morning. I had woken up with at least two locations in my body having turned into end-of-the-line tracks, left hand and right foot in a buzz from lack of blood. The man sitting next to me pulled what looked like half a grapefruit skin from a plastic bag and ate two bites of a stinky mustardy sandwich before replacing it. Or maybe the stinky mustard was my feet. I stretched like a kitten in a small basket and out from my kinked body rolled a burp so loud the man jumped.

There is little glamour in riding coach overnight.

I am on Amtrak, going to St Louis MO to visit a grad school friend, and then heading to Kansas for a conference for Cornell.  I have never ridden more than a commuter train in my own country before, and traveling a distance by train was on my bucket list.

I boarded in Rochester last night at 11:40pm, glazed and tired and a little surreal, climbing steps into the silver coach. I walked the dark hallway and found a seat next to someone non-threatening who wasn't snoring. I'd bought a blanket-by-the-pound blanket, cheap, from the new goodwill surplus store, planning to leave it after the night, and snuggled in knowing it would be the only night we'd have together.

It feels a bit like camping, perhaps, in the acceptance-of-grime way, but with a scenic movement view and many more people. My sandals went stick stack stuck as I approached the tiny toilet in the bathroom. My yoga muscles asserted themselves and I stayed balanced as the bathroom swayed around me. I imagined some man before me in this tiny space, weaving and large, who probably had no yoga muscles, judging by the state of the toilet seat.

But upon returning to my seat I learned we were in Indiana and I looked out the window and noticed the roadside weeds were different. The delight of travel!

This train is a mega-diverse landscape, as it were. All colors and levels of income and ages. Walking the aisle at midnight to my seat, all the sleeping people in various degrees of nesting with blankets or with stoicism uncovered. The sweet scenes of people revealing their affections in sleep, children wrapped around each other, two women with their cornrow hair mingling together, a small girl tight between them.

To pass the hours I could read, I could write, I could listen to music. But for some time i was just looking out the window, realizing that a train passes through the inglorious back rooms and junk drawers and forgotten closets of these Midwest towns, the garbage centers and storage facilities and lines of abandoned porta potties backed up against the track. And also grain elevators, trampolines and squat aboveground pools in backyards.

And endless corn. So much corn.  Irrigated corn. This I find incredibly depressing, that so much of our land area is going to feed cattle or to be made into ethanol.

The travel eagerness and curiosity is setting in. What's it like to live in South Bend Indiana? What makes this place different from another? Who rides Amtrak versus flying or greyhound? What are those orange clumpy-headed weed flowers along the track?

I changed trains in Chicago, stuffing my luggage into an expensive locker, and climbing from the underground platform into the bright looming city. I walked for hours, staring at buildings, moving to counteract the sitting. I padded around Millennium Park, found a shirt with Jesus Lizards on it in my favorite clothing chain (in hip cities and nowhere in the fingerlakes), and ate the best baba ganoush of my life (for $4). [yes Chef Kevin that is a challenge]  To pad around, exploring, feeling porous and delighted by the simple fact of being somewhere new, my traveler surges alive again.

This way of travel also seems more believable, that I am actually truly moving the distance between the east coast and the Midwest. In a plane it is too quick, too high, too removed. The clanking chimes of the crossing guards blocking the road, for once not holding me up as a car but making so I could be one of those to blast through. In this way I am finding train travel to have a magical aspect to it, exciting and lulling and expansive and detailed, all in one.

My goodwill blanket, morning after.

The inglorious back room of our Midwest, the stuff seen from the tracks.

Chicago walking.

A large mirror sculpture in Millennium Park. Where's Waldo?

I had a feeling of Seattle urban affection to see this sculpture.

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Biker vs. Bender, or: Pedal Adventures in the Finger Lakes, or: Actually Not April Fools Day

I decided the other day, with matters pressing in against all aspects of my life, that I was deficit in elevation change and mileage on bicycle. A ride to Lodi would fulfill this hunger and the need to check out the historical society there in need of a pipe organist to offer a recital.

So there we were, ShortHairedBikinggirl (Biker) and ChefBalletBeau (Bender) meeting in transit, one leaving from Ithaca and the other from Trumansburg for a rendezvous on Route 96, the main artery between lakes. A SAT math problem, if you will: if Bender leaves at 4pm going 15mph and carrying 2 cookies and if Biker leaves at 3:30pm going 13mph with a 5mph headwind, what time will they intersect, what speed will they be going in knots at the time of intersection, and what color will Biker’s hair be?

In fact the town where we turned to aim for Lodi is called Interlaken, German meaning "between lakes."  It's this amazing area that at once you look upon it and see a glimmer of a lake, but being that you are higher above where the glaciers clawed out ditches to be filled with melt that we call Seneca and Cayuga, you see mostly hills and farms.

But the meet-up.  

I was pedaling slowly, anticipating that I had left before my ridemate crossed my entrance to 96.  I noticed the red-and-white splotched Croc sandal, sitting solitary as though tossed from a window (a prank a friend pulled on another?) and set it as a flag for further trips (I'm passing the Solitary Red Croc now!). On a bicycle you can take in details that would otherwise be missed in a car. Not long after this croc, I heard "UN OEUF!  UN OEUF" from behind and immediately bursting into laughter we met, cycling along, remembering a terrible joke Bender told Biker the day before. (“How many eggs are in chef’s omelette? Un oeuf! (Enough)”)

Good to be with each other, to have a chat and joke, poking fun at how people get locked into poor speech habits of "Ummm" and "sooo".  When you begin to realize you have these linguistic crutches, you get a bit self-conscious about how you appear to one another.  I suppose in this way a single unifying ride helped peel back a layer, to show how we see our flaws and can laugh, and maybe individually evaluate ourselves a bit more.  Call it Shared Perspective or maybe Shared Self-awareness.  Either way, as we pressed up hill and slope, air whooshed and pushed softly around us, as we sliced through to atop between the lakes.

Not far from Lodi, the competitive streak started to settle in both of us.  "On step," which is Cruising Gear, is the basecoat for this streak. In this, I feel like I am taking steps, and as I grow in rhythm I simply apply more pressure and thus stronger steps.  But its more than a physical feeling; it's a mental state that ignores fatigue or pain of pushing.  Instead there are endorphins and the need to fly, and with the cars buzzing by I want to hug closer to catch a ride from their down drafts.  You get comfortable and suddenly you want to poke a little bit.  At first Biker pulled ahead, only to be shortly overtaken.  It was just a little test of each other, seeing how fast we could pick up from cruising speed.  For me it felt like a little tap of the gas and feeling the power of the engine, and wanting to draw from the raw power of it.  Bender, being a bit cocky, commented "I mean, you've got more than that right?"  

And thus the real race began!

Biker, striding hard, pulled ahead by maybe 25 yards, her green helmet just inches above the bar, decreasing the profile and becoming a bright green dart.  Bender sat back a bit, giving her the benefit of the lead.  Having been a ballet dancer he reasoned, meant that he could out perform her in the short runs but not the long game.  Best to let her lead and overtake her and let her wear down.  So it went, with Bender flexing his many plie'd legs and applying maximal effort, flying past Biker.  

In this race it was more about the fun of opening up on the country road after climbing so many hills to suddenly feel as though you are going so fast that you are bending time.  If you pull back to the existential part of this scene, we did bend time.  The time spent with this other person usually results in not caring about what time it actually is anyway.

So there we arrived at the Lodi Historical Society where the aforementioned organ had been sitting for nearly two yeas of non-use and forget.  We were greeted by Harry, 71 (which he eagerly announced), with hair that suggested he wanted to hold on to what he could as the top was very bald and the sides and back had a length that fell over the ears, almost like a monk who had not trimmed in some time.  We enquired about bringing our bikes into the building for safety. “This is Lodi,” he said, “There’s nobody here.”

In that indulgent and timeless way that some older men have, Harry regaled us of the history of the 150 year old church.  To put in perspective our timeline, bikes weren't really around this area when the Lodidians settled here.  When General Sullivan's troops came through the area bikes were most certainly not around, and neither was Harry.  But, he spoke about the history of the church, the town, his home and farm, as though he had been there the entire time, curating the various nooks and details, knowing the families that brought the town to being, and seeking endlessly for the precise dates when so and so left Lodi for the Big City, or whatever tidbit he could remember.

The organ however, was another story.  Much like our talk on language crutches, Biker began to plod away at the keys and pedals.  Instead of the decadent and resonant ring of organ pipes what was brought forth was more like an "uhhmmmmm" and "soooooo" from this old device. No exuberant and well pronounced notes rang forth but still the sound of an organ in an old church brings out parallel emotions, though they are more like whispers.  Hopefully, after the Curator Harry has a chance to meet with the Lodidians who oversee the Historical Society we will see its return to a champion of proper proportion, capable of speaking on Bach, Mozart, or maybe even Saint Saens.

With all this happening in my life, the new adventures, the daily grind, the people leaving us, this time warp was exactly what I was looking for.  A time out of place situation, in a place unto itself. 

And then, post organ and Historical Harry, we continued into the golden glow of the Finger Lakes on towards Two Goats Brewery, a perhaps unwise decision given the distance, but it is summer and we are alive.  Two food trucks (count them, 2!) were there, one with pizza (Pi Truck) from a wood-fire oven, run on wind and solar power, indeed we’re not in Kansas.  The other is an impressive taco truck (Global Taco) and both of them are becoming local institutions.  Then Biker gleefully ran into long lost friends, residents at a local artist’s commune, making this stop at the brewery seem meant to be. Given the scenery and the delicious food and beverage offerings, it could be Patagonia, or Northern Italy here, but it isn't.  It's the Finger Lakes.  The own corner of the world full of realities of beauty and life.

Sunset on Seneca Lake was a glory, but then the reality of returning to the other lake and home. And so we pedaled off, bright lights blinking, with the sun dipping below the range opposite us that traces up the west shores of Seneca.  Thus begins our next phase of the trip wherein things begin to fall apart.  Biker, with her many miles of experience and Green Gary with his fancy shifting could approach upward climbs with grace and poise.  Bender with his legs and Blue Lotus had all the power, but literally nowhere to put it, with older style gears and shifting. Without too much clinical explanation here, the chain derailed again and again.  Eventually the hill was met, and cruising picked up again but not without a steady stream of expletives (Chefs use those like they do salt) before then.  At this point the sun is down and the headlights are up, the temperature has dropped and the desire to fly has picked up.  Not because the open road calls us but because the warmth of home.

Finally the chain fouled as though some gnome had pulled it from its place, twisting under the pedal, the occasional car whizzing by as the two of us tried in vain to understand the mystical workings.  Eventually a truck-traveler pulled over to offer us assistance.  As it turns out, Truck Clayton lived just "up there" (we’re in the boonies, mind) and could give us a ride to a better scene for chain repair, resplendent with light.  Not long after that his brother Truck Chris joined us as well, and there were had two bearded brothers who by their back-and-forth you could tell they were kin. 

Totally bemused by the problem of a twisted chain and flipped derailleur—that if only we had better bike knowledge we could have fixed—we began thinking about Plan B. Which ended up being a younger Truck sister driving one of the trucks, Truck Chris in the cab to keep her company, with us and bikes back to Ithaca. We were beside ourselves with gratitude for these strangers taking pity on us, people from a very different way of living.

The Truck Siblings were keenly interested in our passion for cycling while not being interested whatsoever in taking it up.  At one point they marveled at Biker’s ability to ride at night alone up hills.  Bender explained, "Yeah sure, but she also just biked through part of the Andes." Truck Chris responded, spitting tobacco into his plastic water bottle, "The Dandy's? What's that?"  We explained, both of them laughed: “You guys are two fit people talkin’ to two rednecks.”

Again, a place unto itself.  From lakes to hills, from old churches to new breweries, from older men with vast knowledge to young men with so little, this area is a magical and mysterious place.  Finally, the startling truth here dear reader, is that I am not Biker writing this entry.  I'm Bender, ChefBalletBeau, and just like you I'm discovering this place for the first time, again, en biciclette, and loving all of it.  Bumbling chains and verbal crutches and all. (Granted, some editing help provided by the pedantic Sandra)

The play's the thing

When I was a child I kept imaginary horses, no more than three at a time. 

Any more than three and the time investment was too hefty and I couldn’t keep track of everybody. I had one white Arabian mare, who was the most stalwart of all the horses, and it is a great sadness that I cannot remember her name. I remember deliberating over her name; it needed to be graceful and romantic. Genevieve or Tara maybe.  Gwendolyn.

I usually also kept two young black horses, faster than my Arabian mare, but feisty and harder to handle. They probably had names like Black Diamond or Velvet. These horses would run behind my father’s car when we went on road trips, which offered me a sense of comfort, that something awesome of mine was also coming with us.

I kept the horses in the garage, in small transparent stalls between my mother’s gardening supplies and my father’s motorboat. These are full size horses, mind you; somehow they all managed to fit in that space. But someone was always moving the wheelbarrow in the way of my horse system. Writing this right now, I can hear the scrape of the wheelbarrow as I moved it aside to get through to my horses.

While I was going through this horse period (before I started taking riding lessons on visible horses), I could be found every morning opening up the garage door, then walking calmly with my two hands in the air, leading two horses at once out to the front yard. This yard was most conveniently fenced in electric and had a nice gate, and I was satisfied that my horses were content and healthy there. In the evening, the reverse happened: hands in the air, leading horses back to the safety of the garage. I would usually also ride in the evening too, trying to get my sister to join me. Then we would slap our thighs with a thin stick and prance and run around the driveway.

Now this was just my imaginary horses. I could write likewise about the town of Lego people and dry beans we had (“Beanville”), or the extensive village of rocks by the lake where we made seaweed cakes to sell (we were enamored with the suffix “-ville”, apparently, so this was “Rockville”), the American girl dolls and the living room carpet floods they survived in their laundry basket lifeboats, the plastic horses and their world travels chosen by spinning the globe with eyes closed and a finger poked down, the huge families of barbies and their dramas and infidelities and love lives, or the space ships on the couch manned by an expert crew of beanie babies.

I would play tirelessly, endlessly, with no thought of hunger or time or the importance of setting the table. There are no words to describe how delicious this was, one of those incredibly satisfying drives that needs to be expressed as a young human. I can say with utmost clarity that my boundless opportunity to be allowed to create my own worlds of play was the greatest benefit of homeschooling.

My first greatest heartbreak came when my younger sister sat by the beanie babies in their spaceship and called me over (I was worlds away with a book on the couch), “Let’s play! Come on!”  And I couldn’t.  I couldn’t play.  It no longer felt “true” to craft the imaginary stories and take the figures in my hands and move them across the couch.  I was surprised and sad and felt that something was wrong with me, that I couldn’t muster this anymore. But I was taken away by someone else’s story now, the books, and I had less of a need to craft my own stories. And I was putting my energy towards horse riding lessons, planning for horse shows, getting excited about systems that were outside of my head.

What is play, really? Can adults play? What is different between adult play and child play?

I think play is where importance and whimsy meet. As a child, it is critical and necessary of energy that your horses survive the tsunami on the carpet—there’s the importance—but also whimsical and safe. For instance, at any time you could stop the game or Daddy comes home after work all comfort and safety, and these things are the foundation of feeling not actually in danger, of not actually being in a tsunami.

I think play is also about creating something from within yourself. As a child, it’s writing an intricate story about your barbies or caring for your imaginary horses. As an adult, on good days, this can come from making music on the pipe organ or finding just the apt word to describe an experience. In a much broader sense, I suppose all of life can be playful, provided you’re in a period when things are not troubling, and where living, and being aware of living, the intricate story of a human experience comes as self expression.

As an adult I feel that sense of time stopping, about something being important and whimsical when I’m crafting in my kitchen, for instance. Not following a recipe, which would be just plain adult, but puzzling over what’s in my fridge and then imagining up something to create from it. What about curry powder and chocolate! On soy nuts? Yes! It’s whimsical because of the strange combinations, a little bit of self expression. And it’s important because this is taking care of my health and well-being.

A sense of play happened during field work the other day. Monsieur Visiting French Scholar, who is a wonderful combination of analytically brilliant and very silly, and I were working in neighboring plots of cover crops. The setting: something important (we’re doing science) but also whimsical, because as I’m bent over I feel a light tap on my butt. Looking up I see Mr Scholar grinning ghoulishly from his plot and that he had excellent aim with a grass weed arrow he had flown at my butt (root ball acting as weighted arrowhead, stems serving as feathered shaft). We laughed and of course there was no danger in any of this. Later I found him bent over, curve of lower back exposed, and so I planted a dandelion down the back of his pants.  The basal rosette of the plant popped perkily from that place, a novel flower pot design.

I believe that without the setting of importance (we were all out there being productive and scientific), there would be less of a life spark to beget creativity and see grass weeds as arrows and behinds as flower pots.

Let me describe for you a scene of play that is not of a child, that happened recently, and that brought happiness and whimsy mixed with that sense of drive and importance. If you told my ten year old self that this would bring me so such giddy glee, I would have disbelieved you indeed. 

I went grocery shopping with a friend.

The farm store was mostly empty that evening and my sweet friend Tall Bri (“lets be tall happy dancing woman together!” we’ll say before a Friday night) and I gathered carts and rolled into the dreamy land of local, minimally-packaged, and impossibly inexpensive food. You don’t get prices like this in Wegmans or at the Ithaca coop. It takes a Mennonite Grocery Shop in the small town of Seneca Falls.

“Jams!” Tall Bri crowed, “cheese!” I called, and we giddily rolled into the separate lands. For me this was a jubilant unfettered conquering of good food, where I didn’t have to sigh wearily about how expensive fresh ground peanut butter was, and where I could buy a simple plastic bag with walnuts in it, not some glossy colored cardboard-plastic-structured container with a small essay of labeling on it.  I bought two containers of peanut butter, a giant glugging pillar each, with that self-satisfied understanding of I’m Stocking Up For the Future While The Gettin’s Good.  “The Asparagus is so CHEAP!” I could hear Tall Bri from the land of fresh vegetables. I hooked my right foot up into my cart and skate-boarded gleefully to join her. Grapefruits and apples and eggplant, again, the cornucopia of plenty.

Rolling along, admiring left and right down every aisle, as if in Disney Land, simply so pleased by everything. Blue AND red popcorn, just because they both existed, went into my cart. I saw Tall Bri’s head skimming along a few aisles over. “I found the nuts!” she sang and, in a pang of leaving the many varieties of bulk flour I was studying, I rolled to join her with the pecans. The pang of leaving something good for something else good cannot actually be a pang, it is in fact a celebration.

We had the dose of importance from the nature of buying food for oneself and the dose of whimsical because the food was so simple and pleasing and local and nearly half the price of things at Wegmans.

A Mennonite grocery store offers not only a highly economical shopping experience but a cultural one as well, the products that you don’t find in your middle America grocery store.  For instance, I bought a LOG of butter. “Amish butter roll” said its name tag. I passed a bag of breakfast cereal the size of a small child, disconcertingly pastel circles and squares and stars made from wheat and corn syrup, whimsical indeed, “Happy Shapes” it read on the bag, by a company called comfortingly “Hospitality”.

The manufacturer of cheese curds, some tiny brand that was local to upstate NY, Stoltzfus Dairy Cheese.  Stoltzfus. Of course I took a packet home, just to enjoy that sneeze name each time I opened my fridge. 

Two women in blue and green dresses, white aprons, and little bonnets rang us up. I just about pranced each item onto the belt and fluttered with urgency to deploy my battalion of reusable bags for the haul. “I’m so excited about these spices!” I said as I topped the 8^th container on the stack I was creating; it shuttered its way balanced on the belt toward Miss Bonnet Cashier. She was totally unfazed by my giddy enthusiasm and with complete composure scanned each item for me. The sum came to more than I have ever spent on groceries in one swipe, but with that much peanut butter and popcorn and maple syrup I won’t step into a florescent grocery store for anything besides soy milk for months.

Whatever it may be, grocery shopping or goofing around in the field, I never want to lose that whimsical importance I used to feel leading my imaginary horses to the front yard.

Reflections on Writing, and, a Fingerlakes Experience

One of my mothers (you garner multitudes of mothers when you grow up homeschooled among wonderful people) said to me yesterday that she still checks my blog for updates. I felt honored by this but also slumped, as I haven't been posting in ages. It's not that my life isn't word-worthy; I do have a lot going on. But I remember back to my "younger years", back in college, my first jobs, my graduate school, and how I would unabashedly post any little story. Reading back on these, I had a delightful shameless exuberance in writing and processing my experiences, without stopping to worry that no one would read (your mothers will always read), finding my experiences so noteworthy that they had to be written about. Being so much in love with life that I couldn't help but share it. If you're not David Sedaris who unfailingly entertains when he writes, it takes a certain amount of innocence to write stories of your life all the time, because mine for certain will not unfailingly entertain.

What my mother said yesterday really got me thinking. Even if I don't write a post three times a week like I did in college, even if I write infrequently, I still want to capture word birds when I'm inspired, and write. When I write, sitting there tailoring words to capture an experience, my life feels richer, even if just for the tautological mental reason to justify writing about it. 

"You should be a writer" people would tell me, after laughing about a story about the dining hall, or after following an entire bicycle trip through a rugged land. Instead I am an agricultural science research technician and an organist. But I write. Which makes me a writer. More and more, my job at Cornell has begun to encompass writing: grants, editing other's papers, putting together reports for farmers, recently submitting a scientific journal article. Maybe I'm good at it, even if writing about soil organic carbon won't be entertaining for most of you. 

So here's a little post of something from a few weeks ago. It's about the joys of living in a specific place, a place with a character unto itself. In Seattle I lived the character of soft rain showers and bicycle lanes, in Colombia it was the unstoppable heat and the unstoppable good nature of the people, in New Orleans it was the jazz and the spicy food and the young ambition. These places where you're in them, they're full of little signals and distinct markers that tell how they are most decidedly themselves. 

I live now in the Fingerlakes. A place of glacier carved landscapes, vineyards, wineries. A love of local food and farming. Small towns rich with creative young ventures involving food and wine, camaraderie among all these people who work the land and the wineries. I cannot imagine anything more infused with the Fingerlakes Experience than being courted by a local foods chef here. 

I got to step into a different world recently. This chef, Chef Kevin, had worked with a local wine-maker and bed and breakfast owner to put on a fingerlakes wine pairing dinner. Candle light, fancy dress, each course paired with a wine to match flavor to flavor. Dinner tickets were magnificently expensive and I could not imagine spending that much money on one single meal. It was also on the other side of the hulking hump of land between Cayuga and Seneca lakes, and no buses went there, so this meant a hilly crawl of 22 miles. I told him I wanted to support his efforts, but I was having trouble justifying the money. And then he explained why, exactly, he wanted me to be there. Not to support him, either monetarily or emotionally. But instead because he wanted me to see this beloved world of his that I’ve never experienced: exquisitely crafted food, paired thoughtfully with local wines. High concept; basically, food as art and presentation. Like going to hear a symphony is much more expensive than listening to it on a CD, but a rich intentional experience. (In which Sandra gleefully experiences a surprise benefit of dating this chef: in the end, they wouldn't let me pay for a ticket anyway.) 

And so, I squirreled out of work early, wadded a dress into my bicycle pannier, and then crawled those hills between the lakes, reflecting on how completely I would earn this gorgeous meal. The ride was a spread of tall clouds in resplendent shades of grey, the climb from one lake to reach the pinnacle between them, to fly down towards the other. I arrived early, to find Chef Kevin quietly swearing at a succession of buckwheat crepes folding over on themselves, sun pouring into the kitchen of the bed and breakfast. The “edible flowers” he had on his menu for a course (atop a Szechuan-sweet potato bisque with falafels) he had been planning on harvesting from my grandparent’s backyard (oh, the hilarious folds of life!) but sadly they had just been mowed with the grass, so no wild viola available. So when I arrived off the bike, he enquired if the purple flowers in the yard of the bed and breakfast would suite. They were in fact Purple Deadnettle (no joy there) but I did bring him little white clusters of Garlic Mustard florets.

So then when he introduced that course I got to speak up from my place in the dining room and joke about eating invasive plants as conservation control measure.

I was entering a world of schmoozing; small talk, all these people (all couples) coming for this feast, introducing themselves, open and friendly. None of the couples knew any of the others, and I knew no one; but by the end it was like a big old house party, all of us along one big long table. I wondered what type of people come to a splendid wine dinner. One couple owned a local brewery, another was from New Jersey on a romantic Fingerlakes weekend, another were also bed and breakfast owners and enjoyers of wine. I chatted with everyone, and found myself perhaps to be charming even, joking about forgetting names (“but the next time when I ask you, you have to give me a different name”), and conspiratorially, with happy pride, leaned in and said I was dating the chef. I felt so pleased to see all these people with their eyes rolled back in their heads, really enjoying his food.  About the duck (free-range local) and buckwheat crepe course: “This is delicious and pairs so well with this chardonnay,” commented Mr. Brewery Owner. “I mean, well, it would pair well with pond water”, I replied.   

After the dinner, there happened to be a late-night hyper jazz pianist dance show (how’s that for descriptors!) at a rural bar, sweet mint cocktails, stars visible outside the lights of Ithaca, rows upon rows of grape vineyards on the drive there, bearded men in plaid who work the local farms. Most of the wine-dinner party progressed there, and I found myself in a set of couples going in, on the arm of Kevin. I met a dozen people I’ll never recognize again, and felt like an outsider in this star-gazed, weed-infused dancing crowd. I was poignantly aware that I was not there under my own transportation, reliant instead upon Mr. Winemaker who had driven us. I was doing my best to reflect on how it seems to be the highest achievement to craft all your systems to have everything under your control, but really, it may be even higher achievement to be flexible and at peace when you can’t have everything under your own control. Like not being able to leave when you’re tired. 

Since Kevin had cheffed at the bed and breakfast, it was part of the deal that we would stay there the night, since home was far and the party was late. But the bed and breakfast had an over-booking; there was no room at the inn. Instead, a creative adjustment was made. So, I got to add to my list of strange places slept: in the tasting room of Mr. Winemaker. On an air mattress. With a box of grape vines waiting to be planted, stacks of wine books, bottles and boxes of wine. A very fingerlakes experience indeed. 

 

Everyone was rather apologetic about that situation, but I thought it hilarious, and somehow perfectly fitting for my fingerlakes adventure (already comprising a wildly hilly bike ride, high-concept local food, a dance show, and getting to know the standards of the area: the wine makers and business owners and brewers). “For there was no room in the inn,” I joked to Mr. Winemaker as I walked under the stars to the tasting room, "maybe you’ll find baby Jesus tomorrow."

 

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