A tale of two churches

"And know you always have a home here", the priest at the small Episcopal church in Tacoma said up to me in the organ loft during the church service. "I know", I responded in my announcement back voice, "that's why I invited myself back today" and everyone laughed.

This was the church where I served as organist during my grad student tenure. My Sunday morning routine often was to wake up off some friend's couch in Seattle (wearing last night's dress), scoot along on my bicycle to the bus stop, fill my wee going mug with delicious Seattle coffee, disinter a misshapen muffin from my bike panier, then sup and dine on the bus for the 50 minutes to Tacoma. Once at the church I'd sneak upstairs to my stash of church appropriate clothing there and play some hymns.

This was a small and diminishing congregation, with many health struggles shared during gratitudes and concerns. But there were always donuts and hugs during coffee hour, and so much love and enthusiasm. I was in the epoch of my tall colored socks and tropical bird hair and I think once they accustomed to this and my incessant biking, they got a bit of a kick out of me.

On a little trip back to the Pacific Northwest (balmy in comparison to central NY state), I played again for them--after having been gone a year-- as organist last Sunday. They had no money to pay me, but if I had a dollar for every time someone said, "it is SO great to have you BACK!" I would be rich. Regardless, I was rich, just from the glow of how much everyone appreciated hearing the organ again.

And in true form of that congregation,  I did receive three new pairs of tall socks. :)

Sliding onto that organ bench again, I found a little sticky note with a list of hymns in my handwriting, as messy as a six-year old's left-handed scrawl in the back of a swerving vehicle. Dated July 2013! I also found a paper sticky tab marking a hymn page: it had written on it, also in my handwriting, "Nutrient Spiralling." The thing must have migrated from my soil science soil fertility notes to my organ music. I wonder if the organists
following after me wondered what that could have been about.

In addition to the Sunday morning service, I gave an informal little recital on piano and pipe organ the day before on Saturday. A few handfuls of people gathered in the sanctuary on a fiercely dreary afternoon of pouring rain, and I got to play my favorite pieces for them. I wore a mostly black outfit for this--wanting to seem appropriate as a performer. But the comments I received, "Where are your socks?", "Where is your color?", "Why is your hair not purple?", made me realize that I still had a role to provide whimsy and playfulness.

One church lady joked that everyone should have agreed to show up with purple hair to hear me play.

Before the recital began I hadn't realized there had been a slightly heated discussion about whether the lights on the Christmas tree behind the alter should be lit: Father Priest wanted to save them for Christmas eve but Mrs Red Green Earrings argued they should be lit now for the recital to increase the festivities. So they approached me, one on either side, and asked my opinion and without knowing the import of my tie-breaker response said, "sure turn them on!"  Mrs. Earrings clapped her hands looking victorious and Father Priest stalked over dutifully and lit them. It was indeed more festive. As I stood up to play my recital I thanked everyone for coming, and then made up a little story how Father Priest graciously agreed to turn on the tree lights to compensate for my uncharacteristically boring outfit and that I would wear some colors for church tomorrow.

The next morning, because I couldn't choose among all the new pairs they'd given me, I wore two different socks to be church organist.

And now I am in Idaho, preparing Christmas music for services at my other "out west" Episcopal church. I found the worship bulletins from Easter left on the bench still, in addition to a long-lost music book of mine. No organists had played that instrument since I was guest for them this Easter. I am indeed happy to be their Guest Christmas Organist now.

I love traveling around and visiting friends and playing for the old churches.

The joys of soil sampling

I just had the best little 4-minute bicycle ride to Rite Aid. And the best day at work even-while-fighting-a-cold.

I think it is because I had full maneuverability over my fingers and did not bemoan the existence of ears--basically: because I was not cold today! Thank you, Weather.

One of the last work days on the research farm today; I was sent out to sample soil for pH. I worked alone all day, no music, no company, but was quite incorrigibly at peace. The skies were like a theatre, the blasting wind shifting scene changes by the minute, the sun an intriguing spotlight on it all. There were moments I just had to spread my arms wide and gaze in happy awe at all the sky's activities. Piles of clouds. Swatches of blue. There was nothing homogeneous about looking up at all today. A double rainbow, so bright the colors were smartly distinguishable, stretched in a complete arc. I could even see the farm house from across the lake, where the end of it touched to earth.

Oh but I do love working outside.

It was so windy though--from the south--that I needed rubber bands around my clipboard to keep all that in place, and my plastic mixing cup skittered in circles; the pencil blew out of reach, my coat flapped in my face. I felt like I was working in outer space, where you set objects down and they just won't stay where they were.

I had the RTV to drive around the field, bearing me and my equipment zippily. This brought back memories of my soil sampling days as a graduate student--which were in sharp contrast to anything zippy. I'd schlep my Field Bike out to the plots, somehow balancing all my equipment along too. Then I would tread from plot to plot, juggling buckets, soil probe, clipboard, water bottle, screwdriver: clanking along like a one-man band.

At least my soil sampling style has increased a bit... 

Ergg, Traugg, and Swoob

"Seasonal worker" was the job title I adopted during my tenure at the Vegetable Trial and Demonstration farm. Although I never called myself that--I felt too much like a migrant worker that way; I chose to call it my Seasonal Field Experience--yesterday my coworker remarked dryly that we sure were experiencing all seasons in this job.

We were stamping around a stubbly wasteland of a cornfield, hefting around iron tamping bars and shovels, in the blurry gray slant of incoming snow.

Iron bars are unforgivingly cold on wet snowy hands.

But I had one of those moments, where I could grow a little taller on a platform of perspective, gazing snowily out over that corn stubble, and hold for a moment all the time and all the seasons I had spent at this farm. There was the spring: the rain, my personal turmoils of leaving a mountain and a man out west, the seeding, the minuscule hopes of minuscule plant babies sliding tremulously through the roofs of their tiny potting soil rooms. Then was Summer I: the rich long days of light, the exuberant growth of teenage plants, the laughably insurmountable task of fighting back weeds. The expectant first tomato eaten with a happy hop, the squash blossoms like so many suns, eagerly anticipating the onslaught of food to come. And then later Summer II, the glut of too many zucchini, parties at the farm, the joyful aroma of basil, hoeing, watering, sweating, eating melons in the field. I wanted to have tee-shirts made, complements of the sunshine, all the vegetables consumed, and the constant physical work: "We Are Not Fat and Pale Here." Then Fall I, the golden glow of trees turning, harvesting pumpkin seeds, needing a scarf to bicycle to work, the abundant freedom to harvest anything and everything because everybody was ready. And now, Fall II, which is beginning to think it is winter: pulling out dead plants, scraping rotten tomatoes out of the beds, putting away the decorate planters.

So I stood there damply in the blowing snow and surprised myself by not feeling resentful of it (I have a history of dreading winter and the dark and cold and sickness) and was grateful for the beautiful diversity of all the earth had shown me over my time here.

Someday I will stay in one place longer than 8 months and will truly feel the cyclical nature of it, in a way that has not been possible recently. I've only had a single full winter in the snowy north since 2008, all of the others I escaped to Australia, Costa Rica, Puerto Rico, Seattle, and Thailand. We'll see about this coming one.

Back to the iron bars and snowy stubble. Why? What could we possibly be doing out there?

Putting in a hop yard, of course.

Hops, a member of the same family as marijuana (I have my probably unlikely theory as to why an IPA gives you an extra delicious buzz), are becoming increasingly in demand in NY state due to the emphasis on local beer from local ingredients, and the farm decided to jump on the band-wheelbarrow (as it were). The hops enjoy climbing--really climbing--and so a hop yard is really a climbing gym for them: a series of phone poles in the ground with cables strung across their tops.

Installing a hop yard is serious work: the sort of work requiring a crew of strapping Mexicans, tractors with augers, and tasteful grunting and swearing. Our work with the iron tamping bars was to fill in the holes after the phone poles had been inserted (that's where the strapping Mexicans come in). It felt a little bizarre and diminishing to be out there in a barren field with all those poles looming above us, panting slightly as we shoveled soil into the holes around their bases and used the heavy iron bars to pack it in.

Not all jobs can be done with tractors and I realized we were working like humans have been working since soil was new, how the pyramids and ancient temples were constructed. With the power of arms and backs.

"This feels rather prehistoric" I said to Coworker Eric as we whacked and tamped iron bars into the dirt, then added after our implements accidentally knocked together, sending a shock wave of sound and vibrations through my arms: "sorry about that, would you like to come over to my cave for some mastodon later?" Then I decided that Coworkers Eric and Traci both needed prehistoric names. "Ergg" I decided for Eric, and Traci became "Traugg."  Ergg then decided I would be dubbed "Swoob." 

Looking up at the looming wood above us, I added: "I'm Pole-ish."

Here's Things From My Journal

The end of Daylight Savings Time. The period of evening light up until this point fading gradually, a loved one dying of a terminal illness. But today and pushing those clocks back: quick death by guillotine. Oh light, oh summer, how I miss you.

Now comes the time of Fat and Pale, of Unsociable and Sleepy.

(don't worry, not really)

So to combat this I went bicycling (and then made hot chocolate and pumpkin-raspberry-chocolate-chip muffins). At least it was sunny, although still sharply cold, all prickly from the wind. I put on ear-warmers, arm-warmers, a neck-warmer, a torso-warmer, and feet-only-luke-warmers. I flapped off into the wind, the colors, the slanted golden sun. Biking 17 miles in the cold feels about as wearying as bicycling 50 miles in the delicious heat. Oh well.

So now from my ensconce of blankets I shall write a bit, entitled perhaps: Here's Things From My Journal.


Family Road Trip
A visit to Little Sister living in Virginia. Last week my parents and I climbed into my Dad's spotless car and drove south through Pennsylvania (gee, even width-wise that state is massive), Maryland (just the fingernail of it), and into Virginia.

We drove through a backdrop of golden and orange trees, rolling hills, white picket fences. Then we were 5 with my sister and boyfriend, all us tall people folding ourselves into the car to visit Monticello, Jefferson's home. "Well. If there were a carpool lane we'd qualify for it," my Dad observed. We were squished in the backseat like paper dolls folder too many times to fit in their envelope.

Lunch in the car: Dad is driving and eating a sandwich. He hands it, half-consumed and rather ragged, to my mother. "Dear. Will you rearrange this for me?"

~~~

I think one of the sweetest moments of this little family trip occurred on the Monticello lawn (see backdrop of colored trees and sweeping views), when we'd finished the Standing For a Long Time Tour rather wearied and I'd asked if anyone was carrying any snacks. Nope: snacks were all in the car.

In just a few minutes, though, Dad appears on the horizon with a bag of nuts, not inexpensive nuts either, that he'd charged off and bought at the Monticello gift shop. My parents, as a general rule, all calculated and moderate, do not buy food not from the bulk order or the cheapest price-per-pound. "You remember when you were a little girl and in the middle of the night, Daddy I'm hungry, and I'd take pity on you and get up and fix you a fried egg sandwich?" he said.  Now overpriced gift shop nuts. I was indeed touched. And they were actually really delicious nuts too.



On Being Kale
I haven't had a happy Halloween in many years. I was either being miserable with an illness, attending an academic conference, or wearied by too many college Sexy Bunnies or Slutty Kitties or Hoebag Weevils or whatever.

But this Halloween was an excellent one. I went as: Kale.

I brought a kale plant home from the farm, and fashioned myself a pair of leaf earrings and two breast-plates from leaves woven into my shirt. I wore neon green pants, a leaf-like shirt, and--predictable--sprayed my hair green as well. I played the piano at the local brew-pub that night (made a wad of cash), perched on the bench all greenly, with a bouquet of kale lying on the case.

Most everyone else, in their store-bought costumes, the cowboys, the nuns, the Elvis, regarded me dubiously as they walked in the door and saw what was playing the piano. "DUDE," I overheard one construction worker say to a cowboy, "that girl is covered in lettuce."  The rock-star ladies had a cuter way of putting it, "Well, gee! You're so healthy!"  The owner of the pub strode in bright-eyed, "Of course," he said (he knows my penchant for vegetables), "just let me get the salad dressing."

Ha.

Later, after the piano time, I can attest that kale is most excellent to shake on the dance floor. And also to simply dance waving around a leaf of it. Although I did keep dropping earring leaves. I threw a leaf at the DJ and hit him square in the face with a leafy thwap; he threw it back at me all grinny, but on it's repeat return flight it hit a guy in the wig.

I was happy when people would yell "Kale!" across the place and I could be the one to answer.

Bartender 101

"You're on the schedule as Vegetable Girl," Miss Head Bartender said when I walked in at 5pm. I'd freshly showered, plucked the tag off my black Salvation Army shirt, dusted the soil from my jeans, and had biked to the Brew & Stew.

It was my first night bartending.



How about that for things your young self never thought you'd be doing. The young self so introverted the social interaction of checking out library books was challenging. Or even the Just Moved Here self who'd come to this pub for the first time this May, to sit in a corner and garner free wifi.

I hadn't applied for this position, and there wasn't even a help wanted sign on the door.

Since that night of the lonely wifi I'd been coming routinely for Buy One Get One Wednesday Nights, and each time I came in--not just to sit and drink a beer alone--a conversation or connection so remarkable would happen that I'd walk out the door making my happy noise. I am fascinated by strangers--it might have been all those people-watching lessons with my father as a little girl--and coming there alone I somehow effortlessly inserted myself into people's conversations. Wanting to engage with people, talk to someone else besides my four-leaf clovers, make people laugh, and listen and learn about them. I also enjoy their faces if I get to share about playing the pipe organ or bicycling across Cambodia.

There were the two entomologists (I'd heard them say "soil science" and I basically pounced on them; then we talked about ovipositors for some time), the two Navy divers who told me about working in life-edge situations everyday (who then followed me out the door and insisted on buying me dinner), the entire club soft-ball team, a British couple (discussing the difference between pubs in the US and UK), and the very friendly and flirty gay men who were all about Halloween.

I'd bring in my own homemade popcorn (Mr. Flirty and Friendly came up with the name for my curry-honey variety, "Curry Up, Honey.") for nibbling and sharing, and then vegetables from the farm when there was surplus. "Wait, I thought you were the Popcorn Girl", one server asked me once, when Miss Head Bartender explained, "We call her the Vegetable Girl."  A bouquet of cilantro for the cook, an eggplant with a nose for the owner, tomatoes for the servers, purple peppers for my bar-neighbors. Eventually it became not Buy One Get One night for me, but Get One Get One night.

So after all those conversations with strangers, and popcorn, and vegetables, Mr. Owner asked me if I wanted a shift or two.



So this first night was allegedly training. But it wasn't so much training as, "Here's the computer system and here's the glasses and Oh! we have customers, go!" But Miss Head Bartender was patient with all questions arising in the moment. Where are the wine glasses? Is the Miller Lite in this cooler? Sure, I can bring you more ice! Yeah I can get you a water. A local beer recommendation? Certainly!

Bartending is about double tasking (filling a beer, washing Mt Glassmore, checking for the food order, remembering the face that goes with that tab), being efficient and quick in movements, and basically playing a tenser and more public version of The Memory Game--a board game to remember pictures on little pink over-turned cards--but instead finding the Samuel Adams in that huge cooler of bottles. All of this very briskly at times, with the awareness that your movements are very public.

Bartending is also light flirting on the clock. "Yeah, when we first met you we thought, 'She's on the wrong side of the bar'", said Miss Softball Team tonight when I was finally behind the bar. 


Have you ever watched a server enter an order into the restaurant computer system, deftly and instantly tapping the burger-no-mayo-side-of-fries and house-chardonnay into the screen? The ever shifting menus of colored buttons. The lengthy list of sandwiches. The perplexing options of sides. They go: taptaptaptapTAPtaptap, and a perfect order is effortlessly flourished off to the kitchen.

I was: tap    tap tap       tap     um  tap OOPS NOT HORSERADISH.

My learning this system was a study in quick learning, in picking up patterns, in watching my brain struggle to find the mayonnaise button. But soon I watched myself learn and remember that the wine button needed scrolling to be found and the condiments button was in yellow.  I was reminded of the process of learning a new piece on the pipe organ; Conscious Effort: C# in left hand here in tenor! And then eventually and imperceptibly it happens without the clenched focus.

There was a pleasure to be had pour a beer all full and rich-colored, carrying it over, setting it in front of a face, looking the face in the eye, and wishing Cheers! The night went very quickly; I consumed a Mistake Sandwich from under the heater in the kitchen, feeling like I was on a time trial but happy for it. I left with my back pocket a-flame with $84 in cash tips.

Inner life of a traveling pipe organist

This morning I played pipe organ for my sixth different church of the summer.

(So far the list is: P-ville Reformed, Lyons Episcopal, Newark Episcopal, United Church of Phelps, Rochester Christian Science Church, Canandagua Episcopal) 

Each church and instrument is like learning a new language: how much intro people expect for the hymns, which sounds are available on that organ, which stops to avoid (the shrieking 2-foot, for example). There is nothing apologetic about playing the pipe organ: what you do is heard by all, should support all, and can bog down or enlighten a worship service.

I'd never been to this church before--the Episcopals in Henrietta--and arrived a full hour early to introduce myself to the instrument, play through Praise My Soul The King of Heaven (that thing is like hiking a few mountains across the pedal board), and certainly enjoy the quiet empty sacred space before it fills with other humans. That empty space I appreciate so I can settle in and test drive some of the organ stops, which can be a rowdy, if not down-right disenchanting, listening experience. Much better in private.


But this morning I climbed the steps to the organ loft and found a collection of choir members milling about up there. Nobody told me they'd gather at 9am to rehearse! So instead of spacious emptiness, I had choir faces peering at me, with no small amount of curiosity, over the organ console. But I decided to accept the spontaneity of the situation and managed not to deafen anyone as we rehearsed. "Shall we play through the sanctus number--" I began and was interrupted by a dear Linda who, as if she had just seen me, crowed, "Ohh! Your hair is so cute! Should we do that with our hair Sheryl? Oh to be young...." 

Having the choir up there in the loft with me, behind the organ--nay, resting on the organ console itself--meant they could cue me as needed, as they were facing the sanctuary and I wasn't. During the end of the communion hymn I had to stifle a laugh, because I look up and there is a set of three bobble-head choir members on my dashboard, all doing the International Play Another Verse Symbol, which is rotating one's finger about.


Situated outside the disquieting strip-malls and intersections that is Henrietta, the church was airy and woody inside, giving it a summer-camp and approachable feeling. And a large window in the back without stained glass meant I could sit at the organ and stare at the trees.  The passing of the peace was a veritable coffee-hour minus the coffee, which is a heart-warming thing to witness in a church. The people were so sweet, especially that original Linda, who saw me walking down the hall after the service (not sitting on the bench) and exclaimed "And you're so tall too! Tall AND adorable." I was also blown away by how much everyone said they enjoyed my playing. I could feel it, actually, that I was in a soulful and joyful space and this must have been coming through the music, too: enjoying the hymns and working with the stops and.... those trees out the window.


I had tested preset 5 and did know that it was so blasty and all proclaimy, full of horns and deep bass--brazen in fact--and wasn't planning on using it.  But my subconscious must have bested me because just before the Gloria (S-278, by the way Mother Robin, delicious fun! My first time playing it!) my thumb shoots to 5 and with surprise I hear what I have done but I can't change this and I don't want to and then realize we're raising the roof and every foot is like a fog horn and then we end on that huge final chord and I get a little shiver.  Mmmmm THIS is why I wake up Sundays.


~~~~


"Are you an Eastman student?" asked everyone.  "Nope," I would respond, and for helpful clarity on my music background I added, "I work on a farm." 

Long morning full of thoughts

Before I started this season at this trial and demonstration farm I wondered how it would be, in my brain, to do labor from my body all day. I wondered which vegetables I would actually get to eat. I wondered if my bicycling and running would get tiredly set aside after 8 hours of moving around in the soil already.

Well. I learned that I still have a voracity for bicycling (and to a needing-motivation-extent: running) and could bomb off for a little jaunt even after a work day (this got easier as the season progressed: I learned activity can beget more activity, once one has accustomed to it). I also learned that Monday asserts itself as A Hungry Day, especially after a Sunday bicycling back from the city.

I found I got to eat all of it. And learned how it feels to have a bountiful endless supply of an astounding variety of vegetables--overwhelming and undeniably thrilling--and that I do not have nearly enough stomach or time for all the fennel, tomatoes, eggplant, garlic chives, thai basil, and sweetheart cabbage. And I learned what tronchuda and escarole are, and that white beets exist, and that there is a surprising variety in eggplant size and shape, and that red beets can be sliced in the field and applied as lipstick.

I am studying my brain while my body works. Some days I dribble off into a pool of blues or bluegrass from my headphones. Some days I figure yoga positions into my work (today I sat in legs-wide-open-pose to stretch some thighs while weeding some chard) or challenge myself to prune with my left hand.

When I first started I was in a walled-in grump place that I didn't have an output for creativity or analysis or writing in this temporary job.

Well: that's what being an organist is for, and writing, and discussing meristems with coworkers. Or simply working with one's hands and letting the brain paddle about on an ocean of thinking. Or not thinking.

Today I had thoughts: I didn't listen to more than an NPR podcast all day, and the good Lord knows I talked to nobody besides one four-leaf clover (and that was only in greeting), and I astounded myself that I got through the day in a pleasant and accepting mindset with no more stimulation than my dirt-working hands and my thought-stirring brain.

A long morning full of thoughts. And the cadence of that phrase brought me back to reciting a certain prayer during my short and shy tenure as a Catholic school girl.....

Long morning, full of thoughts
The sun is on thee
Ripped are thy arms among women, and
Blessed is the fruit of thy work, veggies
Long morning, full of thoughts
Bless you my future
Now and at the coming of the winter