The Summer is Short and the Winter is Long

"Rise up, Jock and sing your song,
For the summer is short and the winter long.
Let's all join hands and form a chain
Till the leaves of springtime bloom again"

That's a song we console ourselves with in the darkest, coldest time of the year. But here it is, August! It's sunny and warm today, not too hot. The garden is burgeoning, the air is sweet. We are now used to wearing shorts and sandals and stepping out without a jacket.

But here it's just far enough north that suddenly we can feel a change, a subtle stirring in the air. The grasses are turning brown, and the insects sound has a slightly heightened urgency. The crop of beans is almost over, and it's harder to find blueberries on the bushes. Strawberries, those harbingers of high summer, are long gone. There's still plenty of time to party and luxuriate in the greenness, the warmth, the ready supply of fresh fruits and vegetables- but it's also time to prepare the root cellar, to stack the wood, and to put food by for what's coming.



Each golden day of summer has been extra sweet this year, it seems. While much of the rest of the country is baking in a prolonged, overheated drought, we've been blessed with slightly-below-normal temps, one brief heat wave, and day after day of achingly beautiful sunny, green gloriousness. I give thanks for the beauty, the sweetness, the fertile, rich ebb of the wave that is summer, so short, so precious. I will savor each moment as much as I can.

What if...?

As I've wandered off the path of "organized religion", while maintaining a central core of spirituality, I sometimes wonder if I can find a way to sum up my beliefs simply and succinctly. Sort of like Linus in "A Charlie Brown Christmas", where he recites Luke 2 and concludes, "And that's what Christmas is all about, Charlie Brown!"
(You put your right hand in...)

But this is not easy, as I look around at what gives my life meaning. My family, my home, music, the trees and green growing things outside, the rhythm of the seasons- how do you summarize all this?

(You put your left hand in...)

Teaching, singing, knitting, reading, playing with the dog, nestling with my beloved, communicating with my kids- all give me a deep feeling of satisfaction and connection with more than myself. Walking in the woods, or along the beach, or even on a city sidewalk, centers me, opens me to the Other. Gardening, digging, working hard, working out, reminds me that there is more than myself. Star gazing, listening to exquisite music, remind me of the vastness of all that is, beyond our ability to understand or conceive. Being silly, playful, stops me from taking myself so seriously that I can't experience joy.

(You put your right leg in...)


It's true, there have been times in my life when I have had to reconsider and make changes, and turn myself around. That's all part of the journey.

I remember a conversation with someone I loved dearly, who said he believed we were on this earth to reach beyond earthly things, to separate from the physical and connect to the spiritual. I objected to this philosophy- I said I believed we were on this earth to savor it, experience it, in all its delicious juiciness. That we couldn't experience heaven above unless we experienced it in the joy of living. That it was ALL spiritual, that there was no dichotomy between the physical and the spiritual.

In fact, to summarize my spirituality:

You put your whole self in!

That's what it's all about!

Following the daffodils

After graduating from Concord (NH) High School in 1977, I took a "gap year", made necessary by some administrative snafus that left me without a scholarship or any other needed funds to go to college that fall. I worked at various retail jobs, and finally decided to follow a dream of tramping around Europe. None of my friends was available (or willing) to make the trek, so on March 1, 1978, I set off on Icelandic Air for Luxembourg, France, Belgium, and the British Isles.

Now, March in New Hampshire is very much still in the grip of winter. I left snow and ice, encountered rain in New York (where we were held over for one night due to strikes in Europe, put up in the Hotel Essex where I slept off the flu I had suddenly contracted), witnessed horizontal snowy blasts for the brief glance out the door in Reykjavik, but when we landed in Luxembourg, it was springtime. We landed in early morning, and I was to take a train to Bordeaux, France, late that afternoon, so I spent the day wandering through the parks of this lovely city, admiring the green grass, budding trees, and the barely budding daffodils.

I stayed in Bordeaux for a week with a penpal and her delightful family. Papa and Maman both worked, and Isabel and Philippe were in school, so I spent my days wandering their small village and catching up on jet lag. The daffodils were in bloom. On the weekend they took me to the Dune du Pyla, further south, and to their summer cottage in Arcachon, where the daffodils were in riotous profusion!

I started a daffodil search across Europe- they were blooming in Paris, where I spent a lonely week in a Quartier Latin hotel, in Brussels, where I visited another pen pal, and as I arrived in Canterbury, England, for Holy Week and Easter, there they were, just starting to bloom. For the next 6 weeks or so I made my way around Great Britain, to London, Salisbury Plain, Wales, the Lake District, and Scotland. I started searching for what was becoming my favorite flower. The weather held up amazingly well, and I met folks at youth hostels and inns, saw things I had only imagined, and grew in independence and spirit. wo

A big highlight was Wordsworth's house in Grasmere in the Lake District. I had met up with a lovely South African woman (Ailsa Dewar, where are you now?) and we hired a local man to take us on a long trek across the region, stopping at Dove Cottage where, indeed, we found a host of golden daffodils.

One problem with the whole adventure- I was terribly lonely and homesick. I was only 18, missed my mom, my friends, and learned how important it is for me to have friends and community. I could have afforded to stay for several weeks more, but in mid-May I arranged for a flight home (remember when we could have open-ended return tickets? I didn't even fly home on the same airline!). I decided to surprise my mother, so when I landed in Boston, I hopped on the Concord Trailways bus, and once in Concord, I took a taxi home. There was my mother, working in the garden, on a sunny May afternoon- and the daffodils were in bloom.



There is a lovely song by Sydney Carter, called Julian of Norwich. In it are the following lines:
Love, like the yellow daffodil, the flower in the snow
Love, like the yellow daffodil is Lord of all I know
Ring out, bells of Norwich and let the winter come and go
All shall be well again, I know

The daffodils are just now blooming at Tam Lin. They remind my of my big late-teen adventure. And they remind me that despite the hardship of a New Hampshire winter, despite all the violence, anger, fear, oppression, injustice and cruelty in the world, that somehow all shall indeed be well again, in some way we can't really fathom. All shall be well again, I know.

Standing tall

Winter's grip is still upon us, but somehow, even as blustery and cold as March is, there's promise in the air. So I am taking daily walks again, and the walks are getting longer! As the walks get longer and my body gets stronger, I feel more optimistic and less like hibernating, and the cycle continues.

One thing that I notice over and over again is how my body reacted to late winter- I curled up, turned inward, and I adopted what my mother often called "wet noodle" posture. The more I have noticed it, the more I have tried to correct it. And another positive cycle is born!

For the past three summers I was able to attend Pinewoods Camp English Dance Week, which was amazing and lovely for so many reasons. One of the best things I gained from it was acquaintance with a yoga teacher from Silver Spring named Anna Rain. She teaches Iyengar yoga, which focuses on the structural alignment of the physical body. Anna has a vitality and joyful personality which encouraged and inspired me. She taught how to "take yoga off the mat" through body positions, or "asanas", and alignment suitable for dancers. I quickly found these asanas to be equally effective in the rest of life, from walking down the piney path of camp, or from my house to the mailbox, to standing at the sink, to singing and leading my chorus.

On my walks I now have a short "jody", or echo-chant, that I often give myself:
Head up! (head up!)
Shoulders back!
Stand tall!
Stand taller!
Heart open!


I stand taller, my shoulders back, allowing my heart to open to all I meet, rather than curling my shoulders forward to protect my heart and my soft underbelly. In doing so I find myself filled with feelings of strength and love, towards myself and others, and thus, joy and peace.

Sweet Home

I've been hibernating. That's the best excuse I can think of to explain nearly 3 months of blog-dormancy.
Actually, I've been performing all December, traveling nearly all of January, and easing back into so-called-"real life" in February. But indeed, the days are getting longer, and after about 6 weeks of regular one-two punches from Old Man Winter, there's been little snow and several days of thaw. It's still plenty cold, but even the bird song anticipates the thought that "if winter comes, can spring be far behind?"

Truly, for all the activity, I feel pretty much like hibernating during the long dark months of winter. Our trip South in January was a brief interlude that gave color to our eyes and a few days (out of the 25 of traveling) where short sleeves were comfortable. Other than that it was mostly chilly! But still, a wonderful adventure playing our music, visiting our friends, and experiencing, as Hunt says, "different dirt".


We drove in our Ford van, equipped with a plywood platform bed, all our instruments, our sound system which we never used not once, clothes, food, and Nellie the World's Greatest Traveling Dog. It was a bonding experience with Nellie, and we drove around in our little home-away-from-home.
But-
We couldn't wait to be back home! We have both learned, over and over again, that we are finally in the Place Just Right and it truly is the Valley of Love and Delight! Even though it was snowy

and continued to snow, even though it was cold and dark and we have had to haul wood every day, we are so happy in this home we have made in this house we have built.

Nellie was so happy to be home she nearly burst into flame.

And now the days are getting longer, bird song is in the air, and winter's back is broken. Who could ask for anything more?

To everything there is a season

...and a time for every purpose under heaven.
Thanksgiving Day has passed, a day which was full of gratitude for life's abundant blessings... and turkey with all the trimmings. My two grown kids and my dear husband and I (and the puppy*!) rode over the highway and through the woods to the grandmothers' house, and everyone was loving and cordial and friendly and fun, and we were home in time to relax before bedtime (and let the puppy run around*).

On the way home in the dark, we saw 3 houses with Christmas lights a-glow, and one lit tree standing in a window. 'Tis the season? The stores and the national economy want us to think so. But I find that once again I am approaching the month of December with my usual stubborn insistence on letting the beauty of the dark-into-light time unfold. The days are definitely getting darker and darker; we have candles at the dinner table most nights, and we're all looking at our watches after supper and wondering what is the earliest we can get into our beds! I'm not ready for Christmas muzak, decorations, lights and greenery to infiltrate my quiet, brooding Advent.

On this first Sunday in Advent, I have gotten out the Advent candle holder, but have not yet gathered the moss or installed the candles (photo to follow when mission accomplished). As my spirituality has evolved, my love for Advent has only increased, as it so beautifully expresses the hopeful anticipation of light following the darkest time. As we light the candles one by one, they remind me by their strengthening light that no matter how dark it gets, light will return. This is also reflected in a very November-y song by Gordon Bok that I often think of at this time of year:
Oh, my Joanie, don't you know that the stars are swinging slow,
And the seas are rolling easy as they did so long ago.
If I had a thing to give you, I would tell you one more time
That the world is always turning toward the morning.

So, let the candles slowly increase, and let the greens gradually appear. The carols on the player will ease in as well, and the tree won't arrive until the Solstice. There will be concerts, and parties, and places where "Christmas out there" will be unavoidable, and I'll participate whole-heartedly with gratitude for the joy in the faces around me. But at home, let it be Advent for the next 4 weeks!





*although this is not a blog post about the puppy, I promised to write about the puppy this time, so here you are!

Higher Learning

Yesterday Hunt and I spent a day in academia. We were invited to give a guest lecture for the Boston University ethnomusicology department, backed up by scholarship and references. What an enticing challenge! To do what we usually do, but with scholarship to back it up! So in preparation we poured over websites, looked through our own library (and discovered it was far more comprehensive than we had realized!), visited the NH Library of Traditional Music and Dance, emailed notables in the field, (Dudley and Jacqueline Laufman. Photo courtesy of Dudley Laufman)
took notes, made pdf files and posters, and off we went!

(a page from a Vermont dance prompter's book c. 1847, courtesy NH Library of Traditional Music and Dance)

...did I mention that I am an alumna of Boston University? It was eerie, walking into a classroom where I was tortured by 20th century music theory, to deliver "Dance Music, Sedition and Maple Syrup: the Musical Roots of Old New England". I was confronted by ghosts of my past- I swear I met my 20-year-old self in the hallway- yet it was all different, too. I mean, there was never even an Ethnomusicology department at BU 30 years ago! But here we were, and we gave all we could to a group of brilliant, musical, scholarly grad students who welcomed us with courtesy and warmth. I still felt challenged to live up to the impossibly high standards I always felt were just beyond my reach in my undergrad days, so I vibrated like a piano string all the way through the presentation.

We decided to drive home after dinner following the presentation, instead of staying the night in Boston. This gave us time to de-compress and evaluate the experience. We are still processing it, but one thing is certain: we are expanding our horizons, professionally and personally, and we're grateful for every opportunity to learn and grow and make connections.

Next time, I will write about the puppy. Really I will!

Nellie the Dog