URBAN FARMING

RHODE ISLAND RED

THIS IS A POLISH HEN, POST-MENOPAUSAL
SHE HAS A GOITER AND HER PLUME IS SO BIG
IT'S IMPOSSIBLE TO SEE HER FACE!

Welp, I am on to the next leg of my adventure, which is house-sitting for my friends Donald and Alan in the L.A. neighborhood of Glassell Park. What is truly exciting here is, as I'm sure I've mentioned multiple times already, is--CHICKENS.

I am constantly running up to the coop to feed, water, give snacks to, chat with, and check the laying box. Twice already I have collected eggs that were still warm.

What has also been exciting is that while here I have purchased a brand-new car (my first ever) upon more of which later. Suffice it to say for now that the experience made me want to lie down in a cool room with the shades drawn for at least a week.

No sooner did "Armen" of Glendale Fiat deliver the thing, however, than--I forgot to say there is NO cell reception up here in the hills--my laptop, out of the blue, began exhibiting signs of analeptic shock. Every time I hit the "e" the calculator would inexplicably appear onscreen and it went downhill from there. I may have spilled a TINY bit of water on it yesterday morning but it worked fine for hours afterward. Anyway, since then I have had it in front of the fan AND the space heater and "Norm" has paid a house call to the tune of 85 bucks to tell me he didn't know how to fix it.

Luckily, Alan told me before leaving I could use his mac with which I am basically unfamiliar but am making do. The blog allows me to maintain the delusion that I am actually in control of...something, and I become quite agitated, I'm not proud to say, when not able to get to it. So I'm grateful to have a back-up.

Meanwhile I was interviewed on EWTN (Catholic Register Radio) the other morn! And did manage to use the phrase "falling-down, blackout drunk" at least once...Here's the info:

"The show airs on 220 EWTN AM & FM affiliates across the U.S., as well as Sirius Satellite Radio’s channel 130, and on Sky (our European broadcast); and around the world on webstream through www.ewtn.com/radio, via mobile devices (EWTN, iHeart and TuneIn apps,) and of course—what first made EWTN go global 20 years ago—our EWTN Shortwave Radio signal traveling the globe.

Register Radio encores throughout the weekend Saturday at 5:00 p.m. PDT and Sunday at 8:00 a.m. PDT

We will post the audio of the show and we will have a downloadable podcast available at www.ncregister.com.

Click on the “Radio” tab and then click on the “microphone” icon."

THIS IS WHAT YOU GIVE THEM IN THE MORNING

AFTERNOON SNACK--CRACKED CORN!
WHO WOULDN'T LIKE THAT?
THEY ALSO GET OLD LETTUCE LEAVES,
BREAD HEELS AND, AND AN OCCASIONAL
DOLLOP OF COTTAGE CHEESE

BASIL, OBVIOUSLY

I ALSO HAVE A SALAMANDER, A CAT, A FERAL CAT, AND MANY VEGETABLES,
FLOWERS AND HERBS IN MY CHARGE

ZUCCHINI FRITATTA HAS FIGURED
PROMINENTLY IN MY DIET AS OF LATE

GRAPE ARBOR, BACK YARD

THESE LAST FOUR SHOTS ARE THE FRONTYARD.
THE OTHER DAY A GUY ON A MOTORCYCLE SCREECHED TO A HALT,
PEERED UP THE STEPS, AND REPORTED "I JUST LOVE THIS PLACE!"

I think Werner is being a bit harsh here in saying chickens are stupid. Though I will say that in the laying box, lined with wood shavings, there is a wooden egg which apparently you put there so they'll know that's the place. There it stays. And the chickens have been in the same coop for over two years. 

THE KEISKAMMA ALTARPIECE

Do you all know of the Keiskamma altarpiece? I didn't, until last week.

Above are a couple of youtubes telling its story.

Here's more info from the Fowler Museum at UCLA, where the altarpiece visited.

Here's a wonderful essay by Barbara Hinze, from the American Medical Association's Journal of Ethics, entitled "Saint Anthony's Fire and AIDS: Two Altarpieces and the Oft-Forgotten Goals of Medicine."

DETAIL, ISENHEIM ALTARPIECE,
MATTHIAS GRÜNEWALD,
AFTER WHICH THE KEISKAMMA WAS MODELED

THE MAGIC HOUR

From wikipedia: "In photography, the golden hour (sometimes known as magic hour, especially in cinematography) is the first and last hour of sunlight during the day when a specific photographic effect is achieved due to the quality of the light."

TELL ME NOW, WAS LIFE SO GOOD ON EARTH?

MEXICAN BIRD-OF-PARADISE
to die for, right?

NEW MOON, MONDAY NIGHT,
PALM SPRINGS

I was in Palm Springs for a week and left yesterday. Never have I so enjoyed my time there. I am one of those people who (I'm sure annoyingly) is always cold, so a nice stroll in the coolness of a 90-degree early evening for me is bliss.

By the time I left, the baby hummingbirds (see a couple of posts back) had started to poke their minuscule heads, mouths agape, over the top of the nest. Also it was quiet, quiet, blessedly quiet. Away from L.A., I feel how incredibly stressful my life is there. I don't even commute, and though I live in a relatively quiet street, still the noise is almost incessant. The yard guys come every Tuesday with their leafblowers. Every other Wednesday Marta the cleaning lady arrives at noon and leaves at 7:30. The building next door is divided into fifteen or so studios, filled with mostly young-ish people who God love them just adore standing out on their balconies till about 1 shooting the breeze and smoking. Across the street are two, not one but two, houses with incessantly barking dogs. Plus did I say we've had a rat in our kitchen? That's right. A freakin rat! A mouse isn't four inches long with a long snaky black tail. A mouse doesn't sit on top of the stove by the tea kettle in the dark and leer when you turn on the light and shriek.

Louder than all that, though, is the noise in my head. How to carve out enough time to write? How to keep up with the steady stream of email? How to stay centered in Christ because without that, I have nothing to give, nothing to say. "I am the vine and you are the branches: without me, you can do nothing." Nothing!

I hope to go out to Palm Springs again in July. And meanwhile, I'm house-sitting from June 12 through July 1 at the house of my friends Donald and Alan. Who I may have mentioned HAVE CHICKENS that lay one to three fresh miraculous eggs each day!

Here's a poem I read out there, from a book a friend gave me called Death. 

SONG OF THE DEAD ONE

Joy fills me
When daylight breaks
And the sun
Glides silently forward.

But I lie choked with fear
Greedy maggot throngs
Eat into my collarbone cavity
And tear away my eyes.

Anxiously I lie and meditate.
How choked with fear I was
When they buried me
In a snow hut on a lake.

When they sealed the door
Incomprehensible
How my soul could escape.

Greater grew my fear
When the ice split
And the crack grew thunderously
Over the heavens.

Glorious was life
In winter
But did winter bring me joy?
Worries corroded
Worries for sole-skins and boot-skins.

Glorious was life
In summer
But did summer bring me joy?
Ever was I anxious
For sleeping furs.

Glorious was life
On the sea ice.
But did that bring me joy?
Ever was I anxious
For no salmon wished to bite.

Was it so beautiful
When I stood flushed, embarrassed,
In the swirl of the feasthouse,
And the choir ridiculed me,
Getting stuck with my song?

Tell me, now, was life so good on earth?
Here joy fills me
When daylight breaks
And the sun
Glides silently forward.

- Copper Inuit traditional song -

SUNSET OVER SILVER LAKE TUES. NIGHT
NOTE TINY CRESCENT MOON!

CROSS, FOREST LAWN CEMETERY
DUSK AND SMOG

As the sun glides silently forward, I'm gliding from hummingbirds to poultry.

I pray not to be choked with fear.

GIVING VOICE TO THE EARTH

A recent email from reader Alicia Rae Drost re, among other things, responding peacefully to bad neighbors:

"Heather,

While you probably have more reading material than you know what to do with, I want to share with you these few pieces because your desire for justice, heart for the people, and interest in current events has become evident to me. I do not know if this particular story will interest you, but I was surprised by the passion this issue evoked within my spirit.

I've meant for quite some time now to share this with you, and I don't believe I yet have done so...

The installment of an irresponsible Canadian oil pipeline in the States causes many discrepancies and produces many reactions. The response held by The Hermitage, a Mennonite-orchestrated retreat center in Southwestern Michigan seems most appropriate...

There's this link which is an article about how the oil line will effect (or is it affect?) the land belonging to the retreat center and what the owners/directors intend to do about it (which I find to be a very wise response):

Then there's this link which speaks more about the response given by the hermitage and surrounding community:

If you chose to peruse the second link you'd probably discover this poem written by the directors of the retreat center, but since I do not know if you have the time to do so I'll include it here. What impacts me about this poem is that while it addresses the sorrow we may have over the destruction of land and trees and wildlife it also acknowledges our role in this destruction, and isn't that recognition what will bring about healthy change, if anything will?"

The Earth Speaks 
by Naomi R. Wenger and David Wenger
(found at: Catapult Magazine)

Giving voice to the earth is a monumental task, but one that we feel keenly as we anticipate the loss of what is here and its replacement with a hidden harbinger of what is more dangerous than terrorism, more insidious than pollution, and almost as ubiquitous and purposed as the air we breathe.

How massive the equipment that bears down upon me, obliterating all that springs forth from within:

oaks, cherries, hickories, sumac, beech groves to come, sassafras for tea, apple trees, dogwood, broom sedge, bouncing bet, butterfly weed, wild asters, Queen Anne’s Lace, yarrow, goldenrod, black berries, black raspberries, wild grapes mushrooms and even poison ivy;

ensnaring, crushing and displacing all that finds a resting place upon me:

box turtles, snapping turtles, turkeys, wrens, evening grosbeaks, pileated woodpeckers, flickers, downy woodpeckers, dragonflies, dung beetles, butterflies, sow bugs, striped beetles, ground hogs, chipmunks, rabbits, gophers, squirrels, deer, raccoons, coyotes, hog snakes, black racers and garden snakes.

How violent the scoops that cut me open,

     deep wounds bleeding mound upon mound of soil,

     digging down, down, down;

     reversing infertile dirt and top soil so that I am left scarred and barren.

How repulsive the implant of metal veins

     coursing black tar from sandy deposits through me

     to be refined and then used against me to power more machines that ravish and kill.

Oh, to be caressed with soft footfalls and tender scratching,

     to be gentled into producing that which gives life to all,

     to be without the pain of more, bigger, faster.

How long ?

How deep?

How big?

How much is enough?

AROUND MY BACK YARD

THE NON-SWIMMER

I'm the opposite of Neddy Merrill, the guy in John Cheever's "The Swimmer." Not only do I not swim in my neighbors' pools out here in sultry Palm Springs, I don't actually much swim in my own. I just like to look at it in the dark.

MY OWN PRIVATE HUMMINGBIRD

It's summer and my thoughts turn to...Barbecues? Family vacations? No: one of my own favorite activities--getting away from people.

Thus, I'm in Palm Springs for the week (90 miles west of LA) staying at my friend Christine's while she's in her hometown of Zermatt, Switzerland. Outside the sliding glass doors to the pool is a cactus, and within an hour of arriving, I'd discovered that affixed to the top of it is a hummingbird nest, complete with hummingbird! I can't figure out if she (do only girls hang out in nests?) is sitting on eggs or what, but I have never seen a hummingbird sit still before and I assure you, it is thrilling. I feel quite sure God has sent me here so she, the bird, can guard me.

This is my kind of weather--about 90 degrees Fahrenheit with a gentle breeze. I at once turned off the A/C, cranked open the windows, and made a large batch of sun tea. Morning Mass is at 7:30. Around vespers, I take a long walk through old Las Palmas. There is no shortage of alkies and addicts with whom to gather for an hour. In between I write, pray, dangle my feet in the pool, and ponder another exciting piece of news.

To wit, from August 6 through 11th I'll be on retreat at the Redwoods Monastery way up in Whitethorn, California! Whitethorn is on or near the Lost Coast, which I'd never even heard of before, and now want to move to sight unseen simply for the name. I'll drive, so it'll be a road trip and an adventure.

Now's your chance, if you live around or near the California coast, to meet up for coffee!