rubbing two sticks together

i got a kindle for christmas. last year around this time i think i posted something about why i didn’t want one...i probably still wouldn’t want one if it wasn’t for my job. e-publishing is becoming a major phenomenon, something i would be only peripherally aware of if i wasn’t so involved with the local writing and publishing community.

i’m about to turn 26. when i first started getting into music, CDs were poised to overtake cassette tapes. in early junior high computers were suddenly essential, and by late junior high the internet was...the internet. i got my first cell phone in ninth grade, by junior year they were popular and in college everyone had one. DVDs crushed VHS tapes. email flew past snail mail. a kilobyte became a megabyte became a gigabyte.

i took a photography class when digital photography was in its earliest stages. the teacher forced us to experiment with this hulking sony mavica that wrote to a floppy disc. i hated that thing and resented having to use it.

i think i initially resisted (or at least harbored mixed feelings for) most new technologies as they came about. i doubted that digital cameras would catch on. i hated typing. sometimes i didn’t see why i should pay $14.99 for a CD when i could get a tape for $9.99. i was attached to my CD collection and waited years to get an ipod. i never thought i’d own an e-reader.

i still feel uneasy trading the comfort of a physical object for the convenience of a digital file, the constant shrinking, disintegration and disappearance of everyday things that goes along with this exponential rate of technological advancement.

i accept change but i’m nostalgic for things before my time--i work on a computer but i play on a typewriter.

a kindle will never replace books for me. the smell and the weight of them, seeing their covers lying around the house while they’re being read, their spines lined up on a shelf to catch your eye and remind you of their stories.

i’m making myself open to e-books as a convenient addition to books, though. my aunt sent a thumb drive with 2,600 titles--apparently in australia you get to keep any e-book you “borrow” from the library, so i believe she copied her library’s entire stock of digital books onto that digit-sized memory stick. it included about 300 books i want to read, 30 of which i’m desperate to read. suddenly having all this wonderful reading material (virtually) at my fingertips is overwhelming but exciting.

worms' meat of me

i received a “what is going on, are you ok?” kind of message the other day and it made me realize how long i’ve gone without posting anything on here--almost the entire season of autumn. truly sorry to anyone who might’ve been worried. i’m not dead, totally fine, just busy.

the month of october was too much. one four-day weekend i had two article interviews, four photo shoots (one of them huge) and a visiting author reading event (jonathan franzen). the following weekend i worked a booth at a readers/writers/publishers trade show, participated in a five-hour strategic planning meeting and did another big photo shoot. every weekend was just packed. during the weekdays i had articles and photos due, an entire book due to the printers (not one that i wrote, but edited and designed covers and helped put together), other random assignments...i can easily handle busy work weeks as long as i have weekends to recover, but there was none of that.

november 8 was the climax. sometime back in august i was half-persuaded and half-volunteered myself to do a giant sewing project for an upcoming benefit event. basically it’s a bookworm mascot costume. it wasn’t supposed to be due until late february, but suddenly the due date was pushed three and a half months and i needed to have it ready to debut at the nicole krauss reading event on november 8. this fun, creative project became a huge source of stress in my life. it made it so that even when i had moments of downtime i couldn’t relax because i knew i should be using that time to work on the bookworm.

if by some chance you’ve never sewn a seven-foot-long, foam-filled, freaky-looking “counterculture” worm costume without the benefit of a pattern or tutorial, let me tell you how it goes. turns out the tubular, round shape of a worm segment is a very difficult thing to construct, especially when they have to be joined together and loop around a human body. also, in the final stages of sewing, there were times i had to turn my sewing machine sideways, wedge the entire mass of the worm’s width between me and my sewing table, reach as far forward as i could, smothering myself in bookworm bosom, sewing blind and hoping my fingertips wouldn’t become part of the costume. i got a taste of what it must be like to try to accomplish things with the kind of morbid obesity that doesn’t fit through door frames.

i put the finishing touches on the worm just hours before the reading, sending numerous folks around me into cardiac arrest...i knew i would finish it, that’s just how i have to do stuff sometimes, absolute last minute. my procrastination was further complicated by the fact that ms. krauss’s flight was delayed and she cancelled on us, so we found another author willing to fly in from california, again, just hours before the reading. that whole day was a blur of frantic phone calls and emails and social media and research.

the plan all along was that i would both make and wear the bookworm costume. what no one (including me) anticipated was that wearing this enormous, heavy, thick bastard of a worm shell was going to make me claustrophobic. one of my coworkers helped me dress backstage about ten minutes before my cue. once i’d wiggled into the belly of the beast i jammed myself in a half-open exit door for the cool, fresh air to keep me calm. i heard my cue, lumbered out on stage in front of about 500 people, gave a pretty damn good performance considering my brain was about to pop, trotted backstage, sprinted out the back door, confused a lot of people on the street, waved at gawking onlookers in restaurants, turned a tight corner and scared the hell out of a theater attendant on her smoke break (“i thought i was being attacked by puff the magic dragon!”), and dashed into the lobby where a couple friends helped pull the thing off of me.

then it was finally over. that was my last major due date for a while, and even though i always have a lot of ongoing projects demanding my time, i practiced saying "no" to some things and gradually started to make time for myself again.

now i’m enjoying two weeks off for the holidays, and my current main project is nothing but fun: xmas presents. i’ll try to start posting more and put up photos of some things i’ve made. i hope everyone’s having a fabulous holiday season!

market, seeds, cabin, garden...

yesterday was one of those perfect spring days. mid-60s, sunny, big puffy white clouds, flowers everywhere and a steady, drenching rainstorm all night. i spent all day outside.

in the morning i rode my bike to the first saturday market of the year. it was a little tricky, lots of flooded areas because of the crazy high river.

the market wasn’t as crowded as i expected, but maybe that’s because it’s so huge now...they keep shutting down more blocks and spreading farther and farther.

i mainly came for the seed swap...

i scored fennel, mountain spinach, french sorrel, purple sprouting broccoli and “idaho blue corn”: sweet corn that started as “black aztec,” and the gardener has been growing it here and saving its seed for 33 years.

at the last seed swap in february i forgot to take one of these peppers, but i snagged one yesterday. they’re “choriceros,” from basque country, and the person who brought them here 50 years ago has been growing them every year since. here’s a photo of him with his peppers.

i stopped by to visit with mike, one of the wood artists i profiled, and he gave me this fabulous maple spatula. i’ve already used it three or four times.

on the way back i stopped at tully’s to see some of amber’s awesome metal sculptures.

later in the day i hiked around in the foothills for a while. i was shocked at how lush everything looks already. currant bushes in bloom everywhere! last year i messed up, i didn’t start looking for currants until late july when they actually ripen in early june. this year i’ve already located hundreds of bushes and i’m ready to pounce on them the second they’re ripe.

here’s where i’m working now:

and here’s the view out the window behind my desk...in some of the rooms you can hear the rushing water:

i keep wanting to write a big long post about all the interesting stuff i’m being exposed to lately, but everything i try to write comes out sounding lame. here’s a brief, somewhat-lame rundown: w.s. merwin (current u.s. poet laureate) is visiting in just over a week, so i’ve been reading some of his work in preparation, and for the most part i love it. i’ve also read a lot about him and his incredible conservation work in hawaii.

there’s a good bit of down-time when i’m not answering phones or editing or whatever thing i’m doing, so i stay busy reading work-related stuff: local authors and visiting writers. right now i’m reading tony doerr’s “the shell collector,” the most amazing book of short stories ever written. i first read just the story “the shell collector” while lounging in a pool in belize--it’s included in a collection of beach-themed stories in this wonderful waterproof book:

and after that i meant to read everything he’d ever written, but i’ve been on this crazy nonfiction kick for so long, i never got around to it until now.

quick garden update: i planted beets 4/11; favas up 4/14 and 4/15:

carrots started sprouting 4/16, chard up 4/17, and little borage sprouts that reseeded themselves from last year have been coming up all week. most of them chose good locations.

i pretty much gave up on the mȃche ever sprouting (it’s been almost a month since i planted it), so earlier today i started planting sorrel right on top of it...then, like magic, mȃchelets appear. i think it’ll be fine if they intermingle.

first ripe strawberry today!

chives and oregano look nice and healthy...i already harvested a big chunk of the chives:

i got a couple rubber snakes to keep birds away from two of the salad beds:

i’m trying to avoid having to cover everything in netting like i did last year. jeanne used rubber snakes last year and she told me they worked on birds but not squirrels, which is fine with me, i only have one bed that’s bothered by squirrels and it’s not a big deal to net that one.

yumm, lettuces. i’ve been tempted to make my first spring salad out of baby kale, dandelion leaves and violas but i don’t think that combination would taste great. those are all accents. i need a good lettuce or spinach base.