Things You Never See

Ithaca turns out to be a good place to see things you never see otherwise, especially with Alan Poole as my guide. I had never seen people riding unicycles in my life. Maybe I saw a chimp ride one once on television. But here were these two dudes going along a very narrow, very fast road with nothing but two pedals and a wheel between them and Eternity. It's the mother in me, I'm sure, that made me gasp and immediately begin to worry for them. Think about it. They've got nothing to grab should they hit a rock or a pothole or a squirrel or a dead possum. How in the world do they dismount safely? How do they go down huge hills? Why don't they get down off those damn things?
I was completely in awe of them, and I couldn't stop taking pictures of them, something they found very funny. My inner Gomer was gaaawww-leeeeee-in' all over the place.I did get to see them dismount and remount near Taughannock Falls. There was a whole lot of arm waving going on as they attained their balance and rhythm atop those dreadful wheels. I was glad they were wearing helmets, at least. You couldn't get me on one of those things on a dare. But then, I won't even play volleyball, and I suit up in steel wrist guards to roller skate. I break a wrist, I'm S.O.L., and the workman's comp plan for freelance artist/writers is raiding the piggybank.
That said, they made excellent time, almost beating us to Taughannock Falls. But we were birding.


Taughannock Falls was a pilgrimage for me, because it was there that ornithophotographer Arthur Allen shot his famous peregrine photos, when a pair nested naturally there in the early 1900's. It looked like a piece of the Rio Grande in New Mexico, plopped down in the Finger Lakes country. That's Alan for scale.
I believe Louis Agassiz Fuertes also painted those peregrines at this spot, where they nested just to the left of the falls. Just knowing my greatest bird art influence had stood on this spot filled me with awe.
Chet Baker came with me on this trip, and it was absolutely lovely to have him along. Almost nine hours on the road each way, Baker kept me company and showered me with kisses. We talked and I ran my hand over his muscular little thigh as we drove. We ran around after squirrels at the rest stops and jumped creeks in the woods. Alan took an immediate shine to Baker, and was amused at how he'd leap atop walls, catlike, to walk along the tops.Baker was not allowed in the Asian Art floor of the Johnson Museum on the Cornell campus, so he spent the afternoon curled in bed instead. The sheer age of most of these artifacts filled me with awe. Here's a cloisonne Chinese dragon vase.

A beautiful man, carved from an elephant tusk. His backward lean is thanks to the curvature of the tusk, but it perfectly evokes the weight of the ivory basket he carries. I am sure there were carved fish inside the basket, but I couldn't see inside it. How do you carve a fishnet out of ivory? I could only shake my head.

A painting of Kali, my favorite Indian goddess. This is me, oh, about one week a month. Look out, demons and wrongdoers. I am riding the lion with my sixteen arms. Mess with me: I will slice and dice you. I find it interesting that Liam makes the same bloodspurts on his headless people that this artist did several centuries back.

Looking down on the magnificent Cornell campus. Because of its history of great ornithologists, this was the college I most wanted to attend, but when my parents drove me all the way up there from Virginia, an admissions officer told me I'd never get in as a biology major with my crummy math SAT scores. He told me I'd better emphasize that I wanted to major in journalism. Which I didn't. So, being a timid but principled high school student, I didn't even apply. That's OK. I got educated anyway. Still, the visit made me wistful, remembering and appreciating the vision of my father and mother walking little baby me up these same sidewalks. Dad was looking for a good ice cream place. He said college towns always have the best ice cream places, and he knew Cornell had a dairy somewhere. That was Dad. I sought out a local ice cream factory in his honor, where Bacon and I shared a hotdog and a coconut almond shake. Dad would have ordered maple walnut ice cream.
Because I knew the daffodils wouldn't be blooming yet in Ithaca, I cut a huge bunch of mine and took them up for Alan and Charles. I was sitting across from Alan, with the still-cold spring light coming in the window, and was struck by the beauty of the scene. It was a Vermeer interior, timeless and serene.
These are my two favorite photos from the whole trip. For me, they evoke the peace that animals bring to us, with their quiet, caring presence. If you want to see me happy, give me a cup of tea or a glass of Shiraz, and sleek little Chet Baker on my lap.

For Mojo Man

This essay aired today on All Things Considered, in honor of Earth Day. You can hear me read it here. I couldn't have written it, much less felt it, without a letter that Mojo Man, a self-described frustrated forester, wrote to me more than a year ago, when I was complaining about selective cutting. In essence, he said, "Get over it. Think of the alternative. Logging is a sustainable use of a forest. Forests are dynamic systems, and even logged-over woods beat a housing development."

Sometimes we don't know the impact a few well-chosen words to a friend can have. Mojo's letter got me through the logging, got me through the snarling chainsaws and the shrieks and cracks of dying trees. Did I enjoy it? No. Would I allow it to be done to our forest? Never. But I repeated Mojo's wisdom to myself over and over throughout February and March; I repeated it to Bill and the kids; kept it in my head as I spoke respectfully to my neighbor, and it truly got me through. This old earth is a renewable resource, bouncing back after unthinkable injury and insult. Think of the Exxon Valdez disaster, the healing that's gone on in those diesel-soaked beaches. We owe her so much more honor, love and respect than we'll ever give her, but like a good wife and mother, she keeps coming back, taking care of us even at our spoiled, self-centered and destructive worst.



Our neighbor is logging his woods. We listened as the bulldozers and chainsaws moved closer each day. One by one, the big trees fell. The loggers were taking everything over 18” in diameter, leaving the smaller trees to mature. After three weeks, there was only one giant left, the tulip tree we called the Privacy Tree. We called it that because it shielded our house from the road, made it feel like a secret.

I knew the logger was saving the biggest tree for last. He couldn’t have overlooked it. It was time to say good-bye. I walked out through the snow, meaning to wrap my arms around it, and had to spread them for a good-bye hug. I know, I’m a tree hugger. But it’s something, in this cut-over, degraded forest, to find a tulip tree that’s 36” at breast height.

“Can’t we ask them not to cut the Privacy Tree?” asked Phoebe, her voice plaintive. “Doesn’t the logger have a heart?” Well, no, honey, we can’t ask him. A 36” tulip is worth money, and it’s on our neighbor’s land, and that, dear, is that.

While she was at school, I did call my neighbor and offer to compensate him for the value of the tree if he’d leave it standing. It was a reckless act, born of a mother’s desire to fix what’s wrong. I had no idea what it was worth, figuring I’d either be able to meet the price or not. I just wanted to buy it, to leave it standing, so the tanagers and wood thrushes could still perch in it and sing. He turned me down flat. “Nope, I’m gonna cut it. If it dies and falls down, I can’t get anything for it. And I don’t want it lying on the ground. Trees are a crop, just like anything else, and you need to harvest them before they fall down.” I suggested that trees might have another value as habitat, even after they fell down, and we hung up, agreeing that we saw things differently when it came to trees.

Two days later, my husband and I watched in silence as a chainsaw snarled into its base. The Privacy Tulip trembled, groaned, spun slowly, and smashed down, taking five other trees with it.





Four years ago, I watched with dismay as another forest I loved was logged just like this one. I’d drive by every day, watching it get thinner and thinner. The loggers took all the big trees, piling them like Lincoln logs on a flatbed truck, hauling the forest away in a cloud of diesel fumes. I ground my teeth and muttered as I passed. The next spring, underbrush sprang up in the newly opened woods, from seeds that had been waiting for decades in the soil for just such conditions.

Within three years, new, strange bird songs rang through the opened stand: Wild turkeys, American redstarts, blue-winged, prairie, hooded and Kentucky warblers flocked to the thick young growth that sprang up in the wake of the cutting. Come spring, I’ll park my car where the logging truck once sat, and watch jewellike birds fetching insects and nesting materials in the flickering sun, in the new growth racing toward the sky.

For birds like these to survive and thrive, some trees must fall, some sunlight must strike the forest floor. Even as I mourn the Privacy Tree, I know that my neighbor’s is a changed woodland, and not necessarily for the worse. Come spring, I’ll be listening for new songs.A postscript:
Even before the branches had settled, five hawks appeared in the sky directly over where the Privacy Tree had stood for so many years. Two red-shoulders and three redtails circled and screamed, keening an unearthly chorus in the space where the tree had been. Their cries tore through the pearly sky. Who can say why? I think that we are not the only ones who mourn it.

Old Bread Memories

Ithaca is gorges. It's waterfalls and snow, and for me it was also daffodils just peeking up through still-cold ground; phoebes just arrived and singing tentatively. I keep traveling north this spring, and I act like a big baby when I have to get my down parka and gloves back out. Looking at the bright side, it makes it all the more delicious to return to sun and warmth, such bits as we have. This is a view of the valley plowed out by the glacier that passed through what is now Ithaca. Winter keeps a grip on the place for a long, long time.

And yet...the first Ithaca Farmer's Market of the season was happening, and I joined my old friend Alan Poole for a visit to the land of hearty-looking breadladies and spun maple sugar. We got some white bean soup and braved the cold wind off the lake to enter the open-air barn that houses a very robust farmer's market. Oh, what wonderful things!We bought bread from this artisan stand. I bought a loaf of Amadama bread, a curious thing...it rolled around and around in my mind; I knew I'd baked it in the past; I knew I loved it, but I couldn't remember any more than that. Alan jogged my memory. "It was a recipe from the Tassajara Bread Book." Yes! Back in the late 70's I lived in a big old house in Petersham, MA, where we baked breads from that collection of monastery recipes. So I bought the loaf and brought it home--so sweet and brown and good. Here's what I've found about it on the Web, from a Los Angeles Times article from 1922:

"Amadama Bread--One pint of boiling water poured slowly over one-half cup of
Indian (fine corn) meal, stirring all the time. When cool, add one bread spoon of lard,
one-half cup of molasses, one dessert spoon of salt, one-half yeast cake
dissolved in one-half cup of luke-warm water, and flour to make a stiff batter.
Knead well and rise in again, let rise in the pans till almost double in bulk,
and bake."
...
The name "Amadama" is a curious one. It is almost impossible to find anyone
who can explain its origin convincingly. Perhaps the most feasible story
regarding it is the following:
...
When Mrs. John Johnston of Gloucester, MA first introduced the bread, she called
it "Epidemic Bread,"which name was mispronounced by an ignorant maid in one
customer's home, who called it "amadama" housewives clamored for it and it became
most popular. For this reason Mr. Johnston called it "Epidemic Bread," which name was
mispronounced by an ignorant maid in one customer's home, who called it "amadama"
bread (instead of "epidemic.") From that time on many customers, who heard of
the maid's mispronunciation, called it "madama" in fun--which name became a fixture.

I'm doubting that these women have lard anywhere near their kitchen, so perhaps butter would suffice. As you know, lard is a staple in my kitchen, if only for Zick dough. The amadama bread is the toasty looking loaf at the very bottom margin of the photo. I was to regret my purchase upon climbing on the scales back home. Bread and pasta are now struck once again from my diet. Sigh. Travel eating is the worst. Somehow, you think it won't count, until you get home. Why do carbs have to taste soooo good? Begone. No more.

I always get a kick out of kids in college communities like Ithaca. They all look like fortune-tellers.

There were some mighty thrifty looking winter carrots and taters, too. Alan says the carrots are incredible.

Later, Alan and I went to the Johnson Museum of Art, where there happened to be an Easter egg hunt and celebration going on. I was amazed at the biomass of mini-people crammed into the lobby. In my college days in Cambridge, children were an anomaly, evoking double-takes on campus. Things have changed. Graduate students and professors now reproduce. I was also amazed at the fortitude of this single stalwart folksinger, armed only with a gut-stringed guitar, who was belting out "Puff, the Magic Dragon" without benefit of mic or amp to what felt like several thousand chattering kids.
This would, for me, define the Gig from Hell. Give the man a Pignose.

Our Swinging Orangutangs gig at the Whipple Tavern last Friday night was anything but. We had a steady full house and the most marvelous time, and our tips plus the spaghetti dinner hosted by the tavern brought in over $500 for pocket money for the sixth grade class trip to Pittsburgh. We played a mini-set of songs from "Boogie Nights" that I'm fairly certain have never been played in that space, including "Best of My Love," with screaming female vocal harmonies between me and Jess; "Jungle Boogie," sung by Bill of the Birds, "Get Down Tonight," sung by JZ, "Brick House," by BOTB (he does a real nasty job on that one.) Jess does an amazing job on the vocal and antic keyboard of Chaka Khan's "Tell Me Something Good." Yes, it was something completely different. It was such fun that we looked up and it was 12:30.

More Ithaca anon.