Tis a gift to be simple

The title comes from an old Shaker hymn,

'Tis the gift to be simple, 'tis the gift to be free,

'Tis the gift to come down where we ought to be,

And when we find ourselves in the place just right,

'Twill be in the valley of love and delight.

When true simplicity is gain'd,

To bow and to bend we shan't be asham'd,

To turn, turn will be our delight,

Till by turning, turning we come round right.

Probably my first introduction to living simply, aside from being raised by depression-era parents, was as a teenager, visiting the Shaker Village at Pleasant Hill, Ky. It was a revelation that less stuff could make life more enjoyable and free the mind for pursuits other than acquiring, and then maintaining that which we acquire.  Shakers created beautiful furniture.  We've all had Shaker-style cabinets and chairs at one time or another, haven't we?  They did not procreate, thus the decline in Shakers.  And, they shook, or danced and spoke in tongues-early Holy Rollers.

But, I digress.  I've been following a new blog, To simplify and the title reminds me of that old hymn.  Not that he's living an Shaker life but on a scale of simple compared to most Americans, he's off the charts.  And he makes great music. 

Top of the World

We took a long weekend and headed to Fool Hollow in Show Low.  It's always a bit cooler up there and by this time of the year we have had it with the heat. Enough with the heat already! 

On Sunday we took a drive over Rte 260 to Heber since we had never traveled that road before.  As we were traveling we realized that 260 is the northern border of the area burned by the Rodeo-Chediski fire in 2002 and the damage is still very evident.  It's coming back but it will take a long time to fully recover.

As we were driving along, I was looking around trying to imagine what the area might have looked like when fully involved, if that's the correct term.  I had this sense of actually being at the top of the world and it took me a minute to realize that I could see no mountains, no land higher than I was.  There aren't many places in Arizona that you can't see mountains or mesas that are higher than you are.

Judy's Fix-It Shop

Do you ever have those times in your life when most things seem to be going just about right but then there are one or two that are just not working?  No matter what you do?  I'm not a person who thinks things will ever be perfect in every aspect, believe me. If you could walk around in my head you would know beyond a shadow of a doubt that that isn't me.  But I think we all know when something isn't working and probably won't because there are things beyond our control or other people are involved or, not involved, as the case may be.  I'm a bit, well, maybe a lot, of a controller. I think being a controller keeps me safe, really it just makes me tired.

The difficult part is deciding which things to keep, because a controller thinks she can fix everything and make it work.  She's Stronger, Faster, Smarter!  Able to leap tall buildings in a single bound, more powerful than a speeding locomotive yada, yada, yada.

I have a hard time with the concept of broken beyond repair.

Day 2

It's like the Oklahoma Dust Bowl in here!  But I'm liking the look.

Day 1

Day 2

More to come...

DEMOLITION DAY

See this:

It will soon be gone.  Bad design decision that's pretty easy to remedy, well, it is if you pay your 2 sons to git'r done.  That's all adobe used to add more thermal mass to the room along with a bit of rusticity.  However, it got out of hand and now just takes up too much space.  Everytime I look at it, which is everyday, several times a day, all I can do is think about how to change it.  Not a peaceful state of being, so it's going!  Yes!

The stove will return to that position and will still be used to heat the house, the 3 times each winter its actually needed.  I tried to get rid of it, too, but was voted down.

The wall behind the adobe will be an opportunity for creativity but I have some ideas.  At the very least I will have to paint the whole wall because that's custom made clay paint.

The good thing about using adobe and some other natural materials is they can be reused.  The plan is for these bricks to be the foundation for an earthen oven at a friend's house.  We're even saving the mortar, which is basically mud.  It will be reconstituted and used for mortar again.

Stay tuned.

Beautiful Ohio

We were in Ohio for a few days attending our high school's alumni banquet.  2010 is the 35th anniversary of my high school graduation and I had a blast seeing people I hadn't seen in many years.  For me, many of them went from being crazy high school kids to grandparents in the blink of an eye.  To borrow a phrase from the time-mindblowing, man!

Rick graduated a year ahead of me, so we know all the same people.  The student body totaled about 450 back in those days, so everyone knew everyone and many of our classmate's parents were classmates at the same school.  Except my dad, who was raised Catholic and attended the Catholic high school in town but was still considered a "West Sider" and not quite up to snuff by the nuns who ran the school.  You see, in some places people grow up on the wrong side of the tracks, but we were on what was considered by the townies to be the wrong side of the river-the West Side.  A bunch of ill-educated, ill-mannered country bumpkins who populated the hills and hollers where the land rose up out of the bottoms on the west side of the Scioto River.  We were definitely country, when country wasn't cool.

This was the first trip back without a living parent in the picture.  My family roots are deep in the area.  The Cooper branch goes back to pre-Civil War, but the majority of my ancestors immigrated from Germany in the mid-19th century.  Most were dirt-poor farmers; I can remember visiting their homeplaces as a kid and being amazed at the lives they had created from nothing. My great-grandmother, who was a big part of my childhood, was born in 1881 and was boarded out and worked as a housekeeper as a young woman.  She didn't marry until the age of 22, an old maid for sure in that era.  My grandfather (her son-in-law), used to tell the story that she had been engaged to marry a young man but one day her beau drove to her house in his wagon with another young lady and invited my Granny to his wedding.  What a way to break an engagement!

 Great-grandmother, Elizabeth-back row, right

She went on to marry in 1903 and she and my great-grandfather moved to town so he could work at the local steel mill.  Sadly, she was widowed when my great-grandfather was killed in a horrendous accident at the mill.  She then moved back to the country with her five young children so she could have a cow and a garden and feed her family.  It was a hand to mouth existence augmented by the generosity of relatives and neighbors. The boys left home as soon as they were old enough.  My grandmother, Daisy, had completed the 8th grade when they moved but never attended high school.

Daisy married my grandfather in 1925. They lived in town for awhile but eventually moved to the West Side where they raised their children, 3 biological and one adopted.  They always had "extras" living at their house, various relatives or friends who were going through a rough patch and needed a place to stay and food to eat.  My grandfather was a very tolerant man.  A wonderful country cook, Daisy worked for many years in the cafeteria of the grade school I attended.  Still today people will reminisce with me about her great cooking. 

 Grandmother, Daisy-front row, left

  My grandparents moved my great-grandmother into a house across the street when she was no longer able to keep up the farm and she eventually moved in with them after a fall resulted in a hip fracture.  After recuperating, walked with a cane which was never away from her side. This was a woman who was used to ruling her roost and woe to those who committed an infraction of her rules within reach of her cane.  She couldn't move fast but she could certainly poke you if she could reach you!  Yes, my grandfather was a very tolerant man.

Now there are very few of us left in the area.  I got to see an aunt and an uncle and a few cousins while there but most have moved off for better opportunities in other places, the same search that led our ancestors to the rich and plentiful farmland of southern Ohio and back and forth across the Scioto River.

My trips to Ohio over the last 7 years have been filled with family responsibilities, illnesses and deaths.  There was hardly time to catch a breath and still get everything done.  This time was different.  I could actually sit and enjoy being in what is a very beautiful place.  The wildflowers and butterflies put on a spectacular show and the weather couldn't have been better.

No matter where I am, the hills of southern Ohio will always be a part of me.

And I ate real tomatoes every day.  Thank you, Ohio.

More on The List

I posted about The List here.  One of the items on my list was improve my Spanish and through a fellow MondoBeyondo-er, I'm getting the opportunity to do just that.  Kimberley is starting an online Spanish course called, Dreaming in Spanish: Connecting Language with Heart  and I get to be one of her primer estudiantes.  I think this first class is filled, but check out her site to find out about future opportunities.

I also have some friends here in town who speak Spanish and have graciously agreed to meet for coffee and Spanish.  It's so much easier to make mistakes in front of friends.

This will be the week to make reservations for the trip to Honduras.  My traveling buddy and I spent Friday morning hammering out details.  I will be helping the medical team for part of the week and also working on the mural.  Some other folks that I've worked with through the years will also be on this trip, so it will be interesting re-establishing those connections.  This is going to be such a great experience in so many ways.

Que tengas un buen día!