at the end of the day, there's always spinach

As I walk to the bus stop early this morning, I’m thinking – surely it is the last time this season that I will be seeing this?





After classes, Ed drives me to the garage that had been attending to the door issues of my bright red Ford Escort. Insofar as his car (or truck) experiences problems that he cannot fix, he takes them to J&K Repair and it is always the lowest bid and the best work in town. The door now opens on my Escort, the engine light has quit flashing, and the charge is all of $30.

Unfortunately, J&K is close to Farm & Fleet and so we have to stop there as well. To pick up a steel flat stock, and also a trowel for the cement job that needs to be done to support the jackposts in the basement of the farmhouse. Enough construction talk for you?

I am a tad concerned when Ed tells me that smoothing cement is a first for him. Mixing it? Working with it? Fine, but apparently smoothing it is an art form that doesn’t come easy for the novice. Why does it matter that it’s not smooth – I ask him. You don’t care what the basement looks like, but I do. Why? I know I’m not likely to get much of an answer there and indeed I get simply – because.

We stop at Menards as well. There, we pick up more lighting fixtures and we examine switches and tracks and all forms of electrical fittings. Loaded with all good deals, we head out. It’s been a long day. I haven’t the oomph even for a trip to the grocery store.

We eat eggs and defrosted bagels and the few shreds of CSA spinach left in the refrigerator.

transitional times

It’s good that in travel, you do not know what awaits you or else, quite likely, you’d never leave the soft cushions of your couch.

In Atlanta, the Delta agents put me on so many flights that are then canceled or delayed that when I finally appear at the gate of one that is to soon leave for Chicago, the agent takes one look at the record before her, then passes me off to her supervisor.

The flight itself is a riot of missteps and malfunctions. Long delay in departure because the incoming plane -- a flight from Cancun -- is late. (Who could blame them. Stay with the warm weather as long as you can.) Then, a pull away from the gate and a quick return, because the auxiliary engine dies. One could say that it’s good to find this out while still on the ground. One could also say that sitting for over an hour in a plane where nothing works, not even the air flow, sucks. And when the captain says he believes it is now okay, you wonder if he’s making it up to keep you happy. And you suddenly remember that the copilot looks like she is half the age of your younger daughter, and that was fine and charming when things were going smoothly but now you wish she looked more like Captain Sully.

We do take off though and of course, we hit the terrible weather in Chicago just in time. So we are now in a holding pattern. Until cleared for landing. Which happens far far later than what was promised. Then, with a thud, we are on the ground. I know, I know, everyone needs to have their first difficult landing.

It is then 5:30 and I say to myself – well, at least I’ll easily make the 6:30 bus to Madison. That’s before the long taxi: for some God knows why reason, it is taking 45 minutes for the plane to find the gate. It is as if I were driving with someone who could not find a parking space in lower Manhattan. We canvass the entire airport and then some.

But, I make the 6:30 (running) and I make it back to Madison just in time to see the wet mush turn into ice on the pavement. There is so much of it that it freezes quickly over strips of wet snow. Ed says that driving isn’t too awful: at least the road has texture (of a frozen sort).



This morning we go to the farmhouse to study the progress.





Ed has removed all traces of the chimney and has also moved out great boulders (note these at the bottom right) that had been used to support it.





He is digging a hole to pour in the cement and I am reminded of a problem I gave my Fall Semester Torts class about a building that toppled because (maybe) the proportions of liquid to cement were not right. I hope that my traveling pal knows his proportions.

Andy comes – poor Andy with the possibly sprained knee. We could have talked about our various ailments but we didn’t do that (too much). Instead, we talk building talk. I love it all – hearing the banter about beams and switches, I even do not mind that Ed weighs in now on how he would have done the kitchen in a completely different way than what I have planned out. He is given a free pass for poor behavior just because I am so grateful for the work he did in moving all the boulders and dirt out of the basement.


I have to leave eventually to teach my many hours of classes. I tell the students how hard I worked to get here from Albuquerque on time, but they probably wish that I hadn’t been quite so successful. A free day is a free day, after all.

Outside my office, the walk down Bascom Hill remains completely iced over.





It’s as if at this point we’ve all given up. Forget it, we’re done. It’ll melt eventually.

I have a dinner meet-up just off the Square (at the cozy-wonderful Kitchen) and I pass a Capitol that is unusually busy and unusually beautiful, what with the people there at these late hours and the swirling snow.



But I have this to say about being back in Madison:  at this point, I am officially sick of winter.

from Atlanta, but it should have been Minneapolis

The winter of travel discontent. Except, truthfully, I am not harmed nor even frustrated by all the flight disruptions that continue to plague me this season. I am merely taking it in. And this latest pickle – a snowstorm, or wintry mix storm, or some kind of meteorological chaos now in the Midwest – was already in the works many days back. When the inevitable email came in Saturday midnight, just as we were winding down one last talk around the kitchen table and I read the announcement that both Minneapolis and Madison had canceled flights for the next day, I was not surprised.

I was also not surprised that I could not reach Delta right away, that it took many many tries and that I was put on hold for 1.5 hours – taking me now to 3 a.m. and still without a seat to the Midwest for the next day.

But, luck was surely with me and the beleaguered night agent finally found a seat on a terribly early flight out (in just a few hours!) -- to Atlanta. And from there to Chicago. Maybe. And from there we’ll see.


I am in that state of contentedness that comes when you thought you’d have yourself a tortuous journey and instead you’re put in a comfortable seat on a smooth flight -- all this, on the tail end of a most wonderful Saturday in Santa Fe.

Lovely Santa Fe. Even as, I have to admit this – the town is different than I had imagined it. Which only tells me that I shouldn’t wait until I’m good and old before I visit places because when I finally do go, I have to wipe out all past images and work hard to start with a clean slate. You rarely travel with a clean slate once you get older.

What I find now is a sprawling town, high up in the hills, but quite flat actually. As if someone had carved out space for it up there where the sky seems very very close and, at times, very very blue.





We start with a look at the Farmers’ Market (which is quite near the Flea Market and so we cover both).





I am in the southwest. Yes, there are apples and heirloom tomatoes and quite a number of vendors sell goat cheeses and honeys – even the south has its winter season. But the colors are different here (even the fresh eggs have a palate of soft hues I hadn’t seen before, except maybe in an Easter basket).





And some foods just shout New Mexico. The chilis, the posole, the lavender. Woolen goods, yes, maybe I could find those in Madison (though one vendor says this about her products: I sheer them, dye them and knit them myself). But not prune flatcakes and certainly not the beads and buckles and boots that I see here.
















There is a strong tribal presence among the vendors. And an even greater number of American Indian sellers up on the Square. The Plaza. A nod to Mexico, I'm told,  in the layout and the style of housing along the perimeter.










Do I buy anything? Well yes. A tiny turquoise bead, lavender soap, chipotle chocolate fudge. We are a frugal bunch, but when we are together, something within me loosens up and it’s all that I can do not to buy another carpet, for example.






I say another, because on two of the previous reunions I came home with carpets. And now, in Santa Fe, we meet a most affable fellow from Morocco, and I begin to think that there is something about carpets and these friends of mine that fits too well, as if I’m looking not at carpets at all but at warm patterns woven in places that are distant and dangerous – Pakistan, Afghanistan, Kuba on the Caspian Sea ... On and on, we listen to our man talk about the places where he can find the most fantastic carpets and I can almost see him, dark with a long and lovely pony tail, placing silver coins into the hands of tribal men whose rugs flank the backs of mules or maybe even llamas.


Santa Fe has, of course, less exotic but no less beautiful art too. Lots of it. Gallery upon gallery. Lovely places and so terribly expensive that really, I feel sad for the artist and the gallery owner because surely a sale does not happen frequently here.










We have a southwestern lunch – posole stew for me, and somewhere in the late afternoon we stop for an espresso and it is sublime to sip this outside and to eat raw chocolate even as I never recall having had raw chocolate before.





It’s a blustery day. The wind kicks up the dust and blows balls of brittle brush across the highway. We talk about how dusty New Mexico can be – all gray and brown now – nothing’s green yet, if indeed it ever is green. When rain drops come for a brief second, I hear from all corners – we’re grateful for every bit we get. (Albuquerque’s annual rainfall is 6 inches; how about that, Seattle!)





We have dinner back down in the valley, not far from the banks of the Rio Grande. It’s a lovely restaurant. Our hosts ask us if we have had enough of the spices of the southwest and I think – no, not all. Only can you please refill my glass of water? And lots of ice?

And then it all ends – this very brief week-end far from the blizzards and snow piles and icy walks home from the grocery store. We grow older, my friends and I, at the same pace – how remarkable is that – we’re all the same number of minutes closer to our various looming retirements and pensions and all other things you hear mentioned by people who would not be your parents but grandparents. And it is quite satisfying to know that we can fret about access to health care for all and then move on to a review of who dabbled in what art or travel in the year that just ended.





So, now, let me face the Midwest and the blizzards. Surely there is a way to get back to town in time for classes tomorrow. Surely there is.

on the road to Santa Fe

Morning in Albuquerque.





It’s as if I am playing catch up this week-end. Appearing in places I have long wanted to visit and, too, spending time with friends who live nicely south, yes, so very nice that it is indeed south, but south is far from north and so we haven’t much in the way of face to face contact in the course of the year. So we catch up now.





And we take a day trip to Santa Fe. I’m the outlier here – I’ve never traveled here. Yes, I know of its fantastic reputation. Some say it is the second most important art center in the country, after New York. A place of O’Keefe paintings (though she lived mainly just outside the city) and of adobe and faux-dobe houses, all high, where the air is thin and clear and the skies can be a raging blue.

All that.  A mere hour's drive from Albuquerque.





I'll say more tomorrow, during the delays I'm sure to have at Midwestern airports as I fly north again, straight into the snowstorm back home.

from Albuquerque

If ever there was good luck, I have it in this: my best pals from law school days (when I was a student), all three of them, have settled in the south (in the case of one, only for the winter). Arizona, Florida, and now also New Mexico.

When we have our annual reunion, typically in February, we toss around ideas as to whose house we should visit. Madison never makes the short list. We don’t even pretend.

And so I’m in Albuquerque for the week-end. Two nights only, but my work schedule is such that it’s all I can spit out in the middle of the semester.

I’ve never been to Albuquerque before. I vaguely remember driving through some bit of New Mexico on a family road trip when I was eight, but we hardly paused. We were in a hurry to get back to New York, having spent too long in Las Vegas. (No, no, my parents did not get hooked on slot machines. My dad says some speed demon ran a light and rammed right into us, and in the early sixties it seems that the person who spoke with greatest conviction prevailed. In any case, the car needed a new front and we had to wait for it.)

But even without having ever seen any of it, I have often said that if I ever moved south, I’d probably consider New Mexico. I spoke in hypotheticals as I am certain I will never move away from Wisconsin, but still, in my imagination, New Mexico has the great combination of a decent climate and exquisite light, especially in the cold season.

My friend tells me that Albuquerque has 300 days of sunshine annually and that we should get a good share this week-end as they’ve had a great number of the nonsunny ones already. I don’t pay attention to those statistics anymore. I’ve been in too many places where they say that THEY have 300 sunny days and I’ve concluded that this means nothing at all, except maybe that someone who counts such things is rounding up to the nearest hundred.

But in fact, it is a tiny bit sunny now. And oh, so very lovely!




arriving




a detour to Los Poblanos




among chickens and goats




a walk along the Rio Grande


Light in Albuquerque: at sunset, the hills turn red.

and so it moves forward

Early this morning, I nudge Ed to get going. No time to waste. I want to go out to the farmhouse before my morning class. I want to take one last look before the official reinvention of the interior begins.

And it is a reinvention. Not entirely a complete rebuilding  – the price for that would have been too high, but a reinvention and completion of the spaces we’re stuck with.


I admire now Ed’s work on the chimney removal – from the roof, all the way down to the basement (so many chipped bricks tossed out the window for now! What do you do with charred and chipped bricks?) and I see now what he meant when he said that at this moment, the floors are being supported by two clumsily placed wooden poles. Dismantling the chimney revealed what he had long suspected -- there's not much there to brace the floors above.





And so the very first task for the construction team (Andy and his grandson, with an occasional assist from Ed) will be to support the floors. Right now you could say that they sort of undulate. More like an ocean on a breezy day than a floor in a solid farmhouse.


Andy comes and I listen to them talk about this point load and that microlam. Reassuring builders’ talk. Like we all have a game plan going.

Me, I’ve been the one that has taken on the job of reinventing a livable space (with an occasional assist from Ed). I made the call on what we can live with and what has to be scrapped or resurfaced.

In the meantime, the bugs, especially the box elder beetles keep popping up from from the cracks in the walls and ceilings – a whole new batch waking up to the almost spring air. I haven’t time to vacuum them up today. I cast one quick hungry look at the spring-like landscape – those are berry canes to the left, and fruit trees, and there is a patch intended for mushrooms underneath.





I hurry off to teach.

workers

(On the Square today) People to admire: so many who, in their daily working lives put forth an effort, over and beyond what you’d expect.





It was gratifying for me to see support for people who work.





I couldn’t witness this for long because, well, I had classes to prepare. But still, it was a good noon moment. Workers of all yoke, supporting rather than fighting one another.





And as long as I am on the subject of work, I want to also state here my deep appreciation for someone else who, in the last weeks has worked tirelessly to reconfigure the interior of a farmhouse, so that it could be the fresh and open space I would like to see there.

My traveling companion has been covered by construction dust and bits of crumbling cement for days as he has chipped away at the chimney, and then studied the place to understand what's needed to support the floors (which right now have some possibility of falling, one on top of the other).

People doing good work. I admire that.

Now, back to my textbooks.

ground

When life deals you a long hard day, maybe it’s time you had a burger?





That, at least, was my reasoning.

I have burgers maybe once every six months. Typically it would be a default option. Nothing else grabs me and so I succumb. But this burger was premeditated. I ask a friend – want to grab a burger Tuesday night?

Ed’s out of the picture. He's not a burger person. His respect for the animal that once moo-ed makes sinking teeth into a medium rare burger rather difficult.

And I am generally sympathetic. But not tonight. Tonight, I just wanted that burger.

melt down

You’d be surprised how many people do not celebrate Valentine’s Day. A meaningless day, my students tell me. Hallmark stuff. No substance behind it.

Well, yes, but isn’t a celebration of love a sweet idea? I listen to the two women selling espresso on campus talk about their evening plans. Doing anything? One asks. We went out to eat yesterday... today we’re eating the leftovers and watching a romantic movie.

So what’s unpleasant about that, you Valentine's Day detractors, you?

I’m told that Valentine’s Day is the third largest gift giving holiday on the calendar. (After Christmas and Mother’s Day). So I ask my class – you’re not much into Mother’s Day either, I suppose? Huh.

Of course, my occasional traveling friend is downright oppositional to the very idea of calendar days that require you to be a certain way, or do things outside of your personal inclination. Me, well honestly, I don’t place immense significance in Hallmark days, but I do get feisty at the idea that I haven’t a choice in the matter.

But, ultimately, the day is marked not by any Valentine, but by the weather. Sunny and warm. Or, as warm as you could possibly hope for on February 14. Snow-melting warm. Shed the puffy jackets warm. Puddles warm. Warm.




I leave work when the streams of melting snow make sidewalks shine and those walking home quite happy indeed.

by the light

My hands are raw from some cleanser or other. Figures: Sunday is cleaning day.

I finish polishing the condo. We move on to the farm house.

It is such a beautiful day!





So this is it? Home until some time in the future when it is home no more? I watch Ed greet his cat as we drive up. Man and cat.










Then, very quickly, we turn our attention to the farmhouse. (And I have to say, this may well be the most flattering photo ever taken of it.)





Ed returns to the task of dismantling the chimney...





.... I take the vacuum to the second wave of bugs that lethargically crawl out when the weather turns warmer. And another bunch, and then another. How many hundreds winter the weather in this way anyway?

Ed is tired, but the chimney demolition is almost done. We then count light switches in need of repair and I throw ads onto Craigslist for anything that someone may still find useful.

The afternoon hours move forward. I work on classes in a room that has never ending sunshine.

And quite suddenly it is evening. Ready to head back to the condo? – I ask. Ed is worn out, I can tell. Too many bricks to dismantle and throw out onto the melting snow outside.

While he showers, I take a walk down the road. Around the bend, I so often come across deer. Yes, tonight as well. One crosses the road quickly, too fast for me to take note.

Around us, the fields are picking up the hues of a setting sun. I am full of smiles. This is my backyard now. This is my block, my neighborhood.










I take a walk up the road, around the bend, just a few steps more...





The sky fills with the color of a pre-spring evening. Oh! I see a deer come out of a forest. And another! I watch, even as they are mere specks in the open fields.





More come out. Four. Then five. Then seven.

I could come closer, but why should I. Right now I am the intruder. They live here. I’m only getting ready to do so.

One minute the sky is grand, the next minute it is grander still. My road (yes, my road!) snakes up and then down... so different from an urban or even suburban landscape!





We drive back to the city and I throw one last look back at the farmette. Easy to spot, to admire. The sun is gone, but the silo stands out. And the farmhouse. It’s behind the thicket, right close to the silo.





It could be that the years, the very first three of my life, spent in the countryside of Poland, have left their imprint. This place of quiet fields and blazing sunsets sure feels like home.

making plans

It’s curious when the change happens: when you see yourself as belonging to the category of people who are thinking out loud about retirement. Yes, of course, it could be that I will be a very late retiree. It could be that I’ll never see retirement at all. Things happen. Bodies fail suddenly, savings strategies collapse. And, I quite like my work, so there’s that to consider.

Still, as more and more people around me plunge into retirement including, of course, my occasional traveling companion, and including some who are even younger than I, at some moment not too far back I began to play the game as well: how many years before I toss aside a work schedule in favor of...something else?


There is, however, the other side of the coin too: where I think I am still planning what to be when I grow up. I will write my book. I will plant yet another garden. I’ll chase foxes away from chicks, should we choose to breed chicks.


In the meantime, in celebration of a perfect near freezing temp, my older girl and I cross-country skied. She hadn’t done that since she was maybe ten, but somewhere in her there is a gliding gene, because she is both good on ice and good on snow.





Yes, time to get lost in the Arboretum.





If you have two hours to fool with, it’s not a bad place to lose yourself in. Just you and the wild turkeys.

different views

I had hearings to attend this morning, but I forgot to take the materials home with me, so that at least one important document that I sorely needed was in my office. It was the sheet specifying the starting time. 8:30? 9:30? I could not remember. And so, to be on the safe side, by 7:30 I found myself on the bus to campus, arriving at the Law School at an hour when few are there. Ah – sunrise over the Capitol. Almost like a view onto the Pantheon or St. Paul’s, there rising above the chimneys and rooftops of the city.





It turned out I was rather early. By an hour.

Presiding over these hearings is not nearly as fun and glamorous as you’d wish. I take comfort in the fact that I respect and like the remaining hearings officers (these are nonresident appeals hearings) and today the panel included one of my favorites – a woman who lives on a farm south of Madison.

I feel, now especially, that there is much to be learned about life on a farm. (Even as this panelist has farm animals and Ed’s farm only has one cat.)

She talks about how they grew their horses from one, to two, to three, to thirteen.
Thirteen??? How is it that you have thirteen horses?
They mate and give birth. And donkeys – we have donkeys too. 
Why? – I ask. 
Well, just because. 
What do you do with them?  
Feed them.

I think about why people have the things they have. Coveting horses or donkeys or goats. (Or something else.) She has a goat too.

Then there’s the cattle. She and her husband raise cattle for the beef that you and I might want.
Do you name them?
Sure. And when we give them up to the slaughterhouse, next day we’ll get the beef, neatly labeled with the cow’s name on the package.

I doubt that I could eat a steak with a name on it. Even as, every few weeks, I think longingly about having a steak or a burger.

After the hearings, I head back home. You always feel spent after listening to people present their sad stories. From Bascom Hill, I get the usual view of the Capitol, stately as ever, seen now from the campus perspective.





Much much later, I make a final trip to the plumber, reviewing the choices I had made for the farmhouse, regretting some, not others, and then I drive home, marveling at how there are so many ways of doing any one thing well.