Category Archives: To Be Thankful

Exteriors: Lake Como

November 4, 2011 By in To Be Thankful, To Breathe, To Travel Tags: , , , , , , 2 Comments

I took these pictures while visiting Lake Como recently.  What a beautiful place!  The sun sparkled on the lake, the mountains rose up above the clouds, the air was crisp.  With the shimmering of the water, the turning of the leaves to red and gold, and the huge thrust of the mountains, and it is beautiful wherever you look.  It’s the kind of place that you look out onto the lake and up into the mountains and you can’t help but breathe deeply and slowly.

We stayed at the magnificent Villa d’Este.  A grand villa on the shores of Lake Como.  Very beautiful.  Most of the pictures above were taken there.

One day we took a ferry across the lake and had a lovely lunch in a town called Bellagio (see the picture of the colorful buildings above).  With a bottle of wine, and the children (and us) well-nourished by the wonderful meal, we whiled away the afternoon with no sense of time and a feeling of contentment.  Italy is beautiful.

Thank you

September 7, 2011 By in To Be Thankful Tags: , , , , 7 Comments

This is the beautiful sunset here tonight.  Thank you for all your well wishes.  I’m getting better every day!

This is the land the sunset washes,

These are the banks of the Yellow Sea;

Where it rose, or whither it rushes,

These are the western mystery!

Night after night her purple traffic

Strews the landing with opal bales;

Merchantmen poise upon horizons,

Dip, and vanish with fairy sails.

~Emily Dickinson


Peace Corps, Niger/Endings

February 25, 2011 By in To Be Patient, To Be Thankful, to seize the day 1 Comment



I was a Peace Corps Volunteer in Niger.  For two years I lived in that dusty, difficult, beautiful, challenging and amazing country.  I lived in a village called Ouallam, north of the capital city of Niamey.  My experience there was life-changing, as simple as and as complicated as that.

Life there for me mirrored the harshness and contradictions of that country — I made wonderful friends, and at times I felt very lonely.  Through my friendships and my work with the people there, I experienced the consequences of poverty, the sorrow of death, the happiness of simple pleasures, the warmth of connection and community.

I had a little dog named Sam and a calf named Tom.  I worked at a clinic for mothers and babies, helping with the baby weighings, talking about child nutrition and breastfeeding with the women there.  I was lucky to see babies born, a miracle.   And I was devastated to witness a stillbirth, where even the mother, following the birthing custom, gave birth in complete silence.

Those moments, both happy and sad, stay with me to this day.

I made a home in Niger.  A home with a stick bed, a mosquito net, an outhouse, my animals, my friends.

I was sad to learn about the kidnapping and death of some French aid workers in January, and to learn that Peace Corps evacuated its volunteers.  My heart goes out to the families of those aid workers and to the volunteers ending their service.

I didn’t feel fear often in Niger, but I do remember a trip further North with some fellow volunteers where we were surrounded in the main square, a moment of insecurity and fear before we were able to move out of the crowd and into a safe place.  But mostly my own memories are of feeling welcome and at home.

In my current home, I have some reminders of my time there.   The pictures posted show a hat I bought there, and the fringed leather box on the mantle contains three tea cups — drinking sweet hot tea with Tuareg friends being a favorite memory.

Even though the year has only just begun, it’s been a week of endings.   A beloved former teacher, Sheila Nielsen, died.  She was vibrant and energetic.  Straightforward.  Where the slow pace of Niger may have taught me a certain amount of patience, I think that Mrs. Nielsen taught me something different.  She taught me to “Seize the Day.”

So in the face of many endings, there is the possibility for new beginnings.  And I remind myself, as Mrs. Nielsen might have said “Carpe Diem.”

What is ending/beginning for you in your life?

A Memoir about Life and Yoga

January 4, 2011 By in To Be Thankful, To Breathe, To Observe, To Read Leave a comment

I just finished reading Claire Dederer’s book Poser, My Life in Twenty-Three Yoga Poses.  I picked it up after I read a review of it, because it looked like it fit.  And it does.  Like Dederer, I’m the daughter of a single hippie mother. Like Dederer, I have children, I’ve been married ten years, I’m a writer, and I do yoga.  Though I am relatively new to yoga — I’ve really only been doing it for a year.

I started yoga at first because I one night I was reading to my children, and after I finished the book, I tried to sit up — and, well, I could barely sit up, and I realized how weak some of my core muscles had become.  Also, I enjoy running sometimes, but I had grown tired of pounding my body around in Austin’s exquisite summer heat.  Also, I was feeling bad about my posture, I wanted to open up and get stronger.

Yoga is not for everyone, but it gives me something that I never had before.  For whatever reason, and I know I have written about this before, I grew up being uncomfortable in my body.  Feeling awkward, not at home.  Sometimes I think it must have happened at birth — I was injured when I was born and I spent the first several weeks alone without my mother in the hospital.  Maybe that gave me a sort of insecurity in my body  – not being touched enough during those early weeks.  Or maybe not.  Maybe there are other reasons, maybe it is just one of my challenges.  Yoga helps me feel at home in my body.  Yes stronger, leaner, straighter, and feeling more beautiful too, but it also gives me that feeling of being at home, comfortable.

As someone who as always searched for a home, (I think we all search for that, really — a physical home for ourselves and our families, an emotional home in the hearts of those we love) I didn’t realize that in one sense, finding a home in myself was the first step.

Also, another good thing about yoga for me:  I am able to release my cares and worries and troubles and questions during my yoga class.  Maybe it’s something about the breathing, or maybe it’s a concentration thing — upside down in a head stand, it’s hard to think of anything but that one fact of being upside down in a head stand.  So during yoga class I just breathe deeply and move in ways that feel both delicious and wonderful, and also hurt too, in a way  – that good, stretching kind of hurt-so-good.  Through all that, I can just let go of everything else.

And yoga, first in a physical way, but absolutely also in an emotional way too, has taught me to be patient with myself, and to forgive myself and to let go of my fears too.  This all sounds very deep and philosophical, but the simple truth is, yoga makes me feel good inside and out, all over.  If you had told me two years ago that yoga would be a catalyst for me, I would have laughed.  I have skepticism in me.  Maybe that’s one reason it took me so long to try it out.

I’m reminded of this quote by Rainer Maria Rilke, because somehow it speaks a little to what I have learned in the year I have been doing yoga:

Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves like locked rooms and like books that are written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps gradually, without noticing it, you will live along some distant day into the answer. ~Letters to a Young Poet

Christmas Dinner is Finished (Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year)

December 27, 2010 By in To Be Happy, To Be Thankful, To Celebrate 6 Comments

It was wonderful to gather with friends and family for Christmas dinner — here are some some pictures of our festive table — decorated with handmade placemats in bright patterns, candles of all shapes and sizes, shells and crystals, and gingerbread houses, homemade lanterns (jars plus colored tissue paper plus glue), figures from our nativity scene, charming ceramic salt and pepper shakers, citrus fruit, and anything else we could find around the house that looked pretty!  We had a lot of fun decorating the table.

But it was most fun to share a meal with our loved ones.  Since many of those gathered did not know each other well, my sister had an idea — we would introduce each other, tell a little bit about every person at the table.  So one by one, all of us taking turns, we told stories and shared memories about each other.  Afterwards, everyone felt appreciated, loved and we all felt closer with each other.  It was a special moment of being together — which is what the holidays is all about.

Thanksgiving and Harvest Time: The New (virtual) Agri-Culture

November 17, 2009 By in To Be Thankful, To Farm, To Garden Tags: , , , , , , , , 2 Comments

Thanksgiving: a traditional time for families to gather together, eat turkey or nut loaf and pumpkin pie, and be thankful.  For the pilgrims who were taught how to plant and grow corn and squash, and how to hunt and fish in an unfamiliar environment, by the Native Americans, the first Thanksgiving was a three-day harvest festival to celebrate the bounty of the new world.  Harvest festivals have been around a long time.  The harvest has been celebrated in many cultures, ancient and new — the Greeks honored Demeter, the Goddess of Agriculture, and the Romans celebrated the Goddess of vegetation, Cerelia.  The Hindus celebrated Gauri, Goddess of the Harvest, and the Hebrews have the Feast of the Tabernacles, or Sukkot.

But it’s no surprise that  Thanksgiving today has become divorced from the harvest, though not from food.  Most of us no longer depend on our own harvest to eat, it’s only a matter of whether the store is open and if we have some money in our pockets to purchase our desired edibles and condiments.  But just because we no longer harvest our own food, doesn’t mean that farming and the agrarian lifestyle is not of deep interest to many people.

Witness the popularity of Farmville, a game played on Facebook, where people grow virtual crops on their  virtual farms.  NPR featured an interesting interview with Dean Takahashi of VentureBeat the other day about the immense popularity of this game — over 63 million people play each month.  In one sense, people are using the game to connect with friends, an excuse to communicate (and something to communicate about).  And in another sense, people regard farming as a fanciful and fun activity, and are yearning themselves to return to simpler times.

Youtube is filled with videos about Farmville and the farms created on them:

The popularity of the game points to the fact that people are interested in farming and in where their food comes from, even if they are unable to grow it themselves.  People are interested in organic food, biodynamic food,  and eating seasonally and locally, both for health reasons and for environmental reasons.

Most of us do not farm our own food, but even if you live in an urban area, it might still be possible to grow a little something for your family.  Many cities have programs that encourage and promote backyard gardening.  In Austin, Gardens, and Resolution Gardens are just two companies willing to help backyard gardeners.  Needless to say, gardening is a wonderful activity for children.

Unfortunately, I will not have grown any of the harvest bounty that will bless my Thanksgiving table.  Not this year, anyway.  But I hope to get a garden started, in my small urban back yard.  And next year, I hope to have my own harvest to celebrate.

What about you?  Will you serve any home-grown food this Thanksgiving?