vacation

Hi Everyone,

This blog is a good forum for broad sweeping announcements.
Let it be known that David, Barb and Calley are setting off for the wilds
of Maine for a week vacation. David's grandparents established this
"camp" on Lobster Lake (north and east of Moosehead Lake) over 100 years ago.
Gas lights, outhouse, dark sky, bright stars do remind me of my early years at the Hemlocks.
HIs cousins now own it but every few years, we go up. The above photo
shows the view from the swimming rocks.

We are just following the lead of our daughters who model for
us the idea that you've got to keep moving.

Eliza was home for a few days and unpacked and repacked and set off
for Bates College. She will be leading a freshman orientation trip to
none other than the White Mountains. Taking a group of nervous frosh to
the land she loves and knows so well. Lucky them. Hope they are in shape!

Carrie went from Seeds to DC to visit Tim, arrived home for a few days of turn around
time to finish moving out of her Somerville apartment, unpack and repack, and head off
to New York City to begin life as a grad student tomorrow at Columbia. David is
driving her to the train as I write. We will drive down in a few weeks for a visit
and take her the rest of her stuff.

Thank you all for your GREAT comments on our blog. I'm off to the field to
collect more insights and photos to share.

See you in September!
Love,
Barb

Sisters on the Mountain

Eliza and I were finally able to cross paths at her hut in the White Mountains of New Hampshire this mid-August.  I (and two friends from Seeds) met Eli (and two of her old friends from home) at the trailhead on a rare, clear day to hike up Mt. Washington. I immediately gained loads of respect for what Eliza has accomplished this summer. About a quarter of the way up during a water break I asked Eli how many times she has done this hike. I believe the answer was a breezy "50 or something". 

The hut is an amazing scene. Crew members in brightly colored duds cooking delicious food and dealing with the masses of hikers that trickled in from all directions for the rest of the afternoon. The place smelled amazing when we walked in and has a great lived-in quality. You can tell immediately that so much love and intention has gone into ever inch of it. 

We watched Eli give a green technology tour to interested hikers. The hut (along with the seven other huts in the Whites) has a zero carbon footprint and runs entirely off natural resources. The AMC is really setting an example to all of us about how important it is to value the environment in a low impact way. The huts lead by example, not only in their respect and conservation of the environment, but by providing an opportunity for visitors to take a new perspective home, cognizant of the importance of applying these examples to our every day lives. Eli delivered her talk with professional expertise and aplomb considering all of us were standing right in front of her, beaming, giving her double thumbs up and filming the bits about what happens to human waste. 

The hut was at capacity with almost a hundred people and after watching the five-course dinner go out like a well choreographed dance, we crawled up to the roof to watch the sunset. I will and fail to explain the quality of the light up there. The sun lit up the sky as it dipped under the horizon and we were surrounded by what can only be described as an ethereal pink light. The mountain ranges in front of us undulated like waves. I am not kidding, it was overwhelming. We lucked out, I later found out, as roof nights are rare. What an amazing opportunity to live in such a remote and wild place while still being surrounded by a constant flow of interesting and dynamic people, both visitors and co-workers. I can't think of a more important or appropriate thing for Eli to have been doing this summer and I am so excited that I got to experience it for one night. 

The Crickets

As I sit at my computer early this Saturday morning, I do not hear the
weed wackers, the construction vehicles or the sound of mowers.
I hear the crickets. They indicate better than any calendar can that
summer is on the wane.

E.B. White says it better than I ever could in Chapter XV of
Charlotte's Web.
Below is the passage I have read to my students and my family
every fall.

The crickets sang in the grasses.
They sang the song of summer's ending,
a sad, monotonous song. "Summer is over and gone," they sang "Over and gone,
over and gone. Summer is dying, dying."

The crickets felt it was their duty to warn everybody that summertime cannot last
forever. Even on the most beautiful days of the year-the days when summer is
changing into fall- the crickets spread the rumor of sadness and change.

Have you read Charlotte's Web lately? And I don't mean have you watched the animated
movie. It may be entertaining but does not include the wisdom of this book.
I think it should be read every other year starting in first grade and into adulthood.
Birth, death, sadness, joy, change, friendship, longing, even flirtation and love are all in there.

Enjoy these "most beautiful days of the year!"
These days of "sadness and change"
Change is not sad, it is full of possibility.
Which is what fall is all about.

Going, Going, Gone

Dispatch from Seeds of Peace

Hello!

I am so excited to be finally writing a post on this famous blog and have been meaning to all summer but for those of us who have attended or worked at a summer camp, you know that personal time is extremely limited. This is the first time I have ever posted anything on a blog and am currently waiting apprehensively for some photos to upload so please excuse my novice displays of bloggermanship.

I left Seeds of Peace about a week ago. My day job at Seeds of Group Challenge Facilitator. I worked with a co-facilitator to design and implement empowerment and coexistence programs. At Seeds the kids have two and a half hours of dialogue every day in which they are put through the emotional ringer, asked to question every notion they have ever had about their personal and national identity, and face people from "the other side" that they have most likely been taught to dehumanize their entire lives. Group Challenge is the partner program to this dialogue, the physical manifestation of these difficult conversations. We put the kids through

This is a picture of my second session bunk. There is a small program within Seeds called the Maine Seeds program. They bring kids from all different backgrounds from all over Maine and engage them in conversations about race, class and issues facing Maine.


Outward Bound style team building and leadership initiatives, culminating in the high ropes course. We worked closely with the dialogue facilitators, communicating constantly about group and one on one dynamics of the group, as much of dialogue plays itself out on the Group Challenge course.
Ultimately we put pairs of kids together on the high ropes course, usually kids from different countries or regions who just could not get along or struggled all camp with their relationship. All of a sudden you are balancing on a wire with someone you never thought you could rely on and the only way you can complete the task is to work together. I'm still floored by the courage, passion, focus and intention these kids brought to camp. It is emphasized from the beginning that they are here to do hard, hard work.

It is an emotional pressure cooker of a place, and most of these kids are coming from places where violence, discrimination and nationalism shape their daily lives. It was an amazing opportunity to get to know some of the world's most deadly and protracted conflicts through the stories of adolescents who live it everyday.

I know that there have been some subtle shifts in the deep structure of my consciousness because of the relationships and perspectives that developed this summer. I am energized and deeply grateful for the experience.

I've decided to take this momentum and jump into the graduate program at Columbia that I have been holding at arms' length until now. I want to do a dual degree in Public Policy and Social Work, focusing on conflict resolution and human rights.
More to follow!

I have to go move to New York City now.

Love love love to everyone, Carrie


Mahad and Catherine, just off the high ropes.
















Two campers on one of the high elements at the top of telephone poles.

alternative energy 101

Question: Is this a relic of the past or is it the hope for the future?

Answer: Both

Our lawn mower finally died. The one I poured gas into through a funnel. The one that I quessed was killing small amphibians and insects as I powered on. The one that eventually emitted dark black smoke so that I had a headache when I was done mowing. It was self propelled and I just had to guide it as it made it's way across the lawn. David kept it going with baling wire and string until finally oil spilled out and it gave it's last gasp. Done.
I never liked it. A necessary evil of (yes, we do live in...) suburbia.

So the discussions started over the dinner table. Should we buy a Neutron? It is an electric lawn mower made in Vergennes, Vermont and advertised in all environmental magazines. Expensive of course and only good for small lawns. Our "lawn" is a combination of many green plants growing together. Weeds and grass intermingled, so the mower has to be rugged. Probably not the solution for us.

In the 1950's of my youth, lawns were perfect and weeds not tolerated. My dad had a tool that looked like a giant syringe as long as a cane so you didn't even have to bend down to use it. The plastic tube was a tasteful environmental green color. He filled it with acrid smelling deadly chemicals and gave a shot to every dandelion in the yard. This was before the publication of Rachel Carson's book, Silent Spring. In those days America was having a love affair with chemicals. In her book, she blew the whistle on the powerful chemical companies. Her editor at Houghton Mifflin, Paul Brooks, took a risk publishing such a controversial book. It is still in print. Because of it, eagles are back on the coast of Maine. In spite of it, cancer is everywhere.

Back to the lawn mower. As our discussions continued, the grass grew; verdant this year with all the rain. I borrowed a friends' lawn mower twice but grew weary of hauling that thing over here and returning it politely with a full tank.
One day in frustration, I grabbed the old push mower that we had brought up from Connecticut when David's mother moved out.

I sighed and thought, As if this will work! but started pushing. The familiar clack clack clack of the blades took me right back to being a kid. I began to smell that wonderful green smell of freshly mown grass which had so long been obfuscated by the smell of burning oil. And I was creating a line of mown grass! It was actually working! Granted it looked a little like a bad haircut but the solution is to hit it from the other direction as well. The grass had gotten long at this point in the summer and the tall stubborn weeds that simply lay down as the mower went over and popped back up victorious, had to be pulled out by hand. But I liked the experience. I sweated like they did in the old days. I seem to remember my brothers doing this in the New Jersey heat with streaks of sweat soaking through the backs of their tee shirts.

I enjoyed the process. After years of wincing and gagging behind the deafening Toro, I could mow the lawn in peace and get lost in my thoughts and really notice the world around me. Somehow we've been led to believe that we need bigger and bigger machines to accomplish simple tasks. Time to rediscover an alternative energy source: ourselves.

cake

Things are a little slow in the family blog world these days. I imagine people are in transit or kicking back or tired of the rain or tired of blogging so I decided I better do my part to get things jump started.
I knew you would all be interested to see Eliza's birthday cake. It is modeled after my childhood favorite...chocolate wafer cookies layered with whipped cream. Inspired by Brad's post, I learned that this cake becomes a 4th of July cake when raspberries and blueberries are added in the American flag design. It becomes a birthday cake when Eliza's initials are written in fruit. (surely you see them in red!) We had no problem polishing it off.
Hikers have to have their share of chocolate! She headed back up Mt.Washington after our celebration.
Happy August everyone! Hope you are all well.

another 4,000 footer

Last weekend we climbed Mt. Abe in Lincoln, Vermont.
Calley's first mountain!

laundry in Vermont

I noticed laundry hanging on covered porches a lot in Vermont. This may be due to the unsettled weather this year. Sun in the morning, rain in the afternoon, quick thunder storm and sun in the evening.

August 4th!!!!!!

Lovely Leos


Eliza's birthday


Sylvia and Brad's wedding!

What a wonderful time we all had a year ago as we came from near and far to celebrate Sylvia and Brad's wedding.
And of course Sylvia and Brad included Eliza in the celebration with a cake and song to celebrate her 21st birthday on the very same day.

Happy 22nd Birthday, Eliza!
Happy First Anniversary, Sylvia and Brad!
Happy Birthday Sylvia and Jessie, this month!
Wish we were all together again.