Late afternoon in Taos

New Mexico morning

Hi All,

I am here in Taos at a writing/meditation retreat with Natalie Goldberg. This landscape is lovely at all times of year. Laura and I drove up from Santa Fe just ahead of the storm and are now hunkered down to write and read and go to class. After blustery wind and rattling windows in the old Adobe house where we are staying, the weather has settled and the sky is the familiar New Mexico deep blue. I will post pictures over the next few days as time allows.

And maybe some writing.

For you writers out there, todays prompts so far have been:

I remember

I feel through my feet

I don't remember.

It only takes ten minutes to trust first thoughts and

write down what comes to mind.

Those of you who have studied with Nat or with me, there

is no excuse. Get writing! I traveled this far so you could have

some fresh (or old familiar) prompts.

Keep your hand moving across the page!

You'll be glad you did.

Love to all,

me

1000 Paper Cranes

Hey Fam!

I wanted to let everyone know that we are going to fold 1000 paper cranes for the wedding in May and we need help! If you know how to fold paper cranes, want to learn, and have some extra minutes around the edges, we'd love for you to get a pack of origami paper (any color, hopefully standard size) and fold some cranes and send them our way!

1000 paper cranes means luck and longevity and life and love and apparently all things good. We'd love your help! Since we are doing the decorations ourselves, we thought this would be a cool addition.

Love, C

Cape Town

This is going to be a quick post as we just got off a 16 hour flight and I'm playing major catch up. Tim and I just got back from Cape Town where I was sent to run a workshop for three days and I craftily convinced (he didn't need convincing luckily) to play hooky from school and come with me. He surfed in both the Indian Ocean and the Atlantic Ocean in one day (and didn't get eaten by a shark), my workshop went really well- we brought together peacebuilding practitioners from all over the region to talk about best practices, and we had a wonderful few days to wonder around the country after that. It's an extraordinarily beautiful place. Mountains and sea! This post won't describe how complicated a place it is beyond it's breathtaking scenery, and we are both left with a lot of questions and feelings of discomfort regarding how little the lives of black South Africans seem to have really changed since Apartheid ended. We also went on a township tour (apartheid-era slums where the majority of black South Africans still live) which was very powerful. But for now, just some highlights -

The Cape of Good Hope! We hiked out as far as we could, leaving crowds and tour buses behind. This is the most powerful lighthouse in South Africa. The Lucitania went down on Bellows Rock, right out of the picture frame. It was pretty dramatic to be at the southern most tip of Africa.

South African Penguins!

Eating dinner outside in Hermanus by the light of an oil lamp. Earlier we watched Southern Right Whales from the shore with their young. Land-based whale watching!

Cold!

Wine will fix it!

The workshop I ran was held in Stellenbosch, the wine country about 20 minutes outside of Cape Town. Pretty much vineyards and wineries as far as the eye could see. Just like this.

Top of Table Mountain! We took the cable car up. Robben Island is just out of the frame to the left, all of Cape Town right below Tim.

Nature! We didn't quite make it to a safari so this is as close as we could get. This is an eland on a farm where we stayed for a night.

Typical sunset from the road along the coast.

The world is beautiful! I feel so lucky! Love, Carrie

Wolf Neck. Freeport, Maine

Sunset on Thanksgiving.

Sent by Eliza.

The Turkey

As the late fall light slanted through the window of my third grade classroom at The Brayton School, I placed my left hand on brown construction paper, splayed my fingers out as wide as they would go and traced my hand, bumping over each finger tip and then around the curve of the thumb. I cut along the outline with scissors and reached into the back of my desk for my small box of Crayola Crayons. I chose a different color for each finger - crimson red, burnt orange, canary yellow, forest green - and put a smiling face on the thumb. My Thanksgiving turkey was done.

Ben Franklin wanted the national bird to be a turkey. He felt the predatory nature of an eagle to be an unsuitable symbol for America. An eagle will grab prey right out of the mouth of another bird while in flight. It is an aggressive predator.

Turkeys are peaceful, they gather in groups and when roosting, sit in the lowest branches of a tree. Eagles choose the highest point of a tree for their nests. I stood under an eagle's nest on an island in Maine and was amazed by the detritus piled on the ground below - small carcasses, bones, muscle shells, twigs gathered and never used, white droppings. The eagle is a slob! The vegetarian turkey is communal and resourceful, grazing for food on the ground. A locavore.

Ben Franklin had a point. The way we begin can determine how we continue. Perhaps the history of this country would be a little different if there had been a golden turkey at the top of every flag pole rather than an eagle. School children would imagine peace as they saluted the American flag. Instead of eating it on Thanksgiving, perhaps we should be honoring the most peaceful of creatures; the wild turkey.

Happy Thanksgiving everyone.

Postscript: while looking for a graphic to go with this post, I came across a drawing that I had done a few years ago. I guess that most earliest of art projects, the turkey, made a lasting impression on me.

today