Jelisava

Car-stewed Applesauce

Car-stewing the apples results in a delicious flavor / New Jersey Apples / Oct. 2008

How to make “Car-stewed Applesauce”:

Buy a basket of local ripe apples at the farmstand for $2. Put the bag in the back seat of your car and forget to take it out when you get home. Two days later, get in the car and wonder what the smell is. Oh, overripe apples. Note to self: remember to take apples out of car. Get in the car the following warm, sunny afternoon and smell really overripe apples. Finally get apples out of car after four days. Leave apples in plastic bag in kitchen for two more days. Decide that something must be done with the bag of $2 apples. Separate all the good apples from those bad apples. Peel the good ones and chop them into small chunks. Put in a pan and cover with water. Cover and heat until water starts to bubble. Turn off heat and let apples stew some more. Stir in dark brown sugar, cinnamon, and fresh lemon juice to taste. Serve hot or cold. Good with yogurt on top. Ahhh, I think this is the best applesauce I ever had.

Treasure code

My small corner of the world / New Jersey / Nov. 2007

For a long time, even after I lost nearly every scrap of faith, I carried around this moment, this prayer, like a special treasure code I would take out and utter as needed. “Thank you, God, for allowing me to be a small part of your enormous and beautiful universe.”

~ from The Lost Ravioli Recipes of Hoboken by Laura Schenone

Slant of sunlight

Dappled afternoon sunlight plays tricks ... can you find the hidden pumpkin face? Hint: the elephant is staring right at it / New Jersey / Oct. 2008

"O woman, with a mind Picasso
could have painted, giving you many cheeks,
each one turned a different way."

~ an excerpt from "Back with the Quakers" by Betsy Sholl

Practice seeing

Look how light changes the color and tone of the liquid in these bottles — they are all exactly the same, but the sunlight makes them look completely different / Tennessee / Jan. 2007

“Practice seeing the little things.
Gather glimpses of colors, shapes, tones, and shifts you usually ignore.”

~ Rob Brezsney, from his book Pronoia Is the Antidote for Paranoia: How the Whole World Is Conspiring to Shower You with Blessings

Flip-Folded

Fabric Flip-Fold / New Jersey / Oct. 2008

My old leather card wallet finally came apart. I liked it because it fit in my pocket (it was approximately 2.5 x 3.5 inches) and held the necessary papers of our times: driver's license, credit card, library card, business cards, stash-of-cash (and a few inspirational words tucked in, too). In the spirit of the times — re-use/re-cycle/re-store — I fashioned a new one out of fabric and ribbon scraps. It took just a few hours to put together, sewing by hand, and holds my “personal effects” in style. If you want to make one, the directions are here:

Download fabric_flipfold_102108.pdf

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It's about all of our tracks

Changing the landscape; our shiny new porch / New Jersey / Oct. 2008

OUR PIECE OF THE PLANET (Naš Komad Planeta)

a few hectares
of the land our own piece
of the planet in the cadastre register
that sounds really good
speaks of our verve
and exceptional pleasure
we are changing the landscape
we are holding it carefully and
courageously in our arms
walking we are turning the planet
with our legs because our piece
is not just a delineated plot of land
it’s about all of our tracks
path cardiograms we are leaving
on the very heart of the landscape
in the soil under our fingernails
on our fingernails under the ground

~ Croatian poet Slađan Lipovec (from: Rijeke i mjesečine)

Opportunity, equality, social and economic justice

Petunia "blooming" out of tree stump / Mountain House / Aug. 2008

"... I want my America back, I want my country back."

~ Bruce Springsteen at Philadelphia's Vote for Change rally

Hang out on the line

Clothes last longer. Where do you think lint comes from? * / New Jersey / Sept. 2008

The dryer has stopped drying. So a make-shift clothesline goes up. There is something comforting and alive about a full clothesline. The late September sun is so strong that the dishtowels seemingly dry in minutes.

* One of the top 10 reasons to hang your clothes out to dry from Project Laundry List. They advocate "making air-drying your laundry acceptable and desirable as a simple and effective way to save energy." Another good reason to "hang out": Sunlight bleaches and disinfects. And: It is an outdoor experience that is meditative.

Practice being kind

Mosaic mixture of a Mexican tile, bowl fragments, blue tile, Italian flower pot fragments, and leftover bits of white subway tile with terracotta-colored grout (mixing orange and red paint into antique white grout) / New Jersey / Sept. 2008

I heard a man on the radio say this: we should practice being kind. What a beautiful idea. We practice so may things to "better" ourselves. Why isn't kindness taught in schools the way reading and math are? Acts of kindness can make us better people and impact all the people we touch. Let's resolve to practice being kind.

* kind  1. gentle, considerate, and friendly in nature or behavior; 2. proceeding from or characterized by good-heartedness.

The sound of thought

At the girls' barn jam in the O's newly constructed barn we stomped our feet to the rhythms and freely spilled our drinks on the floor / New Jersey / Sept. 2008

Because difference constitutes music . . .
Sound is . . . the rubbing of notes between two drops of water, the breath between the note and the silence, the sound of thought.
. . . To write is to note down the music of the world.

~ Helene Cixous