MaryAlice Musings and More

Unbelievable, the month of January is almost done. Just as the month seemed to fly by, it also feels like years ago that I made black eye peas for New Years Day.   We, as a nation, have survived an insurrection. Fewer have survived another month of Covid.  The pandemic rages on, especially in the U.S.   I have vaccine envy and no appointment.   The past president has been impeached again, the only president to be impeached not once but twice.  We have a new President, a new Vice-President and people who actually can do and want to do their jobs for our country.   My kicksled has made it from Finland, to Ely, Minnesota and is now on it's way to Willow Street in Patten, Maine.   And I keep making ice globes.  I am happy hunkering down.  I seem to be very busy.  My volunteer life has somehow turned into "work-life" and my days are busy.  Time at the computer.  Time on zoom and calls.  I have had good connecting even tho...

  I ventured out of my house today!  I really have no idea when I have left Patten or taken a drive through Shin Pond and the to the North End.  I think it might be three weeks, but who knows, it's Covid time.  I had a number of stops and things to do in making my big trip to Millinocket!  I just laughed out loud about a day of "to do's" in Millinocket.   I left home mid-morning and headed to Millinocket Floral .  I dropped off two of my favorite vases and set a time to stop back to pick up my transformed vases.  I love fresh flowers.  They are a very special treat especially in the middle of a winter that has more than our share of very gray days.   It feels decadent to have not one but two vases of beautiful flowers, and Rhonda has made such beautiful bouquets and they last so very long.   Besides flowers, I was able to have brief, safe visit with Emilie and Will.  I was working at the library today and Emilie and Will s...

    The winds have stopped and the temperature has moderated a bit.   I am stepping aside from the "bluster and righteousness" that is coming from our nation's capitol.  The same capitol that was attacked just twenty days ago.   Today I got my latest installment of ice globes ready for their debut.  I put a favorite bench out on the front lawn, and after dark tonight I put my six globes out for display.  I called Ted and Terry and asked if they could see them from their house - they could.  I was delighted.  Simple pleasures and simple action.  Let their be light.  I can be a light!  

  I found myself feeling a little sorry for myself today.   I am so ready to have someone else's cooking, to go to a really good restaurant and enjoy exploring dishes I seldom or never have tasted.   Instead of encouraging a downward spiral I pulled out one of my favorite cookbooks and I am making a recipe that I have never made from the book.  While I finish this blog my first attempt at Chicken Masala is bubbling away on the stove. I made my own mixture of Garam Masala.  I have the jasmine rice warming in the rice cooker.  The aroma coming form the kitchen is really good. I am imagining walking into a neighborhood, sit down and pull up your sleeves and enjoy whatever special they have for the day. Today's special Chicken Masala with Jasmine rice and steamed green peas.  While the masala is cooking I have a tray of ice globes that are getting frozen.  I am hopeful that I can bring them by the end of the night.   I did try some food...

I have two ice globes  sitting on a TV Tray on my front porch and they look much better than this picture of them.  That may be your invitation to make your own ice globes and see how beautiful they are when shining in the cold darkness.    I have for the past two weeks been trying my hand at making a functional snow globe.   The first batch of balloons I bought were not very flexible and didn't make for a shape that would hold a candle.    My other challenge was it was not really cold enough.  It needs to be cold enough to freeze the outside of the shape but not freeze all the way through.    I have a small odd size globe glowing it is actually sitting on it's side, and I had to work make a space large enough for a candle and also stay safely in place. On Friday I bought some other balloons and today I had a bigger more successful globe.  They are both glowing. I am going to make more tomorrow.  I plan to move the gl...

  I may be the world's worst selfie taker.  I already have a problem - when I laugh or smile my eyes pretty much close - if I open them wide I look like someone else. On top of it all  I really don't enjoy taking my own picture.  But this morning I was moved to make my "unfinished" selfie.   My hair is longer than ever, even in my most absolutely hippest of hippie days.  Funny I never really felt like a "hippie",  I felt like me in experimentation.  I was discovering the world.  I was open.  I was young.  I liked the Grateful Dead.  I had long straight very dark hair.  Fifty years later I have long, straight white white hair and I have braids.  I don't think I wore braids, at least not often, when I was young and a hippie.  Now I wear braids, even before Covid, I wore braids, I think my braids are a part of my grand-mothering self and I like it.    And I still like the Grateful Dead, I don't l...

    I have no need to write my words,  this day has come.  Respect, Dignity, Honesty were promised and Amanda Gorman, Inaugural Poet, the youngest broke open our hearts.  The President is already at work.  The new Senators are sworn in by our first woman, black, south Asian Vice President.  A new day has come.    The Hill We Climb When day comes, we ask ourselves, where can we find light in this never-ending shade? The loss we carry. A sea we must wade. We braved the belly of the beast. We’ve learned that quiet isn’t always peace, and the norms and notions of what “just” is isn’t always justice. And yet the dawn is ours before we knew it. Somehow we do it. Somehow we weathered and witnessed a nation that isn’t broken, but simply unfinished. We, the successors of a country and a time where a skinny Black girl descended from slaves and raised by a single mother can dream of becoming president, only to find herself reciting for one. And, yes,...

  I have been saying out loud for weeks now,  how bereft we are as a people,  hundreds of thousands people have died and not one moment of shared national grief.  Not one day went by that the president of our country acknowledged the losses, asked us to remember to acknowledge the magnitude of these deaths or the preciousness of their lives. At dusk today our next President of the United States brought us together.  Brought us to the Reflecting Pool and the Lincoln Memorial.  Of course my grief, my hearts remembering another time when their where panels and panels and panels of the AIDS Quilt .  Watching these beautiful columns of light - reflecting and reflection.  These lights honoring memories, memorials, lives lived and lives lost. We are heavy, heavy in our hearts.  I am heavy in my heart.  I am also hopeful.  I am watching the ripples of water and lights surrounding the reflecting pool. Please listen to Sweet Honey in the Rock...

  It has been a quiet day for me today.  I started my day with a cup of tea and Morning Edition.  I had come downstairs early this morning and the story that I caught my heart and stopped me from any other thoughts was listening to Rev. Dyson, who yesterday gave the sermon at Washington's National Cathedral.  As Steve Inskeep said in this story, Dyson did something that Martin Luther King Jr. had once done.  He imagined a letter that St. Paul might write to Americans if he lived today.  Rev. Dyson did not hold back:  "American exceptionalism is really white supremacy on the sly. The man who founded your nation relished talk of God while holding Black flesh in chains. Many of those who say that God takes special pride in your nation seek to bless the blasphemy of white supremacy. The American church has sinned by portraying truth as white, facts as white, reality as white, beauty as white, normal as white, moral as white, righteousness as white, t...

  On December 30th Susan, Ros and I met in the parking lot of the Houlton Visitor's Center (inside the visitor's center building is where Pluto resides as a part of the Solar System Model).   It was just a few days before that we had finalized a date and time for me to participate in my first "dawdling, gawking, dykely caravan tour.    We met in the parking lot and headed North on US Hwy 1 (the one that has the Solar System Model) to the tribal land of the Houlton Band of Maliseet.  I had never heard of the Maliseet before moving to Maine, and it has only been since buying my home in Patten, that I have become very interested in learning more about both the history and present of the MicMac and the Maliseet tribes.  It was a sunny, mild day.  Off we went.  We each had our phones anchored and our voices coming through our car speakers.   Susan and Ros took the role of "tour guides" very seriously.   They pointed out ar...

  I am going to be short and sweet today.  Somehow I found myself thinking of the Solar System Installation along US Highway 1.  The Sun is the inside University of Maine - Presque Isle and is painted on two floors to maintain the scale that happens from the sun and all the planets in the solar system. I think I was jogged to think of the interest in the solar system and science as I was hearing the excitement in President Elect Biden's voice as he was introducing his Science Team this afternoon.  I was upstairs in the front bedroom, putting the last winterizing on the large window that faces north.  Surprisingly, I decided to move things around in the room and it feels and looks better.  While I was carrying things around I had the radio on and listened to Biden talk about his choices, it made me smile and laugh out loud.  He sounded so proud, excited and committed in the sureness that this time would be a big part of "building back better". ...

It is Friday,  we are half-way through the month of January, 808 new covid cases in Maine yesterday and this is the last full week that trump will be president.  I was happy to be able to have a day where I got outside and glad to head out to Happy Corner Road after lunch today. Carla, Kathy and I went into Carla's back 50 acres (we did not snow shoe through it all).   Carla and her husband have spent the past 40 years tending and loving their land.  They have made great multi-use trails through the winds across beautiful fields, all humorously named. We we on "Top of It All" trail,  we went down the "Scary Road" and found our way back to the house on the "Stonewall" trail.  There were more names but I forgot them I was just too caught up in how beautiful, how quiet, how good it was to be out on my snow shoes.   It was the first time this season.   And a few hours later I am definitely feeling that I had spent 2 hours slowly stepping through the w...

    Today I participated in the Wabanaki Reach : Interacting with Wabanaki Maine History.  It was powerful,  deeply moving, excellently facilitated and clearly shared truth.  I have known about Wabanaki Reach for a couple of years,  Diana (the library's latest Island Institute Fellow )  had worked closely with Wabanaki Reach during her years at Bowdoin College.  I spent a weekend with her and Karin Spitfire, finishing one of the Maine Maps that are used in many of their trainings.  This fall I went with Diana out into the woods and participated in the video where we put out the map, disassembled it, and put it back together.  The photo above is one that I took of the map.  And now today along with 50 other people I moved through this deeply meaningful training, telling the story of the Wabanaki from the lens of the Wabanaki and the colonizers.  I was buoyed by the number of people I knew who were on zoom with me, that we could...

I started out the morning being moved by a quote that heard  from Jason Crow, a Democratic Representative from Colorado :   "That is the thing about leadership, it is not about you."   Meanwhile, my initial effort to make ice globes has been met with warmer temperature and my balloons are not even partially frozen yet.  I have to say I was just uplifted by the color of the balloons, the surety that the balloons will eventually partially freeze and maybe tomorrow morning will be the time when I break them and find my soon to be light ice globe.   I then walked back into the porch and was struck by the rainbow colors that I have there in the midst of winter.  My very precious rainbow wind chime and outside the front door my rainbow flag flying proudly, colors waving in the midst of grey.   Besides the color I have these reminders of summer, rosemary still standing tall, my elephant watering can, and a very favorite pitcher from Italy....

  One constant of each day is that I have to eat.  There are few, and for me there really are no options, places where I could get prepared food.   I have managed most days to put together very tasty meals.  Often I have leaned into some old standbys and I do try to find and make dishes that I have never or seldom have done.     Above is my crock bowl of French Onion Soup.  It had lots of steps and wow do you use a lot of onions, and it tasted GREAT.  I have enjoyed chopping, slicing, kneading, smelling and just being present in my kitchen making good food.   I have gotten much better at storing, labeling and eating left overs.  I have enjoyed the days when I spontaneously  when I have brought extra leftovers to my neighbors.   Don and Candy and I have for a number of months dropped off a meal or a treat.  It is very fun to walk out on my porch and see a little package, often with containers labeled with wha...

  In early December I ordered myself an Esla Kicksled,  they are made in Finland and there is a dealer in the U.S. in Ely, MN.   I have seen this zipping around in Ely on my trips there and I kept thinking that this would be a good winter activity for me.  My sled, bright blue will be arriving within the next week or two.  Check out Ely Bike and Kick Sled I can't wait to be zipping around River Trails,  EFI's trails, and in the Monument.   You have to have compacted snow, so a snowmobile trail is great,  ponds and lakes perfect places,  and along side streets and roads work well.  I have good snow cleats for my boots, Anita is going to make a video, and Mark is going to help me put the pieces together.  I stopped at the post office to make sure that this VERY big package would be delivered directly to my house rather than me having to pick up at the post office because my street doesn't have home delivery and I have ...

  It is the second Sunday of the New Year.  The sun shone today.  We continue to have mild weather today and there is no lost irony in that more snow fell in Texas today than in Maine.   Climate change and the lack of rain in the summer and snow now were one of the topics that we talked about in our weekly UU Houlton Coffee Chat.  I have for several months spent most of my Sunday mornings with my UU community.  We have informally provided support, connection, humor, a song or two and some good tips!  There is also a YouTube UUHoulton Service That was started a little while back.  First in the Church Parlor and now in a sweet room in the basement, with a few shows at Rev Dave's cabin.  I have come to these chats angry about the response to the coronavirus, about those who won't wear a mask, about the consequences of these failures.   I have come fearful and feeling alone.   I have come filled with  conflict. ...

  On January 7th 2019, I closed on my house.  Literally, within hours workers descended on the house.   There was so much snow and I wondered where my new Snow Guy to put it all.   Friends came and cleaned.   The Bates Fuel folks brought the new furnace, the duct guy came down from Houlton.  My carpenter was working on a new closet in the bedroom and shelving in the dining room.  The construction folks were replacing walls.  The insulation people were putting in insulation.  The painter was ready to paint every wall that was not wood paneled.  It was a whirlwind of activity, with a little less than three weeks before the scheduled move!  And it all happened. Here I am.  Today I am snuggled in, appreciating and feeling supported by this house - my home.  As warm and cozy as it is inside, outside it has been grey all day long, not even a glimpse of the sun.  It felt damp and there were a couple of flurrie...