Naomi Shihab Nye

In light of recent attacks and some ridiculous idea from politicians to only accept refugees who are Christian (My God, do we not remember turning the Jews away during WWII?), I thought I'd share this comforting piece. 

Many thanks to David Kanigan for reminding me of this gem. 


Gate A-4 By Naomi Shihab Nye:

Wandering around the Albuquerque Airport Terminal, after learning my flight had been delayed four hours, I heard an announcement: “If anyone in the vicinity of Gate A-4 understands any Arabic, please come to the gate immediately.” Well— one pauses these days. Gate A-4 was my own gate. I went there.

An older woman in full traditional Palestinian embroidered dress, just like my grandma wore, was crumpled to the floor, wailing. “Help,” said the flight agent. “Talk to her . What is her problem? We told her the flight was going to be late and she did this.”

I stooped to put my arm around the woman and spoke haltingly. “Shu-dow-a, shu-bid-uck, habibti? Stani schway, min fadlick, shu-bit-se-wee?” The minute she heard any words she knew, however poorly used, she stopped crying. She thought the flight had been cancelled entirely. She needed to be in El Paso for major medical treatment the next day. I said, “No, we’re fine, you’ll get there, just late, who is picking you up? Let’s call him.”

We called her son, I spoke with him in English. I told him I would stay with his mother till we got on the plane. She talked to him. Then we called her other sons just for the fun of it. Then we called my dad and he and she spoke for a while in Arabic and found out of course they had ten shared friends. Then I thought just for the heck of it why not call some Palestinian poets I know and let them chat with her? This all took up two hours.

She was laughing a lot by then. Telling about her life, patting my knee, answering questions. She had pulled a sack of homemade mamool cookies— little powdered sugar crumbly mounds stuffed with dates and nuts— from her bag and was offering them to all the women at the gate. To my amazement, not a single traveler declined one. It was like a sacrament. The traveler from Argentina, the mom from California, the lovely woman from Laredo— we were all covered with the same powdered sugar. And smiling. There is no better cookie.

Then the airline broke out free apple juice and two little girls from our flight ran around serving it and they were covered with powdered sugar too. And I noticed my new best friend— by now we were holding hands— had a potted plant poking out of her bag, some medicinal thing, with green furry leaves. Such an old country traveling tradition. Always carry a plant. Always stay rooted to somewhere.

And I looked around that gate of late and weary ones and thought, This is the world I want to live in. The shared world. Not a single person in that gate— once the crying of confusion stopped— seemed apprehensive about any other person. They took the cookies. I wanted to hug all those other women too.

This can still happen anywhere. Not everything is lost.

Summer Hike at Umtanum Ridge

Today is a stay-at-home, take care of myself day.  It started wonderfully, with a short walk with my friend Kim to get some coffee.  We're going to a movie later.  And of course, G is invited. He's friends with Kim too. She's been so busy lately that it's a welcome surprise to find she can hang out and just have some down time. I miss her!

First, gentle face washing, then I put on some Elmer's glue for about 5 minutes. Doesn't take long to dry in this heat/0 humidity. When you peel it off, the junk stuck in your face comes off too.
Then I got out this beauty:

Collagen is good. 

The mask itself is white and looks like Hannibal Lector when you put it on.  Fifteen minutes later, my face is wrinkle free. I took a picture of the right side of my face, which has a few dark patches.  The women in my family get blotchy dark skin when we get out in the sun.  You can barely tell. No makeup, no filter. It's so dry here that when my skin isn't dry, it's cause for celebration.

I took the 15 minutes to put on lotion, put super softening gunk on my feet and meditate. I went bounding in to see G, who was listening to some smooth jazz.
"Oh my gosh. Look at my skin." He barely glances.
"You look nice."
"No, no. I just got done with an AMAZING mask."
"Yeah, I saw it."
"No. You saw the Elmer's glue. Touch my face!"
"Kinda feels soft and fishy. But you're beautiful. I love you." He gently wipes his fingers off on his jeans.

Men don't understand beauty at all.

I really needed a bit of time to take care of myself.  I'm sore! Between working out at the gym and all the hiking and moving around G and I do, I'm a little pooped.

WARNING: LOADS OF PICTURES AHEAD

Anyway, it was a great weekend. We went hiking up at Untamum Ridge. You can learn more about the ridge here and here.

If you click on the topomap, you will see that Umtanum is south and west of Manastash Ridge, which is the other steep altitude hike we've taken. We drove out a ways on Canyon Road in Ellensburg and parked on Bureau of Land Management land.  Since it was the 4th of July, lots of floaters and flotillas were passing lazy time going down the Yakima River. That's the river snaking North/South through the topopmap.  It wasn't actually a long hike, but we originally took the right fork through the canyon floor.  We saw a cleared area that's been overgrown for 50+ years with apple trees growing wild now. Obviously, someone homesteaded this canyon and/or cultivated it.  Good apples, just small. There were also the remains of a livestock fence.

It's overgrown, but it's an apple tree.  And Gs butt.

And another- only with reddish apples

And another

Love those high canyon walls

A little creek meandered down to the Yakima

They'll get bigger, later in summer

I was wearing shorts, so about a mile in we had to turn around.  The grass was really high and some brush kept scratching my legs.  Also, we encountered a couple of snakes. I am still training myself not to have a jumpy fear response, but every once in awhile I do sort of dance backwards.  I didn't get any pictures of the snakes. I fear that my readers might give up on reading if I did. Here are some flower pictures instead.

I altered this a little, but not much. 

And a little video.

On the way in, we saw a couple of big horn sheep, and on the way out, I got video of them.

And a couple of good photos.

They knew we were there, and at times moved off a bit. They weren't scared so probably they know that BLM land is closed to hunters.

We went back to the trailhead and began the ascent.
This part of the ridge went south, whereas the other canyon went west. It went up and up and up.  Here's a couple of those photos. I had to stop every 25 yards to catch my breath.  Asthma sucks.

Steep and rocky.  Joy.

Glad I did all those squats this week. 

This is a natural little bridge between the canton walls. Wildlife use it frequently from what I can tell of the trails.

Another view of the land bridge 

I think this looks like a French impressionist painting.

We didn't go much farther after I shot this video:

Think I'm going to need another hit from the inhaler.

We saw an outcropping with what looks like a small wild animal's den.  Being as many of those little critters, bobcats, skunks, cougars, and the like are nocturnal, we decided to turn around.  Besides, we hit a brushy patch and my legs were getting scratched.

On the way back down, G fell off the mountain.  That sounds way better than that he lost his footing and fell onto the mountain.  Guess it depends on how you look at it.  He's ok, but he is taking it easy.  I thought for sure he'd break his wrist or his tailbone because he hit hard and because I'm really sympathetic to people getting hurt.  A little limping down the mountain- we still had a mile to go- and he made it to the car.  Still limping two days later but this could have been much worse.  I had joked earlier in the day about having to shoot him if he broke his leg.  I shouldn't make jokes. There must be a thing called karma. We were cooling out tootsies in the Yakima river on the way back to the car.  It's nice to step into 12 degree water after a hot couple of hours tromping around in the bush.  I leaned over to move a river rock and PLUNK! My phone hit the water.  And sunk.
I put in rice, and the pictures and video transferred over to the iCloud. That's how I have access to them. Woohoo! But booooooo for my phone. I'm not sure if it's alright. We'll give it a few days.

G is really an optimist though, and the rest of the day was spent resting, popping ibuprofen, and watching distant fireworks as our nation celebrated so many years of independence from English rule by lighting things and watching them explode.

More adventures soon- where shall we go hike next? I'm open to suggestions!

Christmas Break

I'm trying to think of something to say, something witty and worthy of a blog post.

The fact is that I'm still recovering.  Instead of saying anything overly brilliant, I thought I'd just let some pictures speak for themselves.

G and I are enjoying spending time together and I even have time to pursue a small hobby.

Around Town
G and I went shopping around town on Saturday.  It was a beautiful, sunny day and we wanted to enjoy the sunshine.  I don't think there was anything we were shopping for, but it was fun to tramp around our little town. We shopped, we had lunch, we had a great time. 

There are tons of cool signs painted in alleyways around town

This is the Ellensburg Bull.  He's famous. 

Selfie!

We were Christmas shopping downtown and an impromptu parade broke out. I missed a picture of Santa driving a wagon. Pretty awesome!

Beet and pear salad at our favorite Ellensburg venue, The Valley Cafe

I just liked this shot.

More neat older signs

Hobby
One of the things I swore I'd do once I finished my doctorate was to pursue my own artistic interests again.  So I am. Now that the quarter is over, turning my brains to something a little creative makes me really happy. It's nice to unplug and lose myself in details. 

This guy is in progress- He'll be a pencil holder in my office

Unpainted birdhouse

base coats

I'm going with Scandinavian designs on this one

I like how the front came out

Almost done

I think I'd like to move on to other projects: painting furniture.  The small projects are nice but I have neat stencils and designs I'd like to make bigger.  There are also a couple of unpainted furniture stores in Yakima that we'll go check out.  I've done some staining and have rehabbed old furniture, but I'd like to take a stab at working with new or newer stuff. So readers, what are your thoughts/suggestions for painted furniture? I really do want to know!

Finally, I think I'm going to grow my hair out a bit. I've loved having it short and G strongly prefers it that way. However, I've almost always been able to put it in a ponytail and I think I'll get it at least that long again. A year is long enough for a cute, short 'do.

I say that now, but in six months I'll be sick of it and will cut it off again...

It's already longer

It snowed for something like four minutes last Friday.  I had to snap a shot. 

Merry Christmas, everyone.  I hope your holiday is peaceful, warm, and filled with people you love.

A Million Little Things

Oh My Gosh, do I have a problem.

It may not seem like much but I have to stop drinking coffee. Like altogether.  I figured this out two weeks ago.  My body has bee intensely disinterested in working with me on getting food in and not being sick. I tried lots of medicines, including an antidepressant since there is seretonin in the gut and the doctor thought it would help.  It helped a little, I admit. My husband also reports that I am less cranky and less bubbly when I take it.  But after a month or so, the benefits dwindled and I have been back to potatoes and rice and bland things for awhile.  What other possible irritant could I possibly give up?

*Groan* I wish I hadn't asked.

So what the heck. I have stopped drinking coffee, except for one cup a day.  I split that into two half cups, or rather two half-caff cups.  I've started drinking loads of tea, which not only helps but keeps me hydrated.  I've had muscle tension, headaches, pain, crankiness and days where I feel like I'm going to pass out from fatigue.  In coming off of my addiction, I've had this fogginess about me, like the world is moving faster than I can keep up with.

Pretty severe addiction, huh?

I have been drinking coffee since I was 11.  That's 29 years. About 20 of those years have been about 2 pots a day.  Not cups, pots.  I've stuck with it through ulcers and a year of this colitis business.  Wanna see me without coffee?

Not Pretty

 Yeah.  

Wanna see my new haircut (with coffee)? 

Caffeinated

The good news is that I am so much improved. It's like I stopped drinking poison, and I am so sad.  

On the bright side, I can eat dairy again.  DAIRY! I thought that was gone forever. I'm going to eat ice cream and stuff and cheese.  Yeah. 

In other news, I took a group of students up to Leavenworth, Washington for a trip to Icicle Creek Performing Arts Center.  Lovely people, and we got to eat lunch at a pretty swanky restaurant called Kingfisher.  Some people in the group wanted to hike; others wanted to go shopping in Leavenworth. Nobody wanted to leave each other so we hung out around the grounds and climbed up hills for a bit.  I snapped a few photos: 

Icicle Sculpture

Icicle Creek

See the ruby in her mouth? 

I love that 12 students who only met a few weeks ago are so attached to each other that they don't want to part.  We all headed into town as a group and shopped together, only splitting up for about half an hour.  It's the sweetest thing I've ever seen a class do. 

The other really neat thing is that I have a writing mentor for the class and a co-teacher. (Ah, the beauty of grants!) My writing mentor, Jamie, is a wonderful budding teacher and her kids came to see us off the morning for the trip. Megan and Dylan are practically class members anyway, since they sometimes attend class or help out in one way or anther. Kyle, one of the students in the class, was taking his dog so he was driving up separately.  He didn't say anything but smuggled Megan and Dylan up to the lodge.  Cool as could be, both Megan and Dylan did our writing assignments with us and participated like everyone else.  I loved the way the whole day went down. I am a lucky, lucky teacher.  

My other English classes are going well too.  In one assignment, my students were to summarize an article that they chose. Preferably something interesting, academic and in their field of study.  The student above was talking about a peer-reviewed article from the Library database on orgasm in contemporary romance novels.  She said she couldn't help but have fun with the title.  I took a picture and put it up on Facebook. Can't help it.
On the 21st, I'm heading off to Boston to present at the National Council of Teachers of English conference. I'll connect with my Oklahoma teacher friends and attend seminars and probably get a good look at Boston.  I like it there, but it'll be cold in November! I may have to stay inside a nice, warm museum or something...

Wish me luck- pretty soon I'm going to wean off of caffeine altogether, forever.  For some reason that looms over me like a cartoon monster.  On the other hand- ice cream.