Christmas Books

We have a tradition of giving a Christmas book to each of our kids' families. The book for this year was Patricia Polacco's "The Blessing Cup," about a Jewish family's expulsion from Europe, a promise that they would never go hungry, and the precious last cup from the family's china set. It reminded me of a similar promise in our family history, and I wanted to make a book for our children and grandchildren that told some of our family stories including that one; and particularly I wanted to emphasize that the things that are important are not things. After a year of these ideas stirring about in my head, this was the result:

 

 At the end of this project I feel as though I've come across the plains with these people. I think I will know them when I meet them again, and I love them for their sacrifices, their faith and their unique contributions to my family history.

And yes, I spilled Chilean mate (a hay-like herb tea that I was drinking with a load of sugar so my hands wouldn't shake as I hand-wrote --eventually-- nine of these babies) all over one of the books instantly aging it like nothing else could.

I tried to credit my sources and to be accurate, but don't take this book as the authoritative word. Jay and I have discovered a wealth of stories on FamilySearch and Ancestry.com and other sites--some in conflict with others--but go there yourselves and read more to get the fuller picture.

One lesson for me is that those who wrote about their experiences get remembered. How many other experiences did our people have that are lost because they were not recorded?

Happy New Year everyone!

Knowing where I am in the world

Thanks to Lesley, I have the solution to my dysmapia problem. A darling compass I can hang around my neck! What an unbelievable gift. Much better than frankincense and myrrh or almost anything else I could think of. Thank you, thank you! On the back of this adorable ornament are the words, "To know where you are in the world," and a tiny map with Kaysville on it. Believe me, it may become a permanent part of my wardrobe until I'm back in Kaysville!

I've been thinking a lot about not so much my disorientation issues, but about how important place is to me. I told someone recently that I need to live in a place for a year before I really feel at home. I need to go through the cycle of the seasons and understand the place deeply. Chile has felt comfortable from the first, but more so every day. As we approach our year mark, I feel more possessive of this place, and despite my not knowing "up," I do know and love the eucalyptus smells--and that they are really fragrant after a rain; the screeching killdeer on steroids sounds of the birds and realize they nest on the ground and protect the eggs in the same way my playground killdeer do. I can recognize the edibles on our many trees--the big shade tree in front actually produces millions of delicious orange fruits called nispero (I'm sure the spelling is wrong but I remember the name by the association with "knee" and one day I was searching for the word and came up with the Spanish "rodilla"-something), the membrillo (quince) are starting to form fruits, the fig tree is unmistakable with its lobed leaves and the alamo--well, they have the same dry cottonwood sounds in the breeze that my Southern Utah cottonwoods do. 

When I was a student at Utah State I had the opportunity to fly to Logan from Yakima in a small plane. After making that 10 hour trip by car multiple times it was a revelation to see the highway down below and the canyons and mountains making sense of the twists and turns in the road. Not only was it beautiful, it was logical, and I couldn't get enough of watching the ground pass by. The added dimension of perspective was critical.

In heaven, I'm not going to be disoriented. That's motivation enough.

Service Hours

Remember those? They came in all varieties: for the Church's "Individual Awards," for Scouting, or Personal Progress, to make up for bad citizenship in school, to work off bad grades (not sure how that connected, but I think it was done), AmeriCorp requirements, Cub Scouts, 4-H: service hours.

In our monthly mission report there's a place for "Service Hours." When your mission job description includes doing anything and everything to improve the lives of the farm workers, their families and the community, it's a bit hard to see what service hours would be outside those parameters.

If the company hires a custodian, is it service hours when we (Jay mostly) sweep out the plague of beetles on the floor of the Learning Center every morning? Or do service hours begin when he also cleans the bathroom and the adjacent storeroom?

Sometimes I try to quantify things way outside our normal expectations like painting someone's new house for 8 hours, but usually I try to ignore that little blank. On a mission, isn't it all service?

              




Some things we've done this last month included making our General Conference cinnamon rolls to deliver  to most of the families we teach, arranging a tour of the farm and lunch for a busload of 27 temple missionaries--including the entire Temple Presidency, becoming the ward choir director (yes, lower case. When I told them they were the best choir I'd ever directed they knew that I was as inexperienced as I looked), demonstrating how to make a banana pineapple cake and another time demonstrating how to make rolls, mending the young missionaries' pants, getting their bikes back in working condition and giving them and their investigators rides to various activities, teaching knitting, working together on various sewing projects, digging weeds, running medicine to someone who needed it, giving Priesthood blessings, planning a birthday party, knitting a going-away wool sheep for a young supervisor, rounding up workers to learn that the father/grandfather had passed away~~Hey! I've been feeling bad that we formally teach so few hours in the day; but when I see it written down, we are doing something. I guess it is service.

But gosh. It sure doesn't feel like service. It just feels good.

The Curse of Dysmappia

Grandma Maughan claimed to have a photographic memory. My memory is on the complete other side of the spectrum. But which side that is seems to jump around for me. I might be able to remember details about something that happened if I could just remember the place, and I can't because I have four truths in my head about many of the locations of my life. When we drive out of our "gated community" here on the farm and head toward town I have to wait and see which way Jay turns; then my compass spins around and my landmarks begin to align. It is just so FRUSTRATING!! Our town's main street is aligned north and south (I think) but depending on how we approach it, it might be going east and west. Unless I'm in Utah with the mountains to the east and the lake to the west, please don't confuse me by telling me to turn west. Unless the sun is rising or setting, I have no idea in the world which way west is.

I really think my memory is as good as the next persons': it's just that there are four cardinal directions and I have memories associated with all four for so many places. The Learning Center facing west is only one of the Learning Centers where we hang out here in Chile. When I'm inside, it faces a different direction than when I'm outside. And truthfully, when I analyze it, it really faces north (I asked Jay. It's beyond my skills to "really analyze" it. Tricky little place, don't you think? Multiply that by the dozens of places in my life at any one time and you have some idea of the vertigo I live with.

In Layton when I'd go to the mall I made sure to park in the same parking lot and I would enter the same doors--every time-- so the mall would stay put with Macy's still on the southeast corner and Penny's still on the north. (Please no one tell me that's not where they really are. I'm not sure I could take the heartbreak.) Deseret Book jumped from east to west and Standard Optical might show up on the opposite end of the mall.

I'm not sure I'd have even known about this disability if I hadn't left Cedar City. Cedar and most small southern Utah towns --St. George excepted--are oriented with the mountains and the canyon to the east and Main Street going north and south. My childhood was perfectly ordered with Utah's matching 100 East, Main Street, 100 West configuration with the waffle grid 100 North, Center Street, 100 South intersecting. So perfect. So easy. But things definitely went south from there.

I do everything I can think of to avoid being "turned around" in the new place. Knowing I'm directionally challenged, before a move I study maps and landmarks. I get truly OCD about making sure that the minute we drive into town I know absolutely which direction we're approaching from. I almost chant to my self, "We're going east. Now we're going south. Still going south." It doesn't help.

Some of the places I've been turned around in are: East Edison in Sunnyside. Jay's hometown address. Somehow, in my mind, his street--which is perfectly straight--makes a right turn at Highway 12. Belleville, Illinois--where we lived for 9 years. Clark Air Base in the Philippines--where we lived 5 years. How did that mountain move from the first time we were stationed there to the second?!! Snow Horse Elementary. Yes. I watched them build it; but its fan shaped orientation had me thinking that every one of the outside doors faced east.

I don't know that there's anything that can be done for dysmappia. Nothing I've done seems to help. I don't know of any information about it or really haven't ever talked about it except as a joke. But truly, I would love to figure out how to know where I am in the world--even before I see the sun going down.

Chilean 4th of July -- Times Seven and Body by Barbecue

The Warm-up: School programs

Traditional dancing and traditional treats including Mote con Huasillos (preserved peaches in juice with cooked whole wheat--sort of wheat "hominy." The peach can be fresh tasting or dried with the pit and stronger tasting.) Over the course of the week, we had this three times, at least. 

Branch Postre Party: Nothing but desserts!

We won't talk about the empanada party for the workers and the million cookies we baked to hand out to advertise our English classes the day before, nor the two "service project" days that week that ended up being work, but also being fed a huge hot meal each noon, nor even the barbecue for the farm managers two days later; but it has been Fiestas Patrias--the week-long celebration of Chilean independence, with kite flying, rodeos, school programs, parties, dancing, horseback riding; oh, and yes, eating. 

On the actual holiday, September 18th, we were invited to three homes and at all three places a boatload of meat was being grilled with all the accompanying side-dishes. How could we say no?

Flags fly everywhere--on homes and buildings and it only takes a little of the beauty out of it to discover that it's the law that people display the flag. It's a beautiful flag and many cars also are adorned with the red, white and blue.

I really love how barbecues are conducted here. The men hang around the fire throwing a huge variety of pieces of meat on the grill and flipping things around, salting and tasting. The women fuss around in the kitchen putting finishing touches on a variety of salads and potato and rice dishes. When a piece of meat is ready, off the grill it comes and everyone gets a chunk at the optimal moment. If it's chorizo or hot dogs, you get a bun warmed on the grill to wrap the meat in. When the beef is done, you get some to eat from a fork as you walk around visiting. Then pork and maybe lamb, and finally when the chicken that was probably put on first looks done, everyone sits down for the side dishes and more meat.

Round One--after an hour-long horseback ride through orchards and vineyards:

Round Two: just dessert, but they sent us home with a plate of meat that we were too full 

to enjoy at the time. More whipped cream than strawberries--que rico!

Round Three: more meat, empanadas, salads, potatoes and kite flying!

This is all the same day, people!!

At the end of the week, wearing my Sunday black thermal top and black Cuddleduds bottoms I looked long and hard in the bedroom mirror and admitted that I was looking at Body by Barbecue: just a bit too much indulging this month. 

If rain is your favorite weather

If rain is your favorite weather, you would have been happy at the farm the past few weeks. Some days it would rain without stopping. We still have standing water in lots of places and mini-rivers beside the roads, but the dove found dry land and didn't come back to the ark, so I think we'll be okay.

We hear that last year it didn't rain at all, so people are really happy to get the water and the many water storage lagunas are filling up. We have an English lesson on climate, and I usually ask the students what their favorite weather is. Frequently, they tell me they like rain better than anything.

The rain comes with some problems, though. Work essentially stops in the fields. We are getting ready to begin a new 12 week course of English lessons for the field workers out in the comedores at lunchtime, and prepared some flyers to advertise the classes. We made hundreds of cookies to share as we placed the flyers. We slipped and slid through the mud in our company mini-van to take our warm chocolate-chip, raisin, walnut, oatmeal cookies to the trabajadores. Alas! Not one soul to give them to! The farm seems to be experiencing a "rain delay."

Pasamos Agosto

Chile has all these sayings that I am just beginning to hear but I just love them, and love being "in" on their humor about life. As I was shivering at the church after our teaching session last night, some sisters told me about Pasamos Agosto. It's when old people (60+) sigh in relief that they've lived through August when fragile people sometimes die from the cold. Not that it's very cold, but inside drafty unheated buildings it is often colder than it is outside where the sun usually warms things up. So as I left, I said, "Just two more days," and they smiled and gave me a warmer than usual hug,
denying that I could be old enough to celebrate the day.

And speaking of drafty, I suggested to our missionaries and to Jay that the tragedy of two Elders dying in their sleep of carbon monoxide poisoning in Taiwan couldn't happen in Chile, but he is insisting on getting CO detectors for their house anyway. No worries about ours; our water heater is outside.

Another weather-related saying is "Be careful, it might just be veranito de San Juan." Verano is summer and veranito is a little summer in the middle of winter--a tease that tricks you into going out unprepared for the cold that will inevitably return. I've seen no one willing to brave the outdoors here  in the shorts that are common in Utah junior high schools as the snow is coming down. Quite the contrary: everyone is dressed as if they are headed to the south pole--face wraps, hats, layers of clothing including tights and overcoats.

So tomorrow I'm preparing to celebrate old people's El Primero de Septiembre Fiesta--assuming that we successfully pasamos agosto! Stay tuned..........

Charcoal

Burning wood to make fuel to burn for heat and cooking strikes me just a bit like curing radiation-caused cancer with radiation, but I can't argue with the result of either.

We stumbled upon this charcoal operation on one of our recent farm visits and were fascinated by the process. We had seen clusters of these large hornos elsewhere, but couldn't imagine what they were. This time, a number of them were puffing away and we had a chance to observe these large earthen ovens at various stages up close.

There were probably 10 or 15 of them--shoulder high from the top but taller than me from the lower door-like entrance in a small clearing in a remote area at the edge of orchards and farm land. A gentleman was overseeing the operation and had bagged up the cooled charcoal from some of the ovens. Others had stacks of espino (a thorny, protected tree in Chile branches. If you remove an espino tree you are required to replant another, though not necessarily an espino) branches and other raw wood ready to go into the ovens, and some looked to be filled with trash--perhaps the wood goes on top of household papers and burnable garbage. This one was actively cooking, with smoke coming from any number of porous openings, but primarily from ground-level. From the looks of things, the interior cavern is larger than the dome structure in the center. I asked what keeps the wood from burning up entirely and was told that they keep the fire very small.

From the picture below, it appears that they limit the amount of oxygen in the chamber by means of a metal door propped shut.

Being a bit of a pyromaniac and in love with the smell of wood burning, this was right up my alley and I lingered until I was so warm that I had to take off my newly knit sweater--now fragrant with smoke-- to finish the walk.

You see charcoal vendors all over, selling from the backs of pick-up trucks and in small stands. I have no idea what the yield of "carbon" ends up being for a ton of wood. That would be interesting to know. It would also be interesting to know what the impact these operations have on air pollution world-wide. But in a country where the stars are visible every single non-rainy night, and homes have maybe two light bulbs against the darkness, I will not blame rural Chileans for any holes in the ozone layer.