A final burst of joy

For more joyful images, click here.

In the strawberry patch I pose
freshly painted raspberry toes.

Fulfilling a pledge to take a Joy+Ride this month.

Q&A

Does a falling tree scream? Photo courtesy of slimmer_jimmer.

If a woman screams because she had the following things going on this week: grimy windows, sticky floor, a mother-in-law arriving for a two-week visit, piles of laundry from last week's camp-out, a broken vacuum, a sick toddler, twins turning eight, a cat with an abscess, soccer snack and mold in the bathroom, and no one is around to hear her, does she make a sound?

A possible answer, plus a biology lesson

When the woman screams, a large amount of air passes over the vocal chords, causing them to vibrate. The vibrations cause a compression and expansion of air, creating a sound wave. Sound waves are produced, regardless of what conscious being is there to perceive them. When sound waves hit the ear, they travel down the ear canal, cause three tiny bones to vibrate against the eardrum. The vibrations pass to the small, shell-shaped cochlea filled with liquid. The liquid moves causing hair cells to tremble and shake, triggering an electrical impulse to the brain, which, finally, registers the vibration as sound. That is why we have an auditory cortex in the neocortex of the brain, to interpret the vibrations of a toddler whining or a vacuum breaking. But the short of it is: If there's no ear to capture the noise, then her scream does not exist as sound, only vibration.

A question over evidence

How do we know said woman is justified in her screaming if no one was around to witness it or even hear it? Can you send a scream via the Internet by chopping it up it into a million tiny pieces and then have it reassemble itself on another's screen? Would they hear it?

Answer to evidence and a clarification

It's a philosophical question. Why do you scream? When do you scream? Are you screaming right now? This is an exercise for the mind. The more you use it the stronger it gets. The real question is: If a vibration is cased by a woman screaming and no one can hear or feel it, is it real? The only real answer to any metaphysical question is consciousness. Your conscious thought (the voice in your head asking this question) was the answer to the question all along.

Philosophy is a slippery slope

This is a straightforward question. There is nothing rhetorical, mysterious or metaphysical involved. The question asks whether we would hear the scream of a woman panicking over: grimy windows, a sticky floor, a mother-in-law arriving for a two-week visit, piles of laundry from last week's camp-out, a broken vacuum, a sick toddler, twins turning eight, a cat with an abscess, soccer snack and mold in the bathroom. And the conclusion is that there would, indeed, be screaming and we would, indeed, hear it. It's not rocket science.

An engineer answers, anyway

Yes. Sound is mechanical energy and sound will be created when the woman screams. If no one is there to hear it that does not negate the fact that the woman created a sound and the scream bounced off the grimy windows and ricocheted throughout the house.

A simpler answer

If the woman screamed, would a deaf person hear her? No, because the deaf person's auditory system is broken and wouldn't pick up the the vibrations that make sound. They may feel the lower vibrations in their body, but not the sound.

A personal point of view answer

No matter what, whether heard or not, the woman would make a sound. This conclusion makes sense because if she had all that stuff going on and someone WAS around to hear her throat-ripping panic, she WOULD make a sound. That "someone" could be the woman, herself, who would definitely hear her own scream.

As an example, picture yourself as a child living with your mom. Your TV is rather loud, and tunes out all other sounds. Your mom is shouting to you from across the room. You can't hear her, but she is making a sound. Why can't you hear her? Is it because the TV's noise overwhelms her shout? Now picture the same thing, except the TV is not on, and you are sitting on the couch, deep in thought. Your mom yells again from upstairs. Though no other noise is made except for hers, you still can't hear her. Why? Is it because she is too far away? Whatever your excuse for not listening, she's still screaming at you.

A disputing viewpoint

The scenarios above would make a sound, a lot of sound. Here's my analogy: If a person blows a dog whistle does it make a sound? Not to a human, but definitely to a dog. And in my opinion, that kid is acting like a dog and should get up off the couch and go help his mother.

It depends on certain factors

Just how overwhelmed is the woman and how loud is she screaming? What is her breaking point? Is it the sick kid, the abscess, the roller rink? Could she scream so loudly that it could be heard half way around the world. Also are we assuming that the vibration in the air is not a scream until it reaches our ear? What is the speed of sound and how long does it take to get half way around the world? Is a snack not a snack until we eat it? Is a child not sick until we take his temperature? Sound exists whether we are around or not (as do mothers-in-law). The real question is whether there's anyone around to translate the woman's sound into useful information.

Call in the reinforcements

I think that she does make a sound because if she makes a sound when we are there then why would she not if we were not there? If I stick to her kitchen floor we all hear the sticking sound with maybe small differences. So her scream is not completely in our mind, though she may be going out of her mind. Maybe she should hire a cleaning service or find a therapist.

Is a scream still a scream in an unknown language?

The reason she screams is the same whether she screamed in Japanese while in America. Someone makes that sound and others hear it and understand it, but you don't, maybe because you don't know Japanese or maybe it's because you weren't there. Either way, you will still know she screamed because in the first scenario someone could tell you about the scream and in the second you could probably decipher her emotion over the grimy windows, a sticky floor, a mother-in-law arriving for a two-week visit, piles of laundry from last week's camp-out, a broken vacuum, a sick toddler, twins turning eight, a cat with an abscess, soccer snack and mold in the bathroom...

Inspiration for this piece should go to Edvard Munch's "The Scream" and WikiAnswers.com's "If a tree falls ..."

Memorial memories

Raindrops
pepper playa,
turn hardpan into clay.
Puddles stick to the bottom of
my shoes.



The land sailing adventure also included "A birthday lesson," "First s'more" and "Finally, the wind blew." Want even more pictures? Click here.

Silly soup song

Editor's note: The Slow-Cooked Sentence is devoting itself to song this week as part of its Joy+Ride, a month-long quest that involves planting, polishing and singing.

In the bowl:

Great Big Gobs of Greasy Grimy Gopher Guts
Photo courtesy of meganpru

Sing along with me and my kids. I dare you.

The Recipe: Gopher Guts
Serves: One campsite

Great big gobs of greasy, grimy gopher guts
Chopped up monkey meat
Concentrated birdie feet
Chopped up eyeballs
Baked in a pot of blood
And I forgot my spoon!

Great big gobs of greasy, grimy gopher guts
Chopped up monkey meat
Concentrated birdie feet
Chopped up eyeballs
Baked in a pot of blood
And I forgot my spoon!
But I gotta straw!
(Slurrrp!)
(Aaaaah!)

What happens in the backseat ...

Editor's note: The Slow-Cooked Sentence is devoting itself to song this week as part of its Joy+Ride, a month-long quest that involves planting, polishing and singing.

... stays there. Photo courtesy of Larsz.

So today's my anniversary and I forgot.

"I'm happy," my husband said as he reminded me. "I'm happy with you. The kids. The house."

"I think Ivan's in the toilet," I replied.

As he pulled out the toddler, I raised my glass in a silent, solo toast to fourteen years, four kids, but not one of them conceived in a backseat. I shrug. Sex, schmex, and then hum a little of that song from "Fiddler on the Roof."

(Tevye) ...
Do you love me?

(Golde)
I'm your wife.

(Tevye)
"I know..."
But do you love me?

(Golde)
Do I love him?
For twenty-five years I've lived with him
Fought with him, starved with him
Twenty-five years my bed is his
If that's not love, what is?

(Tevye)
Then you love me?

(Golde)
I suppose I do.

(Tevye)
And I suppose I love you too.

Want to know where some great backseat action is taking place? Check out Black Cab Sessions Chapter 60 featuring Calexico. I'm digging the song "Not even Stevie Nicks," particularly this line:

With a head like a vulture and heart full of hornets, he drives off the cliff into the blue.

Ain't it a beaut of a sentence? And there's enough in that song for me to pull my husband into the backseat for our own little session.

Mama's mix

Editor's note: The Slow-Cooked Sentence is devoting itself to song this week as part of its Joy+Ride, a month-long quest that involves planting, polishing and singing.

"Casi05" courtesy of INDEED.

Thirty songs plus half
a day all for me equals
sweet, sweet sanity.

The time's been spent, but I can still share my songs. My favorite is "Half Acre," I can listen to The Kinks all day long, and you've got to check out the lyrics to "A Chat With Your Mother."

• I'll Fly Away, Alison Krauss & Gillian Welch
• Julia, The Beatles
• Mother Nature's Son, The Beatles
• Half Acre, Hem
• Your Mother Should Know, The Beatles
• Ghost Town/Poem For Eva, Bill Frisell
• God Bless The Child, Billie Holiday
• Sunspots, Bob Mould
• I'll Come Running, Brian Eno
• All Mama's Children, Carl Perkins
• What A Wonderful World, With L Dan Zanes & Friends
• Leave It Like It Is, David Wilcox
• Do You Realize??, Flaming Lips
• White Winter Hymnal, Fleet Foxes
• After Midnight, J.J. Cale
• Crazy Mama, J.J. Cale
• Boom Boom, John Lee Hooker
• Hot Potatoes, The Kinks
• Have A Cuppa Tea, The Kinks
• Bonjour, Bonjour, L'Autobus A Vapeur
• Our House, Madness
• You Are My Sunshine, Norman Blake
• That Was Your Mother, Paul Simon
• Mother and Child Reunion, Paul Simon
• A Chat with Your Mother, Sally Rogers & Howie Bursen
• Inní mér syngur vitleysingur, Sigur Ros
• I Wish, Stevie Wonder
• Isn't She Lovely, Stevie Wonder
• What Child Is This, Vince Guaraldi
• I Took My Mom To the Prom, The Ziggens

Participating

"Elephant Hiding in a Strawberry Patch" by Evelyn Leavens.

Joy+Ride is a blog devoted to poetry, photography and inspiration that I discovered via Mamazine, a now defunct site that published one of my essays. This month the two editors issued a challenge to rediscover joy. Here's the idea and its rules:

"It’s easy to lose sight of the joy in our lives, easy to forget we have the means to find joy, that we are in the driver’s seat... For the month of May, let’s make a promise to practice joy even when we aren’t feeling that joyful."

The rules:

1. Make a list of three attainable things that give you daily joy.
2. Open your calendar and find a place to fit each joy.
3. Set your own joy pace, but we suggest once or twice a week, at least.

So in a search for joy, I am:

1. Painting my toes pink.
2. Singing out loud.
3. Planting a strawberry patch.

Which made me think of the joke about why the elephant painted its nails red and instantly brought me a tiny burst of joy because I could remember the punchline! I'll keep you posted on my progress. Wanna join me for the joy ride?

Hue are you?

"Color Wheel Magic" by Mary Anne Ciccotelli.

I recently read "The Commoner" by John Burnham Schwartz. It's the story of Haruko, who becomes the first non-aristocratic empress of Japan. It's a story of sacrifice set in a world mysterious and sealed off, yet still highly public. Schwartz's style is as exquisite as this world, refined, almost delicate, yet hidden in the silky words are burrs like those in this passage:

His tenderness was like a wound that could be bandaged but never entirely protected -- like his body, so badly burned in the fire of 1945 that he appeared more wound than boy. All except his spirit, which leaked out, as if through a dark curtain pocked with rips and tears, in silent, unexpected slants of light that if looked at directly would have dazzled the eyes.

The second example of this beautiful writing is when Haruko describes her girlhood friend Miko. The two short sentences shed insight into the two girls' personalities and their relationship.

If I was the routine blue sky, Miko was the twilight whose darkening colors never appeared in the same shade twice. One waited for her, never knowing which girl would appear.

Two metaphors comparing personality to light, the first shining through a torn curtain, the second to a time of day. After reading them, it got my mind wandering: where do I fall on the light spectrum? Not what is my favorite color, but what hue, tint or shade is my personality? I have one friend who's easy to color code. Her cheeriness, smile, bubbly laughter and optimism despite the drama of her life makes her as yellow as sunshine, as warm as the sand on the beach, as the sweet as the juice of a peach. I have another friend the color of sage, a pungent, yeasty green, pulling strength from its tap root sunk deep into the earth, nourishing and toasty as homemade bread. Incidentally, she's also writing about color this week on her blog. A third friend is definitely an energetic orange, sizzling and intense with midday energy, and a fourth is the color of a delicious wine, a deep burgundy, round and rich and generous with her life.

And me?

Perhaps my youngest brother Dylan decoded my color decades ago. Dylan was maybe five years old when I left for college, so his memories of me are few and far between. In fact, he may have no memories of me at all; he once drew a picture of our family and omitted me. Incidentally, he's provided a coloring page of himself. To find it, click here. Anyway, no matter how infrequently I visited, once home I re-assumed my place in the sibling hierarchy -- the top. Suffering at the bottom of the birth order, Dylan once asked, "Who does she think she is?"

The queen, of course. In purple.

When the world's a stage

"Hovering fly" courtesy of wolfpix.

Can I tell you about something both magical and mundane, about life and death, about a ballet danced in the twilight of my backyard? It involves the birds living in the neighborhood, a giant, brittle willow along the fence line and a thousand beetles that escape from the willow just after sundown.

I was sitting under the tree in the corner of the yard, drinking the last wine in my glass and listening to my husband summarize an article on Somalia. Suddenly I noticed tens, then hundreds, of bugs fluttering above my head, all heading away from the willow, through the backyard and over the rooftop.

Just as I noticed, so did the dozen or more starlings, sparrows, finches and blue scrub jays. They shot off the tree branches, pinched bugs from the air and flew to a telephone line with dinner. I called for the kids to come see. Two and then three times, swarms of bugs left the safety of the willow and were sent into dizzying confusion as birds pirouetted among them. Some of us cheered for the bugs when they disappeared over the rooftop and some for the birds when they nabbed in mid-flight. We watched until the cloud of bugs dissipated and the stragglers were picked off with ease. The birds flew to their perches and we waited with them. Minutes passed. Not a single beetle took to the sky. So we went inside and closed the curtains, leaving the birds staring intently into the empty twilight.

Mothering skills have eluded me

... or Jane and her mom make Emerald City Salad.

I picked up one of my sons from school today at 10:30 a.m. because he'd thrown up. When he climbed into the car he was hiding a smile. Sick? Probably not. But how do I insist that the school keep a kid who's puked?

This 7-year-old has learned to work the system. About every two weeks, I receive a call from the school nurse, Eloisa, who's phoning because he's in her office, again. By now we're in agreement that there must be visible signs of sickness, like vomit or a thermometer that reports a fever. Today's proof lay in the bottom of the trash can, so I came, grudgingly. My toddler's nap had been interrupted, my mouth was set in a grim line, and what does he say when he climbs into the car?

"Was Ivan eating chocolate?"

"He had part of a donut."

"Yum."

So much for the sore tummy. He's spending the day in his room. In bed. Without a book.

I'm desperate, cranky and sick of my life being interrupted by sick kids. On days like this I grab chocolate and plop down in front of the computer for an episode or two of my favorite food show, Cookus*Interruptus, featuring Feeding the Whole Family author Cynthia Lair. My top episodes can be found in the right-hand column. They all involve Cynthia's daughter, Jane, who is a single mom with enough irreverence and sarcasm to light a fire under any pot. On more than one bad day, Jane's saved me (and my son).

Blogus interruptus

H1N1 influenza virus courtesy of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Today's blog post suffered from frequent interruptions by children with hacking coughs, which, incidentally, were not caused by the H1N1 virus or swine flu, according to the pediatrician. In the half hour the writer sat at the computer, she received requests for:

• peaches with cottage cheese
• a discussion on how to write a persuasive essay
• water
• a diaper change
• a reminder to report the absences to school officials
• a towel to clean up the water
• toast with apricot jam
• more water
• cough syrup
• string cheese
• a hug
• still more water

By now, the writer was suffering from a headache and a bad attitude, so she threw the wet towel at the computer screen and called it quits.

Going down

"Porco Rosso" by William Montgomery,
from of his daily sketch blog Montgomery Today.

Our family is like a World War II bomber under fire but somehow managing to stay aloft. My husband (who receives credit for this analogy) and I in the cockpit as the kids yell out that the left wing is on fire and the rudder has fallen off. Such were yesterday's conditions as we steered the minivan into the church parking lot.

Half the family was sick, but Sunday was the culmination of two years of religious education, and so the Devil be damned, we were going forward with First Communion. As we walked into church, I stuffed a lozenge in a mouth, tucked a handkerchief into a pocket and uttered a small prayer that no one cough on the Host.

God answered that prayer.

As bread and wine were blessed, the five children receiving the sacrament of the Eucharist gathered around the altar. As I watched, Max slowly sunk from view, then stood again, whispered to the priest, walked a few steps, knelt down and puked. This family was crash landing before the eyes of the congregation.

I whisked Max away to the bathroom, cleaned him up and marched him back up the aisle to accept communion. As Max held out his hands, Christ looked down from his cross and said, "Dude, you look terrible. Go home."

We took his advice.



I'm happy to report that after more coughs, sputters and groans, the family took to the air this morning. Over and out.

Soup, slop and sanitation

"Songs We Sing From Rogers and Hammerstein" illustrated by William Dugan. Golden Press, 1957. Image from Vintage Kids' Books My Kid Loves.

I made clam chowder last night and it was a stinker. Perhaps it was because (one) I refused to run to the store for four stalks of celery or (two) I lazily tossed in the potatoes without peeling them. But whatever the reason, it was bland, boring and kinda dirty tasting. (Even though I distinctly remember scrubbing the potatoes!)

We ate the chowder, anyway.

But the leftovers? Into the slop bucket. Well, to be more exact, ours is a compost bucket, but when I was growing up we raised the occasional pig or two, so our scraps turned to slop. And how our first pig loved that garbage, nudging her nose into curdled milk, congealed Cream of Wheat and gobbling up the crusty ends of peanut butter-and-jelly sandwiches. Doesn't that remind you of "Charlotte's Web"?

Wilbur lifted his nose and sniffed. The smell was delicious... He walked to the trough and took a long drink of slops, sucking in the milk hungrily and chewing the popover. It was good to be home again.

While you can go on loving Wilbur, I'll love Star, our family's big, black sow who gave birth to a run of piglets who were so darn cute and pink. Star was smart enough to escape from her pen, so now and then my brother or sisters or I would spot her trotting down the dirt road, a line of babies behind her. We'd yell to mom, who'd hop in the car and chase her down. You know, I can't remember how my mom got Star and her babies back home. I like to imagine her as big and tough as Pecos Bill's true love, Slue-foot Sue, roping and riding that sow into the pen again.

Eventually, Star's antics grew tiresome and the piglets outgrew their cuteness because one day the pig pen was empty, the slop bucket was fed to the chickens and a conversation between a mother and child went something like this:

"What's for dinner?"

"Star."

We ate the pork chops, anyway.

But today -- as the swine flu spreads and worries grow about a possible pandemic -- people are hesitating when it comes to pork, according to The New York Times. Several nations closed their borders to pork and Wall Street analysts predict a drop in pork sales in the grocery stores, the paper reported this week.

Although pigs were the original source of the new virus, experts said the animals don't appear to be playing a role in its transmission now.

"The virus is passing from person to person ... most likely by the spread of respiratory droplets," the Times reported.

So I'm not passing up bacon, nor am I running out to buy face masks. I won't even demand that my children's teacher be quarantined following her vacation in Mexico. But I have taken the precaution of posting hand-washing signs in our home's bathrooms. Should you be overcome by a similar desire, here's one poster and links to the rest:

• Have U Washed Your Hands 2Day?
• Hands vs. Germs (pdf.)
• Be a Germ-Buster (pdf. in English and Spanish)

Have a swine-free, sanitary weekend!