E-book — The Jane Austen Driving School

Posted on July 31, 2012 by This Woman Writes

The newly published Jane Austen Driving School is the second volume in the Ordinary Life Is Beautiful E-book Series, adding to the stories and illustrations of Life Is a Gift.

The Jane Austen Driving School will make you smile.

Thirty short, easy-to-read, fun and funny stories bring readers into the household of the Norwegian Artist, the Polish Writer, their progeny, and their eclectic and rotating supply of farm and household animals.

The Jane Austen Driving School is $2.99 delivered wirelessly through Amazon, readable on your Kindle, iPad, iPod, Droid, and computer (the latter through a free app from Amazon).

Posted in books, children, Christian, Culture, Current Events, Daily Life, Encouragement, Entertainment, Family, grandparenting, Growth, home, Humor, inspirational, Job, knitting, Life, Lifestyle, Motherhood, News, Parenting, Personal, Random, Relationships, religion, shopping | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | 4 Comments

Please Stop Educating Me — I Want to Learn Something

Posted on July 25, 2012 by This Woman Writes

I am one of the 1 percent.

Nah, I’m not talking money; when it comes to that I’m in another 1 percent, you know, the ones who re-use plastic grocery bags as spontaneous suitcases for overnight trips.

When I walk on the beach, I should do just that — walk on the beach, and totally ignore any educational signs. Catching the Breeze by Steve Henderson, available as an original, signed limited edition print, miniature, and note card.

No, I am one of the extreme minority of people who read the placards and displays and educational signs set up in museums, or on nature walking paths, or along beaches, and after years of doing this, I’m beginning to see why 99 percent of the population totally ignores these things.

Take last week: the Norwegian Artist and I were out of town giving a 4-day watercolor workshop and in the evenings we powerfully and purposefully walked along the Belt of Green, a 15-mile path that wends its way along the river, and is filled with people biking, purposefully walking, roller blading, and some — irritatingly — strolling, although this is putting it charitably. If they were moving any slower they’d be going backwards.

Back to my point: randomly scattered about were educational signs — you’ve seen them, they look like church podiums — and they say things like this:

“What rhymes with PLATYPUS?” (I don’t know. Are there platypuses around here?)

“A river runs through it.” (Oh, how clever. By any chance would you have some information about this river, like, say, its name?)

“Trees and flowers and berries — oh MY!” (Yes, I noticed the flora. I was kind of wondering what some of it was, but all the sign tells me is that I — and every other human on the planet — am destroying it.)

Because, in the course of raising four children, I have read a lot of children’s books, I am attuned to the tone of infant literature, and I notice that the same people who write these books seem to have an evening job working on educational signs. And yet, I never see children under five reading them (which possibly may have something to do with most children under five being unable to read).

Children are smart, preferring to ignore the educational signs and instead, learn from the world around them. Bold Innocence by Steve Henderson

No, generally it’s people like me — women between the age of 35 and 60 — we probably own e-readers because we read all the time, anything and everything, even the newspaper classifieds — who fall for these things. And if the municipal and state and federal monies that go into creating them were spent to hire people like us, there would be something worth reading — actual information, for example.

But what there is, is “educational” — “It’s cool down at the tide pool. Flex your abs and check out the crabs! But make sure you don’t touch — because that’s too much!”

After reading this, and following arrows that point to a highlighted box filled with grinning fish, I know nothing about crabs, the location of tide pools, or specifically what lives in the large body of salt water in front of me, but I do know that somehow, I am destroying it.

Is this what it means to “educate” people?

I will stubbornly remain wallowing in my ignorance, entertaining my intellect with prose written beyond the 7th grade level, incorporating a mufti-syllabic word or two, imparting actual information with names and dates and descriptive thoughts and stuff like that.

I also know that I’ll continue to gravitate toward these signs, in the optimistic hope that one day I will find one that actually says something, along the lines of describing poison ivy, what it does, why I want to keep away from it, and — this part’s crucial — accompanying the verbal description with a recognizable illustration or photo of the plant.

Doesn’t that sound educational to you?

It’s important to Steve, the Norwegian Artist, that people enjoy art in their homes. To make this scenario more realistic, Steve offers many of his works as signed, limited edition prints. Follow the link and find a piece for your wall. Art is a necessity for our hearts, souls, and minds.

Start Your Week with Steve — Free weekly e-mail newsletter with upbeat thoughts and good news — now that’s different. Follow the link, and hit the Subscribe button at the top left.

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Bathtime at the O.K. Corral

Posted on July 18, 2012 by This Woman Writes

 I’ve noticed a couple things about the end of the day: 1) we’re all tired. 2) If the Toddler has been with us for the day, not only is she tired along with the rest of us, but she’s extra, extra dirty.

I liken it to a banana that you dip in chocolate and roll around in chopped nuts, only that gives the illusion that the Toddler looks better than she generally does. In the course of the day, she manages to smear her entire body surface with unidentifiable liquid and viscous matter, which we sincerely hope is limited to something innocuous like melted chocolate, sweat, spit, or randomly encountered water from preferably the sink over the toilet. And then, by simply inhabiting the atmosphere, she attracts dust, dirt, mud, lint, pet hair and assorted microscopic material that sticks, like walnuts on a banana, to her skin.

The Toddler plays hard, and by the end of each day, she shows it. Wild Child, available as a signed, limited edition print, original oil painting, miniature study, and note card at Steve Henderson Fine Art.

(The Norwegian Artist wondered if we could patent her as a giant sticky fly strip, but she screams so passionately when any bug crawls across her — why they don’t adhere, I don’t know — that this wouldn’t be kind.)

In my limited world view, some water is for sailing in, some is for splashing around the kiddie pool in, and some — in the bath tub — is for bathing in. Golden Opportunity, original oil by Steve Henderson.

“One of us washes the dishes, another dries them, a third tidies the house and a fourth gets the Toddler,” I announce. You can see everyone mentally calculating the work load of each chore and assigning it a number.

“I’ll take the Toddler,” the Norwegian says. “I’ll give her a bath and prepare her for bed,” and immediately after this he takes her hand and the two of them head outside.

“How odd,” I think. “The bathroom is the other way, and the last I looked, it was inside.” 

See the puddle? So does the Toddler. Reflection by Steve Henderson.

“I let her play in the kiddie pool,” the Norwegian explains.

“That’s not a proper bath,” I argue, aghast. “There are no tubby toys, no shampoo, no warm water, no soap, and it took less than ten minutes.”

“She’s clean.”

Well, how do you argue with that? Not only is she clean, she’s happy, as is the Norwegian, smugly basking in his extreme cleverness and the winning way he managed to shave 20 minutes off a job that properly takes a half hour. How male, I think, the aura of testosterone in the air almost palpable.

And then the Norwegian announces it’s time for bed and it all falls apart. In seconds, the Toddler transforms from  smiling princess to wailing troll, cascading tears flowing over her face and all over her body, instantly drying into a sticky surface that attracts, magically, all the dirt from the room. In remarkably little time, she looks pretty much what she looked like before her “bath.”

But I have finished washing the last dish, and as the Norwegian prompts and nudges his little charge up the stairs, countering her vociferous announcements that she “HATES BEDTIME!” with promises of an extra story, or two, but definitely not three, I pick up my knitting, settle in the chair . . . and smile.

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I think I need to go back to school for retraining, because I find myself unequipped for the technical and methodological demands of modern life.

Specifically, I can’t understand my phone bill.

Obviously, life is not always just a breeze, but neither does it need to be a convoluted tangle of obfuscating confusion. Golden Opportunity by Steve Henderson.

It is six pages long, which as phone bills go is relatively short, but consider that I purchase six uncomplicated services:

  1. A basic landline.
  2. Unlimited long distance.
  3. Caller ID.
  4. Call Waiting (I hate this one, but I’m told I need to “bundle” three extras together to get great savings; I am repeatedly assured that these savings are clearly delineated in the monthly pamphlet that I receive).
  5. Internet.
  6. In-home wire protection, which means that, if a squirrel eats the phone lines in the crawl space under the kitchen, a service technician will be out within two weeks to inform me that the problem isn’t anything to do with the inside of my house and certainly nothing to do with the outside lines for which the phone company is responsible, because there actually isn’t a problem at all.

But if there is, it is somehow my fault.

The front page, which announces that the bill is new, improved, and easier to understand (so they do acknowledge that there are “issues,” after all) congratulates me for saving $18 dollars this month! Every month, I enjoy this $18 savings, which I earn by doing nothing more than breathing.

Theoretically, because I purchase six items and there are six pages in each month’s bill, then one page is devoted to each service, but it’s never that simple. This is what would make sense to me:

Basic Landline — $20

Unlimited Long Distance — $20

Caller ID — $5

If a tree falls in a faint in a forest because it’s afraid it’s going to be turned into paper for phone bills, does anybody hear? Alpine Spring by Steve Henderson

You’ll notice that I’ve dispensed with half my purchases and have used a tenth of one page, significantly reducing paper waste, but that’s not what real life looks like. No, it’s more along the lines of:

Basic Landline — $47.99 – $34.50 residential home credit + $5.79 international access fee (that’s another way to spell “tax,” by the way) with an additional addendum of $4.82 in assorted federal, state, municipal, county, and provincial surcharges (T-A-X) which, on my calculator adds and subtracts to $24.10, but there’s no number like that on any of the six pages.

One time I asked a customer service representative why, if the $15 per month promotional offer for unlimited long distance ended and was replaced by the “new” promotional offer of $17.99, my bill was $5.38 more, even taking into account the ubiquitous – and iniquitous – surcharges.

“It’s only $5.38 more this month because we pro-rate the difference. Next month it will be the full increase of $12.63,” she informed me helpfully.

I wish my bank account did stuff like that with numbers.

The Norwegian Artist always says that the more complicated people make something – the more aggressive the sheer obfuscation of particulars that should be unassumingly elucidated – the more likely that somebody is trying to hide something.

So I think of all the things that I am repeatedly told are far too complicated for me, or anyone who looks like me (two eyes, one nose, mouth underneath the nose) to understand:

We are an intelligent, educated populace, capable of formulating valid opinions and ideas about the major issues that affect our lives. Facts help. Riverside Muse by Steve Henderson

Anything to do with economics.

Anything to do with education.

Anything to do with domestic security.

Anything to do with defense.

Anything to do with science, applied or theoretical.

Obviously, these are complicated issues, but they are made more so by a generous dollop of obfuscation, along the lines of what I see in my monthly phone bill.

I guess I’d better get started on that retraining.

Now in easy e-book form: 30 Middle Age Plague essays and corresponding images by the Norwegian Artist have been published as Life Is a Gift (Ordinary Life Is Beautiful), first in a series of short, upbeat essays to read as you’re lounging by the pool. Upcoming soon is volume 2, The Jane Austen Driving School. Kindle friendly; also readable on IPod, IPad, and Droid phones, as well as directly on your computer with a free downloadable app from Amazon. At $2.99 it costs less than the latte you’re drinking as you read it.

Posted on July 12, 2012 by This Woman Writes | Leave a comment

New E-Book — Life Is a Gift

Posted on July 9, 2012 by This Woman Writes

Just published with Amazon e-books, Life Is a Gift is a series of 30 short, upbeat essays about life with the Norwegian Artist, the Progeny, and the rotating assortment of animals on the studio farm.

Drawn from a compendium of Middle Age Plague essays, Life Is a Gift enables readers to relaxedly enjoy Carolyn Henderson’s writing on their e-reader — compatible with Kindle, IPad and IPod.

Images of the Norwegian Artists paintings highlight each vignette.

The first in the Ordinary Life Is Beautiful series, Life Is a Gift is a great gift itself for anyone who wants to start, or end, the day with a smile.

Follow the link on the image to look at the book on the Amazon Kindle book page, and look inside to read the first two chapters, free.

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It’s the LIttle Things That Drive You Nuts

Posted on July 4, 2012 by This Woman Writes

Yesterday was one of those days when nothing went right, and I wouldn’t have noticed it if it had.

See this? this is NOT the kind of day I was having yesterday. Wading, by Steve Henderson of Steve Henderson Fine Art

The details don’t matter, as I’m sure you have your own version of special days like this: the toilet overflowed, the dog ran out of food, people streamed in and out of the door constantly interrupting my work (as if this is anything new), I was tired, couldn’t find my left flip flop (it was in the bathroom; its mate beneath the dining room table — something to do with Toddler visiting, I imagine; come to think of it, maybe she had something to do with the toilet, too), lunch’s potato soup was anemic and listless, the check didn’t arrive in the mail but the bills did —

My major concern was that 24 hours wouldn’t be enough to fit it all in, and the extras would spill over into the next day.

Obviously, none of this stuff is major, but an overwhelming compendium of trite, trivial, bothersome details running into the back of one another and knocking down the living room lamp (that didn’t happen, fortunately) sets the mood and tone of the day in such a way that the best thing to do with it all is to drag yourself into the evening and call it all done.

Which I did.

Eight p.m. found me literally rolled up in the hammock (it was cold), swinging back and forth . . . back and forth . . . the hypnotic pendulum movement disengaging conscious thought. If I wanted to be spiritual about it, I’d say that I was “being still and knowing that He is God,” but I wasn’t knowing much of anything by that time other than that the dishes were done, the laundry put away, the e-mail inbox addressed, the dog fed with the new bag of food, and the Toddler — thank God and the Norwegian Artist, the latter who took control of this part — read to and tucked away for the night. One hoped.

Finally, a break in the day, and relief from the storm of inconsequential yet draining events. Break in the Weather, available as an original and signed print, framed and unframed, by Steve Henderson.

On my way inside — to my book, jammies, and early bed (which I appreciate although the Toddler does not) — I stopped to visit the box of unwanted kittens from the most recent unsolicited pregnant stray cat dumped off at our country home (Life Is a Gift), and I did something I haven’t done for a long time:

I sat on the ground, scooped up the kittens, and played. While the mother cat wasn’t enthusiastic about this (up to this point, she’s managed to keep them all — by sinister growls — huddled in that box; “It won’t last,” I try to tell her) — I had fun, and so did they.

I flopped them over and checked their genders — they all look like boys to me, but what do I know? I’m just the daughter of a microbiologist — kissed their noses, felt their scratchy little claws on my bare legs, and totally lost myself in fur and felines. I felt like I was eight-years-old again.

I don’t know how long I was there, but for the first time that day, the minutes fled effortlessly by, and by the time I tucked everybody back into the box, where it looked like they had no intention of staying, I was breathing normally again.

Child and adult — we don’t just share the same beach, we share the same person. Reflection, by Steve Henderson.

Book, jammies, bed, sleep — and I find myself in tomorrow today, with a working toilet, still no check, a better breakfast than yesterday’s lunch, and a box of active kitties ready to play when I am.

Little things. They can drag you down or build you up.

Heads up: Thirty of my essays in Kindle friendly version will be appearing soon, entitled Life Is a Gift, and featuring a painting of the Norwegian Artist after every chapter. I’ll let you know when the e-book is out on this site, but you can also find out on my Facebook Page, Linked-In, and Twitter.

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Empowerment: Making Your Own Bread

Posted on June 26, 2012 by This Woman Writes

Back in the 1970s, the status symbol for school-aged children who brought their lunch in a brown bag (we did that back then) was Wonderbread.

White, squishy, soft, building our little bodies in 12 different ways — combined with bologna it represented the pinnacle of elementary school sophistication and finesse.

Sunshine, laughter, good food, and play — these are four great ways to build happy little bodies. Summer Breeze by Steve Henderson of Steve Henderson Fine Art

And of course, my mother, being who she is, did not buy the stuff in the white bag with the blue and red and yellow bubbles spattered joyously — like balloons — about, but rather, the substitute — still white, still squishy and soft (my brother used to roll it into a ball and throw it at me), the exact same thing but it came in the wrong bag.

Nobody else knew this, but I did.  My power lunch may have looked like the real thing but it wasn’t, ultimately being nothing more than an ersatz proxy of the genuine article, although what the genuine article was supposed to be is a conundrum.

While my mother more than once was a  dampening influence on the social status of her youngest child (I have inherited this trait), she was quirky, which meant that, far more times than I realized, she came up with innovative, unusual ideas totally out of step with the culture of her day.

One of these was making sour dough bread from scratch, a family project involving two weeks of stirring a grey slurry that looked more like something you’d slather on your walls that insert into your alimentary canal. Eventually the concoction was pronounced ready, mixed with yeast and flour, kneaded, shaped, and slipped into the oven.

Seven of us — two adults and five children — watched through the miniscule window of the oven as the bullet-shaped loaves plumped and browned into something that was completely foreign to our visual experience. (I tell these stories to the progeny and they stare: “Were minds, as well as pursuits, so much simpler back then?”)

Modern life does not have to be as complicated as we are making it. Afternoon Tea by Steve Henderson of Steve Henderson Fine Art

When the aroma hit our olfactory glands we collectively oohed.

But it wasn’t until the bread came out of the oven that the action really started: it takes seven people less than five minutes to completely annihilate two loaves of freshly baked sour dough bread, and that we did, staring disconsolately at the empty cookie sheets and wondering if we had to wait two weeks to repeat the experience.

“If we’re going to eat it that fast,” my mother pronounced, “it’s not worth making.”

“But we haven’t wasted it,” I pointed out, my eight-year-old brain instinctively referencing the ultimate sin of leaving good food — which back then consisted of cow’s tongue, liver and onions, and boiled zucchini — on the plate, wasted, when it could have been feeding the starving children of whatever country my mother had heard about in the news that day.

While we never repeated the experience (my argument must not have been as strong as I thought), its memory never left me, and when I was 15 and alone in the house with a bag of flour, a packet of yeast, and some water, I made my first loaf of bread.

I have never looked back.

Forward, onward moving through life in general and through the adventure of making bread — I am surprised at the places I find myself.

There is something exhilarating, empowering, and enervating in making something that you are accustomed to buying, and bread is a great — and cheap — way to start. My gift to you this week — my wonderful readers — is my recipe for Quick, Cheap, Simple French Bread.

Bon Appetit!

(By the way, the artwork on these pages is all done by Steve Henderson of Steve Henderson Fine Art, and it is available as originals, signed limited edition prints, miniature studies, and note cards — something for every empty wall and household budget.  Check out the site, find something you like, and contact us. We’ll help you make fine art a part of your life.)

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Quick, Cheap, Simple French Bread

Posted on June 26, 2012 by This Woman Writes

Homemade bread doesn’t taste anything like what you’re accustomed to buying in the store — Thank God. If you’ve never made bread before, cut yourself some slack — your first loaves may not be picture perfect, but they’ll more than likely be edible. As with anything, the more you practice — and learn from your mistakes and successes — the better you’ll get. If you want to read the article that inspired my publishing this recipe, check out Empowerment: Making Your Own Bread. You can read it while the bread is rising.

Ingredients:

2 1/2 cups lukewarm liquid (think: baby bottle safe). I used a mixture of whey and leftover tea, but milk will do, or water; cold coffee will provide an interesting flavor, but please, not pop/soda

1 Tablespoon or packet yeast (I use quick rising)

1/3 cup oil or melted butter (I used olive oil)

1/3 cup sugar or 1/4 cup honey

1 teaspoon salt

6-9 cups flour (may be whole wheat or white or a blend of the two; I used 4 cups whole wheat and the rest white; you probably want to avoid 100 percent whole wheat if you’re a novice at this)

2 Tablespoons Dough Enhancer, if desired, and if you’re using whole wheat flour. (It’s not necessary, but if you have a high proportion of whole wheat flour, it tenderizes the final product)

1) Pour the liquid into a large mixing bowl.

2) Sprinkle the yeast atop and let it sit for a minute.

3) Add the oil, honey or sugar, and salt. Whisk with a spoon, whisk, or hand mixer.

4) Mix in three cups of the flour. You can stir the whole time with a spoon or beat with a mixer. I prefer to use a mixer with dough hooks because the longer I beat the dough with the mixer, the less time I have to knead it, by hand, later on. Whether you stir or mix, make sure the flour is completely incorporated and you have a smooth slurry or batter before you add more flour.

5) If you are using Dough Enhancer, this is the time to sprinkle it over the batter and work it smoothly in.

6) Add another cup of flour (this is four in all) — by this time you should have a stiff batter. If you’re using the mixer and the dough hooks, do so for five minutes or so. What you’re doing is developing the gluten, the protein composite found within flour, and doing so will enable the bread to rise more efficiently. You can either hold the mixer still and move the bowl (choose a direction, clockwise or counterclockwise, and stick to it) or move the mixer (again, either direction, but the same one). Gluten develops in strands, and if you maintain the same direction of stirring or mixing, you avoid “breaking” the strands.

7) Depending upon the power of your mixer, add up to another 2 cups of flour, a half-cup at a time, until you have a stiff dough. At any point, if the mixer is straining too much and not blending the mixture well, switch to a wooden spoon. (The amount of flour you ultimately use is variable, depending upon the amount of moisture in the flour itself, as well as in the environmental air around you. I made this batch on a rainy day in June, and ultimately used nearly 8 cups of flour.)

8) By now your mixture should be relatively stiff. Stir in another cup of flour (7 cups in all, by now) until the dough pulls away from the sides of the bowl. If you need less flour to achieve this pulling-away-from-the-sides-of-the-bowl thickness, use less. If you need more, sprinkle it in — a quarter cup at a time — until you get there.

9) Sprinkle a half cup of flour over a clean, dry surface on which you can need the bread. Dump the dough from the bowl onto the floured surface.

10) Now it’s time to knead. With floured hands and the dough in front of you in a sort of circular shape, gently grab the top half of the dough and fold it toward you. Push this down with the heel of your hand, and turn the dough a quarter turn (to the right, or left, but be consistent). Repeat the action of folding the dough in half, from the top and toward you, and pushing it down with the heel of your hand. This is the action of kneading, and if you’re absolutely whacked as to how to do it, please follow the link or Google “How to knead bread dough” to find a video or photo reference.

11) Knead for 10-20 minutes until the dough is smooth and elastic, sprinkling flour on your work surface, a quarter cup at a time, to keep the dough from sticking. (I used an additional 3/4 during my kneading process). Because this is French bread, which rises without a mold, it needs to be a bit stiffer than if I were making rolls — I kneaded until the bread didn’t stick violently to the surface of the counter when the flour was all used up.

12) You can tell you’ve kneaded enough by rudely poking your finger into the dough — along what you’d like to do to the shoulder of the driver who just turned in front of you and cut you off. If the dough springs back with some degree of energy, it’s ready.

13) Pour 2 Tablespoons of oil into a large bowl, plop the dough on top of it, turn the dough so that both sides are oiled, and cover the dough with a clean towel or plastic wrap. Let sit for 45 minutes to 1 hour at room temperature, until doubled. (If the room temperature is 95 degrees, the dough will double faster than if the temperature is 72 degrees.)

14) Punch the dough, with your fist, to deflate it. Flip it over.

15) Grease two cookie sheets.

16) Cut the dough in half, and shape each half into a long bullet. You can do this freehand, or you can roll each half into a 12 x 20 inch rectangle or so, and roll up tightly, from the widest side, into a cylinder. Pinch the bottom shut, and shape the ends into loose points. Put each bullet onto a cookie sheet. My sheets are sized so that I have to place the loaves diagonally so that they will fit.

17) Cover the loaves, loosely, with a light towel. You can also set the cookie sheets into the unheated oven on a lower rack. Drape a towel over the upper rack.

18) Let the loaves rise for 20-40 minutes, until doubled.

19) 10 minutes before you think the loaves will be doubled, pre-heat the oven to 385 degrees (taking out the dough from the inside of the oven, obviously, if that’s where you put it). Many recipes tell you to bake at 400 to 425 degrees, but in 35 years, I have never encountered an oven in which one can successfully do this. The product generally turns out hard, burnt, and more black than brown. Every oven is different though — and through trial and error, you will learn yours.

20) Slash the loaves with a sharp knife, 1/2 inch deep, diagonally at 2-inch intervals.

21) Bake the bread for 20 minutes, until it is browned on top, and lightly browned on the bottom. If it’s not brown at 20 minutes, cook longer. If you’re nervous that it’s burning, check, quickly, at 17 minutes. Remember, if you used whole wheat flour, that the dough in its raw state is brown already; what you’re looking for is that it is browned — a darker color than when you put it in.

22) Take the bread out. For a softer crust, rub the surface with butter.

23) Let the bread sit 20 minutes for slicing. This is very important, since the bread continues to bake with residual heat, and this step finalizes the interior baking. If you slice too soon, you may wind up with a gooey center.

24) Eat, enjoy, analyze for future improvement, and congratulate yourself for making a product that has fed mankind for centuries.

Leave me a comment if you have any questions or frustrations, and I’ll reply. Because I really don’t live at the computer, I may not reply at the very time you are experiencing frustration, but I will reply.

You did it!

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Well, one of the kittens died.

I know, it was grey and ugly, the product of its homely, drab, tabby-striped, alley-cat, pregnant feral mother that someone dropped off on our property. The morning she gave birth we all looked at one another and said,

Grey is such a drab color, so opposite to the way the Norwegian Artist paints. But even grey, in its own way, is beautiful. Autumnal Reflections by Steve Henderson.

“Great. Four new grey and ugly alley cats that all look like their mother.” And then we found the family a box that we set on the porch where it would be safe, put out food and milk, and guarded the area from the chickens (they’re bullies, you know) while the mother ate.

“Maybe,” I told the Norwegian Artist, “after we feed her for several weeks, she’ll feel safe and warm and wanted.”

“That’s what I’m afraid of,” he responded, and proceeded to coo at one of the kittens. Okay, to be strictly honest he didn’t coo, but he didn’t snarl either. The lifting of his upper right lip could as easily be interpreted as a smile as it could a sneer, but I’ve never known the Norwegian to sneer.

There’s something about motherhood that ennobles animals who are otherwise anything but noble, like this ratty, random cat. Within hours she had commandeered the porch, streaking like a bullet from the box toward any animal that stepped within 10 feet. When Mozart, the Russian Blue patriarch who has benevolently overseen the feline farm for 15 years, padded softly behind the carrier, there was a pronounced thwack as the new mother poofed up, her trebling, trembling tail hitting the ceiling before she hurtled onto the bewildered interloper.

Motherhood — and fatherhood — are beautiful and ennobling things, in the world of humans and in the world of nature itself. Reflection by Steve Henderson

Ten seconds later she was back in the box, licking the grey matters of any dirt they could have picked up in the interval of her absence.

Three of the grey matters were quiet and complacent, the fourth piercingly and unrelentingly strident, which I attributed to its blindly – and I mean this literally – wandering far away from its mother and out of the box, where it yowled and its mother looked concerned, not quite sure of what to do. I kept putting it back, commenting to Tired of Being Youngest, “This one’s going to die if it doesn’t stop wandering away.”

As it happened, it did die, but not because it wandered, but because it just stopped – stopped yowling, stopped striving, by next morning stopped breathing, leading me to wonder if it had been yowling for more reason than just being intrepidly stupid, and if the mother never stirred herself to rescue it because she knew it was better not to.

So small. So innocent. So beautiful even in drab greyness. It lay in my hand, sleeping a deeper, more permanent sleep than its littermates, which it looked just like, but it wasn’t, not anymore.

Tired of Being Youngest wrapped the body in a soft pink cloth, then dug a tiny grave beneath the maple tree, where nobody will inadvertently plant tomatoes. She covered the top with rocks (to discourage the dog), and ended the ceremony by strewing the surface with flowers.

Life is a gloriously mysterious and mystically beautiful gift. Spirit of the Canyon by Steve Henderson, available now as a signed limited edition print.

Yes, it was an ugly, unwanted grey kitten from an uninvited cat, and there are three more that look just like it still in the box. But for a brief moment it was alive, and loud, and outwardly normal – a promise of life enigmatically aborted at the point when it had just begun.

And this promise of life, and then absence of it, awes me – because life is a precious, awesome, mystical and mysterious thing, something I have no power of granting or taking away, but can only mourn, and marvel.

Life is a gift.

Posted on June 20, 2012 by This Woman Writes | 9 Comments

Conquering Fear

Posted on June 14, 2012 by This Woman Writes

My vivid imagination, in conjunction with a Type Triple A, drive-it-to-the-ground personality, means that I conjure up all sorts of dire and dreadful scenarios for any given set of actual facts. The less probable the outcome, the more likely I am to come up with it, and I am fully capable of fancying an array of potential scenarios ranging from the mundane to everything that you find in a Bruce Willis movie.

I never have seen Bruce Willis out in the wilderness, subjugating things. His wilderness is an urban one. The Pataha, by Steve Henderson, available as signed limited edition prints

(As an aside, have you noticed that Bruce always starts out crisp and clean — well, as crisp and clean as Bruce can manage — and by the end of three hours looks like something the cat upchucked on the back porch?)

I digress.

Through the years, the progeny has been the primary recipient of largesse from their parent’s dubious gift of mental B-grade screenplays, and they are all familiar with the admonition, upon their going somewhere, anywhere, of “Don’t get stolen!”

Now that they’re older, my parental thoughts run less on their accepting candy from strangers than on their forgetting to turn off the car lights, stranding them with a dead battery in a strange city, at night, in one of those covered high-rise parking lots where bad things ALWAYS happen.

And with the three minutes left on the battery of their phone, they call me:

“Mom, I’m someplace in inner city Chicago. And the car won’t start.”

It’s not as if, like any parent, I don’t have original material to work with. It’s just that, when it actually happens, it’s never like I fear it will be (sometimes it’s worse). Whatever it is and whenever it happens, however, it’s real life, in real time, and we all get through it.

There’s a difference between what we dream, daydream, and fear. The daydreams are definitely the best of the three. Daydreaming, by Steve Henderson, is sold, but note cards of the image are available. Just follow the link on the picture.

Last night, I had a dream – not a Martin Luther King dream – in which I spent hours on the computer, viewing one website after another, hitting links, reading content that didn’t actually exist because it was circumscribed to what I created in the subterranean miasma of my fog-befuddled subconscious.

At some point, I awakened enough to realize this, my intellect delivering a stunning piece of coherent thought:

“Don’t waste time,” it told me, “following non-live links.”

While this idea has been expressed far more eloquently by others – the apostle Paul comes to mind with his “Whatever it true, whatever is noble, whatever is right,” recommendation in Philippians 4:8 – it never hit so hard as when I awoke from three hours of work with absolutely nothing accomplished, because everything I had read or seen was confined to what I had generated in my mind.

It wasn’t real. It never would be. And I didn’t have the power to make it so, or not so.

“Why then,” I asked my fully wakened mind, “do you waste so much time – sometimes under the guise of prayer – thinking, fearing, and worrying about, what could happen?

Life, in real time, offers beautiful, fear-free moments worth filling our thoughts with. Dandelions by Steve Henderson of Steve Henderson Fine Art, available as an original, miniature study, note card, and soon, a signed limited edition print.

“Why do you follow links that exist only because you think they do?”

Bad habits don’t disappear overnight, and they don’t just “disappear,” actually, without significant work, discipline, and effort on our part. So one little dream won’t lasso my tumultuous thoughts into submission.

But that dream, however, is a step forward, one of many through the years as I absorb what the word “Trust” means, and Who it is that I want so desperately to give that trust to.

Someone with Live Links.

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