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to main Journal Page Sept. 25th I’m moving along….with the help of friends. I sent off a draft of the introduction (to the collaborative story/cookbook) to my daughter, Jan, and she gave me a terrific critique. It’s very close. Yesterday, Mary Jo Ryan came over to help me organize the recipe list, add new ones, and figure out who would want to join the groups of testers I need to set up.If you are in the area and into cooking, let me know and perhaps you can join a group. One more meeting with Mary Jo and that should be pretty much organized. Mary Jo is in the food business and it’s nice to have her guidance. She came over at eleven-thirty and left at nine-thirty. We had Vietnamese spring rolls for lunch and larb gai and ho mok for dinner. And we even got a lot of work done…..under her direction. There’s tons more to do, but it isn’t chaos any more. Today I got an e-mail from Mandy, a recent law-school graduate, who is going to India; and, if I’m ready, she will check out some information and groups regarding a fund to manage the education grants that will come from the profits of the book (the one that’s in process). I am so grateful for all the help I’m getting. Maria is still testing recipes in Mexico. The lesson here is, sure, go ahead and bite off more than you can chew……as long as you have friends or readers out there who will help out with the processing. As Mary Jo pointed out yesterday, with age comes a willingness to accept your own limitations. Tomorrow evening at seven, I’m going to speak at Village Books in Bellingham, two or so hours from here. I’m staying with Eileen Galer who is responsible for the visit…….and the next day I’m having lunch with Elizabeth whom I met in Mexico and on to La Conner where I’m visiting with a couple of book clubs at the invitation of Lou whom I also met in Mexico. Life is not dull. I hired someone on Saturday to pick about three big buckets of Muscadine grapes that are growing out my back door. I washed, boiled, squooshed, and squeezed them into the most amazing purple grape juice anyone has ever tasted. Mary Jo and I drank it from wine glasses with our meals and it was even better than wine. They were the first grapes I’ve ever picked. I have never known a grape that didn’t grow in a supermarket. What a treat. Martin, the young man who picked the grapes, is an agronomist from Bolivia who is here to work with Earthcorps; he lives down the street from me in Ann Lawrence’s home. I wrote about her a few journals ago. I haven’t found a house-sit in BC yet. But the Sunday NY Times had an interesting article about Spain….and it keeps popping up in my thoughts. Hmmmm. Well, it’s still a couple of months away. That’s it for today. Goodbye, Rita PS Anybody know a Canadian family heading south for the
winter? I'm looking to house sit in BC. September 18th September 11 Hi and Welcome, I can't write that date without a tear for what has happened in the world in the last six years. My heart goes out to all who suffered a personal loss. We are all still suffering the repercussions. For those of you who are here for an update on the collaborative story/cookbook, here's the latest. Nothing new...I am taking it easy this week after gall bladder surgery on Friday. I'll get back to work tomorrow. I'm still working on the introduction. Hoping to have it done by the end of the week. As you may have noticed, I'm not working all that hard. I do promise to get this book to my agent, Elaine Markson, soon. Once the introduction is finished, I'm going to start on the recipes. When I have about ten, I'll send the package back to Elaine and hopefully she'll send it out to publishers. So that's what's going on with the book. Funny thing. Lately I’ve been feeling as though anyone who visits me here is going to be disappointed because I’m not out in the world having adventures. Instead, I’m living in one place (until December), doing all the things everyone else is doing: going to the dentist, answering e-mails, accumulating and paying bills, cooking, eating, meeting friends…….and working at promoting the nomad book and organizing the next book. (The “next book” is a collaborative story/cookbook, an anthology with recipes that readers have submitted.) I’m also getting ready to focus on setting up an educational fund for slum kids in New Delhi that will be funded from sales of the anthology. It’s all stuff that has to get done……..but my life for these months can’t compare to the excitement of tracking orangutans in Borneo, singing and laughing with tribal men in Irian Jaya, living with royalty in Bali, or meeting interesting people in India. But this past week something clicked: adventure doesn’t have to happen “out there.” The best part of my adventures in the past twenty years has been the people I’ve met. And there are interesting people everywhere. All week long, even here in Seattle, things and people kept happening to me, and I felt the same kind of joy I feel when I’m “out there.” First, I had a house guest whom I picked up at the ferry that goes from Victoria, BC, to Seattle. Catherine, an artist, has traveled around the world on a sailboat and lived for five years in Samoa. She has contributed an intriguing and eerie tale for that story/cookbook about a bizarre relationship she had in Samoa with a fire-knife dancer. When I picked her up at the ferry, we met for the first time. Then, as we were driving to my house, the car began to smoke and smell. I drove it to Leo, the nicest mechanic I’ve ever had. He’s American-Chinese (one of the things I love about Seattle is its diversity); and if you live in Seattle, you will find him at Dere Auto, 1818 Rainier Ave. S). Catherine, Leo, and I all thought that the smoke must have been the brake pads burning; it smelled like it. But when Leo took the car out for a ride and put it up for a diagnosis, he determined that it was the clutch, which had smoked because I’d gunned it up a bunch of steep hills. It didn’t need any fixing, he said, and handed me the keys. He could have “fixed” something that didn’t need fixing; lots of mechanics would have. I felt great when I drove away. When we got to my house, I asked Catherine a lot of questions. What fun it was listening to her stories, watching her videos, and looking at her paintings and photography online. www.catherinebuchanan.com I felt lucky to have made a new and interesting friend. The third thing happened the next day. I learned how to access the stats for this site. Following the directions, I clicked a few times and there they were. In the month of August there were 2,556 unique visitors; and, since January, there have been 17,488. In the last twenty-five days, people in 52 countries have clicked-on this site! Wow. I’m not sure what I expected, but I have to say that it’s pretty exciting to know that so many people around the world have visited me. And then last night I went to an event at Earthcorps. It’s a hard-working group that puts together some amazing young people (between 18 and 25) who do environmental, cooperative projects. But I have to digress a bit before I talk about what it was like when I walked into their event. In March of 2006, I gave a talk at a class in Plymouth Church in downtown Seattle. Patricia Belyea had read the nomad book and invited me to address her class for women: The Next Fifty Years. I mentioned to the group in passing that I was about to leave for Tanzania. The next day I got an e-mail from Ann Lawrence who had been in the class. She wrote about Allan, a young man from Tanzania who had lived in Seattle for more than a year, working with Earthcorps. Now he was back in Tanzania. Everybody in Seattle loved him, she said; and she gave me his e-mail and phone number. I wrote immediately. Allan wrote back saying he’d love to show me his country. Then he asked, “What are your intentions while you are here?” I hit reply and explained that I was committed to teach and talk for one or two weeks in the International School of Arusha…and then I wanted to live in a village with a family and learn some Swahili. His response was that his mother and father were eagerly awaiting my arrival! I lived with Allan’s family for more than three months. Mother, father, brothers, sister, auntie…….they were great. They became my Maasai family and my visit to Tanzania was amazing because of them. OK. Now back to Seattle. Here I am, a year later, renting a house in the Mt. Baker section of town when an invitation to a pot-luck block party is slipped under my door. I go, carrying some lasagna on a tray. I don’t know a soul, but I begin talking to neighbors, one at a time. About an hour into the event, I’m talking to a woman who says, “Oh, I know you. You must have just come back from Tanzania.” It was Ann Lawrence! The Ann Lawrence who was responsible for my extraordinary introduction to Maasai life. She lives down the street! Two nights ago Ann took me to that Earthcorps event. I loved being there. What a great group! Young Americans and lots of youth from other countries, all very much part of a team. You can feel the spirit. All colors, all eye-shapes, lots of different first languages……everyone young, enthusiastic, and outgoing. There was a strong feeling of brother- and sisterhood in the air as we ate dishes from many different cuisines. And there was laughter and music and high energy afterwards as we participated in songs and dances from Brazil, Bolivia, the Philippines, and Ghana. In Seattle! For Past Postings, please view All Journal Entries
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