At around 7PM last night, I received this message from my father:

"Hey kiddo. It's about 7PM. I took a spill on my motorcycle and I was wondering if you could give me a hand when I get home, and probably a ride to the emergency room. I'm just getting on I-90 now, so I'll be back around 9PM or so..."

For those of you who may not know WA freeways, I-90 is the one that crosses the Cascade mountain range. I immediately called him back and left him a message telling him that he should stop and go to the nearest hospital rather than ride the rest of the way home, but he never picked up his phone.

9 PM passed.

10 PM passed.

I got worried enough that I called the state patrol to see if they had any news of single male motorcyclist accidents on I-90 (FYI: they can search for news of people in accidents by last name, in case you ever need to check on someone.) Finally, at 11:30, I get a call from my dad, who sounded terrible. I found him slumped over his motorcycle in his driveway. He wasn't passed out exactly, he just felt tired and couldn't get into his house by himself, so he decided to nap on his bike rather than the ground until I got there. He proceeded to make me even more worried by being unable to get his own keys out of his pocket (since he had hurt his left shoulder and his right hand) or walk in a straight line, and furthermore, the fact that he insisted that I turn on the power strips for his computers in his room before we went to the ER made me wonder about his decision-making capabilities. And then he started shaking, and got cold.

It turned out that he had slid his bike out from under him on a turn... in Merritt, British Columbia. Merritt, British Columbia, in case you didn't know (I didn't) is about 300-480 miles away from Olympia (depending on which roads you take.) My father took the long route, because he doesn't like to ride his motorcycle on big freeways. In other words, he rode for about 11 hours in pretty severe pain rather than getting medical care in Canada (where, by the way, said medical care is free.) In his defense, he thought he had only broken his thumb and maybe dislocated his shoulder at first, because his hip didn't start hurting until a few hours after the crash. By the time he got home, he was thought he might have broken it.

After five hours in the E.R. (midnight to 5AM, to be precise) we found out that he had not broken his hip nor had he dislocated his shoulder. However, he had broken his hand (below the thumb, in such a way that he'll probably need surgery to set it properly) and had such extensive bruising on his hip that he had lost enough blood (internally) to be anemic. Did you know that you can lose about two quarts of blood to bruising? (You only have about seven quarts, total.)

Since he also hadn't had anything to eat since his breakfast cereal the day before (!), we went to Sherri's for breakfast. Then I slept until 1PM, and went out to buy him groceries and pick up his painkiller prescription. So much for my day off...

On the upside, it is traditional to stay up all night on the solstice, and I figure that this was close enough to count.

The weekend before last, J. and I headed up over the cascades to look for morels in the Cle Elum/Roslyn area. ( We found a handful of morels and one Big Mad Mama Moose... )

As a public service announcement, here is ( what you SHOULD do if you meet an angry moose )

J's dad died last Monday, at home, surrounded by his family. We buried him ourselves the next day.

The cool part of this otherwise sucky situation? His obituary is in today's New York Times (above the fold, even.) Yup. That's how cool he was.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/19/education/19rossman.html?_r=1&ref=obituaries&oref=slogin

Bonus: Cute pic of him when he was younger. You can see why J's mom took up with him.

Jaime's dad stopped going in for blood transfusions yesterday. He's been getting platelets and reds every day for weeks, so it's likely that he won't be with us for long. I'm flying back down tomorrow.

Jaime and his family were talking about the six word memoir (more at http://www.smithmag.net/sixwords/.) His uncle came up with a good one for Michael: He turned over every stone, looking.

Michael liked it so much he decided to etch stones for people (a process involving painting on a stone with nailpolish and dunking it in acid--very cool, but requires a certain kind of rock.) On the top he wrote, "He turned over every stone" and then, on the bottom, of course, "looking."

Apparently, it takes visiting J's family, watching his father dying.






No newspapers, current events, if any
Stalled beyond our reckoning
Past the edges of our circle.
We dip in and out of turbulent
uncertainty, confusion,
our ties of blood and love
circling a disaster: nature
Turning what she does from
one circle to the next, the shovel
in her hands
slamming hard
thrusting up the old cracked
crust.
Beneath, dark loam
moist,
fertile,
raw
fleshed out to the light.
We can’t turn away. We’re involved
In mystery, the harsh turn
Of the universe, careless
And magnificent.
Untethered
from the usual wonderings,
We hold hands together as tightly
as any children gazing up at a night
they are young enough to know
they can fall into.

but I thought it was a neat little story idea and ought to be passed on.

This is from http://kiota.livejournal.com/. Unfortunately, I have to say that I found this because someone else just posted that this person committed suicide. I'm not kidding. But you should read the story anyway.


From http://kiota.livejournal.com/:

Let me tell you a story. This is a story about how God was born. Everything has a beginning - yes, even God. So gather around, boys and girls, and listen closely.

Once upon a time there was a universe. This universe was a wonderous place. It consisted of many things. It had many galaxies, many solar systems, many stars and planets. One of these galaxies, the Milky Way Galaxy, had in it a solar system, located in the section known as the Orion Spur. In this solar system was a star we call the Sun, and many planets, one of them known as Earth.

On Earth there were people. There were men and women and boys and girls and all sorts of animals and they all lived together, sometimes in harmony and sometimes not.

Now you must realize, these people were the result of tremendous evolution. These people were, in fact, the result of billions of years of evolution. You cannot imagine that sort of time, so don't even try. It is beyond comprehension. These people, at any rate, were extraordinarily powerful. Through tremendous intellect, they were able to come to entirely rule the Earth, despite being physically weaker than many of the other animals.

These people were also different than the animals they lived with in another important way - they had self-awareness. They were sentient. In other words, they had a soul. And a soul, boys and girls, is a very, very important thing.

These people were wise, and they knew many things, and among the things they know is that everything has a beginning, that nothing comes from nothing. They looked around their world and they saw how incredible and perfect it was; they looked within themselves and they saw their souls and knew that their souls came from something, their souls were forever, their souls were not of this world.

They thought and they thought and they came up with an idea: God.

And as they believed it, as billions believed it, as generation after generation believed it, as through life and death they believed it, as their souls believed it - God was born. For those people had tremendous power - with their belief, with their faith, with their souls, they could create such a thing as a God.

So God was born. And God was wiser than those people - infinitely wiser. Wiser, and capable of many things they were not. Capable of doing anything he chose to do. Capable of knowing everything. Capable of controlling past and future.

And so God did something that was very simple to him, though how he did it is incomprehensible to us. He went back. Back before his birth, for time means nothing to a god. Back before there were people. Back before the planet called Earth and its Milky Way galaxy. Back before the universe. Back before time.

And then, God looked around, looked ahead, and knew what must be done.

And God said, "Let there be light!"

And there was light.

Begin game:

Proceed to Post Office with two objectives: 1) Mail various boxes and letters; 2) Apply for new passport, since dog ate corner of old passport, thus removing renewal-by-mail option.

Stand in line at Post Office. Find out that you need to know both of your parents' birthdays and birth places. Helpful Post Office employee tells you that AAA will do your passport photos for half the price of the Post Office.

Proceed to AAA (on the other side of town), while calling parent on cell phone and writing down birthplaces and dates. Steer with knees.

At AAA office, find out their camera is broken and they can't take pictures. Helpful employee points out that Walgreen will do the photos for a few dollars more.

Proceed to Walgreen.

Find out that passport photos at Walgreen will take half an hour, because all twelve of their printer cartridges are empty and must be replaced. Wander around Walgreen for half an hour while waiting for photos. Pay for photos.

Return to Post Office with photos. Stand in long line. Get a third of the way to the front, and see sign telling you that Post Office only processes passports until 3PM. It is 4PM.

Return to start. Do not collect $200. Play again tomorrow. Good luck!

Around this time of year, with some regularity, I begin to desire the desert. I look outside: the occasional sunbreaks light the budding trees with flashes of gold and green then disappear, leaving shades of grey and brown. The crocuses are up, snowdrops gone, daffodils beginning to peek around the corners. It's not a bad time of year here, but like a longtime lover longing for something new, I want red sand, dry air, dusty roads. I want those light-light-blue skies that look like they start miles above my head, that leave room for wandering, and clear dark nights punctured by white stars circling. I want to run my hands along the smooth flanks of windswept red rocks and lie sunbaking in the sand like a snake, motionless, watching, listening to the wind brush the dry leaves of sage and Mormon tea and other plants I can't name but imbibe by smell. I want the weight of openness, the deepening of sound that comes far away from roads and radios. I wan to go now, on a plane, in my car, throw my tent in the back, pick up Jaime, and head south at ten miles over the speed limit, hands gripping the steering wheel.

At this time, I believe if you cut me I would bleed the color of those rocks.

It's rainy and grey outside. My back hurts. Jaime just left to go see his family for some uncertain amount of time (extra depressing since his dad's bone marrow transplant didn't work.)

Dear Florida,

Please get your shit together and stop fucking up our politics.

Sincerely,

The Other 49 States

I went for a 5.5 mile walk yesterday at the Nisqually Refuge and communed with spring (as well as with my screwy hips, which hurt quite a bit now.)

I had originally meant to go for a short walk, but a 1.1. miles I thought, well, I'm already a mile in, I should just walk the next four! I regretted this later.

As I headed off toward Medicine Creek, the sky suddenly filled with riotous, wild birds squacking and crying. Eventually, the huge group separated into two large flocks who flew to opposite ends of the fields. The flocks slowly spiraled down, looking like cyclones of black wings, and landed in the water and grass almost simultaneously, a half-mile apart. Where Mecicine Creek pours into the sound, I ventured off of the trail to look at the mudflats and encountered the most amazing carpets of light green moss, about two inches thick and springy. They were so resilient I couldn't see where I had just stepped, but I still walked most of the way around them on my way back, except for when I took my shoes off and walked on them barefoot. They felt exactly like a wet carpet.

Closer to the Nisqually river, I saw the first salmonberry blossoms, nettles poking up everywhere, and what was either an otter or beaver (although the chewed little tree nearby makes me lean toward beaver.)

All this with the added blessing of a warm wind which smelled like rich hummus and the promise of abundant life. I had with me, rather than food or water, the memory of the previous night's chorus of frogs at our house providing a musical backdrop to the owl who hooted from the Douglas Firs on the south side of the yard for an hour at least, and the faint response of a second owl, somewhere off to the east.

You may have heard that I've moved on from the world of Admissions and entered the dimension of natural food grocers. What a strange transition it has been. After years of scratching and clawing my way up from the dregs of retail subservience, through a masters degree and a year-long foray into the full-time professional world, I've given it all up--my plane tickets, my fat paychecks, my per diem meals in exotic cities like Van Nuys--to stock organic pinto beans, balance register reports, and help people find their garlic pill supplements.

I can't say (so far) that I regret my drastic turnaround. The store(s) are member owned, not-for-profit, and managed by a staff collective that operates by consensus. It's a gathering place for some of the most creative and interesting people in town--I just met a coworker who has a goat farm, and one of the other new hires runs a community printmaking shop downtown and is a freelance bike mechanic. It seems like every third person I meet is in some sort of band. I've been becoming more and more interested in local and organic food, and food as medicine, and working at the co-op is an immersion into the very real world of these things. I was helping a woman find pure cranberry juice the other day and after some deliberation she decided to buy the more expensive, organic juice. "Yeah, $2 more isn't that much for organic," I said in a chatty way. "Yes," she replied. "Especially when you have cancer."

Because it's a collective (apparently one of the few remaining collective natural food stores), the working environment is not your typical retail job. If a customer is being offensive, we can ask them to leave, or talk with them about it. This sounds great, in theory, to me. But I think it may be a long while before I shake off all those years of both female and retail "niceness" training. Working at the co-op requires me to retrain myself to be *real* while at work.

In fact, the reasons I'm excited about working at the co-op have very little to do with "career planning", and everything to do with growing up (in the best sense of the phrase.) For the last year or two, I've felt that I'm becoming who I am, that I'm growing into myself in the way that a small child might grow into a pair of shoes long intended for her. And the things that I'm interested in learning more about are being real and present with other people, being attentive to the needs and feelings of my body, and understanding and practicing community. I want to learn to really communicate, to value conflict (even if I fear it), and to use my voice like the tool and art and weapon that it is and can be.

The co-op, with it's often byzantine organization structures, diversely-strange (and sometimes trying) staff, and its open embrace of values that I share seems like a hell of a learning experience. Certainly, my first month of training has been frequently overwhelming, tiring... and satisfying. But every now and then I find myself staring at the can of pinto beans in my hand and thinking, "wait, what have I done?"

...I'm putting this poem up, which I wrote in 2005 and still think is funny. Most people haven't read enough about research methodology to know the vocabulary, but pretty much everyone gets the basic idea.

At some point soon, I promise, I will write some more substantive things and post them.



Research

Let me describe my methodology.

First, I’ll deconstruct your arguments
Remove your underlying assumptions and
Introduce you to my communitarian philosophy.
You know the boundaries of our discipline are false
So let’s be open to our partisan nature,
Reveal our bodies of data and give consent
To further study. It’s true—
I want to have discourse with you,
I want to part your dichotomies,
Take a position, and operationalize
All your variables. I want to mesh our systems
Ground my knowledge in your epistemology
And listen to your dissertations all night long.
Let’s go beyond enlightenment — Together
We can find a perfectionist approach
To explore multiple outcomes
Until our debate becomes crucial
Our methods intersect
And entirely new ways of knowing
Are created.

On last Sunday, I pulled myself away from J. and his family, and my parents, and drove north to Santa Rosa so that I could visit schools in that area on Monday morning. Now, I've been looking forward to my Bay area work-trip because this is my home-away-from-home, and because in between Santa Rosa and Santa Cruz I'd be able to stop back in Berkeley, stay in a home rather than a hotel, and boil my own water for pasta. But spending so much time with everyone here, and perhaps seeing how J.'s family has pulled in to support his dad while he's in the hospital, cracked my solo-businessperson travel persona and left me vulnerable to the loneliness of single hotel rooms and dinner partners made of print and paper rather than flesh and blood. I felt like I was traveling against a current that was pulling me in the opposite direction. All I wanted to do was say screw work, turn around, and go back to Jaime and Berkeley.

It didn't help that as I pulled into Santa Rosa I was also hungry. So after checking in, I hauled myself away from my dark hotel room, put on my jacket, and set out walking toward the downtown area, where most of the places I wanted to eat at had already closed.

After a cold walk around town, I found a Chinese-American-Japanese Buffet for $10.99 and decided that it would do. There's something about unlimited fried food that seems to pair well with mild despair. Apparently, single diners are so rare there that even after I told the gentleman who seated me that I was alone, he still brought me a check with two fortune cookies and two dinner charges. I set them straight on the charges, but kept the extra cookie.

After I paid the bill and was walking back to the hotel, I pulled out the first fortune cookie and cracked it open. It read,

"You will travel to many places."

Well, I thought, thanks for nothing.

Back at the hotel, I ate the second cookie. This one informed me that,

"Your home is a pleasant place from which you draw happiness."

The juxtaposition, I think, said it all.

Scottsdale is the capital of cultural appropriation. I realized this as I was wandering around the downtown ("old town") area on Saturday night, looking in all of the closed shop windows. Almost every shop was selling some sort of "western" art, most of which involved Indians, Indian jewelry, pictures of Indians (particularly half-clothed, lithe young women, perhaps with wolves nearby), beadwork, etc. But Indians were definitely the subject more frequently than the creator of the art. One store, tellingly, had a window displaying about 100 different necklaces, most of which were made of turquoise in traditional-looking patterns, over which a sign hung that read, "We do not sell Native American jewelry." Perhaps they do not sell jewelry made by Native Americans, but they sure are selling plenty of knockoffs.

I had just turned away from contemplating a painting of two very white looking girls in traditional-ish pow-wow outfits when a huge, white stretch-Hummer pulled up to the stoplight next to me. A young guy with blonde, disheveled hair and a partially unbuttoned white dress shirt was leaning out a half-opened back window (the kind of window that only opens half-way, probably to keep drunks like him from falling out) yelling at another man in a little black convertible that had pulled up beside him. The man in the black convertible was also shouting, and waving a wad of cash in the blonde guy's direction. I couldn't hear what the guy in the convertible was saying, but the blonde guy was shouting, over and over, very loudly, "I need money for my fucking hoes! I need money for my fucking hoes!" He shouted this for the duration of the light. Just before the light changed, the guy in the convertible hurled the cash at the blonde guy, who responded by cussing at him fluently. A few errant dollar bills swept along behind the cars as they accelerated away into the night.

At least someone else (presumably sober) was driving the stretch-hummer.

My evening has been lovely. I had some acceptable guatamalan dinner (pollo en pepian) and wandered down the little street with all the shops to a little art & cultural center for the end of an open mic featuring, incongrously, a variety of beefy men with guitars playing songs in front of a huge picture in Diego Rivera style of a young latino woman with her fist in the air, bordered by two trees hung with water bottles discarded during desert border crossings. The art exhibit at the center is called Las Madres, and features art made from or centered around these found belongings in the desert: a man's shoe, the sole layered with newspaper and a calling card; a letter; children's backpacks covered in dust. Just the empty bottles--milk bottles, mostly, with loops of bright cloth through their handles to carry on one's back--, dirty from the crossing, more than twenty of them hung like Christmas ornaments from dry sticks masquerading as two trees, was as strong a testament to the overlooked humanity of the immigration "debate" as the more traditionally artistic mother-figure whose layers of apron reveal the story of her daughter's deadly, failed attempt to cross the border. You could look the exhibit up online, but I recommend against it. The power of the exhibit is in the substance of the objects, and the computer would render them mere pictures once more.

The open mic was the emotional opposite of the exhibit--amateur and frankly sohpomorish, but that was its main charm. I sat in the dark on a big couch and wrote amateurish poetry with a borrowed pen on a piece of paper printed with warnings about mountain lions (from yesterday's visit to Sabino Canyon) which I had previously been using as a book mark. After the lights came back on and the musicians congratulated each other, I got in my car but rather than heading back to my room I drove up the street and got a vanilla italian creme soda at the Epic Cafe, where I sat outside in the finally-cool night and alternated between eavesdropping on other peoples' conversations, staring at the big street sign for "University Ave. 700 N" hung over the street but very low and close to the curb, and reading High Tide in Tucson (essays) by Barbara Kingsolver. Barbara apparently lives somewhere outside the city limits and since I don't know where, I imagine her as a sort of living, literary ghost haunting the saguero cacti just past the edges of the Tucson sprawl, where the strip mall lights fade to moonlight. Damn, that woman is brilliant.

Returning to my room, I found the pants that I washed in my sink and hung out to dry on a branch in the garden nearly completely dry. In Washington, I might have waited days for that to happen, and even then, they may well have molded. Let's hear it for the desert, and the crazy people who live here.

I am tipsy enough that typing is a little difficult. Here's why: after having a vodka tonic with dinner, I was at my room (at a B&B)when one of the innkeepers invited me downstairs to help them finish off some wine left over from an afternoon gathering of supporters of the Children's Hospital. It seemed like a good idea, so I followed him down the three stories of creaky stairs to the kitchen, where he and his sister poured me a glass of cabernet and offered me some Russel Stover chocolates.

No, this isn't leading to some sort of incestuous come-on. Quite the opposite. Instead, the sister started talking about the 9-11 conspiracy show they had just seen on TV (about how, you know, the government blew the WTC up, etc.) It turns out that they're devout, anti-government Christians. The whole first half-hour (or more) of our conversation revolved around her brother's run-in with local law enforcement. Here's what happened:

The brother is a Gulf War vet (cute, too) from a family tradition of military service. He lost his faith in the government after reading about Waco, TX. At some point, after he returned from service, he was deep in prayer when the Lord told him to carry a weapon. Unsure of whether this was really a direct command from God, he struggled with the idea for some time. Finally, he asked God whether it was really Him instructing him to carry a weapon, and he saw the word "Luke" followed by the number "22." He consulted his Bible and found that in Luke 22:36 Jesus instructs his disciples to carry a sword, and if they do not have one, they should sell their garment to buy one.

So he figured that the command to carry a weapon really was a command from God. He decided to literally carry a sword (which he had) rather than a gun (which he also had) because he knew there was a chance he could "draw fire" with a gun, and because the scripture did actually refer to swords.

He carried his sword into a number of places (such as the Secretary of State's office) without any problem. It was at a church "crusade" event (and he was well aware of the irony of the situation) where he was confronted and told that he needed to leave (or hand over his weapon, I think.) The police were either called or were already there and when he refused to give up his sword, they pepper sprayed him from a few feet away until, as his sister said, "it was literally dripping from his beard in a stream." At this point, their other brother intervened by placing his hand in between the spray and his brother's face. They both ended up in jail.

His sister returned home, crying out to her Father (the heavenly one), and asking why this terrible thing had happened and why her brother's were in jail. Then she was directed to a piece of scripture in which it is told that "they will drag you in front of magistrate's and kings" and you will proclaim your faith. (I can't remember the rest of that quote, but it was indeed quite uncanny.)

The sister also told me about being an off and on biker chick, and being the "prodigal son." When I had first checked in, I asked her for a good place for dinner and she said she'd have to ask her brother because she had essentially renounced the world and hadn't left the house much in the last ten years. I thought she was exaggerating, but now I think she might be serious. She was a little odd--very talkative, but a little off. I wonder what the story behind her and her brother living together is.

I got along with them (and their friend who joined us partway through the conversation, who looked like Che Guevara but hadn't heard of him) because we could really come together on things like the WTO, FDA (and the evils of food additives, aspartame, high fructose corn syrup, GMOs, etc.), police brutality and pharmaceutical companies. Also, I have a decent working knowledge of the Bible, which helped.

The only problem is that now I'm tipsy and it's after midnight and I have to pack my bags. Ah, the sacrifices I make for adventure!

All three books that I brought on this trip are about death (and love.) I didn't realize this until halfway through book #2, after I'd already picked up and put down book #3, and finished book #1. Clearly, my subconscious picked a few books out for me on my last trip to Lassley's Paperbacks, although I do know that I have been ruminating on death recently. Jaime's dad's blood cancer has been chewing its way through his blood, necessitating transfusions and, in early November, a gamble of a bone marrow procedure. My mom told me she was diagnosed with chronic leukemia last fall, and she's moved from Stage 1 to Stage 2. I think of my own death, of course--inevitable, hopefully far in the future but who knows? And, oddly enough, loving J. makes me think of death, too. We're unreasonably in love, and thinking of what we have to lose makes me bittersweet. Goethe and the other Romantics' melancholy love makes more sense to me these days, when before I mostly they thought they were maudlin egotists. Well, I still think they're maudlin egotists, but I see the root of their appeal.

Death feels completely foreign to me. When I think of death, I feel like I'm staring at an unknowable and mysterious alien object that has fallen from the sky, indescribable, threatening, and opaque. I've never really been close to anyone that died, although I've known a few people that have--a grandmother and grandfather I'd only met a couple of times, a college acquaintance I hadn't seen in years, a best friend's little brother who I'd only seen a few times since I was in high school. So my thinking about death is a lot like meditating on quantum physics, of which I know extremely little, but can relate a certain puzzling story about a cat in a box. I've heard people speak of death in terms of grief and missing someone, and in terms of spirituality or personal growth, but each of those seems to be missing something, only part of the story.

The three books I picked explore death differently. East of the Mountains by David Guterson follows the man with cancer who decides to kill himself, but his plans go awry. The Probable Future, by Alice Hoffman is more dreamy, with a dying grandmother, and a teen-aged granddaughter who can see how a person is going to die just by looking at them. I'm beginning The Pilot's Wife, by Anita Shreve, which follows a woman whose husband dies when his plane crashes. I tried not to cry over my dinner at the Macaroni Grill when the author describes the woman seeing her dead husband's jeans hung over the back of the bathroom door, ready for the return home that won't happen.

I've appreciated East of the Mountains the most. The main character faces death--the slow, agonizing kind--even though its painful and scary, not because of some philosophical or spiritual belief, but because what he loves most is alive in this world, and because death is part of our life. Hoffman's book has some great scenes about letting people go who are dying, something that seems noble to me, but probably takes more maturity than I have now. I'll see what Shreve has to say--right now, there's just a lot of grief.

And love, well, it seems intimately connected with death, but I'm not sure how, exactly. Perhaps death is a condition of love, or a forge, or an initiation.

The Comfort Inn in Fort Collins has a sign by the microwave in their breakfast area that says:

"Do not microwave the eggs. They will explode."

I did not actually read this book at this cafe, but they are both spectacular.

I just finished East of the Mountains by David Guterson (best known for Snow Falling on Cedars.) This is definitely the best book he's written. It's the story of a retired doctor who finds out that he has incurable colon cancer, so he plans a trip to eastern Washington where he plans to kill himself. But things go awry.

The detail in this book is incredible. Reading it, I would have sworn that the author had worked on an apple farm, performed surgery, and fought during WWII, among other things. Every sentence is a kind of simple, lucid poetry, but the plot moves along at a quicker pace than the other two books of his that I've read. It's a total immersion experience. Usually, this is not a subject or necessarily a character that would keep me riveted, but I didn't want to put it down, and I didn't want it to end. I imagine I'll be re-reading it sometime.

And the cafe...

...is right down the street from my B&B (on Colfax.) I stopped by just to take a look at the menu on my way back from visiting a thrift store further down the street. The cafe is decorated sparsely, with yellow-ish walls and an open kitchen along one wall. On the window is written "Same Cafe, Deliciously Different." Instead of a menu, I found a sign that explained the cafe's operation: You pick up your silverware, serve yourself a drink, and someone comes to your table to take your order. (The menu is different every day, and written in multi-colored chalk on a blackboard near the door.) Then, after you eat, you are encouraged to either donate an hour of your time to the cafe, or donate money for the food.

No set prices, organic food. Their motto is "So All May Eat."

An older woman with short, dark hair and slightly cat-eyed prescription glasses at a nearby table stood up and explained the process to me. She also introduced me to the proprietor (who was cooking) and, when I asked, told me that the cafe has been open for about a year. I declined food (I had finished a grilled cheese sandwich at Pete's Kitchen, a 40-year old diner down the block, about a half hour before) but stayed to talk with her for another forty minutes or so. She told me about where to find used bookstores in Boulder ("the hill"), about being sent to an all-girls school in Boulder during high school (because her parents were worried about her behavior) and about leaving for San Francisco and Haight Street in the 60s. She told me that Boulder was popular with the beats, "before the hippies", and also where to visit in France (the northern part, particularly a certain abbey built so that the high tide surrounds it.) I told her about being an admissions counselor, and Olympia, and my mom taking us all to Italy this summer. We shared stories about electric shocks and lightening. About halfway through our conversation, the proprietor brought me a little plate with a single cookie on it. The cookie was sweet, slightly crumbly, and had a lemon glaze dripping from the top. It was delicious. I poured myself a half-glass of iced tea to go with it and left $2 in the box.

If interested, you can find their website at http://www.soallmayeat.org/.