Does the World Need Us?

Praça José Bonifácio in Piracicaba

My husband Jeff and I arrived in Brazil a week ago for a 3-month stay.  The 24-hour journey from Seattle was gratefully easy including a seamless plane change in Washington D.C. less than a day before a massive snowstorm hit the area.  Upon arrival in Sao Paulo, we drove north to the inland city of Piracicaba, where we will live for the next couple of months.  I first visited Piracicaba exactly 30 years ago.  At the time, I was a not so young mother of a 2-year-old boy and pregnant with our daughter.  Now, both children are grown adults, our son married for three years and our daughter, almost 30, will get married this summer.  It seems like a long time ago that I walked to the local bakery holding my young son’s hand and discovered that the cruzeiro had inflated overnight and was now the cruzado, with the value of 1000 cruzeiros.  Fortunately the cost of bread did not inflate 1000-fold. 

The Cathedral in Piracicaba

Amazingly, despite the passage of time, another monetary unit (the real) introduced in 1994 and population growth, the town feels very much the same as it did when I first visited.  Piracicaba remains a peaceful and prosperous university town with a thriving downtown core and several productive factories on the outskirts.  It sits in, and is supported by, a rich agricultural region.  Lush sugar cane fields stretch beyond the town as far as you can see.  Just as I did 30 years ago, I can still walk across the street from my apartment building and buy freshly baked pão francês from a family run bakery (the Brazilian style French rolls that are the staple daily bread everywhere in Brazil http://flavorsofbrazil.blogspot.com.br/2012/08/brazils-daily-bread-pao-frances.html ) .  But back in 1986, the world, Brazil and Piracicaba were very different, perhaps more innocent places.  Brazil was a new democracy with an emerging if small middle class and just auditioning on the world stage.  It would be three years before the fall of the Berlin Wall signaled the end of the Cold War and five years before the Soviet Union dissolved.  Back then, I don’t think any of us imagined something like 9-11 or similar terrorist attacks.   There were threats of course but nothing like those we face today.  The big issues at the time in Brazil were national inflation and de-forestation of the Amazon rain forest.  Now thirty years later, no matter where you are in the world, there are much greater economic and political challenges – many linked heavily to the global economy and increasing inequality.  The challenges here in Piracicaba are not terribly different from those in my hometown of Seattle.  Environmental issues like de-forestation are now recognized to be part of larger, more complex global concerns including climate change.  Brazil is fully on the world stage now – about to host the 2016 Olympics! It has some of the best street graffiti in the world.

Great Street Graffiti in Piracicaba

My first visit to Brazil occurred in 1982, four years before I came with our young son.  I took a leave of absence from my job in Seattle and traveled in the Amazon region, assisting my husband and other scientists on a scientific expedition. The expedition evaluated the hydrology and geochemistry of the largest river in the world.  I was a trained geochemist at the time.  I remember feeling during the five weeks we were on the river as if I was living in a National Geographic travelogue replete with dug out canoes, exotic birds and floating villages.  One afternoon we passed through a hatch of beautiful butterflies that surrounded our boat in a magical veil of bright yellow wings for more than an hour. 

Some of the changes during the last three decades are unsettling, even alarming – and for better or worse, the changes we’ve experienced affect us all regardless of where we live in the world.  For example, last week I read that 2015 was the hottest year on record throughout the globe, breaking the high temperatures reached during the previous hottest year, 2014.  Everywhere I turn, whether I am reading about energy, education, global warming, security, social and religious freedom there is disheartening, and often bad news.  But at the same time there are exciting new innovations all around me that give a feeling of optimism.  Who imagined in 1986 that we’d all own personal computers let alone smart phones?  Probably Steve Jobs but not most ordinary folks.  Similarly did we imagine all being connected through the World Wide Web?  I didn’t but smarter folks did and they were inventing it just as I was walking to the bakery in Piracicaba holding my little boy’s hand.  Now all of us share music, news, knowledge, stories, everything on this amazing global information system.  Of course these systems have been and will be used for purposes that are threatening and even dangerous – we’ve seen that recently in Paris, San Bernardino and elsewhere.  But I believe the power of art, science, engineering, computers and associated technologies to do good and help solve our problems is greater than any downside. 

I was reminded of this belief a few days ago when I received a poetry prompt from the outgoing 2015 Washington State poet laureate Elizabeth Austen.  Ms. Austen is a talented poet and teacher – skilled in inspiring the rest of us to read and write poetry.  You can connect with the prompt at http://wapoetlaureate.org/2016/01/24/poetry-for-all-prompt-5/

She began a series of video poetry prompts in 2015 and sent out the fifth one earlier this week.  The prompt begins with an epigraph from Rainer Maria Rilke, a nineteenth century lyrical poet.  In the prompt, the contemporary poet Ellen Bass responds directly to Rilke’s assertion in a poem entitled “The world has need of you.”  After listening to Ms. Austen’s video, my poem is in response not to the statement but to the implicit question: “Does the world need us?”  Here is my poem:

Does the world need us?

Does the world need us?

Well you might ask.

As if the sky needs the swallows

Or the young eagles

Learning to fly as their mother

Sits high on the tall Doug fir.

Does the sky need the sun?

Or does the sun own the sky

What sort of a partnership is it?

The mere concept of need is curious

Does need mean want?

Is it a necessity?

As in I need a glass of water

My throat is parched.

It is so hot.  I need more liquids.

Of course they don’t need to be water.

There’s that need word again

Need suggests necessity

What about just want?

As in, I want a glass of water

Will any old liquid do?

Of course I need something healthy

Not mountain dew or dirty water.

If I was very thirsty and nothing safe was there

What would I do?

Are there times when we are so thirsty

That we drink polluted water

Or even something worse?

What’s worse than dirty water?

Is that why the world needs us?

To make clean from the dirty.

Perhaps the answer is quite different:

Perhaps the world needs us

To make beautiful things?

Poems, paintings, music, gardens

That touch our souls

Beyond the tumble and rumble

Of the natural world.

I wonder aloud again

Does the sky need the swallow?

Or the young eagle?

I ask now from the perspective of the bird

Yes.  The answer is yes.

Without the sky how could I fly?

If I answer for myself

It is still yes, yes and yes again.

Why you ask in return.

How can we look at the sky

And not long to see the swallow, the eagle,

Even hear the song of the bem-te-vi?

Songbirds chatter in my ear.

I sit high up in my apartment

Feeling the wind from the sky

Blowing gently over me.

I look forward to connecting you with my adventures in Brazil.  It is exciting and familiar to be back in this wonderful country – a part of my life for more than 30 years.  Stay tuned.

New Year’s Day 2016 - Taking Time for Friendship

It is the first day of the New Year, 2016.  Outside, the sky is the palest of winter blues.  The air is freezing and clear.  Frost covers the grass and the roofs of my neighbors’ houses are white.  I’m taking the time that the holiday affords to reflect on the importance of family and friends.  I’ve not posted for a few months due to a very busy fall.  Now, at the beginning of 2016, I am excited to continue sharing ideas about living and loving!!  

The Hall of Mirrors, Versailles

Near the end of the holiday season, the potential of the new year, with all its mystery and excitement awaits.  Three weeks from now, my husband Jeff and I return to Brazil.  Three weeks ago, I was sitting in the waiting room of a hospital in Portland.  Over the past three months, I’ve helped my sister-in-law combat breast cancer.  Thankfully, her prognosis is excellent but the process of getting back to health is time consuming and painful.  It has required multiple surgeries.  While many other family members and friends have helped her, I’ve had the privilege of being the primary support person during her treatments.  One of the rewarding aspects of my role is how much closer we’ve become.  I am lucky in being friends with my sister-in-law and it has been very very good to visit her frequently.  I am completely at home in her house and hopefully, I’ve helped her through a process that we all hope no one else has to endure.  Breast cancer is no fun.  As my sister-in-law says, “I hope I’m taking this one for the team!” 

I'm someone with the life-long privilege of being surrounded by amazing women.  Some of them are part of my family – my mother and mother-in-law, my aunts, my daughter and daughter-in-law, my three sisters and four sister-in-laws, my and my husband’s female cousins – and others who are close friends.  Many of these women have been part of my life since I was a child, or, in the case of my friends, for many years. These women mean the world to me.  Together they have helped me in countless ways – everything from surviving tough times; teaching me to cook and raise healthy children; to helping me become an engineer and a successful working mother!  All along they’ve listened to my sometimes trivial, sometimes gigantic problems and always helping without passing judgment. 

What a privilege these relationships are.  If you ask me what one of the best parts of retirement is, I will tell you it is something I never expected.  It is having time to be with these fantastic women – a quantity of time that I simply did not have when I was working every day.  Time is a tricky element.  Time doesn’t expand or contract.  It is a physical constant.  The length of one hour is always 60 minutes and the length of one minute is always 60 seconds.  But what you fit into an hour or a minute can seem either expansive or constrained.   Who hasn’t spent “forever” waiting mere minutes for an eagerly anticipated event?  Likewise, who hasn’t experienced several hours passing “in a flash” when on an excursion with close friends or family?  In both situations, the amount of time seems to change with the activity.  But of course the absolute time hasn’t changed.  What changes is one’s perception.  In retirement, having more time gives me new opportunities to be with the important women (and men) in my life. 

The role that women have played in my life is extraordinary.  I cannot imagine my life without their sisterhood.  As a teenager and young adult, I attended an all female high school and an all female college.  Single gender institutions are more rare in today’s world than they were in the 1960’s.  But the chance to be in an all female environment that supported and nurtured female independence – at a time when women’s liberation was a very new concept – is one that I will always cherish. My family moved to the United States in 1964.  I was just 15 years old.  It was a turbulent time in history – the Civil Rights Act had just passed – and a turbulent time in my own life – who goes through adolescence without trauma?  During those formative years I struggled with developing my identity and independence, defining a career, adapting to demanding academic institutions, a new country and a shifting culture.  

Jeff in the Place des Vosges

With help and friendship I not only survived - I thrived.  The support of my female teachers and professors, my mother, aunts, sisters and girlfriends made all the difference.  When I moved to Seattle in my late twenties to do a graduate degree in civil engineering, I carried the mantle of these female mentors in my heart.  I’m glad I had such role models since at that time there were virtually no women professors or students in my engineering classes – very different from the smart female professors in my all women’s high school and college.  Years later, as a working professional and as a mother, the support and affection of my girlfriends, sisters and sister-in-laws carried me through many stressful periods.  I remember feeling close to complete collapse, returning from a busy day of work to a full evening of single parenting – my husband traveled abroad a great deal during our happy marriage.  On such occasions, I would often take my two kids and walk up the street to my girlfriend’s house.  We would literally impose on her for dinner, or a glass of wine or just a moment of relaxation.  

Fishing in the San Juans

Similarly, I recall sharing the challenges of being a working mother with my sister-in-law and my younger sister – hashing out our stressful schedules from the privilege of being together.  Of course it isn’t just the women in my life that gives it richness.  Let’s face it, we need men too – especially if they are good cooks and fishermen like my husband and son! 

In retirement, I have the freedom to spend time with the important (men and) women in my life – go for a walk with a friend, visit my sisters, or, as happened these last three months, help my sister-in-law recover from breast cancer.  Time is a gift.  I try to use it wisely.

The Sky Mirror 

The Other Side

The end of 2015 was full of many journeys - in addition to my trips to Portland to help my sister-in-law.  I went to my aunt’s memorial service in London and visited with my English sister and many other family members; with my husband, my sister and her husband, I visited Paris and Versailles – where we saw the gilt and glory of the Sun King and Anish Kapoor’s amazing Sky Mirror; thankfully we left the day before the terrorist attacks -- we were lucky; others, equally innocent, were not.

Less than a week after my return, Jeff and I hosted a traditional Thanksgiving for six Brazilian scientists and numerous extended family – introducing BBQ'd turkey and pumpkin pie to a whole new group of friends; we spent Christmas on Lopez Island where we woke up among the giant cedar trees to see Christmas lights twinkling.  

One of the Brazilian scientists visiting the University of Washington joined us for the Christmas holidays.  We shared our family traditions of Christmas cookies and Christmas stockings full of goodies.  We started a new holiday tradition – setting out crab traps and catching fresh winter crab for Christmas Day.  We enjoyed her Brazilian tradition also – making a delicious chocolate confection called Brigadeiros.   Brigadeiros are small, bite-sized sweets, something between a candy and cookie.  They are easy to make with three ingredients, sweetened condensed milk, cocoa powder and butter.   The ingredients are cooked together until thick and then cooled prior to being shaped into small balls.  At that point the fun begins as each ball is decorated with something yummy: chocolate sprinkles; coconut; chopped pistachios; peppermint sugar or other tasty coating.  Once decorated the Brigadeiros are placed into individual fluted paper cups – and then of course the best – they are passed around and enjoyed!

The Witt Winter garden at Washington Park Arboretum

2015 ends with many memories of beautiful places and visits with many extraordinary people.  In a few short weeks Jeff and I will fly to Brazil and re-unite with our life there.  I am excited to have the time in Brazil to finish a couple of big writing projects and hopefully begin some new projects.  I look forward to improving my Portuguese skills and continuing to exercise regularly.  After all, it will be summer in Brazil and we’ll be wearing shorts!!  The new year brings a new beginning and an opportunity to use time well.  I plan to do just that.  Spend time with friends and family.  I recommend it highly.  Happy New Year to everyone!

Apple Pie in Autumn

The View from Agate Beach

Fisherman Bay to Kjargaard to Richardson’s to Vista; Mud Bay to Aleck Bay to MacKaye Harbor to Barlow Bay and Agate Beach.  According to my odometer, these roads on Lopez Island trace a distance of approximately ten miles.  But according to my memory, these roads trace a much greater, grander distance, a distance full of memories and viewpoints that far exceed any mile measurement.  I first biked these roads more than thirty years ago, long before biking was as popular as it is now.  Back in those days, biking was simply another form of transportation – not the “in” thing it is today.  Either way I loved these rural island roads when I was in my twenties and I still love them now that I'm in my sixties.  I hope I'm still biking them twenty years from now.

The old dock at Richardson's

From the turn of last century through the 1980’s, there was a store at the end of Richardson’s Road where we’d stop to buy ice cream cones.  When my kids were young they loved to explore the funky old place and paw over the tools and toys while they licked their melting cones.  The store burned down in 1990.  I still ride the half-mile “dog leg” out to the end of the road to where the store stood – partly to see the remains of the old dock and admire the view to the south but mostly because it brings back good memories.  One of the best things about returning to a place year after year is remembering the past and living in the present – all at the same time.  In today’s dynamic world this is an important experience.  One of my best memories of this historic site (the old Richardson’s store was on the national register of historic places) is being at the store with my father-in-law.  He used to buy his denim overalls at the store as well as various tools and kerosene.  He’d grown up in the 1920’s in a small town on the coast of Washington.  He loved old-timey general stores and Richardson’s was definitely such a store.  Even though it is long gone, it’s still part of my bike circuit and it brings back good memories every time I loop by.  The gas pumps have been inoperable for years but the price still shows 47¢/gallon.

Lopezian Goats

Over the years, my bike rides, both on Lopez and elsewhere, have become longer as I’ve become a stronger, more experienced biker.  But this sequence of roads on Lopez continues to be a favorite.  There are many parts of the ride that I love.  Sometimes I find myself pedaling through a deep forest; sometimes I ride past old barns and open fields full of cows or pigs and more recently, a herd of goats; sometimes I pass a beautiful old farm house or a dramatic rocky outcrop; sometimes I watch fields being plowed or, later in the year, being harvested; there is one field on my route that is often full of nothing but Queen Anne’s lace and another that is covered with round haystacks. 

When I descend a steep hill I know I’ll be sweating up the other side.  It’s a good feeling to realize I have the strength to do the climb.  One of the best things about regular exercise is that you do get stronger and, as you do, you can do more and you enjoy it more.  This weekend I plan to put my strength towards a good cause.  I am joining other women in the greater Seattle area on an organized bike ride to raise money for a nonprofit organization call WAVE – Women Against Violence Everywhere.  I feel privileged to be able to help this organization and to be strong enough to do the ride.  There are too many women here in the United States and around the world that suffer from violence and abuse.  It is important to educate ourselves and do everything we can to prevent violence against women.  How much better the world would be if every woman (and child) could live without fear.

I’d like to share a poem that I wrote last week.

Lopez Autumn

Fading days of summer

The sun hangs low in the sky

Washing the mowed fields in bright light.

I watch the geese gathering

And see the goats graze

Their babies grown like unruly springs

Bouncing over the cut grass.

In the evening, I bicycle to Agate Beach

I watch the last kayakers load their craft

I pass the sailboats anchored in Fish Bay

And the apples rosy red on the trees.

The plums are eaten and gone.

The sunflowers spent,

Their stems bent in the strong winds.

It’s been a hot dry summer.

We ate crab and garden tomatoes,

We made berry crumbles,

We shucked oysters from Sweetwater.

We caught wild salmon.

We brined it; we smoked it;

We ate it with goat cheese.

Now the rabbits are busy

Filling their nests with nuts.

Rosehips and snowberries

Decorate the hedgerows

Where I ride along Davis Bay

The poplar trees are turning yellow

And the evenings are already cool.

Gone are the sweet golden sunsets

And the warm air in the afternoon

I’m thinking about sweaters and soups.

I’ll find my jacket and rubber boots.

I’ll make an apple pie

For Saturday night

And miss the long late evening light.

By the way, in case you want to make a good apple pie on Saturday night here is my favorite recipe.  It comes from a battered, wire-bound Five Roses Cookbook that my mother gave me in 1963 when my family lived in Ontario, Canada.  I’ve made this pie many times over the years and I’ve never found a better recipe.  It might sound very indulgent to use both whipping cream and butter in the filling.  However, the combination makes the pie very moist and the addition of lemon rind is even more delicious.  This pie gives you a very good reason to go out on a vigorous bike ride or to take a long walk.  Do this BEFORE you eat a piece of pie! 

September is a wonderful time to make apple pie.  We picked the apples from our tree and ate the pie with Lopez Island vanilla ice cream.  If you want to be very traditional, pair it with Canadian cheddar cheese or if you live in Washington, a nice big piece of Cougar Gold – Washington State University’s signature cheddar. 

Deluxe Apple Pie

Ingredients

1 Double Crust Pastry  (I recommend making your crust with a combination of butter and vegetable shortening – the original recipe called for only shortening)

6 apples

6 tbsp. packed brown sugar

1/3 cup(s) sugar

1/3 cup(s) Five Roses All Purpose Flour - or any good quality flour

1/2 tsp. ground cinnamon

1/4 tsp. salt

1/4 cup(s) butter or margarine

1/2 tsp. grated lemon rind
6 tbsp. whipping cream

Preheat oven to 230ºC (450ºF). Prepare pastry and line a 23 cm (9") pie plate, reserving some for top crust. Core, peel and slice apples. Combine brown sugar, sugar, flour, cinnamon and salt together, then mix with apples. Spread apple mixture into unbaked pastry shell. Dot with butter; sprinkle with lemon rind. Pour whipping cream over top; then cover with top crust, sealing carefully and making slits to allow steam to escape. Bake for 10 minutes and then reduce heat to 180ºC (350ºF) and bake for 30 to 35 minutes until apples are cooked.

Just out of the oven...yum

I’ll get back to healthy recipes next blog.  Sometimes it is good to indulge and enjoy the season’s bounty while it lasts!