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Mother’s Day
Tomorrow, May 11, is Mother’s Day. Happiness and joy to all mothers everywhere.
I restacked last year’s Mother’s Day posting, with its photos of my mother and Robert’s mom. Find it in Substack Notes or click on the link. This posting is powerful.
Wisteria
When I was young, really young, the closest I got to wisteria was “The Adventure of Wisteria Lodge,” a Sherlock Holmes story by Arthur C. Doyle. The trailing vine with the purple flowers was not hardy to Minnesota, where I lived until 1962.
This changed in 2013, when the University of Minnesota released a cultivar of wisteria, its trademark Summer Cascade, which is hardy to USDA Zone 3. Minnesota zones range from 3 to 5. So now Minnesota can be purple, too.
It’s been another story in Portland (USDA Zone 8b), where exuberant wisteria twine along porches and eaves all over the city.
Life then and now
My life these days is filled joy and connection. It’s busy and chaotic, and I love it.
I write every day. I love writing. And I love that people have a chance read what I write. The experience of writing never gets stale for me, and I hope that you find what I write to always be fresh and new.
I even like being 75 years old: I look at the babies on the bus, comfortable in their strollers, placidly looking out at new objects and faces or fingering their toys and bottles. They are babies in 2025. By the time they are 75, like me, it will be the year 2100. That seems unimaginable.
When I was a kid in the 1950s, even 1960 seemed unattainably far in the future. Now it is 65 years beyond that. Even 1984, the year in the title of George Orwell’s dystopian novel, passed 40 years ago.
Time’s passing informed this poem. It appears in Day 6 of my meditations published last week as part of the 100DaysProject. It was Day 69 of the project.
Memory
Remember who you are A child of the Universe Receptive and loving An empty vessel. Here are your thoughts, Your words and your memories. Rest with them now, Remember, reflect. What did you see today, What stoked your fancy? These are your children, Remember, reflect. Put your finger on the pulse— The world came to you today With gifts beyond counting. Breathe them in, Breathe them out, Cherish their essence. Breathe them in, Breathe them out, Keep them as your own. A mantra: Thank you, good Spirit Thank you, most glorious, Thank you for tossing The world at my feet.
Contemplative
It’s just a wall. But what history, what colors, what gouges and gashes, revealing the bricks underneath the plaster. Some bricks are red, some are white. All are story.
Little ideas
What little rabbit of an idea Is hiding in the burrow of your heart? Ears twitching, paws ready To run before you can capture it. That song of an idea in your ear, Making you itch with excitement. Write it down quickly now, Before the music subsides. I found an idea in the laundry There, amid discarded socks. Quivering and new, unprotected— I took it away and devoured it. Ideas stick to the walls and dangle Like evergreen moss from the trees. You don’t know, can’t know where you’ll find them. No matter, because they find you.
Bus therapy
I’ve been noodling around an idea for a book called Bus Therapy. It would be about how riding the bus helps my mental and even physical health. Riding soothes me, anoints me, brings me into focus, introduces me to new vistas and people and ideas. Riding the bus helps me rearrange my world—and my psyche.
I’d been feeling low and fatigued for several days. Perhaps the multiple sclerosis was catching up with me. At any rate, I was tired and listless. I could write but I didn’t want to set up the laptop. So I read books and watched TV and went through my email on the tablet.
Getting on the bus
After three days indoors, I’m ready to try Bus Therapy, see if it eases my malaise. I’ll just get on the bus and ride. I decide to go to my favorite Starbucks, the one on Division and Civic Drive in Gresham. To get here, I take the 14 Hawthorne to the 75 César Chávez line, which will take me to the Hollywood MAX station. Problem is, the 75 is really late. After a 20-minute wait, a bus appears but the driver says she can’t accommodate me or the other wheelchair rider who just sidled up. This is okay, as the next bus is right behind hers. And the other wheelchair is occupied by Mama Marla, a woman I know who is once again traveling with a small dog. I dedicated a post to her a few weeks ago. She hasn’t seen it, so I show her on my phone.
The windows on the 75 bus are clean! Everything is so bright and pretty in the spring sunshine . Bright white flowers glow as I pass them. I notice the Paradiso Villa apartments for the first time.
Bus to train
In Hollywood, after another long wait, I board the MAX Blue Line train to Gresham. Sitting on the platform, I read more of The Blue Line Letters, a really good young adult book about a teen riding the blue line every day, from Gresham to a summer intern job in faraway Hillsboro. I hope to interview the author, Steven Christiansen, and write a review. I also come up with a few more ideas and write them in my notebook, a pretty red one.
Soothing vistas
I see many vistas and vignettes from the bus and the train. Fluffy white clouds, although none of them had holes in them, the kind I most like to photograph. A woman stands, serene and erect, as if in prayer, next to a scooter. Two men share a cigarette. They get on the train (having disposed of the butt), one of them pushing a stroller with a little girl, all in pink. Balancing on the back of the stroller: a huge piece of Black Forest cake, with a sticker from Albertson’s.
Trimet is working on the MAX tracks, so I and a clutch of other disgruntled passengers are loaded onto a shuttle bus serving the stops in Gresham. By the time I get off the train and onto the bus, I’ve relaxed into Bus Therapy mode. I feel markedly better. By the time the bus drops me in the general vicinity of the Starbucks, it has been two and a half hours—but it was all good.
Bus Therapy works! I am energized, mellowed, hollowed and filled up again. I’ve been around people, sparking on their energy. I’ve watched building and streets and trees, cars and the freeway and train tracks. It soothed me, ironed out the furrows in my brow and in my brain. Thank you, God. Thank you for Bus Therapy!
Minnesota dreaming
I woke up recently dreaming of Brainerd. I don’t know where that came from. It’s a town in the middle of Minnesota, county seat of Crow Wing County.
There are 87 counties in Minnesota. International Falls, where I lived as a tot, is the county seat of Koochiching County. The name comes from the Ojibwa names for what are now Rainy Lake and the Rainy River. The Rainy River, the border between Canada and the U.S., was right across the street from our house in International Falls. Duluth, where I was born, is in St. Louis County.
Other Minnesota county names from Ojibwa words are Mahnomen, Kanabec and Wadena. Some county names have a whiff of French from the early fur traders and settlers: Mille Lacs, Lac qui Parle, Le Sueur (think canned peas) and Nicollet.
The county seat of Nicollet county is St. Peter. The only fact I remember from Minnesota history class in the fourth grade was that St. Peter was almost chosen as the capital over St. Paul when Minnesota became a state—and that it was only prevented by shenanigans involving a fur trapper.
I looked it up: in 1857, the governor, Willis Gorman, rammed a bill through the territorial legislature making St. Peter the capital. The move would have enriched Gorman, who owned a lot of land in St. Peter. Graft is, after all, part of the American dream.
The scheme was derailed when the head of the legislature’s enrollment committee, a colorful fur trader named Joe Rolette, pocketed the bill before it could reach Gorman for his signature. He then disappeared until the end of the session. Some say drinking and cards were involved. The legislature, in a last-minute effort, drafted a new bill, passed it, and Gorman signed it. But that bill was later thrown out of court by a judge who pointed out the capital couldn’t be moved by a legislative act, it had to be referred to a vote of the people.
So St. Paul got the nod as capital. And St. Peter only got to be a county seat.
Minnesota became the 32nd state on May 11, 1858.
Back to Brainerd
Back in Crow Wing County, Brainerd fancies itself “Minnesota’s playground.” For a town of about 14,500, it does boast an impressive array of fishing venues, golf courses, amusement parks and the largest racetrack in the upper Midwest.
Brainerd is also home to Paul Bunyan Land, with its scary 26-foot talking statue of the famous logger. The statue greets visitors by name.
“Brainerd” was the original title of the film that became “Fargo.” Most of “Fargo” was shot in Brainerd, but an unusually mild winter in Minnesota that year meant the snow scenes had to be shot elsewhere.
Beauty shot
They keep breeding prettier tulips.
Miso is the new Marmite!
I wrote about Marmite and Vegemite, two dark sources of umami flavor, in 2023. Both are viscous, brown, strong-tasting yeast extracts, full of B vitamins, beloved by their aficionados and reviled by others.
Marmite is the British product, while Vegemite is from Australia. Vegemite was acquired by Kraft in the 1930s but was recently spun back to an Australian company. I had thought you couldn’t find Vegemite in Portland, but Instacart reports you can buy it at Barbur World Foods. Don’t stampede!
I’ve left Marmite and Vegemite behind because I’ve discovered that an even better spread on buttered toast is fermented soybean paste, known as miso. It’s way easier to spread, too, nowhere as sticky as Marmite.
A worthy substitute
Miso has the same salty, meaty flavor as Marmite but is less yeasty. It comes in various styles: white, yellow and red. I prefer powerful red miso and am indebted to my husband for first pointing out that it’s tasty right out of the tub. You don’t have to make miso soup to enjoy it.
Avocado toast
I recently made a delicious variety of avocado toast (well, delicious to me). It’s the sort of thing I sometimes concoct, a bunch of flavors that may never have been thrown together before. I started with a slice of toasted seeded Carbonaut bread, a specialty bread developed to have only 2 grams of carbs in a slice. I could have spread it with butter but instead used bacon drippings. Then came a layer of miso, followed by thinly slice onion and cottage cheese. Avocado slices went on top.
The toast was deeply delicious, and deeply satisfying to me.
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Curate your creativity
My wish for you is that every day, you find time to create. This can be a thing of substance, like a quilt block, a drawing, a poem or a paragraph. Or something ephemeral, like a kiss on the wind or the bond between friends or even strangers.
Cook something, make music (or hum along), notice the clouds. Spirit is calling you toward richness and fulfillment. Please, answer.
Inspiration
What moves us, inspires us? Is it things others do? Words piled upon words, Ideas polished and honed. Some look to nature, So loudly quiet, Wind, water and rustle Of our feet on the trail. Or find it in doing, Creating, cooking, Birthing a child Or raising one up. The essence of others, Great minds that move us, Wisdom of ages Or of our own moms. How can I ever know What really inspires me? It’s wrapped in the Spirit That moves through my being. Inspiration comes, Inspiration stays, Inspiration leaves, But only when I say it can, Only when I’m done.
—Fran
This post reminds me that I need to ask Chiaki to schedule a miso-making session in our new kitchen at church! :)
Thanks again for the nice read. My father grew up in Bloomington, Minnesota on a farm which is now the site of the Twins baseball park.My uncle Troy is almost 101 years old. He lives up north on a lake with his son, my cousin. I think it's called "Little Man Trap Lake". Keep up the good work Fran.
Kraig