Stories, creativity, spring greens

Bitter, the taste of the equinox, so eagerly awaited by pioneers

Check in

There is no need for reasoning here. It is more important to listen deeply, trust completely, and respond fully. By honoring your inner wisdom, you connect to your true self and strengthen you intuition. This loop, in turn, feeds on itself in a beautiful way. TRUST. ACCEPT. ACT. ACKNOWLEDGE. REPEAT.

—Flora Bowley

The first dandelions were spring tonic for pioneers starved of vitamin C all winter. Fran Gardner photo

Bitter

~Spring’s greens and a family story~

My mother spent much of her childhood homeless in places like Pinyon Mesa in Western Colorado. After her father took the cash out of the sugar can and left, her mom and the five kids lived in a wagon. They had a horse and a cow, although the cow was later stolen.

This photo was probably taken around 1921 in Grand Junction, Colo. The girl on the right is my mother, Pearl Augusta Wilbur. The tall girl is her sister Clara Belle. The boy is her half brother, Laurence Burke. The fourth child is a neighbor

Mom remembered so clearly the first dandelions of spring. “Spring tonic,” she said. After a winter of biscuits and potatoes and salt pork, greens would provide the first vitamin C in months.

For most farmers of that era, sauerkraut would have been the winter source of C, but the homeless family may not have had access to that.

The herbs of spring

Spring herbs are bitter: dandelions and rhubarb stalks. Sassafras, ramps and wild strawberry leaves.  Horehound, tansy, horseradish, endive, parsley and coriander seeds. Sour sorrel, which I used to grow to add to salads and soup. Endive, especially the curly variety (also known as frisée or chicory), is delicious sautéed and deserves to be more widely eaten.

The cruciferous (cabbage) family contains many bitter-tasting vegetables: broccoli, Brussels sprouts, cabbage, kale, radishes, radish greens, radicchio, arugula. These foods contain compounds that give them their bitter taste but are also responsible for many of their health benefits

Other bitter flavors: citrus peel, cranberries, cocoa powder, coffee.

Passover herbs

The bitter herbs of the Passover seder are meant to recall the suffering of the Jews in Egypt. The term is maror, and the herb may be parsley, romaine, endive or horseradish. Passover begins at sunset April 5 and runs untilApril 13. Easter Sunday is April 9.

Here again, bitter is equated with suffering and loss. Yet bitter greens are some of the most intriguing and satisfying vegetables. They are definitely not part of the ordinary bland American diet.

Eat your greens. Enjoy these intense flavors. Try them with unusual acids: Meyer lemons, ume (Japanese pickled plum) vinegar, balsamic vinegar. Or rediscover the fresh fruitiness of apple cider vinegar.

These flavors will wake you up, make you perky, enliven you day.

Sauerkraut

Purple or red cabbage makes colorful kraut, full of anthocyanins, powerful antioxidants that reduce inflammation.

A friend of mine, Debra Arrivee, has for years hosted a big party in the fall where perhaps a dozen of us would slice cabbage using a huge mandoline, add salt, and make crocks full of sauerkraut. Once it had fermented, Debra would can or freeze it in small batches and pass it on.

But you don’t need a lot of equipment and huge heads of cabbage to make sauerkraut. A small to medium head, green or purple, makes about a quart and a half, and you can make it right on the kitchen counter. At any time of the year. I do it in my tiny apartment in assisted living.

Best of all, once it’s ready, just keep it in the fridge. No canning or freezing to kill the good bacteria.

Here’s a recipe that uses just cabbage and salt. Use kosher or sea salt Avoid salt with added iodine.

I recently tried adding julienne slices of daikon radish to sauerkraut; I love the tang and crunch. I also add whole cranberries (I keep ’em in the freezer) to green/white sauerkraut for a burst of color and flavor. Some folks add juniper berries.

Inspiration from a painter

In Brave Intuitive Painting, Flora Bowley reaffirms what I already know, in my heart and in my head.

After many years of following my heart, I now understand that the very act of pure expression does change the world.

It changes the world by changing each and every person who is brave enough to pick up a paintbrush, open themselves up to the unknown, and express themselves honestly and intuitively. It is through this kind of heartfelt expression that truths are revealed, lives transform, and new worlds are born.

Her words hold true for all sorts of creativity: cooking, gardening, crocheting, raising children, writing. Your whole life is your creation.

Trust. Accept. Act. Acknowledge. Repeat.

In modern times

The Internet frees us to reach our creativity, teaches us that creation is not a rare thing, that many many many people are writing, painting, drawing, playing music . . . all sorts of endeavors, often for no other reason than to create and share.*

I grew up with the belief that only a select group of special people could actually be artists, and surely I was not one of them. However, I kept following my deepest calling, and by continually found myself making art. . . . I now understand that human aliveness is inseparable from creativity. We are all artists already.

As I move past youth through middle age into senescence, I’ve noticed an increasing embrace of universal creativity. When I was a kid, authors were on a pedestal. Now anyone can self-publish. They can even unblushingly refer to themselves as “bestselling.” Who’s to contradict them?

What the world needs now

Remember, the world is in vital need of authenticity, integrity, connection, and self-expression, and creating art is a powerful way to feed this hunger and connect to your true self along the way. Art truly does save.

Yes, artists (and writers, and quilters, and double bassoon players) are not just saving the world with their energy. They are, we are, saving ourselves. An uncreative life is not worth living.

Bowley suggests sitting quietly with a journal and finding the stories behind the questions: “Am I creative?” or “Am I an artist?” Then craft your insights  into new, positive affirmations.

Every week, in the “Check out,” I’ve been encouraging you to write every day. The muscles that guide the pen or the keyboard connect directly with you creative core. The process pulls you out of your quotidian, mundane life into the realm of unfettered possibility.

Please, just 20 minutes. It will change your life.

Authentic

I want to get back to authenticity, which is something I’ve danced around, Let’s pause to think about the creativity questions we ask ourselves, starting with “Who am I?”

Without a doubt, I am a writer. Writers write, as Gail Sher says in One Continuous Mistake, also the most inspiring book on creativity.

I find in my writing exercises flow and purpose, few wasted words, a lack of passive structure, and plenty of wordplay. I use explicit vocabulary, that is, concrete rather than abstract words; literary and culture references; and intuitive insights.

I love the writer I am. If I can take you, reader, along for the journey, so much the better for both of us.

Authenticity, again: something I seek, strive toward. Writing from the heart. Using my chest voice and not my head voice.

There is no end point. There are simply layers to peel back and beautiful gems to uncover as you step into your most powerful and authentic self. Be patient, be gentle, and don’t forget to notice all the simple treasures along the way.

*I can’t help thinking of “Share and enjoy,” the slogan of the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation Complaints Division in Douglas Adams’s Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. This phrase had its own song, which was sung by a choir of robots. I’m indebted to www.tapir.caltech.edu for pointing out that the robots’ voice boxes are exactly a flattened fifth out of tune. Need a giggle? The audio file is at http://www.tapir.caltech.edu/~teviet/share-and-enjoy_44.mp3]

Lady Day

No, not the singer Billie Holliday.

March 25* is a “quarter day,” one of four that marked the year in Britain of yore. Today, quarter days are the more prosaic January 1, April 1, July 1 and October 1.

But from the Middle Ages until 1752, when the Gregorian calendar was introduced and January 1 became New Year’s Day, Lady Day was the first day of the year. **

The other quarter days, times for new beginnings, when rents were due and new ventures launched, were June 24 (Midsummer), September 29 (Michaelmas) and December 25 (the first day of Christmas).

Lady Day marks the feast of the Annunciation, when the angel Gabriel told Mary she was going to bear God’s child. The song she sang to her cousin Elizabeth, the mother of John the Baptist, when she shared the news with her (Luke 1:46-55) is called the Magnificat.

I like this version, from the old Anglican Book of Common Prayer, with its stately phrases like “scattered the proud in the imagination of their hearts.”

My soul doth magnify the Lord, 
and my spirit hath rejoiced in God my Savior.

For he hath regarded the lowliness of his handmaiden. 
For behold, from henceforth all generations shall call me blessed. 
And his mercy is on them that fear him throughout all generations.

He hath shewed strength with his arm. 
He hath scattered the proud in the imagination of their hearts. 
He hath put down the mighty from their seat 
and hath exalted the humble and meek.

He hath filled the hungry with good things. 
And the rich he hath sent empty away. 
He remembering his mercy hath holpen his servant Israel 
as he promised to our forefathers Abraham, and his seed forever. 
Amen

*March 25 is the birthday of my husband, Robert Jaffe. Although it is late in the year, in 1940 the Jewish holiday Purim was March 25. (In 2023, Purim began the evening of March 6). That is because the Hebrew calendar has a leap month, Adar, that falls seven times in 19 years (look it up). Being born on Purim traditionally brings good luck. Well, Robert had the good luck to marry me.

And while Robert was born on the day that used to start the year, I was born on the new New Year’s Day, January 1.

**Before it was supplanted by the Gregorian calendar, the Julian calendar had Lady Day on April 6. A vestige of that date remains in Britain, where the tax year, which is Jan. 1-Dec. 31 most everywhere else,  runs from April 6 to April 5.

Another oblique thing

In heraldry, the broad line that goes from the lower right of the coat of arms shield to the upper left is called a bend. That’s the same oblique trajectory that, in my vision, causes the creative tension that makes a piece of writing better.

But I love the nomenclature for the bar that goes the other direction, from lower left to upper right. That’s the “bar sinister,” and it indicates bastardy.

Sinister is a perfectly ordinary Latin word. It means left. Dexter is the word for right.

The association of left-handedness with deviousness in generations past has made “sinister” a word of delicious malice.

There’s a character in old cartoons named Simon Bar Sinister. He’s in “Underdog,” a Superman spoof that ran from 1964-67 on NBC. I’m indebted to Wikipedia for the names of other characters, like Professor Moby Von Ahab*, a non-mad scientist.

*“Ahab” is a relatively common crossword  term, causing constructors to work hard on unusual clues. My favorite: “Starbuck orderer.”

Mid March

Now, maybe, it’s finally time 
To turn the fecund earth, 
Greet the grubs and earthworms, 
Uncover the quickening bulbs, 
Smell the ferment of impending spring, 
And relax into the season. 
 
Put a spade in the dirt, 
Still gelid with winter wishes. 
Soon, soon you will reap 
Radishes and green peas.

Check out

I’m moving this week, to another apartment in the same place, Rose Schnitzer Manor. I’m losing my quilt wall to an extra wall of windows, and the shade of gentle Ulm, my adopted cedar, will be replaced by unfiltered southern sky.

There will be light. Much more light.

A cadre of movers will make it all happen in a matter of hours, packing up the books and boxes of fabric and reassembling everything in the new place.

Still, moving is stressful. I’m going to need all the insights I’ve been gathering over the years:

I’ll need forgiveness (of all that clutter), forbearance, patience, humor.

I will need to be present, to breathe, to

Go. 
Slow.
Now.

I can remember Flora Bowley:

Trust.
Accept.
Act.
Acknowledge.
Repeat.

And through it all, 
I will try to stay true, 
To be authentic,
And to let the Universe whisper its language of love
Into the heart of my understanding. 

—30—