Unplugged

I'm amused and disturbed by the way new technology makes people unhappy when they don't get it. A few decades ago people got upset about technological intrusion when Pendle Hill put phone lines in the dorm rooms, but now people get all malcontent if they can't have free wireless. The other night some of us were sharing about how our days had been, and one man said meditatively, "I'm feeling really disconnected from . . ." I expected this sentence to end with "my family" or "the people around me" or some such thing. But no, it was "wireless internet in my room. There are so many things I feel I'm missing out on."

This morning my kitchen helper didn't show up to his job at all, and when I saw him at lunch I asked him what happened. "I'm so sorry," he said, "I slept in until eleven. I was up all night trying to get the wireless in my room to work." Tip: don't tell this to the woman who no longer has a computer of any kind and who got up before dawn to cook the breakfast you didn't eat.

The song of harvest home

At first, working as a cook seemed like a scarier version of what I'd been doing for years. The pans and utensils seemed too big; recipes that started with 40 cloves of garlic or 20 pounds of tuna seemed ridiculous.

Now that I've settled into the proportions, I'm really enjoying it. It felt good to realize that I'd made the house recipe for granola so many times I could just go into the cool storeroom and start scooping out the grain: 10 quarts of oats, 3 of rye flakes, 2 of oat bran . . .

The Icelandic sagas feature women as secondary characters, but I remember being fascinated by the fact that "housewife" was treated as an important job. Back then running a household was indisputably a full-time occupation, partly because Icelanders lived in longhouses with dozens of people. (Think Riders of Rohan type dwelling.) Getting a household through the winter took major preparation and planning. In one saga, a house is thrown into turmoil because of the wife's bad management, and it looks like they may run out of food. A woman's position of honor was once synonymous with her role as a provider of food: our word "lady" is from Old English hlǣfdige, "loaf-kneader".

Well, my job isn't that important. But I do enjoy feeding a lot of people.

Bad Quakers

Things you really shouldn't do during meeting for worship or moments of silence:

1) sleep
2) wink at people
3) bend over so far your hat falls off
4) make your grocery list
5) make small talk
6) crack your knuckles
7) kill ants
8) audibly clean your teeth
9) hit people

I've witnessed all of the above, though as far as I know I'm guilty only of 1 and 7.

Postscript, January 15: today I told a friend about this list, and she calmly answered, "Oh, we had someone die in meeting once."

Belonging

I love how familiar Pendle Hill feels to me now. I love sitting in meeting and not needing to look up when someone starts to speak because I know everyone's voice by heart. I love being able to identify who made a loaf of bread - Sarah's loaves are big and high-risen, mine small and diagonally slashed. Kurt's are carved with letters so that all eight loaves in order spell something.

Yesterday I was walking towards the building where I live, talking under my breath. A woman popped her head out of her apartment door as I passed. "Are you talking to God?" she asked, smiling beatifically.
"I'm talking to myself," I said.
"It's the same thing!" she answered. "It's the same thing!"

Best fashion advice ever

Carl, on the way to Quaker meeting this morning, to me (wearing a red shirt, blue striped skirt, purple socks, and bright pink rubber clogs): "You can't match too much or you'd look like a Muggle, anyway."

Love made visible

I'm now living and working at Pendle Hill, the Quaker center where I spent last summer. (Not going to Kazakhstan after all. Ask me if you want.)

One of the things I love about this place is the small objects that show great love put into them over the years. A decade ago when a 225-year-old oak came down, one of the maintenance workers saved some of the wood and made it into things like new seats for the stools in the craft studio. It probably would have been easier to just buy new stools, but I'm sure people were sad about losing the tree and were glad to have it preserved in some way.

The other bit of handiwork I found moving this week was the hotpads in the dining room. They're worn print cotton and corduroy, sewn into rectangles and stitched across with embroidery floss to keep the layers together. And where the fabric is shredding with age, you can see through to some previous layer of the hotpad from a previous generation, the cloth deemed too ragged but re-covered instead of thrown away. The potholders have certainly been around for longer than most of the people here, made and re-made by someone's careful hands.

At the top of the weekly chore chart here are the words Work is love made visible. These small objects made it particularly visible to me this week.