Wildflowers

Last summer I decided to plant some wildflowers. We're a big gardening family with flowers all around, like the azaleas...

Some tulips...

Some snapdragons and a marigold in the barrel...

And some vegetables and other plants in the backyard. I help take care of them, but I wanted my own plot. So, when we transplanted the strawberries last year, I took up the empty space, turned over the soil, and in a week planted my wildflowers.

My garden

I weeded. I watered. I weeded again. Then I waited. And then they grew!

This month, all these little orange flowers started popping up, and I'm getting excited for when the other ones decide to arrive.

Wild flowers are really fun because almost each month there's a new kind of flower popping up, and then by the end of last summer I had red, yellow, orange, blue, pink, purple and white flowers the whole length of the garden. It was just beautiful. Here's to summer!

A word from the mom

I haven't been keeping up my end of this blog. Let's get that out there right away. Despite Em's gentle nudges---"you could write about that, Mom!"---"that would make an interesting blog post, Mom!"--I have, as usual, let work take precedence.

What's this blog's title? Play on. Play.

Play is not what comes naturally to me. I was a serious kid. I liked to read. I liked to listen to adult conversations. I didn't care much about meeting unfamiliar kids or playing tag, hide and seek, or alley alley in free.

And I'm a serious adult. I take responsibility, I follow through, I do what I say I'm going to do, I work hard, I accomplish the things I want to accomplish.

But. How fun is a life without play?

I have learned to play through watching my children. There was some child psychologist who talked about the concentration exhibited by children stringing beads. I have watched my children, and my piano students, as they metaphorically were stringing beads. Sometimes what they were actually doing was moving sand, forming dikes and ponds, sometimes what they were doing was taking on a role, and sometimes playing "Heart and Soul."

But the thing all these play-ers had in common was, they were in the moment. Experiencing whatever they were doing without any self consciousness at all. Totally absorbed in what they were doing, without the "how am I doing" or what do they think of me" or any of those other self conscious thoughts that intrude.

Those are the moments I'm seeking to create in my life.

Back from St. Olaf

The verdict: I still love St. Olaf


Even though I pretty much knew everything about it from my mom before I even visited, I liked actually being there, and I could really picture myself there in--golly!--a year or so.

We were there on Flower Friday, when a local florist comes and you can buy flowers for your peeps. The student mail boxes had a bunch of flowers poking out of them.

I found it a cute little quirk, but we're not supposed to go to college for the cute little quirks, so here are some other things that I liked:

They have a top-notch music program, lovely hills to climb on your way to class, a rock wall to climb to qualify as your physical education class, a wind turbine, nice admission staff (even though someone added an extra letter to my last name, I forgive them), and a tight community that I really like. Although, they could have saved a lot of money by making climbing the hill from Skoglund gym/auditorium a way to take phy. ed., instead of walking down the (steep!) hill to get inside the building to climb up a wall with ropes bothering you in uncomfortable places, then walk up the hill again to your dorm on the other side of campus.

I like the smallness of the school, the not-too-faraway-but-still-far-ness of it, the liberal arts structured education, and the basis in the Lutheran faith, while still being culturally diverse and having many non-Lutheran and non-Christian students.

Oh, and this is the best part--it smells like cookies. I know it's the Malt O Meal plant, but the place smelled like cookies to me.

(This is not one of the major deciding factors in how I choose the school I will attend, but it doesn't harm their chances at all. If it smelled like cows, that would be a different matter)

The only thing that could potentially derail my dream of becoming an Ole is the financial aid that I may or may not get. I find it very unfair that it costs three arms, two legs and your first born child to go to a good private school. But hey, we'll see what happens.

I would say at this point, St. Olaf is my first choice, with Augsburg College in second, then comes Wartburg College (love my Lutheran schools) and UW-Madison with a shrug and a maybe from me.

May the best school win.


And may they all really really really like me and want to shower me with monetary gifts. Amen.

I'm getting excited for my first college visit this Friday to St. Olaf in Northfield. AHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!! I've been there once to sing in the fall choral festival, so I got a look at the beautiful campus when all the leaves were changing color. Hearing all their wonderful choral groups later that evening also made me want to go there. Singing is my second musical passion next to playing the piano, and I hope to someday direct choirs. Northfield is also a nice little town--not too big, not too small, and just the right distance from home for me.
It's also got a Ragstock. I'm so there. Case closed.

Lots of people I know have gone to St. Olaf (my mommy included), and all of them like to gush about the music program. [Mom edits: I do not gush.] I haven't even applied yet, but I'm probably going to gush too. They're also trying to win me over with their food--but they didn't need to send me a whole postcard about it, though. I'm sure becoming an Ole does not include starvation.

Fun fact: In 2009 St. Olaf won the Rube Goldberg Machine Contest hosted by Purdue University. They were the only liberal arts college in the competition and the only college to enter without an engineering program. Rube Goldberg was a cartoonist who drew insanely complicated machines to do simple and mundane tasks, like turning on a light bulb, as seen in the video.



But anyways. I'm just going for the music. Let's hope on Friday I like what I see even more.

'Oh, When the Saints"

If you need something to make you smile...



Two of my favorite people tearin' it up!

Voyageurs!

My latest musical obsession has been with the songs of the French-Canadian voyageurs. I read this book called "Early Candlelight," by Minnesota author Maude Hart Lovelace, who tells the story about a French-Canadian-American girl growing up at Fort Snelling, and is surrounded by voyageurs and fur traders and all these midwestern pioneery people. Read the book, it is soooo good! Throughout the book these voyageurs sing--almost all the time--and they are beautiful and happy songs. I'd be a very good voyaguer, since I love foreign languages and folksongs. Now they'd only have to show me how to paddle a canoe. I was actually somewhat raised on the voyaguer music as a little kid (see two posts ago). Mom and Dad bought this cd at the History Center gift shop, all the songs being sung by a college choir from Toronto, so the French sounded real. We'd listen to them on long car rides, although the only one my siblings and I could ever figure out how to sing was good ol' "Alouette." It was actually a big part of my life back then. At preschool I drew this wonderful picture of the twelve voyaguers from the cd cover in their canoe, and it became one of the greatest pieces of my shortlived career as a visual artist, along with one entitled "Cast of the Andy Griffith Show." There had to be exactly twelve men in that boat, and I'm told that every time I drew a new figure I had to go back and count them all over again just to make sure. Also inspired by the French-speaking explorers, my older brother taught me how to say, "Ferme le boush." (shut up.) He didn't show me how to spell it though.
So rediscovering the voyaguers and their music has been very cool. The one that Lovelace quotes right at the end the book when...um...something super awesomely cool happens is called "A La Claire Fontaine." I read the words, and it looked very familiar. "Mom," I asked, "do you recognize this?" That's when I found out it's actually her most favorite French song ever. She sang it for me, and it brought me back to being in the the van on the road to somewhere when I was four years old. Isn't it lovely when things like that happen? How music triggers memories. My mom doesn't sing in public very often, doesn't like to, and when she does it's in the choir, but let me say that she sang that song so beautifully, I kept wanting her to sing it over again. The next couple of days I went looking on YouTube (what would I do without you?) for any videos of people singing it, because I didn't want Mom to wear out her voice, but I couldn't remember the tune. That's when I found out it's a children's song. Indeed, the best (and cutest) video I found had three French six year old girls singing it in their backyard. I love the songs that can be sung so simply and still be a thing of beauty. After all that, I looked for the lyrics, even though I don't speak French. I read the English translation and found that it's an interesting storyline for kids to be singing. Here are the third and fourth verses in English:

Sing, nightengale, sing,
Your heart is so happy.
Your heart feels like laughing,
Mine feels like weeping.

I lost my beloved,
Without deserving it,
For a bunch of roses,
That I denied her.

Chorus:
So long I've been loving you,
I'll never forget you.

I never sang stuff that heavy when I was six. The happy tune betrays it's melancholy lyrics, but that's kind of why I like it. Now my mom and I can sing it together.

**I'd upload a video, but YouTube isn't cooperating :(

Bonhoeffer and the 15 Foot Angel

Last summer I was part of a group of high schoolers who spent a week at Augsburg College learning about Lutheran theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer. He was a truly amazing individual, who worked and died for justice at the hands of Hitler near the end of World War II. He spoke out against Hitler's treatment of Jews, and for overtaking the churches with anti-semitic propaganda.
Part of the week's studies involved a service project in Minneapolis. We were at a Lutheran church in the Phillips neighborhood, where many of the parishioners are immigrants from Latin America, and some of them shared their stories of immigration (They were all legal, but told of neighbors and families they knew being torn apart because they were undocumented) They gave us a better understanding of how hard it is to make it in a new country. The pastors there were a husband and wife team: soft-spoken, petite Pastor Luisa, a native of Chile, and tall, outgoing, white, Minnesota-born Pastor Patrick. I was in awe of his seamless Spanish.
After talking with the church members, the pastors showed us two storage sheds outside behind the church, an alleyway going between them. The one on the right had a mural on it, a beautiful green garden that said "God's Creation" in yellow and orange letters, and Spanish words.



The shed on the left side of the alley had also been painted, but by the ugly spray paint cans of local gangs. An incomprehensible symbol of squiggles covered the whole thing. Our job was to cover it with a mural of our own, with 17 people in our group and and hour and a half to work with. When we thought of our design, we got down to business: There was a tree, a big white and yellow daisy, and the words Paz and Alegria, peace and joy in big bright letters.



We were sweating in the sun but enjoying our task and the people we were serving with. But a little later, something really odd occured. A short man in a purple polo shirt and khakis approached us. He carried a plastic bag that I could see had bibles in it. "Oh geez," I thought.
A street preacher.
"Can I have a couple minutes of y'all's time?" He asked us. "Can I tell you about Jesus?"
We students took a pause from our painting and looked at him. "Um...well, see, we're kind of doing this for Jesus. We're doing a service project," we told him. Our leader and professor, Jeremy, a young thirtysomething with a tough-guy look but a good humored personality said to the man kindly, "We're kind of in a hurry to get this done, we only have half an hour until we need to leave." We did indeed, and still had lots of work to finish. "Could we paint while you talk?" Jeremy asked. The street preacher shook his head gravely. "I would not disrespect God that way. I need your full and undivided attention." "Well, ah, sorry," replied our professor, shrugging his shoulders. It was getting awkward. Jeremy went back to our mural, which was coming along nicely by the way.



"What would you say if a 15 foot angel was standing in front of you right now?" The man said heatedly. At that point, we all stopped painting and watched Jeremy and the man. We were all thinking the same thing: What the heck? Jeremy, clothes flecked with paint, face shining with sweat and sunblock, strided over to the street preacher. He was a good deal taller than the man, more intimidating for sure, and it really would be a much more entertaining story if the Augsburg College professor of religion had thrown a John Wayne-style punch right then and there. But this is not an entertaining story. Alas, we were trying to live out not only our Christian principles, but Dietrich Bonhoeffer's as well, one of which was pacifism (for awhile, at least). Jeremy looked the street preacher in the eye. "You are not a 15 foot angel."
And let me tell you, the street preacher didn't look so confident anymore. He went on his way, and we finished the tool shed mural half an hour later.
Bonhoeffer makes this point, which he called 'Christ existing in community.' It basically means going out into the world to see Christ in action through other people, and to experience Christ's love through others. We were trying to be Christ existing in our community that day by just painting a mural. See, in Bonhoeffer's German-Lutheran 20th century, people knew Jesus advised them to be more in tune with the problems in their community, but they were generally more interested in getting themselves to heaven. Making that your life's goal can be blinding. This street preacher we encountered certainly was blind to the fact that we were trying to do something good with God in mind, even though it was something as little as making an alleyway tool shed brighter. He seemed to have his head so deep in the book that he couldn't see God around his world, too. I hope that we all can learn to see Christ existing in our communities.