Rewind one week. Hutchmoot 2010, there is much bustle and chatter in the sunshine-yellow kitchen…Saturday evening’s Moroccan Spiced Chicken, not to mention many other tasty foodly items, would not have come off in as timely or seamless a manner if not for one…(kindly insert lively drumroll)…Redhead Kate.

Our acquaintance began with a string of emails about baking ingredients and an offer of a suitcase full of sweet potatoes. “Good thing I’m traveling Southwest!” she said, since two pieces of luggage are allowed, bless that airline’s heart. I knew I liked this girl, a real thinker, expeditious. She works for her family’s sweet potato company in North Carolina and brought with her quite a large box of the beauties as well as a deep, wide knowledge of the product. She laughed as she watched the gems get run through the dishwasher before roasting. Nothing but the best, cleanest sweet potatoes for our guests.
Read the rest of this entry »

As I sling imperfect measurements of flour and brown sugar into a big enamelware bowl this morning, as I sip my coffee out of the Swede coffee cup (”you can always tell a Swede but you can’t tell him much”), as I drag my brushes through the vibrant liquid colors and commit them to the paper, my grandma is with me in the kitchen today. Hazel was my mother’s mother. Her middle name was Fern.

She loved her family and was a consummate homemaker. She loved the nothingness of the Arizona desert. She loved the pink, cloudy evening skies of the West. In her opinion, the Tetons were God’s most extravagant gift to his children. She was an artist and took painting courses by correspondence. She had a real gypsy spirit and didn’t mind moving around, wherever the winds of opportunity blew her and her family. She was a rascally tomboy when she was young, and kept a healthy portion of that feisty nature as long as she lived.
Read the rest of this entry »

Mason Jennings. My favorite lately. His voice has an earnest, genuine, conversational tone. He manages to pierce the film that usually separates me from the recorded person. There’s a thrust and a glottal to his vocals that I can’t explain except to say that he has charmed me. I have several of his songs in my repertoire, just here and there from different records that have a similar, homespun sense. There’s an immediacy, a comforting echo in most of the productions of these albums. This song (track 4) which I had never heard (from a compilation project) popped up on Pandora yesterday and his lyrics here have cast the same sort of sweet spell. He digs deep. And I dig it. Deeply. Like he digs. Like the river is deep. Or is it really so deep? Or…oh go on.

Read the rest of this entry »

A friend muttered an under-the-breath comment the other day about the infrequent nature of my writing. That part I know of myself, that trait I don’t like very much, and that I try to press down under the water so that people can’t see the struggle’s splashes, was ushered right up to the surface for a big ol’ gulp of fresh air. It stung more than I thought it should. I suppose you could say that I’m in that “do I live my life or write about it?” stage these days, so it didn’t come as a surprise. I notice things like the bright orange yolks in the eggs I have for breakfast, like the sturdy little beginnings of trees that are springing up from the whirlybirds that fell from my maple tree into the soil around my strawberries, like the heady scent of honeysuckle and the lush, damp green that is closing in on my peripheries and around my little back yard that marks the onset of summer, then I think “I should probably write about that.” But I end up just enjoying those little things in real time and then forgetting that I ever intended to put words to them.
Read the rest of this entry »

In our sky-high tower by the sea, there was a vacuum. It was a vacuum void of my own computer, and it was glorious. Sure, I checked my email via someone’s iPhone about three times during the week, only emptying the junk and checking for real correspondence, of which there was little. In this void, this newly acquired open space in my heart and mind, I read. I might as well have put these books on plates and gotten out my knife and fork; I was ravenous for words. I devoured them.
Read the rest of this entry »

I’m freezing. I’m hungry. I’m surly. I’ve been scolded, twice in one day. Not the usual average for a girl who avoids confrontation at any and all costs and feels at her lowest after even the slightest sting of a tongue lashing. Both instances were ones where I thought I could get a cheap laugh and ended up hurting, alienating or irking people. See, the thing about avoiding confrontation is that, well, no one confronts you. You breeze through life just barely whispering past any real discourse about your faults in the particular department of relationship. Passivity can be delightful, but it’s just that: passive. And cowardly. And selfish.

The woman I hope to be is not crass, nor is she thoughtless, nor, for heaven’s sake, catty. These are all traits I know I am fully capable of. Not only am I capable, I’m well-rehearsed. Family members of mine could attest to this in spades. I’ve got some zingers up my sleeve and I seem to pull them out at the most inopportune, harmful times. (Well, zingers should probably always stay up the sleeve where a serious lack of ventilation will suffocate their potency and vigor.) Have you seen a man who is quick with his tongue? There is more hope for a foolish man than for him. (Proverbs 29:20). Ouch.
Read the rest of this entry »

Each year when I celebrate my birthday, one of the things I love most is to conjure in the kitchen for the loved ones who have gathered on my behalf. I know it seems a little backwards, me being the birthday girl, but I want it that way. And princess gets what princess wants. Sometimes, though, I get a little, well…bent out of shape.

My poor family. On Saturday morning I burned the bacon (it did have a delicious, candy-like, maple and mustard concoction on it, rendering it a sensitive subject to heat). It was still indescribably tasty. Then I put five cups of whole milk on to simmer for the rice pudding dessert, then promptly got caught up in reading the rest of the recipe in the other room. You can well imagine what happened. I’ll just say that Eco the dog had quite the dairy-licious feast on the floor. After a few exclamatory expletives from me in these situations (gasp!), mom always says quietly, “oh, quit it.” She brings me back around, makes me laugh at myself and causes me, almost always, to see the humor in the situation instead of deeming myself an unequivocal dimwit (which is no easy task, by the way, bringing ol’ Ev down from the ledge). Why does it surprise me when she says, after I’ve spent the majority of the day in the confines of foodland (at no one’s command but my own), “Evie, get out of the kitchen for awhile.”
Read the rest of this entry »

Today in church, Randy spoke about freedom. (Hooray!!) As believers, we need to be reminded (at least I do, often) that the written laws were nailed to the cross and that we are now called to live as free people. Sometimes I fear (for good reason, I think) that our culture believes that the words “Christian” and “freedom” are diametrically opposed, irreconcilable. That’s another [huge] discussion for another time.

“He forgave us all our sins, having canceled the written code, with its regulations, that was against us and that stood opposed to us; he took it away, nailing it to the cross.” (Colossians 2:13) Well hey, free ticket, right? Sa-weet. Now that we’re free from the law, unbound, we have a choice. The obvious, more pleasurable avenue would be to live it up, to run rampant with this freedom, to push the limits and inch our toes to the edge of the precipice under this umbrella of forgiveness. Either that or we can live in the deepest, fullest reality of our freedom and endeavor to love each other with the compassion that was extended to us, to mirror our Father’s greatest act of love.

One of Randy’s illustrations was the following story (from what I believe he said was the 17th century), one of a young woman and her desperate plea and act of selflessness for her lover’s life. Tears came instantly to my eyes as he relayed the end where she lays her bruised body before Cromwell and pleads on behalf of her dear condemned. In this particular legend, the law was beaten. By love.
Read the rest of this entry »

First, let me give you just one little glimpse of why I love it here. I just walked up the stairs from my classroom and outside, around on a winding path that leads to the door to the teachers’ lounge. (It’s time for my morning tea.) The gym, where kids are having PE right now, is across the courtyard from where my classroom is. There is a giant magnolia tree in the courtyard and a nice grassy patch, and a sweet little bronze sculpture of a child reading on a bench under the tree. Flowing loudly from the general direction of the gym are strains of Lenny Kravitz’s “It Ain’t Over Till It’s Over.” The PE faculty have some great taste in music. Yesterday it was James Brown’s “Papa’s Got a Brand New Bag.” It’s a good place to be. So back to how I got my job.
Read the rest of this entry »

One of the duties that proved most difficult for me (after creating sixty-two works of art, of course) was writing about why I did it all. I found myself sitting in the gallery the morning of the opening of the exhibit, staring at the walls which bore several months’ worth of my life. My brain, empty. “Influence of place,” my comrade and curator, John, said to me.

Influence of place.

The following paragraphs flowed out of my fingers/brain/heart within a half-hour’s time.
Read the rest of this entry »

Maybe it’s because I’m lazy.

Maybe it’s these gigantic casts I’ve got on both of my thumbs from a terrible, overzealous-shoulder-massage injury.

Perhaps it’s because I’ve been trying to simultaneously teach art full-time, design a book cover, and create somewhere in the neighborhood of fifty pieces of art.

Yeah, maybe it’s that last one.

We all know I’ve been a little absent. A little?! Yes. But aside from all that, I have an art exhibit coming up that I’d like to tell all y’all about.
Read the rest of this entry »

In my tattered copy of a book simply titled Good Poems (selected by Garrison Keillor), this page is one of many that are dog-eared (gasp!). I think I remember a librarian in fifth grade telling me that this was the unpardonable sin, so each time I feel that crunch of paper fibers beneath my thumb, it thrills me. Renegade behavior, I know. There’s not much I need to say about this poem, except that I thought it appropriate that it be shared with my Rabbit Room friends.

I dedicate this post to a one Mister Ron Block (cue the Casey Kasem Top 40 theme music). I’ll be aghast if he hasn’t already encountered this poem and all but committed the lines to memory, but just in case he hasn’t…
Read the rest of this entry »

There is such a thing as an ERB test. Don’t ask me what those letters stand for, but they are the standardized aptitude test currently used in the school where I work. I, personally, just love to call them the “erb” tests. As in “herb.” As in parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme. As in Peaches and ____. I most definitely digress. At the lunch table I asked the kids, ages ranging from grade 3 to 5, how the morning’s tests went. One third grader who is famous for the bows which always sit perfectly atop her cute little head, said “This is going to be the longest week of my liiiiife.” A fourth grade ragamuffin who likes to call himself “Heinz Cowguts” (which I think is quietly brilliant) said “Oh that stuff’s so eeeeeasy for me! I finished so fast!” I assured Monsieur Cowguts that there were many fellow students for whom this test wasn’t “so eeeeeeasy” and that he might want to use a bit more tact at the lunch table, and that the correct grammar usage would actually be “I finished so quickly.” And then there are the mature, erb-savvy fifth graders for whom this test is old hat and something they merely endure.
Read the rest of this entry »

Heaven knows why it has taken me so long to write a little something about this album, the newest EP from friend and soul sister, Julie Lee. Julie and I met several years ago at a friend’s house and found immediate ease in conversation and a unique connection; sparks of light and magic hung lightly in the air around our collision. It was one of those instances where you know for sure that the God of the Universe meant for you to meet this one particular human being out of the millions that He created. I know that sounds a little dramatic, but I like drama (the good kind only, please) and am grateful when I find it happening in my little life.
Read the rest of this entry »

“Anyone can revolt. It is more difficult silently to obey our own inner promptings, and to spend our lives finding sincere and fitting means of expression for our temperament and our gifts.”

Georges Rouault, a French Expressionist painter from the nineteenth century wrote down these words. Or spoke them. Or spoke them and then thought he should write them down, lest they become lost forever. Bottom line, this meaning-full and beauty-full thread of words made it all the way from his mouth to a piece of green construction paper next to the door of my art classroom, hand-written in Sharpie. It has hung there, heavy with truth, for almost three years now. I am, on many occasions, asked by the young people who cross that threshold each day to define words like “revolt” and “promptings” and “temperament.”  Once I explain what is being communicated by Mr. Rouault, most children stand with half-blank stares, but some kids get it. They get it and they like it. There is a quiet challenge that hides within his words, and we do love a challenge, don’t we?

But I thought it’d be neat to hear what you all think it means. Maybe I will gain new insight and wisdom to share with the young artists who are in my care.  What significance does this statement have for us as creative and faith-alive humans? Anyone? Bueller, Bueller…Let the dissecting begin.

Fellow Rabbit Roomers, I need your help. As exciting as anything that has happened to me in these gloomy,  heavy-set winter months is the recent re-purposing of my little white backyard shed into a new art studio. I’ll soon be wearing my tomato red art apron in a new kind of kitchen. I get to create sawdust and — glory of glories — leave it on the floor. (Of course I’ll sweep it up eventually because I like a clean floor but still, it’s the principle of the thing.) This past Sunday, mom and dad helped me sucker-punch that sad, cobwebby excuse for a storage shed into a beaming beacon of creative promise. It only took five hours! We moved all of my work tables, tools and crates of old bits and pieces and odd junk out to the particle-board womb. They now look up at me with gratitude and appear so much more at home than in the spare bedroom they’ve inhabited for a year and a half. Dad even wired me for lights (we’ll just see how soon I blow a fuse since it’s just an extension cord from the house) so it’s bright, cheerful and well-appointed.
Read the rest of this entry »

I don’t watch the evening news. The white noise of so many busy-body blabbermouths saying the same things over and over again usually lacks luster for me. I’d rather have quiet or music. This evening when I got home, mom called and said, “Evie, I know you don’t watch the news, but you have got to turn on the TV and watch some of what happened today.” She proceeded to give me the Cliffs Notes version of the crash of US Airways Flight 1549 out of LaGuardia. “What?!!” I said with a breathless smile on my face. Since the larger part of the American population actually do watch news and own computers, I will spare you my version of this incredible story.

But do you know how relatively narrow the Hudson River is?? Or how close the plane came to the George Washington Bridge as it flew overhead? Or that the plane was at just the perfect angle to avoid an end-over-end catastrophe? Or that it’s possible for geese to take down an entire aircraft? Or that there were business men in their nice suits aiding the people in quickly escaping the frigid water?
Read the rest of this entry »

Yellow onions, garlic and fresh ginger are sfubzling away over a low heat on the stove.

Sfubzling: (the “s” is silent) a little-known culinary term, used only by cooks with their ears truly to the ground, describing the noise which emanates from the cooking vessel and seems much like a mix of sizzling, bubbling, and fizzing. It’s a delightful and promising noise. Good smells most usually accompany.

I cue the music, step into the kitchen, light a candle in the window, sharpen my knives, crank up the stove, pour a glass of “Prosperity Merlot” and place my brand new, shiny-sunny yellow Le Creuset soup pot on the front burner. It was a Christmas gift from my sister and brother-in-law and I can only dream of all of the hundreds of wonder-full soups, stews and braises it will hold in its belly as it goes through this life with me. A few glugs of olive oil and I’m off and running. I chop, chop, chop with my sharp knife (an immeasurable pleasure), hum along with the groovy Nat King Cole tune, sip my wine, and in a hair’s-breadth of a minute, I am revived — brought home to myself — by a pretty soup pot and a prayer.
Read the rest of this entry »

Griffin House. Matthew Perryman Jones. Trent Dabbs. Katie Herzig. Andy Davis. K.S. Rhoads. Erin McCarley. Tyler James. Butterfly Boucher. Jeremy Lister. (And the Honorary #11: Will Sayles on drums. He rocked hard.) I had the pleasure of experiencing the greatness of this fine line-up at the Cannery Ballroom on Saturday night. These ten artists from Tennessee (get it?…) are embarking on a sixteen-date tour in Willie Nelson’s old tour bus. Good times (and perhaps a contact high) will surely be had by all on that rolling paradise which bears a desert scene on the side. I’d like to hug whoever was initially responsible for getting this powerhouse bunch of folks together for this musical journey.
Read the rest of this entry »

Oh gosh, Evie-fans!! I am so terribly sorry to have kept you in the dark about the goings-on with my sweetheart of a truck. Let me get you up to speed, as it were. I and the fellows down at Auto Zone have gotten to be quite close, and Tom said last time I walked in, in his very northern accent, “Wee’re gonna have to either chaaarge yoo rent or give yoo a jahb.” These guys are great, and so helpful and patient in times such as yesterday when I left with a 36 inch belt for the power steering wheel thing-y and came back, moments later (and I mean moments) to switch it out for a 36.5 (and 37 and a 37.5, just in case). These men are Steve, David (a.k.a. “Bear”), Asa, Tom, and Joe. What wondrous characters and great new friends. Anyways, on to the recent progress…
Read the rest of this entry »