More Pics from "Woodyfest" 2009

1. Balloon Animals

2. Clowns

3. Harmonica Lessons

4. Carriage Rides

5. Water Slide

1. Okemah's world-famous "hot" and "cold" water towers

2. Woody Guthrie boyhood homesite

3. Best BBQ joint in Okemah

4. Groovy car parked downtown

5. Mural near the Chrystal Theatre dedicated to Guthrie

The Woody Guthrie Free Folk Music Festival in Okemah, OK

It is a source of pride for me that Woodrow Wilson "Woody" Guthrie is from my home state. Although many people in Oklahoma deride Guthrie for his activities in association with the Communist Party in America, there is no denying that the man was an expert poet, songwriter, and artist. His politics were the result of seeing first-hand the effects of The Great Depression and Dust Bowl on common Americans. He was willing to work hard for the vision of America that he believed in. He was not afraid to speak his mind and to stand up for what was right even when it meant great personal sacrifice. He saw what was unique and special about the American way of life and challenged us to ensure that all people in this country truly had an opportunity to participate in our democracy. He was a patriot who was not afraid to ask America to live up to its promises. Unfortunately, his life was marked by tragedy and was cut short by a debilitating disease which robbed him of the things he loved most.

Almost everyone is familiar with Woody's songwriting skills. In addition, he filled countless notebooks with poetry, sketches, musings, etc. He wrote political commentary for left-leaning publications. Recently, I was given a book on Guthrie's artwork. Although I was aware of his sketches, I was surprised to learn that Guthrie also excelled at oil painting. It was a shock to see prints of masterful portraits in the book alongside his more abstract and organic sketches.

On a personal level, I have always identified with Guthrie's life story. I was so disappointed to learn that the Cowboy Hall of Fame in Oklahoma City refused to host a travelling Smithsonian exhibition on the life and work of Guthrie when it came through his home state. Luckily, the Oklahoma History Center did host the exhibit. I got the opportunity to see it and it brought tears to my eyes. Woody Guthrie was a beautiful spirit, pure and simple.

Fortunately, Woody's hometown of Okemah pays tribute to the singer and to the spirit of what he represented every year during the Woody Guthrie Free Folk Music Festival. The festival is held each year the weekend following Independence Day weekend and features a children's festival, live music, songwriting workshops, open mic events, and much more. Several venues host festival events including the historic Chrystal Theatre, city parks, local restaraunts, and the "Pastures of Plenty" area near the city swimming pool. We have gone to the festival nearly every year since it began. (During one I was 8 months pregnant and could not endure the heat & during another we had a newborn at home.) We have seen legendary acts such as Pete Seeger, Country Joe & The Fish, and members of the Guthrie family (including the infamous Arlo).

The children's festival is always a favorite for us and includes live music (Sarah Hickman, Nancy Apple, and many others), balloons, clowns making balloon animals, face painting, crafts, water play, pottery lessons, and carriage rides. The favorite for parents, of course, is the harmonica lessons featuring a FREE HARMONICA!!! I love the look of pity on the faces of the older couples at the festival whose kids are already grown when they see our children happily marching to the car blowing like mad on their new harmonicas.*

There are several options for food in Okemah as well. We have always steered clear of venues featuring festival performers for fear that they would be too crowded to accommodate the two of us adults plus three rowdy children armed with harmonicas. In some of the years past, we have brought a picnic. The local American Legion also serves a mean $5 burger and hot-dog dinner just up the street from the Chrystal Theatre. When we choose that option we are usually some of the youngest people present, but our kids eat up all the grandmotherly and grandfatherly attention they get at the Legion. The past 2 years, we have eaten at a great BBQ restaraunt that looks a bit like a shack on the outside but is clean and friendly on the inside. The food is excellent and this year I had a friend green tomato for the first time in over 20 years. Suddenly, I was a little girl sitting at my Grandma Laura's kitchen table all over again. It was the best feeling I've had in a long time!

"Woodyfest", as it is often affectionately called, is as much a part of my summer as sno-cones and sleeping late. I wouldn't miss it for the world (unless, of course, I was 8 months pregnant again)!**

*We confiscate the harmonicas as soon as we get in the car.

**I will most likely never be 8 months (or any months) pregnant again.

A Swindle, A Toothy Pearl, and A Funeral For Crawfish

I have a very interesting life. I am surrounded by joy & fun. One of my students totally pulled the wool over my eyes today. This little guy is so cute that I can't help it that he's my favorite. I know teachers are not supposed to have favorites, but my heart didn't get the memo. After lunch he came in crying & saying he needed to go home because he had been beat up all day. Apparently, he and another of my students had a scuffle on the playground & his elbow got a little skinned and bloody in the process. I called the other student over to find out what happened and my little cutie student just kept saying, "I coulda' died out there!" For the entire afternoon he kept begging to go home saying he needed his mommy, that he was tired of being beat up, that he was too sad to stay at school. Well, my heart was practically breaking all day. I almost DID call his mom, but sometimes if you let them call once they'll want to call every day. I toughed it out, broken heart and all. At the end of the day, I saw mom and stopped to talk to her about it. Mom informed me that he got a new video game yesterday and had been pulling out all the stops since that morning so he could stay home and play. It was all an act. I was totally duped by a 5 year old.

When I got home, Maggie had lost a tooth. I don't know why I think lost teeth are so adorable, but I do. The tooth fairy has more magic in her little finger than santa, the easter bunny, and leprechauns put together. The kids and I went ouside after I paid due inspection to the tooth (neatly sealed in a plastic bag by the school nurse) as well as the gap left in my daugter's mouth. The unthinkable had happened--our new pet crawdads were belly up.

After a heated debate with my preteen son about whether a flat-ended or point-ended shovel would dig a better hole (I was recommending one with a rounded point, but I'm an itiot so what do I know, right?), Tarron stubbornly dug a hole for them with a flat-ended shovel his dad uses to mix cement. We laid some bricks on top just to make sure the dogs didn't dig up Speedy and the gang before they made it to crawfish heaven. That hole wasn't near deep enough. If only he had listened to me about the shovel . . .

I played taps with my nose. It was a nice touch, if I do say so myself.

I identify with almost every human emotion you could name, with the exception of one. I never seem to experience boredom.

Self Will Run Riot

The bunks: 8 in all, 4 on each side. At the very back right is a small bathroom with tiny RV toilet and sink.

Top right: Seating area at the front.

Above: parked at Blanchard Springs in Arkansas

Above right: Bo keeps his baby in tip-top shape

Right: Thanksgiving dinner on the bus

I have been promising Jerri (our "beef lady") a blog on the bus for a long time. Jerri raises cattle in Okemah, OK and delivers enough naturally-raised beef to fill our freezer from time to time. When she was at the house this fall, she got a peek at the bus and has been wanting to show pictures to her family.

So now I will share the saga of the bus to those who have not heard it: Bo and I had been toying with the idea of purchasing an RV of some type to take on the road. This "toying" had mostly consisted of browsing on ebay and daydreaming. I had filed this under "someday" in my brain, but apparently Bo had other ideas. . .

One weekend, months after we had last even dicussed the RV idea, Bo said he had something important to discuss with me. He sat me down and said, "I have done a bad thing." Of all the posibilities racing through my head, what he said next was not one of them: "I bought a bus on ebay." Apparently, he had seen the bus and fallen in love. Thinking he probably could not afford it, he had begun bidding on it to see how high the price would actually go. At $2,800.00 he won the auction. Now I don't know how it works in most marriages, but I really frown upon my husband spending thousands of dollars without consulting me. Let's just say I had a few choice words for him after his little announcement.

To make matters worse, this particular bus was living in Nebraska. Bo would have to fly to Nebraska, then drive it back. I was less than happy about all of this, so I called my friend Leanne to vent. I can always count on Leanne to break things down into their simplest form. She put it like this: "It looks to me like you are going to own a bus. Now you can either own a bus with resentment and anger in your heart or you can own a bus with a happy, joyous heart. Either way, you're still gonna own that bus." Damn, that really took all of the fun out of being mad!

Bo flew to Nebraska to get the bus & drove it back. It took me awhile to warm up to it. I have threatened to hurt him in his sleep if he does anything like that again. He will, don't worry. It's just his nature. So far, we have taken it to a couple of Oklahoma lakes for the weekend and to the Ozarks for five days. This summer I am hoping we can take it a little bit further. Bo has also used it for a few out of town construction jobs and has hauled a group of guys to a men's conference at Lake Murray.

Several names were tossed around for the bus--Great White Hope, White Lightening, The Grey Goose, etc. My personal favorite was "Cani-bus", but perhaps now that we are responsible adults that's not appropriate. The name that stuck was Matt's suggestion--"Self Will", from the phrase "self-will run riot." I think that pretty much says it all.

Adventures in Breadmaking

I am a purist on so many levels and food is no exception. My kitchen is decorated in what can only be described as New Millennium Granola--jars of rice, beans, and seeds; canisters of flour; baskets of fresh fruits and veggies; plants; a little pottery thrown in. I tend to take things to the furthest extreme possible (this is a trait that I am told makes me simultaneously both endearing and annoying), so of course there has aways been a hole in my decorating scheme. I am missing that perfectly baked loaf of bread sitting out on a bread board, steaming fresh from the oven.

My past experiences baking bread have gone something like this: I spend hours rising, kneading, rising, kneading, rising, kneading. I then lovingly shape a loaf of bread and throw it in the oven and--viola!--30 minutes later I have one of the following: a rock, a giant wad of bread flavored gum, something that looks like it might hatch alien spawn, or a topographical replica of death valley. Covered in flour, I glare helplessly at my creation and envision all of the careless frolicking I could have done in place of all that industry. I do so love to frolic.

Okay, so when my food coop started buzzing about this new amazing recipe for no-knead bread, I pretended not to hear at first. I had that feeling that one might get if, say, a lousy good-for-nothing cheater ex-boyfriend suddenly swore to be true forever. I was determined not to get hooked by bread again. I couldn't handle the heartbreak. But suddenly it was everywhere--online discussions, blogs, and in the pages of the Mother Earth News. I could not resist all those sweet promises being whispered in my ear. I had to try it.

I read the recipe with skepticism--too much water, don't worry about completely dissolving the yeast, don't sift the flour even a bit, resist the temptation to knead--it all flew in the face of everything I had read on how to successfully bake bread. Not that I had ever had success at baking bread, mind you. I dutifully followed the recipe as written despite my discomfort.

The first loaf was not a complete failure, a bit too heavy, but the crust was simply to die for. Oh, did I mention that this recipe makes a huge batch of dough that you can keep in your fridge for up to two weeks. It's true! Then you just tear a piece off and bake it whenever you want. I continued to experiment with the version of the recipe found in the Mother Earth News.

http://www.motherearthnews.com/Real-Food/Artisan-Bread-In-Five-Minutes-A-Day.aspx

It was not a complete success, but neither was it a complete failure. I decided to let my better judgement prevail at least with the scooping of the flour. I mean, I CAN make cakes, cookies, shortbreads, and all that and everyone knows you just don't scoop flour straight out of the flour bin. I also read in the online forum associated with this article that sometimes the bread needs more rise time after shaping the loaf. After sifting the flour with a spoon while mixing the dough and letting the shaped loaf rise for over an hour, I am finally getting a decent loaf of bread. Maggie says it's better than Panera bread. I wouldn't go that far, but it's no alien pod either.

I have also discovered the authors of the MEN article and the associated cookbook have a website with lots of great tips, recipes, and troubleshooting. I have also tried making Indian-style nan in a cast iron skillet. It turned out well and I can't wait to bring some dough along on our next bus trip. I also really want to try the refrigerator rise method on the site. I tried it one day and the dough did rise nice and fluffy, but I subsequently destroyed the loaf trying to shift it onto a pan for baking. I guess the parchment paper to put underneath is not optional.

Anyway, here is the authors' website and a youtube video demonstration. I'm going to keep experimenting. It's definitely worth the time!

http://www.artisanbreadinfive.com/

More on that darn horoscope

Okay, as almost everyone who will stand still and listen to me for more than five minutes knows, I began my degree in education 12 years ago when Tarron was a baby. I did manage to get my bachelor's degree in a record 8 years, but life circumstances (i.e. three kids, two of whom were still in diapers) prevented me from moving forward with my student teaching at that time. I have spent the past 4 years working at jobs that gave me a lot of wondeful opportunites that I am extremely grateful for and saying that someday I was going to go back to school and get my teaching license.

In the past two years in particular, I have learned some lessons on the fragility of life. I have lost friends, one in a way that was both sudden and tragic. I was also hospitalized for some heart troubles that appeared seemingly out of the blue. I have really begun to realize how precious and fleeting our time here on this earth is. My #1 priority has been to spend more time with my children and my employment situation was not conducive to that end. When the agency I worked for lost the grant that payed my salary, I knew that it was time to make some long-awaited changes for the better in my life.

The past semester has been a challenge. My husband Bo has been such a blessing, taking the kids to school every morning, volunteering at Mag and Ez's elementary school one Wednesday a month, cooking his wonderfully unhealthy meals, and being a great support while I was teaching all day and writing my research all night. But finally I am done. The new challenge, of course, is finding a teaching job. This takes on varying degrees of urgency from moment to moment depending on my mood. Sometimes I think I need a teaching job T-O-D-A-Y and other times I could just slow down indefinately.

So anyway, as many of my friends know, I get a daily email horoscope that I think must be written just for me. This is what it said today:

You are at the end of an opportunity cycle that began twelve years ago and you're at the start of a new one. You can get beneficial results by visualizing your new direction, but understand that this isn't just about something wonderful that could very well come your way this year. It's about setting long-term goals and taking the time to build momentum instead of trying to reach satisfaction immediately.

Coincidence? Maybe. Or maybe not . . .