Archive | music RSS feed for this section

What’s cooking… in MY Kitchen?

21 Aug

While summer is still sizzling, I want to share with you some of my latest local recipes. But wait – before your mouth starts watering – it’s not what you think!

Although I totally appreciate food as an art form – and absolutely admire my friends who try their culinary skill at exotic dishes, artisanal recipes and ethnic cuisine – I might as well just come out and say it (for those of you who don’t already know): I don’t like to cook.

I basically just want to write.

MY kitchen is made up of words.

But food and words are not mutually exclusive. In fact, one of my favorite recent creations was written from an interview I did with local Kentucky chef and restaurant owner, Ouita Michel. I could relate to her comment, “For me as a chef, using locally produced foods gives everything that we are doing a sense of authenticity. At each of our establishments, we are expressing what Kentucky is today through the use of Kentucky artists and Kentucky farm goods and preserving old Kentucky locations.” In the travel industry, this is what we call “sense of place,” and it is critical to the authenticity of tourism product.

I wrote the piece for Business Lexington, the Kentucky Bluegrass region’s local business journal. Back in May, Editor-in-chief Tom Martin asked me to do some coverage of travel industry trends and sustainability issues, as well as profiles of interesting local figures as appropriate to fit each weekly issue’s theme. Here are some more of my articles from the past four months:

Aug. 19, 2011 interview with fine artist, musician and film maker Patrick McNeese

July 22, 2011 interview with Lexmark’s sustainability director John Gagel

July 8, 2011 overview of sustainable restaurant scene in Lexington

July 8, 2011 Lexington residents share favorite places to eat

June 24, 2011 overview of tourism trends today and tomorrow

June 24, 2011 overview of Lexington’s hospitality industry

May 27, 2011 tourism as an economic factor affecting sustainability

May 27, 2011 three ways businesses can be more sustainable

And so, while I may not love to cook, when it comes to mixing up ideas, flavoring them with just the right words, and baking it all into a delightfully tasty creation, I’m as talented as any chef. A blank Word document is to me what a clean kitchen must be to a culinary artist, a tabula rasa ready to become the palette for the next tantalizing masterpiece.

Advertisement

Tags: , ,

What do the Rolling Stones have to do with Gratitude?

25 Mar

I got a call today from an old college friend, a friend who knows me well and appreciates my eccentricities. When he asked what I was doing, I replied that I was watching a Rolling Stones video. I then tried to explain that I was doing research for my blog and that the Stones were helping me practice Gratitude. This ended up sounding lame even to me, and I had to tell my friend to just wait for the blog, and then it would all make sense. And so, here it is…


A year ago at the time of the Spring Equinox, I was living in the tropics, taking part in an exotic international experience full of adventure, romance, fun and excitement. Immersed in the beauty of the ocean environment, I relished gorgeous sunrises and sunsets, thrilled to amazing ecosystems and rare wildlife sightings, all the while embraced by the warmth and openness of the Latin American culture. The full moon rising over the Pacific Ocean on the Nicoya Peninsula in Costa Rica took my breath away. There was never a dull moment.

Over the past year, my mom had some health issues back in the states, my romance became more challenging than nurturing, and I realized that in order to be true to myself, I needed to transition away from the exotic life of travel, and back to what I felt was a much more mundane existence: living with mom in my bland, dull, ordinary, conservative hometown, what some half-affectionately refer to as “Rifle Town,” Winchester, Kentucky.

Then, in one of life’s awesome little ironies, my former husband gave me this book called “How to Want What You Have: Discovering the Magic and Grandeur of the Ordinary” by Timothy Miller. And I opened myself to the possibility that maybe life was not so bad.

This is not a book about anti-materialism or voluntary simplicity, as the title might suggest. It’s about how to stop constantly wanting something other than what we have right in front of us. Miller is a cognitive psychologist who writes in a very simple, straightforward style, exploring ideas based in Eastern philosophy from a modern psychology perspective. He examines how we drive ourselves crazy by focusing so much attention on our human desire for more of everything… more wealth, more stuff, more power, more attention, more sex, even more spirituality or more love! According to Miller, whether what we want is good or bad for us doesn’t really matter; it is the act of focusing on the desire that prevents us from living in the here and now, appreciating what we have, and treating others the way we want to be treated.

One of the passages I like the most talks about how meditation – or taking a meditative approach to life (however you choose to do it) – is conducive to wanting what you have because when you meditate, you realize over and over again that you just need to stop thinking about what you want and just sit there with an empty mind. “If you meditate regularly, the cycle of desire and renunciation is repeated thousands of times,” Miller writes. “You might think of it as reprogramming a computer. The original program essentially states, ‘Try to get what you want. Try to gratify your instincts.’ Meditation gradually alters the original programming.” Meditation also is conducive to helping us practice Attention, Compassion and Gratitude, which are the disciplines Miller advocates to facilitate wanting what we already have.

When I was talking to my friend about this earlier, he reminded me that Sheryl Crow must have read this book when she wrote “Soak up the Sun,” which has that line, “It’s not having what you want, it’s wanting what you’ve got.” But I actually use three other songs to remind me of the three practices that Miller advocates to keep us focused on wanting what we have: Attention, Compassion and Gratitude. You are free to try this at home, and the videos provide a fun way to remember the ideas.

Practice: Attention

Artist: Carly Simon

Song: Anticipation

Theme: “These are the good old days.”

Concept: Being here now and realizing this is the precious present. We can all easily remember the line that ends this classic tune, and remind ourselves that even though we tend to always look to the future and think of what we think and hope is going to happen, even that future, when it does occur, can ultimately only happen “in the now.” If we use the reminder “These are the good old days” as a way to bring our attention back to the present, it becomes easier to see how good we’ve got it, right now, and to realize we have no control over what will happen.

Watch the video.

Practice: Compassion

Artist: Bruce Springsteen

Song: Hungry Heart

Theme: “Everybody’s got a hungry heart.”

Concept: Empathizing with others and seeing that everyone you encounter is just trying to get the same things you are in life. In another of life’s little ironies, I’ve never been as big a Bruce Springsteen fan as is the partner I recently left behind. But I have to admit it resonated with me when Miller mentioned “Everybody’s got a hungry heart” as the mnemonic to help us in realizing that even the people who annoy us most (he uses examples such as neighbors with barking dogs or kids scrawling graffiti on our town’s infrastructure) only want the exact same things we want in life: acceptance, shelter, power, love.

Watch the video.

Practice: Gratitude

Artist: Rolling Stones

Song: You can’t always get what you want

Theme: “You can’t always get what you want, but if you try sometime, you just might find you get what you need.”

Concept: Being happy with what you’ve got and thankful for the things that surround you each and every day. Remember the opening funeral scene of The Big Chill? This song was the perfect choice for expressing the resolute nature of grief when we lose something, or someone, we thought would always be there. This theme is a perfect way to remind me that, even if I may not have everything I think I want, I always have all that I really need… and then some. And that realization makes me immensely grateful.

Listen to the song.

This year, the Spring Equinox visited central Kentucky with an appearance of the incredible super moon, the same moon that shines over the Pacific Ocean, and over the tropical beaches I have now left behind. I’m now focused on taking part in what adventures, fun and excitement I can find in and around my old Bluegrass stomping ground, immersed in the beauty of a comfortable and aesthetically pleasing home in a wonderful park-like neighborhood with older trees, squirrels, rabbits and lots of bird species. Here I am embraced by the warmth of very close friends, some of whom have known me for more than 40 years. I relish this special time with my mother, here and now, a relationship that is precious and which I know I cannot have forever. When I practice Attention, Compassion and Gratitude, there is never a dull moment… and occasionally, if I’m lucky, I even get to soak up the sun.

Watch the video.

Read another cool blog post about this book.

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Yin and yang in the Old Pueblo

10 Nov

Honoring death and survival in the American Southwest

“Hope is the thing with feathers
That perches in the soul,
And sings the tune without the words,
And never stops at all.”   ~Emily Dickinson

Raven

Joy

I am writing this week from Tucson, Arizona. My journey here was undertaken to visit two friends – one a 50-something African American gay man named Raven, the other a 26-year-old female adventure travel guide named Joy – both of whom have taken time from their busy lives to show me around this remarkable region and shared equally vital wisdom about life, love, spirit and survival in the desert. Just as these two friends look vastly different when placed side by side, so this journey has presented itself as a study in contrasts – and in learning to exist with balance among them.

The trip was timed around an annual celebration here, the All Souls Procession, which honors the Mexican tradition of Dia de los Muertos or Day of the Dead. The signature procession through the streets of downtown Tucson, which anyone can join, attracts roughly 20,000 people, about half of which are costumed in elaborate face paint and colorful skeletal garb reminiscent of Grateful Dead iconography. Joy and I walked in this mile-and-a-half-long procession together, at times somberly, at times with gleeful elation. This was, after all, a celebration – but a celebration of death! We, along with thousands of others, were there to honor and remember those who had passed away – or even passed out of our lives, for one reason of another. We were there saying, along with Kurt Vonnegut’s protagonist Billy Pilgrim from Slaughterhouse Five: “Farewell, Hello, Farewell, Hello.” This was an event so compelling that I would like to make it an annual pilgrimage, returning each year to the desert, where life can be a struggle for all beings.

Bobcat at Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum

The day after the procession, I visited the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum, a wonderful fixture of this arid region, where visitors and natives alike can learn about the flora and fauna that have miraculously learned to thrive throughout the centuries under harsh, inhospitable and unforgiving conditions. At once a peaceful outdoor area with hiking trails, a natural history museum, a botanical garden and a zoo – albeit in the very best sense – this amazing attraction allows guests to see local mammals like the coyote, javelina (collared peccary) and bobcat; birds such as Gila Woodpeckers, Gilded Flickers, road runners, owls, hawks, falcons and hummingbirds; as well as butterflies and a host of reptiles and amphibians. Gracing the beautiful desert landscape here are a myriad of desert plants, shrubs and trees, among them the Saguaro Cactus – state flower of Arizona and symbol of the desert southwest – found only in the Sonoran Desert.

Gilded Flicker in Saguaro Cactus by Warren Lynn

Much has been documented about the efficient way the saguaro stores and utilizes water to keep itself and the ecosystem that depends on it alive. “The saguaro has a thick waxy skin that restricts loss of moisture. The outer surface is covered with pleats, which allow the stem to expand during water uptake, preventing the cactus from bursting. A mature saguaro can soak up 200 gallons of water during a single rain storm. A saguaro is typically more than 90% water. Water is needed for survival, but also plays an important role in heat regulation. The water within the cactus heats slowly throughout the day (preventing the cactus from cooking), then releases its heat at night, keeping the cactus warm.” Source: Todd’s Desert Hiking Guide. Like all life in the desert, the saguaro has to be efficient in every way in order to survive.

And survival can be an issue here for any living creature. Tucson is only 60 miles from the border with Mexico, where new immigration policy is taking its toll. “These walls being erected have their consequences on the environment,” said Joey Burns of the Tucson-based alternative country-rock band Calexico. “Regardless of the human border, the local wildlife has to be able to travel back and forth; it’s important for their survival. But they’re also having a hard time because of all the traffic that goes through there: drug smugglers, immigration, border patrols, vigilantes, humanitarian aid-workers trying to prevent these immigrants from dying of dehydration in the middle of the desert… Putting up a massive wall isn’t the solution to any of these problems. It’s certainly not going to stop desperate people from trying to cross, and it sure doesn’t help the relations between the United States and Mexico.” Source: Anthony Carew at About.com.

November 7 All Souls Procession through downtown Tucson

Border issues notwithstanding, one of the most compelling aspects of Tucson, known to locals as the Old Pueblo, is that, unlike so many homogenized geographical regions in the Unites States, it retains a palpable and dynamic culture, an authentic sense of place! This is brought out in traditions like the Day of the Dead, where Mexicans and Americans come together for a communal celebration of both life and death. And it is also reflected in the Latino influenced musical traditions that have naturally emerged in border regions such as this one. Calexico – whose concerts now traditionally close out the annual Day of the Dead festivities – represents that blend of cultures and musical genres perhaps better than any other border band in the southwest. The concert they gave as the finale to the All Souls Procession at the historic Rialto Theatre, the locus of Tucson cultural history since 1920, benefited the non-profit organization Many Mouths One Stomach, a Tucson-based collective of artists, teachers and community activists who support “festal culture,” the fulfillment of human needs through public celebration, ceremony and ritual. The performance not only fused many world genres, especially those that inspire the southwest, but also brought together in celebration many cultures in one uplifted community spirit. Calexico’s music, which has been called “desert noir,” and described as “a melting pot for country, indie rock, various Spanish rooted sub-genres, jazz, and many other musical styles,” will be the subject of an upcoming interview I’ll post here in the coming weeks.

Calexico’s Dia de los Muertos concert at the Rialto Theatre

I started this entry with a quote about hope, for hope represents one of the greatest mechanisms of balance we can employ in times of challenge. No matter where we may live, like creatures in the desert, at times each of us is faced with the perils that threaten our survival in a harsh climate. And yet, hope is the thing that keeps us moving on, traveling to new places, alive and celebrating life, even in the face of difficulty and loss, each and every day. The yin and yang of coexisting cultures and of death and survival in the desert are nothing if not testimonials to hope.

Tags: , , , , , , , , , ,

Newer Entries →