AfricanKelli

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Books!

Yeah, these photos are terrible, but it is what you get with a Blackberry camera from 25 yards away. That is Barbara Kingsolver, one of my very favorite authors. I know, I know — I’ve already shared how much I enjoyed hearing her speak last month. How does this have anything to do with advent?

Well, I’d be remiss to put together a list of thoughtful ways to celebrate Christmas without including books. As a reader, nothing thrills me more than having a friend hand me a book and say, “This. This is a story you’ll love.” In truth, I’ll read just about anything with that introduction. “The Lacuna” is one of my favorite books of 2009. It is so very good. But there are many others! Here are my suggestions for a holiday shopping list:

For the adventurer/traveler/person who loves politics:  “Whispering in the Giant’s Ear”

Runner up: “The Monkey Wrench Gang”

For the chef: “The Art of Simple Food” (best cookbook ever, in my opinion)

Runner up: “A Platter of Figs”

For the children in your life: “14 Cows for America”

Runner up: “I love you Stinky Face”

For anyone — thoughtful, interesting, entertaining reads:

“Unaccustomed Earth”

“Left to Tell”

“The Syringa Tree”

And books about nature I just think are wonderful:

“Trout: An Illustrated History”

“Bear Portraits”

“Monkey Portraits”

~K

One of the things I’m most thankful for are good books. When I read a couple weeks ago about “14 Cows for America,” I knew I had to read the story for myself.

It’s about a group of Masaai warriors who decide to give cows to the United States after 9/11.

The symbolism in the book is startling. There are often exquisite drawings with two tower-like figures in the background. Giraffe necks, walking sticks, branches of acacia trees.

Interestingly, I bought this book for a young friend. Reading it to her, I realized she is young enough to have been born years after the national tragedy. While I had tears in my eyes by the end of the story, touched by the beautiful illustrations as much as the carefully selected words, she was entranced by the animals.

In a way, this is healing.

The other recent children’s book I purchased is “The Red Shoes.” Again, it’s the matching of spectacular drawings with words chosen just right that make this book art.

Plus, who doesn’t love a good story of redemption that includes amazing accessories?

Both stories are full of hope and healing with patient perseverance. They are being added to my list of favorites for children, including “The Fire Cat,” and “The Secret Garden.”

~K

My current mix tape  looks a little like this:

Movies recently watched and loved:

Holiday — Cary Grant, Katharine Hepburn “Is this where the club meets?” Yes, any day. Such chemistry!

Arsenic and Old Lace – Cary Grant again, what can I say? I know what I like.

War Dance — beautiful documentary on the children of Uganda and their national music contest

TV show currently watching and loving:

Brothers & Sisters — tv simply doesn’t get better for me than this program. I want to be a Walker.

Books:

Ug, still stuck on Blindness. I need to get past this. I’ve got Lacuna waiting for me, and the Pioneer Woman in town tomorrow night with her new cookbook! Not to mention that giant new stack from friends. Something tells me I need to spend less time with my new boyfriend Cary.

Music:

Two words — Norah. Jones. My goodness, this woman is magical. I could listen to her albums back to back for the rest of my life and feel like I’m not missing out on a single thing. (And while we are at it, how fabulous are that dress and dog?)

Podcasts:

I need some new suggestions. I’m back to being a gym rat (this time of year greatly reduces my courage to run alone around Tempe Town Lake. It’s dark. And scary.) So, I’ve got 6-8 hours a week of podcasts I need to load to keep myself entertained and not feeling like a spandexed hampster on a wheel. (The new gym is an anthropology doctorate waiting to be written. Let’s just say as I roll in with one eye still shut and my hair in a giant messy bun on the top of my head — truly lucky if my socks match — there are super stylish women in the salon downstairs getting “blown out” for their workday and others sipping on $6 protein shakes in the cafe across the way. Toto, I don’t think we’re at the YMCA anymore.) So, as I huff it in my high school swimming t-shirts and stretchy shorts, I prefer to feel like I’m learning something in lieu of joining the masses in watching FOX news on the giant TVs. Suggestions? Podcasts you love? I’m hooked to Splendid Table, The Moth, This American Life, Speaking of Faith and my buddy JO.

C’est tout,

K

A couple friends asked me to take photos for them this weekend. Baby Mya was born just more a week ago. I don’t have permission to post any additional photos, but I think you can see how tiny and sweet she is from this shot.

I love taking photos for friends, but I have to be very honest. I have no idea what I’m doing. I put my camera in automatic, shoot like mad and hope for something to come out that they can work with. My friend Amanda has taken photography classes, has a small country’s economy’s worth of fancy gear, and takes photos that turn heads. We had lunch yesterday and it was quite apparent I have absolutely no business ever making this an actual business.

Which was quite alright for Elaina and Nick. They are getting married next summer and wanted engagement photos. It was such fun to get them to goof around and didn’t take any work to make them look at each other lovey-dovey.

Beautiful, right? I am lucky that the models are so easy to work with! (and that I have another job)

~K

I’ve been reading, “The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven,” — a short story collection by Sherman Alexie. He is one of my friend Juliann’s favorite authors. This was such a quick and shocking read. I very much enjoyed it.

Alexie describes frankly the disparities of living on the reservation and the cliches that haunt his people.  He writes, “It is hard to be optimistic on the reservation. When a glass sits on the table here, people don’t wonder if it’s half filled or half empty. They just hope it’s good beer. Still, Indians have a way of surviving. But it’s almost like Indians can easily survive the big stuff. Mass murder, loss of language and land rights. It’s the small things that hurt the most. The white waitress who wouldn’t take an order, Tonto, the Washington Redskins.”

In another story, when a police officer offers a Indian child a piece of candy, disease bubbles to the surface. “I’m sorry, Detective Clayton,” my father said. “But my son and I are diabetics.” “Oh, sorry,” the detective said and looked at us with sad eyes. Especially at me. Juvenile diabetes. A tough life. I learned how to use a hypodermic needle before I could ride a bike… The detective looked at us both like he didn’t believe it. All he knew was crinimals and how they worked. He must have figured diabetes worked like a criminal, breaking and entering. But he had it wrong. Diabetes is just like a lover, hurting you from the inside. I was closer to my diabetes than to any of my family or friends. Even when I was all alone, quiet, thinking, wanting no company at all, my diabetes was there. That’s the truth.”

Good, brief read. Three out of five bananas, absoloodle. I’m now (still) reading “Blindness” and have “Anam Cara” on deck. ~K

This week’s Speaking of Faith is an interview with Irish poet John O’Donohue. In his last book, Anam Cara, he writes:

“It is strange to be here. The mystery never leaves you alone. Behind your image, below your words, above your thoughts, the silence of another world waits. A world lives within you. No one else can bring you news of this inner world. Through the opening of the mouth, we bring out sounds from the mountain beneath the soul. These sounds are words. The world is full of words. There are so many talking all the time, loudly, quietly, in rooms, on streets, on television, on radio, in the paper, in books. The noise of words keeps what we call the world there for us. We take each other’s sounds and make patterns, predictions, benedictions, and blasphemies. Each day, our tribe of language holds what we call the world together. Yet the uttering of the word reveals how each of us relentlessly creates. Everyone is an artist. Each person brings sound out of silence and coaxes the invisible to become visible.”

Blame it on my surroundings this Sunday, but while on a long hike first thing this morning, O’Donohue’s voice and story struck such a cord, I was suddenly in tears admiring the gorgeous forest. The podcast discusses how God is found in beauty and how it is human nature to seek out things we find beautiful to better understand them.

“The heart is where the nature, feeling and intimacy of a life dwell, and without heart the world grows suddenly cold. In its desire for beauty, it reaches toward the beyond. This poignant desire for beauty suggests that beauty is the homeland of the heart…. When God created [the heart], it was fashioned for an eternal kinship with beauty; God knew that the human heart would always be wedded to him in desire; for the other name of God is beauty. The heart is the tabernacle of divine beauty. St John of the cross puts this poetically:

I did not have to ask my heart what it wanted
Because of all the desires I have ever known,
Just one did I cling to
For it was the essence of all desire:
To know beauty.”

With these words ringing in my ears, I found beauty and God everywhere I looked.  The colors, lines, textures and perfection of these creations — they took my breath. We may not all believe in God, but I think it is safe to say we all have a belief in beauty. There are things we consider beautiful, which he is quick to say doesn’t mean glamour or anything materialistic. Instead, when the host asked what was beautiful to him, he listed off friends and experiences of feeling loved and accepted.

He also lists this piece of music as one that made him tingle with exuberance. I couldn’t agree more. I was smiling from ear to ear feeling so thankful to be able to enjoy these notes and their order as I hiked along. Oh, to be so talented!

To me beauty is my father’s relaxed laugh when he is with his children, my mom dancing without shame to Prince, my brother’s love for his dog, a deep breath of musky dense forest air, seeing the Milky Way on a clear night in Mozambique, women in Colorado without makeup and their sun-kissed hair pulled back in long, carefree braids with mud stuck to the backs of their legs after a long ride/hike/day in nature, crab and sourdough bread eaten with your fingers on the pier in San Francisco, purple hydrangeas growing like weeds in Central America, a pair of jeans that fit magically and finding a handwritten note of love on an otherwise blue day.

God is in each of these.

What’s your view of beauty?

~K

I recently read, “A Moveable Feast,” by Ernest Hemingway and it was such a pleasant and  entertaining read. I think authors like Hemingway can be immortalized to the point of intimidation, keeping readers at bay. I’m glad I’ve pushed past the pretense to explore his writing — this story is odd, funny, sad and more than anything else — human.

It is a memoir of his early days as a writer when he and his wife Hadley were struggling to pay the rent and figure out what their next meal may be. He writes longingly of food, of spending time with wealthy friends and envying their ability to buy clothing and art (and food). But more than anything, he writes about this city — one that I’ve had a long-distance love affair with for years.

“But Paris was a very old city and we were young and nothing was simple there, not even poverty, nor sudden money, nor the moonlight, nor right and wrong nor the breathing of someone who lay beside you in the moonlight.”

He knew they would one day have money, so he writes of poverty as though it’s a cold, not a chronic disease. Nonetheless, he hates that he cannot provide more comfort for his young wife and son.

“I had been stupid about other things too. It was all part of the fight against poverty that you never win except by not spending. Especially if you buy pictures instead of clothes. But then we did not think ever of ourselves as poo. We did not accept it. We thought we were superior people and other people we looked down on and rightly mistrusted were rich. It had never seemed strange tome to wear sweatshirts for underwear to keep warm. It only seemed odd to the rich. We ate well and cheaply and drank well and cheaply and slept well and warm together and loved each other.”

I’m not surprised those two excerpts in particular ring true at the moment. We are all struggling in our own ways, so it seems. While I am far from hungry, or worried about feeding a family, I am finding the simplicity of happiness in drinking and eating cheaply as long as you can curl up with those you love by the moonlight. This weekend, my gaggle of friends gathered to play cards, catch up and eat homemade favorites. It made me think of the countless stories I’ve heard my parents tell of their first decade of being married. Friday nights were cheap pizza and beer with friends around a card table — playing whatever suited their fancy at the moment — snacking on handfuls of popcorn and worrying in their own ways how they’d ever be able to take care of the sleeping babies in the next room.

Some worries and some sources of happiness are universal. Hem had them in Paris. My folks had them in Mesa. Today, they haunt and dance around me in Tempe.

“A Moveable Feast” is a timely and excellent read. It’s a classic that certainly doesn’t need my stamp of approval, but it is damn good. I really enjoyed “The Green Hills of Africa,” by Hemingway also, that I read this summer. For those interested, I’m now knee deep in “Stern Men,” by Elizabeth Gilbert of “Eat, Pray, Love” fame and it is so creative and witty.

I won’t be giving these books away. I normally inhale and instantly pass off books I’ve enjoyed, knowing they’ll carry goodwill to the next sets of hands who partake in a literary feast. In visiting my friend Dena’s home last weekend, I found myself ignoring a house full of people (dressed like cowboys no less) to spend time with her giant bookshelf. She’d collected and organized her books in such an elegant way. And so, Hem, this book stays put. I want to share it with friends and family who visit, but always keep a place in my home for your incredible art.

I am happy to be reunited with my lovely, dusty literary friends.

~K

This week’s Speaking of Faith focuses on the practice of yoga and connecting spiritually during practice. I had heard this episode before and enjoyed listening to it again now that I am regularly taking yoga. Seane Corne described getting out of a life of drugs and alcohol in part by regularly working at this craft. She also discussed how her spirituality and yoga are like peas and carrots: you can push and prod all you want, but they develop with time and one day you’ll say, “Huh. Lookie there.”

The conversation group this week was smaller thanks to the holiday weekend, but lively. We talked about how we find ourselves close to God when enjoying different hobbies. I find myself in prayer when I’m on long runs or hikes. While I love Bikram, the teachers talk through the entire class. I need silence — to hear my heartbeat in my ears — to connect with God. (Don’t get me wrong, by the end of the hot class, I’m thanking God for surviving, but that’s it.)

This weekend I hiked a couple times, trying to enjoy the last bit of this insane heat. I know soon enough the heat will disappear and the parking lots will be waiting rooms. Right now, I’m one of only a few crazies willing to battle the weather to be out on the trails. On Sunday, I dragged my friend Alma with me.

Again, there wasn’t much silence, but there was a lot of heart-pounding, huffing and puffing and trying to manage not falling down while making our way up and down the desert hills. It was a couple hours of great friend therapy. We hadn’t talked in a very long time and by the end, I think even our ears were tired.

If you pray, do you find yourself more comfortable to do so during an activity? Do you need silence?

~K

Finny,

May I just say, welcome home birthday girl! So glad you were able to get away to Maui to celebrate your anniversary and the big blowing out of candles. Your photos make me want time in a hammock with a very tan man and a pina colada. What? Too honest? Mahalo!

I love what you’ve selected for the September CRAFT projects. While I’ve yet to make the commitment to become a pet parent (after how many years of moaning that I want a dog), I love this project and have many friends in my life who’d appreciate one of these nifty little canine accessories. Also, who doesn’t have a bag full of annoying conference tote bags hanging around to be put to better use?

And dessert. Well. I think it is safe to say you know where I stand on dessert.

Another not so secret to be revealed — mixed CDs are pretty much my favorite gift to give and receive. I love new tunes, especially a random selection of artists I more than likely wouldn’t have other known. My friend Adam is incredibly good at this. He gives me new music regularly. So, sharing the love this month with a sweet few. I’ll post one to you soon. Nothing like spending the afternoon with dessert baking in the kitchen, the sewing machine humming in the living room and the tunes shaking hips through the entire house.

xoxo,

Donk

This week’s Speaking of Faith discussed one African’s view of foreign aid. Specifically, Binyavanga Wainaina is angry with the way Kenyans have been portrayed in international media and how Africans in general are thought of as poor, dying orphans. He said:

“We can save you from yourself. We can save ourselves from our terrible selves. Help us to Oxfam the whole black world, to make it a better place.

We want to empower you. No, your mother cannot do this. Your government cannot do this. Time cannot do this. Evolution, it seems, cannot do this. Education cannot do this. Your IQ cannot do this.

No one can empower you except us. And if you don’t listen to us, our bad people, those RepublicanToryChineseOilConcessioningIanSmithing racists will come to get you: your choice is our compassionate breast or their market forces.”

My travels and work experience in Africa have given me a chance to see the ugly and the beautiful of foreign aid. I’d say that as an American, I look back on some of my gawking behavior with embarrassment. I should have known better than to have taken that photo, at that time, full-well knowing the shock of the horrific situation was exactly what I was trying to capture. I’d say this podcast gave me time to think a bit more about how to help others without exploitation and how aid can be destructive.

Our conversation group this morning was lively. I enjoyed listening to another PC volunteer’s experience in an Asian country as an English teacher. Additionally, two others discussed how aid to the US under similar circumstances would leave them feeling incapable of caring for themselves.

I think foreign aid has great room for systematic improvement. Like anything else with political and religious implications, it can become a terrible mess and cause more problems than it solves. Without intense and committed involvement from the community at stake, nothing can be achieved long-term. The one side to this conversation I missed was spirituality. Faith and charity go hand in hand. What are faith-based-organizations doing well in Africa? What are they doing poorly? How do people with the best of faith-fueled intentions have to say about this topic?

SOF is continuing the conversation about aid in the developing world. It will be interesting to see who else speaks up.

~K