Happy Healers

Dear World,

I am honored to present to you ten remarkable, gifted healers who yesterday completed the final step in what for most was a five-year course of study and dedicated practice. They are the first to become certified by the newly formed Chartres Healing Institute as Sacred Healing/Sacred Touch Practitioners.

First row, left to right: Judy, Sandie, Wilma, Ginny
Second row: Nancy, Ava
Third row: Ronda, Sue, Sally, Eva, Judy (co-facilitator)

How blessed we are!

Love,
Sharon

Trick or Treat

A Room of Her Own

When Judy, Nancy and I moved into the house on B Street, Judy chose the lovely bedroom with pearl-grey walls and white trim off the living room. Nancy wanted the attic with its cute coves and crannies. We all agreed she should also have the room below the attic for her art room.

I pulled the short straw -- the oddly shaped room next to the refrigerator whose walls are covered, floor to ceiling, in big bunches of bright purple pansies and yellow daffodils tied together in ribbon-laced nosegays. THOUSANDS of ribbon-laced nosegays. Who even knows what a nosegay is anymore?! We are only leasing the house so ripping the wallpaper off or painting over it is not an option.

"But your room comes with a bathroom," says Judy every time I complain about the pansies. And she's right, it does. Complete with bidet. (I'll save the bidet story for another day.) But, alas, Judy decided early on that she would take her morning shower in the bathroom off my bedroom instead of in the bathroom that is exactly next to her bedroom and connected to it by a door two inches from her bed.

Judy, as you will recall, is an intensive care nurse. She works 12-hour shifts that start at 7 a.m., but for some reason require that she be at the hospital at 6:30. So every morning at 5:30, she opens my bedroom door, clatterbangs it shut and jiggles the handle about a hundred times, walks through my room in the dark crashing into any number of things. Same story on her way out, except -- it's now 5:50 a.m. -- she occasionally says something in a really loud voice like, "ARE YOU AWAKE?" Or, "I HOPE I DIDN'T WAKE YOU." Which, of course, wakes me and makes me want to hit her.

But I digress.

I am a writer with a large and looming project that requires more space to spread out files and papers than I have where I usually work, which is the entry space between the front porch and the living room that we lovingly call The Library. I needed to find a quiet, untrafficked retreat for three months with plenty of space where I would not be disturbed.

Judy and Nancy suggested the Peace Chapel in our backyard where we, and some of the 62 practitioners Judy and I have trained, provide free healing touch treatments each Thursday for people in the community. A perfect space, to be sure. When Sue Harmon offered to provide a temporary home for the Thursday clinic it all came together.

I bought a put-it-together-yourself desk, and a put-it-together-yourself bookcase, and a put-it-together yourself armoire affair which Judy offered to put together herself -- with help from Nancy -- and ultimately from Ron Little, the construction genius, cheered on by his wife Claudia and family friend Paul.

I moved the massage table to the garage, along with the altar and the woowoo music and the art and the candles and the throw pillows that said "Peace." I moved in my books and research notes and inspirational ephemera (don't you love the word ephemera?!) and my big, beautiful black leather desk chair, and my trusty eight-year-old HP laptop.

Whereupon my laptop stopped functioning. Not completely, mind you, just enough to make me TOTALLY CRAZY. My 15-year-old desktop in the library was in even more precarious shape.

Clearly, I needed a new computer before I could begin work in my new office on my looming project.

Nancy and I spent two hours at Connecting Point in Medford yesterday talking to a lovely chap named Justin about the merits of the Macbook Pro. And another hour at Staples talking to a revved up version of Justin about the merits of the new Windows 7.

Nancy, Judy and I spent another two hours in Medford today reprising yesterday's conversation with the Staples guy who speaks at approximately 10,000 words a minute. I returned home with a raging headache but no new computer. I am writing this blog on my half-functional laptop that kicks me off the internet every four minutes. I am not happy. I am not working on my huge project. And, let it be known, that at 3:27 p.m., I am drinking wine.

Teachers

I'm sitting in front of a log fire (well, okay, gas-log fire) in a beautiful little chalet nestled among cedar, Douglas fir, Ponderosa pine and giant live oak trees at Mount Shasta.  Barely 20 yards from my deck is Lake Siskiyou, sparkling green and blue and gold on this exquisite fall afternoon. I come here as often as I can -- it's my place for pondering. At this very moment the focus of my pondering is a couple I met last weekend. 

Judy and I taught full-day, back-to-back, energy healing classes on Saturday and Sunday.  The couple I want to tell you about borrowed a car and drove two days from Vancouver Island, British Columbia to Ashland in order to take the classes.  

Janett and Jerry have lived on a deserted stretch of Vancouver Island coast at the mouth of Juan de Fuca Strait for the last thirty years.  Jerry is with the Canadian Coast Guard (non-military in Canada).  Janett is an astronomer.  There are three houses in their little "community" -- the one they live in, one occupied by a single man who tends the lighthouse, and a mostly unoccupied guest house for Coast Guard visitors. 

Groceries are brought in once a month by helicopter.  Mail is delivered once a week, weather permitting.  In the summer the way out (or in) is by boat or hiking the Pacific Coast Trail for three days.  In winter there's no way in or out at all except by helicopter. 

"But what if you forget to put something really important on your grocery list?" I asked.

"We wait a month," Jerry said.

"But what if you get sick or have an accident?" I asked.

"They try hard to get the helicopter to you before you die," Janett said.

THIRTY YEARS!  They've been there for THIRTY YEARS!!  They raised and home-schooled two children there.  And it was only two years ago that they got hooked up to satellite TV and internet.

Just thinking about living so far from civilization with the same person for thirty years made me twitch and blink and muffle a scream.  No friends, no movie theaters, no restaurants or wine bars.  No Safeway or Albertsons or Rite-Aid or Ace Hardware.  No Starbucks or Macy's or Shakespeare Festival or Halloween parade or football games.  No New York Times. No Co-op. No car!

In short, NO DIVERSIONS.

"We have the ocean," they said.  "And the whales and the trees and the clouds and the stars and the creatures.  We have our books and the labyrinth we made with paths of grass. . . and we have each other."

That, I learned, was the key.  These two remarkable people who were friends before they were lovers, have something I've certainly never known in my life.  They have such an enormous appreciation and respect for nature and such an enormous appreciation and respect for each other that their egos seem to have melted away. 

"Janett sees and hears only truth," Jerry said. 

"Jerry is so gentle and patient," Janett said. 

They came to Ashland to learn, not teach.  But teach they did.  And I, for one, will never be the same.       

Alley-oop

Ashland is a town with lots of alleys. Not dark, scarey alleys full of junkies and pimps like in the movies. Charming alleys full of sweet, colorful surprises. I was thinking about Ashland's alleys when I was strolling down one yesterday on my way to watch Nancy and Kim hang the new show at Illahe Gallery (Nancy's part of which has been covering the floor of our library and every surface of our kitchen for days.)

This morning I got an email from my friend Elin Babcock. All about alleys. I didn't ask if I could put her message in my blog so I may be in big trouble. But I love it and I think you will too.

When I was walking down the alleyway past your house, I thought of the life of an alley. Of the fact that the alley goes past the Peerless Hotel (where there is a story of a red-haired female ghost). I smelled the delightful scent of concord grapes hanging from neglected vines and apples on the ground good enough for Tarte Tatin. On the way back from 8th Street, I took another alley where a man was practicing Frisbee golf. Then before 4th street, I saw the barred window that used to be the jail in the building that now is a bookstore. The alley between B and C Streets is a delight with morning glories in the deepest color purple. Somewhere there is a backyard full of bamboo with stalks thick enough to block the house completely. I met a lot of alley walkers who choose to take the road less traveled. I think of the Ashland in your blog and it has changed the way I look at my Ashland.

Note: In case you've never made -- or even heard of -- Tarte Tatin, there's a recipe on page 638 of our new kitchen bible -- Julia's Mastering the Art of French Cooking. DOUBLE YUM!! A story about how the tarte came into being is in the Food & Wine section of this month's Living France, which I happened to be reading moments before opening Elin's email. One version of the story is that there were two sisters, Carolina and Stephanie Tatin, who owned and ran a hotel in the town of Lamotte-Beuvron in the Loire Valley. One day while in a hurry, Stephanie forgot to line the tarte tin with pastry before putting in the sugar, butter and apples. When she discovered her faux pas, she plunked the pastry on top and put the whole thing in the oven anyway, resulting in the delectible upsidedown apple tart that you'll see in the window of nearly every patisserie in France.

Do Brussels Sprouts Come From Brussels?

There are only two vegetables I really, REALLY don't like: brussels sprouts and okra.  With okra it's the slime factor, but on NPR's Weekend Edition this morning Leann Hansen read a letter from a listener who said if you don't like okra slime, just eat it raw. I never would have thought of that.

And a few hours later when I stopped by KIXX Boutique on Main Street, Laura (the very stylish stylist) told me -- pretty much out of the blue -- that if you saute half a cup of pancetta or prosciutto or turkey bacon and chop up a bunch of raw brussels sprouts and dump them into the pan with the sauteed whatever and cook it until the sprouts turn bright green, and then add some slivered almonds and pepper, even snickity-pickity-eater children will scarf it up. 

It sounded so oddly tasty that I dashed right over to the Co-op to buy brussels sprouts and pancetta, neither of which they had (let it be known that I will never in this life or any other voluntarily purchase okra).  So I improvised and bought prosciutto and chard.

Nancy was in her art room off the kitchen while I was whipping up my KIXX Boutique lunch. "Hmmmmmmmm," she called out (she has a keen sense of smell). I ignored her.  "HMMMMMMMMM," she said again. Finally, she came in the kitchen and stood over the stove. "What's that in the pan?" she asked.

"Prosciutto and onions."

"Hmmmmmmm," she said. "What are you chopping up?"

"Chard."

"So what would you call this dish?" she asked.

"Chard with proscuitto and onions."

"Hmmmmmmm," she said, drooling into the pan and looking for all the world like Oliver Twist.

Laura the stylish stylist was right.  Even snickety-pickety-eater kids will love this dish! Improvised or not.

Our Sturdy Golden Bears

I grew up in Berkeley at a time when Cal football was a really big deal. Every home-game Saturday my father would buy my mother a giant yellow chrysanthemum corsage with a navy blue "C" in the center made out of a fuzzy pipe-cleaner. She'd pin it to her suit jacket, put on her white gloves, and the two of them would walk, arm in arm, from Shattuck Avenue up the hill to Memorial Stadium.

When I got a bit older my father would sometimes take me to watch the team practice. It was the only thing we ever did together and even though he rarely said a word, I coveted the time. And the sport. And the team that made it all possible.

This morning I put on my navy blue t-shirt with CALIFORNIA BERKELEY in big yellow letters and the official university seal dated 1868. And I drove over Siskiyou Summit to Mount Shasta, California. My destination was the sports bar with giant-screen TV at the Mount Shasta Golf Resort. The Cal Bears were number six in the nation. Number six! Ahead of USC and UCLA and Washington and Stanford and everybody! They were playing the University of Oregon in Eugene and I wanted to watch the game with compatriots -- Californians who understood the significance of a ranking not seen since Pappy Waldorf coached the team in the early 50s.

Cal lost by 40-something to 3. It was a baffling and humiliating defeat at the hands of the Ducks. But you know what, for a little while there was hope. And excitement. And yelling and clapping and commaraderie with a bunch of strangers. And memories. I wouldn't have missed it for the world.