I really love snow. It’s pristine (at least at first); it’s quiet; it makes things slow down. But for me, now, this pounding we’re getting in the mid-Atlantic is getting a little nuts. But then, as often happens, the glory of life pokes through just when I’m getting frustrated and the perspective police show up to give me a good shaking.

I drove up from D.C. today in an effort to be sure my cats hadn’t mutinied or decided to take over the house entirely. (Aside from a really rough tumble they gave the water dish after I got home today - I suspect I was being berated cat-style - all was well.) The roads were, well, horrible. Even the interstates were covered with that bumpy, packed-down ice stuff that made me think I know a little of what those off-road truck racing guys feel in their necks the day after a race. It was a long, slow ride home.

When I got here, well, I couldn’t park. There was snow everywhere, and since I only have street parking, I jagged my car to the curb as best I could, unloaded, and headed back out for errands, a whispered prayer for a space thrown up as I pulled out. The grocery store was nuts; the bank was dead quiet, except for the manager who was quite disconcerted that people were hanging out waiting for the bus by the front door since the bus stop was snowed over. (I would have never thought of that, but it makes sense that a bunch of guys in hoodies would be a little unnerving for a bank staff). The drugstore empty - guess everybody got their meds last week. So I got things done, and headed home.

I got stuck. . . not badly stuck but stuck enough that I thought I might slide into a parked car if I tried to haul myself out. Just when I was about to throw on the hazard and get out for a look, a nice man from the car behind me ran up, asked if I was stuck, and then pushed me right out. So nice!!

Then, I pulled onto my street and lo, like a glowing sign from heaven, was a patch of pavement. I pulled in, but only after I carefully but not TOO slowly drove past a man in a wheelchair sitting in the snow and ice in the middle of the road. I got parked and walked back to him. He was okay, and a friend pushed him up the street to what I assume is home.

As I reached my door, the mailman’s truck got stuck. I went over to push him out, and it didn’t work. But just then more people showed up - someone tried to put a 2×4 under his tire and get him out, some of us pushed, another got a shovel, finally a woman in an SUV butted right up to him and pushed him right out. We all huddled off to our dry houses, I assume.

As I had been driving earlier, I had really started to get grumpy. This was such an inconvenience. A real pain. And it is, but not that much to me. I got around. I made it home. And I am not in a wheelchair. I am not a person whose job is - driven by motto - to deliver mail despite the “snow.” I do not have a health condition that makes being snowed in terrifying. I do not even have to get to a job, most days, that would fire me if I couldn’t get there. I am blessed.

I am blessed by neighbors who care enough to help the mailman, even if it is by directing from an upstairs window. I am blessed by men who don’t even know me but who push my car out of the snow. I am blessed by clerks who work at the grocery store so that I can buy Amy’s Macaroni and Cheese before the next snowstorm hits. I am blessed with heat (and warm kittens) and blankets and a house whose roof is still intact. I am blessed to be loved by a man who has already checked in twice to be sure I’m okay here. I am blessed.

I am blessed, too, to be taught lessons and reminded of my blessedness by a loving God who really doesn’t let me get too grouchy, especially when more snow is coming tomorrow.

May you all find your blessedness in your situation this night.

- Here is a man who makes the most of his situation. Bravo, sir!!

Filed by Andi at 6:16 pm under Uncategorized
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It’s been an oh-so-not-productive weekend, at least on the reading and writing front, but I am coming to enjoy these God-created breaks in time. While I did begin to get restless some yesterday, I know that these storms come only when we most need them.

Dave and I have spent a lot of time talking, and we actually had a fun, if tiring time, shoveling out our cars yesterday only to have them recovered in a few short minutes. We watched lots of movies, and found a funny new show that both he and I really enjoy - Top Gear. I almost finished cross-stitching my grandparents’ Christmas gift from three years ago (It’s the Lord’s Prayer as modeled after a medieval wall-hanging - think monk-like illumination made in tiny crosses), and we ate a lot of peanut butter popcorn, the most delicious substance Mennonites ever created.

There is glory in these days. It’s quiet, subtle glory. Glory that has been hushed by the snow, but it is there whispering to me today in the snow flakes that shimmer as they fall off the trees.

- The Great Blizzard of 2010 by Ian Campsall

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So, honestly, I don’t have too much to report. I’ve been watching TV with Dave for most of the day, and it’s been pretty nice to just relax and not feel bad about it.

Tonight, more of the same. Tomorrow, more of the same. Sometimes, it’s really good to just be forced to stay in and live.

Filed by Andi at 4:58 pm under Uncategorized
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This week, I had the privilege of interviewing (via our lovely tool known as email) singer/songwriter (and sometime actor) David Homyk. Here’s what he had to say:

1. What got you started in music? When did you start singing?
Playing? Where?

At a very early age I knew that music would be central to my future,
but the spirit didn’t move me to start singing until I had also gained
interest in the guitar. The two seemed to go hand in hand for me. I
had already been playing piano and organ in the church since I was
about 9 years old, but my first vocal performance of original material
came around 10th grade at Baja Bean in Charlottesville, VA.

2. How would you describe your music? Who are your influences?

I usually explain my style of music to people by referencing those
artists I most often get compared to: Jason Mraz, Maroon 5, One
Republic, Gavin DeGraw, James Blunt, etc. Ironically, the artists who
have influenced me don’t necessarily sound like me at all. To name a
few: Soundgarden, John Coltrane, Pink Floyd, Mobb Deep, Pearl Jam,
Nirvana, Led Zeppelin, The Doors, and many others you wouldn’t expect.

3. If you were a spice, what spice would you be?

Salt

4. On a great day, what do you listen to? On a bad day, what do you
listen to? On a day-ish day, what do you listen to?

Great day - Soulja Boy
Bad day - Elliott Smith
Day-ish day - Tom Petty

5. If you could tour with any musician/band in the world, who would
you want to tour with? Why?

Well for practical purposes, if I toured once with U2 I’d build an
international fanbase so rapidly I’d be able to tour with any
subsequent artist after that.

6. What’s the first song you remember learning the words to?
Jesus Loves the Little Children

7. Where do your ideas for songs come from?
They basically come from my subconscious, woven out of the vowel sound
changes that emerge from chord progressions and riffs I compose on my
guitar or piano. I start pivoting on the vowels with consonants until
I have words and phrases that work musically (i.e. they’re
unbelievably catchy; you hear them and say “Yes that’s perfect,
couldn’t have said it better”). From there I’ll have a hook, hence, a
theme. With my anchor plunged into that the rest of the song will
ultimately unravel itself in my mind the more I obsess over it. It’s
almost as if the song IS its own spirit possessing my body and mind,
using both of them to come alive and be manifested.

8. My blog talks a lot about books, so do you have any
recommendations for my readers? What books should they read? (Skip
this one if you don’t have much time to read; I understand.)

Indeed, I don’t have much time to read these days. However, when I
travel I squeeze in my reading, and over time I’ve accumulated quite a
library. The one book that has changed my life above and beyond the
many is Eckhart Tolle’s “The Power of Now.” I discovered and began
studying this work a very long time ago, probably about 6 years ago.
More recently, Oprah has taken public interest in Eckhart and has
begun promoting his work, which I am totally thrilled about. I’m so
grateful that millions of new people are learning about his work now.

9. If you were an animal, what animal would you be?

I would have to be some type of animal that a) flies, b) without
dependency on a flock, c) in an uncluttered biosphere such as a
desert, d) without the burden of lengthy migration. So I’d have to be
either a hawk or an eagle of sorts.

10. If you were to put together the ultimate mixtape for my readers,
what would be on the tape? Give me about ten songs and their artists.

Not necessarily in this order:

David Homyk - “Longer Stronger”
Pink Floyd - “The Great Gig in the Sky”
Beyonce - “Halo”
Nirvana - “Lithium”
Nina Simone - “Feeling Good”
Led Zeppelin - “The Rain Song”
R.E.M. - “Radio Free Europe”
Mary J. Blige - “Be Without You”
Pearl Jam - “Black”
Birdman - “What Happened to that Boy”

Check out David’s music at his website, and you can even download a free song there, too. Good stuff for a snowy weekend (that is, if you’re blessed to be in the snowstorm, as I am, that one friend reminded us was “a snowstorm, not the apocalypse.”)

Filed by Andi at 4:26 pm under Uncategorized
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Okay, so Animal, Vegetable, Miracle was one of those books that significantly changed my life, and I really liked, as did the rest of the world it seems, The Poisonwood Bible, but I honestly cannot tell you what made me want to read Kingsolver’s essay collection Small Wonder. Maybe I read about it on a blog or in a review, and whoever turned me onto this book, I owe you a huge debt of gratitude. This is the book that helped me start my book. No joke, no questions, this book did it.

There’s something about Kingsolver’s voice in this collection that just comes off as honest and true, not overly crafted or carefully worded. This isn’t a collection of wrought language and complex metaphor. These essays are just the writer’s perspective on a lot of issues from her daughter’s decision to raise chickens for their eggs to the U.S. flag to biodiversity. Each piece is - in the way of most things - political for it states a clear perspective and opinion on something, and I really like that. I like knowing where she stands, and knowing why she stands there. I feel like I’ve just finished a really good visit with a dear friend, a trip where we spent the day walking the beach or sitting by the fire and just talking - sometimes deeply, sometimes heatedly, but always honestly, in the way I only can with my closest friends.

The last page of the book, which is the last page of the essay “God’s Wife’s Measuring Spoons,” says this.

. . . still I suspect that the deepest of all human wishes, down there on the floor of the soul underneath the scattered rugs of lust and thirst and hunger, is the tongue-and-groove desire to be understood. And life is a slow trek along the path toward realizing how that wish will go unfulfilled. Such is the course of all wisdom: Others will see the front and the back, but inside is where we each live, in that home where only one heart will ever beat. There we have to make our peace with all we need of sorrow, and all we can ever know of the divine, by whatever name we call it.
What I can find is this, and so it has to be: conquering my own despair by doing what little I can. Stealing thunder, tucking it in my pocket to save for the long drought. Dreaming in the color green, tasting the end of anger. Don’t ask me for the evidence. The possibility of a kinder future, the existence of God - these are just two of many things fall into the category I would label “impossible to prove, and proof is not the point.” Faith has a life of its own.

And well, that about says it. This book is one that will sit on my shelf to be caressed and peeked into when I, too, am seeking to conquer by own despair by doing what little I can.

- Small Wonder by Barbara Kingsolver

Daily Tally - 96 Miles, $1.75, cheese, pancakes, eggs, too few veggies and fruits

Filed by Andi at 5:03 pm under Book Recommendations
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