MotherPie

Wine: Fine Wine. Real Fine Wine.

Reading the Sunday New York Times with a glass of 2001 Beringer Private Reserve Cabernet, which ranks between 94 and 97 by any wine rating.

Media and wine. Fine wine. Very very very very fine wine.

This is the End...

This is the final blog post.

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                

April Fool's!

Books, Books, Books...

Bellazza linked me for a reading meme and as reading is essential to my life and very being, I'll play. My mother will tell you that as soon as I could walk I carried a book about.  Becky's reading questions were more appealing so I've combined her list w/ Bellazza's.  So... Tell me what you are reading, too.  Or play along.

1). What non-fiction issues/topics interest you most?  Media, brain science, science, art, culture, history, biography, ideas.... I have a very wide range of interests, business...

2). Would you like to review books concerning those? Sure and I would include information about the artists of the book covers which is always never included in any kind of book review but is essential to marketing the book. Chip Kidd is my favorite book cover artist and probably the most famous.

3). Would you like to be paid or do it as interest or hobby? Tell reasons for what ever you choose.  I would do either but I mainly review for book clubs.  I co-reviewed a book for my second meeting of the book club I joined in Santa Fe.   

4). Would you recommend those to your friends and how? I always have a book with me.  I'm always bringing up good books in conversation.  Frequently I mention what I'm reading here.  I give books as gifts.

5). If you have already done something like this, link it to your post.

6). Please don't forget to link back here or whoever tags you.

Becky's Reading Questions from her blog Deep Muck Big Rake:

    * What are you reading? The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz (National Book Critics Circle Award Nominee, announced Jan 12)

    * What do you plan to read next? In Defense of Food, An Eater's Manifesto by Michael Pollen; and Seeds of Destruction - The Hidden Agenda of Genetic Manipulation by F. William Engdahl

    * What’s your favorite book of all time? Rain of Gold by Victor Villasenor.   The author chose a small publisher in Houston rather than a big one that wanted to have the title be Rio Bravo.  It is a tale of the veracity of oral history.
    * Was it made into a movie? If not, do you wish it were? Don't think so but yeah.
    * What did you learn from it? Good stories are worth writing about and reading.  The truth as fiction can be and often is real.
    * What other book(s) would you recommend reading with it?  Hmmmm.  Bless Me Ultima.  Two books of cultures entwined with US history.

OK, my fellow readers and bibliophiles. Play for the sake of reading!

• SusieJ who I know reads Valentines
• Joared
• Donald of Writing Cabin who discovers himself in his books
• Judith Shapiro of Remembering Matters who writes about books from time to time...
• Rhea of The Boomer Chronicles who as a writer is widely read

 

Une petite histoire de moi-meme.

Or a very short brief. I'm listing five things in my life now that I would have never thought would be in my life when I was 25.  This is an idea from Parisian photographer/blogger  Claude, who like me, isn't fond of memes but I'm giving it a go.  If you want to do this, go ahead.

1. Three children who have grown up to be quite likeable and delightful.  At 25 I was married but not yet a mother.

2. Blogging on a laptop.  Writing on an IBM Selectric was more in my imaginings then, and publishing was via newspapers, magazines or books. 

3. A persistent love of cultures and languages.  Never satiated.  My youngest daughter has caught the flame.

4.  A guitar-playing husband.  I thought then he might pick up the saxophone.  I never would have dreamed that I'd have a drum-playing son and a husband who serenades me.  Life is sweet and charming. 

5.  Gadgets. Cell phones, iPods, digital cameras and all the information available at fingertips.

This was a quick jot. I'm sure I'll think of more.  And you?

Identity & Self Image...

Virtual and real... just for fun, I chose one word to draw a self-portrait.  Me. In my prime.  No wrinkles, no grey, no sags, no bags. Immediately, MotherPie came to mind, mainly because at my fingertips on the computer, where I creatively play, the blog title crops to the forefront so hence the word.  Now that I think of it, I need to get another life.  I am not my blog, my blog is not me.  But what is the self, anyway, if not a conglomeration of ephemeral things?  What is real, anyway?

So here is a piece of my (virtual) self.  What word, at the moment,would you use to define yourself in a portrait.  Want to give it a go?  If you do anything similar, link back.

My real self is off celebrating. another. birthday.

Still...

In this quiet non-routine period that closes out one year and looks to the new, I find myself still with my thoughts, not quite to resolutions...yet.  Still... is when silence emerges and self stands clearly. Still...as I sit by the fire, I think of these things. Still...

Still Loving: My Mini

Still Not: Buying Vista

Still Glad: I bought stock in Apple

Still Enjoying: Hiking & the mountains

Still Doing: Daily Blogging

Still Proud: of my 3.95 cumulative for grad degree in Media Studies

Still Amazed: at 2007's Challenges: Juggling a daughter's wedding, a move cross-country from NYC to Santa Fe, finishing grad school, three graduations, moving two kids to new colleges, adapting to empty nest and a retired husband. 

Still Hoping.

Still Enjoying: my 3 children plus new son-in-law

Still Grateful: my  parents are in good health

Still Wanting: a convertable Mini in seafoam green (which they don't make, oh well).

Still Trying: to get an excercise routine patterned into my new schedule

Still Failing: To balance my checkbook (ha. some things never change).

Still Passionate About: Art and Reading

Still Taking up new things: docent training

Still Dating: same man I married

Still Not: sorting through storage things

Still Working: to ski with form

Still Reading: Letters

Still Thinking: Happiness, Family & Community

Still Wondering: Why that Lady in the Mirror looks older than I feel.

Still Dressing: in jeans with a basic color scheme of black, brown and white shirts

Still To Do: Find a new pair of jeans that fits a 50 year-old battooski

Still Cherishing: Time with Friends

Still Will Never: have a tattoo

Still Will Aways: Make Memories

Still, Still: Here!

So Friends, if you have a list to tell of your still-ness, please tell and link or comment!  I'd love to know what Jill, Rhea, KChristie H, SusieJ, Rhonda, Shelly, Janet, tut-tut, Janeywan, NYC Naomi, Claude, Ronni, The Atavist,  Kay, Hoss, Miss C., Jennifer, Lauri, Shrek's Mom, Magpie, Maddy, Bellezza, antropologa, Antique Mommy, Hattie, and others are still being, doing, thinking and so forth.   

Still Cheers! 

Ahead, Behind & What's in the Mirror...

How deep, how stormy, how blue-sky this image is.  A reflection, even now, on the present that is ever apt to change, ever likely to never stay the same.  Something is always behind us, something always ahead.  Life in mirrors.

I'd like to see blue skies ahead and storm clouds behind but...hey.  Life just isn't like that.  We can't paint it as we want it.  We just live it as it is.  Our art is in how we interpret and accept it and what we make of it.

This is  me in the mirror, capturing my life at the moment, just outside  Santa Rosa in New Mexico. 

One for the road.

Bridge as a Metaphor for (My) Life...

Where is your place, my place?  Where do we fit, where do we belong?  Right now I'm  bridging between places and I'm confusing myself and my readers (including my husband) with my writings as I'm in transition. Part of me is still in NYC and will be for awhile, even after the moving truck pulls away towards the end of June.  I'm moving back and forth between places. Part of me is in our second home in Santa Fe which will be our only home.  Part of me remains in places where I have lived, even, like in Guanajuato, Mexico, or Grenoble, France, for very short periods of time as I studied the languages and cultures of those places as a student.

As I write MotherPie posts, I write with different places in mind and post them sometimes for future publishing so even time is bridged as well as place. I even used the bridge as a metaphor for one of my major studies of online identity in the new media of blogging.

Even my identity as defined by roles of work and relations is changing, from the role of corporate wife and graduate student to that of???  Not being a corporate wife anymore allows me to be more open in this space so I actually feel I can be more real. I'm bridging to a different form of motherhood as my last child heads off to college and my oldest of three marries and I become a MIL (mother-in-law, not missing in la-la land).

So for those who may be confused, here's a brief of the t0-and-from: Born in Oklahoma City to a third-generation Oklahoman (that is as far back as you get without being Amer-Indian) and a Texas Daddy (both parents descended from Yankee heritage), my first five years were spent in places in the South and West.  My father finished his Air Force reserve duties in Amarillo, Texas, near his childhood home in the Texas Panhandle, and that is where my first memories were formed.  From kindergarten through highschool I lived in Oklahoma City and just like my mother, I went to O.U. and met a sixth-generation Texan (with Southern roots), fell in love and married.  I've lived as an adult in Dallas, Oklahoma City, Houston, Atlanta and New York City and Santa Fe.  Our shared interested when we fell in love was our love of New Mexico where we have spent, as our ancestors have before us, many years vacationing.  We have family in NM, so we are returning to a place we've always loved and a place that has roots and connections going back to an ancestor who was a territorial marshall.  We maintain bridges in the present to places in the past belonging to ancestors in England.

So where I have been, where I am going and who I am is a bridge. To get even deeper, philosophically, my  life is rhizomatic with connected nodes that expand with my experiences.  Rhizomatically there are no external boundaries to growth and movement.  The metaphor of a tree implies roots and a sense of unchanging place.  A window represents a view from one place out to another.  A door signifies a way in and a way out.  A strong and stable bridge allows connections and movement.

Hence the idea of bridging along a many-forked life path that can be lived recursively or adventurously.

A Big 35th Birthday...

The worst birthday I ever had was my 35th.  My brother remembers it well.  Today he is turning 35. I had Captain Kangaroo and he had Mr. Rogers and Big Bird. He was 11 when my first child was born and he became an uncle.  I think his generation is squeezed between the Boomer's Me Generation and the current i-gen (my moniker for it).   Don't you think the y-gen has morphed now into the i-gen?  Forgive me, I digress. 

Happy Birthday P-4.  Here's to you and your gen.

Big Bird with Diana Ross: Believe in Yourself
(although I think we all need to believe in something greater than ourselves, macro-speaking).

A Post a Day and a Blog Birthday...

It doesn't take a genius to blog.

It doesn't take an Einstein to publish.

It does take an effort to write a post every day.

February 24th was the one year anniversary of this blog and at least one post has been published every day. 

What started as a new media project has become an interesting sideline: an ephemeral sandbox full of unexpected blog friends and fodder for study and fun in the process.  The future? Who knows.