Locals work for a better Uganda (Pt.2)

Continued from yesterday’s post.

Ugandan President Musevini sat down with Hornbeck, Rawlins and Clay in September 2008. Hornbeck calls Musevini “an economist by education who understands the farmer-owned concept as long as they have a market.” Janet Storton of Sisters was also at the meeting and presented President Musevini with a quilted fabric bag made by the Kapchorwan women she trained through her Sisters of the Heart project – another off-shoot of SCC’s broadening relationship with Kapchorwa.

Last month, Rawlins and Hornbeck put the finishing touches on what Hornbeck calls a “real economic partnership” and KaBuM International (Kapchorwa Bukwo Mild) was launched.

 

Future Washing Station Property

 

“This year we hope to begin construction of the first farmer-owned washing station,” says Rawlins. “We have a core group of best practices and top farmers in that region. The difference is we let them own the means of production so no middleman can exploit them.”

Farmers will pay off private loans for the infrastructure within five years, out of coffee sales. “Then the Ugandans will own title to the washing station,” adds Hornbeck.

That washing station could be ready in time for this fall’s harvest, and the beans available for sale locally as early as September.

KaBuM boasts a specialized computer system that tracks bean micro-lots by GPS co-ordinates, allowing consumers access to the cupping ratings and personal stories behind their brew.

Like the story of Janet Chemonges who was deserted by her husband years ago. One of a number of female coffee farmers, Chemonges expanded her farm, hired more pickers and received training in new practices with a micro-loan. She’s now the Ugandan representative to Women In Coffee International as well as the mother of two university graduates and two more children who attend Testimony School. She recently rode on an airplane for the first time.

Hornbeck and Rawlins are having no trouble connecting farmers with new buyers who attach value to these personal stories, and facilitating true direct-trade relationships. Sisters Coffee Company is one, eager for a second relationship like the one they’ve developed in Guatemala.

Justin Durham of Sisters Coffee says they are “so psyched to bring in Ugandan coffee.” Durham plans to start by purchasing small quantities, then “hopefully growing it into a sustainable long-term relationship. We want the few we have to be really deep relationships.”

The Ugandan farmers are benefitting on all fronts. The large buying corporations are being held to higher standards, paying better prices. “Now they know. By educating the farmers, they’re becoming liberated,” says Rawlins.

Hornbeck and Rawlins’ stake in KaBuM ends when the loans are paid off. Then, says Rawlins, “We’re out.”

They’ll remain only as consultants and member farmers. 3000 acres were secured on this past trip, an investment in Ugandan coffee for its value as a renewable resource, with profits cycling back into Testimony School. “We’re not interested in making money from coffee. We are interested in making money for Testimony School,” emphasizes Rawlins.

Rawlins points out the higher costs involved in supporting students through secondary school, and he envisions scholarships for Kapchorwan students who show the aptitude for a university education.

Uganda seems to be opening its eyes to future possibilities and its doors to the western coffee culture. Since 2003, Rawlins and Hornbeck watched at least eight attractive coffeehouses spring up in the capital city of Kampala.

In the same period, the faith of the Sabiny tribe grew and some members of Christ Glorious Church even risked their lives to make peace with their life-long enemies. They built a well for – and offered forgiveness to – the machine gun and machete-toting Karamojong raiders who killed their loved ones and burned their homes. Women from both tribes cried together.

A whole lot of Sisters folks took part in the planting and watering of seeds of change in Uganda.

Today, it appears those seeds are taking root, as emboldened farmers are poised to harvest more than just coffee beans this fall. The hope of an educated and revitalized Africa hangs heavy and pregnant from the limbs of countless thriving coffee trees on the dense slopes of Mt Elgon.

Meanwhile, sitting at a table in Sisters Coffee Company, Hornbeck leans forward and his gentle eyes seem to spark as he says, “If coffee enables the country to develop economically – that’s everything. That’s what will change Africa.”

For more information on the outward projects of Sisters Community Church including child sponsorships, contact Paul Rawlins at 541-549-1201 or email prawlins@sisterschurch.com

Locals work for a better Uganda (Pt.1)

John Hornbeck at Testimony School Dedication 2007

Like a great cup of coffee, the now full-bodied relationship between Sisters and Uganda began with fresh water.

Seven years ago, a team from Sisters Community Church led by pastor Tim Kizziar in cooperation with All Nations Ministries, ventured to a desolated village in Eastern Uganda to offer clean water and spiritual hope.

This fall, coffee aficionados right here in Sisters may get a taste of some unexpected fruits of that journey, simply by brewing a pot of locally-bought coffee.

Amid the steep, lush canyons that camouflaged violent tribes, Kizziar’s original group prayed for healing of the land and its people. And they began the slow work of growing their new friendship with the warm, open-armed Subiny tribe.

“Africa is built on relationships,” says John Hornbeck of Sisters. Hornbeck, an unassuming, retired attorney just back from his latest trip to Uganda, and Paul Rawlins, SCC’s energetic Outward Pastor, are buzzing with excitement over a new coffee-related endeavor that they believe could be a dynamic agent of change for Uganda.

Hornbeck and Rawlins represent hundreds of church members who embraced a long-term commitment to give a leg up to the people of Kapchorwa village in their fight for survival – and revival – under harsh conditions.

Murderous cattle rustlers, AIDS and waterborne diseases are just some of the miseries that decimated the farming community – leaving many homeless, fatherless and vulnerable.

Kizziar partnered with Pastor Godwin of Kapchorwa’s Christ Glorious Church back in 2003, and began exploring ways to help Godwin help his people.

First, SCC provided a well in a soldier-guarded Internally Displaced Peoples (IDP) camp and medical teams to remedy health issues.

Then they addressed the children’s future. Says Hornbeck, “Their young people have a great desire for education and to excel; they have aspirations.”

Today, just up the mountain from the IDP camp stands the newly built Testimony School where, according to Rawlins, 450 children now receive an education, health care, shoes and a daily meal through SCC’s child-sponsorship program. Back in Sisters, many of us display photos of the eager, bright-faced Kapchorwan boys and girls who we support and correspond with.

 

Our Sponsor Child, Daniel

They saw the need for the community to become self-sustaining.

In 2005, an SCC team noted that the only large building in Kapchorwa was a coffee mill. When asked about the quality of their coffee crop, farmers eagerly showed off their beans, and a my husband (who had connections to Starbucks) had the coffee analyzed.

As it turned out, the high altitude and tropical climate along the western slopes of Mt. Elgon yield the ideal growing conditions for quality Arabica beans. Mt. Elgon straddles the border of Kenya to the east and Kenyan coffees typically garner top dollar.

Despite the fact that in the world economy coffee is the second largest commodity next to oil, these simple farmers seemed surprised by the level of interest. Uganda, historically, was a British colony; most Ugandans drink tea.

They sell most of their crop locally, or to large multi-national corporations who pay bottom dollar then market the beans as “farmer co-op.” Rawlins says, “The term is deceitful; consumers don’t know the difference.”

Those corporations further control the farmers because they own the only bean-washing station. According to Hornbeck, “They’re just farmers, with no access to direct buyers and no ability to market.”

Rawlins and Hornbeck explored several scenarios to improve the farmers’ bottom line, but came up dry until two years ago, when they got some help from an unexpected source. Hornbeck’s sister, a member of the board at Michigan State University, connected Hornbeck with Dan Clay, the head of the school’s Institute of Agriculture.

Clay, along with a native Rwandan grad student, had created the PEARL project (The Partnership for Enhancing Agriculture in Rwanda through Linkages) which played a key role in the redevelopment of Rwanda from its devastation by genocide. Hornbeck says that under Clay’s program, “one washing station grew to like a hundred and forty, and coffee became the chief export of Rwanda and the most important economic factor in their recovery.”

When Michigan State performed a diagnostic on coffee grown in the region around Kapchorwa, its high characteristics were confirmed: Arabica, mountain grown, volcanic soil, shade grown. And Hornbeck and Rawlins’ hopes were confirmed that, using Michigan State’s model, they could have a similar success in Uganda.

I’ll post Part 2 Tomorrow.

Don’t Cry Over Spalted Wood

On a recent trip to the sawdust-laden shop where Ben and Craig turn hunks of wood into fine furniture and cabinet boxes, I peer around. I survey several work benches where carcases in various stages lay like patients on gurneys. I ask the guys, as I always do, “Whatcha workin on?”
They tell me who they’re making a bookcase for and how they plan to detail a coffee table. We discuss a hutch project we’re collaborating on.
“Hey, I want to show you something,” says Craig suddenly. He fishes a 1x4 out of a pile. “What do you think? I got a bunch of this stuff from a guy in Southern Oregon.”
I can’t identify it, but I like the fine-grained sample with auburn streaks laced with fine brown and black veins. “Rustic Maple?” I ask.
Turns out, Craig has a pile of Spalted Tanoak. And I’m told it’s most closely related to Beech.
Here’s a piece with some clear lacquer on it:

I discovered that the term spalted comes from an old loggers’ term for “spoilt.” Fallen, decomposing trees are lifted from their final resting places in forest beds or fished out of marshes for eager woodworkers.
Spalted is the term for the coloration that happens when fungi set up housekeeping in dying wood. The large discolored areas are one type of spalting: pigmentation or sapstain. Those lacey black and brown lines are called zone lines and they’re not actually a fungus, but an interaction zone in which different fungi have erected barriers to protect their resources.
Considered a link between the Chestnut and the Oak, Tanoak (lithocarpus densiflorus) is an evergreen hardwood. It has flowers like the chestnut and acorns like the oak, and grows best on the humid moist slopes of the seaward coastal ranges.
                                 
Back in the 1800's, when the fur trade was a booming business in Oregon, roads were built through the forests in order to log Tanoak. The tanin they produce was and is still used for treating furs and hides. Douglas fir trees were cut as a secondary use species while they were logging the Tanoak. Today that’s reversed, and tanoak is logged only because the Doug Fir trees are being cut. 
My woodworking friends and I may use Spalted Tanoak for the Craftsman-styled hutch we’re collaborating on. Spalted wood also inspired these gorgeous projects:


I think its simple, rustic beauty makes it a fit for Central Oregon. Can you picture other uses?

On Blues, Bundt Cake and Benevolence

In a barn, on a meadow, in the middle of a pine forest, Sisters locals gathered on a mild April night to help out a friend.

Some folks know Gary Oldham from church; others ride with him on the Sisters Cycling Team. Still others were helped into a home mortgage over the many years that Gary has provided that service to the community. Grateful teens, better off for being fed and mentored at the Oldham home, sat front and center.

All were devastated that their gregarious friend suffered a broken neck while snowboarding at Hoodoo Ski Resort on April 1st. 

    

They came to The Barn at Pine Meadow Ranch on Friday night to offer encouragement and financial support to the Oldham family. The rustic venue hummed with the down-to-earth acoustic strains of several astonishingly talented Sisters High School Americana students . Inside the converted farm building with its rough, wide-planked walls and uneven floor, the organic rhythms of guitar strums and sweet vocal harmonies seemed just right.

On a futon draped with a Pendleton blanket, I sat with my husband on our date night. Wicker chairs and wooden benches placed at casual angles accommodated others. Candles flickered; old and new friends mingled. Barbecued burgers, brownies and Kahlua-infused bundt cake were laid out. Oldham, in a full upper-body brace and using a walker, took the stage briefly to thank the community and “to reflect on how awesome this place is that we live.”

Outside, under a thin silver smile of a moon, a ranch dog barked and a baritone chorus of frogs crooned across the meadow.

    

When popular local singer-songwriter Anastacia covered Gillian Welch’s wistful Elvis Presley Blues, this blogger was mesmerized. She paid a moving tribute to the memory of local developer Gary Sokol with a soaring ballad, written for him and unveiled for the first time in the venue that was his brainchild. Sokol died in a tragic accident nearly two years ago. Applause rose when event organizer Melody Youngblood, a senior at Sisters High School, announced that about $1500 had been gathered in offering for the Oldhams.

Miraculously, Gary is alive and he is not paralyzed. Translating that miracle into a full recovery will take arduous months of rehabilitation and possibly more surgery. It’s heartening that this small community still rallies to aid one another in tough times. As Anastacia sang in Elvis Presley Blues, “It blessed my soul … yes it blessed my soul.”

I witnessed hope ascending last Friday night—up and beyond a canopy of unrefined beams, from inside that old dairy barn, on a meadow, in the middle of a pine forest in Sisters, Oregon.

Tax-deductible donations to help with Gary Oldham’s medical expenses may be made via Rotary Club of Sisters. Phone (541) 977-6545.

Full Story: Nugget News, April 21 2009.
Photo Courtesy: Upper L: Author  Upper R: http://ow.ly/1A3dA  Bottom L & R: Kyle Rood Photography

Ode to Color Joy

It snowed here on Easter. Egg hunts were moved indoors at the last minute. Yesterday was a sunny 60 degree mood-lifter. Today the ground and sky are a matching shade of white. Another perfect April day in Central Oregon—for scanning old family photos and writing blog posts!

A hop, skip and a jump over the Cascades, the Woodburn Tulip Festival is blazing. If you’re craving a color fix as I am, put on your mud shoes and load the kids in the car. Until April 30, the festival offers wine tastings and wooden shoe makers, art classes and antique steam tractors. Kids will happily slosh through the mud for cow train rides, ducky races, hay pile, pony rides, horse swings and exotic rescue birds.

If you find yourself on I-5 between Portland and Salem, this is a quick and happy diversion just a few miles to the east. Check the Wooden Shoe Tulip Farm website for a list of upcoming activities and live entertainment.

 

Giada and The Case of The Contraband Oranges

I confess that sometimes while cooking I imagine myself a winsome celebrity chef like Giada De Laurentiis. Skillfully I prepare Capellini Piedmontese while impressed onlookers take notes and smile appreciatively. My charismatic alter-ego vanishes, however, as I rummage ungracefully through drawers for the right whisk, peeler or pastry brush to put to task. So it seems that until I invest in a few stylish kitchen gadgets or some new Rachel Ray Cookware, the celebrity chef gig is kind of on hold.

Last month I was preparing Savory & Sweet Spiced Walnuts to give as Christmas gifts. The recipe called for orange zest and my blessed husband made a special trip to the store for the two navel oranges I required. I don’t own one of those slick zesting tools, but I managed well enough with my all-purpose grater. When I was through assaulting them, the oranges looked, well, sort of forlorn (I will hereafter refer to them as for-lor-anges) but I slipped them each into a plastic baggy for later snacking.

While packing a cooler the next day for a family trip to California, I grabbed those disfigured forloranges thinking one of us might enjoy them on the road. Just past the Oregon-California border on Highway 97 is a sometimes-mandatory Agricultural Checkpoint that is notorious to my children. It was here that a full, two-pound, clamshell box of juicy Costco cherries was surrendered last summer. The kids have not yet extended grace to the officers who took those cherries and in fact, they are convinced that the officers confiscate fruit randomly, according to their own personal cravings.


So this time, as our car approached the official in the khaki uniform, three voices from the backseat pleaded “No! Don’t tell them we have fruit! They’ll take it!” My husband politely greeted the female officer who, of course, asked if we were carrying any fruit with us. Hubby turned to me for the answer. “Bananas, apples and, um, oranges,” said I, seizing the opportunity to model honesty isn’t always convenient for the children.

“May I see the oranges?” asked the officer. From the cooler I hesitantly produced one of those pitiful forloranges in its plastic sandwich bag. She looked as surprised as if I’d handed her a dirty diaper but she inspected it dutifully.

Awkward silence. I said, “I zested it.”

“Hmm. Well, there’s still a little bit of skin on it,” she said as she pointed to the orange splotches left by my not-nearly-as-professional-as-Giada zesting technique. “We’re concerned about oranges; but without the skin, well, I don’t know...” For what seemed like a long minute she appeared dumbfounded but never dropped her professional demeanor. “Does the other one look like this?” she finally asked.

Upon learning that it did, the befuddled produce officer, with the apparently unprecedented case before her, decided we could keep them but with the following mandate: “Be sure to eat them soon”. As if that settled the matter. I persuaded my son to eat one right away, but the other forlorange flew under the radar all the way to Central California and I still feel some guilt about that.

I’m not sure there's a moral to this story, but I know this: I'd like a new zester. And if you too could use some newer kitchen gadgetry, be sure to stop back on Thursday when I will announce a FABULOUS GIVE-AWAY! You won’t want to miss it! Oh, one more thing: always eat your cherries before you get to the Ag stop! They take their work very seriously there.

Your Great Great Grandma’s Kitchen

For the past week I’ve been ingesting a novel so sweetly dripping with hearty and sincere prose that I have to share it with someone. I’m going to let you into my happy little world where I’ve been reverently eavesdropping on the fictional letters of a dying, 76-year-old Mid-western preacher to his young son.
Here is an excerpt from the Pulitzer-awarded Gilead (2004):

We came to this house when I was still a small boy. We had no electricity for years, just kerosene lamps. No radio. I was remembering how my mother used to love her kitchen. Of course it was very different then, with an icebox and a pump sink and a pie safe and a woodstove. That old table is about all that is the same, and the pantry. She had her rocker so close to the stove that she could open the oven door without getting up. She said it was to keep things from burning. She said we couldn’t afford the waste, which was true. She burned things often enough anyway, more often as the years passed, and we ate them anyway, so at least there wasn’t any waste. She loved the warmth of that stove, but it put her to sleep, especially if she’d been doing the wash or putting up preserves. Well, bless her heart, she had lumbago, and she had rheumatism, too, and she did take a a little whiskey for it. She never slept well during the nights. I suppose I got that from her. She’d wake up if the cat sneezed, she said, but then she’d sleep through the immolation of an entire Sunday dinner two feet away from her. That would be on a Saturday, because our family was pretty strict on Sabbath-keeping. So we’d know for an entire day beforehand what we had to look forward to, burned peas and scorched applesauce I remember particularly.

The Tramp At Christmas by Grandma Moses

If I were a time-traveling publisher, I would go back fifty years or so and implore Grandma Moses (1860-1961)to create illustrations for this work. A good deal of my childhood, and beyond, was spent hypothetically living inside her portraits of turn-of-the-century Americana. In my fanciful yet simple imaginary life, there were maple trees to sugar, cows to milk, barn dances to attend. In the wintertime I tucked my hands inside a fur muff, sledded, and rode in horse-drawn carriages with the other children. It was a far cry from my real world, growing up in coastal California where we didn’t know seasons and had to travel hundreds of miles just to have a snowball fight.

January by Grandma Moses

One of my first pieces of business when I arrive in the next world is to thank my favorite aunt for giving me an oversized Grandma Moses Storybook when I was about eight. It had stories and poems such as Robert Frost’s The Road Not Taken, paired with Moses’ unrefined landscapes and rudimentary figures of farmers and townspeople.

Moses didn't begin painting until she was 76, after her husband died, and she created many pieces well into her nineties. Before she died at 101 she said "If I didn't start painting, I would have raised chickens. I could still do it now. I would never sit back in a rocking chair, waiting for someone to help me."

Gilead is a story of fathers and sons and the strength of family bonds which transcend passionate disagreements over war and religion. It’s about the power and limitations of relationships and the wonder and incomprehensibility of beauty. It is practical and joyful, like a Grandma Moses painting.

All Is Still by Grandma Moses

This morning I have been trying to think about heaven, but without much success. I don’t know why I should expect to have any idea of heaven. I could never have imagined this world if I hadn’t spent almost eight decades walking around in it.  -Gilead

A Country Wedding by Grandma Moses

She began to come to the house when some of the other women did, to take the curtains away to wash, to defrost the icebox. And then she started coming by herself to tend the gardens. She made them very fine and prosperous. And one evening when I saw her there, out by the wonderful roses, I said, 'How can I repay you for all this?' And she said, 'You ought to marry me.' And I did. -Gilead

 

 
Hoosick Falls In Winter by Grandma Moses

To play catch of an evening, to smell the river, to hear the train pass… -Gilead

It's a Smaller World After All

I have two reflections on this last day of the year.

First, as I look back on 2009 I'm struck that it's a smaller world after all.

It's a smaller world when I can include folks from every reach of the globe in my daily, real-time Twitter-sphere. It's a smaller world when elementary school chums and co-workers from decades ago re-emerge and re-enter my life via Facebook.

It's a smaller world when we share the same entertainment (think Susan Boyle on YouTube) and family highlight reels (such as the dance-down-the-aisle wedding procession that sent smiles virally and even influenced an episode of The Office) with strangers and folks from faraway lands.

Second, as we close a decade, I'm asking myself how I would have approached it had I known at the outset what it would hold. I might have been immobilized with fear. Time Magazine dubbed it the "Worst Decade Ever". What if I knew about September 11th, Hurricane Katrina or the economic crash? What if I knew my young cousin would lose his leg in Iraq or that I would lose my job and lose my mom?

Retrospection makes me feel strangely comforted. I certainly don't feel like this was the worst decade of my life. In fact, I wouldn't have missed it for anything and what I remember most are its victories: my co-patriots mobilizing to help each other in times of great need. And its lessons: I've learned to serve my community, invest in deeper friendships, take personal risks, love my family better and savor small blessings.

This perspective makes me trust and lean into God's divine strategy to give me just enough light to see my way clear for this day and just enough grace for each moment. It really doesn't matter what the next decade has in store. I have everything I need for today.

In 2006 Sisters Community Church hosted a "Firefighter Appreciation Night"

to thank those who battled the Black Crater Fire, which burned thousands of acres and forced hundreds of residents to evacuate.

Our heroes, just off the front lines and covered in ash, were presented with hundreds of pies and new socks. Some cried.

A Christmas Cause: Shopping for Hope

I don't know about you, but we have had far more "sorry kids, we'll have to keep it simple this year" Christmases than not.

Every year we've improved at finding a select gift or two that costs very little, yet demonstrates that we've been paying attention to our children's evolving interests. So I am immensely gratified that our kids are growing into appreciative, charitable adults who see the bigger picture and understand the true message of Christmas.

The message of Christmas is hope. God humbly came to earth to save mankind, who could not save themselves, because He is the essence of love and we are the objects of His perfect love.

Hope is what Yobel Market is all about. They are a fair trade, global marketplace whose mission is to inspire awareness and promote justice. Last year I discovered Yobel Market and immediately thought of my college-aged daughter. I chose a pair of earrings crafted by Suubi women who live in refugee camps in southern Uganda, and a raw silk scarf made in Cambodia by recovering victims of human trafficking. Our daughter opened her gifts and cried as she read the backstory about the women who crafted them. She said it was the "best gift ever" and I knew she meant it.

Yobel Market will be here at Sisters Coffee Company on Sunday, December 20th for an event you won't want to miss. Come see for yourself these special (and extremely affordable) items that help bring hope to the hopeless.

Live music will be provided by Shane Simonsen. A short documentary film by Zion Pictures will introduce you to Canaan Farm, a transitional farm providing healing and hope to the child soldiers and families who have suffered from the LRA conflict in northern Uganda.

Come for a memorable evening celebrating hope. If you haven't "caught the Christmas spirit" yet, this should do the trick.

A CHRISTMAS CAUSE

An evening of film, music and fair trade gifts that inspire awareness and promote justice

Date: Sunday, December 20, 2009

Time: 7:00pm - 8:30pm 
Location: Sisters Coffee Company
Map and Directions

Dad’s Dream: A Tale of Two Houses

Thanks so much to St. Petersburg, Florida Kitchen Designer, Paul Anater, for inviting me to guest post for his blog Kitchen and Residential Design during his absence. The piece I’ve written is far more sentimental and estrogen-infused than his normal fare, so I’ve been second guessing the whole idea. I suppose I could have written about my specialty, Kitchen Design. But since my dad passed away thirty years ago this month I have been spending a lot of time revisiting some old memories, especially those surrounding our living spaces. So here I go, with a little Christmas tribute to my dad:



My dad, the electronics professor with the teasing wit and clip-on bow tie, had a manuscript for a college textbook to complete and three noisy rug rats underfoot.  “We’ll go to the country for the summer,” he must have said to Mom. So they rented a seven-bedroom, turn of the century, Dutch Colonial farmhouse in a small town nestled on the upland slope of the Santa Cruz Mountains. It was 1969.

 
The house itself was decrepit, with advanced plumbing issues. I can remember turning a squeaky faucet handle and observing the slow oozing of rusty goo into a wall-mount lavatory. It was minimally furnished, most notably for me with a record player and stack of albums which included The Ventures, Herb Alpert & the Tijuana Brass and The Beach Boys. There were clawfoot tubs, cold linoleum floors and secret passageways. It was absolutely wonderful; and it was here that we all huddled around our black-and-white console TV to watch a grainy image of Neil Armstrong’s walk on the moon.


While we kids were enamored with the house and the space to run, Dad was enamored with the close proximity of his beloved redwoods. These are graceful, velvet-barked, tilt-your-head-back-and-try-to-find-the-top kinds of trees. On many Sundays after church we would be treated to dipped cones at Foster Freeze, then a drive through the dense, moist, redwood forests of California’s Coastal Range.

Summer rolled into fall and it became clear that we weren’t ever going back to Monterey. Dad bought several acres of future paradise on a steep hillside with a lush valley view and never finished the manuscript.

For the next five years he was a man with a plan and a long commute to teach year-round plus some night classes. Our occasional vacations meant piling into the Ambassador station wagon (without seatbelts) to visit family, with stops to tour model homes: A-Framed, chalet-style mountain retreats. Dad’s enthusiasm was contagious, and we had all caught it.

So when the framing eventually went up, we were totally engaged with the process. I think this is why even today I adore the sweet scent of sawdust on a jobsite or in a cabinet shop. Miraculously my sister and I, as teenagers, were able to agree on one thing: our new bedroom would have lavender walls and chartreuse shag carpet. Deep shag. Life held such promise; we each had ample closet space for our bell bottoms and wrap-around skirts and plenty of wall space for our fuzzy black-light posters. Dad fashioned swinging saloon-style doors to separate the toilet space from our long, double vanity.

Dad's Dream House

All of the cabinetry was birch plywood with a simple, flat door, routed on the back side to lip over the face frame. Outfitted with the latest Harvest Gold appliances, the galley kitchen stretched no more than ten feet long. Mom chose sunflower gold tile for the countertops and a happy blue and yellow vinyl flooring. There was no microwave of course. We didn’t know we needed microwaves in the 70’s.

Brew-ha-ha
There was, however, a small appliance that truly christened the kitchen of our A-framed chalet in the redwoods. On our first Christmas in the new house, Auntie Midgie and Uncle Owen presented my parents with the latest innovation: a Joe DiMaggio-endorsed, Mr. Coffee automatic drip coffeemaker that eventually gurgled and brewed to everyone’s delight. But Dad “wrote the book” on electronics, so he didn’t need directions. When his first coffee-brewing efforts were met without success, Dad proclaimed in his most professorial voice that there was obviously “too much turbulence in the scupper hole." This would become a family mantra of sorts for all future technical difficulties.

Uncle Owen admires the Mr. Coffee.  (Mom & Dad are on the right)

And so just as Dad had dreamed, this A-Framed abode with its pointed nose of window glass, extensive redwood decking and mountain charm, sat in harmony with its environs. And a gregarious, hard-working man realized a dream.

Less than two years later, before the new-house smell had even gone, Dad learned that he had lung cancer. Our family went into survival mode and tried to reconcile that what once felt like a shiny new beginning was now the beginning of the end. My courageous dad tried to go back to work for awhile with just one lung. He loved a few things even more than the redwoods...teaching for one, family for another.

Just before Dad passed, he briefly came out of a semi-comatose state and with a sense of urgency asked us to sing a hymn, In The Garden. My mom, Auntie Midgie and I sang it very poorly, but Dad's eyes and ears seemed to be witnessing something infinitely more angelic. Here is the last verse:

I'd stay in the garden with Him,
Though the night around me be falling,
But He bids me go, through the voice of woe,
His voice to me is calling.
And He walks with me, and He talks with me,
And He tells me I am His own,
And the joy we share as we tarry there,
None other has ever known.

He left us, there in his redwood paradise. He had pursued the things he loved. As I squeamishly approach the age my dad was when he bought that piece of property(!), I appreciate ever more deeply the lifestyle he modeled. He is still teaching. He’s teaching us to journey to discover our own unique dreams, the ones that are so divinely designed that they inspire a hope that propels us to act, and a joy that’s contagious.

Eleanor Roosevelt said, “Today is a gift; that’s why they call it the present.”

Merry Christmas.

A Kitchen Make-Over, Hollywood Style

Christmas Day brings the release of what promises to be another feast-for-your-eyes romantic comedy from writer/director Nancy Meyers, who also brought us Something's Gotta Give and The Holiday. Meryl Streep stars as a bakery owner who is undergoing a kitchen remodel while caught in a love triangle with her ex-husband (Alec Baldwin, who we all love to hate) and her architect (Steve Martin).

I'll have to seriously multi-task to watch Meryl while also taking in every inch of the set design. Traditional Home has a slideshow of the set that reveals styling much like Streep herself: gracefully casual, warm but sophisticated. Her character's bakery provides a canvas for the same food stylist that provided culinary gewgaw for Julie & Julia.

The kitchen looks open and uniquely eclectic. I can't wait to have a better view and discover where the rest of the storage is! The exposed hinges and inset grids (metal? cane?)in the cabinet door panels are interesting choices.
If I could have one Christmas wish, It's Complicated will be rated PG-13 rather than R; but alas, I can always focus on the scenery.

View Traditional Home's slideshow here
View the movie trailer here

A Fine How-d'ya-do!

Let this serve as proof that the Pacific Northwest is not to be overlooked in the American fall color event (but who's competing?!)

And I'm feeling thankful for the warm and welcoming front porches I've spotted around town. I'm not a big fan of scary Halloween decor (because I get scared!). These appear to say, "Come on in. The pumpkin pie will be out of the oven soon."

de-Sign Of The Times: Cabinets Expand at the Waistline

It's not your imagination and you are not alone.

Across the world homemakers are failing to neatly close their cabinet doors on their newly purchased dinnerware and scratching their heads about it. Cabinetmakers here and abroad are reprogramming their CNC machines to create cabinet boxes that accomodate today's "generously sized" dinnerware.

"Tabletop" trends influence cabinet design in other ways. Displaying family china and heirlooms, while still practiced, is not the end-all it was in the past, and entertaining guests is a more casual affair. According to Drew Chernoy, owner of Clementine’s Kitchen in Del Rey, CA, buyers 20 to 30 years ago were ‘collectors’ or ‘nesters,’ and had in mind different uses for each of their sets of dishes, platters, glassware and flatware. They had the ‘holiday dishes,’ the ‘summer garden party,’ etc. Some of these were more ‘formal.’ This related to their life growing up or their vision of the eating experience in their life to come. Having the ‘good dishes’ on their wedding registry further reinforced this. The underlying change is that having lots of sets of dishes and entertaining pieces, glasses, etc., just is not that important anymore to the more recent generations”(The Gourmet Retailer).

The tableware cabinet buyers are looking to store today is casual, durable and best of all, stackable. And it is growing in size. A typical dinner plate once measured 9 inches across but a trip to Crate and Barrel finds popular styles ranging from 10.5 inches up to the 11.5 inch Classic Century style (right). The product description states "Originally designed in 1952 by world-renowned designer Eva Zeisel...Dinner plate has been enlarged for today's lifestyle".

Pottery Barn offers their popular Sausalito style with dinner plates spanning 12 inches! When does a plate become a "platter"?!

This explains why dishes are boldly peeking out from upper cabinets and homeowners are having to find more creative ways to accomodate their everyday dinnerware. Custom Cabinetmaker Craig Mannhalter of Metolius Woodworks in Sisters, Oregon has retooled and increased the standard depth of uppers over the past 20 years. Fieldstone Cabinetry representative, Jeff Ptacek CKD, agrees that while the standard depth is still 12 inches, they are seeing increased requests for 13-15 inch custom depths.

Need to retrofit an existing kitchen?

• Consider replacing some upper cabinetry with decorative open shelving.
• Store dishes in drawers. Deep drawers at a comfortable reach work best.
• Replace shelves in standard base cabinets with roll-outs (available at Lowes).

Planning a new kitchen?

• Make a pre-decision about where you will store your everyday dishes. With your dish measurements in hand, have a clear discussion with your cabinet supplier about the interior clearances for uppers.
• Consider incorporating decorative open shelving in your design for flexible storage.

On the other hand, mega-sized dishware can mean 50% more plate to pile food on, which translates into more waste and more waist. What if we instead stock up on today's "generously sized" salad plates (8 to 10 inches) for use as dinner plates? I'm wondering, since we are the consumers influencing the retail trends, if perhaps we could "stir things up". Ha!
Maybe instead of "letting out" our cabinets we should put our dishes on a diet. Better still, maybe if our dishes were on a diet, we wouldn't be.

Then no one would have to come unhinged (so to speak!).