MARTHA'S VINEYARD CAMP MEETING ASSOCIATION

It’s easy to catch a ferry to Martha’s Vineyard from Woods Hole. Oak Bluffs has the most flexible ferry schedule. The first time I visited, I rode the ferry to Oak Bluffs, rented a bicycle and immediately cycled over to Edgartown. I didn’t really pay attention to Oak Bluffs, not even when I came back to return the bike and get back on the ferry. This time though, I learned something about Oak Bluffs that I can’t stop dreaming about.

In 1835, some men from the Methodist church in Edgartown purchased a half acre of land for holding religious camp meetings. They built a shed with a pulpit in the front and this was their area of worship. The worshippers attending would set up tents around the pulpit. The first meeting was a success and the tent city started growing. Sometime between 1855 and 1865, there were more family tents and people started to extend their time on the island. Sort of mixing their religious meeting with summer vacations. Eventually a local carpenter was employed to build cottages. At one time there were 500 small family cottages, now there’s about 300, some of them have even been insulated for Massachusetts winters.

Sarah and I walked by almost every single cottage. It’s not hard to do. They’re packed close together and they’re tiny. Yet each one is unique in color, trim and porch displays. I realize now that I never took any pictures of a whole cottage. I focused on the porch displays and the gardens and the neighborhood cat. We stopped in at the gift shop, where we asked all kinds of questions. I wanted to know how many of the cottages still belonged to original families. Only six out of the three hundred are still within original families. There are strict rules to owning a cottage. They don’t allow them to be rented out for more than six weeks a year. You will need three letters of recommendation, one of those from your religious leader, to purchase a cottage. These rules are in place to protect the community feeling of the place.

This was it. This is the kind of place I’m always talking about where all of our friends build our own retirement community, except the houses are already built. The ocean beaches are an easy stroll away, as well as the grocery store and ice cream shops. We could take the largest cottage and have it fitted for a doctor’s clinic for the minor issues of aging and there’s a hospital in Oak Bluffs for bigger issues. We could have amazing trick-or-treat nights for the local children and caroling in December. Our Thanksgiving Table could be set up in the open air tabernacle that sits in the center of the community. Our parties would be epic!

Our community would be joyful.

Community and not taking pictures seems to be a recurring theme around here. But our stroll through this little village inspired more than retirement dreams and the pictures I did take. I thought up a whole story about two girls from different families spending their summers together, riding their bikes out to remote beaches and flirting with lifeguards. They change into different people during their time off the island, but return to being the same old same old every summer. They grow up. They have struggles, but they always come back to the village. It’s their sanctuary, their healing place. There are stories to be told here. Stories of love and loss. Stories of destruction and growth. Stories of finding something worth hanging on to forever. I want to rent one of those cabins for as long as I am allowed and use my time to research and write.

I want to go to camp.

GO TEAM

Sometime this summer, a memory popped up in Facebook. It was a picture of me excitedly holding my ticket for BlogHer, an annual conference for women who blog. It turned out that this is the ten year anniversary of that first conference I attended, as well as my first visit to New York City. I was buzzing with excitement to see Talaura and have her show me around this city that I had only ever experienced through a Hollywood lens. I was ecstatic to be going to a conference that would put me in the same room as so many amazing women. My favorite bloggers were all going to be there and I was going to meet them! I was going to be in the same room with these women who inspired me to be creative with their own words, who taught me the power of telling stories through pictures.

One of those women is Karen Walrond of Chookooloonk. Karen’s blog has always been a place for inspiration. She was my first teacher of photography and to this day I still use “look for the light” as my mantra while imaging. Her words combined with her images tell stories of kindness, joy, truth, and beauty. Reading this blog has made me want to be a better version of myself and I am so glad that she still keeps up with it, while so many of us have fallen off the blogging wheel. When Karen put out a call for people to help promote her new book, The Lightmaker’s Manifesto: How to Work for Change Without Losing Your Joy, I raised my hand high up in the air and whispered “pick me! pick me!”. Then I got an email saying that I was now part of The Lightmaker Launch Team and a link to the Facebook group page. Karen wanted everyone on the team to take a moment to post a brief “about you” along with a photo and I jerked my hand out of the air and shrunk in my seat whispering “I don’t really know the answer, don’t pick me.”

One question Karen asked of all of us Lightmakers was “how would we change the world?” and my brain turned into a desert of nothingness. I mean, I think I had causes that I used to be passionate about. I really feel like I used to do stuff. There are past blog entries in this space about the AIDS Walk and buying school supplies for underprivileged children. I have written here about science and making fully informed decisions as opposed to relying on some ridiculous meme as a news source. All of that feels like a lifetime ago. I have lost my zest for activism or for at least talking about it. I still send a weekly email to Gov. Parson’s and Eric Schmitt demanding they free Kevin Strickland and Lamar Johnson. I have an automatic monthly donation set up for Planned Parenthood. I quietly give money when a disaster hits and while I was still doing my Zoom classes, all proceeds went to a charity of some sorts. But really, I feel useless, deflated and tired every time I read the news and see what a dumpster fire just this country alone has become, let alone the rest of the world. The desire to help and fix it all is overwhelming and paralyzing.

I’ve lost my joy.

So, I think that maybe Karen’s new book is coming to me exactly at the moment when I need it the most. I look forward to reading this book and gaining some of my joy back. If you’re interested in reading Karen’s book, there are a number of ways to pre-order it here: http://www.chookooloonks.com/books . I haven’t even read it yet, but I’m sure it’s going to be one of those books that I keep within reach for those moments when I feel like throwing in the towel.

EAT

Dinner

8 Likes, 1 Comments - Cindy Maddera (@elephant_soap) on Instagram: "Dinner"

I finally got around to reading Anthony Bourdain’s Kitchen Confidential a couple of months ago. The book has been on my reading list forever and I am almost positive Chris had a copy of it laying around his office at some point. I just never got around to it, but I was finally between books and not to sure what I wanted to read next. I cashed in some Amazon rewards and bought a copy of it for my Kindle app. This was the book I read on the airplane to Portland and I have to admit that at times, it was not an easy read.

I could not read the book without hearing Anthony Bourdain’s voice. It was as clear as if he was reading his words out loud. His voice is so familiar because Chris and I would sit down to watch No Reservations with rapt attention and with the kind of reverence used for listening to the gospel. Anthony Bourdain traveled the globe in a way that Chris and I dreamed of doing ourselves. The destination was not so much about seeing the sights as it was about immersing yourself into the local culture. This baptism came in the form of food in an all senses dunking. You felt the texture of the food as you pinched a bite together between your thumb and forefinger. Your eyes were blinded by the colors of spices filling bowls in a market. You could almost smell the pungent smells of the fish markets. Whenever Chris and I traveled, our adventures centered around food. The question was not “what did we do?” but “what did we eat?” We sought out the obscure. We followed the locals and we avoided the chain commercial places like the plague. Now, I’ve converted Michael to this food travel cult. I think this is why on this last trip to Portland, I found myself falling in love with the city all over again. Michael is notorious for having unsatisfying restaurant experiences. There is always something, from the service, to the atmosphere, to the quality of the food, but in Portland, Michael didn’t have one complaint. On our last breakfast in Portland before heading out to the coast, we ate at Pine State Biscuits. On taking his first bite, Michael pretended to pick up his plate and smash it on the floor in anger. The food was that good.

No Reservations was more than just a travel show though. It was a gritty, real and beautiful example of how we are all connected to each other through food. Food is the thing that binds us together. It is the reason we all gather in kitchens during social events. Every single one of us can recall a dish that when you smell it, you smell your childhood memories. Every family has their own taco salad (Michael says it is not taco salad and every member of the Graham family tell him that he is wrong). Food brings joy and comfort and this was an emphasis in Kitchen Confidential. Reading Anthony Bourdain’s words describing simple and fresh ingredients made me want to cook. I don’t mean that it made me want to quit my job and become a chef. I mean that it inspired me to want to cook something more elaborate than the easy meals we put together during the week. Saturday evenings have become our night for experimenting in the kitchen. I browse through issues of Bon Apetit and the New York Times food section for ideas, but a lot of times we let what ever happens to be cheap and interesting behind the fish counter inspire that evening’s meal. The meal itself doesn’t even have to be complicated. The goal is to use fresh and unique ingredients and to try something new. It can just as easily be a good stinky chunk of blue cheese crumbled in the salad paired with simple baked fish seasoned with salt, pepper and fresh lemons.

The joy of the experience is all inclusive. It begins with Michael and I browsing through the grocery store and hashing out ideas. We debate about pairing monkfish with roasted potatoes or clams with a linguini in a butter/ white wine sauce. We either take turns cooking or work together in the kitchen, dancing around each other as one chops and the other one sautes. We make huge messes in the kitchen and I love it. The meals are not all hits. It was decided that whole baked red snapper wasn’t good enough to deal with picking out all the bones (I’m pretty sure I swallowed a fish bone). Yet we are still more satisfied with our meals than if we’d gone out.

And no reservations are required.

LOVE THURSDAY

I got to looking back through my archives and realized that the last Love Thursday entry I did was December 11, 2014. Almost exactly a month ago. I thought it had been a while since I had typed out "LOVE THURSDAY" in a title bar and glancing through those December entries I can see that I was in no mood or state of mine to pull some cheery lovey dovey post out of my brain (ass). Between December 11th and now there have been a lot of sad posts and some really boring posts. I've lost four pounds. I've been on my mat and off my mat and back on my mat. It has been sixty degrees outside. It has been ten degrees outside. Currently it is eight degrees and everything is covered in a dusting of snow that fell days ago, but it's been too cold for any of it to melt. I traveled the whole state of Oklahoma on a solo Christmas tour. I've cleaned out my closet and a whole filing drawer. I've looked at puppies (one of which will be coming home with us at the end of this month). I have walked 128,576 steps. I have also watched all of American Horror Story's Coven and Season seven of Sons of Anarchy.  

To be honest, I'm not so sure I am yet in the right mindset to write a Love Thursday. I was thinking this as I sat down to write, even though I've also spent a lot of time in the last few weeks inside my own head. This is the first full week of the New Year. The first full week of getting back into routines with normal bedtimes, usual work hours and scheduled gym time. It had crossed my mind to drop Love Thursdays from the usual routine, but I have come to realize that these entries are part of that routine. It's like sitting down with a cup a coffee on a Sunday to watch CBS Sunday morning. There are so many times I sit down to write an entry for Thursday and I have nothing, but something always comes to me while I'm typing things out. 

It all comes down to intention. Why do I write these entries? Why do I write? Do I just write this entry now out of habit? I've decided that the answer to that last one is "no". Each Love Thursday entry is planting the seed for good things to grow. When I feel I have nothing for these posts, I am forced to find something. I am forced to dig deep and see the good things that are not only in my life, but surround my life. And it inspires me to find more. So here is to a New Year of good, a New Year of love, and a New Year of Love Thursdays. 

Happy Day!