Nah. Not the movie star, the great boots and fabulous hat.

I’m talking about the collection of Flow Blue plates you can see through the window.

Just kidding. But I bet if you’re the kind of antique dishware lover that I am, the plates jumped out at you.

However, I really am talking about the chic Western look. Gotta love it.

Note to self: Next time I’m in Santa Fe, I’m buying some turquoise boots at Back at the Ranch. Very, very cool, especially with that little snakeskin touch at the toes.

I suppose you could wander around NYC looking like this and no one would bat an eye, but then you could probably do anything in NYC and expect the same reaction. The San Francisco Bay Area not so much. A little too Texan, if you know what I mean. Here, though, it’s the perfect party outfit.

Anyway, I love the red-hot cowgirlness of this get up. It just shouts “Life is a Blast!”

Ms. Huston’s ranch is a little over an hour’s drive down the mountain, through a valley and back up a pass from my place. As the crow flies not so far.

Architectural Digest did a spread on her digs the exact month I moved up here. In the evenings, I’d find myself turning the magazine’s glossy pages, staring longingly at her fixed up buildings and landscaping, wondering if I’d ever get all this done.

Guess I did.

If you’ve been following my progress all along, you know how much work it’s been. I think I deserve the damn boots, don’t you?

Here are a bunch of photos of Huston’s ranch from the Architectural Digest shoot . . .

It feels like the “old California” up here— a mixture of cowboys and Indians and the old Mexican Californios. They say the Mexican ranches were so vast, and their inhabitants rather lonely, that the arrival of a visitor was the cause of week long celebrations called Fandangos. They say you could travel from rancho to rancho for months and be feted this way.

Think Gone With the Wind and the barbecue at Twelve Oaks only way more fantastic.

Anyway, it’s springtime here and time to take a drive though the back roads over to the Mineral King area, around where Angelica Huston lives.

I’ve got an idea for a story set around there. It came to me when I was sitting in that endless County Planning Commission meeting about that stupid Cemex strip mine. My large animal vet got up to speak and pleaded with the Commission to come up with a general plan for mines in the county. “The way you’re going about it now,” he said ” you’re dividing families and neighbors. You’re pitting them against each other.”

Bingo.

A place. A bunch of people. A plot.

As Tolstoy said, ” . . .unhappy families are unhappy each in their own way.”

So, I started to think about these families, who they might be and the ranches and orchards they live on. I thought of movie stars like Ms. Huston, about her father—the great film director John Huston whose family was from around here. I thought about how he made the stunning movie Chinatown about water resources, about corruption, about unhappy families, and about the west.

Look, it was a long, long meeting. I had a lot of time to ruminate.

Well, the families in my story are unhappy, and they are unhappy “each in their own way”, but it’s in a western way.

It’s all about the land and what you’d do to hold onto it even though its rugged and wild.

Then again maybe that’s just the point. You hold onto it for just that reason.

There are days like today when the cows broke down the fence around the house, and I had to herd them all off the lawn (think Dale Evans meets Keystone Cops) when I realize why writers live in studio apartments in Brooklyn. No ranch tasks. Plenty of takeout food.

But then you’re in Brooklyn, which I hear is the end-all and be-all of cool, just pas pour moi as I like to say while I’m rounding up livestock.

Okay, so no one can really see me living in the big city, right? Still, takeout every now and then would help.

Well, Dave’s mom came to the rescue and bought me an All Clad Deluxe Slow Cooker for Christmas. How have I lived before now?

I used to look at Slow Cooker recipes and think, ” If I have to go to all the trouble of browning everything—and you do, really, you do— in one pot, why don’t I just stick that pot in the oven and call it a braise?”

And then I got the All Clad Deluxe in which I can brown everything, stick the insert into the unit, and six to eight hours later I have dinner. Everything all cleaned up except a couple of plates. I get to enjoy a martini in front of the fire with Dave and not worry about making more than a salad.

The machine required the right cookbook, and after much searching, I found it—The Art of the Slow Cooker by Andrew Schloss.

Right now, I’ve got a wonderful smelling and tasting red lentil soup from that cookbook bubbling away. I know it tastes good because I cheated, lifted the lid and had a spoonful. I couldn’t resist—all that cinnamon, coriander and cumin wafting through the house.

Most Slow Cooker Recipes are pretty grim. You know— a can of mushroom soup, a package of dried onion soup, a slab of frozen meat.

Not this. There are some meat recipes, but there are some great soups, too, and techniques that could be adapted to vegetarian cooking.

Here’s one I made the other night that just soothed my cowgirl soul and gave me time to proof and post one more chapter.

A Wonderful Vegetable Tagine Recipe

From Art of the Slow Cooker (Chronicle Books, paperback with color photos, $24.95), by Andrew Schloss

Makes 8 servings.

Ingredients

2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
2 leeks (white and light green parts only), thoroughly washed and cut into 1/2-inch thick slices
1 small rutabaga (about 8 ounces), peeled and cut into 3/4-inch dice ( I couldn’t find so omitted)
2 carrots, peeled and cut into 1/4-inch thick slices
2 parsnips, peeled and cut into 1/4-inch thick slices (didn’t have, so they got omitted)
2 celery ribs, cut into 1/2-inch thick slices
2 tablespoons minced gingerroot
4 cloves garlic, minced
1 teaspoon ground turmeric
1 tablespoon fresh thyme leaves
1 teaspoon kosher salt
1/2 teaspoon coarsely ground black pepper
1 teaspoon ground coriander
1/2 teaspoon ground cumin, preferably ground from whole seeds toasted in a dry skillet
1 can (about 28 ounces) diced tomatoes, preferably fire roasted, with their juice
1 can (about 15 ounces) chickpeas, drained and rinsed
1 large butternut squash (about 2 pounds), stemmed, peeled, seeded ( I used two because I didn’t have rutabagas and such) cut into 2-inch chunks
1 stick cinnamon
1 tablespoon honey
1 tablespoon fresh lemon juice
1 teaspoon hot pepper sauce
2 tablespoons finely chopped fresh cilantro

Heat the oil in a large deep skillet over medium-high heat. Add the leeks, rutabaga, carrots, parsnips and celery and sauté until the carrots are barely tender, about 4 minutes.
Add the ginger, garlic, turmeric, thyme, salt, pepper, coriander and cumin and stir to disperse; cook for 1 minute.
Add the tomatoes and chickpeas and heat to boiling; set aside.
Put the butternut squash in a 5-to 6-quart slow cooker. Pour the contents of the skillet over the top, and submerge the cinnamon stick in the sauce.
Cover the cooker and cook for 4 to 5 hours on high, or 7 to 8 hours on low.
While the tagine cooks, mix the honey, lemon juice, and hot pepper sauce in a small bowl. When the tagine is done, remove the cinnamon stick, drizzle the honey mixture over the top, and toss gently to disperse.
Scatter the cilantro over the top and serve.

Two hundred opponents of Cemex’s proposed horrible blight crowded into the hearing, spilling out into multiple hallways. Seventy-five people signed up to speak against the Cementos de Mexico eyesore.

And speak we did.

Dr. Richard Young, a NASA physicist, proved in his presentation that Fresno has more than enough aggregate to meet its needs for the next thirty years. Dr. Pat Cassen, another NASA physicist, pretty much destroyed Cemex’s claims about mitigating air pollution. The League of Women Voters representative showed that, contrary to what Cemex says, the land can never be reclaimed as the slope is too steep. Others spoke about Cemex’s hundreds of environmental violations and fines. (Look them up yourself. It’s shocking.) And finally, I pointed out that even very pro-business Republicans like Representatives John Ensign and Dean Heller of Nevada are fighting a similar Cemex aggregate mine in their state. They have decided that the few jobs created are not worth the devastation to the land, the air-pollution, the water contamination, and the lowered property values. Representative Heller is on the record saying that “This [aggregate] mine is detrimental to the community and should not go forward.” Representative Ensign’s testimony against the mine is available on YouTube.

Oh, and get this! When Xenia Township, Ohio refused to permit a Cemex aggregate mine in December of 2011, Cemex’s response was to consider filing a lawsuit to get its land annexed to the next county.

Do we really want extremely wealthy and powerful foreign companies redrawing our county boundaries to get what they want? Seriously.

At the end of the day—and I mean 5 pm on February 9th 2012— the commissioners were unable to vote to approve and had to schedule another meeting next month.

Folks, Cemex has had two and a half years to prepare a Final Environmental Impact Report on this mine. In my opinion, they failed to make their case, so what is another month going to do?

They changed the whole project from a strip mine to an open pit mine in response to problems uncovered in the Draft Environmental Report. What are they going to do? Change it back? Sprinkle fairy dust on the document?.

Next, they obfuscated the data on air quality to such an extent that the San Joaquin Air Quality Board accused them of making “capricious and arbitrary statements”.

What else? Oh yeah. They changed the grade of the mine so that it was so steep the Commission—by law— could not approve the project.

The only thing that seemed accurate was Cemex’s claim that the aesthetic destruction of the landscape would be severe and unavoidable.

Last week I showed you a picture of Jesse Morrow Mountain. Here it is again.

This whole area is a tourist destination know as The Blossom Trail. In the spring when the fragrance is incredible and the petals are blowing all around, all you want to do is drive very slowly down the tiny country roads with your head hanging out the window and just breathe all this in.

Ah, for one of those old fifties convertibles!

There are wineries popping up in the area, charming bed and breakfasts, and recently a destination restaurant—The Schoolhouse Restaurant— opened with a chef from Napa who wanted to be close to the farms.

If Cemex wins approval, the experience I just described to you will be destroyed. The fields of flowers and fruit trees will be facing the proposed Cemex eyesore. You’ll be smelling asphalt production, listening to blasting, breathing toxic dust.

Just to give you an idea let me show you a picture of an actual Cemex aggregate mine in Bolivia similar to the one Cemex proposes to build along the Blossom Trail and the Gateway to the Sierras. I guess when Cemex in its Environmental Report noted that the aesthetic destruction and degradation of the landscape would be “severe and unavoidable“, this is what they meant.

Wow.

Wherever you are in the world, if you come to the Sierras to backpack, to see the giant trees, to hike beside waterfalls and the Kings River, this affects you.

You’ll have to drive by Cemex’s toxic wasteland first. You’ll have to breathe in dust from the constant blasting and get your windshield destroyed by speeding gravel trucks. (Oh BTW what exactly is in the dust? Who knows? Cemex lost the core samples. I kid you not.)

You won’t be stopping at local wineries or staying in agritourism vineyards. You won’t be eating at local farm-to-table restaurants. You won’t be buying local fruit from farm stands or stopping at the old-time Minkler Cash store for penny candy like back in the day.

This blight will drive these small businesses out, all for aggregate we won’t need for thirty years, all for a handful of trucking jobs, all for Cementos de Mexico profit.

If you want to help, if you want to fight the appalachia-fication of rural California, please go to Friends of Jesse Morrow Mountain and make a donation. (They have PayPal) We’re going to have to dig in for the long haul on this one, and the legal fight will be expensive.

The next time you go to the high country, you’ll be glad you did.

It’s spring in the Central Valley when the Fresno County Planning Commission’s thoughts turn to . . .

. . . granting a permit for a toxic aggregate mega-mine on Native American burial grounds smack dab in the middle of prime orchard country where the cattle and horses peacefully graze.

Dumb idea. You’d think, huh?

See the little mountain in this picture? Now imagine it leveled by Cemex, the Mexican multinational concrete company. Imagine blasting noise, imagine dust, imagine the air pollution you can’t see, the ground water pollution from the facility seeping into farmers’ wells. Imagine the trolleys running up and down the side of the hill carrying the mountain down rock by rock.

Imagine the cherry orchards covered in dust, the fields of poppies buried under it.

And all for road-building materials that studies show Fresno County won’t need for thirty years!

Well, not without a fight.

Tomorrow a bunch of us are coming down off the Sierras to speak in front of said planning commission. It’s times like this I remember what Gandhi said. “What you do is unimportant. That you do it is of the utmost importance.”

That was Gandhi’s way of saying,”Time to cow-girl up!”

I’ll be there with a hundred or more people, staring down the high-paid lawyers from Cemex. Let’s not forget what a small group of determined individuals can do, and my friends, I am one of them. Just ask Dave!

If you live in the Bay Area or Los Angeles, you may think what happens in the Central Valley doesn’t affect you.

Think again.

The next time you’re at the fancy-schmancy San Francisco Ferry Building Farmer’s Market with the Hoity and the Toity, ask where the stuff comes from. Half the time it’s from the Central Valley, from right here.

Next week, I’ll post an update to this story and tell you ways you can help.

But I’m not there. I’m sitting at my desk slooooowly proofreading my book. I remember a well- known mystery writer telling me he always held carrots in front of his nose at this point in the novel writing process. “Eight pages and I can get up and play with the cat. Eight more pages and I can make some tea. Eight more pages after that and I can check the mail.”

In order to speed things up, I’m forgoing blogging about life on the ranch this week so that I can put up another chapter. Since each one takes me about three hours to proof and post, and since life on the ranch doesn’t come to a dead stop just because I need time to do this, I’m going at a snail’s pace. But, I really want to get this book up on Amazon sooner rather than later, and in order to do that, I have to apply seat of pants to seat of chair and not drift off into some dreamy state. In my case, it’s eight more pages and I can go fill the cattle trough!

Writing is fun, but copy editing . . . uh, not so much. That’s why there were some glitches in Chapter Eight. I wandered off. The glitches have now been corrected. If you haven’t gotten that far, then just ignore this message. If you have, well I’m sorry for the pronoun confusion — there’s a reason that happened. However, now you can go back and take a look.

Rest assured that after I’ve gone through all this, a professional copy-editor will have a go at it. Then it’s off to the e-book formatter and up on Amazon. com.’s Kindle store.

I suppose this is always the kind of thing you see if you lift the hood up and take a look at the engine of any creative endeavor. All that sort of messy stuff. Still, the engine is not what I want my readers to see. Kind of breaks up the narrative dream. While that’s all very post-modern and stuff, it’s not my style. I’m a traditional women’s fiction writer through and through.

But, back to the chapters at hand . . .

If you’ve been to Mexico City, you’ll know the Plaza Tolsa where Lili is having lunch. If you haven’t been, well, here’s a photo on the right.

You’ll get the feeling.

And just to nudge your imagination a bit more, here’s the restaurant Los Girasoles on the left where she’s dining.

BTW—Fabulous food. Great margaritas.

Before I sign off here, I’ve got a little announcement. Any of you within range of KVRP Public Radio (FM 89) can listen to me read El Tropical, an excerpt from my novel Bird of Paradise. It airs February 8 at 7 pm. Hope you’ll tune in.

Now that I’ve done a little internet digging, I see they’ve been all over Oprah for years. There are Vision Board classes, even Apps.

What can I say? I don’t get around much. At least not with what’s on TV. That’s part of my plan.

However, undaunted by the fact I’m a bit late to the fiesta here, I’ve been looking for images of older women, women I might like to be like or whose footsteps I’d like to follow, something to put on said “Vision Board” and not an image of a movie star, either.

Wow! Are they hard to find.

And then something wonderful happened. I clicked on my hometown newspaper — the Charlotte Observer — and there was an article (with a picture!) about a local poet — Julie Suk. Eighty-seven years old and still writing.

Not only is she writing, but writing what many critics (Galassi of the Paris Review to name one) consider to be the best poetry in America. And to top that, she really didn’t start publishing until she was in her fifties!

I’ve been digging into her poems the last week like someone starved. I had no idea how I longed to hear the voice of someone older, especially as I list into that territory myself.

Once I turned sixty, I started to feel a little like someone driving familiar roads in a dense, tule fog. Even the oncoming headlights — admonitions to “Live Your Best Life” or “Achieve Your Dreams” — blur in the grey cloud, blur and pass, as I try to move forward. I know I want to go somewhere, am going somewhere, but what guides me now? What path will lead to a vibrant old age?

And then I found Julie Suk’s poems.

Read her no matter what your age! She has a lot to tell us about both the light and dark of life.

Rounds

When I held my first son,
how perfect he seemed.
Driving home late,
we would sing rounds
O how lovely is the evening
his head nodding to my lap.

Blessings on that third
of our lives spent in sleep,
the plots of the day
left dangling.

Once I drove by a woman
clinging to a viaduct’s ledge,
police, priest, and the curious
crowded below, the road
curving past into a benign
vista of cows and trees.

Blessings on those moments of reprieve
grabbed before dropping into nightmare.

How could my son fracture,
unaware of the split?
Ominous, the day I waited
on his porch, cake in hand
as if food could assuage
a mind reeling off.

Get out! Get out! The door slammed.
What I dread is a stand-off,
barricades, guns, police
with no choice but to shoot.

Blessings on the daughter
who ripens with a life
that turns us around again,
this time, we hope,
the helix of notes
descending in tune.

For a while we let pass
what Aeschylus said,
how at night
the pain that can’t forget
falls drop by drop
upon the heart.

The moon floats off,
the dog whimpers under the steps.
How lovely the evening
with a child on my lap,
a circle of us singing
heedless of the dark taking aim.

— The Dark Takes Aim, Autumn House Press, 2003
© by Julie Suk. Used with the permission of the poet.

Now, I’m looking for a fabulous recipe for the famous Oaxacan yellow mole. Most American recipes use pasillas or guajillos, because chilhuacle chilis are impossible to find here unless you grow them yourself. (They sell the plants at Berkeley Horticultural Nursery last I checked.)

This got me thinking about a wonderful meal I had with friends last November in Mexico City at Patricia Quintana’s fabulous Restaurante Izote on Avenida Mazaryk in Mexico City.

Very glamorous . . . and the food!

We sat upstairs on a sunny autumn afternoon, the window lending a view of the delicate pepper trees outside and the large synagogue across the street. When the waiter brought a platter of sopes de camarones in a chipotle sauce and perfect margaritas, we were all in heaven.

(Here’s Patricia Quintana herself on the right. I would love to live in a place where I could dress like that everyday! Que alegria!))

I know that you are hearing terrifying story after terrifying story about Mexico City. All I can say is that with the same precautions I would take in any large city in the world, I feel safe. Safe and also having a fantastic time!

Anyway, I’ve just posted two more proofed chapters of Palace of the Blue Butterfly on this website.

Now, I’m a little closer to my goal of getting it on the Kindle. You’ll probably want to go back and read Chapter Five before you continue just to refresh your memory.

And since in the novel I mention Vivienne dining at Restaurante Izote, I’d thought I’d show you all what it looks like.

Now I’m wondering what sopes de pollo en mole amarillo would taste like, and if Sra. Quintana would approve.

Well, it had to happen sometime. I’m late with the post. First time in almost two years, but I have a good excuse. I embarked on a cleaning-out-all-drawers-and closets rampage, all inspired by a necklace Dave bought me at the Plaza del Angel Antique Market in Mexico City, which you see only a small part of above. Think Marche aux Puces in Paris only in Mexico City and in Spanish.

Anyway, the necklace is so perfect, goes with everything I own, can be worn on any occasion with jeans or a black dress, that I almost don’t need anything else.

Wouldn’t it be wonderful, I thought, if I could pare my life down to only the necessary and the beautiful? It’s something I’d been dying to attempt for a long time. After the sensory overload that was Christmas, January seemed like a great time to start

When Dave decided to go to the Bay Area for three days, I knew it was my big chance to up-end the kitchen and throw out everything I don’t use. No stopping to make dinner. Nothing in the way.

Seize the moment!

It’s just that it took a lot longer than I thought—hence late blog post— but I reorganized every cabinet in my kitchen. So satisfying!

The next day, I just wandered around opening cabinet doors, gazing at the platters and pans all stacked up, the duplicates stored away or tossed. Bliss.

Then it was onto the bureau drawers. Wow! so much stuff I don’t use. I either have to start sleeping in silk PJs or throw them away. Did I actually have a life once in which silk pajamas were even feasible?

It’s just there was one nagging little problem with my virtuous activity. Part of me knew I was procrastinating. I have to get back to the copy-editing of my novel to get it up on Amazon, but I’ve been a little discouraged lately.

Every time I see an article on Mexico, it’s all about the drug war, the dead bodies dumped on the town square, in the middle of Mexico City, by the side of the road. Just a constant barrage of horrible news.

Why, I started to wonder, would anyone want to read about the place?

Then a funny thing happened as I got rid of old stuff, excess 13 by 9 inch pans and the like, as I pulled the souffle dish back from it’s exile at the far end of the cabinet, as I boxed up jewelry that I haven’t worn in years—those chandelier earrings— to give to my daughter. I felt more confident of my own story, knew that it was in some way truer than the numbers and statistics about the bloodshed.

In fact, Dave I spent a lovely two weeks in Mexico City this November, and here we are alive and well.

And I scored the silver and amethyst Fred Davis necklace, which was the inspiration for my cleansing frenzy.

After the last post, I decided to create some sort of collage, images I can keep in mind as I move toward my goals. I didn’t know this idea was called a vision board, but, on the same day it seemed, something happened and I learned.

I got an e-mail from an agent letting me know that she was moving to a new agency, one that developed self-published books.

Could have knocked me over with a feather. How times have changed.

I decided to take a look at some of the books this outfit published. Lo and behold, there was a book on How to Create Your Vision Board. Turns out it’s a lot more complicated that just sticking up a bunch of pictures. And the first step? De-cluttering! Which is, I guess, what I was doing.

Anyway, the book was interesting, so I downloaded onto my iPad. I’ll be following some of the steps over the next few weeks.

Anyway, the necklace, when I look at it, is an image of what I know to be true about Mexico… about Americans going to Mexico and becoming artists, about how Mexico nurtures that no matter what else is going on and has for years and years.

Just take a walk on a lovely Saturday afternoon around the Plaza del Angel in the Zona Rosa and you’ll see.

In brief, here they are.

Savor moments of each day. Don’t emphasize the importance of material things. Take the initiative. Have a goal. Value friendships, family and community. Exercise. Eat right . . .

And the one I’m thinking about today –

Don’t compare yourself to others.

As it is that time of year when we traditionally take stock, I like others, started listing the ways I did not live up to all of last year’s resolutions.

Did I mediate each and every day. Well . . . not exactly. And that dream notebook that was so interesting . . . I let it languish. As far as doing all the chapters of The Artist’s Way . . . uh. You get the picture.

And then I thought, “Jane, Jane, Jane. If the point is to increase your own capacity for happiness, and maybe bring a little of that joy into other people’s lives, you are not headed in the right direction. Time to meditate on Quan Yin, the Goddess of Compassion and Mercy. Or, as we say on the ranch, “Let’s just back this truck up!”

Better to focus on the things I did do. Much more inspiring.

I have a friend who tacks images that inspire her writing up on her office bulletin board. Once, at a low point in her spirits, she covered the board with photographs of all the things she’d achieved in her life — college, wedding, birth of kids, big garden, remodeled kitchen, recovering from cancer treatments, Bay to Breakers race, a special anniversary, pets, Thanksgiving dinners.

Nothing of historical importance mind you, but when she stepped back and looked, what she saw was a life well-lived, rich in family, friends and creativity. Do you really need any more?

Before we moved out here, when I was waffling and scared to buy the property, another friend said, “Are you nuts? Of course, you should do this. Ever since I’ve know you, you’ve wanted two things: to write and to live in the country. You can do this.”

So in honor of my friend’s inspiring idea, these are some things that are going on MY bulletin board just to remind me how far I’ve come.

I’ve gone from this on the left (below) . . . To this on the right (below).

I’ve gone from being scared and wondering if I’d lost my mind to being certain that I hadn’t.

And I’ve gone from this — a book in a box — to a podcast. So this years resolution: From a book in a box, to a podcast on the computer, to a novel on one of these little gizmos, that’s the resolution.

Now, back to meditating every day, keeping a journal . . .
I have a whole other year.

This past week, I would be all set to write about one thing that was going on around here when something else would snag my attention, and off I’d head in that direction.

Today, since I was down to the wire, I just decided I’d go with whatever thought I seemed to light upon the moment I sat down at the computer.

Here’s how that went . . .

Coffee cup in hand, I clicked on the San Francisco Chronicle first to get the weather report. We are longing for rain, snow, mist, fog, anything at all resembling precipitation. We’re in the midst of a strong La Nina out here, which means cold and dry. Boy, is it dry.

However, in my ADD mode, a headline grabbed my attention away from the weather report. “Neighbors Up In Arms Due To Heinous Noise from Hospital” it read.

Dear God, I thought, thankyou thankyou thankyou that I don’t have to go through that anymore. San Francisco may be a beautiful city, but the thought of living next to a massive, humming air filter system that sounds like a giant leaf blower and makes using your backyard impossible is enough to turn my blood cold.

And at just the moment I was mumbling my little prayer of gratitude, I remembered a poem by Mary Oliver, who seems to be an insomiac like me. About that she writes: “Not quite 4 a.m., when the rapture of being alive/strikes me from sleep,”

A good way to deal with insomnia, I’d say.

Besides, It’s so much easier to feel that way when not woken by a giant, humming, hospital air- conditioner, or whatever it is, that has a tendency to kick in at 3 am in the morning. Again — thankyouthankyouthankyou.

For me, this poem captured everything that was going through my mind — the longing for snow, the lovely sound of the owls when I wake in the middle of the night, and the excitement, tinged with, if not dread, certainly concern for the coming year.

And also the poem gave me the comfort of knowing that, no matter what happens in 2012, La Nina will turn again into El Nino, and I will once again be able to hold my hand out to the glittering snow or the cold rain.

And you will, too.

Here’s a poem to welcome in the coming year.

Snowy Night
by Mary Oliver

Last night an owl
in the blue dark
tossed
an indeterminate number
of carefully shaped sounds into
the world, in which,
a quarter of a mile away, I happened
to be standing.
I couldn’t tell
which one it was –
the barred or the great-horned
ship of the air –
it was that distant. But, anyway,
aren’t there moments
that are better than knowing something, and sweeter? Snow was falling,
so much like stars
filling the dark trees
that one could easily imagine
its reason for being was nothing more
than prettiness. I suppose
if this were someone else’s story
they would have insisted on knowing
whatever was knowable — would have hurried
over the fields
to name it — the owl, I mean.
But it’s mine, this poem of the night,
and I just stood there, listening and holding out
my hands to the soft glitter
falling through the air. I love this world
but not for its answers.
And I wish good luck to the owl,
whatever its name –
and I wish great welcome to the snow,
whatever its severe and comfortless
and beautiful meaning.