Call to Prayer

I was in Indonesia, the first time I heard a full Muslim prayer call.

It was dawn and I was climbing a not-terribly dormant volcano on the island of Java with a friend. The tone and melody surprised me so thoroughly that I sat down and just listened. I recall wondering then, as I do today in Istanbul, how many times, if ever, I'd climbed out of bed at dawn and got down on my face before God.

I'm fascinated by devotion.

If you've ever been curious how a Muslim prayer call sounds, watch this handy 38-second video.

If you live in Istanbul and have zero curiosity about Muslim prayer calls because they issue five times a day from loudspeakers in your neighborhood, but you are curious about the ridiculous view from Christy's new apartment, watch the  handy 38-second video below.

I'm here to serve.

Wanna Go?

I bought a print in the South of France weeks ago that I have been toting around by hand, since it won't fit in my suitcase. The image is such an emblem of everything I love about France, that if I accidentally leave it in a yellow cab in Istanbul, I will cry.

The print is an art deco-period woman in a swimsuit standing in front of a restaurant - probably in the 1930's. Oh thanks Google, there she is. She isn't the point though. Like all good memento purchases, she has a story.

On Sam's last week in France, we walked to the far side of the port looking for the beach that our new friends, Tristan and Kathryn, who are American/Italian/British travel journalists living in Nice, suggested.

Along the cliffs hangs a shell of a building, with an equally decrepit structure perched on a small rock promontory rising out of the turquoise sea. Nothing is left of the structure but a three-story spiral staircase attached to a concrete pillar and a rickety, rusty metal gangplank that hooks the promontory to the main.

Local teenagers gather there to perform the universal teenage mating rituals - shoving, squealing, strutting etc. They also rockclimb the cliffs, swing their legs up onto the rusty gangplank to access the platform, climb the spiral staircase and the concrete pillar and then....

Jump off.

It's at least a 30 foot jump, maybe 40, from the top of the pillar. Girls climb up the slippery and overhanging cliff too in order to sun and preen and jump, well away from any parental supervision.

Sam and I found this deeply entertaining and noted that it really was a perfect way for teenagers to express their considerable teenage angst. In America, of course, such a place would be wrapped in concertina wire and plastered with keep-out signs. Not so, in France.

Besides being a demanding and dangerous climb, the platform provides a perfect stage for the young men to perform feats of aerial bravery and make obscene gestures to the incoming Sardinia/Corsica ferries.

Of course this impresses girls.

The day before I left Nice, I wandered through the old town, photographing architecture, drinking cafe au lait and breathing the Catholic incense burning in 17th century cathedrals. On my way, I happened into a shop selling art deco posters. One caught my eye.

It was a woman in a bathing suit standing on the rocky shore, under a restaurant called The Reserve. The restaurant was perched on the cliffs with the conspicuous elegance for which France in the 30's was so famous. Across a small gangway, restaurant guests were invited to gaze at the Mediterranean from a milk-white, wrought-iron three-story gazebo attended by tuxedoed waiters and a string quartet.

How swank and delicious this place must have been at a time when Nice was bustling with British aristocracy and famous French
impressionists. Today, there is still a swank and lovely restaurant next to the former location. Happily, the restaurant's current website has another picture of it's former glory.

The salesgirl saw me get really excited, when I figured out what I was looking at. When I told her I wanted it, she said in French, "do you know where this is?"

"Oui, oui" I said. "Les garcons sautent."

Believe it or not, "The boys jump" was one of the first sentences I learned while studying French with the Rosetta Stone. The shop girl was clearly pleased that not only did I, an American tourist, knew the site of Restaurant De La Reserve but that I was able to explain myself and my excitement in French.

This exchange marked the end of my keen observance of French culture and the start of my love affair with it.

Americans like to say that the French are rude or even less kind adaptations of that word. But I think the French and their value system are misunderstood by my people.

The French are exceedingly polite and bristle at American informality and presumption. They rigorously defend their beloved cultural institutions from tacky global influences, so that even MacDons on the Promenade des Anglais has flower beds out front.

Because the French haven't surrendered their singular cultural aesthetic in the name of efficiency or commerce, (I'm thinking WalMart) when you stumble into a small town in Provence on a Wednesday morning, you find a local market fairly bursting at the seams. Vendors are selling artisan bread, cheese, porc, chocolate, wine, grass baskets, lavender bunches and warm bread all as a matter of daily course. Normal people - not just tourists or French with boatloads of cash - shop, socialize and conduct business there - like humans have done in the marketplace for millennia.

In my opinion, this is at least one reason why France is the #1 most visited nation on the planet, according to 2010 global tourism statistics. Believe it or not, the US is second and we have the Grand Canyon.

I told you all that to tell you this:

1. I just spent six weeks in Provence, the Cote d'Azur, Haute Provence and The Jura.  

  

2. I plan to be near-fluent by this time next year and I plan to go back.

3. I would like to bring a few of you along: A few smart, fun women who, like me, appreciate high-quality, local food, wine and culture. Who are up for soulful, sensuous travel, where people and their lives trump cities and their buildings.

4. I have scouted a route through lavender fields, roadside cherry stands, mountain lakes, antique markets, wineries, Roman ruins, Mediterranean beaches and other natural and man-made wonders. 

So, my question is, what are you doing next June?

A Whole New KRO

It seems, to me, that a successful blogger is one who employs a platform that a) doesn't require three hours per post to untangle messed up code; b) gives the impression the blogger actually does live in the 21st century.

Good news! Kirk Ranch Organics has finally achieved this. After 18 months of wrangling our old site, Kirk Ranch Organics has a fresh new look, with proper RSS, a new address and even  consistent fonts. Wow.

Since we will no longer spend three hours on jacked up code, we might actually blog on topics like The French Riviera, What to do in Nice, Where the best markets hide in Provence and shopping at Ikea in Istanbul. We even have ideas about bringing a few of you back to Provence with us next summer to scout out the best cheese, antiques, flowers and perfume. France is soooo good. I can't keep it all to myself.

We are very much looking forward...

Brave or Crazy

In honor of my upcoming 39th birthday, I decided to quit agonizing about it and finally do something with my hair. 

My current style, which I like to call aging-hippie-spends-too-much-time-in saltwater-chic, I believe is the main culprit behind people inquiring which of us, me or Christy, is older. This is intolerable.

So this morning Christy took me to her Turkish hairstylist here in Istanbul. She had an approximately 30 second, halting conversation in Turkish with the salon owner, pointed to my grey hair with exasperation, and then left. 

My stylist knows the word OK in English and I know the words Hello and Thank you in Turkish. Hooray, what else do we need? Let's color my hair.

Some of you who know Christy might be saying, "wow you let Christy tell them what color to dye your hair?"

I know, that thought crossed my mind as I sat helpless with ammonia based goo all over my head. I resigned myself to the fact that the horses were really out of the barn on this one. 

I comforted myself by remembering what she said as she left; "don't worry you can always grow it out."

The story has a happy ending. They were in fact incredibly competent and my hair looks much like it did when I was 20. This is good because I have been invited, this afternoon, to be a panelist for a United Nations Development Program agency seminar on organic farming. I'm pretty sure I will be the only Texan there.

It's a long story how this happened and I will post more after it happens but at least I can go with good hair. July 11, 2011

Encouragement.

Browsing through some photos of last June and July in Texas, I realized that we actually got a bunch of soaking rain last summer.

The fields were deep with healthy green bermuda, my beds were growing like crazy and big drenching rainstorms weren't all that uncommon.

In this hard season of heat and drought in Texas, I thought I'd post these photos as an encouraging reminder that when it does rain again, it will be lovely and grow. July 11, 2011

Easter Evacuations.

Evacuate is an ugly word. One that forces this weird union between hysteria and disciplined action. Both are required, I think, if you plan to get any of your stuff out. 

As luck would have it, I 've had this experience, now twice, in the last ten days: Once for oncoming wildfire and once for oncoming tornado. I would have hit the trifecta if the predicted softball-sized hail had, in fact, occurred. Happily, it didn't. It was only quarter-sized. 


I'm going to spare you the details of conditions in Central Texas right now because you can just go to CNN and find out. 
In short, two weeks ago, Texas, which is suffering the worst drought since the 30's, started burning and it hasn't stopped. Then last night it started raining, which should be terrific news, and it was, until it turned into hail, massive lightning strikes and then tornadoes.


When a wildfire is burning in someone else's backyard, like in California, it usually prompts sympathy but not much else because well, what can you do? When a wildfire, which is swallowing oak and mesquite trees so fast it makes them explode and disintegrate, barrels toward your life galvanized by 60 mph winds, things get real. Fast. 


Horses. Dogs. Cats. Truck. Trailer. Hard Drive. Guitar. Guns. Saddles. Change of clothes. Water. Wedding Album and the rug my sister gave us from Azerbaijan. And each other. That's it. 


Had the fire managed to jump a highway or two and burn my precious home, which has been defying natural disasters since 1917, that's what we would have had left. 


A mere eight days later, as we raced to our neighbor's storm cellar and I alternated between praying for and cursing this crazy-ass Texas weather,  I had my iphone, my hard drive, a hard copy of my book and Sam. Everything else was on its own.


It's hard not to be schizophrenic about all this. 


The number one feeling is gratitude because thanks to our volunteer firefighters, we never had to pull down our driveway to escape the advancing fire and the tornado turned Northeast and petered out.


So we had a nice underground visit with Durwood and Aletha and her 92 year old mother, my yoga student, Aline. They are all more experienced with hail, fire and tornado than I and therefore seemed to enjoy a lesser degree of panic.


That's the good news.


But the bad news is a fireman lost his life fighting the Gorman fire and 167 families have lost their homes in a nearby community. Thousands of others are homeless from these tornadoes. We are in this weird middle place. We aren't cleaning up wreckage but we are deeply paranoid about the possibility.


Maybe things seem more radical than they actually are because we are new here, but how do you tell?


It's unsettling to be so distrustful of the natural world; to sense that it is hostile to your presence. I'm an earthquake girl myself. At least with earthquakes - the initial one anyway - you don't know they're coming. You just get out from under your desk (hopefully) and start surveying the damage. But this stuff has been going on for weeks. I'm exhausted by red radar screens with purple tornado dots and weathermen saying things like "baseball-sized hail hitting Gorman in eight minutes."


In addition, looking at the weather almanac last week, I discovered that the normal average high temperature for April 20th in this area is 77 degrees. It was 102 that day just south of us in Comanche.
I think that is what's bothering me. I'll bet people in Missouri and North Carolina and even Japan and Haiti - places that have gone wild on their human inhabitants lately - feel the same way. Maybe I'm overreacting, but this stuff is making me pause and reflect.


There's not much we can do about earthquakes and tsunamis. Maybe there is nothing we can do about droughts, floods, hurricanes and tornadoes either. However, I believe 98% of the scientific community, when they say there is.


Scientists repeatedly say, when the number of carbon molecules in the atmosphere increases, the earth's temperature increases. This has a huge impact on ice, oceans and weather patterns.


 In 400,000 years of atmospheric history, as recorded in ice cores, there has never been this much carbon in our atmosphere. 


Never.


It's easier to blow off this data when you are not demolishing historic weather averages and enduring 80-year droughts. Watch PBS correspondent Martin Smith's thoughtful and interesting documentary called Heat  here. 


Even as I write, I can hear the tv in the next room. The newscasters have taken over the golf tournament Sam was watching to tell us about a whole new set of tornadoes. These are working not far from the area that, tonight, is still on fire. The tornado west of us is heading our way and we are hoping it veers south.Or better yet, dies completely and just settles into a good soaking rainstorm for oh, I don't know, a month. 


At the end of the day, I still believe in a sovereign God, who knows exactly what is going on and will work it out for the good of those who love Him. He doesn't however, promise the ride won't be bumpy.

On the way to church this morning to celebrate the resurrection of Jesus - we drove past black fields and scorched trees. The roads are torn up with firebreaks and everything smells of smoke. Yet somehow, even with zero moisture last week, green shoots have sprung up through the charred ground. All over, there are swaths of black death covered by the fuzz of bright green promise. 


How's that for an Easter message. April 24, 2011

My Auction Buddy.

There is nobody in the world who loves an equipment auction more than Ranch Boss. 


No, sorry Danny, Durwood, Mark; R.B. loves them more.

A day at the equipment auction for Ranch Boss is like a day in Starbucks, Barnes and Noble, theMetropolitan Museum of Art and the spa all rolled together, for me.

His palms even get sweaty as he throws them up on a hay baler that he totally does not need but "it's such a sweet deal." Actually, he never throws his hand up, that's what rookies do. He just catches the bid-catcher's eye and nods. That way nobody around him really knows who is doing the bidding.

Believe me this little addiction is not without its perils. 


Once, we nearly brought a $7,000 horse home in the back of my Nissan pickup. Ranch Boss was insulted that such a fine horse should sell for so paltry a sum. The bidding stalled with him at $7,000. I had no idea, he held the winning bid. The loud sigh of relief he blew when someone bid $7,500, tipped me off though. 


If we'd hauled a trailer to Fort Worth that day, I'm pretty sure we'd own that horse. This is a long way of saying, we may have to hold an auction intervention soon.


The auction yard is crawling with coveralled, cigar-chewing men in sweat-stained caps that bear the names of local implement dealers.


One guy, who wears a lifetime of farming on the skin of his hands,eased his field-worn body up into the seat of an old Massey Ferguson and assessed - correctly I might add - "what she'll bring." 


But don't kid yourself, this is no place for rookies.
Some of this equipment has clocked enough peanut and hay field mileage to go from here to the moon and the guys with the implement caps know it. They stomp clutches and raise buckets, check hoses and hookups.


Ranch Boss, who's been going to equipment auctions since he was a kid in North Carolina, knows too. So I'm thinking maybe I should rent him out to auction rookies who want to buy some used equipment but don't know what they're up against. I think I'll call it "My Auction Buddy" or something like that.


Sounds like a win-win to me. March 20, 2011