Hope springs...

The first signs of spring!

Happy Birthday (to me)!

When it comes to New Year's resolutions, I find that I'm always a little late on coming up with anything. I never really give it any thought until someone inevitably asks me on New Year's Eve what I've resolved to do this year. What improvements I'll make, what nasty habits I'll swear off, what I'll vow to do with religious devotion. I usually shrug and think 'oh yeah.... new year's resolutions' with wonder and frankly, at a complete loss as to what to wish for. Instead, I save them for my January birthday, by now I've had a couple of weeks to think things through and the post-holiday depression is usually beginning to wane at this point and my motivation to get out of bed in the morning is slowly returning.

I read in the Guardian around Christmas time that men and women require different strategies in order to keep their resolutions. Men, of course, should write them down, measure themselves against bite-size, but concrete targets that are easily achievable, make charts and graphs following their progress visually, thus encouraging them to continue down the path of improvement. Women, on the other hand, react most strongly to shame and embarrassment. What am I on about? It said that women should tell friends and family about their resolutions and in doing so it should motivate them not to want to suffer the disesteem of failing to follow through with them. Though avoiding embarrassment is the primary incentive here, the support and encouragement offered by others will hopefully be of some benefit as well.

I choose to go down both roads, never being the traditionally feminine type anyhow. I've made some charts and graphs, and now I'm telling all of you about my birthday resolutions.... They're simple really, and rather standard ones. Firstly, there's the getting fit. I've set myself the achievable, petite targets; exercise 3 1/2 hours a week, lose 5lbs a month, plan healthy meals and snacks. Easy peasy. Then there's the financial stability resolution - that's a new one for me. I've made myself a budget (with a little graph!) with an aim to pay off my credit card debt (over the next two years!) and save up for a trip home to Seattle this summer for my friend's wedding. I've never tried this financial responsibility thing before, so fingers crossed that I can avoid the yarn and fabric shop over-indulgence. Finally, there's the be a better friend resolution. I have the worst habit of never replying to text messages, e-mails, phone calls and even scrabulous on facebook. My new mantra will be reply, reply, reply.

And that's that. Happy Birthday!

Project 52 (1 and 2 / 52)

Did you ever see the movie Smoke? The one with Harvey Keitel and Forest Whitaker? I think it's from the early 90's.... There's this bit in it, where an old man takes a photo out the window of his apartment of the Brooklyn street corner down below, at the same time of day, every day, for some 30 years. I always liked this idea of documenting a mundane or ordinary subject and watching how it slowly changes over time and it's been somewhere in the back of my mind ever since. I just never managed to stay in the same place long enough to ever let it come to fruition for me.

Now that I'm settled here in Warwickshire, I thought I'd finally start my own project. I'm not diligent enough for an everyday sort of endeavor, but I think I can just about manage once a week. Here's my subject, this old oak tree in a field down the road from our house. I aim to shoot it at around the same time on the same day every week. I can't wait to see how it turns out at the end of the year....

Here's week one (above) and week two (below) of Project 52. Enjoy!

Mostest Favoritest of 2007

I'm not really much of a list maker. I know some of you out there find no greater pleasure than making long lists of things you've got to do and find particularly great satisfaction in crossing things off of said list. One of my closest friends even includes 'shower' and 'eat breakfast' on her daily to-do list so that she can have the satisfaction of dragging her pen across the page an extra couple of times. My husband is one of these listy types as well, and razzes me relentlessly about making shopping lists and to-do lists and packing lists when we go on trips. I usually manage to make do without one, she says tapping her forehead knowingly with her forefinger.

It's that time of year when everybody starts compiling lists of things that they liked best about the year and though I don't really get the point of to-do lists, I do like making top 5 lists. Anybody who knows me knows that it's music that makes my world go round and I've always sort of fancied myself something a connoisseur of good tunes. You be the judge. Here I'll list my mostest favoritest albums of 2007!

Before we get started with the drum roll and all the hullabaloo, I need to send a couple of honorable mentions out. This was a good year in music for me. Pretty much all of my favorite artists put out new albums, one even posthumously, though regrettably only one makes the final top 5 of 2007. Shocking really, considering I'm the loyal fan type, but damn there was some fine new (to me) music to come out this year!

And the runner's up are ...... Iron & Wine -The Shepherd's Dog (can you believe it, i&w didn't make the top 5!), Wilco - Sky Blue Sky (what? not Wilco either?), Amy Winehouse - Back in Black, Damien Rice - 9, Ray LaMontagne - Till the Sun Turns Black (I know this came out in 2006, but I didn't get hold of it till later and I haven't stopped listening to it since), Kings of Leon - Because of the Times, The Arcade Fire - Neon Bible, Bloc Party - A Weekend in the City and last but certainly not least, Beirut - The Flying Club Cup.

Elliott Smith's New Moon would have made my Top 5 had I not just gotten it for x-mas and have only listened to it a handful of times, but it's absolutely brilliant. Go out and buy it immediately!

5) Coming in at number 5, it's our dear friends Radiohead with their perfectly radiohead sounding album, In Rainbows. Case in point, when my friend came to dinner recently and asked me to put it on, the first thumps of 15 step started off and she proclaimed "Oooh! It sounds just like radiohead!" Also, I'm a big fan of their pay as much as you want downloading scheme. I gave it a good deal of thought, but in the end settled on £3.00 for mine, which seemed fair enough to me. How much did you pay for yours? I read the average paid was £2.99 so as it turns out, I'm perfectly average.

4) Next is Elvis Perkins' pretty little debut album Ash Wednesday. I heard about this thing way before I got around to giving it a listen. I was flying from LA to London on Virgin and I swear that's as good as it gets for transatlanticism. (Oh Virgin airlines... you're so dreamy.) There's all sorts of fun things about a Virgin Atlantic flight, loads of movies, games and music on the little video screen on the seat in front of you and a music magazine to flip through. For some reason this kid's story stuck to me. He's the son of a Hollywood actor who died of AIDS in the 80's, his Mom was killed in 9/11 so there's lots of reasons to expect that this album would be a bit mopey and sad, and it is, but not in the ways that you might expect. It's dreamy and loopy and sometimes a bit poignant and shocking. Swoon.

3) Now, I don't have a whole lot to say about this album except that I listened to it A LOT this year. It's one of those that's completely sing-along-able and for that reason alone, it played while I was cooking or jogging or in the car and in the shower. All I really know about her is that she's Canadian and used to play with Broken Social Scene. Divine!


2) I love everything about Miss Kate Nash. I love the storyteller in her more than anything, I love that she's a teenager, but wouldn't sell her soul to the Britney machine, I love that even though by now you can't get her off the radio in the UK, I'm still not sick to death of her. She came to me by accident. Wilco was playing on Jools Holland, which for the Americans is a late night show on Fridays that showcases all sorts of music and I stayed up late to get some Tweedy action. Instead it was little Kate that grabbed my attention. The only introduction she got was "This is Kate Nash, she's new" and she was only allowed one song. She didn't have an album out or anything yet, but her songs were all over limewire and myspace and the like. I started collecting them as I came across them and if I'm honest, I don't actually own this album, I've only bits and pieced it from the internet. Naughty!

1) Peter, Bjorn and John blew me away this year. I can't stop listening to their album Writer's Block. Here's my favorite song from the record and maybe you'll see why I love it so, so much.


Good stuff. There were a bunch of albums I didn't get to listen to yet like pj harvey and Sigur Ros and Steve Earle and Bat for Lashes and Band of Horses and Caribou and KT Turnstall and Interpol and Rilo Kiley and Spoon and Bettye Lavette....

What are you listening to?

(sorry about all the you tube action, I'm not sure what happened there and can't seem to fix it. besides, you can't have too much of a good thing!)

Happy New Year!

Here's hoping you find plenty of sun spots to curl up in for 2008!!

I know, I'm a little late but I got there in the end! My trip to Berlin was super-fantastische! Note: New Year's Eve in Berlin is probably best experienced from an armored vehicle or perhaps the Pope mobile. It's a friggin war-zone out there. It's not just that there are fireworks in the hands of the masses, but big fireworks, like rockets and M-80's and scary noisy whistling then banging, booming ones. And then they're thrown at you while you're waiting for your ever-efficient-it-takes-more-than teenagers-with-fire-powered-rockets-to- stop-this-German-bus and they're exploding in mail boxes and rubbish bins and phone booths and thrown at every passing car and at each other and at you or otherwise exploding all around you. The Germans didn't seem to blink an eye, it was all in good fun, they said. I, for one, was terrified and I'm not embarrassed to admit how wimpy I am.

And I'll also admit that despite all the noise, I really had a ball on new year's eve and the rest of my trip - Berlin is a fun city to visit and the Big G and me talked a whole lot about how great it would be to live there some day. It was fab to catch up with a dear friend whom I hadn't seen in ages and even more fab to eat Brats and drink delicious, cold beer!! (the UK stuff is always served at room temp, ick!)

Auf Wiedersehen!

Over the river and through the woods, to uh ...Berlin we go. That little rhyme didn't quite work out like I'd hoped. No matter, we're off to Berlin tomorrow to spend the weekend with a dear friend who's over from the States for the holidays and to go berserker on Berlin for New Year's Eve! Achtung baby! I'll be back on the blog next week when we return.

Happy New Year!!
Bee

Happy Christmas!

Wishing you all that is merry and bright!!

Lots of love,
Brooke

...and all through the house

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas...

One year on....

Kick up yer heels! It's our anniversary! Can you believe it's been a year already? We went down to Cheltenham for the night, a spa town in the Cotswolds, for a night on the town. Cheltenham was all dressed up for Christmas with twinkly little fairy lights brightening up the streets. We had dinner at a Southwest American food restaurant, a rare treat in the UK and fitting considering we got married in Tucson last year!! What a thoughtful little guy I married.


Overheard on TV tonight:The only math you'll ever need baby is U+ME = FOREVER. - Homer Simpson

Into the Wild (or freedom's just another word )

It was with great trepidation that I went to see the film version of Into the Wild last night. It wasn't that I was dreading that Sean Penn's rendition of my beloved book would become a veritable Dead Man Camping, but well.... okay, well I, well.... it's true I was dreading that. I mean, come on! John Krakauer's book, in all it's factual drudgery and philosophical glory, rocked my little world in 1999, and without a doubt changed my life in so many inexorably delightful and frightening ways.

If truth be told, Krakauer's portrayal of an idealistic and romantic Alexander Supertramp is what lured me to the road in the first place. Certainly, there was an ocean of discontent at my status quo sort of life surging under my skin before my eyes ever glanced a page of that book. You see, I had been grinding myself down, what with all that applying myself and that ambition of youth stuff.

I think I averaged about 3 hours of sleep a day during those years, I was 23 and finishing up a zoology degree at UW, working on an ambitious undergraduate research project in the neurobiology department, all while working full-time graveyard shifts as a vet nurse in the animal emergency clinic and somehow managing to maintain a healthy semblance of a social life as well. Something was bound to give.

It wasn't simply Krakauer's book, but it certainly was the catalyst that opened my eyes to the idea of change and a less structured life. Enter a girl called Mizz. We met on the number 34 bus that took us to campus every morning. It turned out we were both in the same biochemistry class and she lived around the corner from me in Fremont. We soon became friends and she was one of those people who at 23 had already been to places I'd never even heard of. She knew somebody who had a cabin overlooking the Nenana river near the entrance to Denali National Park. She asked if I was interested in renting it for the summer with her. She also knew somebody who knew somebody and the next thing we knew we had jobs doing Living History performances in the park, you know the people who dress up as characters from the past and harass the visitors?

The pieces all fell together. I found someone to sublet my apartment. We packed up my old Saab and put up one of those cheesy signs in the window that said ALASKA OR BUST and headed north on I-5. We listened to a lot of Modest Mouse and Built to Spill and Alejandro Escovedo and then some books-on-tape from Tom Robbins and Edward Abbey and Dorothy Parker thus christening my Saab "Blanche" after a 'high-breasted blonde' in one of Parker's stories. We adopted fake accents and alter egos; she became an Australian and me a hapless Canadian (since I don't do accents well, eh?), we met some punk rock boys in Whitehorse who took us fishing with whiskey-soaked marshmallows for bait, we had a run-in with a Black Bear on a toilet break somewhere on the Cassiar Highway, and it was with tears that we unwittingly drove through a flock of migrating tiger-swallowtail butterflies and had to pick their delicate wings out of Blanche's menacing grill. It was Alexander Supertramp who I thought of through all these experiences. Did he soak in this pool in the Liard Hotsprings? Did he stop for gas at this station in the Yukon? Did he see the same herd of caribou cross the highway near Tok?


We arrived in Denali 7 years after Alexander Supertramp had died lonely and misguided in the back of an abandoned bus. It was with wide eyes and jaw dropped open that I listened the 'old timers' who had been working there in 1992 who suggested that Alex had found his way into the staff cafeteria at the Denali Village hotel on a regular basis. There were others I spoke to who told me they'd had their Stampede Trail cabin broken into that summer with the glint of a big city prosecuter in their eye and their hand on their hearts. I'm not sure if I buy any of it, and Krakauer reckons that that kind of conjecture was simply that, conjecture.

That summer something within me broke down a little bit. Focus shifted, life re-framed. For the first time in my life I felt like I belonged. There were city kids and country kids, Southern Belles and vatos from the hood and because there was no one else around social boundaries were obsolete, every sorority girl from Connecticut and forty year old farm mechanic from Iowa and drug addict from Hollywood got on like a house fire. That summer I danced on tables, kissed a lot of boys and a girl too, backpacked solo through polychrome pass and was charged by two grizzlies, fell in love at least ten times (and once it even stuck, for reals like.), gorged on blueberries right off the bush, threw rocks at rocks, sang silly songs when hiking to warn off the bears, drank beers around a campfire every night playing deface it or taste it (a game for life), there was a ptarmigan I called Bobby McGee and a fox called Sly who visited me every shift I worked out at Savage Cabin, there were the orphaned teen age bears who terrorized me at the same cabin, I chopped wood and learned that I was afraid of heights after one too many close calls walking on railroad bridges over bottomless gorges, ooohed and aahhhhed while the Northern Lights danced overhead like neon wind.

Every paycheck was immediately spent at the Spike, a bar in an old railroad car that was mostly frequented by employees at the park. There was an old poet who bought you shots of goldschlagger and stared and your chest, sometimes he wore masks or took his clothes off at random intervals and always in public, but always imparted some scrap of wisdom that slowly changed my outlook on the world. He was the first man I'd encountered, and actually developed a friendship with, who was truly and fearlessly free. He worked summers as a tour guide in Denali and had been for some 20 odd years and every winter, he and his girlfriend made it a point to live in a different place each year, working when they needed to and living out of their old airstream caravan. As soon as I realized it was possible to spend a lifetime exploring, my wheels began slowly spinning.

Near the end of that magical summer, when the Teklanika was finally running lower, the thing to do was to hike out to the bus on the Stampede Trail. It was all the rage that year and random groups of people (often your hiking partner was dictated by whoever had the same day off as you) started making the pilgrimage to the bus and returning with bragging rights and photos like these.


(I don't know who these guys are, but I found this photo here, it says on his website that this photo was taken the year before I was there.) My feelings are still mixed about the en vogue onslaught to what was probably a sacred and magical place for Alexander Supertramp. Presumably, the pilgrimage is still carried out every summer by the college kids that go to work at the park, and probably will be all the more popular now that the film has come out.

It's not a particularly pretty hike, nor is it necessarily an easy one. The first 10 miles is a relatively flat, but boot-suckingly muddy track that is zig-zagged perpetually by an annoying rivulet of what we called Notagain Creek, but I'm not sure of it's actual name. You have to cross that motherfucker at least 15 times before you even reach the first river crossing. Your boots have overfilled and your feet are wet from the word go, and the day we attempted this journey we got caught out in a squall that seemingly came out of nowhere and didn't give us enough time to get the rain gear out before our packs were soaked through. We camped on the bank of the Teklanika that first rainy night, with an aim to cross the river in the morning, and spent a considerable amount of it shivering in our damp sleeping bags by the campfire under the tarp and reading Krakauer's book out loud to each other by the light of our headlamps.

In the morning we still had another 10 or so miles to go when I discovered that I'd managed to melt one of my hiking boots to a rock while drying it out by the campfire. Unfortunately, it was a portent of things to come that day. First things first, we had to cross the Teklanika River, Alex Supertramp's Rubicon, weary and cold from a frosty Denali night in wet gear. Despite giving it a good couple of hours, walking up and down the bank in a 1/2 mile in either direction, we couldn't find a good place to cross, the water chest high and neither girl particularly buff, we couldn't support each other strongly enough. When Megan slipped and nearly went under, our confidence was shaken enough to chalk this one up to experience. And though I was bitterly disappointed at the time, in retrospect I think it was all for the best. In the end, I don't think I really wanted to intrude on the cherished place a hapless kid died in just to get a notch on the belt of Denali cool. It was simply curiosity that brought me out this far and also a bit of reverence for someone who had such an mysteriously profound effect on me, even in death and through somebody else's words.

We spent the day instead lazily recovering by the river bank, throwing rocks at rocks, swapping your mama jokes and stories from home. It was a relatively uneventful day save for the bull moose that went running through our campsite and got tangled in our makeshift clothes-line, strewing our damp clothes through the dense willows and the lightness that was slowly unraveling in my heart. A new understanding was emerging of the destination not being nearly so important as the progress made on the journey.That night the storm had finally given up the last dregs of it's fury and when the clouds parted, the Northern lights were revealed against the infinite backdrop of the Milky Way. We lay on our backs on a mattress of softest tundra and warmed to the soul by the campfire, we marveled at the night sky as the Aurora danced and twirled overhead. At one point in the show, they formed a sort of wagon wheel directly over head, a perfect circle of the greenest light with glowing shafts directed inward like so many spokes. I considered this a different kind of portent, a sign from the heavens that my wheels were spinning in a new direction.

I didn't return to university that autumn, my wheels carried me next to the redwoods, then to the red rock desert of southern Utah and then on to coastal Maine and from there I just went on and on. I spent the next few years perpetually on the road, and there was a kind of freedom there that I hadn't known before or since. Janis said that freedom's just another word for nothing left to lose, and things these days are sure piling up in the tattered cardboard box that holds the Things-I've-Got-To-Lose, in fact it's practically overflowing. Though life's a lot more complicated now than it ever has been, there's a contentment and comfort here in this stability I never could have imagined all those transient years and wouldn't trade now for all the blueberries in Denali National Park.

.....and taking names

The Queen Bee News gets a new look! And I'm back and badder than ever, well relatively speaking anyway. Thank you to all of you for your concern about my recent adventures in hospital, but things are going fine and I'm feeling much better thank you very much. It's our first wedding anniversary this weekend and to celebrate we're heading to Cheltenham, spa town and gateway to the Cotswolds for a short getaway and romantic night out. Cheers!

see you later, alligator

Things have been a bit quiet around the queen bee news and I'm afraid they will be for a bit longer. It's time for me to take a bit of time off, but not to worry I'll be seeing you again soon. Happy Christmas!

Waving, Not Drowning

Woah! I think this is my hometown! I just found out that Washington state is having the worst floods in years! I guess! I'm shocked and horrified. Check out the pics on the Seattle Times' website. Click on the photo galleries option to see more.

You're in my thoughts Elma!

12/10/07 - I've discovered that this photo is actually of Centralia, not Elma afterall.

Five Photos: Birds

A couple of weeks ago I mentioned how good it would be for me to revisit some of my favorite photographs and share the where's and why's with you. Well, here you go! These are some of my favorite photos of all: the birds.

Pictured above: Pigeon love on the Charles Bridge, Prague. This one was taken on a jet-lag induced early morning prowl on my first ever visit to Prague. It was literally just me and these birds on the bridge at 5 am, and if anyone's ever been to Prague you'll understand just how precious that kind of solitude is since most of the time the place is a madhouse of tourists, punters, ex-pats, street performers, beggars, stag do's, drug dealers, party goers, puppeteers and other various onlookers and passersby.

Familiar? You saw this little wagtail on my roof earlier this autumn. I absolutely love this photo, it's probably my favorite of all the lucky shots I got this year. I am in love with the sense of movement that the blurred last remains of the sweetgum tree in the background provide. It was only a fleeting moment that the little guy alighted and in this photo you can sense his panic when he saw me in the window behind him.

This little Sawhet Owl turned up to roost on my parents' porch in the weeks leading up to my wedding last year. My folks have a ranch bed out on their back patio, and I like to sleep out there when I come to visit. For whatever reason, I never sleep sounder than when I'm sleeping outdoors. Even when I'm camping I usually just use my tent as place to stash my backpack away from the dew and the ticks and mozzies, while I prefer to sleep under the stars. This little fella woke me up in the early hours one morning when his wingtips brushed my face as he swooped in and perched on the vines only about 4 or 5 feet above, staring down on me with those suspicious and knowing eyes all the while.

Superstitious me discovered that it's a bad omen to see an owl in the sunlight, but an owl visiting in the days before your wedding is meant to bring good fortune. Particularly an owl seen on your rooftop. Leave it to us to just break even with superstition. Go figure!

Another Czech bird, a european Jackdaw (a relative of the crow and the blue jay) eyeing me up for a tasty snack.

And the grand finale, a guardian of Warwick castle here in my neck of the woods.

A final note: you may have noticed that my blogging basically sucks lately. Things are just a bit bananas for me at the mo and I'm hoping to be back on track soon. Think good thoughts for me! Rub your bellies and wish mine better. A little collective healing prayer and energy would do me a world of good!

'Tis the Season

I think I got the festivities started right by bringing these fellas home over the weekend. Bright portents of a very sparkly Christmas, indeed. I'm only a little creeped out by the way their eyes seem to follow me around the room, but I'm sure I'll get over it.

And just where do you think you've been young lady? (I can hear my mother asking from all the way across the Atlantic.) Well, you know how it is... life sometimes catches up with you. The big news is that my Ravelry registration finally came through and pretty much any spare time I've had this week to go online, I've been on ravelry fantasizing about making all the beautiful things you guys have been making. How great is that site? It's an organizer, planner, shop, pattern finder, technique teacher, and bragging space all in one convenient place. Fab.

Other excuses include that I worked a bit of overtime this week, so just the one day off and otherwise I've been curled up in a ball on the sofa while the squirrel (or is it a hedgehog?) who lives deep in the bowels of well, my bowels tears them to bits. I swear there's a vicious animal in there just clawing his way out.

Too much information? Don't worry, there's more. I have a photoshoot scheduled next week to determine the origins of the little beast. I'm a bit nervous about it all, if I'm honest, and have been debating whether or not to mention that I'm getting a colonoscopy for Christmas this year for the blogosphere to balk at. But the truth is it's time for me to be brave.

Instead of staying up nights worrying and making myself sick getting my guts tied up in knots about it, I just plain need to come to terms with the fact that this is the way it is. The facts are as follows: My dad died of colon cancer and his mom too, so I've long known that sooner or later I'd have to have the poopshoot photoshoot and will probably have to have them regularly for the rest of my life. If Katie Couric can do it on national television, I'm sure I'll survive the relative privacy the National Health Service can provide.

Meanwhile, I've nearly finished the Pia scarf from Rowan's Big Just Got Bigger book, though I skipped out on the pink this time and used big wool instead of the shaggier biggie print. So my scarf looks a bit "lacier" than the photo in the book. I'm diggin it. And as long as we're on the subject of knitting, an update on the Pippa bag is overdue. I've finally finished the knitting as of two Monday nights ago, and it's just begging and pleading with me to hurry up and sew it and felt it already. All in due time, my dear Pippa, all in due time.

I've been obsessing over this book that I borrowed from my neighbor this week, and anyone who's not British may not have discovered the lovely and talented Nigella Lawson. I'm in the spring-time of my love, and at this point, I can't get enough of her.

I've been watching re-runs of her shows on the Food network all week. Thankfully, they're on frequently, because I'm apparently not the only one who can't get enough Nigella. Though in talking to friends and colleagues I get the sense that they're over her. I suppose that they've had the past 10 years to wallow in her Nigella-ness, where I've had only a mere week of discovery and inspiration.

I love the way she writes about food. Get this : "The trouble with much modern cooking is not that the food it produces isn't good, but that the mood it induces in the cook is one of skin-of-the-teeth efficiency, all briskness and little pleasure. Sometimes that's the best we can manage, but at other times we don't want to feel like a post-modern, post-feminist, overstretched woman but, rather, a domestic goddess, trailing nutmeggy fumes of baking pie in our languorous wake." Hear, hear!