Sylvia's Journal

I biked to Quaker meeting, just about my only exercise of the week, and enjoyed the ride under blue skies even though I was up against strong winds. It’s a heavy bike, the road goes up and down a bit and I sit up straight and so there is no aerodynamic advantage. But the ride always clears my mind which makes it easier to still it once I sit down. We were a small group, with one newcomer from the next town over and two students from a nearby college. We like to have newcomers as it strengthens the blood supply to our Meeting. Sometimes we get a little anemic.

Milt was there. Milt is a retired business man whose grandson was one of Sita’s high school classmates. We did not know Milt then. In 2004 he started funding an effort called the International Peace and Prosperity Project which did its first interventions in Guinea-Bissau. The intent was to detect early signs of impending societal violence and then take action to keep it from spinning out of control into civil unrest, war and needless destruction. The chief of the military and other high level officials were very engaged in the process.

When, about a month ago, this same chief of the military and the president were assassinated we all thought of Milt and his team. Yesterday I asked him if his heart was bleeding when he got the news. He said, yes and no. Yes of course because they had worked closely with the chief who was a man genuinely committed to peace; no, because after that things had not spiraled out of control. Not that everything is OK over there but it could have been worse.

I bicycled back from meeting with the wind in my back. I parked myself on a bench by Manchester harbor to write the poem that had formed in my head but instead composed a shopping list for the Tibetan tsampa soup planned for our dinner last night (from the cookbook ‘Beyond the Great Wall’ by Alford and Duguid). Without the original ingredients of yak meat and yak butter it is not entirely authentic but it did have the defining flavor of roasted barley. It’s on our list of favorites for not-quite-spring-and-not-quite-winter-evening meals.

The soup is a great accompaniment to the reading of the novel Blue Poppies (by Jonathan Falla) in which an entire Tibetan village treks through the Himalayas, eating a more authentic (but watered down) tsampa soup, trying to stay alive while outsmarting their Chinese persecutors (it’s in the early 1950s) with the unlikely help of a Scottish radio operator named Jamie Wilson.

I took advantage of the nice weather and, after the cooking was done, started to liberate the garden and flower beds from their fall and winter debris while grand dog Chicha hang around with a ball, putting it ever closer to me in the hope that I would throw it. I did a few times but I don’t have quite the same level of energy for ball throwing as she has for ball retrieving. Besides, my right shoulder is still under repair.