Syncing ALL of your Google calendars to your iPhone

Sometimes I marvel at how much information is available in the blink of an eye. All of my Google calendars weren't showing up on my iPhone, so I searched, found this article, and my problem was solved... all in 5 minutes.

The technological age is marvelous in many ways.

Thanks, Michael Hyatt!

The Water and Stones

We fill the hands and nurseries of our children with all manner of dolls, drums, and horses, withdrawing their eyes from the plain face and sufficing objects of nature, the sun, and moon, the animals, the water, and stones, which should be their toys.

--Ralph Waldo Emerson, The Poet

(via Zadi Diaz)

Poetry Vs. Literature

You must let your poems ride their luck
On the back of the sharp morning air
Touched with the fragrance of mint and thyme ...
And everything else is Literature.

--Paul Verlaine, Art poétique, 1882.

Rest well, Adrienne.

Adrienne Rich died yesterday. I cried when I found out, from a friend's status update. I don't remember now how I discovered Rich's feminist writings. I remember when, on our final day of directing class in my freshman year at Playwrights Horizons, our teacher, Jim Peck, read out loud to us the poem "Final Notations," and gave us handouts of the poem.

I vaguely remember reading Rich in the required Writing Workshop class, which would have been a heinous waste of time were it not for the engaged students and the teacher, Gaurav Majumdar, who lit up when he talked about Joan Didion and had us analyze Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band as a work of literature. It was in his class that I learned how to pronounce her first name: Ah-drienne.

How did I find her larger works from there? I remember reading her words in a library book checked out from the Lancaster University library in England, sitting in my room alone, warm light low on the horizon. In that room, I woke up. I read her, Germaine Greer, others whose names I forget in this moment. I copied long passages from her books into my journal and then let my mind wander over, through, under her words and try to understand how they affected me, where those brilliant points of connection lit up between the text and my life. There were so many places.

In my senior year, back home in New York City, I took Feminism and Theatre and Rich's ideas broadened into others -- Moraga, Anzaldúa, Lorde. I decided I would never get married and I told my then-boyfriend so. The axis upon which my life now turns was formed then.

It was during my senior year that Adrienne Rich published "Fox" and held a reading at NYU, in one of the beautiful buildings on Washington Square Park that they feature in the glossy brochures, the buildings that theatre students rarely got invited to otherwise. My boyfriend and I went together. I had my copy of her book; we got there early to sit close. She was so much smaller, physically, than her words, but her voice was strong and her vision exquisite. I was so new to the experience of hearing poets read their own work.

When it was time for her to sign books, Sharon Olds stood at the front of the line, guiding people where to go. Sharon Olds! A brilliant poet in her own right, author of one of my favorite poems, "I Go Back to May 1937." An extraordinary writer whom I admired. I was nervous, but she drew me in to the conversation when I reached the front of the line. She was so excited about seeing Adrienne, too. Before I approached the table, she and I shared a fan-girl moment of thrill about being so close to Adrienne Rich.

Her writing was woven into every stage of my New York life, my early 20s, my writing awakening, and for that, I am grateful. Rest well, Adrienne. And to everyone inspired by her, keep writing, keep thinking, keep fighting. We need you.

Planting New Trees

Last month, Austin Energy crews had to remove three trees and trim another one in our backyard because they were interfering with power lines. Now, this worked out for us -- they were all fast-growing "trash" trees (if any tree can be called such a thing) and we didn't want them there anyway.

When the crew head left, he handed me a brochure about the removals. I was beyond excited when I saw that the city offers free replacements when they have to remove trees from your yard. Free trees? OH YEAH. I did so much research on the native tree replacement options they offered, you would not even believe it. Ask me about the desert willow's foliage patterns. Go for it.

On Friday, the FIVE amazing trees arrived in their five gallon buckets. I actually skipped outside to see them, no joke.

A waterproof-cased iPhone is optimal for taking mediocre photos of new trees when you have muddy hands.

So we spent this beautiful Sunday wandering the aisles of Natural Gardener, bagging our own mulch and turkey compost, and then relocating five nandina bushes and digging one hole and planting our brand new Mexican plum tree in our backyard.

(Digging 12" x 30" holes in 86 degrees is actually harder than it sounds. I guess these baby-carrying arms aren't as strong as I thought.) We also made room for the common tree senna in our front yard.

Tonight, I came across this quote in the engaging book "Home" by Bill Bryson:

I do not know whether I am singular in my Opinion, but, for my own part, I would rather look upon a Tree in all its Luxuriancy and Diffusion of Boughs and Branches, than when it is thus cut and trimmed into a Mathematical Figure.

Joseph Addison, "The Pleasures of the Imagination" (1712)

Indeed, Joseph. Indeed.