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There are going to be many of these kinds of days, but Halloween 2007 goes down as the first major national difference for the kids.

From what we’ve been told, kids don’t trick-or-treat here. Parents don’t spent hours joyfully making costumes/alter ego’s for their kids. There’s no “Biography Day” alternative where kids dress up as Meriwether Lewis or Galileo (as there’s no school right now).

With Tess in the house, there’s still dress-up nearly everyday, but it’s just not having the kids experience this same sort of childhood tradition and holiday is a little hard to bear. “We need to go to America every October!” Tess cried earlier today.

The reason for a difference in America and England is apparently based in fear: pranks of 14-16 year-old hooligans and parents feeling unsure about kids eating candy from strangers. Too many of those pre-teens have played too many pranks on old folks — i.e., egging houses, scaring innocents, etc. that people now just don’t bother to go out in general. People tape notices on their doors that either bar or invite kids to trick-or-treat.

Supermarkets are humorously barred from selling eggs to anyone under 16 years of age the week prior to Halloween. If I were planning to egg someone’s house, I would get eggs weeks if not months in advance to get them good and stinky. What a pathetic attempt by a supermarkets to prevent such debauchery.

Along those lines, there are no mountain-high piles of candy that greet you when walking into a supermarket. There are costume stores that sell all the same colored wigs, brooms, sickles, and various dismembered body parts that are seen in American stores at this time of year, but trick-or-treating in the fun American way does not exist.

Welcome to your new life.

I acknowledge the commercial side of Halloween in America and the fairly non-existent historical side of the holiday. Notwithstanding these downsides, transforming one’s childhood persona en masse is gleefully fun - I remember being either a hobo OR a 50s girl, alternating years, for a decade. I can remember trading “Big Daddies” for a “KitKat” as being the Annual Diplomatic Moment with my older brother Steve.

So, in a morose and helpless mood, we were puttering around the house today — kids resume school Monday — without any plans to do anything. Since I still don’t have a computer or DSL at home, I asked Rolf to do a little Halloween research and try to find something festive in the area. We learned that most Halloween-ish activities are apparently over, and we missed them (with the exception of our autumn walk at Killerton).

There was a Halloween party for swingers in Totnes (the counterculture mecca of southwest England), but we are too worn out for such alternative thinking.

Rolf did find something at a place called Crealy Park, so the kids pulled outfits from the costume trunk for an uncertain Halloween that had yet to be defined in this new country: Stellan grew a new leaf and decided not to be Garfield for the 4th year in a row; he was a bumblebee, recycling the outfit made for Tess in 2001, complete with stinger, stripes, antennae, and wings. We painted his face yellow and he wore black lipstick and mascara.

Tess was a cat, recycled from two years ago, when I made the outfit two sizes too large for her. She painted her face yellow, her nails black, and we painted whiskers and cheetah spots all over her face. She changed the cat hood this year by tying pink ribbons to the cat ears. The three-foot long cat tail I stuffed with batting still holds its shape.

August decided to be what seemed to be a rock-star wizard outfit: black cloak, starry cape, neon green long-haired wig, and he blue as his face color. He wanted black circles around his eyes, and I obliged, offering black lipstick to round out the glamour.

We headed off to Crealy and it was practically desolate. I saw a goblin run here, a witch run here. There were a few rides and slides as well as an indoor play area, which the kids definitely enjoyed. There was a petting zoo with a goats and calves, bunnies and guinea pigs. A gorgeous Shetland pony caught my eye, and I spent a long time petting it. I haven’t pet a horse since May, when the last ones left our farm. The feel of the pony’s brown hair and the look of her brown eyes brought back the years of having horses at our home. I started crying for the years of hearing horses galloping in the night by our house, of walking in the snow to feed them at night, and feeding them carrots and apples from the garden.

I felt like I was crying for our farm and for our country. I hadn’t cried for home for few weeks, and tried to stay away from the kids so as to not affect their Halloween.

I recognize in moving to a different country things like cultural traditions will be different. That reasoning and understanding doesn’t make the longing for what’s different easier.

In consolation, we allowed them to fill up three white bags of candy from the Crealy gift shop. Within five minutes of returning home, our doorbell rang. A trick-or-treater? August ran upstairs to his bag of candy. Rolf opened the door to a 14 year-old in a garbage bag with black paint on his face. Was he trying to be Death? Was he trying to be rubbish? Rolf tossed him a couple of pieces of candy from August’s stash, and shut the door.

Including the Monroe years, this was our first trick-or-treater, and we didn’t get egg in the face or on the house.

On the way to the University later, we encountered dozens and dozens of college students walking to parties in their costumes: Hulk, a sexy witch in short skirt and fishnet stockings, an androgenous witch, an ugly witch, an American cowboy, a construction worker…

Party on!

Weekend in Wales.

Our plans for a weekend of ‘unspoilt beauty’ along the Welsh coastline changed due to inclement weather. We ventured as far as Cardiff, Swansea, Mumbles and Gower, including the Gower Peninsula where we beachcombed in the mist near the tiny hamlet of Rhosilli. Remains of the 1887 shipwrecked Helvetia provided an eerie focal point at low tide.

The kids are on a two-week Half Term Break right now.

Stellan makes a discovery: chatting with a below-ground-level fish-and-chips cook yields songs from a faceless, cheery stranger; Welsh word for “female.”

Cardiff Castle, below. We didn’t go in, but should have in retrospect, given the weather.

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Illuminated Autumnal Gardens at Killerton House (Friday Night). I didn’t have our tripod with me for better shots of the trees, many of which awed Rolf and me: ancient oaks with stunning branch and trunk features, the biggest Japanese maple I’ve ever seen - with a canopy as big as a medium-sized swimming pool. The center picture in top row is a corridor of trees lit up by orange, red, and yellow lights. It felt like low-key Christmas lighting in October — with an emphasis on the structure of the trees losing now in the midst of losing their crisp multicolored leaves.

Incidentally, this garden was begun in 1777 by the owner of Killerton named Sir Thomas Akland. One of the most famous plant collectors of the age, John Veitch, was employed as a gardener here and he planted many of the finds from his world travels here at Killerton. I’ll be sure to return in the daylight, for certain.

On Friday night, there was also an autumnal candlelit dinner with a live harpist.

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Two Weeks Ago at Valley of the Rocks in north Devon, a stunning place which we saw in its quiet autumnal beauty of bracken ferns. Combined with the turqoiuse waters of Bristol Bay and the rugged cliffs, the old beauty here has stayed with me ever since with its unusual mix of softness and hardscape with teetering square rocks.

In Watersmeet (above), there is a sweet little valley where we stopped for tea with scones and clotted cream, totally overpriced at £8! We were with Rolf’s colleague Tim and Tim’s wife, Fiona, along with their two kids, Peter (in red sweatshirt) and Kyla. Peter has a serious crush on Tess and sends her steamy love letters arranging trysts. (The middle picture to the right of the tea house is Exmoor National Park.)

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Scenes of Exeter.

Stellan’s Montessori School, architecture, a gallant cross-walk guard we see every morning on the way to Tess’s school. (I was finally stopped in front of him, camera-ready!) And some random shots…

A trip to the local food market is like, a real trip, dude — in the adventurous sense.

It’s not like heading off to an exotic Moroccan bazarre or an outdoor French farmer’s market or even a farm in the English countryside, but it’s still mind-expanding: it’s foreign enough and highly influenced by nearby European countries while still in English.

I love food — growing it, preparing it, reading about it, and eating most things. Shopping here provides cultural geography lessons about general English tastes. Unfortunately, the name of the supermarket I go to is uninspiringly called “Tesco’s.” Along the uninspiring vein, it is bright white inside — not at all atmospheric like Whole Foods’ welcoming mosaic floor artwork, earth-toned painted walls, and moody lighting that makes you want to by luscious melons.

Any general stereotypes about folks from these parts not eating fresh vegetables, or overcooked vegetables, or meat pasties, or toads-in-the-hole are false. Devon and the surrounding counties are progressive in the sense that, in general, people tend to care about fair trade and organic products. Perhaps this is true for England in general, but I wouldn’t know.

Also striking: gray-haired codgers with rotted teeth hunched over in tweed jackets toting their re-useable bags as well. It’s a funky contrast.

There are whole aisles devoted to world cuisine (mainly Thai, Indian, and Mexican) as well as aisles for traditional things like kidney steak pie and fish and chips (in the frozen food section). All the salsa is canned and tasteless.

I haven’t really found “American” cuisine.

The English love pickled things — from boiled eggs to beets to onions. I love the English for that.

The chocolate and candy sections are massive as are the tea and coffee sections. I love them for that as well. I can’t say much about the quality of teas here as I don’t know tea well. I only know for certain that I dislike Lamsang Souchang from my submersion in food culture at The Musical Offering in Berkeley.

Since I’ve only been here eight weeks, I still get lost in the store.

The other day I was searching for mustard, mayo and ketchup for simple American hamburgers. It was a ridiculous criss-crossing across the store. Nearby the organic ketchup was mayo with basil, mayo with whole grain mustard seeds, and mayo with piri piri chilis. There are 14 bazillion different kinds of mustard. I’m like a deer in headlights trying to make a decision about such a simple thing.

(I was strangely comforted by the sight of a bottle of Heinz ketchup — that American standard. Or, maybe it was because of My Relationship with the Tomato: driving a 16-wheeler laden with 90,000 pounds of tomatoes in the summer of 1992 as well as living near so many canneries in the Central Valley.)

Sauces are everywhere. I can get Oriental plum sauce for the duck breasts in the meat section. I can buy free-range, organic chicken eggs and much larger duck eggs.

Dried apriots are from Turkey (rather than Patterson, California), walnuts from Italy (the organic ones) and China (the conventional ones). (For the record, they are utterly inferior little nuts that have been store too long.) I can get dried banana slices, hemp seed, and octopus in oil. I can get mango lassi, mango sheets, and soan papdi — a flakey Indian sweet. There seem to be a lot more canned fruits here — black cherries, plums, raspberries, blackberries, and canned apple slices. I’ve never seen canned apple slices in America, just apple sauce.

Many desserts here are known as “puddings” — not solely in the custardy sense. Cookies are known as “biscuits.” The variety of baked items floors me: fruit cakes from Italy (with nuts/dried fruit/brandy/port/sherry — it’s been early Christmas here since we arrived), and decorated cakes in various forms such as ”hedgehogs.” I can get daintily-decorated cupcakes, spongue rolls, biscuit cakes, baklava, and “French Fancies” which looked like dressed up Hostess cupcakes. (Yes, I whipped out my reporter’s notebook to record this aisle.) There are gorgeous chocolate cakes with white and dark chocolate shavings. “Victoria Slices” is the name of a spongue cake with a jelly filling. Here, most things are pre-made. Although there is more variety, most of it is trucked in from elsewhere. I much prefer the Whole Foods bakery where you can talk with the actual bakers.

There are some curious baked items called “Happy Hippos” which seem to be a fortune cookie in the shape of a hippo with milk and hazelnut filling. Other cookies are called jammie dodgers and party rings. What I would call a “bar cookie” — something I bake in a sheet pan and then cut — here, they call them “flapjacks.” Flapjacks, flapjacks, flapjacks everywhere.

I mentioned to one shopkeeper that a flapjack in the U.S. was the same as a pancake (which you can buy premade, along with waffles, in the bread section) and she looked at me twice. There are butter puffs, merengues, tarts, turnovers, shortcakes, fairy cakes … Here, I tend only to browse in these sections as baking at home is a meaningful pursuit for me. The quality of the breads is not as good as say, Whole Foods, which celebrates the range of Seattle bakeries.

The meat sections are pretty amazing with more emphasis on lamb than in American supermarkets. There are huge areas for beef and chicken as well, with cuts that makes my skin crawl as a teetering vegetarian.

Don’t even start me on the yogurts! Rhubarb champagne, wild cherry, fudge (with real fudge chunks), Spanish orange, lemon, mango. For this reason alone, this move has been worth it. (Jesting.) In America, I can get vanilla and strawberry at Safeway — and more varities closer to Seattle, say, at Whole Foods (aka “Whole Paycheck). Here, they have gone berzerk with it, and it’s incredible — truly delectable.

The cheese sections are quite large as well. Somerset Brie is just heavenly. (But I have to stay away from it as I inhale it on crackers.) I was in a pickle yesterday when I asked a cheesemonger where the provolone was since I couldn’t find it in with any cheeses.

“Provolone?” Quizzical look shot my way.

“Provolone-EE?” I emphasized.

They ladies had never heard of it. This does not bode well for our fennel pizzas with mozzarella and provolone cheese. I stopped a woman about my age in an aisle to ask where chicken stock was located (right behind me, of course) and I mentioned the provolone problem.

“It’s an American thing, something you’d find in New York? I have friends in New York, and they eat it. You won’t find it here.”

AaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!

I baked a chicken tonight and stuffed herbed butter under the skins. As I was basting it, Stellan sauntered up, eyes at counter level.

“Mommy, did they kill our chicken, and send it across the ocean?” He said this because the meat looked a lot more like a chicken with his two yellow legs cut off at the knees (on the drumsticks), revealing scaley yellow chicken legs. It definitely looked more chicken-like in this way. I served it white meat only, but August, especially, still refuses to eat chicken, as he loves them as pets and the cut was more revealing of the bird’s past life.

Life is much better. Our things are now at our Highcroft address, where we hope to be until we buy a place of our own.

I admit it! It does feel really really really good to have familiar things around us: our own furniture, mattresses, books, more clothes than the same dang things we’ve been wearing since August 27th, and so forth.

We’re out of the student housing cage we were all in, and happy to have the things that help us function well with three kids. Our former living situation was so unsavory that I couldn’t even entice a single songbird to the four-tired bird feeder we bought. Four different kinds of seed, and not one beak dared eat in our ‘hood.

Good riddance to the permanent creeping black mold in the single bathroom we all shared. Good riddance to the waste-of-time, all-in-one washer-dryer combo. Good riddance to garbage-strewn streets (which I did try to clean up several times).

Our things: bubble-wrapped and packed in mid-August > transported by rail from Washington to Virginia > floated across the Atlantic Ocean to London on a cargo ship named “The Dainty” > maneuvered onto a semi for transit to an Exeter cargo center > repacked into even smaller trucks > walked into the house by British blokes asking, “Where to, m’love?”

Off came the brushhog with summer grass still in its wheels. Then the lawnmower, our big metal bird sculpture, Adirondak chairs, bikes, farm tooks, collections of nails and boxes and boxes and boxes. The sofa (”settee”) and bookcases and fish tank followed. I checked each item off our 17-page inventory.

(We swear to Allah we will have less on our return to the States someday.)

A professional shipping company does it right: dismantled, packed, transported, and put back together. They took away all the boxes and wrap that we could shed before they departed. This tail end of moving hasn’t been arduous.

For the most part, the American shippers/packers were thorough. I was happy to find that the book I inadvertently left on the couch the first day of packing — The Adventures Huckleberry Finn — was still there on the couch. We’ve picked up where we left off.

A possee of 4-6 British blokes in various stages of bulk and tattoo development hauled everything up the 1-2 and 3 stories on our very verticle house on a hill. (No need for stairmaster for the unforeseen future.)

Most things are in excellent condition, but I was annoyed to see a broken terracotta pot, a broken terracotta sun face (not protected in bubblewrap), a chipped wood frame to a floral print, and a few other problems. At these blemishes, the British shippers were almost apoplectic, but I saw that their shock was also an opportunity to pick on the people on the other end of things.

“Absolutely outrageous!” when they saw a mirror had been cut out of Tess’s vanity. “Butch, did you see this? Just flabbergasting!” I’d never seen a group of bulky dudes dote on a vanity as much as I saw Friday.

And then, “You should report this right away,” as points for are leveled against the records of shippers. “Three points for blemishes and then they’re sacked!”

Overall, we’re not complaining though we do plan on filing a claim for the few items damaged, especially since we bought insurance.

What did I make for our first meal back?

Honestly, I was too preoccupied with unloading and organizing kitchen appliances to make more than “granary” (wheat) toast with Irish butter and sugar-free apricot jam for our first meal.

Our Official Second Meal at our table: Stinson Beach Blueberry Muffins from the “Breakfast Food” Cafe Beaujolais cookbook.

I can make those cream-grated nutmeg-toasted walnut morsels blindfolded.

Rolf and I ate at Cafe Beaujolais in Mendocino on our honeymoon and everything is delicious, if not rich on the comfort food side-of-cooking. The testy Margaret Fox — I know this from her writing, but also because I peered in at her cooking one time in her restaurant kitchen and got a severe glare in return — owned the restaurant from 1977 until 2000. She moved to Austria with her husband Christopher Kump, and sold the restaurant to a Sacramento couple.

If you go to the above link, you’ll see why we chose the very first paint scheme on our new little house.

Back to the blueberry muffins. I entered those things in the Evergreen State Fair August 2004 and was floored to see they won merit awards — with their careful placement into a special glass lean-to for presentation. I altered the recipe to make it “original” and wrote the recipe in a humorous style. (But yuck — imagine how baked items look after two weeks of the fair.) In retrospect, that community event is marked as my first step into a particular agrarian provincialism, something I seem to be losing having tripped off the western edge of North America.

One of the first things I unpacked were my cookbooks, collection of Bon Appetit and Cooks Illustrated magazines and diaries of what we’ve made family and friends for holidays, picnics, casual dinners. I opened that first, and recalled with a smile Thanksgiving 2000 when Rolf’s brother Eugene marveled at Scotch Eggs — hardboiled eggs wrapped in sausage. “Cholesterol bombs.” I counted 21 dishes prepared for that Thanksgiving meal and weekend of visiting — I am nuts, but it was a lot of fun. Tess was 9 months old, Aunt “Eubecca” was with Eugene, and Nana and Gamp and Emil were of course with us as well.

The kitchen was the first room arranged so we could eat together again at our table. Other boxes are staying out of the house as there are many things we don’t need until we set up a permanent home. I have a new mantra: no clutter, no stuff that doesn’t have practical value. Already, there are two boxes in the car loaded with items we’re donating to children in Mauritania. Ship it half way around the world only to give it away. Well, I just didn’t get it all done, despite a valient effort.

In other news: Rolf feels like he’s a kid in a candy store with the fabulous equipment in the geography department. He feels very very fortunate to be able to do science here. He’s been meeting with students as their assigned mentor, preparing to teach in the Winter, and other academic activities as new faculty.

(P.S. This is a public blog on the World Wide Web with a fairly tight theme, and it would be inappropriate for me to blog further about Rolf’s new job given anyone’s ability to google. If you want to know about his job, just ask him in person. Please let me know if you need his e-mail address…)

In other family news, August is also thrilled to have unpacked a chess game. In four days, he’s played probably twenty games and studying a chess book he unearthed. He’s in Chess Coaching and Chess Club at school, and he is getting very good very quickly. I have very little strategy other than a few dumb moves, and rely on my queen to wreck havoc in his ranks, but he’s now thrilled to have checked me in three unnerving moves. Fortunately, he’s grooming a new opponent named Tess.

We’re settling in.

At the same time, we try to keep from too much naval gazing at this moving experience of ours.

We re amazed at the news coming out of the southwest and the southeast: what is happening with the fire and the wind? Is Lake Mead really100 feet below normal? Is the Colorado River drying up? Is the water source for Las Vegas half gone? The New York Times reported 500,000 people have fled wildfires fueled by Santa Ana winds. The prediction is that by mid-century, there will be 60 million Californians, whereas now there are 36 million. Where’s the water going to come from? Is California on its way to becoming a desert? Apparently, it’s not even considered a “drought” any more by weather modelers — it’s a shift in climate that has already happened. This begs the question: what is going to happen to farming in the Central Valley without water? Wasn’t it last summer that it was 120 degrees in L.A.? This city has gone 150 days without rainfall this year alone. I recommend this blog by my friend Dennis Gallagher for more information about Big Picture global climate change issues (and much more).

Our home state of California is on our minds as we set up house in England, remembering with ease the burning Oakland Hills fires of 1991 when we were college students.

Lo and behold — our shipping container has arrived in England.

It didn’t fall from a cargo crane during a hurricane. (This has actually happened.)

It didn’t sink with all of our possessions washing up on the Jurassic coastline. (This has actually happened.)

Actually, what happened: it’s been here since September 29th.

Six weeks to ship here as Allied International Shipping said it would be.

<Cue: clinking of champagne flutes.>

For a discombobulating time period, we didn’t know where it all was. No one at Allied could tell us. We were entertaining the dramatic idea that all of our things wound up in Vietnam or Iceland or Madagascar. We were supposed to have been given an official tracking number that would have enabled us to monitor its movement like tracking a UPS package.

That actually didn’t happen.

Water under the bridge, container over the ocean, blah blah blah.

We’re a tad “further along” in the relocation process than other newly-hired professors who’ve recently relocated. A new colleague of Rolf’s has just arrived from Australia. His containers are floating somewhere on the South Pacific. His family still in Australia trying to tie up loose ends. Another new guy from Scotland has been living out of his van while waiting to find a place to live for his family. Doesn’t moving for the love of science sound enjoyable?

Don’t be smug.

Fortunately, we’re going to be breaking free of the quarantine we’ve been in as everything is supposed to show up at our new rental house near the woods this Thursday and Friday.

And guess what, Mom? I AM NOT MEMORIALIZING THE HOVEL!!! I can hardly wait to get out of here as it still feels completely claustrophobic.

I still don’t know how the 40-foot container will go up the steep curvy driveway without taking out a few Minis or VW Rabbits. I will ask Rolf again if he has warned Allied about this minor geographical hurdle. As I distinctly recall from the move in Monroe, there was a Samoan mover with the anger-management problem who was not fond of the simple curve in our driveway as it necessitated moving everything by smaller truck out to the container truck. I certainly don’t want to confront a lorrie driver who hasn’t been informed about this issue. ’Hey, bloke,’ we could assure him, ‘It could be worse. At least England has made it into the World Rugby Finals, right?

Everybody says that once our things arrive, this whole deconstruction/rebuilding process will be easier. However, it’s not that being surrounded by things makes leaving easier.

I am not materialistic and don’t need things to make me happy, although I guess a couple of key “things” might make adjustment easier.

And, yes, adjusting to living here is getting somewhat easier — mainly because I know I can revisit the farm (and my thoughts on leaving) in 60 days. That doesn’t count, then, you may say in your contrarian ways. Then bugger off, you! <Cue: my loud raspberry in your face.> When coping with the loss of a family history in one place, this is what this person’s heart does and I don’t think things will make that loss of place completely go away, but I concede that it might make things easier — if only for the fact that all our boxes didn’t sink.

(This loss is still a tremendous blow to me.)

Hmmmm….I guess having our photographs, furniture, books, desks, chairs, toys, and games — familiar things with a little history — will help put this splintered me back together. Yes, stitching together a homelife can begin with memories we have with those things.

I asked Rolf what he most wanted to see again. He thought for a moment, and being sentimental, said, “I’m sentimental.” Brilliant, Rolf — tell the folks something they don’t already know about us. “Hmmm. Well, probably the family scythe.”

(Yes, he has a scythe used his Finnish ancestors.)

Considering he didn’t scythe any fields of wheat (though he did try it on thistles), I razz him. What about our history — not somebody else’s? Then he said, “Well, I love all of our farm tools ….” as they remind him of being 24 and 25 years old, and beginning our big adventure of land stewardship and farm renovation, a beloved time of our lives that is officially becoming just a memory as we leave our 20s and 30s — and early parenthood and starting our careers — far behind.

For me, the most treasured of our things: our cherry farm table with benches, made in 1997 by Amish men whose initials are carved into the underside of the table…

…he interrupts my thoughts. “Actually, I think I really look forward to seeing the big table,” he said.

I knew I married him for a good reason.

We bought it in Snohomish when August was an infant. It is an object where countless quiet memories are etched: thousands of homemade and homegrown meals eaten there over ten years. Memories of music played around the table. Conversations over the years there with friends and family, including those who’ve departed this world … Rolf’s grandpa and his wife Mary, and Rolf’s brother Eugene and my friend Angie. Rolf’s friend Marc.

Six windows framed the eating area where the table sat. We have an unobstructed eastern view across our backyard through the pasture, out to the evergreen trees lining Woods Creek and beyond to the craggly Cascades and Mt. Stickney. Rolf created a view — i.e., hacked off tree tops — of the mountains especially from my vantage point at that table. Sitting there with a mocha or a cappuccino and reading the morning paper was a morning constitution, a quiet time before children awoke that writer Sylvia Plath memorialized as a “glassy blue time.”

I also strategically placed birdfeeders in sites where each of us could enjoy the comings and goings of various birds: the yellow-breasted American goldfinches who sing in nearby cherry tree, chickadees and Cassin’s finches who ate sunflower seeds from the feeder on the post in the laurel bushes, and Evening Grosbeaks, sparrows, Stellar’s jays, and the occasional pileated woodpecker who hung upside down from the birdfeeder-wedding gift from my Uncle Tom and Aunt Terrie to eat wild bird feed. With flowering plants just outside the windows on the deck, we lured Anna’s hummingbirds close to the windows where we could watch them flit from flower-to-flower while eating our blueberry pancakes.

I wrote my Masters thesis at the table and graded student papers there after I became a teacher.

There are indentations in the wood from the kids learning to use forks as well as pencils. Residue from birthday parties, fingerpainting, and spilled milk may still reside in the crevices.

That cherry table was The Center of The Center of our Home and where our family life was defined. Candles in brass holders always burned there for dinner. A vase nearly always filled with flowers.

I see the table in pictures I tacked to the walls in our Hovel. I think good thoughts.

We had some of Rolf’s colleagues come into the townhouse this weekend and they saw these pictures. Two particular ones are blown up: one of Beowulf at the creek in a snowy winter scene, the other of the Cascades during a pink sunrise. What seemed to capture their attentions were pictures of the house — “Did you actually build this yourselves?”

For a few sticky moments, I felt ashamed of having pictures of our “house” on the walls (real estate photos, at that), for the reason that we could be judged for being Americans who need to be reminded of the objects in a house they once owned. Compared to space that exists here, what we had practically seems palatial.

Rolf said he was glad to not have the farm to work on anymore, and I corrected him as I came downstairs, saying “Rolf! We loved it!” He meant to say that he wants to focus on science, not farm building. (Not that this idea is valid anymore, as we finished everything in preparation for sale. Ironic, isn’t it?) And I could tell that it really pained him to try to distance himself from what others might see as materialism in their limited knowledge of who we are, and what being in one place so long does to one.

The pictures remind us of the simple, quiet family life that took place in that space over time. It reminds us of what we accomplished over 15 years — that our extracurricular project was renovating a farm. (We were either really savvy or really naive, in retrospect.) It reminds us that we once had a highly developed sense of place and valued what takes place at a really good table — we have neither now, except each other.

I’m looking forward to a meal in our new place out of my own cookbooks Friday night or Saturday morning, even if that requires dodging around a few cardboard boxes.

Some snapshots from Sunday in Totnes — what I have dubbed the “Berkeley of Devon” though these photos don’t show those aspects. Rolf and I loved all the stonework — cobblestone streets and stone buildings. Bottom, middle: we’re walking in some ramparts to a 16th century guildhouse directly behind the church in the top left photograph.

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Later in the day, in Dartmouth…Dartmouth Harbour and Castle.

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(Below) This is Riverside Park with its canal, located minutes from our townhouse. We’ve been feeding the birds and playing on equipment here after school. I run and cycle along these trails. The weather has been, for the most part, lovely — drier than Seattle, I’d guess, with no more than five days or rain since we arrived 43 (not that I’m counting) days ago.

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Paper airplane building is an obsession right now. August tapes eight pieces of standard 8.5 x 11 pieces of paper together to build “ginormous” devices. A little music from Daddy always brings out dancing feet and probably a little suspicion from our neighbors. August’s creation from a tech class he’s in, bottom left. Stellan loves crafts and cutting and drawing.

Which brings to mind the emergence of Stellan’s recognizable interest in things visual. He regularly comments on beautiful objects around him. I’ve noticed this for a while, but in the last few weeks, he has made comments such as: “I like those hanging flowers — aren’t they beautiful?” He has noticed “beautiful” women for a long time (I taught him to bat his eyes at an Irish suchi waitress when he was 2o months old) and the other day a fit woman walked by wearing a short, flowing black dress with her hair flying in the wind. He said: “I love that woman. She has a beautiful dress.” After Tess — who notices any new detail in her environment - he is the first to “like” a new shirt I might have, or the way something is arranged differently in a room like a flower vase. He sits for long periods of time drawing “powerful shooters” in great detail with his markers. The pencil drawings he brings home from his school are remarkably different than what he was doing just two months ago: he actually colors in the lines so well that I’ve asked, “Stellan, is this your work?” As he approaches his fourth birthday on October 25th, artistic traits and awareness of his environment seem to be emerging.

We have just booked tickets for the Christmas holidays.

We’ll be on our farm and hanging out in Seattle December 15-22. We’ll head down the West Coast to Trinidad and into the Central Valley and Escalon 22-31. Rolf will fly out earlier to attend the American Geophysical Union meeting in San Francisco as well as to do fieldwork on the Sacramento River. That Christmas and AGU are at the same time in the same neck of the woods is perfect. Perhaps a tradition is arising here?

The kids start the Winter Term Thursday Jan 3.

I’ll fly out with the August, Tess and Stellan — go ahead: imagine the fun I’ll have on a trans-Atlantic flight without Rolf — and meet him in Seattle to tie up some loose ends at the farm, bury our time capsule, don wetsuits and swim in the creek (maybe not…), and play in the fort in the woods. And stuff ourselves on phad thai at Benjarong, stroll in the Bellevue Botanical Gardens, take a Christmas boat out on Lake Washington…

You may have known this all along, but I haven’t seen the light: curiously, our Pacific Northwest and California worlds haven’t evaporated from our lives. Yes, relationships and friendships endure. It’s hard to remember those seemingly obvious things when you’ve uprooted — but I speak for myself. I’ve been averting my eyes when I see globes or maps, as I just can’t take the distance we now are from what love; this time at home will allow me to revisit with new perspective what has been left.

Just amazingly, we’ll be at home — where August was born on December 18, 1997 - to celebrate his 10th birthday.

After we squeeze a week out of what will truly be the last time on the farm — can there be another time before it’s occupied by future owners? — we head to our childhood homes in California for Christmas, a little ice skating in Yosemite during winter, and delightful reuben sandwich-eating at Saul’s Delicatessan. This is the best New York Jewish deli outside of New York (!) where I’ve been eating since I was 13, on spring break visits to my Aunt Liz via Amtrak and continued when I was a student at Berkeley, living around the corner from Saul’s. (I am nothing without my Annual Reuben. [And yes, I am probably the first person to hypertext a reuben sandwich in her blog.]) I could afford this magnificent creation as a student, but could never even afford even a cup of tea — known as $7.99 “infusions” — at Chez Panisse, a block away.

We all fly out of San Francisco on December 31, but we may change this to later if we can swing it.

I would just like to put out a short list of simple requests. Hey, no obligations, no pressure, no worries or associated guilt trips if they don’t come to fruition. None whatsoever.

• Grandpa, please save your voice for the “birdie song” (”Let’s all sing….”)
• Grandma, can you please bake a lemon merengue pie?
• Mom, can I ask for some lasagne even though it would be post-Christmas?
• Mom Aalto, just a little reassurance that there will be a Christmas goose?
• Gamp, a little bluegrass music?
• Dad, a little Yahtzee?
• Uncle Tom, a night out at El Ranchito? (This is the land bereft of good salsa.)
• Zoe, can we schedule a hair appointment?
• Cindy, some last minute Christmas craftmaking?
• Dang, I’ll miss book group — bet you’ve already planned to meet in January?
• Mike and Lynne, can we schedule a little nan and mango chutney fest?
• Holly, Tess has wardrobe additions for Gumbo and Banana. (Not surprisingly, the English have all manner of clothes for their dogs.)
• Jane, maybe a little music performance?
• Uncle Tony, chocolate pancakes?
• Amy, a hike in the hills or frisbee on the beach?
• Playdates, slumber parties with Patrick, Wendy, Katelyn, Cameron, Sophie, and Grace…
• Harry our beloved black cat: I hope to see you dressed warmly, you debonair coyote-dodger.

Yes, a strong association of food with people and places and an attempt to tap into those warm feelings of family and friends through unchanging familiarity. (If Saul’s ever changes their reuben recipe, I will just die. Die, I say!) I do not care how sentimental or romantic this sounds. (Oh, and — NEWSFLASH! - I am sentimental and romantic.) This is what it feels like to be without your home and to need those simple cornerstones and traditions. The idea of seeing familiar faces in Escalon, running along the Humboldt coast and being in Yosemite during winter are thoughts that will hold me through this first friggin winter in England.

I just bought tickets for one of our absolute favorite past-times with the kids, a performance at the Seattle Children’s Theatre. (We’ll be seeing “The Never-Ending Story” 7 p.m., Dec 21st.)

Maybe we’ll sign paperwork for selling the farm then as well if all goes through.

sigh

And then a little of our old lives actually comes to our neck of the woods. Another American scientist is flying the coop — the third Tom Dunne graduate student to flee to Tom’s former British Isle home. In January, a friend to all five Aaltos and a colleague of Rolf’s is moving from his Lake Merritt neighborhood in Oakland to a teaching and research position at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland. Woo-hoo! See you soon, Mike!

My extraordinary friend Amy is celebrating her 40th birthday — alone in Paris! — in early January (with an extraordinary husband wrangling their four children). I’ll be joining her for a few days of smoking and drinking, hard partying, and general debauchery for which I’m widely known.

To see the pictures up close, just double-click on them….

Saltram House

Two weeks ago, when August was at his rifle-shooting, surfing, rock-climbing retreat with his class, we took off to Plymouth where we toured this stunning 18th century Georgian house. (Looks a little like Bath, eh?) Gorgeous library of politically-minded family, private bed chambers decorated in gold wallpaper, and an amazing kitchen with more copper pots, pans, and cake molds, a little dented by centuries of use, than I have ever seen. I counted more than 40 cake molds alone in the half hour I spent imagining what it must have been like to cook in this kitchen with separate larder, pantry, baker’s room, meat room, prep room, etc.

The driveway of my dreams, lined with wild cyclamen.

Many mansions and estates are tourist sites taken care of by the English Heritage or the National Trust and usually generate additional income through garden stores and tea rooms. Isn’t it thoughtful that there are places for dogs to take a breather? (Nova will be out of quarantine in four weeks, and we can hardly wait to take her along with us on our weekend jaunts.) It was easy to imagine the echoes of clopping horse hooves in this gorgeous brick, cobblestone, and rock stable courtyard (center).

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Tess with classmates at a recent birthday party. Two of her bestest friends — she’s a girl! — include Emiline (middle) and Olivia (right). I’m being driven a little crazy by the names of Tess’s classmates: Emma, Emilia, Emiline, Emily, Mimi, Amy, Claudia, Olivia, Charlotte, Charlie, Bella…there are 18 girls in her class, but these are the ones whose names I can remember…

During the party, Rolf and I hoofed it along a public footpath at Powderham Castle, discovering this folly (left) and a view across the River Exe (looking east) to the estuary.

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Tackle em, son.

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Some quick shots of Exeter streets (faaaaaar below).

In the middle view of a new shopping plaza, note the Roman wall, remants of which are everywhere — Exeter used to be completely encircled by it.

This also brings up the curious topic of the history August and Tess are learning. Of course, it doesn’t begin with what Rolf and I are familiar with — Native Americans history — nor do their history continue with “When the Europeans arrived…” They go further back to the Celts and Romans, which is of course fascinating stuff. This shift in historical perspective for our American kids is an odd feeling, the very beginnings of a new national identity for them. We’ll have to make up for this when we return to the States.

After pillaging and killing, Romans “brought” sophistication to the tribal Celts — especially with their organized plazas and cities, running water, and a new complexity in food with the introduction of a variety of herbs, spices, and meats to Britain. (One such meal I chuckled at was roast pig stuffed with live birds.) Much Roman influence is still here. The other day Tess visited an ancient Celtic roundhouse with her class. One of the first women she learned about was Boudicca, a famous female Celtic warrior. Grrrrrrrl power.

Racing forward a few centuries, ask August about the Tudors and he can tell you all about Richard III and Henry VII and VIII. (Okay, well, not allllll about…) On BBC, a new racy series called “The Tudors” is airing on Friday nights — I meant to watch it last night but fell asleep; instead, August and Rolf saw it, and Rolf spent half the time covering August’s eyes as it was soft-pornish with rock music — Henry VIII’s titillating history is featured first to attract viewers.

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Bicton Park Botanical Gardens

The above left picture shows the beautiful symmetry of this 18th century Italian garden with the alignment of statues, fountain and obelisk. The trench you see between the water and the obelisk was dug out by French prisoners of war — during which war, I couldn’t tell ya — sorry.

The kids loved the indoor play area at the Garden.

I have spent 39 years on American roads. The last 20 or so years, I’ve occasionally cursed their omnipresence. After five weeks on Exeter’s ancient roads - when we’re not doing 80 on the M-5 to the Moors — I have squeezed my way through a maze of minis and compacts half the size of the behemoth I must drive.

You wave your hand at the back of the peanut gallery claiming you need a “visual.”

I oblige.

Imagine driving down a typical two-lane American country road. Neat yellow stripes flow down its center while tidy white lines demark the road’s edge. Here in England, just thinking about those yellow stripes makes you feel all warm and fuzzy inside because here everything is blurry.

American elbow room…

Now to contrast. For the sake of familiarity, let’s just choose Yeager Road as our example, as it’s the width of a typical non-arterial I take in here in Exeter. Brits don’t use yellow to demark the center lane because as you discover, there really is no firm center lane! Let’s draw a dotted line down the middle of the lane just to be confusing. Now, pick up you pen and draw a teeny dotted line about five feet wide in the right lane where cars may park. Plunk cars into your parking lane (within the lane). Your hand goes up. No, you may not put them in the grassy ditch on the side of the road. They are firmly parked in the parking lane within the lane. Your hand goes up again. No, you may not put a car on an Exeter sidewalk.

Alright, let’s now randomly drop cars onto the other side of the road: these are the delivery cars with flashing lights, parents dropping off their children, people running errands into markets. Here and here and there.

Congratulations, you’ve just created an Ordinary Exeter Obstacle Course. With one lane nearly completely blocked by a line of parked cars and the other lane peppered with delivery lorries, you are now free to drive. Please make your car a Land Cruiser for extra difficulty.

Oh: I have neglected to add something - lines, in both directions, single-file, of cars also trying to negotiate your obstacle course. Toss in a (biodiesel) city bus and an American-sized charter bus for fun. Where there are curves in the road, the bus can’t get through and though legally-parked, a car absolutely must be moved thus necessitating a quick chain of events beginning with the bus driver, through the police, to the cell phone in your handbag which causes you to rush out of the Maynard School courtyard where you’re arranging a coffee date.

Fortunately, there is a lot of give-and-take. There is startling politeness, too. This sort of thing in America would not be accepted — roads would have been widened — but a brawl, curses, and flipped middle fingers would have resulted. Three cars dash through this course while another driver waits until an opportunity opens. This waiting car then makes a break for it with four more cars in tow. Ebb, flow, ebb, flow. Each person you let through thanks you with a full-hand wave or a subtle lift of a finger off the steering wheel. Oh, this may all sound confusing, doesn’t it? And it is.

You do learn that if you leave home 8:10 a.m. rather than 8:20 a.m., there is a noticeable reduction in obstacles in the way.

Congratulations - by handily retracting your side mirrors and four-wheeling it onto sidewalks, you can enjoy a drive through Exeter streets.

On a related topic, let’s discuss pedestrians. There can be 11 wheelchairs and 23 toothless pensioners qued to cross the street at a designated crosswalk, yet cars whoosh past them, leaving the pedestrians to dash across at a break in traffic. This contrast in courtesies curiously and sharply differs with gestures drivers actually convey to each other when they let other cars through (per above). Coming from Berkeley where pedestrians practically throw themselves onto the street whenever they feel the other side calling them — who cares about these human constructs of “crosswalks” — I am more inclined to the “Power to the People” attitude. Perhaps this pedestrian culture is different in London or other big cities in England, but here in slightly more retro, less P.C.-than-London southwest England, there is an absolute deference by people to the car. When I stop my car for pedestrians at crosswalks — and I just know I am the only one in Exeter doing that, of course - the disabled, the pensioners, and the student or whomever, always wave their thanks like they’re trying to get the attention of a relative whose ship is docking, as if this stunning courtesy has never been extended to them. Cool dudes act surprised as well with a sublte thumbs-up acknowledgement (when they pull their hands out of their tight, low-low-low rise pants.

I was also interested to know that all over the U.K., it is illegal to talk on a mobile (rhymes with “nubile” not “noble”) or, for that matter, even eat or drink while driving, as drivers risk £60 fines and three points on their driving records. A fairly prominent “Dying to Take the Call” public relations campaign seems to be an effective deterrent. These rules are not surprising given the narrow roads, obstacle courses, number of cars, and pedestrians hoofing it around town. The only time a person is allowed to use a mobile while driving is to call 999 (the American “911″).

In contrast, it is not mandatory that cyclists wear helmets. In my own non-scientific study, I found that about 3 out of 4 cyclists do not. It is common to see a cyclist -wearing a three-piece suit, or jeans and a t-shirt, or standard cycling spandex — rocking out to an iPod in one ear while talking on his mobile in the other, blasting downhill or winding around traffic without head protection. It gives me the willies.

One thing I am unsure about is any sort of legality regarding music volume while driving. I can’t recall hearing any people announcing their thumping stereo systems like young turks in every American city. On recent rides back to the hovel-townhouse from school, we’ve been listening to August’s favorite albums by Green Day and the Black-Eyed Peas; he and I both love “American Idiot” and “Boulevard of Broken Dreams” at fairly loud levels. A little end-of-the-day pump up duh jams, mon. I’m already uncomfortable driving a big car, but I’m made more even more uneasy driving a big thumping car…I guess I’ll stop a police officer about the legality of music volumes.

In the meantime … Some Green Day — whose sound is a cross between effervescent “Go-Go’s” and the punk “The Clash” (i.e., catchy and pop-ish, yet angry and critical.)

“American Idiot”Don’t want to be an American idiot.
Don’t want a nation under the new mania
And can you hear the sound of hysteria?
The subliminal mind **** America.

Welcome to a new kind of tension.
All across the alien nation.
Where everything isn’t meant to be okay.
Television dreams of tomorrow.
We’re not the ones who’re meant to follow.
For that’s enough to argue.

Well maybe I’m the faggot America.
I’m not a part of a redneck agenda.
Now everybody do the propaganda.
And sing along to the age of paranoia.

Welcome to a new kind of tension.
All across the alien nation.
Where everything isn’t meant to be okay.
Television dreams of tomorrow.
We’re not the ones who’re meant to follow.
For that’s enough to argue.

Don’t want to be an American idiot.
One nation controlled by the media.
Information age of hysteria.
It’s calling out to idiot America.

Welcome to a new kind of tension.
All across the alien nation.
Where everything isn’t meant to be okay.
Television dreams of tomorrow.
We’re not the ones who’re meant to follow.
For that’s enough to argue.

This morning I pulled into the car park at Miller’s Inn on the River Exe not far from our townhouse.

It was a cool, sunny morning with low clouds reminding me of Puget Sound mornings. A white nylon cap keeps the low sun out of my eyes. That bright orb in the sky does shine here: everywhere, rosemary plants flourish.

An unoccupied police car — with checkerboard sides of flourescent yellow and blue - sat in the car park, along with a worn sports car. Inside sat a long-haired man I recognized from yesterday’s run. I’m suddenly a little suspicious of his idle routine: he’s either enjoying the slight waterfall when he should be working or he’s dealing drugs or he’s an unemployed English major.

I looked askance at him, made a show of repeatedly locking my car — click! click! click! click! - and then set out across the bridge to join fellow Exonians jogging and walking dogs.

It wasn’t quite as chilly as yesterday and I shed my outer shell.

A heron stood in the swift-moving water — its presence a sign that there are fish in the currents and an reminder that more wildlife are further south on this circular bike and running path where the river and the English Channel meet. I make a mental note to run farther south.

I prefer running on soft grass, so instead of taking stairs down to a cement promenade along the water, I stayed high and headed north along the grassy top of the canal bank. Signs along the canal educate passersby about the wool industry here and the importance the 50-mile long river has played in the history of Exeter. I learned this river has played an historically important role as well: Romans reached Exeter in 50 AD and because this was the lowest point where the river could be crossed, it was turned into a stronghold; there was a lot of power to be had where the river could be safely crossed.

The canal was built in 1566. This was hundreds of years after the Countess of Devon built a weir — a low dam across a stream constructed to raise its level or divert its flow — in the 13th century. She’d had a dispute with the Port of Exeter and this weir prevented big boats from entering the city. Ah, the whims of being a Countess.

As a result, an important trading port developed over the centuries and the quay’s — pronounced as “keys” — brick buildings now house cafes, surf shops, restaurants, massage and aromatherapy centers as well as apartments.

To crack the closed British facade, I do things like wave at elderly women in second-story apartment windows as they watch life pass them by, as well as lob a chipper “good morning” to those I pass. Once you wave or greet them, this strange species always returns with an enthusiastic wave, or a startled but cheery reply, if not a giggle. It’s the most hilarious thing.

Running on the tops of the canal banks is soft on my knees, but it also serves another purpose since dogs are out on walkies with their Wellie-wearing owners. There is nothing like complimenting a Brit on his or her dog to broach a conversation.

Today a bulldog and a sheepdog ran straight up to me — I don’t deny I was encouraging them with my come-hither facial expression - and jumped on my legs, an act that is prohibited with Nova but fine by me now as I love contact with animals.

“Nigel! Nigel!! Down!” one woman shouted at a distance to her black bulldog-mix.

“It’s okay …” I say. “I don’t miiiiiind…” scratching Nigel’s head. “My own dog is in quarantine since we just moved here….”

“Oh the poor thing!”

Five minutes of commisseration over quarantine begins. And then — learning where we’re from, why we’re here, where we’re staying. And before long, you’re in their brick house eating scones and clotted cream over tea. That’s my aim, anyway. And we’ll have a conversation about global warming — not if it’s really happening, but what this country doing about it. Or something like that.

I finished my run with a sprint back to the suspension bridge where the English major sucked on a cigarette. Below me in the water, a swan landed while two others took off in different directions. Landing is graceful but the taking-off is embarassing to watch as it’s a long affair of loud wing-flapping and running on the water surface. A woman pushing a blond toddler in a stroller took one last drag on her own cigarette and flicked the butt into the river where the heron fished.