Green Tara, Ladybugs, and Girl Power

I belong to a group of women who meet weekly to meditate and solve all the world's problems. That isn't the greatest description of our doings, but the truth is harder to pin down. We started as a book group to read, discuss, and go through exercises for Brene Brown's book, The Gifts of Imperfection. From there we talked; watched videos and movies; did projects; contemplated life; drank wine and hot tea; burned journals; consoled, commiserated and advised one another; and have gone on field trip or two. (Stalking Elizabeth Gilbert may or may not have been involved.) This winter, we worked through Sarah Susanka's book, The Not So Big Life. But we aren't a book group. You can only move through so many self-help/motivational books before you start to question whether you are addicted to saving yourself from yourself or if you are going to take what you learned and live your life more fully.  We are choosing the latter. About a third of our group has a background in counseling, a third has a background in the arts, and over half have been Unitarian Universalists at one point on another. It makes for grand introspection, if introspection can be a sport played by nine women. And yeah, we are going to keep it at that number. It works for the Supreme Court, and it works for us--as counsel and witness to one another's lives. We named the group Green Tara. Green Tara, for our meditation practice and subsequent reaches toward enlightenment. Green is also a play on Green Lane--our usual meeting spot.

Green Tara at Two Buttons

Sometimes we need to get outside of ourselves and Green Lane. Last Thursday, we took a field trip to the city of Wilmington. (Arden is a northern suburb. We have a Wilmington address, but identifying with Wilmington is purely voluntary. Some people don't take advantage of the scene and culture to be had. For others, it plays a big role. I am somewhere in the middle.) Wilmington has been having block parties once a month in the temperate months. Thursday's block party was themed The Ladybug Festival as it was a showcase of female musical artists, many of them local. A spectacular evening. I was dragging, but so happy I went, because the energy was uplifting. The GT's and I were angling to see Angela Sheik, an international looping guru, who lives in Wilmington. I have been Angela's groupie since Mark and I saw her at one of Cynthia's barn shows four years ago. But Thursday evening, I was introduced to more artists, including Mary Arden Collins, a native of Arden who makes her home in California and whose latest album features a collaboration with Keb' Mo'. Her voice rang pure and clean like a bell. I was mesmerized. Jenny Leigh, another bright spot on the lineup, concluded the evening with gold boots flashing and some raucous good county music. Along with the music, the crowd added to the energy of the summer evening. People of all ages, colors, income levels, family situations, sexual orientation and fashion sense collided in the streets. It was a visual feast as well as a treat for the ears. Not to mention taste as I ate my Seoul Bowl and drank my Ladybug-tini which was very playful--a dark pink concoction with blueberries standing in for the dots on a Ladybug's wings. I stayed up past my bedtime on a school night and didn't yawn once. In fact, I am pretty certain I had a smile pasted on my face the whole time.  As Jenny Leigh sang, "Hands up!" And so we did.

I've heard the phrase Girl Power bandied about a lot over my lifetime. For me, the truth of that phrase is less of a karate kick or a high five and more of a group hug. We women are communal in nature and our strength comes in the currents that run between us.  A society like the one in America that focuses on the individual, doesn't always value the expressions of those who do things as a group, but I am increasingly aware of how radically powerful a cluster of women can be. Green Tara has done that for me. And an evening at Ladybug? It just might provide the soundtrack.

Color Me Privileged

Arden is a white neighborhood. While we do have socio-economic diversity, there is no getting around the fact that racially, we are homogenous. We have a Wilmington address, though plenty of people will designate the area we live in as North Wilmington. I am not sure how that figures into statistics of Wilmington as a city. Are we included? The city of Wilmington has a population of about 70,000 people. 58% African American, 33% white. Separated into neighborhoods. Our daughter went to a high school where white and black were about even in terms of numbers. Compare that to our son's high school in Denver, PA, where the population was 99% white.

I was glad that Maren was going to experience the mix, but I was naive about what that meant exactly. Just as the neighborhoods in Wilmington form around race lines, so do the cafeteria tables. Maren was able to navigate these lines and even cross over to an extent. She is a confident girl with crazy hair. She was often asked if she was mixed race. (We've had genetic testing for genealogy purposes--nothing in our background explains the hair.) Interestingly enough, it was always black students who asked her if she was mixed. Never the white. She has African American friends. Maren played the lead in Hairspray, the musical put on by her high school. A good choice considering the make-up of the student population. But even at cast dinners for a play about racial integration, the kids arranged themselves at tables by the color of their skin.

I am not comfortable writing about race, but I need to acknowledge the changes I have experienced since moving to Arden. While most all of my neighbors are white, I encounter people of color on a daily basis. I didn't before the move, with the exception being the Indian family that ran the Dunkin' Donuts. I don't think that seeing African Americans out in the world makes me confront their blackness as much as it makes me confront my whiteness. What does it mean to be a white woman? I never really had to consider it before.

I get that I can be friendly, say hello, make small talk with people of other races, but I sense a line I can't cross. Wilmington is murder capital of the country at the moment.  Murdertown USA is not a title any city wants. Newsweek sent reporters to profile us. I'm not scared. It isn't my neighborhood that is contentious. Does that mean I am free to look away? Our friend, Joe, recently rode along with Wilmington police to take photos in the different neighborhoods for an upcoming local magazine piece. He isn't sure what the magazine is going to say about the neighborhoods or in what ways his photos will be used. He recounted some of his experiences to us.  In some sections of the city, he was pretty much guaranteed that he would have been robbed if it he had not been under the protection of police for the photoshoot. Why? Because he would have stuck out as white and therefore a stranger, which is funny because Joe vehemently denies being white. He is coy about his actual heritage, preferring to blend in where he can and keep people guessing.

The problem affects the economy of Wilmington as some people won't even go to downtown to take a meeting, much less patronize a business. As I have said before, I am not afraid to venture downtown, even alone. We go to galleries First Friday or to see shows at the Queen. We have dined well in city restaurants. But I cannot say that we have been unaffected. In Arden, we have to lock our doors, not because of our neighbors who have our keys anyway, but because we fear being burgled by drug users from the city. Crime sprees happen here. Usually minor ones. We have a security system in our home. I never lived with a security system before, although I should note that my old neighborhood in Reinholds experienced break-ins soon after we moved out. I'm not even saying that the reason we need security system is because of race. But there is a world of haves and haves not, and living in Arden, I am aware of my privilege in a way I never have been before.

If you look back into Wilmington's history, you will find that from April 1968 until January 1969, the National Guard was a presence in the city to quell the potential for race-related rioting after Martin Luther King, Jr. was murdered. It is the only such National Guard occupation in the history of this country. If you look deeper still you find a state that wasn't quite sure which side of the Civil War it was on. South of the Mason-Dixon Line, Delaware was a slave state in which slavery was dwindling to the point that it made little impact on the economy. It was a border state that was considered a Northern State by some because Delaware posed no risk of secession. Delaware sons fought on both sides of the Civil War. One hundred fifty years later, do we Delawareans identify as North or South? Food can tell the real story. We are both. Delaware aligns itself with the Mid-Atlantic (and my personal PA Dutch heritage) for its scrapple obsession, but Southern fried chicken is a thing here. Race and identification is just part of the story. Unemployment and family dynamics play their parts as well.

What all this means for me as someone who has moved in from lily white Lancaster County countryside is that I have to think about race for the first time. I am not always comfortable acknowledging the advantages of my skin color. And I shouldn't be. But I am a Delawarean now, and we are a people who live on the edge. Wilmington is desperately trying to figure out what will work to bring about change to those statistics nobody wants. It's going to involve a social inventory with its own fair share of discomfort.

Clean Day, Green Day

In Arden, we know it is Spring because on our community Facebook page, you see lots of people selling or giving away items. People are cleaning out their houses. Back in Lancaster County, it was the same thing, except that it meant garage sale season. I'm not sure if Delaware, as a whole, does less with yard/garage sales. My only experience is Arden. Here, our roads are too narrow to accommodate much in the way of additional parking and traffic. We have community sales once or twice a year at the Buzz. You rent a space, put up a table and wait. I did this the first year we moved in, but the ordeal wasn't very successful for me. I was surprised that the sale opened late. I am remembering 9 AM. In Reinholds, the usual starting time was 7 AM, but people started showing up at 6 AM. Amish and Mennonite were especially known for their savvy ability to haggle. In Arden, it is sometimes easier to just put a photo of your items online, give your address, and then chat with whichever neighbors come to pick up your stuff. When we first moved in, we got rid of all sorts of items, including our bedroom suit. Later, in a moment we still laugh about, Mark introduced himself to a neighbor around a campfire, who replied, "Yes, I'm Jen. I sleep in your bed."

Saturday was my designated Spring cleaning day. With all our projects and new furniture, we needed to dust everything in sight, and feng shui the rest. Somehow, we ended up dumping a lot of furniture in the room Jonah takes over when he is here. He was coming down to sort through his belongings, so we could get rid of a few bookshelves and cabinets to make room for sofas and chairs that would make the room into a true sitting room when he wasn't in residence. I made a plan to start at the front door and radically clean, going clockwise through the house. After six hours of cleaning I had only finished the kitchen, which is the first room going clockwise from our front door. While I wished I had achieved more, the kitchen was the cleanest it has been since we moved in. That was a good feeling. Jonah and Mark tackled Jonah's room, though that room still has a long way to go.  With my energy waning, I had to stop. Would I be able to sustain any kind of momentum to clean the rest of the house during the week?

The other reason Jonah came down to visit is so we could go see American Idiot,  the rock musical with songs by Green Day. It was playing at City Theater Company. Jonah and I both share a love of Green Day. We used to play it in the car when we had to drive anywhere together. I'll admit that my love of Green Day wasn't due to my own good taste in music. Mark bought me a used iPod on eBay which came preloaded with Green Day songs and the odd addition of Will Smith's Get Jiggy With It. The former had a perfect beat for my angsty jogs through the farmland. I was hooked.  The fact that Jonah and I could bond over the songs, was, in the word of the credit card commercial--priceless.

Adam Wahlberg as St. Jimmy
Photo by Joe del Tufo

I wasn't sure what I was hoping to see with the musical, but it defied any expectation. Jonah and I went with friends Larry and Linda. Mark, unwisely, chose to stay home. The cast was superb.  No individual performances stood out, not because anyone was that brilliant, but because they all were. I barely recognized Adam Wahlberg who played St. Jimmy, the drug dealer. He had had the lead in Arden's version of Shakespeare's As You Like It a few years back. He was also Maren's acting teacher last summer. Emma Orr, another Arden resident, was a member of the ensemble. The players used the entire theater, including the table where we were sitting, to tell the story. The choreography was as energized as the music. We couldn't help smiling and singing along. Our friend, Joe, who had photographed the performers during one of their rehearsals said that, from what he saw, it had the potential to be better than the Broadway version of the musical. I believe it, though I haven't seen the Broadway version. It was a superb performance. That is something that New Castle County and Lancaster County have in common, unbelievable local theater. I'm not sure why anyone would travel to New York City and pay big bucks when the local talent is so worthy of our love and dollars.

I had worried that I might fall asleep at the performance after my day of hard cleaning. No chance. I was wide-eyed until the end. I was happy, too, that Jonah enjoyed himself. I want him to keep visiting us--even if I have to use big bait to get him here. We all went back to Arden, recommitting ourselves to Green Day, elevating them once again on our playlists. I am willing to bet that with those songs blaring through the speakers of our home stereo, I will be able to tackle the rest of my spring cleaning.

Art at the Buzz

We have somewhere to be. Dinner plans. But first we decide we must pop into Art of the Town Exhibition at the Buzz Ware Village Center--referred to simply as The Buzz. The art exhibition is part of a larger Wilmington initiative: First Friday Art Loop. Back when I was in college at the University of Delaware, my friends and I would drive into Wilmington to do the Art Loop, which was an actual loop, complete with bus ride between gallery stops. I was a Fine Arts major. Sure, I was there to see art, but also to get giggles on free and illicit (because we weren't of age) wine. For some reason, it never occurred to me to go to a frat party while in college. Mark and I have been to the Art Loop in downtown Wilmington twice since we moved to Delaware. The first time was a dud. Summer. In a month when Lancaster's First Friday would be so crazy you had trouble finding a spot on the sidewalk, let alone a table at a restaurant. But we are in Delaware now, and Delaware has a beach culture. Even in Wilmington, things slow down from June through September due to migration south to Delaware's beaches.

The second time we went on the Art Loop was just last month.  Our main stop of the evening was to friends Linda Celestian and Susan Benerarcik's new venture The Highlands Art Garage where they display art and give lessons. We stopped into a few galleries on the way because we were encouraged to give the loop another try and also because my college classmate Sara Teixido was showcasing new jewelry at the Delaware Center for Contemporary Arts (DCCA) gift shop.  The atmosphere this time was more like I expected with young hip crowds and the free wine I remember so well. The quality of art, like most art on First Friday, ran the gamut between questionable and professional. I really fell for Sara's and Susie's work. Both women are exploring nature and spiritual object in ways that seems to mirror my way of seeing the world.

Back to the Buzz. We are going there to see art, yes, but also to support Bernadette who recently took over curating duties for this event. The Buzz has been the center of controversy lately. It is owned and operated by the village of Arden, but is used by all three Arden villages. In an attempt to make the Buzz self-sufficient and not be a drain on Arden residents, the board made some decisions which were unpopular with citizens of Ardentown and Ardencroft. People took sides. Feelings got hurt. Under this reign, the previous curator quit, and the future of the monthly art exhibitions was in question.

In the parking lot, we run into Bill, who is trying to get into his frozen car. Being on the board, he was at the center of the Buzz controversies. The scoop I heard is that Bill made himself into a human blockade at a certain high pressure board meeting to keep out those who were merely advisors from the other villages. He cares about the Buzz, wants to see it succeed, but not every one sees it that way. I ask after Bill, because his wife posted on the Facebook page of our walking group that she wouldn't be walking because Bill had slipped and had fallen on ice earlier. Bill is embarrassed that I asked about his fall.

"It was nothing," he tells us and then adds that because of his wife's post, he has had to turn down so many offers of meals and help from concerned neighbors.

We go inside and see Bernadette manning the hors d'oeuvre table. Bernadette and her husband Jerry moved into Ardentown a few months before we moved to Arden. We met her at one of our friend Cynthia's barn shows. I have gotten to know Jerry better through Poetry Gild. On the table in front of Bernadette are the most wonderful array of focaccia breads, and I can't resist a piece of goat cheese, caramelized onion, and walnut even though we are on our way to dinner. I find out that they are from Black Lab bakery in Wilmington. I always appreciate scoop on the food scene in Wilmington. I make mental note.

art by Joseph Patrick Crouse

In the middle of the room, we encounter Phil who is a month removed from a heart attack and a well-timed ambulance ride. We met Phil the first weekend we spent in Arden. Our friend Cynthia arranged for us to tour artists' studios. Last summer, we bought one of Phil's metal sculptures. It sits outside our kitchen window, and I see it every time I wash a dish. We remark that he looks good to which he replies that he will live to pester Arden another day.

Next we talk to Anita. Anita and I were in the middle of some melee last month that centered on a missing dog. The state police were involved because of the possibility that the dog may have been stolen. (I do not personally believe this was the case.) Anita and I were links in the chain between the owner and the person who had the missing dog in his care on a cold night. Anita and I greet each other warmly and review the previous night's concert. We came to a lot of the same conclusions, but Anita has offered to lend me some SunVolt and Uncle Tupelo CDs so that I might have a better understanding of Jay Farrar's catalog of work.

Time is getting short, and we are trying to leave when our friends Jan and Alex enter. I am on the Arden Community Recreation board with both of them. I missed the yoga class I attend with Jan earlier that morning because I was sleeping in after the concert. She tells me I missed a really good class. Alex and I discuss the Fun Jar we are passing around all of Arden. It started when I gave them a jar of homemade salsa and it has taken on a life of its own. Alec put homemade chocolates in the jar and passed it on to Cecelia, a former Shakespeare production costumer. Alex gave Cecelia instructions to keep the jar moving. Tonight, we speculate where the jar might be. Alex also talks to Mark about what kind of card games interest him. The newly started Bridge Gild is looking for members, but Bridge isn't really Alex's or Mark's game.

Finally, after thirty minutes inside, I manage to pull Mark out of the Buzz so we can continue with our evening's plans. As we leave, we see the featured artist sitting on a bench smoking a cigarette. In an accent  (British?) he thanks us for coming. I realize then, that I didn't really give his work more than a cursory look.  I mentally chastise myself and try to figure when I might see the paintings again. I have a G-Ardeners meeting on the 17th. Will the artist (I don't even know his name) let his work hang all month?

We have only lived in this community a short while and already the relationships we have formed  have eclipsed my love of art. Or maybe they are the art. Maybe the dance that we are doing, the web we are weaving is the thing. It turns out that I went to the gallery tonight to see my own part of a work in progress. It's a beautiful chaotic tumble of connections that reminds me that we are all really alive. Isn't that the purpose of art?