First thing Sunday morning, I jumped out of bed and started making a bunch of empanadas to take to our friends’ apple cider pressing party. Empanadas take time but I’d made a batch of dough the night before, so that was out of the way, at least. In a while, my house was filled with savory aromas of linguiça, potatoes, onions, apples, and buttery pie crust as the little crescents baked.
Every year, the invitation comes early from our hosts, with reminder E-mails as the designated day approaches. We all know what to do: Show up, rain or shine—with our own apples, if we have any, and jars and jugs for juice to take home—and dig in to the work and the play. This year brought rain, but our friends had just finished a kind of swanky, high-ceilinged “carport,” which kept everybody dry. How the day goes is like this: adults and kids take turns cranking the wheel on the veteran apple press. The wheel turns a toothed metal drum that macerates the fruit while workers toss apples into the hopper from a couple of alternating rinse-water-filled wheelbarrows. The apple pulp fills a slatted bucket that is then scooted under the press, a screw device which also is operated by hand. Still other folks alternate ferrying the heavy juice-filled bucket over to a table where empty jars and funnels have been assembled to receive the golden extract, later to be taken home to freezers or for canning.
Out in the orchard, a couple of folks are up on ladders, shaking branches hard enough to cause apples to rain onto the ground. Others put them into buckets and run them over to the waiting barrows and the team at the cider press.
All this hard physical work is accompanied by an ad hoc hootenanny going on over in another corner of the big space. A couple of guitars, a ukulele, and a dulcimer might be brought out, and players call out the next number or the next chord so all the musicians can join in the jam session. We used to call it “livin’ room music,” but in this case, I guess it’s “swanky carport music.” That’s the thing about music, anyway—people who’ve never played together, much less ever even met, can sit down together and have a very excellent conversation in the key of relationship.
And there’s food, of course, spread out on a long table where much noshing and joshing occur among the old and new friends. The empanadas went fast. So, you can imagine it’s like a beehive around there, a really fun beehive where everybody pretty much loves each other. It’s hard work with an undercurrent of joy, purpose, and care. The whole thing looks like a graceful, energetic dance—and it is.
I’m thinking about how often this apple-y sort of choreography is a metaphor for how we live in our human world. Somebody sets a spark (an invitation, an idea, a challenge), attracts or enrolls others in the mutually beneficial choreography, and something kind and useful, crucial and fun ensues.
I’m thinking this is the way the steering committee of wildly creative people who thought up and executed the North Coast KelpFest got it sparked. Contemplating the time and dedication it took to pull off something of such a scope and scale, something so beautiful and imaginative that is making such a positive impact on our place and the planet, overwhelms me with admiration and awe.
I’m thinking about the fabulous, sold-out “Gala Brunch” at Redwood Coast Senior Center the other Sunday. The dining room literally hummed with diners and with community-leader-volunteers who enthusiastically took on the chores of waiting tables and bussing. Margaret Fox and Shannon Hughes learned that the center’s budget could need bolstering to allow it to continue to supply the 55,000 meals it serves each year to elders in our community. It was like the Judy Garland/Mickey Rooney movie where, when there’s a shortfall, they yell, “I know! Let’s put on a show!” Except the chefs and the director and the board all brought their will and talents and big hearts to bear and said, “I know! Let’s put on a Gala Brunch!” And that’s what they did. And hundreds of allies showed up to donate and mingle. They raised $16,000 for the center in one big, late morning push. The amount of planning, organizing, and pure elbow grease that went into feeding several seatings of local advocates, of course, took many weeks. Again, I kind of get choked up thinking about how great an impact this event will have on our town’s older neighbors.
And, hey! How about Indivisible!?! How about that spark…It required meetings for months to organize the No-Kings event that brought over 2,000 peaceful, committed American citizens (out of a population of 7,000), in solidarity with over seven million others in every state, to exercise our First Amendment Right of Free Speech. Pacing the length of Noyo Bridge amid the phalanx of sign-carrying, costume-wearing allies who demanded kindness over chaos, food on kids’ tables over a vanity ballroom, due process over unthinkable depredations like kidnapping moms and dads off the streets, masked military operators in our own cities, and the lawless murder of human beings in international waters, was a heart-stopping lovefest with an unambiguous message to the powers that be: We’ve got a bone to pick with you, Buster.
A spark is what it takes. And I see that anybody can decide to be a spark. Really. REM
