Milk or Meat

I took a deliberate break from writing on Friday to do a thing I’ve never done before – go to an art gallery – which ended up being three art galleries since the first one had none of the intimidating factors I feared it might. So I went to three art galleries – but this one gallery – this one artist – his cow paintings were the thing that grabbed me.  Now, how can I say that? I don’t know much about art – and so I can only speak out of a sense of wonder at what I felt, and give reference to his website for a look at the real paintings:   http://www.osterhausart.com/

And so, this man’s cow paintings – they captured the “cow presence” – my unprofessional opinion – and I would easily have taken one home if I’d had $3,000 or more, but . . .
this is where I think of the two women who came whirling through the gallery while I stood in silent dialogue with one cow – they came whirling through together as though on a shopping spree to find just the right scarf or shoe, or fabric or lamp – they did not stop at any one cow, but rather whirled by and around me with such comments as, “That one would bring out the yellow in your drapes” – or, “This one would accent the green lamp” – or, “You need a touch of red in that room, here it is” . . . but the main shopper, close behind, did not seem overly impressed by her friend’s “good eye” – or the cow’s – and so they whirled through and out before the one cow and I could finish our silent understanding . . .

“Milk or meat, which one do you want?” That’s what the one cow seemed to be saying to me once the women had whirled away. I could see it in those cow-brown eyes that might have come up close to a fence to share dialogue or a careful blink with me . . . and it reminded me of all these cow pictures I took when I was at the Benedictine monastery in the Shenandoah Valley last springtime. The Benedictines, also called Trappist monks, are a priestly order which dates back to their founder, St. Benedict of the early 6th century. In addition to vows of silence and poverty, they have taken a vow of hospitality – which includes hosting those of us who live in this noisy world and would like to experience an occasional week of silence in the bucolic bounty of their farmland and monastic world.

And so, as I took my long walks along the Shenan- doah River last spring, the cows would amble over to the fence with little to say or do except for the presentation of themselves. One curious cow would begin the amble – and then you’d think a dinner bell had been rung, for they’d all begin to amble as the first one had – and so, if I waited long enough, they’d all make it to the fence for a good staring session. Many animals and birds have a kind of wisdom in the eye – but not the cow. They know nothing more about me than my desire for milk or meat.

I think the cow is the most resigned of all the creatures. They have no fight left in them. They have no flight either. They have lived thousands of years within fenced lines that are monitored by maidens or dames, farmers or “hands” – and through evolutionary learning they know that they are one thing or the other – milk or meat – and so they’ve resigned to say nothing more about it.

That’s the look I got from that one cow in the gallery. I ambled on to the next cow – and though her colors be different and her snapshot painting be taken at dusk or dawn, and though her profile be tilted or straight-on – still, she had that one question in her eye about the milk or the meat. But I never got bored of looking at the same question. Each cow is like a different, but familiar, breed of motherly love that has resigned itself to always give and never take. There’s no boredom in looking at her because taking is never boring for the taker – we can take till kingdom come and always think it is novel and fresh. Only the cow herself has grown bored with the equation.

Now, as for color – all the cows he painted, even the black and white ones, had so many feminine colors in their coats – or rather, hides – pinks, lavenders, purples, cantaloupe, chartreuse, and chive . . . I can’t say how it is that I could stand at one end of the gallery and look straight into the brown of a cow’s eyes at the other end of the gallery – and swear that she was a brown cow – only to walk closer and begin to see what the two women had come to see – lavender strokes and pink swirls, a curlicue of red, dabs of green, blue, or musk – as though the artist had been cleaning off his pallet on the cow’s hide instead of painting her. And, I thought, how can all those many colors converge – as you walk backwards and away from her – to make one brown cow with the eye of one question? How can a person, working in close range to a large canvas, think to add lavender and pink and chartreuse to a cow that he meant all along to be one brown cow . . . and how do you bury that one question in the cow’s eye only by adding a small blotch of red and a slice of white? It reminds me of what Barbara Ueland says in her book, “If You Want to Write” – she calls it the "fourth dimension" of writing – a type of inspiration that pervades the sentence but can’t be found in the words themselves no matter how much you scratch at the page – it’s just there.

Similarly, as I looked at the paintings, I could almost smell the fresh growing spring grass and taste the raw milk that I remembered from my grandfather’s farm. I also thought of the Chartreuse liqueur which I keep in the food cabinet – that wonderful “elixir of life” that was developed 400 or 500 years ago among the Carthusian monks in the French Alps. They are known for their silence, animal husbandry, heritage cheeses, and this elixir made from 130 herbal extracts – described as having hints of everything bucolic: citrus, violet, honey, thyme, rosemary, jasmine, coriander . . . on and on, 130 herbs and flowers. They say only three monks are alive today who know this secret recipe, and all three have taken a vow of silence in the Grande Chartreuse Monastery in the French Alps. The websites that market Chartreuse liqueur jokingly tell us that the Carthusian monks spent 500 years sampling and contemplating this 110-proof liqueur before declaring it a perfection which “redefines complexity.”  But I think it took 500 years of looking closely into the eye of one cow to understand multiplicity where others saw only brown.

Great Indices

A couple years ago I took a techno- logy class in which the professor opened the semester by asking us, “What forms of technology do you see around you?” And of course we adult students, like children with an eager eye to please, called out all those things we could see in the technology room including some in our own possession. It was a trick question – as we should have known – for she then proceeded to pick up a pencil and ask if this was not also a form of technology – her segue into the definition of technology: any tool that can facilitate and better our lives. The rest of the semester was devoted to computers and all that they can do for our lives, but the presentation of the pencil as a form of technology was one I could easily grasp and remember. I’m a big fan of the pencil, the paper clip, the pen, and the black and white composition book – technology at its best. However,

I’ve become greatly disturbed these past few weeks about the index card. The index card has also facilitated my life. They are good for note taking and list making, of course – but also for bookmarks, packing labels, recipe cards, vocabulary lists, signs, flashcards, to-do lists, notes to oneself or others . . . they can be cut into any size, shuffled, laid out on a table, stacked and rubber banded, paper clipped, grouped and regrouped . . . and they will last for many years . . . and you can write on both sides. I’ve never been without a stock of index cards.

At first I thought I had made a terrible mistake – that Good Friday, two weeks ago – when I came home and unwrapped my new pack of index cards. These were not index cards, but rather rectangles of paper no stockier than printing paper. They were flaccid, couldn’t be shuffled at all, and when held up to the window – the window panes shown through.

My to-do list fell to the side, and a Good Friday quest began . . . two superstores, two office supply stores, an old drug store, a grocery store, and one fancy pen and stationery shop . . . and no quality index cards. They are all made of paper-stock paper – and I don’t like the bold colors and odd stripes.

Once home, I cranked up my “advanced technology” to go online and see if I could perhaps order this “simple technology.” This is what I’ve learned: 1) I’m not the only one who has noticed the sudden lack of quality in index cards – there is at least one forum devoted to this topic – and people are angry. 2) The index card goes back thousands of years – its name derives from a Greek word, to show; and from the Latin, to point, to inform – much like our index finger. Medieval monks used them to jot down important points. 3) They are called index cards because they are made of card-stock paper. 4) The standard index card is 3x5 inches; wooden file boxes were made to accommodate this card when creating the first library card catalogue in 1820 – which was the google of its day. 5) The general public wanted these cards too – and so they became available to all. 6) No one knows exactly when the card was cheapened – but it’s been recent – and it has been pervasive – Mead, Oxford, all the office supply brands are now made of cheap paper-stock paper. 7) However, the original library card, Levenger, has not changed – but it’s hard to find even online, and then it costs plenty, about $28 per 500 cards – and it is currently backordered indefinitely. Another brand, Exacompta, can be bought for $8 per 100 cards, not including shipping charges from France.

It’s interesting that the iPad made its debut on the same day that I quested for index cards. They say that 120,000 iPads sold the first day, and upwards of one million sold by the end of the first week.  What does this indicate?  I’m tempted to conclude that the decline of the quality index card is indicative of the decline of a nation, its culture, its priorities – at least one computer for every man, woman and child in America – but not a single quality index card to be had. But I remember what one guy said in the forum on index cards: “It’s an index card! Get on with your life!” He then provided a five-paragraph review of every index card he’s ever tried, concluding that, for the price, the Oxford Pentaflex was good enough for him – "chopped up printing paper that it is," he said. And that gave me an idea . . .

If manufacturers can chop up paper-stock paper to make their cheap index cards, then why can't the common person cut up card-stock paper to make an old-fashioned quality index card?

The young man at Kinko’s knew exactly what I was talking about. He showed me his portfolio of card stock paper, adroitly calculated how many 3x5 and 4x6 cards he could cut from a standard sheet, asked me how many cards I’d like, which colors, gave me a price, cut the paper in two minutes, boxed them up.  I took out two cards, one in each hand, and snapped them in the air – yes, snapped – not flapped – but snapped.

"I never thought I’d have to make my own index cards," I said to him gratefully.

“Oh, believe me, you’re not the only one . . .” he said.

And that’s when I realized: 1) The common person does notice when our “little technology” has been made cheap; we cannot be hoodwinked by big manufacturers. 2) Big technology will never totally displace quality little technology. 3) If manufacturers cannot provide us with our little technology – we will make it ourselves – and they will lose an important market sector.