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Peas, Please
Peas are thought to have originated somewhere in Asia It is believed that the pea went to China, possibly in the 7th century, then to Europe. But evidence of peas has been discovered in Bronze Age artifacts in Europe and the Middle East. Others point to an African origin, with cultivation in Egypt thousands of years before Christ. Early peas were most often dried and used like split peas in porridges for consumption during winter months. It wasn't until the 16th century that peas were eaten fresh. In 1533, Catherine de Medici introduced them to France when she married the man who became Henry II, King of France. The French took to them instantly and called them petits pois, a name that stuck. The English imported them from Holland and so cherished them that the pea we know today is often called an English pea. Thomas Jefferson is said to have cultivated some 30 varieties in his own garden at Monticello, including snow peas and a form of sugar snap pea.
Like beans, peas are divided into two categories, those with and those without edible pods. The peas we know as green pea, English pea, and the garden pea fall into the latter category. Most commercial peas are called garden or English peas.
Petit pois are not a variety of pea, but merely green peas that have been picked before full maturity. Thus, they are smaller than normal green peas.
Snap peas look like mini versions of the pods of green peas. The difference is that these pods are edible. Sugar Snap and Sugar Daddy are the two varieties of sugar snap peas, the latter being a cross between a green pea and a snow pea. In addition, the Sugar Daddy is stringless. However, even sugar snaps with strings don't necessarily need to be stringed before cooking.
Snow peas used to be seen only in Chinese restaurants. Now they're available everywhere. The pale green, edible pods are flat and wide with little bulges - the immature peas inside - rippling throughout the pod. There are often strings, but again, they need not be removed. Snow peas are also called sugar peas, China peas and in French mangetout, meaning "eat all."
For green peas, the closer you are to the time of picking, the better. Check the pea pods. They should be firm, crisp and bright green with a fresh appearance and a velvety touch. Tough, thick-skinned pods are an indication of overly mature peas. Also avoid pods that have poor color (such as gray specks or yellowing) or show any sign of decay or wilting. Your peas will taste fresher if you shell them yourself and cook immediately. Avoid buy peas that are already shelled because you don't know when they were shelled. Snow peas and snap peas should also have good color (lighter for snow, darker for sugar) and a firm crispness. The ideal size for snow peas is about 3 to 3-1/2 inches long and about 3/4-inch wide. For snap peas, the most desirable size is 2-1/2 to 3 inches long. Snap and sugar peas have a somewhat longer shelf life than green peas, up to three days, unwashed, in plastic bags under refrigeration as low as 33 degrees. But they should be used within a day or two. Snow peas like less humidity than sugar snap peas, so take this into account in deciding where in the refrigerator to store them, or perforate the plastic bag you put them in. When selecting green peas, run your finger to the top of the pod to make sure the peas are not too large but fill up the whole pod. If the pod is not completely filled, the peas won't be as sweet as a full pod.
Peas are very low in Saturated Fat and Cholesterol. It is also a good source of Riboflavin, Vitamin B6, Folate, Pantothenic Acid, Calcium, Magnesium, Phosphorus and Potassium, and a very good source of Dietary Fiber, Vitamin A, Vitamin C, Vitamin K, Thiamin, Iron and Manganese.
FYI: Black-eyed peas are actually beans, and not a pea at all!
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Last month I attended the annual EcoFarm Conference at Asilomar, the amazing conference space in Pacific Grove. The EcoFarm Conference is California's largest annual gathering of organic farmers. Each year they are joined by researchers, health professionals, distributors, marketers and advocates...
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Ever cumin to Southern California? I'm also a total lez so me/my girlfriend love girl bands and all things led zeppelin:) It would be awesome!
That sounds tempting...
Previous question
When will your group be coming to Southern California? Also have any of the members of Led Zeppelin attended your show(s)?Lez Zeppelin responded on 09/25/2012 Next question
Ever cumin to southern California? I'm a total lez and I know my girlfriend would love you :)Lez Zeppelin responded on 09/25/2012
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Copyright © 2009 Pirene's Fountain.
All Rights Reserved.
Last updated:
May 2009
Showcase—Rebecca Seiferle
Rebecca Seiferle
The Drunken Boat
Poet, Translator and Reviewer
Books by Ms. Seiferle
Rebecca's Poetry
Rebecca Seiferle
The Drunken Boat
Poet, Translator and Reviewer
Books by Ms. Seiferle
Rebecca's Poetry
Rebecca Seiferle
The Drunken Boat
Poet, Translator and Reviewer
Books by Ms. Seiferle
Rebecca's Poetry
Rebecca Seiferle
There is something mesmerizing about Rebecca Seiferle's work. Reading her poetry is like stepping out in an electric storm. The images conjured can be strangely beautiful or frightening but always invigorating, and each nerve ending comes alive. Seiferle's words, passionate and fierce, are honest and unafraid; they release a riptide of memories and emotions in a strong, flowing current. The reader finds resonance at the core of her poems, feeling empowered and vulnerable at the same time. Such are her transformative powers as a poet.
Rebecca was born in Denver, Colorado, but had attended over 20 different schools all over the country by the time she graduated from high school. She grew up in many places and says of this circumstance, "My father just liked to move!" She lived in New Mexico for more than 20 years, so the flavor and culture of the desert southwest permeates some of her work. The essential landscapes of her work, however, are far more universal in nature. In some ways, her unconventional upbringing may have contributed to enhancing her already keen intellect. It would have been natural for a young girl, sensitive to every nuance of life, to develop an ear so finely attuned to the language of poetry. A natural genius combined with a boundless imagination fuels her poetry. She writes with great compassion and love for earth and its inhabitants, but with recognition of their limitations.
Rebecca Seiferle has a BA from the University of the State of New York with a major in English and History, and a minor in Art History. In 1989, she received her MFA from Warren Wilson College. She has taught at the Port Townsend Writers Conference, Gemini Ink, Key West Literary Seminars and The Fine Arts Centre in Provincetown. She was poet-in-residence at Brandeis from 2004-2006. She currently lives in Tucson, Arizona. Rebecca is an award-winning poet, but more importantly, a great voice of our times. She teaches and continues to write and publish, and in a remarkable balancing act, publishes and edits the fine literary journal, The Drunken Boat, which she founded in 2000.
The Drunken Boat
Rebecca Seiferle is Editor-
in-chief of The Drunken Boat,
previously a quarterly online
magazine of international
poetry and translation,
now published bi-annually.
The Drunken Boat is one
of the most successful
international literary journals
online because of the quality
of editing and the high caliber
of poetry, reviews, interviews
and poet spotlights featured.
Two Boats, Argentuil by Claude Monet
From: The Drunken Boat
by Arthur Rimbaud
"Now, I, a boat lost in the hair of the coves,
tossed by hurricane into the birdless air,
me, whom all the Monitors and Hansa sailing ships
could not salvage, my carcass drunk with sea;
free, rising like smoke, riding violet mists,
I who pierced the sky turning red like a wall,
who bore the exquisite jam of all good poets,
lichens of sun and snots of azure,
who, spotted with electric crescents, ran on,
a foolish plank escorted by black hippocamps,
when the Julys brought down with a single blow
the ultramarine sky with its burning funnels;
I who tremble, feeling the moan fifty leagues away
of the Behemoth rutting and the dull Maelstrom,
eternal weaver of the unmovable blue—
I grieve for Europe with its ancient breastworks!
I've seen thunderstruck archipelagos! and islands
that open delirious skies for wanderers:
Are these bottomless nights your nest of exile,
O millions of gold birds, O Force to come?
True, I've cried too much! Dawns are harrowing.
All moons are cruel and all suns, bitter:
acrid love puffs me up with drunken slowness.
Let my keel burst! Give me to the sea!
If I desire any of the waters of Europe, it's the pond
black and cold, in the odor of evening,
where a child full of sorrow gets down on his knees
to launch a paperboat as frail as a May butterfly.
Bathed in your languors, o waves, I can no longer
wash away the wake of ships bearing cotton,
nor penetrate the arrogance of pennants and flags,
nor swim past the dreadful eyes of slave ships."
The Poet, Translator and Reviewer
It is not surprising that Ms. Seiferle's work has received numerous awards and that she has been recognized as a powerful voice in our generation of poets. Her poems are made from the wild heart of life; they seem to come from a place of depth, hidden clefts of the mind that birth mysteries. Seiferle is a poet who is true to her vision of the poem, not dwelling on the current trends of writing, or the workshop prescription for a "good poem." She follows the directions of the poem itself, however convoluted the path, and arrives at a destination that is breathtaking. Not only does she write with originality and a compelling depth, she also has a range that is incomparable.
Seiferle has experimented with alternate poetry forms which she has shared with us for this issue. (Please note the top right of this page, the homepage, and the current issue) She describes the process as follows:
"I've been working on a series of "Other: poems" which combine text and image. I began making images in photoshop, often starting out with a micro jpg taken from a nude photo and then expanding the jpg and altering it with the various capabilities of the program. The images are non-representational, highly textured, though they have evolved to include drawing upon them, and have become more complex visually. I had been writing a long poem that seemed to unravel like a breath and at a certain point realized that the poem, or bits of it, belonged with the images. It was interesting to me how the image became another presence, exerting a kind of force like the world, as the weight of language had previously done in my work, which required that text change, often becoming simpler, more compressed, more intense…"
"I've been working on a series of "Other: poems" which combine text and image. I began making images in photoshop, often starting out with a micro jpg taken from a nude photo and then expanding the jpg and altering it with the various capabilities of the program. The images are non-representational, highly textured, though they have evolved to include drawing upon them, and have become more complex visually. I had been writing a long poem that seemed to unravel like a breath and at a certain point realized that the poem, or bits of it, belonged with the images. It was interesting to me how the image became another presence, exerting a kind of force like the world, as the weight of language had previously done in my work, which required that text change, often becoming simpler, more compressed, more intense…"
In a sense, all poets are translators. They soak up the world around them and filter it back to their readers with a sharper, distilled clarity, and with all the emotional synergy and enlightenment they can muster. Translating takes both passion and unique talent—being faithful to the author's intentions are obvious requirements, but understanding and conveying the most delicate nuances of meaning and emotion are by no means an easy feat. It requires complete immersion into the poet's work, not to mention a fluid ease with both languages. Rebecca learned Spanish in high school. By then, she was reading Vallejo, Neruda, and others in the original.
Ms. Seiferle's translations of Alfonso D'Aquino and Ernest Lumbreras are included in Reversible Monuments: Contemporary Mexican Poetry (Copper Canyon, 2002). Her translation of Cesar Vallejo's, Trilce (Sheep Meadow, 1992) was the only finalist for the 1992 PenWest Translation Award. Her excellent translation of Vallejo's The Black Heralds was published by Copper Canyon Press in late 2003 and has been favorably reviewed in The Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times, and her translations of several Cuban poets are forthcoming in The Entire Island, edited by Mark Weiss, from the University of California Press in 2009.
Rebecca Seiferle has regularly reviewed for The Harvard Review and Calyx, and interviewed various writers for The Drunken Boat. Seiferle's interviews and reviews show her immense understanding of the poetic utterance supported by a thorough knowledge of literature, language and their historical origins. Her analytical ability is evident from the depth of probing in her insightful questions, and from the answers she elicits. A few years back when I discovered another favorite poet, Alison Croggon, I read Rebecca's interview with her and was struck by how the interview facilitated a better understanding of Ms. Croggon's work, and I was grateful for the shared clarity. Rebecca referred to Alison Croggon as a "Renaissance woman." That description can also be applied to Ms. Seiferle herself, a writer of many talents. A three time Pulitzer nominee, she has received dazzling reviews for her work, and four of her poetry collections have been published to high acclaim.
Books by Ms. Seiferle
Rebecca's Poetry
In Rebecca Seiferle's world, everything matters. There is nothing unimportant or irrelevant. She has that "inner eye," the extra sense many artists have that allows them to see beyond the obvious, but her strength lies in making those leaps with her readers. The beauty of her concise language is amplified by her luxuriant, rich images. The metaphysical and physical fuse in her poetry, producing a meditative tone to some of her work.
(From "Dragon Hill")
Human, animal or divine . . .
there's a large blackness in the center
of the iguana's forehead,
murky as a galaxy
coalescing, a new face forming, and in the depths of the new
cells, a third eye, its eyelid closed, dreaming
the heart's refrain: Out of so much,
so little; out of so little, so much.
Seiferle arrests our attention with strong, fresh visuals and captures our doubts, fears, hopes and pain. She sets all these to a deep, sonorous music. She produces language that is so precise and organic, it becomes part of the action itself—so seamlessly connected to the membrane of the poem, it becomes a living, writhing, twitching thing. The words wrap themselves around one's skin. Through her words, one can feel, see, touch, and above all, know. It is the ultimate reading experience. Savage beauty wars with tenderness, regret, a dark sadness, and… tragic inevitability, such as is present in the destruction caused by wars, famines, disasters and other harsh realities of life. (See Goya: Los Desastres de la Guerra, Current Issue)
One of her poems will stay with me forever. Even now, I can see vividly, and feel the fascinated horror of an accidental mutilation. How minutely Seiferle dissects her feelings. The imagery and narrative is unflinching and brutal in its honesty, as the narrator takes painful responsibility for an inadvertent action:
The Ripped-out Seam
I will never stitch back together
the horned toad that I halved with a shovel.
All summer, in my mind, holding itself upright,
trying to balance its torso
between its front legs, the toad has tried
to drag itself forward, to escape
the agonized coils of its own
entrails spilling out of the gaping absence
of its lower body. No
meaning I can think of, no matter how deft
of hand, can knit the pale
distended bowels, or reconnect
the webbed feet's chaotic twitching
to the brain that lunged, leapt,
propelled them forward.
I was excavating a pit for the children to play in
with their fleets of miniature cars and must have
scooped the legs from the body in one motion.
When I lifted the shovel and saw the flayed skin
resting in the blade, I thought
the thighs' cavities, bloodless
and filled with dirt, were the ancient remains
of a cat's nightly predations, or the relic
of a hiberation from which
the horned toad never awoke, but then
I saw the upper half, alive, sitting at the edge
of the heaped earth where it, too,
had been tossed.
What shocked me was how perfect
the unwounded half of the body was:
the eyes' stunned gold,
the jaw's tiny teeth, the spine's
prickled barbs, the crimson gills'
breeding color, the throat's throbbing rhythm,
the head and forelimbs trying to go on, to continue,
while the lower half had been interrupted
in the emptying out
of the blue and yellow guts,
the soft pulp of the liver and lungs.
That was June, now it's the end of August
and in my mind, I am still carrying
the still living torso behind a tree
where I hit it with a shovel,
fracture the skull,
so it will no longer suffer
what I have done to it. Again and again
the creature drags itself forward,
tries to reunite the two halves
of what it is, to heal
the wound it keeps dragging behind.
Only in the ripped-out seams
of body, of mind, do we resemble each other...
rendered together,
the horned lizard and the human figure
drawn in black on the white surface
of every vessel that the Acoma people paint
and sell to tourists. They shrug
if anyone asks what the meaning is
of this design, of that one, at the idea
that everything must mean something
other than it is.
(From: the Ripped-Out Seam, The Sheep Meadow Press, 1993)
And then, as is often the case with a poet of great range, Ms. Seiferle shifts gears into the fluid and lyrical. Here is softness in contrast with the stark beauty of some of her work. There is a delicacy of line and feeling. Here, her brushstroke is applied with subtlety and finesse:
(From: Dredging for the Face of the Earth)
Is it the way the light falls
or the way my eye follows
the light
that most resembles
a hand stroking a face?
It is as if I were
in love with the blue shadows on the mesa—
an angel peak with one wing missing.
(From: The Ripped-Out Seam)
Seiferle works on a grand canvas, but even in this tiny, confined area of scrutiny, the force is large and shattering; there is such movement in this exquisite, detailed piece, a sonnet from a linked series:
(From : "A Broken Crown of Sonnets for My Father's Forehead")
Not in the kingdom of death, in the jar
of my childhood, a male seahorse floated
like debris. Solo, thickening, in a tear
of Morton salt and tap water, he snorkeled
up pink clouds of shrimp, and gave birth to four
children, each a tiny Pegasus, whirring
through a bare and gelid world, circling
his great hippocampus head. Who was I
to fathom such a creature, concoct a sea
within a jar? When I lifted the glass,
the tide of my touch sent him crashing. He
could only drift in the directionless ache,
as his young vanished, one by one, his pouch
filled with nothing but the current itself.
(From: The Music We Dance To)
Rebecca Seiferle is a storyteller in the most intrinsic sense with natural gift for the narrative. She has it all—the hook, the pauses, the buildup, the climax. Even in the most lyrical works, she spins a tale that is hard to resist.
In Seiferle's poetry, we are made aware of how we constantly walk alongside death and violence, but become inured to it, numb. Rebecca rips those protective shrouds away to illuminate even the most gruesome truth, to see what really is, and to accept that we live in a world where dark and light exist side by side. Her explorations are accompanied by a sense of wonder and compassion. There is a haunting quality to this poem which is written with a heartbreaking beauty:
The Foundling
The only ghost I've ever seen
was that of a baby black bear, waiting
for me one night in the kitchen in Salmon, Idaho,
a small green tornado caught in the corner by the stove,
full of pale yellow lights like the tiny polished stones
that flash in the bed of the coldest mountain streams.
All winter, we lived in that rented house, while the landlord,
in the garage, practiced his butcher's art, skinning, gutting, dissembling
whatever the local hunters brought him–and I'd seen the cub
hanging outside my window. Flayed of its rich black skin,
reduced to the scaffold of its bones, its overlay of red muscle and white fat,
without claws or snout, pud or tail of bear, it hung in the glare
of the porch light like a human child. So when I went roaming
the silenced house so late at night and was met by that wild presence,
I spoke to it until it sighed and vanished into the peeling wall,
and left me, the only child still there, snared in the net of the world.
(From: Bitters, Copper Canyon Press, 2001)
Seiferle's poems encompass a wide spectrum of topics such as war, death, love, religious inquiry, criticism of injustice, and the acceptance of human failings, to name just a few. She draws from a rich amalgam of sources: mythology, religion, history, and her own varied experiences. She writes with as much accuracy about the human condition as she does exploring relationships between people:
(From: "My Mother's Hip")
"Now I've nursed my mother back to health,
I know what my birth cost her. Then as now,
she had to be knocked out, in labor
for hours, made into scaffolding, her legs
spread in horrifying angles, so I
—umbilical cord knotted around my throat—could be
extracted by the forceps that shaped us both."
(From: Bitters)
Yet with Ms. Seiferle, we enter the unexpected, for she can suddenly switch register and write with a delicate beauty as in the poem below. The flow is both narrative and lyrical, with a measured cadence and natural rhythm like the sounds of water, or the heartbeat of a forest creature carried away by fluttering wings:
The Face in the Depths of the Desert
I wasted so much time
fishing at night, my anger
burning and anchored
to the railing of the houseboat,
while the lantern cast the rippling interstices
of my nets, snarled rods and lines,
onto the canyon walls of that damned river.
My fingers aching from so many knots—
trying to thread back through the original loop—
I kept casting, trying to retrieve
something formless, absolute,
from the halo on the water,
while only the dying silvery lives
heaped up around my feet or trembled on the stringer.
Only the arrival of the carp made me stop.
Those useless, undesirable, "trash fish"
that my father taught us to leave, gasping for air
on the bank, arrived like the embodied breath
of a dragon, each finned flame, interweaving
around, beneath, above one another—
the immeasurable
on every side of their bodies—not
just "above" or "below." Out of the mist of unknowing,
they came into view, merging then breaking away,
rooting in the bottom mud or rising to take with a tiny kissing sound
a dragonfly from the surface,
and the skin of the lake trembled
and swirled.
(From: Bitters)
With a probing depth, more complex and psychological in nature, many readers are astounded by the emotional force of her "Bat in a Jar"from The Ripped-Out Seam. It steals one's breath with a gripping force:
Bat in a Jar
The jar was a mason jar, made to preserve
apricots and stone cherries and to withstand
the extremes of cold air and hot water baths
where the steam, rising, lifts
the canner's black lid
only to drop it, hissing, again. And the bat,
trapped inside knew, if it knew anything,
it would never escape, though
the sky kept humming
with insects and the orchards darkened
as usual, apparently the same.
Someone had put the bat in a jar—to avoid
bites and disease or to protect
the bat itself from house cats and dogs?
In any case, the bat kept calling
for rescue, measuring what confined it, trying
to scale the horizon, that sky of glass. But though
the bat's ears shaped themselves
to the echo, though the echo
filled the glass, the jar parodied
the bat's longing and gave back
nothing of itself.
Mirrored, only the bat was mirrored. Its fear
inaudible except to itself, confined
to its own mind. That which enabled
the bat to select a mosquito
or to nip a June beetle out of the air
now sickened it. Open-mouthed,
wings beating hopefully, hopelessly, the bat
lifted its wing like one seamless membrane
and again and again
tried to answer.
(From: The Ripped-Out Seam)
Ms. Seiferle relates how she came to write this poem:
"Bat in a Jar" for instance could be said to occur in the personal experience of the time I was working at a motel and someone found a bat hanging in one of the alcoves, which set off all sorts of worries about rabid bats, etc, so one of the houseboys caught the bat in a jar and brought it into the laundry room. I was looking at it closely and it was wheeling around and around in an ever increasing distress, and I realized that its own sonar, bouncing off the concave sides of the glass, was killing it, so I persuaded someone to let it go into a nearby field. But I was so struck by that perception of being killed by one's own sound, how one's own gifts could become lethal if confined and captive. And yet the fact is I don't think I would have, or could have written the poem, from that experience alone, for it would have been merely descriptive and lent itself to various 'meanings'. I didn't write it until a few weeks later, I had been reading poetic theory and some philosophy of which I remember nothing in particular just the sort of soup it created in my brain, for reading often seems to me like that, like creating one of those ponds of the primordial ooze full of compound elements that a bolt of lightning gives life to. And I loved someone then who wrote me a long and pained letter that was like a knot of confined and pressurized feeling which I felt was impossible to answer, so I didn't know if that person or I was the bat in the jar or if reality itself, "this" life, wasn't such, and out of that unbearable pressure, I wrote the poem and the image of that bat came back to me as I did so.
"Bat in a Jar" for instance could be said to occur in the personal experience of the time I was working at a motel and someone found a bat hanging in one of the alcoves, which set off all sorts of worries about rabid bats, etc, so one of the houseboys caught the bat in a jar and brought it into the laundry room. I was looking at it closely and it was wheeling around and around in an ever increasing distress, and I realized that its own sonar, bouncing off the concave sides of the glass, was killing it, so I persuaded someone to let it go into a nearby field. But I was so struck by that perception of being killed by one's own sound, how one's own gifts could become lethal if confined and captive. And yet the fact is I don't think I would have, or could have written the poem, from that experience alone, for it would have been merely descriptive and lent itself to various 'meanings'. I didn't write it until a few weeks later, I had been reading poetic theory and some philosophy of which I remember nothing in particular just the sort of soup it created in my brain, for reading often seems to me like that, like creating one of those ponds of the primordial ooze full of compound elements that a bolt of lightning gives life to. And I loved someone then who wrote me a long and pained letter that was like a knot of confined and pressurized feeling which I felt was impossible to answer, so I didn't know if that person or I was the bat in the jar or if reality itself, "this" life, wasn't such, and out of that unbearable pressure, I wrote the poem and the image of that bat came back to me as I did so.
(Excerpted from an interview with Mia for Tryst3.com)
In this new poem below, Rebecca uses her palette with mastery to lend color to emotion. Please read her interview for some of her insights on this piece:
Being Born at Any Hour
I don't know why there's fog, the desert as if
pregnant with some vanished or impending sea, or why
waking up, I'm wondering into it, remembering those lines
by Auden "many have died for lack of water, not one
has died for lack of love," except that it's my birthday
in two days, and his poem was written a year or two before
the emotional climate into which I was born: that sad decade
where everyone would die for nothing but the lack
of love, stillborn, held in insensate arms. Still,
just as aridity sputters back to green at the touch
of water, something rises, sings, on the blue lips of the infant
who, in us, is always tunnelling toward the light. I don't know
why at the bedrock level of misery (the way my head just yesterday
crucified its third eye), something touches down and springs
back up--so green, coming back to life, it's being
always newly arriving, this being born at any hour,
the earth's generosity in my body and in the morning air.
Going on to the next work, the language here is the language of music, of otherworldly beauty and the call to spirits that reside in the earth and trees: a voice that brings to surface long asleep memories, perhaps even from another birth or life as one hears the voice of a seer singing of legends and myths:
Standing here at the beginning of the ruins, we inhabit
a sky full of cries too numerous and varied to be identified. And what would we
call them?
The bird that cries like a man…
the bird that buzzes
with the locust pinched in the thumbs of a branch, the bird
with the voice of a broken whistle,
one last breath…just before
it breaks, the bird whose periodic
cry is a bright thread through the bullrushes…
These warbles, clicks, cries of surprise throng us with a language
we do not understand
our own voice, the lost voice
of our fathers meeting our mothers so long ago, the voice of whatever calls
us into being…
"Gravied, sliced
down to the bone, every year
all that's left of the Thanksgiving
feast is the wishbone. Stained
the color of tea or rain seeping
into wood, it could
be beautiful, a singular harp
from which no one
has learned to coax
a tune, or ivory white,
a bow of stars that never shot
a wounding shaft,
but, instead, impelled
a feathered being into the air,
a hinge for the drumming
of earthly wings. But
the custom of the breastbone
is that only two of you can fight
over this good fortune,
only one of you can win,"
From: Divided Continent
"…As I ran, screaming war cries
around my parents' house, my hands already
scarred from trying to fashion arrows
from the dwarfed bushes in the suburban yard,
the necklace around my neck
gave me the power of another world,
its red eye, the ruby eye of the grebe
that dives into the water and comes up
on the other side of the lake.
On the other side of the street, in another
lot, three girls in white frilly dresses,
their hair coiled in ringlets and bows, curtsied
around a portable table where real eighths
of a sandwich dressed
each miniature plate, real tea was poured
into tiny play cups, and they, too, were rehearsing
another ideal. I was seven, then,
and, oh my longing to be like her, to be her,
and her longing to be like me–the one
who looked up and stared back
out of the perfectly cultivated
garden of her face."
Ami Kaye
May, 2009
We thank Ms. Seiferle for her gracious permission to use all materials, poetry and artwork, for this feature, and her generosity in sharing with us her new poems and her "Other poems" (image/text combinations.) We are also indebted to Ms. Seiferle publishers, Copper Canyon Press, www.coppercanyonpress.org, for the opportunity to reprint poems from Bitters and Wild Tongue, and Sheep Meadow Press, www.sheepmeadowpress.com, for The Ripped-Out Seam and The Music We Dance To.
Please click here to read Pirene's Fountain's interview with Rebecca Seiferle


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Developing the DfE funded online training offer - technical update
An update on the technical developments that will support nasen's SEND online training for educational professionals.
The September 2015 issue of Special has several articles on nasen's online SEND training for educational professionals. Alison Wilcox, Educational Development Officer and project lead for this work, highlights the challenge of translating ideas in the form of advice, examples through multimedia and real-life scenarios to more reflective real-life scenarios in our classrooms.
The ambition of the online training, to provide CPD that supports education professionals in early years, schools and colleges, provides not only a writing but a technical challenge. This blog will keep you informed of developments, right up to the launch of this free resource in the 2016 spring term.
The challenges include:
- creating an easy to navigate structure for the learning content
- developing the management system for SENCOs and others who act as learning mentors or coaches
- making registration, progress recording and using the system as easy and intuitive as possible
So how far have we got with these challenges? The encouraging answer is that we are just finalising the detailed specification for the system.
The designs will be ready early next month. They will be striking and distinctive but in harmony with the nasen brand that you are used to seeing.
Drawing on the advice and expertise of our expert advisory group, and applying the considerable technical and design skills of our website and management systems developers we will build the system over the next five to seven months.
At the heart of the system will be regularly updated reliable data on settings, schools and colleges that we are adding to our management system. This will save you time when registering by providing most of your organisation's information, and then link appropriate contacts within them together – with you permission of course.
Rather than create a new website we are keen to keep everything in one place. Therefore the online training area will be accessed by a tab on the main nasen website, and following a simple registration process, you will be able to register to access the course or as a mentor/coach (or both if you wish)!
Next steps
The team of sector specific expert writers will be creating the content over the next couple of months, along with links to existing content – much of which is located on the SEND Gateway – as well as to newly created text and multimedia resources.
As the system is built we will add some of this content for test purposes. We expect to be able to review the content and the system with a small group of volunteers in November or soon afterwards. If you are interested in being part of that team of tester please either contact Alison or myself.
Your comments
Although we have access to advice and expertise from different groups we are keen to seek your views and welcome your comments on what we must do to make the system work for you – and what to avoid!
Please feel free to add a comment to this blog.
I will post an update next month to let you know about progress in developing the free online offer.
Terry worked for many years at Becta, the government's agency for educational technology, to ensure that the needs of inclusion of children and young people with special educational needs were considered in national technology strategies, developments and projects. As a consultant he provides expert advice for international agencies in Europe and beyond, as well as for UK organisations.
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Many Americans are walking around in a cloud because the Mainstream Media has failed to deliver real news about Donald Trump and his first year in office. Unfortunately, Morning... Read more »
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The ancient story that is preserved in the Book of Genesis informs us that of all the trees in the Garden of Eden, Adam and Eve were obsessed with one. Their interest leads me to ask, "What is it about our ability to look beyond the forest and zero in on one tree, and in the process, to no longer see the forest?" Clearly the sin of Adam and Eve is also our shared sin.
How often in life have you found yourself thinking about one experience, one person, one particular job or task, and then judge everything else about yourself based on this single perception? For example, just because something didn't work out the way that you hoped, you now see everything about life as a failure. Or perhaps someone you love doesn't love you the way you want to be loved, so you judge all your relationships as no good and yourself a failure.
Perhaps none of you have had such experiences, but maybe a couple of you know what I'm talking about. Our ability to make mountains out of mole hills, to make rash decisions, to become depressed and withdrawn, to make judgments and sweeping generalizations as a result of one event and thus zeroing in on one tree and ignoring the entire forest can, unfortunately, operate in our lives.
Theology, which is one way we talk about God and explore the mystery of God, is most certainly not exempt from the human experience. In fact, we would recognize a theology that is devoid of human experience as empty, lacking in inspiration and spiritual nourishment.
Sacred Scripture is filled with stories and examples of how people experience this notion of focusing on one tree. I've already referred to one in Genesis (3:1–8). Adam and Eve's obsession with the tree led them to choose to eat its fruit, which brought sin into the world.
Of course, we have no any idea what comprised the real event that led to the couple's eviction from the Garden. It's probably safe to assume that the scriptural metaphor actually was made up of more than one event or choice. However, there is something in the human experience and relationship with God that has led human beings to a long-held conviction that our relationship with God is somewhat less than what it is intended to be.
In the consistent theology of St. Paul with which we're familiar, the apostle often makes it clear that "through one person sin entered the world….But the gift [of Christ]…brought acquittal" (Romans 5:12, 16). It has long been correctly observed that this theology is good news. But we must also admit that, as a result of this theology, there has been an operating perception within the Church and each of us that religious practice is primarily focused on sin.
We often understand religion as the practice of learning how to avoid sin, becoming free from sin, and being forgiven of sin on those occasions when we have succumbed to temptation. According to this limited point of view, eventually we arrive at death, making sure it is at that point in our life when we have been signed, sealed, and delivered as free from sin and in need only of a little purgatory and not the big hell of eternity. Is this yet another example of the human person concentrating and obsessing on one part of the experience of the relationship between God and humanity, and in the process perhaps losing sight of the forest?
In today's Church, some voices weakly proclaim that perhaps we're missing the "big picture." These new voices suggest that by concentrating on sin we have lost sight of an even bigger event in the relationship between God and his people. This bigger event is the Incarnation of God into our world. In other words, despite our human obsession, or maybe even because of our insistence that we are separated from God, God determined, once and for all to end this perceived separation by becoming one of us. In a real sense, how can God, who is now incarnate in the human person through Jesus, be separated from himself?
If you let this reality sink in for a few moments, the truth of what it proclaims becomes obvious, powerful, and life-giving for each of us. While humans have been running around determining how we have become separated from God and what we need to do to reunite with God, our Lord, in the person of Jesus, cut through all of our methods, all of our ideas, all of our perceptions, all of our obsessions, and freely became incarnate in our world. If we would somehow come to the point in our lives where we could open our eyes and see, we would notice the incarnate reality of what it means to say that God, in the person of Jesus, became a human being. That has to mean something, doesn't it?
During this time of Lent, instead of spending all of our time thinking about how we are separated from God and reviewing again and again the stories of how that perceived separation took place, perhaps we could better use our energy to let the reality of the Incarnation sink in. What does it mean for humanity that God has become a human person, that God has freely entered a world that we see as somehow less than perfect and godlike and that somehow needs to be fixed?
By embarking on this journey, we're not rejecting what we've been taught and what we hold to be true and essential. Instead, we're attempting to become free of our desire to zero in on one thing, one person, and one experience and simply try to see our world the way God sees us.
FR. THOMAS M. SANTA, CSsR


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For most brides, when you put on THE DRESS you know it's it. For Ashley, it was the venue. She walked in to the President Hotel in downtown Kansas City and she was overwhelmed with excitement and tears… because THIS WAS IT: the place she would celebrate marrying her best friend with her closest friends and family members.
Ashley started her getting ready process at the home she grew up in, while Nick took it easy with his groomsmen at the hotel. The girls then packed up their belongings and headed to the church where her grandfather used to be a Pastor, which is where she would put on her dress, see Nick for the first time, and finally say, "I DO!!"
We highly encourage our brides and grooms to do a "First Look" before the ceremony because it gives us more time for bridal party photos after the ceremony so they can get to the reception as soon as possible to celebrate with their guests. This is a time for them to get some nerves out before the ceremony and have a very private moment with just the two of them since the rest of the day can get pretty busy. Nick and Ashley were not opposed to this idea at all, but their family requested to be in the room at the same time. It wasn't until a couple of weeks after the wedding that we really understood their reasoning behind this, and it makes a lot of sense! Their parents asked to be there because that moment with the groom sees his bride for the first time (and vice versa) is a very exciting time for everyone… not just the bride and groom. Their parents wanted to be part of this special moment. After the happy tears were wiped away, they did leave the room to give the love birds some private time together to exchange letters.
This was one of my favorite moments of the day because Ashley has told me so much about Nick's goofiness. On the way to the church she was telling me they weren't doing gifts, but instead they were going to exchange letters… and she wasn't too sure Nick had actually finished his. It was during the first look that he reached in to his jacket pocket and pulled out the letter he had written to her. She started reading it, looked up at him with her "You have to be joking, right?" eyes, only to see that he'd pulled another letter out of his pocket while she was reading. The first one made her chuckle, the second one touched her heart. Nick sure knows his girl :)
After the ceremony the bridal party ducked away from the threatening rain clouds and headed to the Liberty Memorial for some portraits. This is when the guys busted (ok, gently unbuttoned!) their shirts to reveal their true identities: SUPERHEROES!
Then the reception began: the colors of the day were based around the beautiful blues and greens of a peacock, mixed with the incredible golds in the reception hall at The Hilton President Hotel. They had a little twist to the "dollar dance" in that instead of the money going to them and their unplugged honeymoon in Ochos Rios Jamaica, the money was donated to two animal rescue shelters in the Kansas City area, because both Ashley and Nick have an incredible soft spot in their hearts for their rescues.
Ashley and Nick also had us bring our open air photo booth (the alternative to The Photo Bus!) to their reception, and it was so much fun!
To see their downtown KC engagement session, please visit their blog post with photos!


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Where did I get this love for day trips? It's the age old question of nature vs. nuture. Is it something I was taught? Or something I inherited? Is there a day trip gene entwined with those bestowing hazel eyes and a quick temper?
I've called my mother the Queen of Day Trips and she was. Clever and creative, she had a genius for motherhood and day trips were her specialty. They were her answer to what to do with with three bored children, a small budget and her own desire to see the world.
Mom rarely told us where we were going and this mystery was part of what got us out of bed and in the car. Fortunately for Mom and us, the list of potential destinations was long. The mid-Atlantic is crowded with national parks, monuments and landmarks. All of which have the added benefit of being free.
Because these venues almost always represent a bit of our country's history, we coined them Mystery Day Trips of Probable Historic Value.*
Just a few of the places Mom took us:
Antietam National Battlefield (Maryland)
Assateague Island National Seashore (Maryland, Virginia)
Clara Barton National Historic Site (Maryland)
Fort McHenry National Monument and Historic Shrine (Maryland)
Fort Washington Park (Maryland)
George Washington Birthplace National Monument (Virgina)
Gettysburg National Military Park (Pennsylvania)
Glen Echo Park (Maryland)
Great Falls Park (Virginia)
Harpers Ferry National Historical Park
(West Virginia, Maryland, Virginia)
Manassas National Battlefield Park (Virginia)
Mount Vernon (Virginia)
Stratford Hall (birthplace of Robert E. Lee - Virginia)
Williamsburg (Virginia)
These trips were the inspiration for this blog and many of the activities I now do with my own boys. Looking at the websites has my fingers itching to pack our backpack and go.
Given the weekend forecast, my time would be better spent working on that list of housebound activities.
*There has been some debate among my siblings over who coined this phrase. My sister claims it's hers. I'm inclined to let her have it, because it's the kind of clever thing she'd come up with. My inclination has nothing whatsoever to do with her history of biting.


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- Poster presentation
- Open Access
Polymyxin B-direct hemoperfusion therapy improves mean arterial pressure in septic shock
© Yokota et al.; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. 2013
- Published: 5 November 2013
- Arterial Pressure
- Mean Arterial Pressure
- Cardiac Index
- Septic Patient
- Oxygen Delivery
In our previous study, we reported that polymyxin B-direct hemoperfusion (PMX-DHP) (Toraymyxin®; Toray Medical Co., Tokyo, Japan) therapy could contribute to oxygen delivery due to improved hemodynamic status, while decreasing inotropic agents in septic patients immediately after that treatment. The randomized controlled studies are ongoing in other countries, because its efficacy and indication are still controversial issues. The purpose of this study is to evaluate whether PMX-DHP therapy sustains to improve hemodynamic status after the treatment.
Materials and methods
All adult patients treated with PMX-DHP and receiving a pulmonary arterial catheter (PAC) in our ICU from July 1994 to June 2010 were included in this retrospective observational study. Patients' clinical, microbiological and PAC data were collected from medical archives. PAC variables were compared between immediately before and after 24 hours of PMX-DHP therapy. Values were expressed as mean ± SD. Data were analyzed by Wilcoxon signed-rank test. P < 0.05 was considered statistically significant.
There were 63 patients (36 men, 27 women; age mean 63.4 ± 14.8) studied. The mortality rate was 30.2% 28 days after PMX-DHP. APACHE II score and SOFA score on the day of PMX-DHP therapy were 20.2 ± 14.8 and 7.3 ± 3.8, respectively. Mean arterial pressure (MAP) (mmHg) was significantly increased after PMX-DHP therapy (77.5 ± 22.5 vs. 87.2 ± 15.9, P = 0.02). The inotropic score decreased 24 hours after PMX-DHP, but did not reach statistical change (10.0 ± 16.1 vs. 6.3 ± 11.6, P = 0.08). The cardiac index (CI) (l/minute/m2), systemic venous resistance index (SVRI) (dyn·second·m2/cm5), mixed venous oxygen saturation (SvO2) (%), oxygen delivery and consumption (DO2 and VO2) (ml/minute) and P/F ratio were not statistically different before and after PMX-DHP therapy.
Only the increasing of MAP was sustained after 24 hours of PMX-DHP therapy, while the inotropic agents were decreased. Although the CI, DO2, VO2, and P/F ratio were improved immediately after PMX-DHP therapy in our previous study, these were not significantly changed between before and after 24 hours. PMX-DHP could improve MAP with decreasing inotropic agents, while alterations of other PAC variables were not sustained in 24 hours of PMX-DHP.
Authors' Affiliations
This article is published under license to BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated.


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24/7 Security Operations Dispatch Centre & Emergency Response.
1Northwest Security Services safeguards against property damage and theft and provide protection services 24/7 security operations dispatch center, mobile patrol, remote video monitoring, integrated guarding solutions, commercial building security, reception and concierge security services.
If you require a professional, reliable, and fully confidential security service to look after your security requirements, we are available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. 1Northwest Security pride ourselves on our professionalism, customer service, and client satisfaction. We would love to hear from you so if you have any questions, please email: email@example.com or call (807)623 7417
1Northwest Security Services Inc
122 May St North
Thunder Bay, Ontario, Canada
Tel: 1 (807)623 7417
Fax: 1 (807)789 1608
E-mail: firstname.lastname@example.com


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Archive for October, 2009
A better, more accessible CSS way to hide outline from linksFriday, October 23rd, 2009
When starting a new project, I do not use global CSS resets — like Eric Meyer's excellent CSS reset. That's why, I rarely have problems with removed outlines from links.
As you probably know, users which do not use a mouse but navigate webpages with keyboard only, need to see outlines on links when they tab through them. This helps them visually understand which link they will activate.
A fairly new trend is to remove (suppress) this dotted outline on links to make pages look "nicer" to the eye. While design may look "nicer" and more "Web 2.0" to some, when this outline is removed, the accessibility aspect of this remains, and it is very serious.
But Roger Johansson suggested a much better approach: remove links from :active state only!
This is the article that he recommends to all Web developers:
Better CSS outline suppression
Basically, what happens:
You remove the dotted outline from links which are only clicked with the mouse, while keyboard users will see the outline normally!
How? Just use this bit of code, and that's it:
a:active {outline:none;}
Excellent tip!
I promise to myself that if I will ever try to remove the outline from links, I will do it in this, much more accessible way! :-)
Fiesta (Jacques Prévert)Monday, October 5th, 2009
Et les verres étaient vides
Et la bouteille brisée
Et le lit était grand ouvert
Et la porte fermée
Et toutes les étoiles de verre
Du bonheur et de la beauté
Resplendissaient dans la poussière
De la chambre mal balayée
Et j'étais ivre mort
Et j'étais feu de joie
Et toi ivre vivante
Toute nue dans mes bras.
« Fiesta »
Jacques Prévert


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Ramadan at Paul Bakery & Restaurant
Every Ramadan season one of my fave hangouts PAUL Bakery & Restaurant will offer a selective Ramadan menu that features a wide variety of fresh, refined, healthy and authentic dishes, which offers an oriental taste with classic French cuisine which keeps in tune with the Ramadan fast.
The Menu is simple and nutritious with a great understanding of the importance of the first meal after breaking the fast.
This start's with a Jallab or Amareddine traditional refreshing drink, followed by a choice of two soups, two salads, three main course options from beef to chicken to fish stews and as dessert, a special Ramadan flavor: dates éclair.
PAUL Bakery is offering two special Ramadan croissants for the Holy season with sesame, rose water and dates flavor, delicious!
Check out the images below of what is on offer at PAUL this Ramadan, All PAUL branches will be open for take away as of 8.00 am and for dine-in as of Iftar time.


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Town and Country Funeral Directors Ltd offer a free service to create a loving and lasting online memorial tribute, in partnership with memorial website charity MuchLoved. The service provides you with the tools you need so that you can easily create a beautiful memorial website to respect and cherish the memory of your loved one. READ MORE
Visit our Tribute Garden, dedicated to remembering the lives of loved ones. Here you can share memories, send Life Stories, pictures and messages of condolence as well as lighting candles. Many of the Tributes take donations in memory of a loved one for a chosen charity. You can offer a personal donation via the Tribute page. READ MORE
We cover the whole of Surrey and when requested the UK also. We can assist with repatriation from or to the UK.


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Are you a blogger or an influencer? They're the same, aren't they? Well no, no they're not. You can be an influencer and a blogger, just a blogger, or just an influencer… here I hope to explain the difference. Not only is this blog for you if you're not quite sure which category you fall into, but for brands too.
This blog was inspired by Haynet's podcast, episode eight, which was hosted by the lovely Sam Hobden, owner and founder of Haynet. Listen to her 'what makes a blogger an influencer' podcast.
Are you a blogger or an influencer?
If you're a blogger in the purest sense, you write a blog, which is an online written 'log'. The term 'blog' came from the phrase weblog if that makes the word make a bit more sense. A blog can take many forms but blogs are generally informal and chatty in style. Blogs vary hugely in content, depending on the writer or objective.
Now, many influencers have a blog, but that's not necessarily what earns them their title as influencer. An influencer is essentially someone who has influencer over others. Not in a weird or bad way, let's just be clear. When people put a lot of time and effort into their social media, their audience (usually) grows, and this audience is usually engaged with the influencer. Let's call the influencer Charlotte. So let's imagine that Charlotte has grown an audience of 11k on Instagram. She takes pics of beautiful countryside things and gets lots of engagement on her feed. People ask her where they can buy what she's wearing, or what she thinks about x's new range, or the best place to visit in a certain county for country things. Charlotte is an influencer. She might have a blog. Her influence could be limited to a specific platform (like Instagram) or more widespread. She could have a blog too and use that to help support her influencer status. If she wants to. But she doesn't have to.
How do you know if you're an influencer or a blogger?
In simple terms, if your following engage with you and ask you for advice, ideas, buy things that you're talking about or wearing, you're an influencer. Because something you have done or said has influenced them. Or even they see you as such an authority that people reach out to you and ask you your opinion. If that's you, you're an influencer.
If you write beautiful blogs about your adventures as a creative outlet, just for you, you're a blogger.
Or you can be both, if you write blogs about products, services, looks, etc that people read and absorb… and then take action on.
Don't forget to have a listen to Haynet's podcast about bloggers and influencers for more infroamtion.


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It takes a whole village of folks to keep HHF running and running well! NO person is paid at Hickory Hill Farm. Being 100% volunteer driven, our Board works diligently and could not do it all without our wonderful volunteers.
Within our board and active volunteer group we are proud to have three FEMA Credentialed DART responders, three Certified Teachers, a Childhood Trauma Certified counselor, three Pet Partners Registered Therapy Teams, a Certified Animal Control Officer, volunteers with degrees in Equine Science, and more than 6 active volunteers that are CPR and First Aid Certified. Our team is dedicated to continuing their education and training in all aspects of the programs HHF provides.
Board of Directors
Jenna Gibbons is our Education, Camp, and Community Outreach Director and President of the Board. Jenna was born and grew up in Plymouth, Michigan. Graduating from Michigan State with a degree in Elementary Education and with eight years of teaching experience in different parts of the country including Detroit, MI and Smyrna, TN, Jenna brings a strong educational background and desire to serve others to our leadership. Jenna has operated successful children's camps and programs in both Michigan and Tennessee. She states, "I have always wanted to find a purpose in my life that I feel truly passionate about. I enjoy being outdoors with my animals, and I feel that I have a mission to work with children. What better way to bring the two together, than to give my time and experience to Hickory Hill Farm?" Jenna helped form the dream of Hickory Hill Farm in 2015 and co-founded it in early 2016. She is currently a part-time ESL teacher for Wilson County Schools. Jenna and her husband Sean reside on a small farm in middle Tennessee with their son, Rowan, three horses, and one dog (adopted!).
Shea Hutsenpiller is Hickory Hill Farm's Rescue Director and Vice President of the Board. Born and raised in middle Tennessee, Shea graduated from Middle Tennessee State University with a Bachelor's Degree in Equine Science. She has always felt a strong urge to use her passion and love of animals, primarily horses, to help others. After meeting with Jenna through their mutual friend, Jenny, and sharing their similar ideas, it was clear to Shea that God had big plans for them. She co-founded Hickory Hill Farm in early 2016 along with Jenna, Sean, Jenny, Katie, and Madi. Shea has owned, cared for, and shown horses since she was eight years old. She brings her years of real life experience with horses, educational background, and experience working with other area non-profits to our leadership team. Also active in Lebanon Noon Rotary and Wilson County DART, Shea thoroughly enjoys being involved in the community. When not working on Hickory Hill, Shea spends her time on her farm caring for a herd of animals including horses (including one personal horse, the rest belonging to HHF or boarders), 2 HHF goats, two pot belly pigs (HHF fosters), five dogs (two adopted rescues), and one cat (also a rescue!).
Malia Pack serves on our board as our Secretary. Malia grew up in West Virginia and North Carolina. She now resides here in Middle Tennessee with her husband Mark and their five children. Malia enjoys spending her time hiking, traveling.. preferably to the beach, crafting, and of course, loving on and riding Hickory Hill Farm Rescues. She is also a member of our HHF Riders program and spends time riding and working with our fosters. Most recently, she helped transform a nervous, insecure horse to a bold trail mount for her new family! Juggling her time between her family, Hickory Hill Farm, and her day job as a business analyst, Malia has a full plate!
Stephanie Cox is a member of our Board of Directors and serves as a Neglect Case Liaison working with our Rescue Director and Law Enforcement when HHF is called for assistance by the State or other agencies. Though Stephanie was born in Shreveport, LA, she grew up right in Lebanon. With 30 years of experience owning, showing, and caring for horses, she brings a wealth of knowledge to our team. Not only is Stephanie familiar with the equine side of things, she is well versed in caring for other livestock as well. Her family has raised and shown beef cattle for over 10 years on their Lebanon area farm. A 4H alumnus herself, Stephanie is proud of the work her eldest daughter has put in to showing their cattle and they are the 2017 Wilson Co Commercial Heifer Grand Champions. Stephanie is an advocate for the humane treatment of all animals and is the Director of the Mt. Juliet Animal Shelter where she works to improve the lives of local cats and dogs as well. She is an active member of the Wilson County Disaster Animal Response Team, Wilson Co. County Mounties, and Wilson Co Search & Rescue. When Stephanie is not saving the world in animal control or at HHF, you can find her caring for her 2 horses, 3 rescued goats, 2 dogs, 2 cats, pig, 46 chickens, 28 cattle, rabbit, and fish on her family farm, or trail riding and kayaking!
Sean Gibbons is a member of our Board of Directors. Originally from Michigan also, Sean moved to Nashville while he was obtaining his Master's Degree in Early Childhood Special Education from Vanderbilt University. He is also a Certified Teacher and Board Certified Behavior Analyst. Similar to his wife, Jenna, Sean also has a passion for working with children. Sean has non-profit experience, serving on the Board of the American Youth Soccer Association and the Environmental Action Group. Sean assists with the development of our programs alongside Jenna. When Sean is not working or at the farm, he is spending time with Jenna and Rowan or enjoying one of his other hobbies such as playing the guitar.
Madi Robinson is a member of our Board of Directors. Madi is a middle Tennessee native that has been a horse enthusiast for most of her life. She assists the rescue side of our organization in many different aspects. Growing up, Madi took lessons riding hunter jumpers at a local barn; she then spent several years horseless. She never gave up on her dream of riding again, and after graduating high school, she began getting back to riding, this time in the western arena. She has years of experience caring for, assisting with training, and showing quarter horses. Madi has a passion to assist animals that are in tough situations. "Animals don't have a say in how they are treated or whose hands they wind up in. It is so rewarding to help neglected animals through the healing process ending in a happy loving home," shares Madi in regards to her experiences with animal rescue. She enjoys family time, barrel racing her horse, and spending time with her border collie in her spare time.
Supporting Committees
General Admin:
Documents Coordinator: Nathan Huddleston
Intake Committee:
Dr. Kathryn Makoweic, Shea Hutsenpiller, & Jenna Gibbons
Adoption Committee:
Adoption Coordinator: Stephanie Schroyer
Post Adoption Coordinator: Kathy Wear
Training Committee:
Training Coordinator: David Curtis
#HHFRIDERS: Dr Kathryn Makowiec, Madi Beard, Bert Patton, Shea Hutsenpiller, Malia Pack, Duane Pride, Kathy Adams, Shawn Reed, Positions Open
Volunteer Coordination Committee:
Volunteer Coordinator: Shawna Davenport
Foster Operations Committee:
Foster Operations Manager: Jessica Stallman
Donor Relations Committee:
Positions Open
Camp, Programs & Outreach Committee:
Programs Director: Jenna Gibbons
Assistance Camp Director: Kaitlin Belcher
Committee Members: Kaitlin Belcher, Stephanie Schroyer, Pennie Reese, Shea Hutsenpiller, Open Positions
Our team would not be complete without our fabulous fosters and volunteers. We are greatly appreciative of all they do to keep HHF going.