meet joe fox

yesterday morning i decided to make a pot of vegetable soup.

it was a snowy morning and that just sounded like the right thing to do.

i went out to the frig that's in the garage.

up top in it's freezer, i keep frozen berries, apples, pumpkin and cherries and in the lower part i keep potatoes, onions, drinks and carrots.

my carrots from the garden.

i gathered a few assorted shapes n sizes and brought them on into the kitchen.

i peeled them carefully and then went to slice them.
my knife crunched through the first giant orange thumb and woah! the aroma was so powerful!

it was SO powerful , it transported me back in time. back to 1975- i think.

i lived and worked in kalispell montana. i got a job at a healthy food deli.

joe fox

we served everything with alfalfa sprouts. the soups were artisan, the sandwiches were mountain high and ya know, everyone who worked there had long hair.

kila

one of the gentlemen who worked there was joe fox. i quiet man from vermont who was quick of wit and loved to laugh. he lived in kila. a little settlement in a beautiful valley just 10 mi? outside kalispell.

he invited us to his house one day and we rode on out there in our 48 willys wagon.

his house was an old old house, and we were surprised to see, when we went inside, he had insulated the entire house with stacks of newspaper tied in bundles. it was a bit dangerous, but we were young and didn't really think about those kind of things. it seemed like an excellent idea!

he heated and cooked with wood. it was snowy outside and  it gets very cold in montana.  it was getting near dinner time so  he said, 'lets go out to the garden and get us some veggies'.  we got our coats on and went out to the snowy covered patch.

dead remnants of herbs and marigolds, tansy and sunflowers stood like three dimentional shadows drooping toward the earth.

he got a shovel, and low! and behold! he started digging up carrots and turnips ! (this was before i had ever grown a serious garden so this was really something!)

eureka! we hit gold! i think we even had to pump our own water but in the end, i cooked us up a stew i'll never forget. nothing like a cast iron dutchoven simmering a home grown stew on a wood cookstove.

i had many little adventures in montana. such hard working idealistic folks there. you had to have some kinda fire in your own belly to make it through those 20-40 below winters. but there never was anything more beautiful than the stars that hung above the rockies. i can see why they stay.

those montana rockies

the subject was wrinkles

allegory

 

 

i wadded up a new fresh stiff piece of paper

and then i unwadded it.

it was all wrinkly but it was a little softer.

i wadded it up again and then i unwadded it.

i smoothed it out. it's wrinkles made it pliable.

i wadded it up again and again and it started to take on a different color.

it reflected light differently.

and it was so much more interesting

than the fresh stiff piece it had been.

the fresh stiff paper could take on someone elses rendering.

it could be what someone else thought it should be

but the wadded paper had it's own character.

 

a regular person came in the room.

they wanted the fresh white paper

so they could draw themselves on it

or turn it into a hat or a plane.

if they made a mistake, they would tear it up and throw it away.

they didn't want to have anything to do with the wadded paper,

because it was old and used.

but then

a remarkable person came into the room.

they looked at the stiff new paper and the old soft wadded paper.

and said, 'well, what have we here'?

the remarkable person picked up the wrinkled paper and held it to the light.

the remarkable person stroked the soft used paper and decided

this would be much better to wrap his precious gift in.

the end.