Comments on: Grandmother Corn

By: Sara

Sara — Fri, 04 Nov 2005 13:07:44 +0000

Ah, this is so rich. Very cool. My only questions are who ordered the lady’s massage, and who paid for it?

By: moose

moose — Tue, 01 Nov 2005 14:16:18 +0000

I felt like I was reading a weaving. A weaving of cultures and traditions, of times and generations, of parents and children and who cares for whom… Very nice.

By: Natalie

Natalie — Mon, 31 Oct 2005 20:05:39 +0000

Me too, deeply moved. Who was/is she, if I may ask?

By: Peter

Peter — Mon, 31 Oct 2005 17:35:36 +0000

Such an attentive piece. I enjoyed this immensely.

By: dale

dale — Mon, 31 Oct 2005 13:05:56 +0000

Marvellous narrative. Thank you!

By: whiskey river

whiskey river — Sun, 30 Oct 2005 20:28:11 +0000

It’s fascinating to enter someone’s memories and past on such a deep level that you can see them so vividly, the way they were forty years ago, even when they stand in front of you, frail and vulnerable with age.

By: beth

beth — Sun, 30 Oct 2005 18:53:43 +0000

Kasturi, what I loved about this piece especially was how you conveyed the continuity of not only touch, but of appreciation and connection, to this person of advanced age. It’s a cliche, I know, to talk about how our culture devalues the elderly – but in visiting elder-care homes so much over the past decade, my feeling is that perhaps we don’t say it enough. Your statement about how the young reinvent the world, over and over, is so true – I suppose it is necessary too, but we need more of these moments when the wisdom of previous generations can at least be touched, and honored.

By: Dave

Dave — Sun, 30 Oct 2005 10:04:34 +0000

This post adds a really important dimension to our theme this month, I think. I like how it fleshes out (literally!) the old feminist notion of the personal as political.

On a somewhat more trivial level, I was excited to find out the true identity of moxa, something I encountered often enough when I read Japanese literature in college. Now that I have forgotten most of my Japanese but have taken up homebrewing, I often use *Artemesia vulgaris* – mugwort – as a substitute for hops. This little tidbit of knowledge feels almost like a thread helping to stitch together two disparate periods of my life.