Photo by Susan Tweit Unknown name. From an assortment of field-grown peonies Susan got as tubers, un-labelled, "but it has the most beautiful fragrance of any peony I've ever known," she says.

Susan is a memoirist, naturalist, and journalist for magazines such as "Audubon," along with producing regular podcasts and her high-level blogposts for her own blog "Community of the Land" and her new Audubon blog "The Perch." Susan and I struck up a writerly sistership first through Women Writing the West and later Story Circle Network where I met her at last and her sculptor husband, Richard.

In Susan's book "The San Luis Valley: Sand Dunes and Sandhill Cranes" she says "What we do best comes not from our heads but our hearts.... Love is what connects us to the rest of the living world, the divine urging from within that guides our best steps in the dance of life."

What better way to express this love than sharing memories of flowers?

When our email conversation turned to peonies, and our memories of decorating the graves on Memorial day, I suggested she contact my father directly...along with the beautiful close-up photos of her peonies.

My great grandfather Riehl was a peony breeder and grower in the late 1800s, and Susan is fascinated with what "heritage plants...that mark the places where we've lived, sometimes persisting long after we are gone."

Pop replied that with a short version, promising a longer version to come: "Some time shortly after the end of WW#1 Memorial Day was established for decorating graves. This led to the commercial growing of cut flowers. Our position in the climate belt made it almost ideal for us to grow peonies and ship them to Chicago for Decoration Day. We had acres of them at one time."

Susan replied to my father's longer version (which you'll read below) saying: "I loved reading your memories of the farm, from asparagus and sweet potatoes to peonies and the harvest. It's interesting that so many farmers today expect to grow the same thing (or two things) from year to year, and also expect someone to step in and 'save' them when crops fail or the market isn't good. How times change. . . .

"I think there are about a jillion varieties of peonies today, but I wonder if the one I call "Old Home Place" (the heritage peony from my 91-year-old mother-in-law's home place in Possum Valley, Arkansas) is Festiva Maxima. It fits your description, down to the 'hard to cut right and not a really good keeper.' But it is surely beautiful in the garden!"

And, now...on to the long version, below.

Susan Tweit and I have been continuing our conversation on returning reverence and creativity to your daily life. Particularly, we've been chatting about why symbolic actions, like earth hour, have power and meaning...why symbolic actions matter and are part of the change we seek.

As Susan says on her blog, Community of the Land:

Such "Earth Moments" can nurture our heads and hearts, and fill our souls with peace. With grace, with joy. To observe an Earth Moment is to engage in living prayer, as the poet Mary Oliver writes in Thirst,

It's like falling in love with life all over again.

Gateway Canyons Casita where Susan Tweit & family spent the night of Earth Hour. Her folks are on the right and her husband Richard is on the left. The snowy top of the Uncompahgre Plateau is in the background and part of Sewemup Mesa on the right. (Photo by Susan Tweit)

I love Susan's grounded wisdom and lyrical nature. The casita is heart's desire with it's tinyness next to the rising mesa.

We both believe that symbolic actions have power and meaning. Symbolism is the tool of the poet, the visionary, the dreamer, the prophet, the priestess, the medicine woman, world healers and healers all over the world, ritualists, ceremonialists, performance artists, theater folks, and...yes, activists!

Chatting by email, Susan agrees that symbolic actions have power "because in the doing them, we shift our own way of seeing the world and the habits we practice."

In Susan's Earth Hour with her family in remote Western Colorado which she describes fulsomely on Community of the Land, they communed with red rock mesas and "myotis bats fluttering through the night air in search of early spring insects, and three ravens in croaking conversation that echoed off the cliff walls, and a screech owl called once from down by the Dolores River. There's a kind of magic that happens when we stop to listen to the pulse of nature and the sounds of other species." Without cellphone of internet connection, they could focus on this magic and emerge refreshed and renewed.

I recall long stretches of time in Africa where the only lights were stars, piercing into our souls from the darkest of night skies. Once, around a campfire with a truck broken down in the desert, we looked up at that night sky, all worries about repair and rescue quenched, singing!

Yes! Keep a poem in your pocket. Read a poem a day. Step outside to breathe in our connection with all beings. Remember that symbolic actions matter, inside and outside.

Read what Susan Tweit has to say about Title Page at Community of the Land Blogspot.

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Editorial Producer and Presenter: Daniel Menaker

New Yorker Daniel Menaker hosts the show with the kind of ease and charm you'd expect of a graduate of Johns Hopkins University. After teaching for three years in independent schools, he began his twenty-six-year career at The New Yorker as a fact checker in 1969, and seven years later became a senior editor specializing in fiction. In 1995 he went to Random House as Vice President, Senior Literary Editor. In 2001 he became Executive Editor at Harper Collins, returning to Random House in 2003 as Editor-in-Chief of the Random House Publishing Group, a division within Random House, Inc.

For those Riehlife and Community of the Land (Susan Tweit's blog) readers who've been intrigued by our Blog Duet on the theme of Regenerative Design/Living, hop on over to Hal Manogue's "Living a Non-Ordinary Life in a Non Ordinary Way" for a thoughtful essay that expands this dialogue.

"Off She Goes Into the Wild Blue Yonder," scupture by Janet Riehl,
dedicated to my mother, Ruth Evelyn Johnston Thompson

In our opening Blog Duet, Susan and I considered "the balance between outward-aiming work in the world and the inward work necessary to sustain the spirit and energy that outward work draws on" (Tweit).

In our second set [jazz term seems right for our jazz conversation format], Susan focuses on energy conservation, landscape design, regenerative design, sustainable living, water conservation, and xeriscape as part of finding your balance inward and outward.

Upon her return from some demanding speaking engagements, Susan says, she had to wait to let "the new ideas settle and hear myself think". Please go to Susan's blog Community of the Land to read about the New Mexico Xeriscape Council's 13th national conference in Albuquerque, New Mexico and themes of water conservation and sustainable landscape design attended by 400 folks. And replete with wonderful speakers like New Mexico Senator Jeff Bingaman, "who pointed out that conservation is the cheapest and most effective way to find new sources of water" (Tweit).

After Susan tagged me for our second blog duet, I thrilled to her use of the word REGENERATIVE. This word goes in so many directions and connects so many ideas and situations for me ranging from the natural world, longevity in aging, sustaining our creative lives, revivifying relationships and so on. Regenerative feels like a word that reaches its arms out across the world and then down into the earth to root and then up into the heavens to sing hallelujas!

As I re-read and study Susan's post, it occurs to me that many of the same principles for sustaining the land and dealing with dry landscapes are transferrable to human relationships and the deep core of our lives as well.

Susan quotes Gloria Flora's wisdom on working with community to bring change for the better:

1) Find the common ground and work from there.
2) Think in terms of transformation, not destruction.

Aren't these principles we can use in relationships of all types...from romantic liasons to working partnerships?

The phrase "regnerative design" comes from "Keith Bowers of Biohabitats, an ecological restoration firm based in Maryland" (Tweit). His definition of regenerative design is to "design landscapes and systems that renew or restore themselves, using the integrity of nature to also meet human needs."

Keith, could we borrow your phrase for human systems work? What if Regenerative Design became the norm in both private and public life? What if we designed our lives and the life of our nation and placed our nation in the world in such a way that the landscape of our inner and outer worlds and systems renewed and restored themselves, using the integrity of human nature to meet human needs?

Susan says she knows that the reclamation work she and Richard have done in restoring their patch of ground out back of their home has been regenerative not only for the "native plant community and some of the animals and insects" but also for restoring their "connection to the landscape where we live."

Yes, I agree with Susan. We can take nature as a model and primary source. We can also listen and learn from the ecological workers among us who are attuned to systems thinking, so we can see both the big picture and the smaller details. To see with the eyes of the eagle soaring in the sky and also with the padded feet of the mouse scurrying across the crumbling clots of earth.

Eagle eyes scanning the landscape.
Mouse-y feet sensing the land.

Thus will be able to create vital connections and tend the relationships they weave.

Susan J. Tweit telling plant stories in Colorado

Janet Riehl performs "Big Butts Are Beautiful"

As a journalist, memoirist, blogger, and speaker I've known Susan through two organizations: Women Writing the West and Story Circle Network. We recently had such a lovely ongoing email conversation about "how to find a balance between an outwardly focused life and an inward one" (as Susan puts it) that we decided to move it onto our blogs in an ongoing Blog Duet.

Some of the questions we are holding and exploring in our dialogue/duet are:

--How do we strike a balance between "connection and stimulation on the one hand and solitude" on the other?

(artwork by Edna Patterson-Petty)

--How do we find "our equilibrium between inward-focused spiritual and emotional work and the outward focus involved in creating new connections and tending existing relationships"?

-- If we're always connected, always tuned to other people, how can we hear our own inner voices? [See Susan's blog for how quiet time and periods of rest and anonymity help her listen to the voice of creativity and spirit.]

-- What are some places that give us "the comfort of the familiar without the demands of intense connection"?

From left: Bluff House (my spot of ground on Evergreen Heights, hidey-holes, rose homecoming journals...my places of familiar comfort...sorting...and sowing.

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Susan says she's an extrovert-seeming introvert. Depending on the day you meet me, I might seem the same. I learned from taking The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator years ago that I'm in the INFP (Introverted, Intuitive, Feeling, Perceiving) zone of the world. In fact, when I took the Meyer's-Briggs, I was told I was on the line between introvert and extrovert, and I could choose which side of the line I wanted to fall on, based on my own sense of myself. I chose introvert. While I enjoy social interchange, I require large amounts of down time to rest and recharge after forays out. I also learned someplace along the way that I'm a kinesthetic perceiver and learner, and highly tactile.

How does such a person step out into the world to travel...give workshops, talks, appear on panels and so on? Throughout my life I explore the answer to this question. I keep on stepping out of my cave and then diving right back in for comfort and days of low-stimulation, sorting, and sowing anew.

Marion Woodman and Robert A. Johnson, both Jungian psychologists, are two introverts who've successfully stepped out into the world to nurture it with their work, but who have done so while nurturing themselves. They have given me hope. Decades ago I read how Marion Woodman, mythopoetic author and women's movement figure, upon returning from forays out to speak and teach, went into solitude at home and required that. Reading of her way of working totally normalized my own need and experience and I was so grateful to see this in print.

Also, decades ago, I heard Robert A. Johnson speak at the DeJung. (Oops! That is to say, the deYoung Museum...I guess it was the DeJung Museum whilst Johnson spoke for Jung's ideas that day!) I loved it but didn't want to put it on the blog or cause you embarrassment! Museum in San Francisco while he was presenting a seminar. He was so brilliant. But here's what he did that really stuck with me: he announced as the break approached that he didn't mean to be unfriendly, but that he needed time to rest, and therefore during the break he'd be going to a quiet place to do that rather than mingling with people and visiting. What an inspiring model of setting boundaries and politely and firmly defying and confounding public expectations. I loved him for that moment, even more than all of his books that I'd read...and I really liked his books, too!

As an introvert having "connection" as my platform is tricky and potentially dangerous. Yesterday I asked my Wisdom Self for guidance, and received these words:

My instrument is tuned for the world to move through me.
I care for my instrument to keep it tuned.
I take care in how I place my instrument in the world.

This feels like a touchstone for me. So much information pours into my body and nervous system. I have to have time to sort it all, or I will explode/implode. As a kinesthetic who loves to go into the world full-heartedly, I've learned that it's also important to carry a cloak.

When I told Susan about my need to "carry a cloak," she told me a great story, and maybe, just maybe she might tell us on her blog for one of our duets. We'll see.

I was struck by Susan's analogy of quiet time to let the stimulation of other's emotions and thoughts subside, my thoughts clear like a pond going still after a rainstorm stirs it up. I use the image of a storm deliberately: what connection and conversation and the stimulation of being around other humans does is very like what a rainstorm does for a pond: it stirs up the bottom sediments, redistributing nutrients, changing the patterns of habitation and flow, and adding fresh water and nutrients as well as other lives washed.

Sogyal Rinpoche, the bestselling author of "The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying" often quotes a Tibetan proverb: Water, if you don't stir it, becomes clear. Similarly, the mind, if you don't stir it, finds peace. When we allow the mind to settle, then in that quiet we experience goodness, our true nature.

It seems fitting that for Susan, who views the land as our oldest community, that she would observe the pattern of the water in a pond and find the analogy to the mind.

Fade out for this first duet.

For the meaning of the lighting the darkness at Solstice, read Susan J. Tweit's Community of the Land's post on how Luminarias light the night. I agree...nothing like rows on rows of luminarias and the smell of pinon under the startling clarity of a Southwestern night sky.

TODAY IN HISTORY from The Library of Congress "American Memory" project is about as sweet as they come with snipets of poetry, photos, audio files of songs, and...the derivation of the word "winter."

The trailer for the film WINTER SOLSTICE with an ensemble cast of Anthony LaPaglia, Aaron Stanford, Mark Webber, Allison Janney, Michelle Monaghan, Brendan Sexton III, Ron Livingston, Ebon Moss-Bachrach, Frank Wood, Kel O'Neill, Thomas Sadoski, Kathleen Bridget Kelly, Welker White, Jason Fuchs, Dana Segal. Sweet!