The Life You Save May Be Your Own

Winter solstice, the shortest day of the year.  Snow coming down steadily.  Yesterday's 30 inches or so now joined by today's one-inch-per-hour.  We'll be close to four feet by afternoon.  So much for yesterday's back-breaking driveway shoveling/car clearing.  I'll be out again once it tapers off, using my ka-nees as much as possible; then likely drawing a very hot bath.  The plow trucks do not work on Sundays--so we're likely in for the day.

The reading list this month--as I've cleared away some things and given myself license to make a "community" of the books and authors drawing me in, silencing (or at least quieting) the concerned voices crying misanthrope!--has been long and various.   It is a time for simultaneity, apparently--partly because a few in the mix are 500 pages-plus, and I want to move through them steadily while also connecting elsewhere.  Something like deeply enjoying an intense, needy friend, but not wanting to allow that friend the sole short-term domination she might require--life is short, there is much to read.  Your commitment to that friend is life-long, anyway--which is ultimately really what she needs.

Proust--Swann's Way--is one of those hefty, long-term commitments.  We're about four weeks and 300 pages in.  It's evening reading, somehow.  The Brothers Karamazov is another in this category. I started over a year ago, put it away, and am back into it with FMD.  An essay on Dostoevsky by the late David Foster Wallace, from his essay collection Consider the Lobster, adds fuel to the resolve to finish.  Balzac's Pere Goriot (inspired by Proust) is one I'm listening to on DVD, during commutes to and from the city and on my ipod (while shoveling, walking the dog, etc.).  Moments of Being, a collection of memoir-essays by Virginia Woolf, given to me as a gift and awful lovely and sad.  As yet uncracked--and due back to the library in two weeks--is Rose Tremain's novel The Road Home.

In poetry, over coffee in the morning, sometimes just before sleep: Rilke (the Galway Kinnell translation), Kinnell (his first three collections collected together, along with The Book of Nightmares), Denise Levertov's This Great Unknowing, and Jane Kenyon's Otherwise.

Somewhat "central" in all this readingabout is Paul Elie's The Life You Safe May Be Your Own, a kind of quadrography of the lives of Thomas Merton, Flannery O'Connor, Dorothy Day, and Walker Percy--ardent Catholics and artists all.  Each living a kind of monastic existence, even if not literally (except for Merton).  The title of Day's autobiography--The Long Loneliness--rather than that of O'Connor's short story, may have been an equally apt title for the book.  The book pushes 500 pages, I wasn't sure (during the first 100 pages) that Elie's style or his vision for the thematic/personal web among these four would keep me engaged; at p. 280, I'm hooked the way one is hooked by a good novel.  Here are four writers who, you could say,  gave themselves license to make a community of the books and authors that drew them in, silencing (or at least quieting), the concerned voices crying misanthrope!--with compelling results, i.e. an honest and deep and, yes, often painful, life in letters.

Of Self-Blessing

A spring (ish) poem for the middle of winter. In some ways, most appropriate for a dark, snowy night such as this.

"Saint Francis and the Sow"

by Galway Kinnell

The bud
stands for all things,
even for those things that don't flower,
for everything flowers, from within, of self-blessing;
though sometimes it is necessary
to reteach a thing its loveliness,
to put a hand on its brow
of the flower
and retell it in words and in touch
it is lovely
until it flowers again from within, of self-blessing;
as Saint Francis
put his hand on the creased forehead
of the sow, and told her in words and in touch
blessings of earth on the sow, and the sow
began remembering all down her thick length,
from the earthen snout all the way
through the fodder and slops to the spiritual curl of the tail,
from the hard spininess spiked out from the spine
down through the great broken heart
to the sheer blue milken dreaminess spurting and shuddering
from the fourteen teats into the fourteen mouths sucking and blowing beneath them:
the long, perfect loveliness of sow.

Zen and the Art of Valve-Control

Too many days in the city, and I am restless, hungry for quiet. My head is filled with "stuff." The greatest temptation of city life, when you are working on a book or your own art work, is to allow "what other people are doing" to fill your head. And numerically speaking, there are just so many "other people" here.

It is the difference between being the subject, or the object, of your own life. Here in the city, information and activity come tumbling over you, whether you like it or not. Someone has the radio on, or the TV on, people are talking talking talking, all the news--gossip especially--fills every space in which you move. You want to walk down the street and pick up a carton of milk, or take the subway to the library or post office, and all of it--in the space of four, five, ten blocks--assaults you. Suddenly, your head is full.

The battle of the city--I am finding, I am recognizing recently--is a battle of valve-control. You are trying to write something, to think something, to make something; your brain must be active, alert, clear, able to move in multiple directions as you work. Once city noise has cluttered the space--if the valve is wide open, information overload has already tumbled in--your mind, your imagination, are boxed in--like alternate side of the street parking days, when people double park and trap you in your space.

If you love city life, you don't experience it as noise or clutter or a trap, but as energy. Wondrous diversity. The world alive and vibrant in one city block, one subway car. Yes. True. But valve-control may be the secret here, too. Or maybe it's more like a Rorschach inkblot test, beauty and chaos moving in and out of relief. There is a zen to this, regardless. It takes work.

Today, it takes a lot of work. Between Mumbai, industry bail outs, and close-out sales on Senate seats... I'm struggling to get out of my parking spot.

Guerrilla Poetry and Fawning Over Fauns

It's hard to know what to make of the upcoming reading/performance which will be taking place at my local library here in the country. Alix Olson, described as a queer-artist-activist-spoken word-revolutionary, will be appearing at the Tusten-Cochecton Branch Library. Is this city and country colliding in full glory?

I suppose not. We are but 15 miles from the site of Woodstock, after all. But I wonder what Norma, the octagenarian librarian with whom I've recently become friendly, will think of Alix.

At any rate, I am glad to have renewed my library membership, which I let lapse into delinquency over the last six months. It's good to be back. Wi-fi has also come to Tusten-Cochecton (no cell service still--No Towers! they cry).

The hunters are out. Yesterday, I believe, was the opening of deer hunting season. I assume this because trucks full of men in camouflage and orange vests drove up and down my road all day. The pup and I walked sheepishly along, and every time I saw a deer--they're everywhere, travelling in families--I'd psst, psst and whisper-shout Run for your lives. Shoot anything, I say--but the deer? Innocence incarnate.

Heading back to the Bx today after a productive two weeks here. Rumor has it a new bookstore has opened in the 'hood.

First Big Snow

Snow falling like buckets today. Hard to capture with a layperson's digi-camera. But here's the scene. Below, bright sky as it gives over to early sunset.

I Don't Want an Office

"I am doing what seems to me the simplest--I have done with all that is not simple; I don't want the city any longer, I want the country; I don't want an office, I want to paint."

-letter from Vincent Van Gogh to his brother Theo

These words from Van Gogh were meant as a test for Theo, who was considering whether to give up his work as an art dealer and become a painter himself. Vincent gave the above quote as an example of what the painter must feel, must think, in order to commit to the artist's life--the life as he had come to understand it through years of struggle.

Two years now in the country, and I am nearing this sentiment. I don't want an office; I want to write. My second novel is coming along, coming alive. The possibility of life in the country--a full-fledged life in the country--seems less daunting than it did when I first started coming out here. Here is where I work, and where, ironically, I am least lonely.

Today, I split wood for the first time. Learning how to wield an ax without falling over.

But like Vincent, there are concerns, there are worries. Of money, specifically. In this I suppose I am in the same boat as all Americans at this particular moment in history.

On another note, here is an interesting article in today's Sunday Times about a supposed movement called Slow Blogging. A small comfort for those of us who still don't really know what Twitter is.

Autumn Into Winter

We're almost at the end of autumn, but this one still hits home. Autumn into winter...


"Autumn Day"
by Rainer Maria Rilke

Lord: it is time. The summer was so immense.
Lay your shadow on the sundials,
and let loose the wind in the fields.

Bid the last fruits to be full;
give them another two more southerly days,
press them to ripeness, and chase
the last sweetness into the heavy wine.

Whoever has no house now will not build one anymore.
Whoever is alone now will remain so for a long time,
will stay up, read, write long letters,
and wander the avenues, up and down,
restlessly, while the leaves are blowing.

On the Other Side of Nov 4

It's been a while.

Gardening and election season took over, for the most part. (And of course various and sundry personal travails.) We ended the summer with about 3 dozen mason jars-full of canned tomatoes, pickled everything (cucumbers, green tomatoes, green beans), some frozen string beans, and homemade chili oil.

The election brought the city-country contrasts to a head. Our country county has typically gone almost 3 to 1 Republican--this is guns and Bibles country. This year of course it was different. Between my house and the county seat, you'd see yard signs like proclamations, house by house. The Obama-Biden supporters staked out their intentions as an act of courage. In the end, the county went 53% to 44% Republican--a tremendous "win" for the Democrats. And, of course, Obama won PA by 10+ points.

I voted absentee in the Bronx and spent three days, including election day, canvassing in PA. Pax put on his Obama-Biden outfit ( a yard sign fitted to his hunting vest) and was a hit. One day I went out with three local women--white women in their 50's, who started out as Hillary supporters but eventually got on board with Barack. One of them was defying her very Republican husband. I learned that this was a common pattern. "You never know how they'll vote," she said, meaning, wives go with their husbands publicly, but once they're in that voting booth...

It was eye-opening, and a privilege, really, to talk to people face to face about their choices and opinions. People were definitely engaged and paying attention (sometimes too much attention--disinformation definitely seeped in); and I appreciated more than I ever have the distances--cultural, social, political--that many people in this country had to cross in order to ultimately embrace Barack as their candidate.

Anyhoo. Here we are.

Snow flurries this morning in the city. Forgot to drain the pipes in the country. Hoping, hoping I won't go back to a pipe-bursting disaster. Winter is here.

The American Dream / You Get What You Pay For

Spending longer stretches in the country has been a good thing. The back and forth between city and country becomes disorienting, a feeling of rootlessness, and always catching up from behind. Here I can tend to what needs tending, pay attention, keep up. Feel like I'm sowing and reaping a little, so to speak, as opposed to having my ass kicked by entropy all the time.

Amazing how much work it takes to own/maintain a home. Not complaining - well, maybe a little - but I see the value of renting, of leaving the maintenance to someone else. It's different of course - you get what you pay for, a sense of groundedness and stability when it's your own. And with so many Americans these days losing their homes to foreclosure, I am grateful for the privilege.

Still, there are only so many hours in the day, so many days in your life. How do you want to spend them?

We spent a good part of ours this weekend painting. Just one room - the kitchen - and it was a ton of work. Kitchens, with all their grease and grime and hidden corners behind the appliances, are the hardest rooms to paint. Dirty windows, dirty baseboards and trim. The previous owners slapped primer and flat paint on everything for a quick sell, which has been icky especially in the kitchen. Anyway, it's done. Sigh. Proportional investment makes sense, given how much our our lives we spend in the kitchen.

The lawn continues to be my nemesis. Kicks my ass every time, and I only did about two-thirds of it. It's been humid, so the grass and weeds have been growing fast.

Hosted some friends and their two pitbulls for a couple of days. The pup is pooped, so much doggie comaraderie as of late. Us, too. Pooped, that is. We're used to being loners, I guess. Only so many hours and days... back to the quiet now, back to work.

High Summer is Perfection

Sitting on the porch just now, at dusk. The "sun garden" (redundant, for a smarter gardener than me, I know) is growing nicely - tomatoes, peppers, two kinds of squash, cucumbers, mustards. Everything is potential right now, the hope of a bountiful harvest. Nothing to do but wait and watch.

The lawn is mowed, and growing more slowly, now that the weather is warmer and we're well into summer. I feel less anxious, less overwhelmed by the rigor of growth.

Caterpillar season, finally, is over. Meaning, we don't have piles of caterpillars everywhere, caterpillars eating the vege foliage, caterpillars in our hair and sometimes, yes, crawling in our pants (ick!).

All is quiet, all in balance. The hard work of spring paying off. The "shade garden" was mostly a failure--everything spindly and sun-starved--but I'm eating what I can. Next year we'll problem-solve, either move the whole thing or let it be. No point in working against nature, setting ourselves up for disappointment.

I see below a typo - "Easter medicine" instead of "Eastern medicine." What would "Easter medicine" be? Something hopeful, I think, something which infuses hope after darkness.

Silence and slowness are settling in. Welcome, welcome, peace of summer.

Back From Vacation, Discombobulated

Just back from the Pacific Northwest, a family trip. J.'s family, that is. Part of the time spent in the city, part of it on a small island. We all (the fam) fantasized about jointly buying island land and building a family "compound" - artist colony, healing retreat center (accupuncture, Easter medicine, etc), marijuana farm (I know, how groovy), organic gardens, the whole ridiculous healthy-hippie-yuppie shabang. There was a simple and wonderful wood-burning-stove-heated sauna and hot tub at the rustic resort where we stayed, which also got our wheels turning.

Straight from the airport to the kennel (well, just about) to pick up the pup, who didn't seem thrilled about his stay. You can just tell. More of a people dog than a dog dog, I guess. That's my doing, I know. They're looking for extra help, business is booming. Hmm... Krista says it's mostly clean-up work, dirty stuff.

The sun garden plants seem to be thriving, the shade garden plants are spindly and sad. The greens are edible, that's what's important I guess. G. and F. the pup (formerly Brownie) came out for a few days, was fun to share the beauty of the place with city friends; hopefully we can do more of that. F. seemed a little confused, like "Where are all the cars?"

On the drive back, a tiny little faun galloped in front of us in the middle of the highway. I breaked hard and prayed; miraculously, I didn't hit it and no one hit me. But then I braced myself to witness the little gal's violent end - this was a six-lane highway, people driving 65-70 mph. Again, miraculously, she weaved her way across, lightning fast and weightless, and galloped into the trees. I'll never forget seeing that.

Jimmy, Mildred, and Grey Rabbit

First harvest, some thinnings from the spinach and beet rows. Baby spinach and baby beet greens for dinner tonight.

I over-mulched the tomato plants, they seem a little suffocated, leaves wilty and yellowing. I knew I wouldn't be here to water for a week, and the weather called for full sun, so I was worried about moisture loss. Sigh. At this stage, when first transplanted, they really do need careful attention, more than once weekly. They are infants, after all. Hopefully they'll bounce back, I've given them a little more air.

The back and forth between city and country is wearing on me in a new way. Can't quite identify it, but something is shifting, something is pressing. I think more and more about laying roots somewhere, about committing to a place; no more this life of halvsies. Every so often I read a biography of a rural life (right now, Jimmy Carter's "An Hour Before Daylight") and I ache for a life rooted in place. Even if the place is not native, even if it means fabricating home, consciously locating and dropping the anchor.

This article from the NYT a few days ago also I think got under my skin. Ms. Puett's Mildred's Lane must be a stone's throw from here. The hippie communal quality doesn't so much appeal to me as the simple longevity, the life work of several years, making home and art in a place. Making art of home, making home of art.

Man From Plains

In fact, the name of the tiny rural place in Georgia where Jimmy Carter grew up, where his family farmed, was Archery. The town - it wasn't even quite a town - no longer exists. Jimmy was born in Plains, and he and Rosslyn returned there after his presidential term and still live there.

Just watched the Jonathan Demme bio-documentary on Carter. It's a good one, I recommend. Demme is a fan, of the man and the President, which comes through. Talk about a country boy making his way to the big city; and yet never losing the country in him. Carter is nothing if not a man of place and land, which of course explains his tireless and unapologetic compassion (which has gotten him into trouble) for the Palestinian cause.

It occurs to me that, in this modern world, either you are a person of place, or you aren't. The dividing line between those two ways of existing on the planet is stark. We city people are nomadic, our fidelity is to things abstract. Seems to me Carter's relationship to place and land might be the most defining and driving force of his character, and thus his leadership and legacy.

I'm reading one of his memoirs now and looking forward to Peter Bourne's biography.

Dorothy, Getting Her Bearings

Back in the Bronx, the fire escape lettuces have "bolted," meaning they got too hot too fast and flowered; they're past eating now. Phooey. How did that happen? I go away for a week, and all hell breaks loose... Living things (sigh) do need constant attention.

Where am I? Not in Kansas anymore. The pup and I went for a short run, partway across the Triboro and down to Randall's Island. Our normal park route is blocked off, the whole area dug up. We're told it's being developed into a giant, privately-owned tennis center. We like tennis, but...no more community baseball, no more public access. There goes the neighborhood.

We've been exploring other areas of the Bronx, looking at real estate. In particular, areas near large parks. Pickings are slim. As we venture north, it starts to feel like another planet - 50, 60, 70 minutes by subway to downtown Manhattan. We've been told apartments in the Bronx rarely allow dogs. How odd. I find myself pining for Manhattan, which surprises me. It's a momentary lapse, irrational. Longing for something that feels like "home" or vaguely "comfortable" - but really, there's no such thing (no place called home, my own Dorothy-esque chant), not in the form of real estate anyway.

The Beginning of Summer

Memorial Day weekend in the country, the summer people have all descended. Folks are out walking, bicycling, boating. We went for a motorcycle ride and saw all the young city families with their well-groomed, apartment-bound kids running around, doing cartwheels (literally), splashing in the river. The most beautiful river-side homes seem to belong to city people. I felt something - not sure what exactly - as we sped by. Something akin to what you feel when you read a John Cheever story, or a James Salter novel. The elegance and sadness of privilege. The fleeting nature of joy, like a weekend.

We stopped by the nursery and J. picked out three trees: a weeping cherry, a Japanese maple, and a crab apple. He planted them all, hard work, digging into that red clay; and it makes me happy to look at them... our investment in the future, in the beauty of this piece of earth.

I planted tomato seedlings, cucumber seeds (green and yellow), zucchini and squash seeds (green and yellow), sweet basil seedlings, and the last of the lettuce and bok choy seeds. I also built the pole bean teepee. We've got a lot growing now, a lot to tend to. I should try to be here as much as possible while the plants are just budding and require lots of regular water and weeding; but the city pulls me back each week. I'll be doing a rain dance from the Bronx.

Waste Not, Want Not

Energy and food crises are finally turning attention toward waste (see Sunday NY Times article on food waste). It takes talent, I’ve realized, to be a good steward of resources, to be creative and smart about recycling and repurposing so that nothing goes to waste. And vigilance, too. We Americans, as a whole, seem to be lacking this talent, mostly because we’ve not been forced to develop it. Once we are forced to, though, it will hopefully become habit.

I’m working on it. Food waste makes me crazy, so I’m paying more attention to quantities – what we buy, what we cook, what we consume, what goes straight to the freezer. Your freezer is your best friend when it comes to food conservation. In the country, we have a compost pile—which also takes talent. Been trying to master the fine art/science of composting, including turning the thing regularly (and banning J. from it, with his manly insistence on throwing hunks of meat and all manner of protein on the pile).

We used to collect kitchen scraps in the city and bring them out with us to the country. But that got sort of icky. In San Francisco, an innovative city-run composting program is getting some attention. How to make it happen in NYC? Garbage disposal is very expensive in NYC, so any financial incentives for people to compost would work, I think. Plus, the city can then sell the compost to small-scale farms and gardeners.

It Takes a Village

Making our rounds this weekend, it occurs to me that we've covered our bases in terms of finding suppliers of basic needs out here.

First stop, the saw mill. A reasonable $30/hr rate to plane down some very specialized planks of walnut (eight years old, J. rescued the trunk after the whole tree fell in a hurricane). J. is excited about making furniture.

Second stop, the kennel. Preparing for a week-long trip in June, we found what seems to be a terrific dog-loving place nearby where P. the pup will be well cared for. Everything built for doggie comfort and health (my favorite: a doggie "dry sauna," with very low heat, where they dry off and nap after baths or rainy walks), and also very green (wind power, geothermal wells, etc). D. and K. opened their doors in January, after a long fight with the town council (they've been coming out here for 25 years while working in Manhattan, but there's some animosity about them not being natives). Anyway, a bargain at $20/night.

Third stop, the bakery, currently housed in a little out-building behind someone's house, but moving soon to a larger space in town. Breads, pies, morning pastries, all fresh daily.

Fourth stop, Alice's farm stand, where we get local grass-fed meats (ever had a mutton-burger? YUM) and veges in season. A little pricey for the veges, so it's motivation to work harder at the garden. Also carries eggs and chickens, and cheeses and yogurts from a nearby dairy farm.

Fifth stop, the general store, to pick up mail and browse movie rentals. In the parking lot, J.'s walnut in the back of the pick-up gets a lot of attention, and he gets a rec from T., a local plumber, for someone who might be selling a used table saw. B. and D. are holding back their sweet but high-strung German Shepherd "pup" (he's huge) and mention that they'll be taking him to a week of doggie training. When I ask where, it turns out they're sending him to doggie camp at D. and K.'s kennel.

Last stop, the tennis courts by the river. We hit some balls around then head home, ready to take on chores.

Food

What's happening with food right now is the lynchpin that links city people and country people, all around the world.

As city consumers, we can help set the parameters for what food is grown, and how. Food is something we all consume, our universal connector. Health and a thriving environment are the by-products of how we consume food. The more demand we make for real, healthful food - as opposed to processed, soy-and-corn-syrup based foods - the more of it will be grown. Theoretically.

"Increasingly we can see the wisdom of diversified farming operations, where there are built-in relationships among plants and animals. A dairy farm can provide manure for a neighboring potato farm, for example, which can in turn offer potato scraps as extra feed for the herd...To encourage small, diversified farms is not to make a nostalgic bid to revert to the agrarian ways of our ancestors. It is to look toward the future, leapfrogging past the age of heavy machinery and pollution, to farms that take advantage of the sun's free energy and use the waste of one species as food for another." (Dan Barber, NY Times Op-Ed 5/11/08)

Nature is genius, Nature understands how energy recycles itself symbiotically. Greed, impatience, excessively indulged appetites - these are what threw us off, worldwide. I don't know what's in the mind of farmers, perhaps they felt it was their due to cash in on ethanol as fast as they could; regardless, gigantic subsidized corn-farming is wreaking havoc on both food supply and prices.

City people eat. A lot. Join movements for more small-farm foods, make the consumer demand. Sign petitions to your elected officials when the farm bill comes up, voice against inefficient subsidies which support farming practices that do not benefit health or the environment in the short or long run. Buy real food and cook it. The more diversified farms that can thrive, the more likely you can buy local foods which do not require cross country trucking or international transport (more fuel).

I'm not sure what the right balance is between eating locally and international free trade. If our importing of South American bananas and mangos is helping to keep those countries' economies afloat. The economics of it I find hard to grasp. But at the least, it seems we can buy and eat the foods which grow naturally in our regions from local sources, and learn about the growing practices of the West coast farms from where our oranges come.

It has to get bad enough, I suppose, for the movement towards diversified farms to take a serious turn, and for Americans to change the way we eat and buy food. How bad, I wonder.

What's Growing These Days in the Bronx

On the fire escape, Asian greens are coming up nicely - bok choy, Japanese mustards, gai laan. I'm also sprouting snapdragons for the first time; they're a bit sluggish, but they seem to be reaching for the sun and growing little by little.

Our new super, Z., is well-meaning but apparently not very experienced with plants. He's bought marigolds and something that looks like a mini evergreen for each floor and has set them on the stairwell windowsills with no dishes underneath to catch the water (assuming he will be watering them). Also, the marigolds are mostly sitting in the dark (the stairwells don't catch much light).

I feel sorry for the plants, but not sure how much I can take on to assist; we're still unsure about our future here. An incident involving a chase and a handgun on our block (about 11pm) was recently reported to us by a floor-mate. This neighbor has decided to break his lease as a result--leaving us and one other couple as the only ones remaining from among the original group who moved in when the building was first completed.

Options are slim, though. We're seeking but not finding. And who wants to move. Even with all the hoopla, we kind of like it here. I guess I'll look after the marigold here on floor 3.

We Make Progress

We now have about 80 square feet of vegetable gardens. The new raised beds - three 2'x6'x1' boxes - are ready for planting. We'll wait about two weeks until all danger of frost has passed before we put the tomatoes, zucchini, beans, and cucumbers in the ground.

Last year we built one large plot, 8'x12', using railroad ties to contain the dirt; the railroad ties are incredibly heavy, so we really broke our backs. We also didn't have enough top soil to fill the thing, so we ended up making mounded rows, which are a little unstable and don't quite optimize the space. Finally, the whole plot is situated in partial shade. DUH.

The new beds are in full sun, they are smaller so we can reach all sides; they are full to the top one inch; and they are made out of lightweight 2-by-12's. J. also banged together a sifter, so we've gotten most of the rocks out of the top soil. If things go all right, we'll be able to grow the majority of our vegetables for 5 months out of the year. We're thinking about setting up a germinating system (in the basement?) next year to increase that to maybe 6 or 7 months.

So, we learn and we improve. Also: I had written last year about not being able to change my water filter without J.'s help. I am happy to report that I have done it! With a little creative bracing (my feet up on the wall and my back against the opposite wall), I was able twist the old filter loose and tighten up a new one.

We make progress.

Not Fitting In

Every car that drives by my house is a kind of test. Some wave and smile, some stare coldly. These days we're out in the yard for most of the daylight hours, raking or digging or chopping or mowing or resting. Don't know what the talk is, exactly, about the ORIENTALS from the city up on M. Road, but you can bet there's talk.

At the General Store, J. is friendly with R., the patriarch whose son and daughter-in-law and grandchildren are usually around working the register or preparing food. J. is good at that -- acting as if and putting people at ease. Me, I'm sensitive and thin-skinned, I notice how people stop chatting familiar-like when I walk in, especially the guys-with-guns. Roc's daughter-in-law V. is thin and pretty and a firm disciplinarian with her boys and bakes cookies for sale; I've tried to be friendly, but something doesn't quite click, and I think I probably come off like I'm trying too hard. I'm there for a transaction, after all, not to hang out, that much is clear.

I put my hope and faith in time. Hard edges smooth out, people become familiar, one interaction at a time. Maybe we're being watched suspiciously for now, but that's ok, we'll just keep doing what we're doing and hope one of these days they'll just keep on chatting, or that R. will call J. by name, or that we will feel like hanging out.

Country Report, Late April

If there is a dominant partner in this love triangle with city and country, it is definitely city. Country struggles for her place, her time, her priority. City is where we make money. And so, and thus...

But spring is here, and so country elbows her way in. The roads are dry, everything is covered (us included) with the red dust kicked up by trucks as they drive by. We're sneezy and watery-eyed, our backs sore from garden prep. The leafy veges are beginning to sprout: this year we're going Asian - gailaan, bak choy, pak choy, Japanese mustards. Some American spinach and beets, as well. Today, we work on a second garden plot, breaking hard red earth again (get out the ibuprofen), a hot sunny spot for tomatoes, eggplant, green beans, zucchini, cucumbers.

With the price of food (and everything else) rising, we're getting a little more serious about growing food. Hoping to do some canning as well, which will be new for me, old hat for J. (his late father's specialty).

I think about finding a way to spend the summer here, give country her due. But I worry, too, about the reality of it--isolation (physical and mental), especially. But maybe it's time to give it a go. Maybe the country wants to be wife this summer, instead of mistress.

Gentrification in the Bx

With the latest incidents here in the Bx - vandalism, theft, etc. - I've been feeling on edge. The situation with our super J. is also a bit shaky; he tends to be drunk a lot, has been letting various characters into the building (the basement has become a kind of "clubhouse" for whomever, and many of us feel uncomfortable when we go down to do our laundry), and doesn't really do his job. But if/once our landlord lets him go, I would not put it past him to become embittered and do who-knows-what. All the locks would have to be changed, etc. And he lives down the block and won't be going anywhere.

Lately when I walk the pup around the 'hood, I feel conspicuous and nervous. More so than before. I am more aware of the men's shelter around the corner. I was told by one of our neighbors in the building that a former sex offender lives two doors down (did you know that you can find out by going to sexoffenders.com? Jeez.). I am waiting for the next incident, the other shoe to drop.

On Saturday we decided to be pro-active, spend some time out in the neighborhood. We walked up to St. Mary's Park, which is a nice hill-top park about 10 blocks north. We've been looking for free public tennis courts and found them there. The gates were locked with a padlock, but the Parks attendant told us that they did that to keep the kids from stealing the nets, and that we could use the courts if we wanted to squeeze through the gap in the gates (so much for "security"). So we did that, and we all (the pup fetched balls for us) got some exercise.

On Sunday, I walked the 15 blocks west to find the nearest NY Times. On the way back, I ran into a woman who was opening up the doors at a new art gallery in Mott Haven. She let me and the pup in, and I learned that she lives on a brownstone block nearby, where there are a number of historic brownstones for sale. She owns two of them - lives in one, rents the other to her daughter. The buildings have been in her family for 80 years, she said, from back when the neighborhood was mostly European immigrants (she's White). She told me about a group of historic-building owners who have been getting together, forming a little community; and that a curator from the Metropolitan Museum just bought one of the brownstones.

Is this good news? She thinks so. I didn't get a sense of racial awareness, though. She seemed to imply that White gentrification is good, no matter what. White = safe. Most of the people who run the gallery are White - Brooklyn and Manhattan refugees, or, like her, old Bronx families returning after a generation away. Hmm...

J. and I are going to check out the brownstones for sale. Just to see what's up. I find it all a little troubling, though.

The Voter in My Head

There's been so much in the media about "that white male working class voter" lately. Will he go for Hillary, or will he go for Barack? Will he go for McCain over Hillary, or Barack over McCain, or not show up to the polls at all depending on who is on the ballot?

More importantly, who IS he, and is he real? Meaning, is he truly a group of he's that can be categorized in a block?

We're all being categorized and chopped up into voter blocs like never before (or, perhaps, like always before, but much more evident now) based on income, education, location, consumer habits, race, gender, age, etc. I even find myself trying to guess, based on some combination of appearance and observed behavior, who someone is going to vote for -- strangers, friends, acquaintances alike.

What is hopeful about this year's Democratic race is that people seem more open and fluid in their voting decisions. If democracy is about having an informed and active voting public - as opposed to a predictably self-serving / not-in-my-backyard voting public - then the voting patterns themselves will be interesting to observe. I will certainly be disappointed if Obama is not the Democratic nominee; but I will be exponentially more disappointed if he loses as a result of predictable voting patterns, i.e. people voting out of a kind of pre-determined fear and self-preservation factor (which I believe Hillary is exploiting to the utmost). If Hillary wins, I at least hope to be surprised by the how and why of it; I doubt it, though.

I will be interested to see how Wayne County, PA districts vote on April 22. We have a moderate Democrat as Congressional Rep. -- Chris Carney. Wikipedia says the following:

Carney is a somewhat conservative Democrat, which is not surprising given the nature of the district. For example, while opposing proposals to privatize Social Security, he said he is open to the idea of adding private accounts in addition to (not at the expense of) traditional defined benefits. He supports federal investment in stem cell research, and is an advocate of universal healthcare. He supports gun rights, does not favor abortion (but supports family planning and "comprehensive reproductive healthcare"), and opposes gay marriage. He supports estate tax reduction.

During the campaign, Carney raised money with a wide-variety of supporters including Sen. Barack Obama, Sen Joe Biden, Rep. Jay Inslee, Rep. Jack Murtha, and Richard Perle, a leading Bush Administration advocate of war with Iraq who more recently has criticized the decision to go to war Douglas Feith, another Pentagon hawk, congratulated Carney on Election Night.

Rumbles in the Bronx

It's been forever.

Well, I guess it's been a month. I've been thinking about the reality of blogging, and my unsuitability for it. It requires a certain talent for current-ness, for keeping up, for "freshness." Me, I'm all about the old, the outdated, the slow. It takes me a long time to chew on last week's news. It takes me a long time to do just about everything.

But city (keeping up) and country (slow) are still on my mind, still the extreme realities of life. These days, we're thinking about our life in the Bronx, about whether or not/how long we'll stay. It's weird to be a gentrifyer, and difficult in many ways; the double challenge of "should we" (participate in pricing out people who've lived here a long time) and "do we want to" (confront the daily challenges of living in a poor, under-serviced, crime-ridden neighborhood) is where we find ourselves.

The latest: you already know that my car was stolen from the block last summer (at least I got to write off the $400 tow-yard cost on my Schedule A this year as a theft loss). J. has had a number of things stolen from his truck as well. My flower pots have been vandalized, and recently someone (who?? why??) tossed our plastic lawn chairs off the roof. There are currently angry/hysterical warning signs throughout the building posted by one of our neighbors, whose bicycle was stolen from the basement. But the biggie: the other night, someone went around puncturing tires on the block, including all four of mine.

J. and I were out on the street pumping up the tires the next morning, not yet aware that they'd been punctured (the holes were super-tiny), hoping that possibly the vandals just let the air out, for pranks. A guy who works in the neighborhood stopped to chat and asked us what happened. His take was basically this: "Well, you got two ways of looking at it. Since it was a whole bunch of cars, at least you can think, 'It wasn't just me,' and you don't have to feel like you've been targeted or anything, like it's personal. And at least it's just kids playing pranks, you know. Once I had both my mirrors stolen, and when I found out it was a bunch of people lost their mirrors, I felt better. Even though it cost me 500 bucks to replace them. A few years back, one of the tire repair shops was paying kids to slash tires in the neighborhood; that guy's been closed down, though. So consider yourselves lucky, you know. It could always be worse."

Well, seeing as the tires were indeed punctured, we're thinking that old scam may have been revived; and we're not feeling so lucky. How long will my new tires last? Maybe my mirrors are next?

I feel lucky that J. was with me to help pump up the tires and get the car to Maria's Tire Shop. I feel lucky that someone stopped to try and encourage me that I'm lucky. I feel lucky that the car is still running (and that it was recovered by the police last summer). And I feel lucky for my three days in the country after all that, which was good rest & recovery time (it's amazing how porch and sky can heal the soul).

The window boxes are out on the fire escape, I planted bok choy, gai laan, and Japanese mustard seeds. Trying snapdragons for the first time, too. Not sure if I'll put in the time for roof or stoop or backyard plants here; doesn't feel safe.

Chekhov's Humanity... City and Country

Chekhov generally refrained from passing judgment on his characters, playing more the role of objective "witness." Well, sort of. "Man will become better when you show him what he is like," he wrote in one of his notebooks. Often his moral pronouncements are put into the mouths of characters with a deceptive simplicity; as readers, we recognize that the speaker is often both impassioned and hypocritical, sincere and ignorant. And because Chekhov always approached and drew his characters humanely, we can never look at a character and say, "What a hypocrite" or "How ignorant" - because they are too recognizable, too much like ourselves.

Anyway. A couple of stories I recently read with bits of this layered commentary, on city and country life. In Russia, of course, city and country have always been code words for social class - peasants, landed gentry, sophisticated intelligentsia, etc. Many of Chekhov's characters, however, are often in fluid social positions, which allows him to comment on class positions in a more dynamic way.

From "Gooseberries": The narrator is speaking about his brother. Their father was a military man who rose to the rank of officer and came to own a small country estate. As children the two brothers thus lived in the country; after their father's death, all property was lost to creditors, and so they became white-collar professionals.

He was a kind and gentle soul and I loved him, but I never sympathized with his desire to shut himself up for the rest of his life on a little property of his own. It is a common saying that a man needs only six feet of earth. But six feet is what a corpse needs, not a man. It is also asserted that if our educated class is drawn to the land and seeks to settle on farms, that's a good thing. But these farms amount to the same six feet of earth. To retire from the city, from the struggle, from the hubbub, to go off and hide on one's own farm - that's not life, it is selfishness, sloth, it is a kind of monasticism, but monasticism without works. Man needs not six feet of earth, not a farm, but the whole globe, all of Nature, where unhindered he can display all the capacities and peculiarities of his free spirit.

From "On Official Business": The main character here is a magistrate, young and ambitious for a career and lifestyle in Moscow but paying his dues in the provinces.

The fatherland, the real Russia, was Moscow, Petersburg; but these were the provinces, the colonies. When you dream of playing a part, of becoming known, of being, for instance, examining magistrate in important cases or prosecutor in a circuit court, of being a social lion, you inevitably think of Moscow. If you are to live, then it must be in Moscow; here, nothing matters to you; you get reconciled readily to your insignificant role, and only look for one thing in life - to get away, to get away as quickly as possible... and he kept thinking that all about him was not life but scraps of life, fragments, that everything here was accidental, that one could draw no conclusion from it... It occurred to him that since the life about him here in the wilds was unintelligible to him, and since he did not see it, it meant that it was nonexistent.

Both passages express the superiority of city life; and yet both characters are limited in their experiences and understanding. Each bring their prejudices. Chekhov himself summered in the country and eventually settled down on a rural estate; but seemed throughout his life to be dogged by a consciousness of the poor upon whose backs the wealthy and comfortable lived. "As though someone were knocking with a little hammer on his temples," he writes of the young magistrate, who ultimately has nightmares about how the poor "shouldered all that was darkest and most burdensome in life" and how "to wish for oneself a bright and active life among happy, contented people, and constantly to dream of such a life, that meant dreaming of new suicides of men crushed by toil and care..."

As for the man who criticizes his brother for "escaping" to the country, he has similar thoughts as the magistrate after seeing the life of comfort and satiation his brother made for himself (Chekhov even repeats the use of the phrase "a little hammer" in reference to one's conscience), that "obviously the happy man is at ease only because the unhappy ones bear their burdens in silence." But in this story, Chekhov bears "witness" to something perhaps even more implicating: the man's audience, the two other men who listen to him speak of his brother and the revelations he had with regard to happiness and the poor, don't care to hear him speak of it. "...it was tedious to listen to the story of the poor devil of a clerk who ate gooseberries. One felt like talking about elegant people, about women."

Bronx Skies

"We all suffered from the same shortage of vocabulary, as if language itself had fled the Bronx, and curiosity had been bleached out of us. School was of little help. Our teachers had succumbed to the neighborhood’s affliction, a kind of constant, sluggish sleep." From an article in the City section of The NY Times this Sunday, by Jerome Charyn, novelist and Bronx native.

On quiet days when I work at home, I sometimes take a few minutes to sit by the window that looks out onto the street in front of our building. The view is a waterproofing company's warehouse, Bruckner Blvd., the on-ramp to the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway, billboards billboards billboards... and quite a lot of sky. I can see what kind of traffic day it is; and it always seems that people are driving away from here, as fast as they can.

Sometimes I really have no idea what I'm doing here. Lately I've begun to imagine living somewhere else - a different borough, a smaller city, perhaps even a small town. This morning the pup and I walked under the bridge (a spooky underpass) to the handball courts, where I sometimes take him to toss the tennis ball around; but a shady-looking guy was sitting on the curb there, with no one else in sight, and I didn't feel safe. Ho hum.

This is where I am, for now. Half the time, anyway. When I sit by the window, I think about this: this is where I am. Somehow, I got here. And this is where I am.

It's not much of a pedestrian's neighborhood (shady-looking guys, etc.), so when I'm here, I'm mostly inside. Grocery shopping, miscellaneous errands, these things are accomplished mostly by driving to somewhere else. The other night we stopped in at a Puerto Rican restaurant a few blocks away and flumoxed the two women at the counter with our non-Spanish. I do find delight in seeing the Korean dry cleaners' and the Chinese takeout owners' faces light up when we walk in.

So I learn about my borough in tiny tidbits. It's a huge borough, its history of people groups diverse. But when it comes to writers, the Bronx is very much the un-Brooklyn: writers flock to Brooklyn as the new literary enclave, while they overcome obstacles and flee the Bronx for brighter skies (Delillo, Doctorow, etc. - Mr. Charyn now lives in Manhattan, I believe, and Paris.)

Here's another one, which I ran across I don't remember where. A self-published memoir by James McSherry called A Clean Street's a Happy Street. "A well-crafted and poignant memoir about a chaotic childhood in the Bronx," the review says. The title struck me, because of the garbagey-ness around here. I'll see if I can get my hands on the book.

Pilgrim in Provincetown

Boston or New York embodies our condition in one aspect: We are strangers among millions living in cubes like Anasazi in a world we fashioned. And Provincetown shows, by contrast, that we live on a strand between sea and sky. Here are protoplasmic, peeled people in wind against crystal skies. Our soft tissues are outside, like unearthed and drying worms'. The people in cities are like Mexican jumping beans, like larvae in tequila bottles, soft bits in hard boxes. And so forth. The length to which we as people go to hide our nakedness by blocking sky!

There was a fatal problem. There always is. Provincetown people too, and all people worldwide who could swing it, were also bare tissues living under roofs. An honest way through, all but changing the whole idea, would be a set of interleaved narratives, Boston people and desert villagers. -from The Maytrees, by Annie Dillard

It's been a while. City and country somehow receding as main characters in this day-to-day. But I've just finished The Maytrees, Annie Dillard's new novel (and her last book, she says: "This one just about killed me... I want to change and grow."), and made note of the above for OITB (that's Orchid in the Bronx): Toby Maytree, a Provincetown poet, is thinking about a book-length poem which he will start writing shortly.

Anasazi: "The ancestors of modern Pueblo Indians, about 20 separate tribes living in New Mexico and Arizona. There never was an 'Anasazi' tribe, nor did any group of people call themselves by that name. Anasazi is a descriptive term of Navajo origin. Archaeologists applied the term to villagers who lived and farmed in the Four Corners between the years 1 and 1300 AD." One of many things/words I had to look up throughout the reading of The Maytrees. Along with hoyden, folderol, lagniappe, albedo, howitzer, Algreba, skeg, chert. (Any idea? You are much smarter than I.)

AD's story of love found, lost, found, pondered upon, redefined, undefined is as dense as it is earthy, heady as it is moving. Like everything of hers, it hurt my head to read; she's so damn smart, it actually grinds the brain. But in this one, you can feel her heart fighting for space next to - or at least somewhere near - her mind. As a reader, it's a unique experience - feeling something in your chest swell and tighten as you reach for the dictionary. Bare tissues living under roofs.

And it's definitely a country story. AD has come home to Tinker Creek in a way; this time it's the dunes and the starry skies of Cape Cod. The wind, the sand, the "green sea," "black cordgrass, " "parabolic dunes," "low swale," and "shack gulls" - all constantly in motion, ebbing and flowing like the tide throughout the story. On the one hand, I'm sad AD says she's "done." On the other hand, she's earned it, and I've barely understood everything she's written to date, so it's not like I won't have her work to re-read for many years to come.

V-Day 2008

J. brought me orchids, I brought him roses. Earlier in the day, we had poo-pooed the silly holiday, planned to have no special plans. "Boy, are we suckers," we said, exchanging flora.

A funny pairing, but oh well. I do love flowers.

Transition

Maybe, like they say, P. is just picking up on my emotions and reflecting them back to me. He's not the smartest pup in the litter, but he's definitely a sensitive one. You should see his sad puppy face, hang-down ears, deflated posture, when we load up to head back to the city. He is so bummed.

It's hard to describe/express the extreme-ness of the two places. I am less aware during the cold winter months, because of how much time I spend hunkered down inside. But it occurred to me this morning, when we were on our walk in the 'hood. I took a different route, down towards the water, which is also towards the power and sewage plants. Light industry turns to heavy industry the closer you get to the shore. Closer to our building, there are residents, buildings of modest size (and a tree!). Over there, in industrial land, things become mammoth and scary. Let's just say it's the land of emissions. And in the early morning hours, lots and lots of huge trucks, speeding by, delivering and dumping and hauling. Then there's me and P., trotting along - me scolding him for picking up sidewalk french fries like a psycho-mom.

Three days ago, P. and J. were wading in the river, watching eagles and fly-fishing.

This gal Majora Carter, Hunt's Point native, has been getting a lot of press lately. She founded an org called Sustainable South Bronx. Apparently they are trying to create a greenway - a jogger's and biker's path, along the water, which would come down near us. Boy, that would change everything.

The Campaign Trail (2)

No TV here in the country, so we check in periodically to CNN and NY Times online for election results. A victory/non-victory for Hillary Clinton last night in Nevada, attendant media spin about which victory – Clinton’s popular victory, or Obama’s delegate victory – counts more.

Last week, a Times Week in Review article about the “firsts” of this Democratic race – first woman, first black man. It’s weird to be a woman of color at this particular moment in history; identity politics are interestingly, disorientingly scrambled. An article speaking to this on today’s op-ed page: Whitney Terrell writes about living on the fault line between blacks and whites in his Kansas City, MO district, where the white senator endorses Obama and the black Congressman endorses Hillary Clinton. Terrell writes: “With bad times brewing, black voters seem worried they can’t afford to vote for Mr. Obama’s optimism and lose. ‘I like him,’ said one of my longtime neighbors. ‘I just don’t think anybody’s going to let him be president.’”

I have been frustrated (though not surprised, really) in finding the prevalence of this sentiment among fellow people of color. My two most intense and ongoing conversations about Democratic politics right now are with two close friends, one a black woman, one an Asian American woman. F. is black, born and bred in Bed-Stuy Brooklyn, loved/loves Bubba, and has been a Hillary supporter all along. She is cautiously glad to see Obama’s ascent as a viable candidate, but isn’t a supporter (yet). She’s expressed a conviction that he will be “eaten alive” by the white political establishment on the political level, along with worry for his basic safety, on the physical survival level. “It ain’t gonna happen,” she has said. “There’s just no way a white country is going to let a black man be president.” And if they do, (she implies), it ain’t gonna be pretty. She says it in a you silly girl kind of way, in a you don’t know what I know kind of way. I respect that – that I don’t know what she knows about being black in America; but I’m frustrated still, because who are “they” if not “us”? We are voters, and black people are voters, not to mention participants in a democracy that, it seems to me, is desperately trying to revive itself, make itself real again, via the Obama candidacy. Of course Obama won’t get elected if skeptical/fearful black people vote for the elite/perceived-powerful white woman! But this feeling, that Obama – that hope in an optimistic black candidacy cannot be “afforded” – this is what I think is hugely at stake in this election.

S. was the most radical idealist I knew back in our college days. And she wasn’t just talk either – she has worked in Palestinian refugee camps, Mother Teresa’s home in India, and has done death penalty defense work in Alabama (she’s an attorney). For years, she rejected the institution of marriage. Until… she met her current husband. They now have two little boys, and she’s frantic with child care and financial responsibility and sleep deprivation. I was shocked (and yet sort of not, because I now have so many friends with small children, I am learning the all-consumingness of it) – to hear her say that she was voting Hillary, and for this reason: “I don’t want any idealism or ideology, I just want someone who can manage the office, do the job.” In her voice, I could hear her exhaustion, her I’m-just-trying-to-get-through-the-day exasperation with “ideas” and “hope.” Again, Obama seemed an expensive luxury to her.

[Interesting that no one is worried about Hillary, as a woman, getting eaten alive. I suspect that having Bubba by her side as her bouncer is no small factor.]

Youthful idealism specialist Dave Eggers (author of (mark the ironic but not ironic youth-inspired title) A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius) writes, on that same op-ed page:

How can hope be false? the young idealist might ask. Hope is the only horse these young people have in the race. And wasn’t it the other Clinton who liked to quote from “The Cure at Troy,” Seamus Heaney’s version of Sophocles’ “Philoctetes,” which seems ludicrously apt right about now?

History says, Don’t hope
On this side of the grave.
But then, once in a lifetime
The longed-for tidal wave
Of justice can rise up
And hope and history rhyme.

Both tactically and substantively speaking, I think Obama would do well to invoke Dr. King, emphatically and often. There was nothing that seemed more unaffordable to black Americans in the ‘60’s than non-violence, forgiveness, conciliation; but, as only an effective leader can, he sold those impossible luxuries to his movement as both ideal and strategy: do this because your dignity and humanity are at stake; do this because it will work. Dr. King wasn’t perfect, but he was more right – and more leader – than any major American public figure in the last 40 years. He made world-changing activists out of raging, downtrodden citizens, made them to understand that what seemed most unaffordable was exactly what they could not afford to reject.

Full

The thaw came last week, so we can turn into the driveway without switching into 4-wheel drive in J.’s truck or backing up for a running start. I could pay for snowplowing, buy a snow blower, or subject my back to shoveling, sure. But where’s the adventure in that?

But seriously, folks. I find that country survival (on a budget) becomes a game of chicken: how far can I push it, what is really necessary, how can I get by, within the limits of safety and prudence? So far I haven’t hired someone to mow my lawn (except once, in April, when it was getting out of hand and my lawnmower was in the shop) and have managed the snow without a trip to Home Depot. Instead of spending money on insulation, I drain my pipes and turn off the water when I leave for the city, which seems to work fine in avoiding a freezing-bursting pipes situation. I did pay for firewood delivery and a new furnace (still making payments, actually). As we drove in the other day, I noticed cracking paint and areas of wood rot in the siding. Hmm… You pick and choose your battles. Like life, kinda. Tonight we expect 7 new inches of the white stuff (although Rocky at the general store says bah!, probably no more than 3 or 4). The pantry, and the wood pile, are stocked.

Depletion and replenishment.

Laundry day today, I love a clean, warm batch of socks and undies, towels and t-shirts; like a new beginning. Or vegetables filling the crisper drawer. A full tank of gas, or the wood pile freshly stacked by the stove. Enough and not too much. The little things. Had to replace my laptop battery this week, the spunky gal at The Apple Store reminded me that the best thing for battery life is to fully charge, fully deplete, fully charge, fully deplete; none of this half-use/half-charge business. Spend it; spend it all.

I have enough of everything, there is no need for need. God, look at that coat rack, vests and jackets and parkas falling off the hooks. 10 pairs of socks, the same for underwear. Four pairs of jeans/cords. A quart and a half of milk in the fridge, three kinds of sausages in the freezer. What else do I need?

Fire is dying down, white embers burning red. No, not all. Of course don’t spend it all. But almost. Almost all. While they’re still burning, while the heat is still burning red. Time to throw on another log.

Green, green, and more green

Another sign of capitalism going green, i.e. an article in The Times about Clorox's acquisition of Burt's Bee's. A pretty amazing, and illustrative, story - the journey from hippie Maine beekeeper & hitchhiker, to corporate millionaires. The question, of course, is which force will win out - corporate environmental responsibility, or corporate profit-motive. The hope, and the argument, of course, is that they work hand in hand, and increasingly so as today's consumer becomes more environmentally and globally conscious. (Again, we "vote" with our dollars.) We'll see.

Also a sign of the ways in which city and country converge. Burt's is wildly popular here in NYC. The guy on the label is Burt (Shavitz) himself, who still lives in Maine in a turkey coop with no running water or electricity. City-dwellers love this -- they (we) love the vicarious live-off-the-land Thoreauvian experience. They want a "natural" life in the most man-made environment on the planet. A little beeswax lip balm goes a long way here in the concrete jungle.

This may seem like a superficial convergence, but in my (momentary) optimism, I'm curious to see where this goes; how the powerful forces of business/consumerism can get under the skin of a society, for good. "Social entrepreneurs" have been preaching this for decades. I am still a great skeptic about big business, about the catastrophic human and environmental casualties; which is why this presidential election is such a defining moment, I think. Obama is a capitalist, without apology; the question is about attention to the costs of economic growth and concrete measures to address them. Who is winning, who is losing, and how do we as a democratic nation, supposedly engaged and empowered to participate in our country's policy-making via our representatives - how do we mitigate the negative affects of largescale economic growth and design bottom-up infusions (financial, educational, spiritual, etc.), to build a world that is as healthy as it is prosperous (i.e. likely less prosperous but more healthy)?

Change Is A-Comin' / Change Done Already Came

"So does that make the father in the ad less an agent of change, or even more of a revolutionary by saying that hybrids and the environment are now no longer something we even need to talk about?" --Kirk Johnson, The New York Times, 1/6/08

The article is about the new buzzword in the race for the Democratic presidential nominee: change. Kirk Johnson describes a new TV ad for the Ford Escape Hybrid: a young girl and her father, presumably in a typical Midwestern conservative town, are getting into their Ford Escape, and the girl is complaining that she's embarrassed to be seen in a gas-guzzling SUV. Where they're going (a metaphor for progressive communities), people drive hybrids and care about the environment, she says. The father tells the daughter that the Escape is in fact a hybrid. Well why didn't you say that, she asks. "I never thought I needed to," the father replies.

Something strange is happening. Obama won Iowa, a mostly white state. People are talking about his racial identity, but not that much - it's not "the main thing." People are talking about Hillary's gender, but it's also not "the main thing." (Change vs experience has become the main thing.) These two individuals are vying for the most powerful political office in the world. The tipping point (a la Malcolm Gladwell) has come and gone.

The father is not grandstanding about the fact that the Escape is a hybrid, it's sort of just a given.

Change is funny that way. There are certainly moments of drastic upheaval and event: the Civil Rights Movement, Rodney King, OJ Simpson, Clarence Thomas. Colin Powell and Condaleeza Rice. Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Sandra Day O'Connor, Nancy Pelosi. The release of scientific reports substantiating global warming. Al Gore's Nobel Peace Prize. But now, here we are. Barack Obama may become the President of the United States. Hillary Clinton may become the President of the Unites States. Bill Richardson may become the next Vice President of the United States. Homosexuality is further and further from "deviant" for the majority of Americans. Organic foods are now sold at Walmart, and "carbon footprint" and "global warming" are part of the vernacular. In the process, change feels excruciatingly slow and uphill and costly; but then, weirdly, all of a sudden, there it is. Here we are. How about that. And we barely need to talk about it.

Could it be that capitalism is in fact now in check? That corporate decisions are truly being influenced by greater social values, as expressed through political rhetoric, actual policymaking, grassroots activism, and the media? You are what you buy, you are who you vote for - meaning, the trickle down of cultural values in a democratic capitalist society becomes most clearly manifest via your checkbook/credit card bill, and your ballot.

It's early, but look, people came out in Iowa (the way people were supposed to come out for Howard Dean, but didn't). The numbers themselves are a huge indication of change. Is democracy back??!!

Some people might say that this is what you'd call "self-correction." The American Empire is either going to crash and burn, or pull itself back together. The average society has an intuition about itself and acts accordingly when things get way off track.

I buy that. But I also think that this pulling back together requires leadership and commitment and grit in every sector at every level. Perhaps now's the moment to humbly thank the generations of grassroots warriors, the ground-up soldiers, the visionaries - who've understood all along that change is both slow and fast, and who've persisted on behalf of the greater good - at great cost, and with patience. Here we are. This moment may not last long (and who knows which way the election will turn), but I'm going to enjoy it - a moment of optimism, of feeling proud and grateful for my country and its commitment to real progress. And I'll be showing my gratitude, at the very least, via my checkbook/credit card bill and my ballot.

The Ladies of the House

For a while I've been meaning to learn more about ladybugs. People always say that it's "good" to have ladybugs around, especially in the garden. But I have them in my house - all over the house - tons of them. Usually around the windows. And often dead in big groups, like some kind of bizarre Jim Jones mass suicide. (Yeah, that's pretty dark.)

So I should find out what's going on, right? Why do they come to my house to die?

First of all, whoa there, let's not be so dramatic. Here's what I learned from ladybuglady.com.

Q. Why do ladybugs come into my house in the winter time?
A. Ladybugs are attracted to the light colored houses. Especially, homes that have a clear southwestern sun exposure. Older homes tend to experience more problem with aggregations due to lack of adequate insulation. The ladybugs come in through small cracks around windows, door ways and under clap boards. They want to hibernate in a warm, comfortable spot over the cold months of winter. Ladybugs gather in groups when they hibernate, so if you see one, you can be sure more will follow. The best way to keep them out is to repair damaged clap boards, window and door trim and to caulk small cracks.

Q. Once the ladybugs are in my house, will they eat anything?
A. No. Ladybugs don't eat fabric, plants, paper or any other household items. They like to eat APHIDS. Aphids are very small, but very destructive pest that feed on plants. (If you have rose bushes, you have probably seen aphids.) Ladybugs, while trying to hibernate in your house, live off of their own body fats. They, also, prefer a little humidity. But our homes are usually not very humid during the winter. In fact, they are rather dry causing most of your ladybug guests to die from dehydration. Occasionally, you might witness a ladybug in your bathroom getting a drink of water. Now, that's a smart lady!

So they're dehydrating, poor gals. I also learned that when ladybugs are "stressed," i.e. when they sense danger, they play dead, releasing a bit of blood so that predators will leave them alone. A ladybug's blood is yellow and has an unpleasant odor, so, in other words, best to just let them be. Or, if I want to save them, collect them up and then release them... where? They need warmth and moisture. Basement ladybug colony?

It's 18-degrees F in the country today. Hang in there, ladies; believe it or not, spring really is just around the corner.