More Gardens!

A dispatch from the field:

Jessi Golly's friend at Indy Media posted a piece about the summer camp conducted by the More Gardens Coalition in New York. I think the kids in the neighborhood learned a lot and had some fun. I know for sure that the counselors, especially the tall guy in the middle at right, learned a lot.

More Gardens Summer Camp Final Barbecue

Children in the Bronx enjoyed the Animal Adventure Summer at Cortland Garden

By Ida

For nine weeks this summer neighborhood kids learned about local ecology and gardening through the summer camp offered by More Gardens, a group which advocates for and helps maintain community gardens in the Bronx. On the last day of camp on Friday, the kids enjoyed a barbecue and paraded through the neighborhood.

Disturbances in the Field

My daughter was much more organized moving into the dorm this time around. I won't say my work is done here, but the balance has shifted considerably. She had a long list of things to do in preparation, and she worked through it last week in order to be ready to go once she arrived back at school. She worked full-time at Grinders right up to move-in day, and the summer job will be there for her if she wants it during holidays or next summer.

It was raining the morning of Helga's departure for fall semester at Northeastern State U., but she packed most of her stuff in waterproof containers, so we only had to cover a few items with the WWII vintage poncho I use as a tarp. Stereo, TV, and computer were all in plastic bags which were in boxes (or vice versa), and they all fit snugly under the poncho in the bed of the Ranger. We drove through on-and-off storms, but we were covered. We listened to opera on NPR, then 1980s "light rock" on a Mansfield station, then something on WKSU.

Since were went up a day early, the dorm itself was NOT a madhouse, for a change. A couple of nice young men gave me a hand up the three steps with the heavily loaded cart, allowing me to make fewer trips up to the fourth floor with more stuff each trip. The new roommate, Amy, had already moved in, and the former roommate, Megan, now suite-mate, had made a full report by e-mail. Helga saw and chatted with the former roommate's new roommate, Emma, on our way in, so we're all accounted for. The nametags on the doors of the dorm are a representative catalog of popular 80s names, even though the families moving them in are as different as the day is long.

Helga had pre-ordered her books, so we went down the hill to DuBois Bookstore to pick them up. She already had the French book, so she saved some money. By that time I was starving, so we went looking for a place to eat and ended up at Frank's Place downtown, a kind of funky bar/restaurant across from the old train station, now a swanky restaurant, on South Water Street. Wooden booths, four TVs with baseball, football, and horse racing, a pretty good chicken breast sandwich with guacamole, and excellent fries! The service was adequate, and the clientele was friendly if a little loud. I would go back.

I enjoy these day-trips to college towns, especially my old stomping grounds, where I still halfway know my way around. But that balance has shifted, too. As Helga has learned where to find things in town and on campus, I have forgotten most of it, so now she explains to me where things are and how things work. I will probably miss those trips when the kids are finished with school, but that will be a while yet.

We hugged good-bye, and she got out at the dorm. I didn't even stop to work out before driving home, as I usually do. My body needs exercise between the 2-3 hour drive up and the 2-3 hour drive back. What was I thinking? It was not quite 7:00 pm, a perfect time for a taiji form in the gardens over by the library or in an empty corner of Memorial Gym. I must have been preoccupied with completing my mission and pushed on home in clear weather.

I also didn't work out when I got home around 9:30, but instead had a piece of quiche and a gin and tonic, walked the dog, and read myself to sleep with Lynne Sharon Schwartz's Disturbances in the Field, a conceptual memoir disguised as a novel. I was deep in the chapter about her uptown education, and it was hard to put down. A lot has changed in 35 or 47 years, but a lot hasn't. It still matters who you choose to hang out with and where you fit.

Spending a lot of time in other people's stories has its costs as well as its rewards. Meeting Helga's friends brings to mind Schwartz's friends (and vice versa) at Barnard circa 1958. I hear their conflicted, competitive conversations and start to see their faces, clothes, bodies, and attitudes - lots of attitude - all set in my own crudely idealized Eastern private college: one part Woody Allen's "Bananas" and one part Redford and Streisand's "The Way We Were." Meanwhile, the real daughter has real friendships at her own real Midwestern state university. There's a twisted kind of disconnect alongside the vivid connection.

The next day I was, to put it mildly, not at my best. Lethargic and uninspired, I couldn't get in gear to do any of the million tasks in the house or yard, so I took a nap and made more coffee. Okay, I fixed the spacing of a few boards on the back gate, that's about it. The weather was great. Gven and her friend Hallie were working away on the kitchen shelves, but a morose kind of neutral flatness was the best I could do.

What finally got me moving was the errand of putting Helga's French books in the mail - the ones she didn't need to buy but had left at home. I wrapped them tightly in an old FedEx box, duct taped it shut, rode my bike to the post office, slapped a label on it, and she should have it by Wednesday. I'm still useful. Like Martin Sheen in the opening scene of "Apocalypse Now," I just needed a mission. So I rode up the bike trail to Plumb Road and back, about an hour-long ride that I needed badly.

She called me today to say that her friend Maureen is in four of her classes. She sounded pretty happy about that. After a glitch in the food service system, her Flash Card (campus debit card) works, so now she can eat. It's all good.

Night-blooming Cereus

I could see the light on their front porch from the other side of State Street, so I knew we weren't too late. Gven and I were walking the dog together because I wanted her to see the flowers in front of a house on Plum Street I had passed the night before. The old gentleman was out there again with his light shining on the huge potted night-blooming cereus that was doing its annual performance.

"You came back," he said as we joined the cluster of neighbors gazing at the plant. The flowers - about a dozen of them on the multi-stemmed, seven-foot plant - are spectacular. Big white blooms with long, curving peals spreading out from an exotic-looking center with outrageously complex pistils and stamens, all hanging pendulously on a long curving tubular stem reaching out from the main stalk. It's a succulent, he explained - the dictionary called it a cactus - with fleshy leaves branching out of long, flat stems that look like leathery leaves themselves. Very wild looking - intelligent design on acid.

The plant was the star of the show, and it didn't seem to mind being the center of attention, bright lights and all. The whole scene was pretty neat, especially the two main supporting characters, the nice old man and his sweet wife. They both wore thick glasses, moved carefully up and down their front steps, and were clearly getting a kick out of showing their venerable plant to the neighbors. And the neighbors, like us, were suitably awed.

The procedure

The strangest thing is that I have almost no memory of the whole experience - if you can call it an experience. If a tree falls in the forest, etc. Coming out of anesthesia, anything that happened when I was under, getting dressed, walking out to the car with Gven, the ride home - all a blank. She says she was in the room when I woke up, and I told her a joke (rabbi and a frog go in a bar, bartender says, Where'd you get that? Frog says, Brooklyn - there's hundreds of them!), remembered from The Aristocrats, very unlike me to remember the punch line.

So I wanted to jot down a few things before I completely came down from the demerol and valium cocktail they slipped me, and it must have been a healthy dose because I didn't feel a thing. Or even register being present. Making notes now, while I eat my first solid food following a day of fasting and purging, enjoying the midday sun on my face and arms, I can bask on the sunny patio after the cold and sterile offices of Central Swingstate Endoscopy.

The team was very nice, very professional, mostly. The receptionist (you have insurance card, yes?) suffered a brief communication breakdown over the wording of the consent form (just a bunch of legal mumbo-jumbo, she said, and it's expensive to fix it) while the waiting room blared the inane Regis and Kelly morning interview with a starlet and her wannabe-starlet sister, all of which only lasted a few minutes and oddly was the worst part. The dark-eyed technician gave me the gown and little nonskid slippers, showed me to my gurney, explained the process, asked a few personal history questions, and administered a saline IV. The nurse appeared at the foot of the gurney to ascertain what it was we were here to do today, then wheeled me into the procedure room, hooked up the sedative and anesthetic, assured me that I should ask for more if it became uncomfortable (faggedaboudit!), and introduced the young man assisting. The tall Asian doctor appeared at my side to introduce herself, shook my hand, and made lots of eye contact.

I needn't have brought a book, by the way. There was no down-time, and they run an efficient operation, er, procedure. As soon as they directed me to turn over on my left side and pull my knees up (almost fetal position, my last thought before the drugs took effect), then everything fades, so I feel like I missed the main event, like I went out for popcorn during the entire time-warp-shortened movie. I will be told what the scope found as it allegedly snaked around inside me. (Actually a written report was issued then and there, complete with color photos!) Both before and after, I felt a little vulnerable in the role of the patient/object being acted upon by the agents/experts in their scrubs and suits.

Now that I've had a delicious lunch of leftover pasta salad and a spinach burrito, I'm starting to come around, and I no longer feel like a blank slate. I can indulge in a cup of coffee and and orange fizz, sit in the sun and read all afternoon if I want to, and maybe do a yoga class tonight. This unusual discretionary time, when I'm not supposed to operate heavy equipment and there's still a slight cramp in the pit of my stomach, is perfect for reading the last few chapters of The Fatigue Artist, this amazing book I'm halfway through.

It's aptly named but doesn't read like a novel, as the cover claims, more like a memoir of a writer going through a healing/grieving process after her journalist husband's murder. Her conversations with her performance artist friend, student step-daughter, actor lover, clueless doctor, wise herbalist, helpful neighbor, tai chi teacher, and other New York characters are all grist for the mill of struggle to write a book by collecting data, listening to and remembering her symptoms and other things happening around her.

Like her, I'm doing some of that for a short time today, listening to the condition of my head, heart, belly, and legs to try to discern what I'm capable of so far. Yesterday while fasting I was good for an hour-long bike ride but not a hard workout. After the prescribed lemon-lime-flavored binge and purge, drinking eight ounces every ten minutes and going through more than a gallon in three hours, which then goes through me just as fast, I still had it in me to pull a few weeds, transplant some herbs, and restack some firewood. Luckily it was a sunny but cool day, like today.

After reading for a while in the healing sunshine, letting food enter my drained system, I was ready to go. I moved and split some logs that have been drying for a year, clearing space for the last corner of the never-ending fence project. Then I cleaned up and went to a rejuvenating vinyasa class and came home to a spectacular bowl of rice, kidney beans, homegrown red chilis, and fresh tomatoes. Life is good.

On family reunions

A brief review of a short but complicated weekend with the folks at their retirement home in the Cumberland Mountains of Tennessee. First to introduce the players:

Carl Golly, the patriarch, was turning 85, and it was his birthday we were all there to celebrate. His wife of 62 years, Ellen Shuck By Golly, was our hostess for the weekend, ably assisted by their youngest daughter Jo-Jo Golly Badly up for the week from Atlanta. Jo-Jo's son Bubba Badly didn't go. Big sister Anna Banana Golly Gosh was there with her husband Fred Gosh from Detroit, but their sons Boomer and Bingo Gosh were in California for Bingo's birthday. Middle sister Jeanie Beanie Golly Gee was there with her husband Barney Gee from Tampa. Their daughter Oyvay Gee and son Awe Gee came too. Their other son Slam Golly Gee and his wife Scalene Gee brought their three little girls Maddy, Siddy, and Laney Gee, from Iowa. Younger brother Rock Golly came over from Nashville with his wife Cindy Lou Who Golly and their two kids Lee and Eliza Who Golly. You already know me, older brother Sven Golly and wife Gven What Golly, from Ohio.

Got all that? It was a party. Not exactly a raucus, let the wild rumpus begin party, but there was abundant food and drink and laughter and good feeling. We spilled out onto the deck overlooking the first fairway, and several overlapping conversations continued out there for most of the first evening. That gave me a chance to talk one-to-one with my brother-in-law Fred Gosh, who is thinking about retiring but not yet ready to make that move. We compared notes about our bosses' leaving, not knowing what to expect in the transition, and our relief that the new boss hasn't shaken things up too much.

I had a good time talking with the Gee men - Barney, Slam, and Awe - about exercise, sports, injuries, rehab, training, athletes, coaches, recruiting, you know, jock talk. Augie is the head athletic trainer at a small college west of Chicago and knows something about sport law. Slam plays basketball three times a week in his home town in Iowa. Barney had bypass surgery a couple of years ago and walks alot. It's nice to have things to talk about with the nephews and in-laws.

Later that night, Gven and Jo-Jo and I sat on the deck and talked about politics and language, so naturally George Lakoff's book came up. They're not liberals anymore, they're progressives now, you know. Language is a fluid medium, and how you use it to make a case for policy and social change has many potentials and pitfalls. Lakoff's book on Metaphors, for example, has dynamite chapter called "The Myth of Objectivism" that talks about the way people reify a certain set of terms as if they explained the real world with certainty and finality. It's always fun to swap ideas with Jo-Jo.

The next day after breakfast, Jo-Jo put a microphone in front of Carl and got him talking about growing up on the farm in Minnesota. He got into describing how they harvested grain with neighbors and kept accounts of who owed what to whom, how they got the hay in, and how they used the county agent to upgrade their dairy herd. Good stories well told and now documented on a primary source.

It started raining just as we were heading out to the park to set up the picnic lunch, and it rained hard for an hour or so, delaying the start of the cook-out. Everybody hung loose and when it slowed to a sprinkle, we hauled our coolers and baskets of food to the shelter and fired up the grill. Beers were opened, chips and black bean/corn dip were consumed, and kids ventured down to the lake to play with ducks and geese and water at the dock.

Slam and Rock took care of the grill, and soon there were burgers and hot dogs for everyone. Jo-Jo and Ellen made potato salad, an old family favorite. Jeanie Beanie brought a fruit salad, Anna Banana made baked beans, and Gven brought home-grown tomatoes with feta. We sang with gusto and Carl blew out the candles, then everybody got a piece of the famous Amy Simms chocolate cake from Ohio.

There was time to hang out. I talked to Rock about his MBA program at Vanderbilt, a highly structured general business degree he is taking on top of his two bachelors' in mechanical and electrical engineering. He's a tireless worker and a smart guy who seems to really like what he is doing, traveling all over the world making deals with steel companies to upgrade their blast furnaces. But he seemed just as excited about buying their new car on eBay, negotiating everything online, then flying to Florida with free miles to pick it up.

It was that kind of day in the park. Eliza had her nose in a book when she wasn't frolicking by the lake with Mad, Sid, and Laney. Later she could be seen sitting and knitting, engrossed in conversation with Gven about fibers and making things to wear. Her brother Lee had recently returned from high school band camp with a shaved head, so his blond hair was just beginning to grow back. He backed the family SUV toward the picnic shelter and played some of his favorite rock and roll mix, but his ever-vigilant parents made him keep the volume low.

A big card game dominated that evening, something called Phase Ten that seems to bring out the best and worst in card players. The usual suspects gathered eagerly around the big dining room table, and the voluminous rules were explained to the uninitiated and the reluctant, then explained again. Both uninitiated AND reluctant, I won the first hand by pure beginner's luck, and it was all downhill from there. A few others like me lost interest and found someone to sit in for them. The lowlight was when big sister Anna Banana had a conniption and poured Vernor's ginger ale down my shirt front because I used my "skip" card to make her skip a turn. Let the record show that most of Cumberland County heard her call me "the meanest little brother!" I say all's fair in cards.

The noncompetitors were either watching Clint Eastwood steal a spy plane from the USSR, knitting, or reading a Golly family geneology compiled by Carl's sister Marl. I hit the hay early and probably missed a great deal of lively and sporting interaction around the big table.

Brunch Sunday morning at the country club was restrained but very nice. If you're ever there, skip the home fries and scrambled eggs (dry, cold), try the biscuits, and order the omelet, which was excellent. Before departure, we had lots of pictures to take among the hickories and oaks in the shady back yard of Carl and Ellen's hermitage (think Charleton Heston and Maureen O'Hara as Andrew and Rachel Jackson). Family unit by family unit, we hit the road for the trip home. Now I'm cathartically reviewing the whole thing as I recover body and soul from a pretty good trip, and I guess I don't have any global observations to make about family reunions in general.

Your worst nightmare

Driving to Chillicothe on a Thursday afternoon was like going back in time. After fighting through Methodistville and Worthmore traffic, we finally made it out of town on route 23 south. We passed Roundtown, and pretty soon we're surrounded by hills, so we know we're in southern Ohio. Route 35 goes east, deeper into the hills toward Jackson, where the Reed family comes from, crossing 23 at Chillicothe, the first state capital.

We take Bridge St. to Main St. to Walnut to Second, passing old brick buildings that look like they've been there since the canal was displaced by the railroad, then the highway, then the interstate. There are lots of workmen on the street, and the kind of old shops you don't see much in the city. I realize I haven't been out of town in a while. We park the car in a shaded street and follow a small group of dressed-up teenagers into the funeral home.

It's cool inside. Hundreds of people are lined up two-deep in the hallway, slowly inching forward into a long parlor lined with photos on easels, then down another hallway and into the main viewing room. Photos of Marines on a dusty street in Iraq and playing cards in the barracks; the high school track team posing for a team picture and running on a track; prom pictures, yearbook photos, baby pictures, two little boys with their young mom and dad, grown-up brothers with glasses and goatees in fraternity tee-shirts.

Marines in uniform stand guard beside the flag-draped coffin next to the two grandmothers. There's the step-father and some of his family, the step-mother and her daughters. College-age kids who probably went to high school with him, some of their parents, neighbors, local people who know his family.

The time goes quickly. We meet the in-laws, the mother he resembled, and now I'm embracing my friend from the men's group where we've shared a little pain and joy and stories over the years, but nothing like this. He knows how I feel about my kids. I ask him how he's holding up, we're both shaking like leaves, and he says, "You have no idea...your worst nightmare."

We stop on the way out and talk briefly with his other soldier son, who is now stationed stateside. We get a cup of coffee to go, drive back up the highway, and return to our everyday lives still having no idea.

Just Visiting This Planet

When we lived in Atlanta during the early 80s, there was a popular, mostly harmless, nativist fad going around. Georgia, Florida, and much of the Southeast's population was growing so fast that a certain cultural divide developed between the real Southerners and the suburban newcomers from the East and Midwest. In some places, the Damn Yankees (who stayed, as opposed to the plain old Yankees, who went back where they came from) became the majority, and South Floridians, for example, felt a bit crowded. One of the ways they found to distinguish themselves was the ubiquitous, conspicuous medium of bumper stickers.

That was possibly the heyday of the bumper sticker, and one of the best designs showed a green and blue map of Florida emblazoned with one bright orange word: NATIVE. Without getting into complex sociological analysis, I had to respect the pride and rootedness expressed in that simple graphic statement. Read any of Carl Hiaasen's novels, and you get a street-level feeling for the inhabitants of Florida before it was "developed" - that is, paved, subdivided, reclaimed from swamps, and packaged as just so much valuable real estate. This mixture of nostalgia, rage, and insider-knowledge could easily be read as a chauvinistic, xenophobic rant, but as an outsider myself I felt a touch of envy.

There followed, of course, a rash of imitators: a blue and green map of Georgia with a bright peach-colored NATIVE, which was too close to the original; the more aggressive and blustery DON'T MESS WITH TEXAS with the inevitable lone star emblem; and the more relaxed and musical CAROLINA ON MY MIND. Further back in time, there was the classic I (heart) NY and its Southern cousin VIRGINIA IS FOR LOVERS (also with a heart), both of which beckoned tourists to "Come and see us, and bring your credit card," whereas the NATIVE motif seemed to suggest "Thanks for coming, now go away."

The envy I felt was probably typical of us migrants who have fled the heartland looking for greener pastures. Although I was reportedly born there, I have no memory of living in Minnesota, having moved across the river to Wisconsin when I was three. If the Vikings are playing the Cowboys, you know I'm pulling for the Purple Gang, and I can dig the self-deprecating humor of A Prairie Home Companion, but I don't feel like I'm really from there. We spent six of my formative years in Wisconsin, where I made some strong loyalties to the Braves, the Packers, and the Badgers. You can tell how long ago that was (late 50s), because the Braves were still in Milwaukee, and Hank Aaron was my hero.

But we were ostensibly movin' on up, and my family's next stop was Michigan, first a six-year sojourn on the west side of Detroit, then three years of high school in the more affluent northern suburbs. It was only natural while growing up in the Motor City to become a fan of the Tigers, Lions, and Pistons, and as college became a consideration, to form an attachment to either the maize and blue or the Spartans. I admit that there is something deeply stirring about standing with 100,001 excited people in Michigan Stadium to sing "Hail to the Victors." (Can you say Nuremburg Rally?) Yet compared to my Birmingham friends, I had little connection to, or history with, Michigan.

You make choices, and when most of my friends went to Ann Arbor, East Lansing, or Ypsilanti, I went to Kent, and yes, Mr. Frost, it has made all the difference. It was a little strange not knowing the local color that was second-nature to the kids from Cleveland, Akron, Canton, and Youngstown. So I read Camus and Hesse and learned to live with it. The serious wandering took me to the Upper Peninsula, north Georgia, Chicago, upstate New York, Oberlin, North Carolina, and back to Atlanta, which is where we came in five paragraphs ago. Going someplace different had clearly become a habit, but not one Gven and I fancied as we started a family. Little Jessi and Helga were born in Atlanta, and our migratory pace slowed down.

That was the era of the aforementioned bumper stickers. Some other notable examples were QUESTION AUTHORITY, which spawned QUESTION REALITY, and my personal favorite, JUST VISITING THIS PLANET. The very opposite of the nativist declaration of rootedness, this one spoke to me, the perpetual migrant worker on the postmodern transplantation.

As if this isn't already more information than anyone needs, our little family has flourished in foreign soil. We left Atlanta when Jessi and Helga were around the age at which I left Minnesota, and they have grown up in Ohio. I think they can say they are from here. Then it's up to them how far they are blown by the four winds, how widely they scatter their seeds, and where eventually they put down roots.

Name That War

Bidding is open for the naming rights to the current, ongoing, stay the course, ain't stopping, don't set a timetable cuz that only encourages the enemies of freedom, perpetual war. What am I bid to name that war?

It started out, I recall, as a War on Terrorism, something broadly defined like that, which effectively diverted attention away from the actual war on Iraq. At some point, some of that warlike activity was called "counter-terrorism," which implies terrorism directed against terrorism (see counterexample, countermeasure, counteroffensive, counterpunch, etc). Then we were told it was really a Global War on Terror - much more impressive in that it's GLOBAL (makes you go Wow!) and snappier because it's on TERROR (!), not some vague, abstract, ideological -ism. Besides, anything more than two syllables (like nuc-ya-ler) gives him trouble.

Now, the buzz is (or was, given the collective attention span) the new, improved Global War Against Violent Extremism, but the mouthpiece had a snit because nobody consulted him about it. And there may have been some discomfort among our friends at Operation Rescue, Christian Coalition, KKK, et al, with a name-change that stigmatizes violent extremism. Tom DeLay may have made a phone call to the effect that, hey, old buddy, cut us some slack, how we gonna deliver the wrath o' god on that out-of-control federal judiciary if you're giving a bad name to violent extremism? So there, it's still a Globawarontear, if you slur a couple of consonants, which plays well with the folks back home who got a big kick out of "We're gonna hunt'm down and smoke'm out and lock'm up." I think that sound-bite came just before "Bring it on." And we know what happened next; they brought it on.

Isn't it high time this thriving rhetorical industry was taken out of the clutches of a Washington elite and placed in the entrepreneurial private sector? Like the moldy old Sugar Bowl was upgraded to the Nokia Sugar Bowl, and some other football game became the FedEx Bowl, and most of the stadiums worth their salt now carry the name and logo of a vigorous, freedom-loving corporation that pays handsomely to call the tune. Where are those marketing geniuses when it comes to national security and the revenue potential in spreading democracy?

Opening bids should be forthcoming from a number of interested parties. How about the Halliburton War on Terror (War is Hal); or the Enron Counter-Insurgency (See what we did to California?); or the Exxon-Mobil Global War of Liberation (When it's all ours, you won't be dependent on foreign oil); maybe the Wal-Mart Happy-Face War on Unions and Competition. Submit your suggestions today, and Name That War!

Joys and Sorrows

We do this thing at church every Sunday called Joys and Sorrows; probably a lot of churches do. After an opening hymn, a welcome, and some announcements, the floor is opened to anyone to come up and tell the congregation about an event or concern in their life. It's a small church, and usually three or four people have something important to say - and occasionally an old coot who wants to show everybody pictures from his vacation. In two years of attending this little country church, I have never shared a Joy or Sorrow until this week, and I almost didn't this time, but I found myself walking up and standing in line behind some of the regulars.

I ended up not saying what I had rehearsed in my head, but said that my friend Steve lost his son in Iraq last week in a horrible roadside bombing incident, and I was grieving with Steve and his wife and his other son, and that it's just mindless and senseless and wrong. Then I went back and sat down while the service went on, but I didn't really hear the children's story that came next. I did eventually listen to the sermon, which was very well done, and participate normally in the rest of the service.

Afterward several people told me how sorry they were, and I appreciated that support. Those conversations also gave me a chance to vent some of the other things I had meant to say but didn't - always editing - such as the reason Aaron Reed and the other Ohio Marines died is that a small number of very wealthy and powerful people want to control even more of the earth's land and resources to acquire even more wealth and power, and they really don't care how they get it.

There were other things to talk about, some related to other kinds of blind, well-intentioned, thoughtless devotion to leaders who make careers out of lying, stealing, killing, deceiving, exploiting, and manipulating for personal gain. And some not, like how's the drum circle going, and how's your daughter the musician, and wasn't that a great sermon. It was also my first time as part of the set-up crew for a guest speaker, so I arrived early to open up, stayed late to lock up, and had more contact with church folks than usual.

The rest of the afternoon I was dragging. Gven Golly and I went window-shopping at BARGAIN OUTLET, as in actually shopping for windows for the remodeled kitchen of Om Shanty. I bought some hinges at Home Despot and spent an inordinate amount of my nonhandyman time leveling and hanging a big gate at the very back of the yard, which is now almost entirely fenced. I should have felt a huge satisfaction (cue the Rolling Stones) upon getting the gate up and latched securely, but no. I noticed a couple of glaring errors of judgment I made as the project progressed that, if I had it to do over, I would do differently. I still might go back and fix one particular error, but I ran out of daylight and I needed a beer and a burrito.

It was a long weekend. Jess Golly called Friday and told Gven about Aaron Reed's death, then Gven told me as I was building the gate. Jessi's friend Laura had called him in New York with the news; they all had known each other in a high school youth group. So the intergenerational networking shock waves of information and sorrow keep radiating out and bouncing off and knocking down. Saturday morning Helga Golly drove up to Mansfield for her friend Laura's bridal shower (different Laura), agonized just a little over a gift, met Laura's relatives, stayed overnight, came back safely, and all-in-all had a nice time.

This morning I kvetched to Gven about the grossly flawed fence. She has some wiring problems in the kitchen that will need professional attention. What does all this have to do with anything? I personally have not suffered as others are suffering, so this is not a lament. Just a note that it's good to have somebody to talk to.

High-maintenance

(adjective) Requiring frequent care, repair, or attention; not self-sufficient or self-sustaining; needy. Example: In spite of a predominance of hardy perennials, my high-maintenance garden is in constant need of weeding and watering.

Was it Shakespeare who said (Richard II), "What is true of the garden is equally true of the gardener"? If he didn't, he should have, slacker. Take a look at my back yard, which I consider my favorite room in the house, and you will know my character. On second thought, don't, it's too embarrassing. I spend all weekend out there, by choice, and I really enjoy working in the yard, but to look at it you'd never know anybody ever pulled a damn weed. The place is high-maintenance.

And so am I, I admit it. I have very specific needs - and lots of them. If they're not met, I'm gonna have problems. We're out of orange juice? Fizz water? Cream for the coffee? Hrrrumph. Can I get a clean towel around here? I know it's hot, but I can't sleep with the fan blowing directly on me. It never ends.

I need a light morning workout to get myself up and running, a moderate afternoon stretch to loosen the joints and pump blood to muscles that have been sitting, and an extended evening workout to thoroughly flush the system. Otherwise, I'm just not myself. I need to walk the dog every night; sorry, Dali, it has nothing to do with YOUR needs, it's really MY walk.

In the evening, I require a certain amount of quiet time, by myself if possible, to read or write undisturbed or just to sit and think, preferably in the garden or in sight of trees or other growing plants. Is that too much to ask? Some music during dinner is pleasant, and I really like to read while I'm eating, too, fiction if possible, but nothing too dense. Not the newspaper, not a political magazine, and not a philosophical or spiritual self-help book, gimme a break.

I don't see these stipulations as unreasonable, I mean, if you know what works, why not try to put the pieces together? Nor are these demands particularly admirable. I wish my routine wasn't so rigid, but after a while a person develops certain habits, and I figure it's better to know what they are. Right?

For example, it is extremely helpful for the high-maintenance entity (person, garden, whatever) to surround itself with relatively low-maintenance entities. There's only so much time in a day, after all, and if most of it is consumed with taking care of me, I'd better have a reliable, low-maintenance car, bicycle, computer, kitchen, bathroom, and stereo. Not to mention two grown offspring who are well on their way to fully fending for themselves in most circumstances they are likely to encounter. Besides, they are both stronger and smarter than I am, so there's not that much I CAN do for them.

Somehow I have skirted the key issues of spouse and house. We happen to have a high-maintenance house that is (like its occupants) older than most. It is architecturally interesting but has some wiring, plumbing, window, and flooring issues. Speaking only for myself, I am more inclined to to camp out in the ill-equipped house than to spend my precious time (and money!) satisfying its long-term needs.

I'm not going to discuss the spouse because I'm in enough trouble already. Let's just say there is a slight conflict of interest when high-maintenance people live in a high-maintenance house. But we chose it (and each other), didn't we. Even though sometimes Om Shanty looks more like Om Sty, we picked this house, rather than the modern, convenient, well-appointed house on Electric Avenue, with our eyes open. And the ongoing story of our adventure there hinges partly on how we play the ensuing balancing act. What gets weeded and watered today?

Hubris, humility, and yoga

The hardest things to write about are the somatic phenomena that are so completely nonverbal as to defy description, yet that's probably what make them worth writing about. It would be so much simpler if, as the positivists claim, thought could only take place in the realm of language and therefore anything outside language can't involve thought. Nice, neat compartments. Well, you're wrong again, you poor misguided, disembodied positivists. But that's not what this is about. It's about Monday night Vinyasa class at the yoga factory (shameless plug).

J. was teaching last night, as usual, and only four students showed up, which is unusual. The others were all women, all younger than me, and each in a different stage of yogic development, whatever that is, in this case some combination of familiarity, skill, and confidence. We started slowly to warm up with some easy postures, and as J. picked up the pace and the postures became more difficult, my ego started to get involved, and that's always dangerous territory.

There are some asanas that I am "better" at than others, and there are some areas of my body that are more "open" than others. My forward-folding postures, for example, are technically more correct than my hip and leg rotations; not surprisingly, my spine has more range of motion than my hips. Consequently, I was feeling good during downward-facing dog, upward-facing dog, and bridge, which play to my strength, and I was feeling not so great during those side-twisting things I can't name and don't like because I don't practice them because they're not as satisfying. It's a common, self-defeating pattern.

So my totally un-yogic self-image is going up and down as I realize that I'm doing okay for an old guy, but to really make use of this practice will require more commitment than I have given it, which has been intermittent at best. It's a credit to J. that we all finished strong. A good class is like a story: it has a beginning, a middle, and an end. Everybody seemed pretty happy as well as very sweaty as we eased out of inversions into savasana, spacing out flat on our backs, before bowing briefly, saying "Namaste," rolling up our mats, and heading out the door.

What's interesting about being in a yoga class with mostly women is the levelness of the playing field. The typical group includes a normal range of physical "types" - from quite young to older than me, from lean to stout, and from magazine-cover cute to just plain plain. There are usually one or two other men - same deal - bigger guys, smaller guys, some buff and some not. As far as I can tell, nobody is there for the eye-candy. Of course I look around the room and make observations based on my own twisted American up-bringing and mass-culture standards of beauty, but most of the time I'm watching the instructor in order to know what to do and keep up. We're all doing our best to do the work that makes us mindful of the body. That means legs and backs and shoulders and bottoms and chests are highly visible and in motion, yet no one wants to ogle or be ogled.

It doesn't take long to realize that some of these people are stronger than I am, more adept and experienced, more disciplined and more knowledgeable in their practice. It's clear to the naked eye who knows what they're doing, and it helps to be in a class with those people, because they show the rest of us how it's done.