30/30

If this were a movie, Harry Dean Stanton (or Donald Sutherland) would be a slightly off-beat, middle-class editor planning a 30th anniversary trip to Chicago with his artsy-craftsy wife, Sissy Spacek (or Mary McDonough), who wants it to be really special.

Just for fun, let's say they met in Chicago some time during the previous century, and to mark the occasion they plan to revisit some of their old haunts after all these years of tying the knot, going back to school, finding jobs, having babies, moving, going back to school again, moving again, putting kids through school, changing jobs, buying a house in the suburbs, blah blah blah.

In this totally fictional movie, the somewhat happy couple is still in the process of making their big romantic anniversary plans during the winter holidays, as they put up a tree, decorate, shop, and cook in their stylishly funky old brick house in Peninsula, Ohio. There they spend Christmas/Solstice with their urbane and bookish adult daughter, Catherine Heigl (or Drew Barrymore), while their punk cartoonist son, Heath Ledger (or Edward Norton), spends the holidays with his anarchist housemates in New York. Anyone see a plausible plot in this?

In the foreground of the unfolding narrative is a hard-working and supportive, if oddball, family who observes the traditional holiday rituals of sitting down to dinner with ethnic foods - lutefisk, lefse, rum and OJ - lighting candles, offering ecumenical blessings to light and darkness, children and families, and opening gifts beside a fresh-cut Noble fir tree, the whole nine yards.

Timely phone calls to and from the prodigal son in Brooklyn and an exchange of FedEx packages of presents - his carefully wrapped in cartoon paper - keep Heath/Edward included in the festivities. But it is Catherine/Drew who provides the glue in this conglomerate celebration of fragmentation and faith. She helps to cook dinner, says the right thing when stress mounts, holds her rapier tongue when Dad says something stupid, and gives amazing and creative gifts of art prints and books to her proud and grateful parents.

In the background, it is apparent that this family's issues have issues. Sissy/Mary is concerned about Heath, who in the recessionary economy has lost his retail bookstore job, which he didn't like much anyway, and is on his own for the holidays, eating take-out sushi on Christmas Eve with his housemates, Kevin Smith and Zoey Deschanel. He is fine, Catherine/Drew assures them, he just isn't sure what he wants to do next, although he's thinking about going to electrician school or raising goats.

To complicate matters further, Edward/Heath has chosen not to join his girlfriend, Parker Posey (or Jeneane Garafalo) in Connecticut for the holidays with her parents, Christopher Reeve and Isabella Rosselini. Donald is experiencing some anxiety at a distance about Parker and Edward's relationship, but Harry knows they'll do what they have to do.

No Capulets and Montegues, no Sharks and Jets, just a typical American family drama. Or comedy, I'm not sure yet. By the way, this is totally fictional, and any resemblance to real persons, past or present, is wholly coincidental.

Meanwhile, back in Ohio, Mary/Sissy spends most of her time knitting and watching "House" while Harry/Donald is content to kill time stacking firewood and reading the New York Times, if he could only remember where he put his glasses. As Christmas passes peacefully, they count their blessings during visits with their old friends, English professor Kevin Kline and art teacher Emma Thompson, who come over for the evening with their college-age kids, summa cum laude GIS cartographer Cate Blanchett and sophomore environmental filmmaker Paul Dano.

Anticipation builds for their trip, and both Harry and Sissy have contradictory feelings, knowing neither they nor Chicago will be the same as they were December 30, 1978. Departure from Peninsula occurs more or less on schedule, but Harry is always uptight prior to a trip, so Sissy humors him. They quickly fall into their travel mode, talking about what a cool movie their trip would make and what actors could play which characters, depending on whether it is a comedy with dramatic moments or a drama with comedic moments, and whether they work with a slick Hollywood studio or an independent outfit - Woody Allen or John Sayles - and how confusing will it be to the audience if different actors play the same character in different scenes? They agree that if it's too fragmented, audiences will be confused as well as bored - too much like real life and not enough like a movie.

As soon as rural Indiana disappears in the rear-view mirror, their conversation turns to what it would be like to move back to Chicago after all these years, but for now, Mary and Donald are caught up in the details of getting where they are going. He is easily distracted, and she has no sense of direction, so navigating is a trip in itself. Somehow they find the Arlington International Hostel in Lincoln Park with no missed exits and no wrong turns.

The near north side close to the lake is an appealing neighborhood, but they doubt whether they could afford the cost of a condo. The hostel is plain but clean and welcoming. Most of the lodgers are younger, and about half speak English with an accent, but somehow they don't feel out of place. Harry Dean goes out to find a place to park the car and can't locate the street suggested by the desk clerk, finally finding a space on a street a few blocks away with ambiguous signage.

It's getting colder, must be the wind-chill, but it's not as late as it seems, must be the change to central time. Donald and Sissy get dressed and go out, looking good if I may say so. They buy two-day CTA passes and catch the El train north to their old neighborhood of Rogers Park. From the Morse station they follow their noses to the Heartland Cafe, still there after all these years.

In fact, Sissy immediately recognized one of the owners, Gary Busey, standing just inside the entrance. When they had found a table, she went to speak to him, and he alerted the other owner, Lily Tomlin, and the three of them had a small reunion remembering working together, creating a community-oriented business, running a marathon, and more recently helping to elect a president.

It took the waiter an eternity to bring the wine, and when Harry had finally taken a sip and toasted their anniversary, he said he had a question, got down on one knee, and asked Mary if she would spend another 30 years with him. She really liked the sparkly ring with tiny diamonds set in a gold six-peteled lotus on a silver band, and she said yes.

Mary and Harry reminisced at length while eating Mexican food and drinking red wine, enjoying espresso with dessert, and paying the bill. On the way out they perused the little general store next door for memorabilia, like T-shirts that said HELP WANTED: REVOLUTIONARIES or Athletes United for Peace. They walked back to the El and the hostel leaning into a fierce north wind.



Next morning there was snow on the ground. Donald and Mary found a great breakfast place, Frances' Deli, around the corner on Clark Street. Excellent challah French toast, decent veggie omelet, superb home fries, and bottomless cups of coffee. A couple of family groups, also eating breakfast, provided a start to an outstanding day of people watching, and they speculated about other people's stories while enacting their own.

After breakfast, walking down the block with the wind, they stopped at a bike shop just as a young guy rode up to unlock the front door. Harry and Mary looked at bikes, and the guy answered their questions about the comparable quality of Trek and Specialized (not much different). Lincoln Park is growing on me. It's like the East Village but 20 pounds heavier. We walked to the Fullerton station to catch the red line to the Loop.

Almost like we knew what we were doing, we got to the Art Institute just in time for a noon talk about Edward Hopper's "Nighthawks" in the second-floor gallery it shares with more "modern" paintings. I think the questions raised by the guide - are these characters trapped, complicit, alienated, touching, or just a composition in complementary colors - got our minds and eyes aroused for the next two hours of looking at twentieth-century American painting. I didn't bring a pen or a camera, so I don't recall much except seeing a lot of Columbus's own George Bellows, which was captivating, and learning a little bit about what I like and don't like about Georgia O'Keefe's landscapes (the amazing fluid movement) and figures (bones and flowers, love and death).

We needed a break, so we grabbed our coats and found a Starbuck's at Wabash and Adams to refuel on coffee and cake. Two strangers sitting at the angular counter reminded me of "Nighthawks," so I took a picture, but guess what, it just wasn't the same. Back inside the museum, Donald and Mary headed for the Asian art wing, which seemed to go on and on. If you go straight back from the lobby, you can walk through several thousand years of Indian and Southeast Asian sculpture with mostly Hindu and Buddhist themes. Off to the right is room after room with Chinese, Japanese, and Korean ceramics, bronzes, ink paintings, and woodblock prints. Time passes. At the far end is another modern American gallery with a hilarious David Hockney painting of California collectors. It's closing time.

Harry and Mary stopped for a quick swing through the gift shop. Every El station on the way back evoked memories of people and places they once knew like the back of their hands. Heath called while they were getting ready to go out to dinner, and he sounded great. He and Parker were dressing up as dinosaurs in preparation for the New Year's Eve party at his house in Brooklyn. Nine bands were going to play, one of them dressed as cavement, and the grand finale at midnight would be a papier mache volcano erupting in confetti.

Our New Year's Eve would be a little more sedate: a nice dinner followed by a band at the Heartland. Without a dinner reservation, Donald didn't know whether they could get a table at the Basil Leaf, up the street at Clark and Arlington, but they were in luck. There was only a short wait, just enough time for a drink at the bar, and from the bread and wine to the smoked salmon over fettucini, the food was spectacular. By the time they had taken their boxed leftovers back to the hostel, Harry and Sissy were a little too tired and tipsy to get back on the train and head north for music and dancing, so they called it a night.

New Year's morning was an absolutely clear blue sky as we walked to Starbuck's on Clark Street with a front-row seat to watch Lincoln Park runners, cyclists, workers, and dog-walkers take on 2009. Speaking for myself, Harry Dean Stanton felt right at home among the young, old, rich, poor, loud, studious, rough, and sophisticated Chicagoans starting their engines with a hot cup of joe.

Harry and Sissy had no plans except brunch in the suburbs with their friends Tim Robbins and Kyra Sedgwick, who recently moved to Chicago from Cleveland. It's a quick drive out I-90 past O'Hare to Mt. Prospect, the tidy, tree-lined community where Tim is the new minister at the American Baptist Church.

Kyra chopped garlic and cooked fritata while we caught up on their move, the history and challenges of their new congregation, and the many things they love about their new place. They caught up on our Chicago adventure and the ongoing adventures of Edward/Heath and Drew/Catherine, whom Kyra has known since they were in preschool. They showed us around their house, then took us across the street to the beautiful little Greek-revival church.

We still had six hours to drive, so it was time to go. Sorry that we couldn't have touched base with more people in about 48 hours, we hit the road with a full head of steam and didn't really get tired until somewhere around Lafayette, Indiana, the site of another would-be movie, seemingly in another lifetime and involving other characters. Luckily my Starbuck's gift card still had some value on it, and a little more caffeine kept us driving and making up stories, like the completely imaginary one above, all the way home.

Received

Books: Roger-Pol Droit, Astonish Yourself! 101 Experiments in the Philosophy of Everyday Life (Penguin); Ammon Shea, Reading the OED: One Man, One Year, 21,730 Pages (Penguin); Rose-Marie & Rainer Hagen, Bruegel: The Complete Paintings (Taschen); Hans Christian Adam, Karl Blossfeldt: The Complete Published Work (Taschen); plus a gift card at Half-Price Books. I've read a bit into the the Bruegel book and the OED book, and it's pretty funny; my new favorite word is futilitarian.

CDs: Warren Zevon, The Love Songs (Artemis); Joan Osborne, Little Wild One (Plum); Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers, Greatest Hits (Geffen); John Coltrane, Coltrane for Lovers (Verve). I'm becoming a Joan Osborne fan and expect to listen to this disc many times.

Baking pans: one ceramic and one flexible nonstick silicone. I tried them out, and they work great.

Weather X radio-flashlight with siren. Go ahead, envy me. Don't you wish you had a flashlight with a built-in siren?

Two shirts. They fit.

Bodum French-press coffee maker with instructions in English, Dansk, Espanol, Deutsch, Francaise, Italiano, Nederlander, Svensk, Portugues, Polska, Greco, Russe, Arabic, and Japanese; a pound of whole-bean Gorilla brand coffee (Ethiopian Harar) and D'Amico coffee (Red Hook Blend).

Hand-knitted, felted bag, purple and blue-green striped, heavy-weight and large enough for a laptop. It's dusty in the den, and this will protect my Toshiba beautifully.

Given

Smartwool socks, heavy-duty for work.

Smartwool slippers, ankle-high with flexible, cushy soles.

More Smartwool socks, calf-length for warmth.

BikeSource gift card - accessorize!

Stemless wine glasses, shee-shee, German-made.

Two skeins of nice wool yarn.

50 trees planted in your name by Oxfam.

free...firewood

Co-worker P came to my desk on Tuesday to ask if I would be interested in some free firewood. Now picture my eyes getting real big. My two favorite words in the English language are free and firewood.

Are you kidding, of course I'm interested in some free firewood. I mean, it's free...firewood!

P had hired professional tree workers to cut down a big old oak in his yard, and they charge a lot less if they don't have to haul away and dispose of the wood. Which is a sweet deal for me, since what I really like to do is dispose of free...firewood.

So on Friday, my day off, I drove Hank the Ranger over to his house and loaded up the 40 pieces I could carry, and in the process got a workout or two - or four. First there's carrying from the stack to the truck. Then there's unloading at the back gate at Om Shanty and stacking by the back fence to cure for a year so I can split it. Eat lunch, take a break, repeat. Then loosen your boots and enjoy a refreshing Great Lakes Edmund Fitzgerald porter.

For me that's half the fun. It allows suburban office worker types like me to put on work gloves, move heavy objects, put the pickup truck to good use, and indulge - if only for an afternoon - in the fiction that I'm directly engaged in the primal act of providing the means of someone's survival.

Yeah right. It's probably not as much fun for the billions of people for whom this is an everyday reality, not a game and not a form of entertainment. Some privileged suburbanites go deer hunting or bass fishing for sport. I do firewood.

It's been a bountiful week in the realm of free...firewood. On Sunday I stopped on the way home from church to ask the man standing in his driveway on Lewis Center Road about the logs lying in the ditch. He said take what you want, so I did - just the few pieces that I could lift - and left the one's I couldn't lift. I didn't want the next passerby to see me lying in the ditch, so I quit while I was ahead.

Then on Monday co-worker B offered me four humungous ash logs that he had in the back of his van. More free...firewood! Although observers from the nearby office building might have mistaken this innocent exchange in the parking lot for an illicit trade in black-market goods, I swear it was nothing of the sort. By day's end those babies were nestled by the back gate curing until their time comes, probably next fall.

By Sunday I was looking to extend my lucky streak by taking down a couple of dead or dying trees in the back yard of co-worker D, but alas the stars did not align. Patience, grasshopper. Don't be greedy. I know that out there, somewhere, there is more free...firewood.

farewell kiss, you dog

"This is a gift from the Iraqis. This is the farewell kiss, you dog!" Muntader al-Zaidi, a reporter with the al-Baghdadia television network, shouted as he threw the first shoe. "This is from the widows, the orphans and those who were killed in Iraq!" Zaidi said as he threw his other shoe.

Great Moments in Cheese

What makes the holidays so special? Is it the heartwarming Christmas music? The greenery adorning hearth and home, lobby and cubicle? Or is it the brilliant displays of colorful lights illuminating every residential street, public building, and suburban parking lot? Maybe it's the festive green and red clothing everyone wears with their parka and boots and mittens. Or the cards from Aunt Marion, Cousin Joan, and the friendly neighborhood car insurance agent.

While all those things, as well as the incessant blare of popular seasonal songs from every radio station and muzak source, add something really special to the whole holiday vibe, it's something else that truly sets this season apart all all others, making it extra extra special.

It's the Holiday Cheeseball that best embodies the spirit of the season.

In fact, I feel better just saying the words holiday cheeseball. In honor of that sacred trust (I mean really, if you can't depend on your annual cheeseball, what can you depend on?) it is only fitting and proper to observe some Great Moments in the History of Cheese.

The origin of cheese appears to be lost in the mists of time. There are, however, records of the Sumerians making and consuming cheese that date to about 3500 B.C. Homer's 9th century B.C. epic, the Odyssey, describes a scene with the Cyclops Polyphemus making cheese and pressing it into wicker baskets. (http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/1951/how-did-cheese-originate)

Thistle flowers and green fig juice were used by Romans as rennet. In many abbeys, the monks, who were clergymen as well as writers and graziers and cookers ... and jolly fellows, perfected the munster (munster comes from "monasterium", i.e. "monsastery") Saint Paulin and Maroilles ripening technique, which soon spread throughout European countries.

1952 - President Charles de Gaulle declares, "The French will only be united under the threat of danger. Nobody can simply bring together a country that has 265 kinds of cheese."

Now repeat after me: HOLIDAY CHEESEBALL... Don't you feel kinda festive?

The future is in boxes

A commodity to keep your eye on is cardboard.

You heard it here first: as cardboard goes, so goes the nation. If the wood-products industry is doing well, that means distributors of other goods - phones, computers, TVs, shoes, underwear, oranges - are shipping a lot of stuff by UPS, which means money is circulating. When more money is moving around, there is more of it available for more people to buy phones, computers, underwear, and oranges - in boxes!

The beauty of this circle of commerce is manifested in our friend, the renewable resource of paper. As everyone knows, the paper in which those value-added products are packaged can be recycled and reconstituted as the next generation of paper products, such as the cardboard boxes going in and out of stores and UPS trucks. In some cases, the package is worth more than the contents.

Again, to belabor the obvious, when shoes and socks and books are boxed and delivered in their cardboard containers, that creates demand for more boxes (as well as for more books and socks) making it more profitable to recycle the box, the Xerox, the envelope, or the newspaper than to throw it away. No demand for new boxes, no incentive to recycle the old one.

Do not throw it away. Do not sentence that shoebox to an eternity in the landfill, where the most it will accomplish in its present karmic incarnation would be to compost down into carbon atoms, perhaps eventually feeding some photosynthesizing weed and recombining with water to form a sugar molecule. Everything gets recycled eventually, but randomness is way too inefficient. That box can contribute more productively to Amerika's economic recovery by transmigrating its cellulose soul into stationery, newsprint, or another box.

What I'm suggesting goes against the core economic wisdom that made Amerika great, but consider the possibility that more new stuff manufactured from more new material isn't the best deal. Consider instead that finding new uses for existing stuff might work better. Don't think outside the box, and don't think inside the box. Think about the box.

Post-Thanksgiving Gumbo

1. Boil segments of turkey carcass in large pot until meat falls off bones. Remove bones. Let pot sit in unheated workshop (away from varmints) for a week.

2. Skim off layer of fat, place in cast-iron Dutch oven, and fry 100 sliced baby carrots, six stalks of celery, five cayenne peppers, four Hungarian peppers, three sweet red peppers, two large chopped onions, and a parsnip (in a pear tree).

3. Reheat the pot of turkey, pour off the juice into the Dutch oven with the fried vegetables, and cook over low heat; add two large cans of diced tomatoes, a bunch of green beans, lots of okra (if you can find any okra in central swingstate), and whatever else is in the fridge; simmer. Use the meat for sandwiches, turkey salad, etc.

4. Soak a few handfuls of dried black (turtle) beans; bring to a boil and cook for two hours or until they form their own dark purple sauce; add beans to the soup, and simmer for another two hours.

5. Serve with brown rice and a Great Lakes Christmas Ale.

6. Say 'Oofdah!'

Post-Thanksgiving Grumble

(Sigh)

Now that the first big holiday of the Big Holiday Season has come and gone, we can settle back into the normal chaos of everyday life as we know it.

Our out-of-town company has come and gone, and the house is quiet again, save for the old cat's usual complaints first thing in the morning and last thing at night. Our guests, bless them, graciously fit right into the rhythms, routines, and standards of Om Shanty - the house rules, you might say - as we did our best to raise the bar just a bit to accommodate our guests.

And now we can be slobs again. We don't have company, so we can let the laundry pile up on the floor, the mail sit unopened on the table, the sink fill up with dishes, and catalogs lie strewn on every surface of every room. I think I'll do some dishes, do some laundry, and pick up a bit. I know I won't get around to the real projects on my to-do list.

(Sigh)

Kin Aesthetic

Our little house on the prairie was the scene of quite a family gathering this week. Despite my extreme familiarity with some of this cast of characters, I'm still amazed, sometimes delighted and occasionally chagrined, at their quirks, their tastes, and their humor. Three generations of Gollys and a few of their friends gathered at Om Shanty for Thanksgiving, and they all got along reasonably well, or at least survived the encounter by adapting and being good sports.

The kitchen is a key element in this most kitchen-centric of holidays, and our kitchen had an important upgrade this week. My student-friend Ja and his handyman-friend Rick swooped in with the suitable materials, tools, and skills just in time to install our new dishwasher two days before Thanksgiving. For considerably less than what professional plumbers, electricians, and carpenters would have charged, they connected the waterline and drainpipe, ran a power line from the breaker box, moved a cabinet, and placed a new countertop. Nice work, guys, and that's enough drama for one week.

Jessi's plane came in that night from Providence, and he looked like he had stepped right out of the cranberry bog, which he had. Alas he did not come bearing copious quantities of cranberries like last year. They had a bumper crop at the Mann family farm in Buzzard's Bay, Massachusetts, and they worked right up to the last day, so I guess he was so preoccupied with harvesting, screening, packaging, and shipping berries - and making on-again, off-again travel arrangements with his sweetie - that he didn't box another year's worth of berries for the folks in the heartland. I think we'll live.

The good news is that Jessi's sweetheart Alexandra joined us for the holiday. I was so happy when Jessi initially told us she was coming, then afraid she would have second thoughts when our plans expanded to include a raft of additional out-of-town relatives, and then crushed when it looked like she wouldn't make it. But they worked it out, and she bravely flew into Port Columbus International from LaGuardia on Wednesday, forsaking the safety of New York to risk all in a houseful of rough, holiday-reveling Midwesterners. Her timing couldn't have been better, as the four of us had a quiet evening to settle in before the rest of the rowdy clan arrived.

That handsome dude on the far left (wearing a tie) is my Dad, with a few close friends at the C & D, the year Jo Jo was born.

And arrive they did, all three of them, late Wednesday evening, bearing pies and other good things to eat and drink, as well as the whole kit and kaboodle for making lefse, which, as everyone knows, is a tender Norwegian flat bread made with potatoes, traditionally eaten at the winter holidays, and a kind of sacrament not to be missed. So when sister Jo Jo Golly and parents Chas and Helen Golly arrived, armed with ingredients, equipment, and a small traveling bar, the wild rumpus could officially begin.

Grandma Helen had an agenda. Besides making lefse, she was determined to settle the matter of preserving some old photos and newspaper clippings she had recently unearthed from her personal records. She was pleased and relieved when we were able to photocopy and scan them into our computer for posterity. Passing the photos around also gave Grandpa Chas an opening to tell stories about life in Spring Grove just after the War, working in the C & D Cafe with my Uncle Chuck, running the grocery store for Helen's Uncle Freddie Anderson, and related tales that spin off from one another like sparks from the fire.

That's Great-Grandpa Anderson on the far left, next to Fjelstad (?) in full regalia, including wooden shoes.

Our den Thursday evening looked like an arts and crafts convention. Most of the females clustered in our den had knitting or some other handwork to do while talking about this and that. A few had a crossword puzzle or sudoku to occupy their eyes, hands, and left brain. The age range spanned those in their 80s who were born in the 20s and those in their 20s who were born in the 80s. The floor was dark green tile, the ceiling was cedar. The soundtrack included Django Reinhardt and Stephane Grapelli, Bela Fleck, and Joe Cocker, but it was strictly background to the fiber art, word play, conversation, and storytelling around the woodstove. The dog claimed a warm piece of floor with her belly toward the stove. The cat favored the rocking chair to the side of the stove, and woe to any human who usurps Isabel's chair.

But the ultimate art form, let's be honest, is food. At Thanksgiving, the meal is the thing, and ours was abundant if not elaborate. The bird itself was a beauty, and around it were assembled a mountain of Zelda's garlic mashed potatoes, gravy whipped up at the last minute, Gven's rendition of our friend Gorm's Irish-Italian upstate sausage stuffing, Zelda's friend Bernard's Belgian cranberry sauce, Jo Jo's green bean casserole, spinach salad with raspberry vinaigrette dressing, and sourdough rolls, oh ya.

I must say the table looked fabulous. Candles were lit, wine glasses were filled, and Grandpa said grace. According to our tradition, we went around the table and each person made note of something they were thankful for, some heavy and some light. We took our time getting around to the coffee and pie - pumpkin, apple, cherry, and a deep-dish Dutch apple that was to die for. Everybody contributed to the meal, and everybody helped clean up.

Friday afternoon we piled into three cars for an outing at Franklin Park Conservatory, where there's a surprise around every corner. Every time I go there I'm reminded of what a gem it is to have in our town. The toucans in the rain forest room get your attention right away. The overstuffed chair upholstered in cacti, appropriately titled "Sticky Buns," and the warm, dry air in the desert room is refreshing in a way unlike central swingstate. David Byrne's magnetic poetry in the shape of a tree was fun, and the architecture of the palm house was as riveting as the trees.

We wandered upstairs to an exhibit by Dorothy Gill Barnes, an artist from Worthington who does wild things with wood that is already marked by natural forces. We also ran into Gwen, the horticulturist and former taiji student, who poured out information about orchids, and Mark, our former minister.

About this time Jessi and Alex took off to meet up with Andy, Jessi's friend from high school. The older generations needed to restore our strength, so we repaired to La Chatelaine for a light supper. It's right across the street from Half-Price Books, so we perused the shelves until Zelda, Jessi, Alex, and Andy returned from their dinner-break together, then we proceeded to disturb the bookish customers briefly by congregating in the friendly confines of Zelda's store, which was kind of special for the older folks to see one of the younger folks in her work milieu.

It's getting to be a long day, but we still hadn't made lefse. The folks had brought along their special rolling board and board cover, rolling pin and pin cover, lefse grill and magic turning stick, dontchaknow. It takes a trained team of three experienced Norwegians to roll out dough until thin, heat briefly at 450, turn and cool slowly (under a towel) so they stay nice and soft. That mission accomplished, we could relax in the den again and watch Isabel and Helen compete for the rocking chair.

By Saturday morning, I think everybody agreed it was time to go home. Jo Jo, Helen, and Chas left for Tennessee after breakfast. Jessi and Alex had a plane to catch at one. Gven and I were ready for a normal weekend of doing laundry, baking bread, and reading the paper, reassured that we are so very related.

But is it art?

The yard has so many things wrong with it, I never know where to start, because I'll never finish anything in the allotted time frame of a weekend. Two maple trees in the back and one in the front are way overdue for radical cutbacks, especially now that the leaves have fallen, but that can only be done in certain kinds of weather, not too cold and not too windy. All the windfall wood from Hurricane Ike has been cut up, split, and stacked to dry, so a certain sense of order prevails with about two cords in the shed. I found time to edge a section of walkway with a couple of hefty 8-foot 4x6 timbers, which should keep the brick pavers in place for a while. I still need to nail the remaining cedar shakes to the back of the house, and I only have enough shakes for one more row. Then what? It's a challenging process working with found materials.

The house presents a different set of problems. My lack of skill and resourcefulness turns any small task into a minifiasco of time-consuming, labor-intensive futility. After several tries, I succeeded in securing with long (4-inch) screws the footboard of a badly designed Ikea bed frame that has been pulling apart for years where the pegs and glue refused to hold weak joints together. Don't ask how many drill bits it took to predrill the hole and how many tries it took to screw up this simple project. Onward to the dining room trim, which isn't straight, nailed to the door frame, which isn't square, next to the ancient plaster wall, which isn't flush. After that it will be something else. With any luck, the tentative good news is that maybe it looks perhaps like we might have a working dishwasher, possibly in time for Thanksgiving, Lord willing and the creek don't rise. But don't bet the farm on it.

The conversation began as a benign inquiry like "How are you?" and developed into a species of negotiation qua information over some undefined exchange of time or money or property. Zelda is all too familiar with how my mind works (either a or b; if a, then c; if b, then d; in short, e) in a linear fashion, so she structures her communication thusly, and after a certain amount of pointed questioning, leaving no stone unturned and most contingencies covered, I have some information I can work with. In this case, there's no need to switch bed frames because all our out-of-town guests have a place to sleep.

The meal consisted of a simple split pea soup heavily laced with carrots, onions, turnips (or were they parsnips?), and a few cayenne peppers, mixed with brown rice for balance, and a slice of freshly baked sourdough bread. Highly adequate!

The workout begins as a simple stretch to relieve the overuse of something, often the lower back, and underuse of something else, probably the abs. Usually I'm taking a break from sitting at my desk, or moving stuff around in the yard, sweeping the leaves off the sidewalk, bringing in wood or giving the fire a poke, and my lumbar spine is talking to me in an insistent tone of voice that I know enough to heed. Finally I put on a hat and gloves and retreat to a sacred space outside to tune the instrument. Feet touching earth, head touching sky, it seems to achieve the desired effect, and now I'll sleep soundly.

Cards on the table

Let us be thankful for those family dramas that make bad TV morality tales unnecessary. Who needs the Disney channel when you've got the Golly household? As Thanksgiving, arguably my favorite holiday, approaches, a number of conflicting forces are converging on my pself-absorbed psyche (psic), and I'm going to need all the healing qi I can find, and maybe a little healing Bacardi and tonic.

There are the usual logistical preparations to be made for a houseful of beloved guests: places to sleep for Grandma and Grandpa Golly, Aunt Jo Jo, Jessi and Alex; getting the kitchen and dining room in working order to feed a small throng, which will also include Zelda and her friend Bernard. There is the small matter of a large turkey, choosing and executing the right stuffing recipe, the all-important garlic mashed potatoes, sweet potatoes, perhaps a batch of sourdough rolls, the indispensable green bean casserole, and, of course, pies, pies, and more pies.

That would be challenging enough. It's the other anxieties, which are just as real even though they exist primarily in my head, as three generations come together in the seasonal warmth and glow of well-learned Nordic dysfunctionality. And there's also the very old cat who likes to pee on the floor. But it's the humans misbehaving that worries me.

Although everyone, of course, will do their level best to be polite and say the right thing, there is something about family holidays that expose the issues you would (meaning I would) most like to forget, ignore, or deny. Somewhere between "I'm so happy to meet you" and "Have a safe trip back" will come an inevitable moment of truth when the things I least want to know about myself and my family - to myself and my family - will be revealed in the full light of Thanksgiving day.

My enlightened daughter Zelda tells me not to worry. Everything will be fine, and obsessing over the Transgressions of Christmas Past will only make things worse. Be part of the solution, not part of the problem, this 24-year-old voice of reason intones, and don't bring about your own worst-case scenario. Her mother agrees with her; it's a conspiracy.

[Later that week]

I always function better if I have an itinerary, even a loose one, and that false sense of security is coming together nicely. I ordered a turkey today from the Coop, and I'll pick it up Sunday, which will give it a couple of days to thaw. I'll do some baking on Monday. My friend Ja and his friend Rick are coming over Tuesday to hook up the new/used dishwasher Gven and I bought this week. When those tasks are done, I will be better able to relax and allow things to take their natural course (takes a deep breath), remembering that this will be a group effort, and there will be plenty of good food, and it's only a couple of days. We have plenty of firewood and enough chairs to go around, and we all (meaning I) might live through this.

Jessi is set to arrive from Providence, the nearest airport to the cranberry farm, Tuesday evening by himself; Alex is coming from New York on Wednesday, having accepted an invitation to a little family holiday that quickly grew into the Norwegian Inquisition. Jo Jo and the folks are due to arrive Wednesday afternoon from Tennessee. Zelda will be working late most days, which means there might be a very strange entourage visiting her store when she least expects it.

This should be interesting.

RE: The deck chairs on the Titanic

It has come to my attention that the deck chairs are in a serious state of disarray and in need of rearranging. I intend to make it a high priority in the coming weeks and months to ensure that this unacceptable situation is rectified. Ahem. Yours truly, the captain.

That's it, take the bull by the horns, size up the situation, and take corrective action. If you saw my house, you would agree, yep, something should be done. New floors, for starters. Geez, people, do something with those floors! How about fixing the flashing on the roof and replacing those ancient gutters. The heating is ridiculous in here - new furnace, anyone? And how about that second bathroom, you know, the nonfunctioning one?

Or we could spend the weekend reorganizing the top of the desk, changing the spacing between the plants and pottery in the den, switching the coffee table and the footstool so the room has a more balanced look, and some nice new accessories for the living room would be nice. Yes, that's better. At least I feel better, now that at least one room has the proper feng-shui, and by touching up the surfaces, eventually we'll work our way in to the big structural changes, right?

This is my weekly dilemma at Om Shanty: whether to attack one of several major projects, which require a major investment of time, effort, planning, and money, or to nibble around the edges, clean up last week's debris, straighten the books on the shelves, maybe move some things around, and call it a day. Kind of like arranging the deck chairs for maximum comfort and an optimum view of the rapidly sinking ship.

Mr. Obama seems to face nationally much the same dilemma I face on the home front. He could take his cue from FDR and focus the electoral mandate on an economy that is rapidly taking on water, or he could try to satisfy every other need, some more pressing than others, and meet every other desire on the political horizon where needs and desires are without end.

Pardon me, I have this penchant for framing public issues in terms of private ones, and vice versa; sometimes the shoe fits, and we've got a nice Shakespearean moment in which the gardener explains everything to Richard II in Act Two, Scene Whatever, but it’s too late for him to do anything about it but lose his horse and offer his kingdom (too late) for another one, and John of Gaunt saw it coming long ago anyway. And sometimes it doesn't.

I’m just the gardener, what do I know, except the roof leaks when the wind blow from the south, one of the bathrooms is torn apart, and two rooms need new floors. All these projects require skills and materials that I don’t have, but they are not going away. It's easier to bend into accomplishing smaller tasks that I can satisfactorily do myself with available materials – paint the garage, cut firewood, maybe even build a pergola. The king archetype doesn't fit, so I can't tell Barack what to do first and what to put on the back burner.

The argument for an aggressive approach in the mold of Franklin D. Roosevelt or Lyndon B. Johnson is that health care, energy and education are all part of systemic economic problems and should be addressed comprehensively. But Democrats are discussing a hybrid strategy that would push for a bold economic program and also encompass other elements of Mr. Obama’s campaign platform, even if larger goals are put off. (NYT, Nov. 9))

According to the Times reporter, the New Hope Great Deal Society We Can Believe In can either focus singlemindedly on economic recovery or try to satisfy a raft of campaign promises for a slew of different constituencies – not both. If he chooses the former approach, like FDR, the ship remains afloat, if in some disarray, and maybe there is time left in a second term to work on other problems, given a stabilized economy. The premise is that improvements in health care, energy policy, and education - though seriously needed - aren’t terribly helpful or even possible if half the people who elected you are losing their jobs and their homes.

The risk, of course, is that by spending all his political capital on saving banks and bankrupt corporations, we arrive in 2012 with the same crises in health care, infrastructure, environment, and education, and large numbers of people still lose their jobs and their homes, because the freely enterprising banks and corporations took care of themselves, as is their way. Maybe the deck chairs do need attention. Don't ask me, I'm just the gardener.

The New New Deal Deal

What this country needs is a good $700 billion acronym. So far, we have to make do with Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP), which, it turns out, will attempt to do many things but will not buy troubled assets. Herewith some helpful suggestions to our wise government officials in Washington for additional programs to go along with TARP:

Troubled Economy Normalization Team (TENT)
Tarnished Rubble Assembly Project (TRAP)
Bailout Under Government Supervision (BUGS)
Creditor Rescue After Pillaging (CRAP)
World Investment Salvage Program (WISP)
Public Underwriting of Kapital Excesses (PUKE)
Systemic Credit Unraveling Mechanism (SCUM)
Collective Relief for Orderly Collapse of the Kingdom (CROCK)
Banking and Investment Leverage Gain Escape (BILGE)
Financial Implosion Legal and Technical Help (FILTH)
Parachutes (Golden) for Investment Security (PIGS)
Domestic Recovery Office Promoting Confidence in Leveraged Outlaws, Thieves, & Hoodlums (DROPCLOTH)

I invite you, I implore you - okay, I dare you - to exercise your rights and duties as a citizen to come up with your own creative ideas for mopping up the mess. Make up your own solutions. They don't necessarily have to be grounded in reality. Because frankly the rich white guys in charge have no idea what to do.

Occupation: Cabinetmaker

Obama's first order of business: make a few key appointments. He's named Rahm Emanuel, a hardball player, his chief of staff, check. He's picked a few veterans of the Clinton years to serve on the transition team, check. There's the inevitable, uncomfortable meeting with the Bushes at the House, he and Michelle can handle that, check.

Although, inexplicably, Barack hasn't asked for my input on these decisions, I have a few ideas to offer on the crucial upcoming matter of cabinet appointments. In no particular order:

Secretary of State: Colin Powell (That's a gimme.)

Secretary of Defense: John McCain (Give the old guy something to do where he can rattle his saber a little, be the maverick in the opposition camp, spend some time with the brass at the Pentagon, and keep him out of trouble with the Senate.)

UN Ambassador: Condoleezza Rice (She knows the territory, they all know her, and she has credibility on five continents, especially the ones that care about the UN.)

Homeland Security: Bill Ayres (He's familiar with the use of explosives.)

Treasury: Dennis Kucinich (It will take someone who is not one of the boys at Goldman Sachs to navigate this minefield; the economic center of gravity will shift an inch or two in the direction of Cleveland, which needs the business; rename the IRS the Income Redistribution Service; nationalize the banking industry.)

Housing and Urban Development: Jimmy Carter (One big Habitat for Humanity project.)

Health and Human Services: Hillary Clinton (A second go at what didn't fly in 1993 - a national health care system, aka single-payer coverage, aka Medicare for everyone, and keep her out of trouble with the Senate.)

Energy Secretary: Al Gore (Think wind.)

Transportation Secretary: Ralph Nader (Give the old guy something to do where he can shakes up Detroit a little, be the maverick in the opposition camp, nationalize the auto industry and retool it to build a network of urban light rail systems.)

Commerce Secretary: Tom Hayden (One big worker-controlled, community-oriented, consumer-friendly cooperative.)

Education Secretary: Gordon Gee (GO BUCKS!)

Interior Secretary: Gary Snyder (Honor wild places.)

Agriculture Secretary: Michael Pollan (Homegrown/locally grown, seasonal, poison-free food, anyone?)

Attorney General: Bernadine Dohrn (Prosecute Cheney for war crimes.)

Director of National Intelligence: It's a secret.

Bicongregational

It's time I came out of the closet.

I was taking part in a neopagan celebration at the big UU church on All Souls Day when, out of the blue, my existential dilemma du jour was made easier to bear. I ran into an acquaintance I got to know when we were both on a committee at the Old North Church whom I hadn't seen for a couple of years, so we caught up and I met her friend. She was out of the country, then she was sick, now she's fine but hasn't been back at church. For my part, I told her I'm still on that committee, but I also meet with a group every week at the big church, to which she responded -

"Oh, you're bicongregational!"

I've been outed. I knew it would happen sooner or later. Now I'll have to break the news to my parents, my co-workers, my wife and kids.

Actually, it's kind of a relief to openly acknowledge the fact after all these years of living a double life, slipping surrepticiously in and out of pews, arriving late and leaving early, dreading being seen by someone from the country church while in the company of someone from the city church.

No more hiding my congregational orientation. I can hold my head high on any street in central swingstate without shame or fear, that is, until the constitutional amendment banning my kind. I'm not G, L, or T. I'm neither fish nor fowl. I'm proudly bicongregational.

All Souls Day

The best of times or the worst of times, and maybe it's the time of year or maybe it's the time of man, but sometimes it's just a challenge to make sense of anytime at all. But the alternative, to not make sense of things, to just let them go, doesn't seem to work so well either, or I simply haven't learned how. As a middle path, I could just unpack some of the raw material I've been trying for two weeks to chronicle, and see if it makes sense.

I got some sad news via e-mail on a Tuesday that my friend Mike Henry had died late the night before. He had been very sick for several months, in and out of the hospital, and the prognosis had not been very hopeful. I saw him a few times as he underwent various treatments, and his physical condition appeared to deteriorate, but still it's different when the heart finally stops beating. I forwarded the information to a few mutual friends at work and more or less went about my business.

That night I spoke with Mike's friend Marcia, who said people from the Buddhist center had been coming over to their house all day to pray. Mike had been through an aggressive series of chemo treatments, and he came home very tired on Monday. Marcia said he took a nap, and when he woke up he immediately wrote a poem. His spirits were good, but his energy came and went. Later that night he became very sleepy again, took another nap and did not wake up. Visiting hours would be Thursday evening at a funeral home here in Methodistville, and a memorial service would follow.

Through force of will and following the directions, I managed to secure the new storm door that had been partially installed the week before. Now even though it doesn't hang straight or seal tightly, at least it opens and closes. Indian Summer made it unseasonably warm for late October, and I shot some baskets in the parking lot to get my ya-ya's out after work. The nice lady at the eye doctor replaced a missing screw in my glasses, so now the lens doesn't pop out.

My last class of the quarter met at the rec center on Wednesday, and I made some fliers advertising the new schedule for next quarter. Thursday morning's interdepartmental meeting was actually quite good. I finished editing the testing product I'd been working on for three weeks, and it felt good to clear that particular deck. I ran out of daylight, so there was no time to shoot hoops.

The scene at the funeral home was a bittersweet convergence of friends and family from all times and places in a person's interconnected life. Compared to most of those people, I knew Mike only fleetingly, but I also had some connection with many of them. Someone from the art department, someone from the design department, someone from production, and someone from social studies; a couple from his t'ai chi group, a few from his Buddhist circle, and mutual friends of mutual friends with not many degrees of separation.

Mike's cousin (from Iowa?) sang a salutation to the six directions in the Lakota language. His Carmelite brother (from Reynoldsberg) reminisced about their years at St. Patrick's church. Marcia and another teacher from the Taoist Tai Chi Society talked about Mike's intense desire to practice, his eagerness to teach, his enthusiasm in classes and workshops. He did like to push the envelope. He had gotten very excited about going to Wolf Park in Indiana just a few days ago to see the wolves in their own habitat.

Lama Kathy talked about Mike's acerbic wit and his journey to Buddhism, how he argued with her about John of the Cross while studying the Diamond Sutra, and how a couple of weeks ago, he was singing the blues, and he wrote a song that included the word Avalokitesvara, and it rhymed. There were pictures of him and pictures by him on display. Evidence was everywhere of his boundless creativity and twisted humor. The Buddhists stayed in the chapel afterward to chant.

The next day, Friday, was Halloween, and I had the day off, so I got a little work done in the yard, cutting firewood and putting borders around beds. Saturday was All Saints Day, or All Souls Day in some traditions, and the prolonged Indian Summer weather was glorious. I took advantage of the warmth to get up on the roof, sweep off leaves and pinestraw, clean out gutters, and tape over a crack next to a leaky skylight. That night a small group of Pagans celebrated Samhain at the big UU church with stories, songs, and drumming in honor of those who have died.

Sunday I had volunteered to help at the Old North Church in the morning, but I couldn't handle the noisy social gathering afterward, so I fled and came home. The perfect weather gave me time to transplant perennials, split and stack wood, and enjoy a fire with Gven in the pit on the patio. El Dia de los Muertos was also the first day after daylight saving time, so it seemed like a good time for a fire.

Monday wasn't an official holiday that I'm aware of, but it was the first Monday of the month, so the percussion store across from Graceland had its monthly drum circle, and the place was cooking. Just a few players, but they were all good, and the rhythms ebbed and flowed, layered and bounced with energy and respect.

Tuesday was election day, so I voted early and got to work just in time for a townhall meeting with the company president, who had plenty so say about the state of the economy and the company, not dire just realistic. A friend had a little gathering to watch election returns at his house, and spirits ran high as we saw more and more states turn blue. Later at home, Gven and I watched rather humble concession and victory speeches and wondered about the transition.

How could so much happen in just over a week? It seems like every day was momentous in some way yet ordinary in others. I just have a hard time letting go of it without remarking how it went.

65 years

What is it like to live with someone, to be married to someone, for 65 years? I don't know, but I know a couple of people who do. Their five children, three of their grandchildren, all four greatgrandchildren, and six spouses-in-law converged in a central location near the Ohio River this weekend to celebrate Mom and Dad's years together. I think they had a good time.

The ride to southern Indiana from central Ohio was a breeze. We started encountering relatives as soon as we got out of the car and pretty much took over the hotel Friday and Saturday nights. My sister Jeanie Beanie Golly Gee did a fabulous job of coordinating everything, so we had the run of the meeting rooms, which came in handy when it came time to eat, drink, talk, meet the newest members of the clan, play cards, and watch football.

Friday night Mom and Dad brought out a big box of games they have held onto forever and wanted to get rid of. Any takers? Someone found the Pit deck (copyright 1919, printed 1947), a card game based on the Chicago grain market that we used to play as kids. A game of Pit started tentatively, but it is easily learned, and the newbies quickly got the hang of it. Maybe it comes naturally to us Midwesterners. Hours of raucous fun ensued. "Pit open...corner!" You had to be there.

When we weren't doing the abovementioned eating, talking, etc., we were piling into two or three vans and going on excursions in beautiful downtown Jeffersonville and Louisville. To Schimpff's Confectionary, for example, where we took the nickel tour and learned more than we thought it possible to know about the nineteenth-century art and science of making candy from scratch. Hint: temperature is everything. The modest smalltown storefront is quite a place. The back room filled with old candymaking implements, packaging, vending machines, advertising, and other memorabilia provided an interesting history of American candy culture.

It was a nice day in the old river town, so we took a short walk down to the water, past the chic shops, the bars and restaurants, and the floodwall straddling Spring Street. I guess going places together is just an opportunity to have a conversation with my brother-in-law Barney Gee Golly about both of our daughters' moving out on their own, or where the economy may or may not be headed, with my brother Rock Golly about his ski trip to Utah with his son last February, or his most recent motorcycle acquisition.

By now it's time for lunch, so we piled into vans again and found a place up the road that would accommodate most tastes and not take all day. We've got more places to go and baseball bats to caress.

That's right, the Louisville Slugger Factory and Museum is just across the river on Main Street in a very cool art and theater district. If you have even a passing interest in baseball, it's worth seeing how they make the bats from a billet cut from an ash or maple trunk, shape it with one of hundreds of forms placed on a lathe, brand it, and finish it. I didn't have time to get in the batting cage, but my nephews Todd and Greg did, and it's probably just as well, since I don't think I could have hit the machine's pitching.

Everything in greater Louisville seems to be only a few minutes away, so we were back at the hotel in plenty of time for a workout and a change of clothes before dinner at Buckhead's Grill on the riverfront. With 20 people sitting at one long table, you can't really talk to everybody, so by the luck of the draw I got to talk to my nephew Greg Gosh Golly and his wife Christine while they fed their one-year-old Jonathan. We always seem to have a lot to say to each other: summer travels, our place up north, their place in Canada, the relative strengths of schedule in the NCAC and the MIAA, and the sad fact that the Yeomen and the Flying Dutchmen both lost all their nonconference games.

I was also in a position to observe from across the table my nephew Sam Gee Golly's three well-bred daughters - beauties of 7, 10, and 13 - conduct themselves like young ladies, each with her own distinct, witty, vibrant character. These occasions are instant validation for any parent, especially the daughters-in-law, and it was fun seeing Sam and Kayleen relax and bask in the reflected light.

The drive home on Sunday was equally uneventful, except we came a different way, up I-65 to Indianapolis, then east on I-70 instead of down I-71, but western swingstate is just as flat and boring and southern swingstate, so six of one, half-dozen of the other. It gave Gven and me a chance to rehash the weekend briefly, what was new or different from other reunions, and think about when and where the next one will be. It felt good to get home, put things away, eat a meal in the dining room, read the paper, watch the ballgame, and split some wood.

Zelda came by the house to touch base after taking care of the animals while we were gone. She was tired, and I was happy to see her and hear about recent changes at the store. She works hard. The renovation at the Lane Avenue HPB is complete at last, but there are seven pallets of books that have no shelf space. Another day, another bit of problem solving for...Zelda Golly, Shiftleader!

frosty!

1. The condition of my back yard this morning, hardy plants and nonhardy alike, which I neglected to bring into the cellar last night as I had intended. Now we'll see how those six pots of spider lilies on the patio handle last nights temperature.

2. The reception I get when I talk to people at the Old North Church. Maybe it's me. Maybe it's that hardy, smalltown, central swingstate character of the good souls and solid citizens who comprise the congregation. No, it's probably me.

3. The back room, aka the Sven den, of our domicile, when I got home from a committee meeting last night. I won't say it was cold, but I chose not to settle into a comfortable chair to read a book, but went upstairs instead and fell asleep on the folded-up futon in our guest room, aka the Gven den.

4. The reaction of a former student when I contacted her about a workshop for the practice that I thought she was interested in. Maybe it's me. Maybe it has something to do with her complicated life, work changes, family obligations, and the normal strains of maintaining balance in life. No, it's probably me.

5. The mugs of Guinness at Claddagh, where an extremely small group of warm, friendly people met this week for a committee meeting and managed to move through an agenda, make a few decisions regarding the upcoming church calendar, and share the kind of personal information that might explain where each of us is coming from in our actions and attitudes toward the business at hand.

It's pledge drive time again

Don't you just love this time of year? A slight nip in the air, low humidity, football Friday nights, football Saturday afternoon, football all day Sunday, sunlight on an angle that illuminates everything from the side, the brilliant foliage, and desperate pleas for funds from every direction.

I met my friend Petro at Starbuck's last night for our annual stewardship conversation, culminating in my writing a number on a sheet of paper and discreetly folding it into an envelope. He drank cappuccino, perhaps because of the likeness of its color to the cloak worn by the Capuchins, an austere order of Franciscan missionaries and preachers. I drank green tea. We had a pleasant yet earnest conversation, which I always enjoy, and we understand each other pretty well. An hour later I drove to the rec center in my gray Ranger, and Petro drove home in his new used dark green Jaguar.

This morning, Dan and Maggie and the gang down at the WCBE Fort Hays studio are back at it on the radio trying to talk their loyal listeners into ponying up with a check or credit card. Everyone hates the pledge drive, as they freely acknowledge, but for the price of a cup of coffee, you can keep the transmitter running and the unique programming on the air, etc., etc. When I've heard enough, I switch to WOSU, where they're doing the same thing in slightly more sophisticated language, and when I've heard enough, I switch to Smoove Jazz WJZA and try to ignore the commercials.

Shortly I will receive an enthusiastic letter from the two colleges from which I actually graduated (the other ones don't bother), reminding me that the current generation of students can finance their education only with my help. As a somewhat loyal alumnus, I will enclose a small check in the enclosed postage-paid envelope. Oddly enough, coffee is not involved.

The letters from environmental, human rights, civil liberties, public health, political advocacy, and other interest groups will continue to arrive at my desk, the difference being that they don't wait for the fall pledge season. Deciding whom to support is an exercise in values clarification as well as money management and, yes, identity politics. What can I afford? Who do I most want to support? Who needs my money the most? Who can be trusted to use it prudently on my behalf? What am I doing, really, in distributing my 'wealth'?

Ha! You call this wealth? Well, yeah, compared to most of the world, I'm rolling in it. Not saving much, yet managing to salt away a little here, a little there, paying the bills mostly, certainly not living large but rarely missing a meal, and indulging in the odd luxury here and there. While I'm not set for life or anywhere year prepared for retirement (whatever that is), I feel like I have enough money coming in to - are you ready? - redistribute a tiny bit.

Uh oh, I think I just uttered a hot-button word. Isn't it un-Amerikan to "redistribute" wealth? That's contrary to the 'Darwinian' (Spencerian) struggle of each against all for a bigger piece of the pie, which as some of our would-be leaders tell us, will actually "grow the pie" - an unfortunate turn of phrase. As Justice Holmes said, "I like paying taxes. With them I buy civilization." So I guess we all choose where and how much to redistribute.

Hoops

Partly due to nature and partly to nurture, every year about this time I get the itch to shoot baskets. Not necessarily to play basketball, as in a game, on a team, full court and all that, but mainly to handle the ball, feel the bounce, elevate to lay it in off the glass, be there for the rebound, get in a rhythm and move with it.

If there is a basketball gene, I have it, and about half the men in my family have it. My Dad played ball in high school, in college, and in the army, and he taught me the basics from an early age.

If it's also true that it takes seven years of training and conditioning to become an athlete, then I probably became a roundball player by the time I was 14 or 15. Dad didn't waste any time initiating me into handling the ball, dribbling, shooting, passing, but it was only when we moved to Detroit in 1960 that I played like all the time. So my body and mind came of age out on the driveway by the hoop, either with my friends or by myself.

All through school I hung out with jocks, birds of a feather and all that, and eventually got two degrees in phys ed. Some things just stay with you, and there is no way this guy will ever not be that kid. Genes and jones and a who knows who.

I was reminded of this the other day at the end of a long day at work. I needed an outlet so I grabbed the ball that just happened to be in the truck and spent a few minutes shooting at the hoop in the parking lot. My knees and shoulders and heart and lungs limited the time I could keep it going, but I need to go that more often. As long as I heed the warnings and limits of knees and shoulders and heart and lungs, I think they will gradually come around.

I can justify this insanity because "it's good for me." Yeah, that's the ticket, it's just a fitness thing. It has nothing to do with being 12 again and transported into sport heaven.

I can't tell you

I can't tell you what a good time I had on my day off Friday. I'd like to share the details and describe what we did, but really, I just can't tell you.

I will say that Gven and I went on a nice little day-trip, but I can't tell you where we went. I had already scheduled the day off to start a nice, long fall weekend, and it just happened to work out that I needed to drop something off to meet a deadline, hence the short trip out of town.

Don't you hate it when you know ahead of time that something has to be finished, but you still end up scrambling at the last minute to complete the final touches? I hate that. The added tension doesn't do anything for my peace of mind or the thought-out, polished quality of the final product that was due on a certain date that I can't tell you about. In the end, alas, it is what it is, and I will have to live with it.

So we got in the car and delivered the unnamed item at the appointed mysterious place, and lo and behold, we had some time to kill. It was a beautiful sunny October day to walk around the little anonymous Swingstate town, so we took our time finding a place to eat lunch. This is something Gven and I have worked hard to perfect in our 32-year relationship - taking our time finding a place to eat.

The restaurant where we ended up had changed significantly since I was last there a few years ago, with an expanded menu, improved service, more seating space, and - to our great surprise - an actual bar, something I never thought I would see in this small town, which shall no nameless. Lunch was delicious. Have you ever had a smoked salmon BLT? Mwah!

After lunch we took a short walk to see what else had changed in the neighborhood. There was a newish bookstore and a craft store/gallery with lots of eye-pleasing textures and a cute little natural food store. Eventually we found ourselves up by the library where our friend Pauline (not her real name) works, but Pauline wasn't working that day, so we couldn't surprise her by popping in. So we kept walking and decided to pop in at the place two blocks away where her husband Chris works, but he wasn't in either.

The drive home was uneventful, but with a little help from Starbuck's we had plenty to talk about, what with the above-mentioned endeavor that I'm not at liberty to discuss. Back at home, I still had some other, unrelated work at my desk, which I can't really talk about, except to say that once again deadlines loom and it couldn't be put off.

I got quite a bit of work done that night while Gven went to a movie with her friends, then we had a long tumultuous discussion about something I would rather not discuss. I did a little more work Saturday in the midst of regular weekend chores around the house, then a big chunk Sunday afternoon and evening.

Except for a little yard work, I spent the whole weekend finishing that project, but, as I'm sure you will understand, I can't tell you what it was. Finally, late Sunday night I attached the documents in question and sent the e-mail notifying the recipient that my part of the project was completed at last. What a relief that was! And it feels pretty good to get all this pent-up information off my chest.

identity/politics

Love and marriage, love and marriage
Go together like a horse and carriage,
Dad was told by mother
You can't have one without the other.

Help me work out this nascent idea before it self-destructs. People decry the evils of so-called identity politics, but doesn't it go on all the time? And probably always has, on all segments of the ideological spectrum. But we're supposed to be arguing "the issues" instead of playing the race card or the gender card or some other card. [Cue pleasurable rush of righteous indignation.]

What's wrong with those other people? You know who I'm talking about, the people I hate because they disagree with me. They keep diverting attention away from pressing questions of public policy and toward emotionally charged questions of race, gender, religion, age, ethnicity, nationalism, regionalism, or culture. You know, be very very afraid of X because X is black/female/Muslim/old/Hispanic/French/cosmopolitan/urban. Or be arrogantly dismissive of Y because Y is white/male/Protestant/young/Anglo/Redneck/provincial/country.

The assumption, of course, is that you should support the candidate who is like you. Hence the Palin phenomenon. Nominate the homecoming queen and use her as an attack dog (with lipstick). To echo the unfortunate comment by Nebraska Senator Roman Hruska, when out of party loyalty he voiced his support for Nixon's nomination of Judge Carswell for the Supreme Court because "The mediocre people of America deserve to be represented too." It's a way of making explicit the old axiom that we get the president we deserve. In this case, as in the last two elections, we're being asked to vote for people because they're not too smart.

But at least they're "like me" - or how I see myself. Unexceptional. Joe Six-pack. Main Street. Next-to-last in his class, but really likeable. Why not Sally Field? And there is nothing in this cycle that hasn't been done before, including the fact that these people will do anything to win, including lies, more lies, and damn lies. Lies about their own identity and policies, lies about their opponent's identity and policies, lies about the lies they told us yesterday or last year. But dontchaknow, at least they're against "greed and corruption on Wall Street."

The dilemma for voters becomes: who am us anyway? Given that identity and politics are inextricably intertwined, I still face the existential decision of whether to cast my puny, irrelevant, electronically mutable ballot on the basis of my race, my gender, my religion, my age, my ethnicity, my nationalism, my regionalism, or my culture. Which of my identities will pull the lever November 4? Or maybe I'll shape-shift into a completely rational life form who makes decisions for the benefit of all sentient beings who, by the way, all want the same things.

It would simplify matters is there was a 50-something white guy from the suburbs running for president, preferably a tree-hugging quasi-intellectual midwestern Scandinavian with an idiosyncratic brand of pragmatic mysticism. Is that too much to ask?

But I'm a realist. (That's a lie.) I'll just have to settle for the candidate who comes closest to representing me and my values. The maverick.

What I did on my fall vacation

Today is the first day of an extended, alternative, stingy way of using up a pile of vacation days my corporate benefactor has bestowed upon me this year. It's also the first day of the rest of your life, but you knew that. No carryover days allowed, say the suits upstairs, so use it or lose it, and it's time to make up in the fall for lost time in the summer.

Instead of indulging in three weeks at a time or a week at a time (times three) possibly sandwiched around one or more of the traditional end-of-year holidays, I have opted to string them out over the rest of the year, one day at a time, like a 12-step program - carpe diem, dude - in a series of 12 long weekends, beginning now.

This plan leaves a lot to chance, to whim, to the weather. Sure, I have projects to do, but where to begin? And do I want to use every hour checking things off my voluminous to-do list? Even if I had the discipline to go straight to those tasks, I think I'd prefer a second cup of coffee on the patio with the New York Times. Make that a French roast with chocolate milk, waiter, thank you.

Life is short. If you do a little math, you can find the date on the calendar that's the equivalent of your age, given a certain life expectancy, which is of course the great unknown, but let's say 84 just for fun. My Mom just turned 87, and I share many of her genetic traits, so I figure my chances are pretty good, ceteris paribus, which they're not. If 12 months = 84 years, then one month = seven years, a nice developmental subset a la Piaget, Erikson, Gardner, and my track coach, who said it takes seven years to make a person into a runner. Is that because it takes about seven years for the body to replace all its cells through normal growth and regeneration? And is that the physiological basis for Piaget's, et al, psychological theories about personality development, growth of the 'self', and multiple intelligence? But I digress, and I'm on vacation, so screw it, I'll digress if I feel like it.

Where was I? Oh yes, assuming (and we know that's a big mistake) that I live to be 84, in this paradigm my family moved to Detroit in early February, I graduated from high school in the middle of March, got married at the end of April, had two kids about a week apart in mid-May, started grad school at the beginning of June, and started my present job at the end of July. By the end of this year, it will only be about September 7. It's still late summer.

Hey kids, let's all make our own graphic organizers, depicting your own fascinating life on the grid of a 12-month calendar. Or not. If I keep this up, I'll squander my vacation time on aimless graphic organizers, a regular busman's holiday.

I think I'll cut some firewood instead, and graphically organize the remains of a pear tree and parts of a maple. Then I'll carry some water from the rain barrel to the little redbud tree I just transplanted to be in better alignment with its brother and sister redbuds. After that I'll eat baked chicken with Gven and retire to the den to listen to Dylan's Time Out of Mind a couple of times. Why didn't I come across this CD ten years ago? Oh, I forgot, I was doing something else.

Turn the page

In the back of my pocket calendar, after the week-by-week pages, where manic listmakers pencil-in what they're doing every morning, afternoon, and night, there is a quarterly page-spread for every three months of the year, with just enough space to ink-in a rough account of one's practice times: 20 minutes of this, 40 minutes of that, and a big ugly X when I miss a day of something I would prefer to do regularly. Since I don't train for races or other formal competition, it's a way of tracking a few elements of a daily practice quantitatively. Call me OCD (or worse), I don't care.

So the end of September means it's time to turn the page and enter the last quarter of the year, which at this point is a blank slate of days just waiting to be filled in with minutiae. The end of a quarter also is the ritually correct time to switch libations. What, you didn't know that? Summer is gin season, of course, and gin and tonic just doesn't taste as good when the weather turns cool. Just as spring was tequila time and winter just screams for vodka, fall is right for rum. So I'm penciling in a trip to the state store at Schrock Road and Cleveland Ave. for some Ron Rico gold this weekend, a fifth of which should easily last until Halloween.

It's also time to change hats. As of this morning, a baseball cap just isn't making it on a morning bike ride, and the chilly air requires the wool cap from the Czech Republic, absolutely the best all-time Christmas present from the 12-year-old Zelda and still a perfect fit on my large nordic head. I haven't yet swapped out the summer sport shirts for the winter turtlenecks, but it won't be long. Soon after that, cotton boxers will be put away until April, and thermal longjohns will take their place. Chamois shirts will migrate from the back of the closet to the front. Corduroy and wool pants will do likewise.

I shall solemnly hold off from touching the thermostat for as long as possible, but a lot of good that will do, since I'm not the only person inhabiting this, uh, house. But I have the capacity to fight corporate gas furnace fire with homegrown hardwood fire. That will require some routine maintenance on the stove in the den - a wire brush here, a little stove-black there, good as new - and a lot of splitting and stacking to ensure that there is dry wood come January. But that's the best seasonal ritual of all: the wood you cut yourself that warms two, three, maybe four times.

My knees are complaining about this change-of-season business, so I'll have to do something differently, and I'm not sure what that will be. Up the ibuprofen dosage? Wear an Ace bandage? I've already started going to bed earlier and sleeping more deeply under a quilt and a down comforter. I don't have a rugged sunburned look anymore, just a rugged windburned look, so I still somewhat recognize that guy in the mirror. Not that I'm vain about my appearance or anything.

Road trip, no road trip

Zelda called me at work. "Can I borrow your sleeping bag?"
"Sure".
"Where is it?"
"In a box in the back corner of the garage."
"Okay."

She was leaving that night to drive two hours north, where her friend Megan lives, and travel the next day to the Big Apple to celebrate Megan's birthday. They would stay with their friend Emma in Queens, do Newyorkish things - museums, restaurants, the Empire State Building - and connect with her brother Jessi. Then Jessi would ride back with them to central Swingstate.

"Have a good trip."
"Okay. I will return with your son...if you agree to my demands."

Of course I agreed, not knowing what her demands are. My hands were tied, officer.

I didn't hear from her for several days, then when I came home from work on Tuesday, there was a big tall guy in the living room.

By Jessi's account, his sister and her friend got into Queens and went to "The Lion King" in Manhattan Friday night. The next day, Zelda and Megan took a tour bus around town, then met Jessi at a bar on the Lower East Side, where they disagreed about the band. Sunday more tours. Monday, they all went to the MoMA for a Van Gogh exhibit, packed their bags, picked him up in Brooklyn, followed GPS right into rush-hour traffic, and eventually made it out of town, across New Jersey and Pennsylvania, into Ohio around midnight, and home around three.

Youth is not wasted on the young; they're the only ones who could survive it.

Jessi spent plenty of quality time with Gven during the week, much of it having to do with finding the right shoes. I didn't see much of him, except in passing, until Friday, when we went to Franklin Park Conservatory for a good part of the afternoon. That was low-key fun, just chilling among the plants, rocks, two butterflies (one live and one dead), and a very loud toucan. Revelations at every turn inside and out at a nice little community garden.

Then we joined Zelda and Gven at Cuisine of India in the suburbs for dinner. Zelda regaled us with her version of her weekend in the Big Apple, which closely paralleled her brother's version but with more attitude in the first-person. The food, especially the okra, which I was compelled to order after seeing some thriving plants at the garden, was fantastic. We returned to Om Shanty for cake, only a couple of weeks late for Jessi's birthday.

By this time I had made up my mind not to drive back to New York with Jessi, although the semblance of a plan had been weighing on my mind all week. Advance or retreat? Should I stay or should I go? Whether to cross the great water or hold the fort? I consulted several trusted sources of oracular guidance, and the answers were predictably inconclusive. After all, why ruin a good dilemma with a clear-cut solution?

In the end, I decided on the conservative course of action (retreat/stay/hold) and proceeded to plod through a sullen, morose, regretful weekend. I dropped Jessi at the bus station and went home to clean and straighten up the ongoing bad dream house. I had a hard time focusing on one project at a time. I worked out some of my frustration cutting up fallen trees with the chainsaw, separating logs to be stacked from logs to be split. Remember that great wood-splitting scene from "The Return of the Secaucus Seven"?

I sunned Saturday morning, and I sat Sunday morning. I tried to differentiated the causes of my irritability from its circumstances, and I didn't get very far. I started two batches of bread: the sourdough died in the bowl, probably suffocating on its own overfermentation, and the yeasted dough baked up nicely into two of my best loaves ever, made from local wheat, local honey, and cranberries from the Mann family farm in Buzzard's Bay, Massachusetts, where Jessi will be some time today.

Peoples Republic of America Y'all

Just in case the acronym isn't obvious enough, we might need some kind of intervention here. Don't get too excited, Citizen McCain, I'm not referring to preemptive strikes to knock out nuclear power plants in Iran or armed conquest of any other resource-rich nation, although I'm confident that you have been eagerly contemplating both. I'm thinking more in terms of the collective body politic taking a deep breath to consider how to choose the right course of action.

An attempted coup over the weekend by Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson may or may not have been thwarted, so stay tuned, this could get interesting. 'King Henry' has a nice ring, doesn't it? Maybe coup isn't quite right - how about leveraged buyout? Basically he asked for all the money AND all the authority over how to use it, no questions asked, and no restrictions of his power.

Paulson reportedly got down on his knees to plead with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi for her support in his attempt to take complete control of the economy in his well-connected hands. Maybe he thought that's all a lady really wants - to have a big strong man kneel at her feet. I don't think she fell for it, but no doubt there's something in it for her, too. Such a sweet deal for Hank and his pals at Goldman Sachs could also be a sweet deal for Nancy if she plays ball.

Meanwhile John Boehner and his Caucus of Merry Men interrupted the love-fest for fear that their arch-enemies across the aisle might steal their thunder before the Great Suspender could arrive in the nick of time to save us all from certain calamity. What a great photo op that would have been. I'm picturing Mighty Mouse in those wonderful 1950s cartoons, belting out in his tenor voice, "Here I come to save the day!"

But the lamest duck president in history wasn't in a mood to put up with delays because, in his eloquent words, if Congress doesn't pass the package, "This sucker's goin' down!" Again I can only use my vivid imagination, but I'm picturing a polite pause in the cabinet room, followed by everybody else getting back to the business of negotiating a compromise with Paulson. For once, Calvin Coolidge is right: the business of America is business, and it looks as if it might come to pass that there is a very big merger in the works that all but obliterates the fake line between public policy and private enterprise.

Despite the compromises, the basic outline of the rescue package remains the same as it would "effectively nationalize an array of mortgages and securities backed by them," the Wall Street Journal summarizes. (from Slate)

OMG, did the WSJ just use a bad word? The N word? Just wait, tomorrow they might even use the S word. But it's okay, it's not like some band of working-class hooligans is setting up a socialist state. Rest easy, Amerika, it's only a band of ruling-class oligarchs, as usual, in fact much like our friendly enemies in Russia, where authoritarian communist oligarchy morphed into authoritarian capitalist oligarchy almost overnight.

Here in this blessed land, we do things a little differently. We have a compliant legislative branch to rubber-stamp the takeover of finance by government, or is it the takeover of government by finance - whatever.

Elsewhere, Ben Stein has a few thoughts on who merits bailing and who doesn't. Hint: you and I don't. Unless, of course you happen to be a personal friend of the Treasury Secretary, a former CEO of Goldman Sachs, Chase, or Bank of America.

When I signed an online petition to ask Congress to make certain stipulations part of the bail-out, I received this response (slightly edited) from my senator:

Dear Sven,
Thank you for expressing your concerns with the problems in the financial sector and proposals to address them.

A lot of Swingstaters, including me, are angry at the thought of bailing out people who made a lot of money making bad business decisions that created problems in neighborhoods across Swingstate. I agree that we need to avoid rewarding excessive risk taking. These institutions made unwise decisions, and taxpayers should not be expected to simply cover their losses.

Treasury Secretary Paulson this weekend sent a proposal to Congress that would give him almost unfettered authority to spend $700 billion purchasing troubled assets from financial institutions. On Tuesday, my colleagues on the Banking Committee and I held a hearing at which Secretary Paulson, Federal Reserve Chairman Bernanke, and others testified.

They made a strong case for the need to act quickly to prevent further damage to our economy. The turmoil in the credit markets has the potential to do great damage to a lot of innocent bystanders. I am afraid that if we do not act, the economic instability could affect thousands of American jobs and the savings of countless middle class families.

But Secretary Paulson’s proposal is not the right answer. No Secretary should be given a $700 billion blank check. Taxpayers must be given an opportunity to recover their money, and assurances their tax dollars will not fund lavish pay and golden parachutes. We need strong rules to guard against abuse, and to ensure all types of institutions and regions are helped.

In the days ahead, we need to focus on containing the damage to middle class families and local businesses as much as possible. In the months ahead, we need to take a hard look at how financial markets are regulated so we never find ourselves in this situation again.

Thank you again for contacting me. I will certainly keep your views in mind as the Senate debates ways to help restore strength to our economy.
Sincerely,
Sherrod Brown

Of course, he uses a number of important buzz words when talking to the folks back home - words like taxpayers, jobs, middle class with which elected officials love to pepper their communications with constituents. But his thinking is in line with mine, and it's good to know someone out there is actually representing me. We shall see how much good it does, and in the meantime how much damage is done.

Don't you hit me with that cosmic debris

I had a meeting Saturday morning at the Old North Church that went better than expected. It was a little strange walking up to the door, since the pole barn that used to stand behind the little white frame church has been leveled and hauled away, leaving a flat plot of bare ground. Last week's windstorm blew sheets of metal roofing off the barn and onto the church and shot a 2 x 4 like an arrow through a window. This was late Sunday afternoon when no one was in the building, so the damage was minimal.

The meeting went as well as could be expected, and I escaped in time to get to the bank and have breakfast (eggs, toast, coffee) on the patio while reading the business section of last Sunday's paper. Somehow, for reasons I can't explain, breakfast on the patio defines The Good Life. The patio itself was still a mess from last weekend's storm, so my first order of business was to sweep it off.

I remember how much I enjoyed sweeping the patio and sidewalk at our little house in Home Park, near Georgia Tech on the near northwest side of Atlanta. The kids were small - a newborn and a toddler - and our neighbor to the back would play his bagpipes on Saturday morning, and I would sweep the tiny yard. Now I find sweeping to be kind of meditative, for reasons I can't explain, besides getting all those leaves and maple seed pods and pine needles and random junk off the bricks and into the beds where they can decompose in peace and reincarnate as ajuga and salvia.

It was warming up, so I started a batch of sourdough and put it on the bricks to rise. My main chore was still stripping leaves from cut-off pear branches, and slowly but surely the pile was reduced to rubble. That tree, intentionally cut down, was the smallest and tidiest of the mess that was everywhere in the yard. The other pear tree, which the wind blew down, remains to be disposed of, and the even bigger pile of maple limbs in the front yard isn't cleaning itself up either.

Half of the neighborhood has piles of branches lying loose at the curb waiting to be picked up. The other half has neat little bundles of sticks beside industrial strength paper bags full of leaves, also waiting to be taken away. I don't see any point in leaving it at the curb for the city to pick up and take away and grind into mulch. It can stay here and eventually find its place, some as compost, slow-cooking among the kitchen scraps, and some in the beds around the flowers and groundcover, taking its time breaking down into smaller and smaller particles. It's all good.

I may have rushed it a bit, but the bread was out of the oven in time for me to go to a fall equinox celebration at the Big New Church in Hipville. There were some talented drummers there, and even though the group was small the rhythms cooked. Everybody had a story about the big storm: how awesome it was, how long their power was out, and how glad they were when it came back on. We lit some candles and took a few sunflower seeds home to plant for next year.

WOSU dutifully played "Autumn" from Vivaldi's Four Seasons on my way home from the Buddhist Center on Sunday. Leaves are falling on the table as I write this. So I'm touching all the bases in this transitional season: the UU committee structure and its democratic process, documentation, and accountability; the Pagan rituals, mostly nonverbal, of gathering fruit, flowers, and seed; the Buddhists gathering to sit, listen, walk, chant, and contemplate the words of the teaching to solve a problem; the suburban middle class peasants of Methodistville cleaning up the yard so the neighbors don't get the wrong idea that we're liberal universalist hippie anarchist tree-hugging nature freaks, for goodness sakes. So let them think I'm a responsible citizen. My ulterior motive is free mulch and firewood.

It hit me while replacing a short brick walkway with flagstones. If I'm culturally Methodist, politically Unitarian, and aesthetically Buddhist, where do I pigeonhole all the other hats I wear? Maybe I can get tax-exempt status for the Church of the Mixed Metaphor. The taiji I practice every night on this same brick patio is already a three-cornered Neo-Confucian synthesis of Taoist, Confucian, and Buddhist traditions. Where do I put the Deweyan Pragmatism that underlies Progressive education and the better part of of the textbook business? If William James was right in defining religion as 'ultimate concern', then even editing page proofs could be one of The Varieties of Religious Experience.

The flagstones look good, by the way, thanks for asking. It's always nice to come back down to earth from these flights of fancy. I even got around to hauling out the extension ladder to untie the rope swing from the broken branch of an apple tree, climb up on the roof and remove a couple of small branches, sweep off the loose debris, and pull the leaves and gunk out of the gutters. There's no such thing as 'yard waste'. The flower beds can always use more carbon-based material.

Sturm und drang

I sat for an hour in a roomful of meditating people. I bought mint Lifesavers, razor blades, and ibuprofen at the ubiquitous corner drugstore. I cleaned the inside of the Ranger. I sat, I bought, I cleaned. Not exactly Caesar's dispatch from Gaul, but not a bad start for a nice quiet Sunday in central swingstate.

Then I ate breakfast on the patio while reading the Sunday paper. When I couldn't put it off any longer, I set to work reducing a big pile of branches on the lawn to smaller stacks of sticks. Seeking but not finding a faster way to do this, I kept at it until the pile began to dwindle and I could almost envision getting it done. Meanwhile, the wind from Hurricane Ike howling across the continent from Texas was getting louder and stronger all the time.

While taking a break, I heard a loud CRACK and turned in time to see a big pear tree topple to the ground, falling right across the brick walkway but missing the fence by inches. This was the second trunk of a three-trunk tree. I cut down the first trunk several weeks ago, and its remnants are what I'm currently cleaning up. It looks like I'm not as nearly finished as I thought.

Rather than trim off the branches and cut it into logs now, I decided to keep stripping the existing ones and finish one before I start the other. But the wind kept getting more rawkus, and I wasn't sure I wanted to stand under the maple tree back by the compost heap. I heard a branch get ripped from another maple near the house, so I took another break to pull it off the little dawn redwood it had landed on.

The windstorm is a roar by now, whipping trees every which way, but clearly coming form the south. It looked like the third trunk of the pear tree would go any minute, the way it was bending over the garage. A couple of secondary limbs - branches of branches - came down in the front yard, so I dragged them into a small pile out of anyone's way.

The power was out, so I figured we'd better cook something while it's still light outside, and I started a pot of lentil soup. I was inside when I heard the first big thud, and a huge limb from the big maple in front landed on the concrete slab of the front porch. I decided I wouldn't go in the front yard for a while. Gven and I settled into the den to read the paper out of harm's way, but the sound of the storm - no rain, no thunder, just wind - made us look up every time we heard a gust or a crack.

A few more big limbs came down in the front yard; we were lucky only small, leafy branches landed on the roof. After the wind calmed down a bit, we went out and untangled nature's random, mutant pruning, most of it lying parallel in a north-south line next to the living room, the biggest a few feet from the front door. We dragged them off the sidewalk so the mailman can get through and stacked the bulk to be cut up later.

By this time it was dark inside, so Gven dug a few candles out of the drawer in the hutch in the dining room, and we lit enough candles to have plenty of light in the kitchen and den. I called Zelda, and she was eating supper with friends who had a gas stove, since her house had no power. I called Jessi and got an update on his plans to come to Ohio and then back to New York before the cranberry harvest. Then I called Jo Jo to see if she's coming up for Thanksgiving. That's a week's worth of phone calls for me.

My bodymind needed a workout after all that tree moving, so I stretched on the floor and went outside to do a taiji form. It had finally rained a little, and then the wind blew in a mild, partly clear full-moon night. As I finished the form I could see my moonshadow on the bricks. Bone tired and humming a Cat Stevens song, I'd been in bed less than a minute when the power came back on.