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.

Loon

Beginning

The mind wanders. Maybe that's the good news. Yet it makes it hard to get anything done after returning from a weekend up north. It's even hard to write an account of a weekend up north, enjoying a brief respite from home and work and letting the mind wander.

We decided at the last minute not to take the bikes and the newly tuned-up truck because it was raining, so we took Gven's Honda instead, making it easier to throw things in the trunk and back seat, rather than having to cover everything with plastic tarps. About halfway there it stopped raining, and all we saw for three days was a big, impressionistic, partly cloudy sky. Next time I'll reconsider second-guessing my initial doubts about questioning Plan A, and I'll take the truck. But I'm getting ahead of myself.

Once on the road, we settled into conversation about some of the paths that got us here, an easy thing to do while taking a trip down memory lane where you've never been before. Driving up highways 23 and 75 brought to mind people and places from my youth in Garden City, Birmingham, Ann Arbor and environs, which started us talking about junior high and high school, our common experience of making new friends, adjusting to a new school every two or three years, and finding a niche for a while among kids who grew up together. I guess we did alright.

By late afternoon we arrived at Fairfield North and opted to set up camp first thing. Gven's knack for campsite feng-shui located a nice level site, and the tent practically put itself up. Having established our base, we used the remaining couple of hours of daylight to take a quick tour: our own wooded half-acre, a nearby lake with public access, and the general lay of the land.

With our heads brimming with unlikely scenarios about what we could or would or should do with this place, we settled in to munch on cheese and crackers, open a bottle of wine, start a fire, and heat up some leftovers from home. Add a handful of dark chocolate almonds, a sky full of stars, and there were no complaints. Whatever the future does or does not hold, this is not bad.

Middle

We must have been pretty tired, because we both slept late. The plan was to get breakfast at the restaurant down the road at the golf course, but the car - new battery and all - wouldn't start. We consulted the campground director, who recommended a tow truck, but the tow guy in Gaylord said all the repair shops were closed by noon on Saturday. "You're up north now."

Sure enough, when I started calling mechanics, they were all closed. The man at Alpine Transmission, however, answered the phone and said his son lived near the campground and might be able to help. Two phone calls later, Derek showed up with a portable scanner and a new distributor. He surmised that the old one had developed a hairline crack that broke the circuit, which explained the spark we saw on the outside of the distributor cap. For a grand total of $95, parts and labor, he took time out of his Saturday afternoon to solve our problem when he could have been at home watching the football game or going grocery shopping with his wife.

With the day half-gone but having dodged a bullet, we went to the golf course restaurant for coffee, a bowl of soup, and a plate of excellent french fries. The Michigan-Miami game was on, and I was wearing my Michigan cap, so I guess we didn't stick out too much among the loud golf crowd. As the caffeine took effect, we sketched out a spy novel set during World War II in Switzerland, where the French Resistance crosses into Austria on skis, passing vital design information through their double-agent, an economist named Rose Sharply, who infiltrates the Volkswagen factory in Munich. We'll call our best-seller The Alpine Transmission.

Thus energized and seeing the cup half-full, we headed out to the lake for another look. Gven brought a book and sat on the bench. There was a long-necked bird on the raft near the little beach, and it took off flying low across the lake as soon as I waded in. It wasn't a hot day, but the water felt good, and just getting in it was worth the seven-hour drive. I stood there waist-deep for a while and stretched like the legendary Fu bird before swimming out to the floating plastic raft, then sat there for awhile on the quiet lake before swimming back to the beach to dry off, totally invigorated. We drove back to the campground, cooked supper, finished the Pinot Noir with our pasta and pesto, and stared at the fire until the wood was gone.

End

This time we got up early and immediately took down the tent, grabbed a quick shower, and packed up everything. We found our way into Mancelona, where we spotted Bo-Jack's cafe, just the place for a large coffee to-go and a donut. It took about an hour to get to Traverse City, and if I hadn't missed the turn-off to route 37, we would have gotten to church on time.

My friend Chip, an alumnus of the Wednesday night men's group, is the minister at the UU Congregation of Grand Traverse, so while we were in the neighborhood, Gven and I decided to visit his church. It was Ingathering Sunday, the first service of the church year, which turned out to be a good time to learn about the church's history as well to see Chip in action.

It was a very upbeat, thoughtful service, and afterward we talked with lots of interesting people. I don't think I've every been to a church with its own orchestra. Someone suggested that we see more of the Old Mission Peninsula, so that's how we spent the first part of the afternoon, driving out to the lighthouse and back, past cherry and peach orchards, vineyards, and views of both the eastern and western lobes of Grand Traverse Bay.

By the time we got back to town, we were pretty impressed with the whole area, but the city was just as cool - touristy but in a good way. It helped that the weather was perfect. We walked around a little and stopped for lunch at the Serenity Tea Bar. Dessert was gelato from American Spoon. We walked down to the beach for a quick workout, then headed home.

This trip gave us a lot of information to process, and the drive home gave us a chance to start. It was fun to get outside our heads for a couple of days, but you know what? Getting home made the same old sameness just more familiar. Re-entry wasn't too bad initially, but the mind keeps going back up north.

Tuneup

I threw my trusty steed, Schvinn, in the back of the truck and dropped off the Ranger at Boyd's Tire and Service on route 3 for a tuneup. It was still early enough so it was actually pleasantly cool while I biked up Polaris Blvd. to the office.

It immediately felt like a "positive energy" day, whatever that means. We approved two chapters of the teacher manual ahead of schedule. The team of production editors finished the last of the corrections to the index after weeks of work. I crossed paths with two smiling, beautiful women on my way downstairs to get coffee. There must be something in the air.

The call from Boyd's brought me back down to earth. My tuneup was going to cost a little over $400. I guess I haven't changed any plugs and points and condenser lately; do they even do that anymore? After resignedly hanging up the phone, I asked a trusted co-worker what he thought, and his reaction was the same as mine - $400 is too much - so I called Boyd's back to cancel. When I called Joe's Service down the street, he said he could do it today if I got there in the next hour.

I notified the authorities, hopped on the Schvinn, and rocketed down Polaris to route 3 and Boyd's, only to find they had charged me a $96 "diagnostic fee." When I balked at that, the fat clerk hemmed and hawed, talked about "no hard feelings," and we settled on $48, still too much for looking under the hood and winking. Note to self: don't get a tuneup at a tire store.

With the clock ticking, I drove to Joe's in plenty of time and described the symptoms. He told me it would be about $300 including cleaning the injectors. I biked back to the office in the midday heat and cooled off by lying down on a mat in the fitness room. That pause in the action allowed my core temperature and my psyche to level off, and I returned to my desk on the fourth floor to finalize the changes in the index.

Was the mood in my row of cubicles festive, or was it my imagination? A friend on the index team gave me a slice of spice bread with pomegranate jelly, and I can't begin to describe how delicious it was with a cup of yerba mate. I finished mastering the index corrections and took the pages downstairs to return for a third and final proof.

And not a moment too soon. I had just enough time to get on my trusty Schvinn, good horse, giddup, and fly back to Joe's about a minute before they closed at 5:00. I looked at the worn plugs and wires, paid for the work, and drive away in a smooth-running Ranger.

End of story? Not hardly. After stopping at home to change into my fourth T-shirt of the day, I went to Kinko's to make copies of a flier for my fall classes and made it to the newly expanded and renovated Rec Center in time to fill out some forms before they closed at 6:00. I needn't have hurried, because the Tae Kwon Do teacher was there for the same purpose.

Turns out there had been a miscommunication about days and times, but we straightened it out on the spot just like reasonable people, and the classes should be listed correctly when the schedule comes out next week. I looked around the new/old building, which looks great, and left some bright orange fliers at the front desk for registration.

Somehow I still had an hour to kill before my 7:30 meeting, so I got coffee at Caribou and ate my lunch sitting outside writing this and making intermitent eye contact with yet another dark-haired beauty at the next table was talking with a friend about her recent trip to Europe. Florence was wonderful!

Our regular Wednesday meeting discussed the all-too-human phenomenon of transference, which "can be our way of telling the untold story inside us" and through which, perhaps, we "can learn to notice clues about how our past is still very much alive in our present relationships." (David Richo, When the Past is Present) I don't know much about Carl Jung, and I had never heard of David Richo, but I think they're both onto something.

Rites

Another friend from my Wednesday night men's group got married on Sunday. That makes five weddings over the years in an evolving group of eight - not the same eight men for the entire twelve years, as some have left and some have joined, but still, that's quite a track record. And there's a sixth one coming up next spring. Is there something in the water on Weisheimer Road?

Bearing in mind that this is not a random or representative sample of all red-blooded American men, or for that matter all middle-class midwestern straight white males, or even all Unitarian-Universalist introverts (but we're getting warmer), it's still remarkable. Skewing the probability is the fact that some people join this kind of spiritually focused street gang partly because of marital issues: recently divorced, widowed, or just searching. What I find remarkable is the degree to which they found what they were looking for.

There is no template that all six of these guys fit. A common thread that does link each of them is that other major changes have accompanied their courtships and marriages, but that phenomenon isn't unique to this group, just more dramatic: moving to another part of the country (Washington, New Mexico, Chicago and then Michigan, pretty soon Arizona); career changes (preparing for retirement, earning tenure, going to seminary); family upheaval (birth of daughters, death of a son, death of brothers, death of parents).

I'm not claiming that anything spooky happens when you join a group, or that these dangerous liaisons somehow sprang from our Wednesday night alchemy. That would make a much better story. I'm just saying it's been extremely cool to witness the unfolding story lines of a circle of strangers who have become friends by confiding a tiny bit of their story every week.

Learning and Labor

1. Like many people, I've been so focused on the work that's in front of me that I haven't given much thought to the context and consequences of my labor. We have a national holiday that once upon a time was intended for that, so I'm going to take a break and give it a try.

For most of my life, technology has been touted as a glorious promise of "labor-saving" devices, and it's true that machines have done much to help workers. But the upshot has been a denigration of work, with the almost unavoidable inference that 'labor' is something to be scorned, avoided, or tolerated as a necessary evil. A magazine ad from my youth proclaimed: "Machines should work. People should think."

Dobie Gillis pauses beside Rodin's "Thinker" to ponder life's eternal questions; Maynard G. Krebs cries out in alarm: "WORK!"

One of several colleges I attended (when I should have been out in the Real World, WORKING) has had as its motto since 1833 the lofty phrase 'Learning and Labor', which, besides its alliterative allure, sings to the Progressive in each of us that our effort can be put to productive and virtuous use if we study hard and bend to the task. It says both are good in themselves, and they are connected, so if you have purely intellectual aspirations, get over yourself.

At one time that was literally the case at the aforementioned institution of higher education. All students were given a job that helped keep the place running. Nowadays, of course, we have people to clean the buildings, landscape the grounds, unload the trucks, cook the meals, maintain the heating plant, move furniture, answer phones, make copies. Although this division of labor creates jobs for townies, I think the students are missing out. They're learning from books, computers, lectures, discussions, on the Web, in the lab, in the library, in the gym, but not so much from labor.

Other unrelated (mostly) Labor Day musings:

2. You know you've been spending too much time in your left-brain when the beauty of a well-placed comma, the elegant balance and rounded corners of a transposition box, and the ink drying on a paragraph sign causes astonishing aesthetic pleasure. Note to self: single-minded concentration on making corrections in other people's text can have at least short-term effects, so go ahead and admire the subtle beauty of the Pilot V5 Rolling Ball marker interacting with the paper, then consider taking a break.

3. Behold the lilies of the field...The spider lilies in pots on the patio are making their annual appearance at last, first one and then another on the end of a long, thick stem. They last for a couple of days, then wilt as the next one emerges, not like clockwork at 5:00 like Chas and Helen's but unpredictably, like this morning after the rain. I separated one from its clump, put it in a terra cotta pot that Zelda made in ceramics class, and put it on her new front porch. I hope it lives.

4. We dog-sat Sadie for a few days while friends Jim and Kate were in Copper Harbor, on the tip of the Keweenaw Peninsula, after dropping off their son at Northland College, where he's thinking about environmental studies. Kate's grandparents lived in the UP, so I guess they are doing the roots trip and the wings trip.

5. Thoreau said, "Beware of enterprises that require new clothes." I would add: Beware of politicians who own large amounts of property and claim to be champions of the working class. Beware of rhetoric that is heavily laden with references to goodness, truth, freedom, compassion, democracy, and God's will.

6. This one's for Lulu and Kevin, who know something about learning and labor:

The sweet pretty things are in bed now of course
The city fathers they're trying to endorse
The reincarnation of Paul Revere's horse
But the town has no need to be nervous

The ghost of Belle Starr she hands down her wits
To Jezebel the nun she violently knits
A bald wig for Jack the Ripper who sits
At the head of the chamber of commerce

Mama's in the fact'ry
She ain't got no shoes
Daddy's in the alley
He's lookin' for the fuse
I'm in the streets
With the tombstone blues

The hysterical bride in the penny arcade
Screaming she moans, "I've just been made"
Then sends out for the doctor who pulls down the shade
Says, "My advice is to not let the boys in"

Now the medicine man comes and he shuffles inside
He walks with a swagger and he says to the bride
"Stop all this weeping, swallow your pride
You will not die, it's not poison"

[chorus]

Well, John the Baptist after torturing a thief
Looks up at his hero the Commander-in-Chief
Saying, "Tell me great hero, but please make it brief
Is there a hole for me to get sick in?"

The Commander-in-Chief answers him while chasing a fly
Saying, "Death to all those who would whimper and cry"
And dropping a bar bell he points to the sky
Saving, "The sun's not yellow it's chicken"

[chorus]

The king of the Philistines his soldiers to save
Puts jawbones on their tombstones and flatters their graves
Puts the pied pipers in prison and fattens the slaves
Then sends them out to the jungle

Gypsy Davey with a blowtorch he burns out their camps
With his faithful slave Pedro behind him he tramps
With a fantastic collection of stamps
To win friends and influence his uncle

[chorus]

The geometry of innocent flesh on the bone
Causes Galileo's math book to get thrown
At Delilah who sits worthlessly alone
But the tears on her cheeks are from laughter

Now I wish I could give Brother Bill his great thrill
I would set him in chains at the top of the hill
Then send out for some pillars and Cecil B. DeMille
He could die happily ever after

[chorus]

Where Ma Raney and Beethoven once unwrapped their bed roll
Tuba players now rehearse around the flagpole
And the National Bank at a profit sells road maps for the soul
To the old folks home and the college

Now I wish I could write you a melody so plain
That could hold you dear lady from going insane
That could ease you and cool you and cease the pain
Of your useless and pointless knowledge

Mama's in the fact'ry
She ain't got no shoes
Daddy's in the alley
He's lookin' for the fuse
I'm in the streets
With the tombstone blues

Copyright ©1965; renewed 1993 Special Rider Music