Author: LettersHead

And I Woke Up Happy

Last night I dreamt that my husband and I lived in a white clapboard house on an urban industrial street.  Its pale painted interior held many of our current belongings but we had no children and had spent much of the summer away from it.  We returned home one dusk to find a circular hole in the glass of a the outer metal door, and then the wooden inner door’s top window had a similar hole in its glass.  There had been a break in and I mused that we should have used light timers while we were away.  We found the place cleaned out of all electronics and art and clothes and books and stuff.  I was annoyed but mostly dispassionate, while my beloved set about the task of getting our stuff back.  It turned out to be surprisingly easy.  We drove a truck down the street to a gray corrugated tin warehouse.  I don’t know how we got in but when we did there was everything that was missing, piled along the warehouse walls.  We began to load everything in the truck, and as we did I noticed a small cherry wood jewelry box shaped like a tiny chest of drawers.  It was just like one I had given him for our fifth anniversary many years ago, and I became convinced that, though empty, it was the same box.  The box was stolen from our real house during a break-in in 1997, and here it was now, among the things taken in the dream.  We hurried to finish loading before the thieves came back, and I climbed into the passenger seat with the box in my lap, so relieved to have it back and wondering if we would return to the white clapboard house or move on to another place.

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BP: Goo Gone

As I woke up to the radio this morning I heard the first news item about the British Petroleum oil spill that I did not need to hear again to understand.  The cap on the oil well is secure but something – they aren’t sure what – is coming up through the ocean floor nearby.  It might be pressure building up as a result of the cap, but then again it might not; such seepages can occur naturally.  Thus, BP is reluctant top loosen the cap because that will result in more fines for them, but apparently they can’t be held legally responsible for the rupture in the ocean floor.

Despite the 24/7 spill cam  documenting the flow of oil into the Gulf of Mexico and the valiant efforts of Anderson Cooper, it’s still difficult for me to get a handle on both the science and magnitude of the spill and how it came to this.  As I type at my computer in my air-conditioned home atop a two car garage I know that I am complicit in the energy dependence that drives companies like BP to do something that is inherently dangerous to the global ecosystem.  I’ve pored over the graphics illustrating how deep water drilling works, how relief wells will help, how natural gas and oil are mined but not necessarily collected at the same time and how bacteria that feast on the oil are depriving the rest of the ocean of the oxygen they need to survive.  The only news item I won’t read is Kevin Coster’s solution to some or all of this – you won’t be getting a hyper link to that one from me.

At some point someone suggested that the President or Secretary of Energy provide the public with strategies for responding to the crisis – and in ways more practical than planning a vacation to the Gulf.  If people can start carrying reusable bags to the grocery store like more people are doing nowadays the possibilities really are endless, days and  in these days of PowerPoint I am really shicked that no one has issued a bulleted list of things people can do to cut energy dependence – of if they have why they haven’t shown up on milk cartons and paper bags. 

Speaking of which, my own personal ray of hope has been the flourishing of the farmer’s markets near our house.  When we moved here 17 years ago there were three tiny, tired farm stands that we counted on for corn, strawberries, blueberries, zucchini, tomatoes and potatoes each year.   Now, we have a Friday farmer’s market near the center of town and those three old farm stands – all within sight of one another – have each constructed new buildings and are offering local milk, eggs, meat, bread and cheese.  This year, for the first time, it’s possible to skip the supermarket entirely for weeks at a time.  We are saving gas on trips to Costco and we are helping the local economy as we develop a taste for grilled vegetables.  It is the Michael Pollanization of America, and it’s great.

Still, my thoughts keep drifting to the basket under my kitchen sink.  For years I have been slowly replacing the Dow chemicals under it with more environmentally friendly cleaners – more white vinegar and less unpronounceable stuff.  But my favorite bottle in the basket is Goo Gone.  It’s a  miraculous citrus-based grease and adhesive remover and it makes all of my worst petroleum-based household problems go away and smell lovely.  I have to admit that I don’t know that all of it products are all natural.  But I harbor fantasies of giant tankers of Goo Gone dispatched to the Gulf of Mexico where the waters and sands will be restored to an orange-scented bliss.  And if that was Kevin Costner’s idea, I don’t want to know about it.

Photos:  Vineyard Sound, July 2009; Spring Brook Farm, July 2009; Summer Produce, July 2009.

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Sleeping In

A Saturday morning in July after a long week at camp.  This is what summer is all about.

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If Memory Serves

 

Three times this week I have found myself regaling people with stories of 25+ years ago and having them draw a total blank on me.  Do I have a great memory (selective, for sure) or am I making things up?  No, no, I know the stories are there even if people who were present do not remember anything, and I’ve told these stories because I am looking to shed some light on the details only to have the subjects taken aback that I remember such things at all.  We both come away a little unnerved, I think, but I am alternately blessed and tormented by the need to recall these stories and make them whole somehow.  Most of them are sitting on  my hard drive, waiting for the final nod which may or may not come.

This mining of the  past is in fact a family trait – there are others whose memories are even more vivid and detailed than my own, which may explain the countless hours we spend around the dining table, swapping new stories and comparing versions of the ones we tell over and over and over.  Favorite topics: funerals, weddings, movies, food and church, not necessarily in that order.  It is the legacy of a big family.

Will this get me to write more – or less?  At this moment, I think more.  To butcher a famous phrase:  better get busy remembering or get busy forgetting.

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Someone called it The Perfect Song

 

Herbie Hancock and Tina Turner record a Joni Mitchell song, Edith and the Kingpin, perfect for the city at night.  Or anywhere at night.  Or anywhere at all.

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Dump Couture, and Other Stuff

I love going to the dump.  Even when I don’t want to go the dump – when it’s 4 degrees out and I can’t feel my fingers or it’s blazing hot and the stench is enough to knock me over – the journey is always instructive, and often hilarious.  People who have their trash picked up never understand the appeal of a dump run, never know the fun of being accosted by some intrepid soul running for electric light commissioner trying to scare up a few votes, the satisfaction of getting to push the button on the corrugated box crusher, the friendly waves of the dump guys in their orange tee shirts, or – best of all – the sweet voyeurism of viewing the outfits that people wear to get rid of their trash.

Most  folks seem to go straight from bed to the garage to the dump, maybe stopping at Dunkin’ Donuts on the way.  PJs, slippers, flip flops, and sweats that are way too big or too small are the uniform, unless of course it’s Saturday morning and everyone is in soccer stuff (watch out for the cleats).  No shaving before going to the dump.  It’s a rule.

There are  a few people who come to socialize (they stand right in front of wherever it is I want to go and talk forever) but the standard rules of Main Street etiquette do not apply – if someone doesn’t make eye contact with you, they have the right to remain invisible.  People I invite to our Christmas party might get only a nod at the dump, if that.  It is a unique kind of personal space where you are practically required to be surly – it is the narcotic effect of the scent of rancid milk, stale beer, and wet cardboard.

But it’s not just the parade of fashion or the need to get rid of our trash that keeps me going back.  I think I began loving Groton when I learned that the deposits that we don’t collect on the bottles and cans we bring to the dump are redeemed by the town and put toward the 4th of July fireworks display (they don’t do this every year, but they’ve done it several times).  I learned this from the dump guys, and they are as happy in their work as anyone I have ever seen.  And they are pretty enlightened for dump guys, too, not hesitating to correct you on your recycling habits and even going a bit farther.  Today one of them greeted a man who pulled up in a pickup with his daughter in the front seat, and yelled in half mock horror “Is that a cigarette is see?!  What’s the matter with you, smoking with your little girl in the truck! Don’t you know the dangers of second-hand smoke?”  Unfazed, the Dad smiled and said “I have the window open – Jeez!”  That wasn’t good enough.  “Put it out, man, put it out now!”  The guy got out of the truck, flicked the cigarette and came round the bed of the truck – to shake his friend’s hand.  Then the little girl hopped out to go help push the button on the box crusher.

And of course there’s the trash itself.  Is that a week’s or a year’s worth of Bud Light cans?  Is this a throw each glass bottle as hard as you can day or a dump it all at once day?  My boy takes a wine bottle and uses it as a bat to hit the seltzer cans into the bin (someone else is probably blogging about that).  Do they really think they can put an entire gas grill in the tin can bin?  If you can’t read the number of the bottom can you just guess?  What do they do to people who don’t use the designated Town of Groton orange trash bags?  Throw them in?  And who made that airplane out of Pepsi cans?

Finally, the drive back and forth is a kind of barometer of how my week has gone.  Am I going to the dump to people watch or because I absolutely must get out of the house?  Is this the highlight of my day or an errand to run before moving on to better things?  It is a sad testament to my spiritual life that I visit the dump more regularly than I do the Church, but the conversations I have with God on either pilgrimage is the same:  I am thankful for my life, I pray for more patience and focus, and then I get rid of all my garbage and go home, lighter and better for having made the trip.

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Memorial Day – Heaven is a Place on Earth

 

I like the way that Memorial Day follows the holiday tradition of ceremony followed by food.  Parades and visits to the cemetery lead into celebration of those who have left us with those who remain.  And for those separated by long distance there is the ongoing shared memory of everyone who is not with us, in heaven and on earth.  I remember my father by raising the flag, and my mother by making potato salad.  I did both of these things when they were alive and so doing them now makes that process more joyful and less bittersweet. 

Coming at the end of May, Memorial Day is as much about the promise of the burgeoning summer as anything, and this year the weather could not be more perfect – cool nights and blue mornings bring legions of peonies and irises into bloom, and friends gather at the in the dusk after an idyllic day in the sun and shade.  In a world rife with trouble and uncertainty, this weekend is a bubble I can cherish.

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Angry Garage

 

When I asked my daughter what she thought of this photo she said, “It’s yelling at me.”  I think so, too.  Like a cranky old man:  “Hey you kids, get off of my lawn!”  Maybe it’s the door that needs paint.  Or the quality of the junk inside.  Or maybe that it has to face the street instead of the rolling hills out back.  Whatever it is, I love the expression, and the toy horse loitering around the side, too.

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A Love of Bricks and Ivy

The stucco house I grew up in had ivy all around one side and I admit to being less charmed by it then because pigeons were always flying in and out of the ivy and dancing on the air conditioner in my window.  But once I moved south to St. Louis and then out east I fell in love with the red right angles and the fluttering greens vying for attention, and there is nothing like the solid, cool  interiors and dappled light of a brick house on a sunny day.

I drive by this house situated behind a wall on what was once a vast estate (now merely a large one) all the time but there is no safe place to stop and take the photo, so on this stunning May morning I parked the car in town and walked a mile to get this and many shots I have been meaning to take.  More to come.

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Back to Go.

Looking for emotional truth is a solitary exercise that is never complete and promises no reward.  And when done among those who think the highest work of the mind is the doing rather than the feeling, even writing it down seems like an act of aggression.  The stronger the narrative in my mind becomes the more reluctant I become to write it down; the more I say the more I might have to take back.  And so the vast sheets of blank paper that slip by with each turn of the calendar indicate not that life is bad – on the contrary, it is the very sunshine of good times that burns the tender shoots of writing.  The warmth from above draws the oldest toxins to the surface, daring me to expose – what?  I don’t even know what is there, and most of the time I am convinced that it does not matter, and yet the only peace I have ever managed to achieve emerged from the process of forgiveness that comes from writing.  But the part of me that values stoicism tugs at me, and I value stoicism because I utterly lack it.  

 So there it is and there it isn’t.  I have now managed to write about not writing.

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