Twenty First Century Writing
We have a sweet children’s book called First Tomato, in which a young bunny picks the first ripe tomato and her mother makes her fresh tomato soup. Only after downloading this photo did I notice that the morning light reveals tiny spiderwebs on the tomato plants, a harbinger of Halloween. Taken just a few days ago, it already harkens back to seemingly distant, definitely brighter summer days, and I am hoping that the remaining tomatoes will ripen before the frost arrives. We wait all through June and July and into August for that first tomato, but we never can be sure when we will eat the last, finding sometimes that the days have gotten too short and we have waited too long.
It’s the first day of school and the new ridiculously early schedule and the blazing heat make me feel like I imagine these cows feel – I just want to stand in the shade and barely move and not think at all. I am already nostalgic for summer and the late afternoon moments when, while riding with a car full of kids (autistic and not, for the record) past the farms, all of them would spontaneously start to moo at the grazing cows.
Tide moving out, sun going down, water gettting cold, leaves turning yellow, apples turning red, nights getting chilly, kids starting school.
Photo: Cape Cod Bay, Brewster, Massachusetts, August 2010
My feelings about Cape Cod are complicated – it seems to be a place so very stuck between eras, never successfully occupying either present nor past – but I never fail to be charmed by the light, how it brings out colors that seem to exist nowhere else, particularly in the early morning and late afternoon. It’s beach plum season, when the colors of both summer and autumn are exposed by the golden light in frosty skin of the pink-blue-purple fruit.
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.
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.
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.
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.
I posted a photo from the Crane Estate last weekend, and since then, like many places in the world this winter, nature chose to rearrange the landscape. A fierce storm with high winds took down all the pines at the top of this scene – the ones near the green boxes near the mansion. You can see here (above) that those white pines are top heavy, and torrential rain thawed the earth beneath the shallow root system and they toppled like toothpicks in hurricane-force winds. The view below is the what you see when your back is the mansion – those trees sustained little damage, according to the news – when you are at the top of the hill closer to the house you can see the Atlantic. Hundreds of trees were toppled on this unique property – the grand allee is the only vista of its kind in the U.S. – that we traverse several times a year and have come to think of as part of our own family history. We have photos here of our children at every age, and I carried each of them, summer and winter, in backpacks, on my shoulders and on my hip, miles and miles on its trails back and forth to the beach. The land will heal, new trees will be planted (a restoration was already underway), and we will keep going back, and take more photos. But we never know when that mighty wind will return.
LettersHead 