Tazing

Tazing is the newest tool being used by police officers to subdue miscreants, or just those hard of hearing or perhaps of less than stellar IQ. Bums and derelicts and so forth. Tazers are the American counterpart to the English bobby's nightstick. But I wonder . . . is tazing done offhand and with little forethought because unlike a gun, it isn't generally fatal and can thus be utilized without dire consequences and sleepless nights? I work with a fellow who has a friend who says he uses his tazer all the time, at least once a day. He's a little guy and so would-be criminals and brash back-alley hoods don't take him seriously when he tells them to do something. He says he only tells them once and then . . . zap. They're jerking on the ground, cracking their head on the sidewalk, bleeding and pleading for mercy. Zap.



He shaved his head when he went to the police academy. He keeps it shaved. He worked hard to get a permanent position on a respectable force. His mother is proud of him. He deals with prostitutes and drunks and addicts, but every night it's the same trailer park, the same street corner, and the same party story. There's no making a difference because there's no money for rehabiltation or for education for those who fell through the cracks. He works weekends and holidays. He works on his birthday and on his mother's birthday. He works on everybody's birthday, and he keeps seeing the same people caught up in the same vicious cycle of criminal behavior. But now he has a tazer.

The Writer in Winter

I was saddened this morning to read of John Updike's death. He wrote with eloquence and wit. He talked to America, of our foibles and imperfections. He talked of what we were afraid to talk about. I'm sad because I had just read an article in a magazine by him where he lamented the critical comparisons of his current writing to that of his prose when he was a cocky young man with untold stories. His own worse enemy was his younger self. "An aging writer, he said, "wonders if he has lost the ability to visualize a completed work in all its vast spatial relations. He should have in mind a provocative beginning and an ending which feels inevitable. Instead, he fears to discovers upon arrival that the threads have failed to knit. The leap of faith with which every narrative begins has landed him not on a far safe shore but in the middle of the drink.”

When he was young, the words would jump from his fingertips and string themselves together in an uplifting cadence, words that under anybody else's direction wouldn't belong together. For instance, when he wrote that "the pleasure of masturbation was as dense as an ingot of gold" you felt that and saw that more clearly than you ever would in a movie. And maybe this serves as a good example of why a book is always better than a movie. He wrote that in his later years the words didn't come as easily, and by the time he'd looked up the "right" word the rhythm and syntax of the thought he was shaping up was lost.

This article made me wish I'd started writing when I was twenty instead of discovering my passion when I was forty. What if I run out of words before I publish my first book? Thumbing through my thesaurus shamefaced and outmoded?

Farewell John Updyke. You will live forever on the bookshelves of the world. And I don’t know if your last book is your best, as you'd hoped, but I can guarantee you that it is better than what most of us could compose in our youth.


I'm on page 259 of my current novel and still haven't run out of words. Alas, my characters are headstrong and locked in their prejudices as they attempt to navigate the cultural disparity that surrounds them. I'm trying to make them behave and resolve their separation issues, and their conflict with a chemical farmer (the polite word is "conventional" but I like to call it what it is), while climate change hovers over their heads like an albatross. Will I land in the drink along with them? Will my protagonist's obsession with the daughter of a migrant worker reach fruition before she realizes that the place for her is Canada with her Indian mother and outlaw brother? Time is running out and now he's off to the Upper Peninsula to rescue a friend who is but a hair's breadth away from enlisting in the United States Army for bonus money and a new uniform with a backwards flag sewn on the sleeve and the promise of state-of-the-art weaponry and a license to kill. Young men are always drawn to combat and in tough economic times the Army is a recruiting juggernaut.

I don't have a strict writing regimen as some do. I don't make myself write ten pages a day. Some days I do nothing but rewrite and commiserate. Some days I write one paragraph, but when I turn my computer off and dial the heat down, it is a keeper. Some days I can write six pages of meaningful dialogue and beautiful sentences, and I take them to bed with me. But most days everything I write is shit. And we empty the garbage every night.

But today is Sunday and I don't have to go to work so I have high hopes. Oh, right, it's Super Bowl Sunday and we have a party to go to and people to visit and social obligations. Oh, how I long for a cabin in the woods where no one can find me.

Only the warbler loves the jack pine

They send our white pine
down the river replant scrub
and call it even

The Good Farm

Seed catalogs are starting to arrive here at the farm. Luscious red peppers and gourmet greens, garlic bulbs as big as wine glasses and spears of dewy asparagus that quiver on the page like ballerinas on tiptoe are tucked into the mailbox. Catalogs adorned with pictures of gardeners digging in the dirt with straw hats to keep off the sun and marigold leis strung around their necks land at my doorstep, and I see myself with a bandana around my head working the ground. I have pages and pages of sun ripened tomatoes, summer’s first raspberries and the venerable strawberry to browse through as the snow falls. Michigan grows not only the best tart cherries in the world, but also the best raspberries, strawberries, and tomatoes. The difference in taste between our fruits and vegetables and those grown with irrigation lies in the mineral-rich rain that falls from the sky.

Winter may have a firm hold on the land, but now is the time to begin planning the garden. Here at Raub-Rae Farms we will again have a stand at the Rochester Farmer’s Market throughout the summer to supply those weary of factory farms and chemical-laden vegetables with organic eggs, chicken, and beef in addition to a wide variety of vegetables. This year we will offer a weekly newsletter at the market containing news and notes from the farm (everyone should have an idea of where their food comes from) as well as recipes and growing and cultivating tips.

Organic farming is farming on a sustainable level, one with the natural world and the inner spirit. Our lives depend on agriculture and seeds and we value our land and all that lives here. Raub-Rae Farms is not only a fourth generation organic farm, it is also now a Centennial Farm. My father completed the lengthy application process this past year, and our farm has just been approved for this honorable designation. When the ground thaws he will put up his new sign!

Come Spring!

The End of the Age of Indulgence

I woke up this morning to a buzz in the air. Yes, in the rural technological wilderness of Michigan's Thumb, the feeling of electricity permeates the air on this Inauguration Day. I threw on some sweats and my big fat slippers and opened the door to my living room and an absolute ocean of people on the National Mall. I've been glued to the television ever since, leaving only to refill my coffee cup. What is it about this man that inspires everyone to do better, to be smarter, and to try harder?

If you live on a farm, however, farm activities take precedence over all else. A truck came in this morning to take a load of corn out to market, and my husband is complaining about having to go out in the cold to upload the semi, but what he's really worried about is missing the swearing-in ceremonies that start at 11:30 AM. I plan to watch, if I have to go AWOL from the checkpoint to do so. They say there have not been this many people on the mall for an Inauguration Day since Johnson's in 1965 when 1.2 million people congregated in front of the Capitol, a record they expect to break today.

Much later tonight.... Hello again on this bone-chilling yet warm winter night. The Obama's just danced their first dance at the Neighborhood Ball and a new era begins. Less me and more we, an era of self sacrifice and national service. We kicked the can down the road for too long (starting with Reagan who bad-mouthed govt. yet ran up the deficit, turned the financial markets into a vast casino, and began his infamous trickle-down experiment), and now we're at the end of the road. And about that truck.....it flipped over on the Ohio Turnpike and spilled corn all over the highway. They might be able to save much of it but needless to say, it is no longer organic. Oh...and the crowd record? The Park Service estimates that two million people were gathered on the mall, the ellipse, and around the Washington Monument for President Obama's swearing-in ceremony.

So, are you hopeful or cynical? Me? I'm taking a leave of absence from political talk and concentrating on my writing! That's what hope does. It allows us to pursue our passions.

Medical Marijuana

I went to work even though I had laryngitis, knowing I couldn’t talk, but I quickly learned that most of what I say doesn’t need to be said at all.

Let me tell you a story. It has long been a bone of contention within the ranks of TSA (the ones who make you take your shoes off at the airport and x-ray your belongings)that our government farmed out the manufacture of our uniforms to Third World countries, instead of giving the business to the American garment industry, and we have long protested the shoddy materials, (my sweater vest developed a hole after one washing), but now we’ve found out that the fabric of our shirts has been treated with formaldehyde. Yes, we are draped in embalming fluid. Why would someone do this? To keep the creases in our shirts stiff? Our director is always nit picking about the length of our hair and our jewelry and tattoos, the crease in our pants and the shine on our shoes, but really . . . formaldehyde?

Once this leaked out they told us we could apply for new, all cotton shirts and return the old ones. But I recently discovered that nothing is that easy and sensible for the Dept. of Homeland Security’s poor stepchild, TSA. Now the official line is that we have to get a doctor’s statement saying we are allergic to formaldehyde (is this like saying you might be allergic to asbestos or lead?) and then we have to fill out a packet of forms ½ inch thick and then apply to receive cotton (untainted) shirts from our Third World supplier. But I wonder . . . what strange additive will the fabric of these so-called cotton shirts have? Where is it grown and under what conditions and with what chemicals, herbicides and pesticides?

All this brings to mind the fight here in Michigan over Medical Marijuana and the growing of this amazing ancient herb. (And what about the growing of hemp, a wondrous, natural fabric that isn’t made with petroleum like polyester is?) Michiganians voted overwhelmingly in ALL counties to pass a Medical Marijuana bill in November, and it is now up to the Michigan Dept of Community Health to draft the rules under which this new law will be implemented, and it is within their power to make it easy or hard. Sadly, in direct repudiation of the will of the people, they have chosen to make it hard. Rather than adopt the rules that are working well in other progressive states, they are drafting draconian regulations, making ill people and their caregivers keep elaborate records of amounts grown and used, subjecting them to face-to-face interviews, and recording the names of other users on registration forms, and so on. What are they afraid of? Marijuana has fewer side effects than most of the drugs foisted on us by the pharmaceutical companies; it is cheaper and far less toxic, and people can grow their own independently of outside interference. Maybe that is what they are afraid of.

We didn't learn anything from the Prohibition era, as proven by our failed war on drugs, so we are rightly doomed to repeat our history. We wouldn't be so foolish as to try and outlaw cigarettes, yet any doctor will tell you that no substance is more addictive than nicotine. Al Capone was put out of business overnight when Prohibition was lifted. The drugs are not the problem. The illegality of drugs is the problem. And as the violence in Mexico threatens to spill over the border, this truth is becoming ever more evident.

The Art of Doing Nothing

How do I describe this winter morning… Ground fog is heavy and surrounds us in a surreal whiteout. The full moon is still high and bright in the western sky while the eastern sky is pink with the rising sun. The treetops are visible above the fog and all is still. My camera malfunctioned…..a 35mm with old school film. There were two pictures left on the roll so I snapped them of the moon and the field and the trees and the fog. When the reel is used up, it is supposed to automatically rewind and it sounded like this was what it was doing, but when I opened the film compartment, much to my chagrin, it had only rewound halfway, so the film was exposed and is now ruined.

The fog is thinning and the woods are now completely visible, the moon growing dimmer as the sun rises. A beautiful winter morning that I will now have to commit to memory. What did people used to do? They painted landscapes, whether they were any good at it or not. They wrote letters and descriptions of places and times in diaries and bibles. And because they wrote a lot, many people were quite good at it. When was the last time you got a hand-written letter in the mail? Why have I resisted buying a digital camera? There's something about the development process,the surprise of seeing what you have when you look through your photos. I’m trying to remember all that was on that roll of film . . . The turkey that had accidently hung himself in the crook of a tree down the road a pace, the pond in the sunset, the swing hanging empty from the crooked pear tree, friends and family around the snack bar . . . all lost.

A winter poem about time and place:
State of Alone
The mercury outside my window is slick with ice
Even the inside of the window is glazed.
I scrape the frost off with my nail;
it falls into the sink.
The furnace drones without pause
and the house is quiet.
My summersick dog lies on the heat.
We both feel a draft run through the house;
it sets chimes ringing and makes her nervous.

I inventory things not to do.
It’s in a book—the art of doing nothing.
Meditate and you can see things that aren’t there . . .
brandied cakes and a bottle of wine
set out on a sideboard as if for a friend.

I look behind doors and pause at the stairs
come full circle to see myself sitting there,
in the chair with the wings.
It’s a special friend. I settle for that, out of window’s black view.
I don’t like my back to a window.
Night blankets the house in a mantilla of doubt.
Only cold comes in from under the door.

More Private Than Blood

All writing is good, but about suffering they were never wrong, so tell the truth but tell it slant.

What if you saw a bug on your keyboard that wasn’t really there? Or a spider on the wall, or the shadow of a movement outside your writer's window, which was really just a shadow after all? What kind of hell does the hallucinogenic suffer? The brain is a mysterious organ. Look at . . . let’s call her Mary. Gone stark raving mad after a stroke, or was it really her man falling off a ladder to his death, and to think that I was 25 feet up with a paint can and a brush and a strong wind out of the west, hanging on with one hand and stretching with the other to reach a corner with the tip of my brush. What about brain injuries? You know . . .like falling on the ice and cracking your skull open. That sure shakes things up and does a CT scan show all? Tell all? Nothing is 100pct. Except death.

Poor Mary. Her son once told me he had to transport his hated son-in-law’s ashes and he wasn’t sure where to put the urn. In the back seat . . . didn't seem quite right. In the trunk . . . worse. In the front seat? It seemed the only civil thing to do, and he put him on the seat beside him and talked to him all the way to wherever they were going. And when they got there he didn’t hate him anymore. He was sorry he hadn’t tried to help him but he was such a drunk and hard to be around and hitting people and the sorry son-of-a-bitch drowned in his own puke.

I know I’m going to die, but I don’t want to die seeing bugs on the ceiling and walls, and I don’t want to drown in my own puke, and I don’t want to fall off a ladder and I never again want to hear the sound of my skull striking cold November asphalt. My frozen pool of blood a sideshow at the terminal.

An Otherwise Bleak Drive down I-75

You read to me
and traffic stopped
doesn’t matter anymore.
Rain, staggered flares, and flashing lights
are only there.

You read to me and now I see
doors filled with unwashed children
whose hungry eyes swallow the impatience
to either side of me.
Time goes the way of clouds over the moor
as we consider Swift’s solution for making societal use
of the too many poor children.

You read us down from three lanes into one—
into the line of red taillights heading
for the horizon, black with December snow.
And lifted on the lilt of your voice,
we arrive.


To my daughter, Melissa

Times Square

I wish Dick Clark could find a way to gracefully retire. He comes across as a freak with the dyed hair and taut skin of a plastic surgery addict and now the stroke-induced speech impediment adds a pathetically sad postscript to his otherwise illustrious career. He should've gone out in style five years ago instead of putting us through this torturous yearly event.

Las Vegas is still trying to steal the show from New York with redundant escapades by leather-clad motorcyclists, while New York thinks the rest of the world wants to watch the Clintons kiss in Times Square. Where was the ball? Hidden behind dozens of neon ads and Toshiba billboards, we never saw it drop (maybe it doesn't do that anymore) and the channel we finally settled on didn't even have the countdown. We would've been better served by staying at our card table with our euchre game.

After ten minutes of television commercials and the afore-mentioned trivialities, we went back to our game, our homemade bourbon balls, and our cask ale. Visible through the picture window, Orion was taking down the house, and even the slip of a setting moon on the opposite side of the sky outshone Times Square. Frost coated the windows and kept the beer cold on the porch and nobody even pretended to make a resolution.

Patty’s Bourbon Balls
2 ½ c. vanilla wafers (finely crushed)
1 c. powdered sugar
2T. cocoa
1 c. pecans or walnuts (finely chopped)
1/3 c. natural coconut
3 T. corn syrup
½ c brandy or bourbon
Powdered sugar.

Mix the first five ingredients well. Add syrup, brandy and mix well. Roll into 1 inch balls, then roll in powdered sugar. Do not bake. Store in an airtight container in a cool place and they will taste better after a few days. Brandy balls improve with time.

Say NO to Sulfide Mining in the Upper Peninsula

Media Mouse: Say NO to Sulfide Mining in the Upper Peninsula - Grand Rapids News & Independent Media

Find out more about the proposed sulfide mine on the Yellow Dog Plains in Marquette County and what it will do to the surrounding rivers and streams that drain into Lake Superior, ultimately effecting everyone in the Great Lakes Basin.

Who Came Before You

Christmas is a season of traditions. One of the oldest ones in our family is making Brandy Alexanders on Christmas Eve. Our father, decked out in his wool trousers, suspenders, and a bow tie, sets out the cordial glasses from the china cabinet and lines them up on the counter. Then he gets out the blender, the booze from the liquor cabinet, ice cream, and the old fashioned ice cream scoop. The formula is two parts brandy to one part Crème De Cacao with enough vanilla ice cream to fill the blender. Once the mixture is creamy and frothed, he pours it into the glasses and then, lastly, sprinkles a dash of nutmeg on the top of each one. (What we've been taught is the final essential step.)

The first time I was ever offered an alcoholic drink while growing up was on Christmas Eve, a sip from the bottom of a cup. And then at the age of seventeen or so I was presented with my own glass. It was a moment to be remembered, a drink to be savored with the aroma of nutmeg and the bite of brandy filling the senses, and with the fragile stem of the glass between my fingers, I felt like I was joining the adult world.

Three nights ago we repeated the tradition. Though his fingers are now swollen with arthritis and he walks with a cane, Dad scooped out the ice cream and poured the measures of liquor and brandy into the blender and then filled the glasses. But he forgot the nutmeg. We passed it around, each adding our own.

Twelve Days of Christmas

On the 12th day of Christmas my true love sent to me...
twelve beggars begging,
eleven bankers laughing,
ten gamblers gambling,
nine strippers dancing,
eight maids trash-talking,
seven crooks a-skimming,
six senators lying,
five bags of weed.
Four hedge funds,
three French whores,
two beer bongs,
and a partridge in a pear tree.

The Sixth Toe

Does anyone else find it indicative of a paranoid society that so many people won't answer the phone anymore unless they know who's calling?

Is it the “I Spy” mentality of the internet, or the commercialization of our culture, or the privacy notices stuffed in our mailboxes that are to blame? None of this? All of this? Everything about us can be gathered and scrutinized, from the books we read to the votes we cast. My theory is that people are overcompensating for this loss of privacy by doing things like screening phone calls. Or they pretend to be absorbed in a cell phone conversation when they aren't so they don't have to make eye contact or engage in conversation or acknowledge what's going on around them.

We hunker down in front of our laptops and poke people. We are like a nation of hermits in a crowded auditorium, each with a blue tooth and a cell phone, in touch with the world but not the guy beside us. Will we eventually lose our ability to look a stranger in the eye and converse face-to-face? Will social skills be genetically weaned out of us by natural selection, like a useless sixth toe?

Is your glass half empty or half full?

What I was reminded of during a recent contest at Miss Snark's is that a good opening sentence gives setting and conflict. I repeat...a good opening sentence gives setting and conflict.

There are basic writing rules we all have to occasionally be reminded of. Some of my favorites are:

* 90% of writing is rewriting.
* Write what you know but more importantly, be honest.
* Write about what you're most afraid to write about.
(The hardest exercise I was ever given was to write about 10 things I was afraid to write about.)
* Use synesthesia in your writing “the old man had a wrinkled voice" but avoid the easy comparisons.
* Be completly absorbed in your writing.

This writing business is a solitary endeavor. An exhilarating, lonely, heart-breaking endeavor.

A Higher Plane

The disciple left
his stained Koran
inside the strip club.

Casino Economy

Meet Mt. Pleasant,casino capital of the state. Soaring Eagle, where senior citizens can write personal checks against their social security. Where ATMs are plentiful and drinks are free. Where the light of day will never enter and my friend saw a woman giving a guy a blow job for enough money to keep gambling. Soaring Eagle. They name casinos like they do gated communities, after that which died to make way for development. This is not my Michigan.

Michigan, my Michigan... boundaries of water, wintering lakes and black woods . . . the majestic nests of a diverse bird population now visible in treetops. Detroit's no longer making Thunderbirds but we are surrounded by the oil of the 21st Century and all Americans should be actively participating in protecting this national treasure from a parched world, and, yes, from the desert southwest where development will come to a screeching halt if the true cost of fresh water is ever passed along to the citizenry. (Check out the current issue of Time and the picture of Lake Mead from where Las Vegas draws 90% of its water, predicted to be dry by 2021.)

Casinos have come and will hopefully go the way of the Thunderbird, but we will still be surrounded by fresh water and a strong manufacturing infrastructure and with forward-thinking leaders(a new president who is committed to keeping invasive species out of the lakes and incoming senators not regionally fixated), our rich, diverse ecosystem will thrive and our economy will rebound into the green.

SENATE BEAN SOUP

(From the Michigan Bean Cookbook)

1lb navy beans (Michigan quality preferred)
1 meaty hambone or 1 1/2 lbs hamhocks
1 cup chopped onion
2 garlic cloves minced (or use that garlic press)
1 cup chopped celery
1/4 cup chopped parsley
1 1/2 cups mashed potaotes (if on hand)
1 1/2 t.salt
1 t. pepper
1t each of nutmeg, oregano, and basil
1 bay leaf

Wash and sort beans. In large kettle cover beans with 6 to 8 cups hot water. Bring to boil; boil two minutes. Remove from heat, cover and let stand 1 hr. Stir in remaining ingredients. Simmer 30-40 min. until beans are tender. Remove ham bone, trim off meat,return to soup. Serve hot. Makes about 3 qts. (or about enough to fortify 6 senators)

What hooks you?

The first two sentences of two different novels:

1) The over-heated engine of the Chrysler was still ticking when Katie and her younger sister, Chrissie, ran to the edge of the dock to watch their father disappear under the surface. The wood was warm under their feet, and the lake stretched out before them like a canvas.

2)The vultures circled patiently above the trees that lined the drainage ditch on the Sopal family farm, with the deepest part of the gully the pivot point of their compass. In spring it would be a respectable creek flowing into the Black River, but now it was just a ditch.

Lost in a Lake Effect

Ahh...December. The season of Advent arrived on a snowy morning. The season of lights.

Our lights are still on, though we had an outage in the night with a heavy wet snowfall...clocks were all blinking this morning. I'm steeping a cup of hot tea with the temperature dropping and the wind shifting from out of the East (a sign of tumultuous weather), winding down from a treacherous drive home, during which my rear door suddenly came ajar on the highway, and the dome light came on giving me the bejeebies. Maybe a freezing/thawing explanation. But I had to leave the door ajar because I couldn't reach the handle without taking an eye off the road and a hand off the wheel and there was no easy place to pull off so I just left it and drove home with the whisper of the road wafting through the crack in the door panel, and I thought of how easily one could become lost in a storm.

LOST

How quickly does the familiar become
a thing you've never seen.
You lean against the steering wheel,
as the road traveled nightly becomes one you do not know.
Turn on the radio. You could be anywhere.
Snowflakes attach themselves to the wipers—
silent, silent,
softening tread and resolve to hurry.
There can be no hurry.
No light emerges to meet your own;
no porch door swings open, only silent driving
through the radio static of a forgotten song.


Still looking for an agent who will see worth in my writing. Farewell. Whistle the teakettle.

Still Life

in the chipped china plate
you won't throw away;
in arms that drape shoulders,
graceful as the legs on the bistro chairs,
enclosed in a frame.
The ruffled tutu of the fuchsia
falling off to ground
is frozen by the chance
of a backward glance.
The sun sets a twenty-second fire
to the ridge across the valley from the shelter,
fleeting as the shrug of your shoulders
to have missed it.
The self-portrait I couldn't finish
stands in the back of the closet,
behind sketch pads full of hands.