Water

I woke this morning to heavy damp fog but the little rain we had during the night was barely enough to knock the dust down. So we wait for rain. And wait and wait. We can water the garden with soaker hoses and give each struggling plant a drink from the can but there is no substitute for rain with the rich nutrients it absorbs from the atmosphere on its fall to earth.

I'm sorry to have been so absent here lately. There are the aforementioned garden duties and the novel and the query letter which, trust me, is harder to write than you'd think. After all, it's just a business letter . . . right? You can only stomach so much conflicting advice and I know there is such a thing as over-shopping the query. You must retain your own voice through it all. But, back to water . . .

There was a recent program on NPR about water wars in California’s Central Valley, the dispute between farmers, environmentalists, and fishermen. The farmers are being cut off with reduced rations or none at all for irrigation in order to keep more water in the river for salmon. Environmentalists are fighting for the salmon and for the life of the delta. The government made mistakes in the past—building aqueducts, irrigation systems and dams and encouraging farmers to expand, growing everything from cotton to almonds. This was a shortsighted vision of limitless water and farming took hold under this false pretense of plenty. Now, with a long draught to contend with and fishermen fighting back, farmers who spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on irrigation systems find their pipes dry and are understandably upset. They were duped into believing it possible to farm in the desert and came to think of the river as rightfully theirs. But maybe there are better places to grow cotton and maybe California doesn’t have to produce 90 percent of the world’s almonds.

This whole thing makes me nervous because I know that water will be the oil of the twenty-first century and we have only a precarious hold on our Great Lakes treasure.

Not a Consumer, a Citizen

ASIDES . . .

The Six Million Dollar Man is now doing commercials for rechargeable hearing aids.

Two robin eggs lie broken on the rattan mat in front of my front door.
No, make it three. My robin keeps startling herself at inopportune times, darting out of her nest and dropping eggs. Is it my fault? Did I walk too close to the window in my morning ramble to the coffee pot?

Obama can even do standup. Did you see the recent clip from a charitable foundation dinner? "The Republican Party does not qualify for a bailout," he quipped. "And Rush Limbaugh does not qualify as a troubled asset." Funny stuff. Actually, I think that is a pretty good definition of a troubled asset. His second hundred days will be so successful, he says he'll finish them in seventy-two, "and rest on the seventy-third." But, no, President Obama, I don't think you'll ever lose your cool.

Not once did he mention shopping and spending. I appreciated that. I’m really sick of being told I should be out buying goods I neither need nor want.

I’m not a consumer; I’m a citizen.

Do you think there is a connection between capitalism and overpopulation? And what about the effect the world’s overpopulation is having on the environment? It's been suggested that patriotic Americans should stop at two. Not by me, mind you, but I find it an interesting idea. Implausible, but interesting. After all, this is America where we like to oversize everything.

There is a credit card Bill of Rights awaiting action in the Senate. It has passed the House but must now pass the Senate. President Obama has asked for a bill that stops credit card companies from taking advantage of consumers by the end of the month. We’ll see. If you believe there should be an end to usury and other unfair practices by credit card companies, contact your senator and let him/her know what you think. Or better yet, pay your credit cards off as quickly as possible and throw them away, unless you’re able to pay in full each month and are only using a credit card to acquire frequent flyer miles, etc. But do you ever wonder about the trail you leave by using credit cards? The “consumer” footprint by which you can be tracked and judged without your knowing? For the majority of Americans, however, credit card debt is imprisonment without the jingle jingle of the turnkey.

The full moon woke me in the middle of the night. I was wide awake, staring at the ceiling and wondering what woke me, waiting for whatever did to make another sound, but the house was as quiet as the garden in winter. I wandered out to the living room and the moon was in the window, big and yellow and shining across the wooden floor, and I felt I should go outside and soak up the wisdom of those who planted under the moon. I felt like a moon woman, a women who runs with the wolves, voluptuous and fertile, unable to make a mistake. The lettuce seed would be planted exactly 1/8 of an inch deep. The broccoli would be perfectly spaced and each seed would germinate. My rows would be straight without regard to the hills and valleys that make up the natural contour of the garden. But it was only forty degrees out and I’m not that crazy.

On the same night, my father was restless and up and about. His hearing aid was whistling at him and in trying to tap it into mute mode, he dropped it on the tile floor in the bathroom and it broke. Now he has but one ear until he can buy another.

Onwards and upwards . . .

Memory

Do you believe that robins return to the same location year after year? Last year we had a robin’s nest in an old arborvitae beside the front of the house. We dug the tree out mid-summer because it was scraggly and unsightly. We have yet to replace it with something new, so the front of the house is bare. This morning a robin is building a nest on top of a post tucked in beside a beam under the overhang on the porch roof. The activity is in direct view of my writer’s window, so I shall be able to keep track of her progress. Or is it a he? I know the male helps sit on the eggs. Does he help build the nest as well? I hope this spot offers protection and I’m sorry we took down her tree. My grandma used to shoo the sparrows off her front porch and knock down the pesky bird’s nests. But I think she would like my robin.

I wish I could spend all day exploring serious themes in handsome prose while watching the robins. But I'm in the throes of query letter angst...to lead with a hook or to avoid the hook. Or to hang oneself by the neck from a post with a rope until dead.

Just kidding.

What's Real and What Isn't

Greenhouse update: We added another three-tier shelf to the 6 x 8 house so I could get some of the flats off the ground and my feet inside the door. My tomatoes are 5-6inches tall, attempting to outgrow their pots. Everything is finally coming up; even the slow-germinating peppers are sticking their soggy heads through the soil. The melons are spreading, all pumped up and a lush green, and the red cabbage is a nice rosy color. The brussel sprouts look similar to white cabbage when they first start out. The eggplant is also a little slow, like the peppers, but they are starting to unfurl. On another note, it was 66 degrees when I got up this morning, warmer outside than in, so I’m off to the garden for direct sowing of cold weather crops—radishes, arugula, lettuces, broccoli and onions. The dark horizon promises an afternoon shower so we must not tarry over coffee and unfinished novels. There will be a time for that.

Seven hours later. The promised thunderstorm arrived about 4pm. The winds were so high they blew my new shelf over and dumped the contents of the flats—dirt everywhere and fledgling plants uprooted. Topsy-turvy and who is who? The eggplant and the peppers look alike at this stage of the game. Woe is me. I tried to right them as much as possible. Maybe they’ll right themselves.

So what did you do for Earth Day? I was the stooge for a tree-planting photo op. You’ve seen the staged photos; people huddled around a sapling with shovels stuck strategically in the dirt, as they pose for the camera. The main honchos are in front and put their backs to the shovel as if they'd actually risk getting dirt on their high-heeled shoes. But one must at least pretend to be an arborist on Earth Day.

Smile. Click, click. Smile.

I was bamboozled into just such a fake photo at my airport, me in my uniform providing a backdrop of authenticity for two higher-ups who would never risk breaking a nail in such a manner. Never, never, never. I was duped into being a prop.

The idea was commendable-we at TSA would all chip in money and buy a tree to plant on airport grounds for Earth Day. Who wouldn’t get on board with that? We even got two for the price of one. Who could fault that? The first whiff of trouble drifted my way when I learned they bought ornamental pear trees, in other words “fake” trees, not indigenous-to-Michigan trees. But then the airport doesn’t want messy droppings, fruit, nuts, and leaves, etc. They lean towards evergreens and/or trees with tiny leaves, not big messy maples and real Michigan fruit trees.

But back to the duping. They pulled a group of us off the floor, and anyone who works as a screener for TSA is always ready to get off the floor. We walked outside to the front mall area in short-term parking and there were our trees—90pct planted by airport groundskeepers; only lacking the top 4-5 inches of dirt to be shoveled in and tamped down. Those of us who were actually involved with the idea and the purchase were there but we had to wait for our leader to validate our efforts and grasp the shovel . . . the driving force. Click.

Finished, she dropped the shovel and rushed back inside with her hands outstretched as if up to the elbows in cow manure. As if she'd been digging through the garbage in the slums of Lahore. At the checkpoint she asked for the hand sanitizer.

“Where’s the hand sanitizer? I need hand sanitizer.”

Click, click.

What is a conservative?

This is the most succinct definition I've seen.

A conservative is a man with two perfectly good legs who, however, has never learned to walk forward.
- Franklin D. Roosevelt

Beating a Dead Horse

I found out this weekend that the fifteen-year old kid who was killed by a taser-wielding cop only got what he deserved because he was drunk and running away.

“He shouldn’t have been running away,” explains a fellow police officer to us ignorant civilians. “You can’t run away from a cop. And he was drunk.”

So drunk is right up there with sloth, malfeasance, murder, and rape, and even if you’re scared out of your wits, you better not run. Running is an admission of having done something wrong. And whatever you do, don’t let yourself succumb to the evils of alcohol. We civilians are all weak in our habits, our proclivity for bellying up to the bar, our youthful indiscretions and underage drinking.

This makes two kids killed by cops in the last month in Michigan. Where is the outrage? Our stupor of indifference is deafening. Last fall, a fifteen-year old Italian boy was killed by cops and his countrymen rioted in the streets. People . . . listen up. They were IN THE STREETS!!! FOR A WEEK!

In a different matter, on the opposite side of the state, the following exchange took place in a real court of law.

“Why were you driving drunk in my city?” asks the judge.

“I wasn’t drunk Your Honor,” says the stranger. “I was lost.”

“You got yourself lost on the wrong side of the state.”

“I only had two drinks and I was driving slow because I was in an unfamiliar city and I was lost.”

“What were you doing here, all the way across the state?”

None of your business, Your Honor. Isn’t this a free country? Isn’t freedom to travel a constitutional right?

“I was visiting a friend, Your Honor.”

“How many children do you have?”

What does that have to do with this charge, your honor?

“Why, four boys, Your Honor. One is a policeman.”

“I bet he’s really proud of you . . . pathetic excuse for a father.”

“They’ve all done quite well for themselves, Your Honor.”

“How many different mothers do these four boys have?”

What kind of a fucking question is that you pig?

“One, Sir.”

The judge goes on to tell the stranger that his blood alcohol level was point whatever, whatever (just over the legal limit) and he is putting him on probation for three years and taking his license away for one. Plus he has fines to pay and court costs, etc. etc. Coming down hard because it’s the stranger’s second DUI and this court has zero tolerance for losers, meaning people without money or connections in this Grand city.

In case after case, this judge berated, belittled, and demeaned defendant after defendant. And not once did any of the defense attorneys or court officials call him on it.

Seeds

I started my tomato, pepper and melon seeds last week, days before our April snowstorm, howling winds and six inches of snow. We’d erected a little 6 X 8 greenhouse with a tubular frame on the south side of the house, and I had all my flats inside. On a sunny day, even with cool temperatures, the inside of that tiny greenhouse was hot! And I thought it could hold its own at night with normal April lows. But what to do with such a forecast as this? And lows in the twenties? We were scrambling for solutions.

We hung a troublelight inside with a hundred watt bulb, which by itself will throw off an amazing amount of heat. But I feared that wasn’t enough. Then my husband dug out a little ceramic heater we weren’t using anymore, plugged it into the troublelight, and turned it on medium. We waited for the storm.

The next morning I looked out the bedroom window with trepidation to see if my greenhouse was still there. The plastic sides were dripping with condensation and the only snow on it was a wet layer across the center arch. I went outside, unzipped the door, and ducked inside to check the temperature. It was an OK fifty-five degrees. Not bad, considering the winds were hard out of the north and visibility was nil. Everything else was covered with snow, including the white pine sapling I’d planted the day before.

We have been keeping the heater and light on around the clock, waiting for the temperature outside to return to normal. Yesterday, the sun came back out and the greenhouse got up to ninety degrees. Yikes! We are new at this. We opened the little window for a cooling effect.

And then, the miracle—a tiny green spike unfolded from the dirt, a Brandywine tomato.

This morning the greenhouse is alive with a host of fragile green plants and the sun is shining.

Crime and Punishment

Let me tell you a story. My mother and father married at the end of World War II, like so many of their generation, but unlike many, they left the city life for the family farm. Mother had been raised on her own family farm but moved to the city to be with her city cousins and attend college. Then war broke out. She worked for DeSoto, making B-29s, and Dad joined the Air Force as a mechanic and was stationed in China and India. When the war ended, he could have had a job with Detroit Edison but decided he wanted to farm instead, and they both thought it’d be a better place to bring up the children they hoped to have. They moved into my grandparent’s big house because they planned to have lots of babies, and Grandma and Grandpa bought a place down the road. Dad took up farming and Mother promptly became pregnant. She kept her doctor in Detroit because a young woman can’t change everything in her life at once. You’ve heard the story . . . the race to the hospital . . . water breaking . . . but bear with me. Yes, they waited too long to start on the sixty mile drive, but everyone knows that a first-time mother sometimes miscalculates the speed with which her baby can slide down the birth canal and poke its head out into the world.

My dad has always had a heavy foot; he taught me how to plow through snowdrifts and skid around potholes. He can weave in and out of traffic with one hand on the wheel and point out the St. Louis Arch to you with the other. You will never miss a single sunset or astounding view or the first smudge of the Rocky Mountain foothills on the distant horizon if you’re in his backseat. He won’t let you miss a thing, even if you only want to bury your face in a book. He once had us sitting all day at a lake he’d heard was a stopover for flocks of migrating Canadian geese. We had to be very quiet and sit still and wait . . . all . . . day. They never came, but somehow we didn’t feel like we’d wasted our time. It was okay to sit and look at nature and wait for something to happen. It was okay to daydream. That early memory has stuck with me, even though the geese never came.

But back to his heavy foot . . . mother is about to have my eldest sister and dad is determined that it won’t be in his '45 Chevy, expertly navigating city traffic when a cop pulls him over. Dad quickly explains the situation and the cop says—

“Follow me.”

One of Detroit’s finest turned on his flashers and led them the rest of the way, right to the doorstep of St. Mary's Hospital in downtown Detroit.

Thanks to that policeman, my mother arrived at the hospital in time for her own doctor to deliver my sister minutes later.

I’m thinking of this story because of all the things that have happened recently due to poor judgment on the part of law enforcement officials. Last week there was the sad story about the man who was rushing his dying mother-in-law to a hospital in Texas when a cop pulled him over in the parking lot. He wouldn’t let the man go into the hospital with his wife and mother-in-law. He insisted on writing the guy a ticket. One of the nurses even came out and told the cop that the woman was dying and wouldn’t he please let him come in and see her before she died. He wouldn’t. He had to stubbornly finish writing the son-in-law a speeding ticket.

This morning there was a news story about a man in Florida who was rushing his wife to the hospital because she was about to have a baby. A cop pulled him over and the man explained their situation, and wouldn’t it have been nice if this police officer had said—

“Follow me.”

He doggedly wrote him a ticket for nine miles over the speed limit.

If my dad had been doing his twenty miles over the speed limit in a similar culture of “crime and punishment”, distraught and talking back, they probably would’ve tased him and thrown him in jail, my sister would’ve been delivered on the curb, and our entire family history would have been rewritten. None of us would be where we are now, because this is how lives are ruined, through the overreach and bad judgment of one person in power.

Now some may say they were only protecting the public from speeders. Some would say they saved lives. Maybe so. But this much I know—there is a pervasive mindset in today’s law enforcement and judiciary to follow the rules, to not think outside the box. Independent thinking is neither encouraged nor rewarded. There is no training on how to step back from a situation and weigh the circumstances unique to the matter at hand and take action accordingly. Is it really any different from a combat zone where a good leader squats down and lights up a cigarette and says— “Let’s think this over for a minute.”?

There is enough corruption in police departments around the country to afford every college graduate ample material for their thesis. With the choking economy, there is easy money to be made writing tickets and I have no doubt that cops are under pressure to bring it in, but an even greater problem today is our drug forfeiture laws. With the way the law is written, drugs busts are big business with all property being rewarded to the arresting agency. The wealthier the county, the more corrupt. This is the main reason law enforcement rails against any change to our antiquated drug laws. This is why the Sheriff’s Department has expensive sports cars and SUVs in the county garage; it’s why the Sheriff always drives a new vehicle and has all those toys and can run a high-profile campaign with an eye on the governorship and beyond. This is why they will use all their resources to fight medicinal marijuana.

I will probably never see the day when we can grow hemp again, that wondrous, natural fabric, and I certainly don't expect to ever be able to grow marijuana for medicinal use. I mean . . . can you imagine the paperwork and the record-keeping and the cops poking around your fields and sticking their noses in your harvesting methods and in your granary and your silos? What a nightmare that would be. In spite of the fact that the voters passed a bill overwhelmingly last November (I wrote about this in an earlier post), I expect the guidelines that come out of Lansing will be so convoluted and exasperating few farmers will take it on. I expect the process will make our annual OCIA inspection (our organic certifier) seem simple.

But there are other crops to grow for organic markets if the Senate doesn’t bow to pressure from Dow and Monsanto to regulate small family farmers out of business. But that is another subject.

And my mother? Well, she had her first two babies in Detroit and then found a doctor she could trust closer to home, and there were no more mad rushes to the hospital. My dad has slowed down, but he still loves to get behind the wheel and drive the gravel roads of home where you very seldom see the red and blues.

Why You Shouldn't Call Me

A road, a river, a mountain,
restless desert eddies,
and still more space to navigate;
more than can be gathered.
Beyond the question of what you had
for dinner and if your roses bloom
or stand defeated in the heat,
about what matters, we sometimes fall behind.
Yet I feel you and hear your voice
in strangers that surround me.
When the very silence howls an absence,
like the coyotes that run your foothills,
I hear you.
In this we aren't so far apart.
They say we have them here-
bold in the twilight, hungry and moving.

The Turtle

I saw a turtle today with a head the size of my fist. The ice in the pond is at 90% melt. Only a thin strip remains through the heart of the center, circling up around the dock where it's a few inches thicker (where it was once at its thickest). It was fifty degrees and sunny, so I was taking a walk along the shore, looking for signs of spring, when a loud splash startled me. I swung around, and surfacing ten or so feet out from the widening circle of ripples was a head the size of my fist. First just the head and two eyes bobbed on the surface, and I froze. Then the rest of the body came into view,black and glossy. He was swimming in reptilian fashion, reminding me of a butterfly stroke, heading straight for me, and I watched in amazement. Then he dove and his tail flicked through the air, thin and curled like a possum. The length of that tail surprised me, and the whole thing was like a dream, and I wondered if it really was a turtle. It looked more like a baby Nessie, something spawned in Loch Ness and then lifted into the atmosphere and dropped from the sky by a trickster into our little farm pond in the middle of the Great Lakes basin. He dove and was gone. I waited but he didn’t resurface.

I walked around the rest of the pond, through the narrow inlets and the dead grass, past the birch trees and the small sunken fiberglass boat that someone forgot to beach, listening for another splash, but there was nothing. Life has not yet returned to the pond, the dragonflies and water striders of summer have yet to emerge, and the catfish and bass are deep in the bottom, slowly awakening to the freeing of the pond from its winter ice. The turtle rules the water in March. He has it all to himself.

The Dirty Dozen and the Ides of March

It rained through the night and the wind pummeled our brick house and rattled the windows, and this morning there are standing pools of water in the front yard and the dead grass is beaten down. A section of downspout is in the road and cardboard boxes blown away from somewhere else sit in the yard like tombstones. The woods across the muddy road are black and still. My seed order sits neglected on the table under tax returns and library books. Seeds? Spring, oh spring.

Earth Day is April 22nd. I would encourage everyone to support organic farmers and buy local and in-season fruits and vegetables as much as possible. Secondly, recycle, especially plastic. Bottled water is one of the biggest scams of our day, and the single-use leaching plastic water bottles used by the industry are the bane of our landfills.

So recycle and eat organic. Following are the dirty dozen, foods you should always try to buy organic, either because of their thin skins that offer no protection against the poison sprayed on them by conventional farmers, or the hormones and antibiotics administered to encourage fast growth and prevent disease in crowded feedlots and factory chicken farms.

1. Meat and eggs
2. Milk
3. Coffee – most of the beans we buy are grown in countries that don’t regulate the use of pesticides or chemicals. Look for the USDA Organic label to insure you aren’t buying beans grown with potentially harmful chemicals. Or go a step further and look for the Fair Trade label which insures that your purchase supports farmers who are paid fairly and treated well. And look for the shade-grown varieties. Then you know your coffee is being grown under the canopy of the rainforest, leaving these ancient trees intact.
4. Peaches (delicate skins)
5. Apples
6. Sweet Bell Peppers – they are heavily sprayed and have thin skins that don’t offer much of a barrier.
7. Celery- no protective skin, which makes it impossible to wash off the chemicals used on conventional crops.
8. Strawberries – if you buy strawberries out of season, they’re most likely imported from countries that use less stringent regulations for pesticide use.
9. Leafy Greens – frequent contamination with what are considered the most potent pesticides used on food.
10. Grapes – imported grapes run a much greater risk of contamination than those grown
domestically, and grapes have very thin skins.
11. Potatoes – America’s popular spud ranks high for pesticide residue. It also gets the double whammy of fungicides added to the soil by conventional farmers.
12. Tomatoes – the tomato’s easily punctured skin is no match for chemicals that will eventually permeate it.

Pesticide, Herbicide, Fungicide . . . Suicide.

Why am I Reading Three Books at Once?

The reason why so few good books are written is that so few people who can write know anything.
- Walter Bagehot

Now in all fairness I must say I don’t know who Walter Bagehot is, and my first inclination at reading this quote was to say—What? Have you not been to your local library lately? Who are you and how dare you talk so dismissively about the throes of writing anything! What do you, Walter Bagehot, know?

Then I looked at the current stack of library books competing with my uncompleted income tax returns for attention and wondered . . . why am I reading three books at once?

I started the first novel (highly acclaimed by review) with high expectations but couldn’t get through the laborious, over-written prologue. So I set it aside and started novel # 2 but soon found myself flipping through to the end of chapter one. Now this is death to a writer. To have a reader thumbing through your first chapter? Dear Lord! This is the dreaded sharpie-taken-to-your-manuscript in any respectable writer’s circle! So, how did novel #2 get past a writer’s group and an agent and an editor to become published? With lowered expectations I started novel #3 with its cleaver title and intriguing book jacket copy written to lure me in. I skimmed through the first five pages that every writer knows is paramount to success, waiting to be hooked. But sometimes it takes ten or twenty or even fifty pages to be hooked and I'm a patient reader, so I plodded ahead, only to be introduced to character after character I feared I would care nothing about. In fact, I knew every detail of their predictable lives before each was revealed and cared not a whit for any of it.

And so they sit, on top of my yet-to-be-filed income tax returns as I browse through my own bookshelves for old dog-eared paperbacks and so-called classics which might be nothing more than books written by people who knew things.

So, Walter Bagehot, whoever you are, I offer my apologies.

World Gone Wild

Is the world going crazy? A mentally deranged woman keeps a male chimpanzee (APE) as a "pet" and when he goes berserk and tears her friend's face off, she blames her friend for having a different hairdo? She eats with this animal, shares her wine with him and pops Xanex with him, bathes with him, and sleeps with him and God knows what else she was alluding to doing with him in one of her many bizarre interviews.

Then there is the Octo-Woman. Six children under the age of eight weren’t enough for her. Unmarried, no job, living with her parents who have both now flown the coop, she says she is "blessed" to have eight more babies. Blessed? Babies are not puppies for God's sake. Can you imagine the daily hospital bill alone? Who is going to feed, clothe and take care of these fourteen children? She has a publicist and is hoping for a book deal. What?? Wouldn’t I and the hundreds of other writers supporting themselves with jobs they dislike while they plug away at their computer every chance they get, love a book deal? What an insult. Is she also hoping for a photo exclusive or a movie deal, a tell-all on Oprah or her own reality TV show? Or,as rumor now has it, will she succumb to the million dollar offer to do a porno? Should we be surprised by this? The whole thing was initiated as a publicity stunt, but does anybody care what the nutso’s story is? I’d just like the doctor who implanted eight embryos in a woman her age with her personal and financial situation to be prosecuted and the babies to be given up for adoption to families who aren't out to exploit them.

Then there’s Joe the Plumber who actually does have a book deal if he can get someone to write it for him. He is, after all, busy with his Middle East peace keeping mission and his Capitol Hill policy speeches and his radio talk show blitz. Maybe he can fill in for Rush Limbaugh who fell off the deep end the day after the election, ranting and raving ever since. Can you just envision the man behind the microphone, foaming at the mouth and popping pills, as he spits his hate-filled invective over the airwaves? I have to believe he is on the fringe with his message, so why do so many radio stations carry him? Because he’s a cheap way to fill air space? It’s not that he’s bad for the democrats. He’s bad for America.

How cheap are we? Is there a crazy connection between Simian love and Octo-woman, Joe the Plumber and Limbaugh? Are we not the laughing stock of the world as we fall to our knees and prostitute ourselves for a “story”?

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.