YEAH!

One person at a time, one bag at a time, one effort at a time . . . She's making a difference!

Warp - Installment #2

“Perfectly good!” Edgar sat up and leaned back against the headboard. “Darling, they were on their last leg, if you’ll pardon the odd metaphor. Those old shoes couldn’t hold air, much less water; your feet were coated in mud each time you took them off. It’s high time you had a new pair. I don’t need to buy your new shoes for you. You’re perfectly free to go out and buy anything you need and ’most anything you want!”

They’d had this conversation so many times in the past ten years that Edgar knew every dead end it held. He scowled at his wife’s slender back as she turned from him, scooped up the offending shoes and headed for the bedroom door.

She spoke as she walked. “I know, my sweet. I know we have plenty of money for these things, but I hate to throw it around. Who knows what’s coming further down the line? Maybe the kids will need help.”

Edgar tapped the paper with his broad fingertips. “Lu, the kids are provided for. Their kids are provided for. We’re provided for. This isn’t the old days, sweetheart. There was a point to all the scrimping and saving back then. You—we don’t need to do it now.”
Luella looked back from the doorway, her eyebrows lifted in an apologetic grimace. “I know, honey. I know I make you crazy by being so careful, but . . . I can’t help it. I grew up poor, and you and I started out poor. I don’t want to play that song again. Ever.” She disappeared down the hallway to the kitchen.

She’ll probably try to resuscitate her shoes, Edgar thought. He murmured, “But you’re living like you’re still poor, Lu.” He picked up the newspaper, willing away the unsettled feeling this talk always produced, and turned to the comics.

Warp - Installment #1

“Blast!” Luella sang out from the bedroom closet, loudly enough for Edgar to hear.

Edgar tipped the newspaper down, turned his head on the bed pillow and looked over his glasses at his wife. In the gloom of the unlit closet, she was a vague and harmless shadow. “What is it, dear? And why don’t you turn the light on?”

She stood still, hands on her hips, staring at the closet floor. “I’ve ruined my gardening shoes. They’re completely mildewed. I’m surprised we didn’t smell them before this. I don’t need the light, thanks.” She sighed. “I suppose I’ll garden in my bare feet from now on. Hmmm . . . sounds like a book title, doesn’t it? Barefoot Gardening for Fun and Profit.”

With a monumental effort, Edgar Rawlins managed not to scream at the top of his lungs. “I suppose so,” he breathed, and pretended to return to his reading. He knew Luella’s need to pounce on ambivalent replies.

The hunter sprang. Luella stepped out of the closet and to the foot of the bed in a trice. In a composed voice that didn’t fool Edgar, she asked, “You suppose I’ll garden in my bare feet, or you suppose it sounds like a book title?”

Edgar-the-prey folded, laying his paper on the threadbare flowered comforter. “The latter, of course. I don’t expect you to garden in your bare feet unless that tickles your fancy, Lu.” He didn’t add that he remembered—with a pleasurable stir of warmth in his belly—when it had tickled her fancy (and his) to garden in her bra and cut-offs, racing for her shirt slung over a rose bush when unexpected company drove up.

There was no point in bringing it up, he thought. Nowadays Luella wouldn’t risk being caught in any stage of undress—not because her figure wasn’t still lovely (it was) and not because she was of above-average modesty (she wasn’t). Luella wouldn’t risk being caught in her ten-year-old Maidenform bra, graying and held together by two safety pins.

His wife smiled in embarrassment. “Ed, I know you’d buy me new shoes in a minute if I asked, but I’d hate to. I’d hate to be such a spendthrift. These were perfectly good until I ruined them . . . .”

Earth stewardship: the right thing to do

Today my youngest and I were chatting in the car about how easily people could save natural resources by making a few small, painless changes and maybe some bigger, sacrificial ones. The topic came up because I was drafting behind a semi for about 10 seconds before saying, "OK, we need to move now because this isn't a safe distance." That led to a brief discussion of wouldn't-it-be-nice-if-someone-invented-a-safe-way-to-draft-behind-trucks, which led to a likewise-brief discourse on how easily we can DO THINGS BETTER. Like . . . forgoing the repeat step in the shampooing process . . . sharing your magazine subscriptions among a group of friends instead of tossing each issue after you've read it . . . buying bamboo cutlery to carry around instead of accepting a handful of plastic cutlery at the drive-through . . . insisting politely to the store clerk that you don't need the soap bagged separately before being put in a larger grocery bag because (a) the soap is already wrapped in at least 2 layers and (b) you brought your own shopping bag . . . telling the server nicely that it's not necessary to refill your water glass each time you take a sip . . . using your worn washcloths and towels for rags instead of throwing them away and buying more paper towels . . . turning off the water while you brush or shave . . .

The Aerobic Mouse

There's a new dance sensation at my house. It's called "The Aerobic Mouse." Here's how it goes:

First, you stand at the kitchen sink stemming apples to put through the juicer. You hear a noise coming from under the fridge, which at first sounds as though it's a vibration caused by the loud garbage truck outside that's throwing trash carts up in the air. Then, you realize that the noise is more of a chewing/gnawing/ nibbling noise. Yeah, definitely not just a vibration.

Next, you dislodge the folded grocery bags that are stuffed between the fridge and the counter, watching for a small scurrying creature to come running out. When that doesn't happen and the noises (which are definitely chewing noises, you now realize) resume, you kick the front of the drip pan under the fridge. The gnawing stops.

Got all the steps so far? Go ahead and review them if you need.

Now, return to your position at the sink. Continue stemming apples and feeding them into the Jack LaLanne juicer on the counter.

Here's the bit of tricky choreography: Spot a furry flash moving from the direction of the fridge to the bottom of the cupboard next to you, then streaking back to the fridge. In broad daylight. Jump, scream and run into the living room holding a dripping apple.

Good so far?

Hours later--after your significant other has cleared away detritus from around the fridge and set traps--resume your apple juicing activities in the kitchen. It's dark now. Again, stand at the sink and place the apples in the juicer on the counter between the sink and fridge. Glance out of the corner of your eye in time to see the rodent run out on the same path, wave, wink at you about the traps, and run back to the nether recesses under the fridge.

The next day, add a new step: Move the juicer to a new counter so your back is to the fridge and you cannot see the mouse/rat/capybara without turning around. As you feed apples into the juicer, perform a brisk aerobic hop to discourage rodent incursions around your feet. Remind the creature loudly that this is, again, BROAD DAYLIGHT.

Variation: Add loud music to avoid hearing a trap spring.

Life on the Farm

A few years ago we traded in the city life for rural living. Unlike Lisa on “Green Acres,” I don’t adore a penthouse view (I've only ever enjoyed one, on a week's stay in smoggy Shanghai, China), but I do know I was ready to leave the nightly police helicopter tours over our block, the drug-dealers’ conventions at the local convenience store and the no-name, no-talk attitude of some of our city neighbors.

We looked at several areas before we chose a rural location that shall remain nameless but lies between Oregon and Mexico. With starry-eyed optimism, we bought a "fixer-upper" (translation: some of the outlets weren’t wired to ANYTHING but air) farmhouse with a couple of acres. The outgoing owners even left us several chickens and geese, one duck and a herd of 20 or so cats. They also left a stunning crop of summer squash, each the size of a didgeridoo.

To celebrate the move, we threw a big “Down on the Farm” party. Bales of hay served as seating; we gathered cornstalks into shocks; and I piled the squash into decorative cords on the front porch. We bobbed for apples and ran feedsack races. Overalls and straw hats were optional. When they heard our renovation plans, friends told us we certainly had a lot of vision to buy a (ahem) fixer-upper. As guests departed, we tried to give each one a cat and a squash as door prizes. No takers.

One of our first moves as farmette-owners was to get a big German Shepherd puppy. I drove to the owners’ house with a cardboard box in the backseat to use as a carrying cage; when I saw that the dog was big enough (at seven months) to eat the box, I stuck it in the trunk and let the dog have the backseat. After spending her first day under the porch, she proved herself to be a champion watch dog. She also taught us to never assume that all dogs can run free with the livestock, like that nice dog on "Babe." In other words, she developed a nasty habit of eating very fresh chickens. After we had to dispatch a couple of unfortunate ones, we clipped the others’ wings and kept them in the fenced barnyard.

The next animal acquisition was a pygmy goat. After she and my husband played an ongoing game of, “You add another strand of barbed wire to the fence, and I’ll show you how I can clear it,” we decided a leash was in order for a few days. Following her initial reticence, she quickly became a friendly pet.

Next, of course, was a pygmy billy goat (aka a buck). While the one we bought was about half the size of our nanny, he didn’t lack for libido. A few months later, they presented us with twins . . . twin whats, we wondered? Boys or girls? Our more experienced neighbor set us straight on that score and offered to castrate the little fellows for us.

I will only say that rubber bands took on a whole different light for me thereafter.

Later, when we sold one of the kids to the same neighbor, the nanny grabbed a $20 bill out of his hand and gobbled it down while my husband chased her around the pen. This was an expensive animal! The chickens, on the other hand, seemed a better investment. In return for scratch and water, they gave us fresh eggs. So economical. After doing the math on the feed and water bills, we learned we were paying about $14 per dozen eggs. But they were fresh!

Some of our farmette disappeared before our very eyes that first winter. Several fruit trees perished; apparently they’d been planted too deep and had drowned. My husband planted willow saplings by the goose pond, thinking with satisfaction of how the geese would enjoy their shade come summer. They enjoyed them all right . . . mostly the next day, when they ate every leaf and tender twig. Sadly, the trees didn’t survive. Not so sadly, most of the geese migrated south to our next-door neighbor’s horse pasture, where one mama goose trooped her brood through the mud on daily excursions.

We did manage to help hatch one gosling; having set eyes on me first after exiting the shell, he imprinted on me and became a friend closer than a brother. His nickname was the “Garden Goose,” for he followed me around the garden, helpfully eating broccoli seedlings, peas and most of my flower buds.

After a year of painting, repairing, updating, planting and spending, spending, spending, we felt gratified at what the hard work had yielded. We were also a bit wiser in the ways of the farm. Helpful neighbors were handy with useful advice and extra produce; my parents’ old pick-up truck proved invaluable (you do NOT want to take a smelly billy goat to the animal swap in your car); and we were adept at catching chickens for wing-clipping. I’m sure we provided some good laughs for our country neighbors, too.

We’re thinking of raising exotic animals next . . . say, rhinos.

Once upon a time, there was a Sioux boy named Yakari . . .

. . . and Yakari rode a horse called Little Thunder. And, they talked to each other.

I translated this book. You can buy it!

Where can you buy it, for instance?
Here.

OK, I like this book a lot.

I've been buttonholing people about The Small-Mart Revolution for a few weeks. For the most part, they're not running and hiding when they see me, or at least no more than usual.

Enough chit-chat about it. And now: The book review . . .

If you do read this book, tell me what you think.

Why buy local?

Behold the locally-made cake. It is a thing of beauty in so many ways. This cake was freshly baked to order by a small locally-owned bakery, using eggs from locally-raised cage-free chickens. The baker didn't cut corners by using cheap, suspect ingredients produced in a low-wage country under questionable conditions. She decorated it with skill (and food supplies) that would reflect well on her, sure that we would cross paths often, and she charged a fair price for her hours of labor without apology. The cake cost more than a less beautiful, less delicious cake would have cost at a giant retail grocery store . . . but what is the real cost of a "cheaper" product?

Let's see:
Lower price likely=lower pay for the store baker, cheaper ingredients, lost business for the locally-owned baker, lost business for local graphic designers who don't design the retail giant's advertising, longer wait in line at the giant retailer that doesn't hire enough clerks to prevent slow-moving checkout lines, less consumer control over the cake ingredients (add your own)

Locally-made=developing relationship with the local baker, larger portion of the cake's purchase price is invested back into the community, no waiting in long line at retail giant after purchasing unnecessary items while wandering across the stress-inducing store, no going to customer service to correct wrong price scan, more work for local graphic designer who designs the baker's logo and labels (add your own)

BUY LOCALLY-MADE PRODUCTS. EAT LOCALLY-GROWN FOOD. SUPPORT LOCALLY-PRODUCED ARTS.

If you're feeling literary . . .

Here's a review I wrote recently of a challenging book:
The Last Journey of Ago Ymeri. The story is set in Albania.

The Great Pumpkin

We grew this pumpkin this year ("Big Max" variety) and are mighty pleased with it. (Also grew the smaller pumpkins and the corn.) After we picked The Giant, we watched "Lords of the Gourd" on PBS. Now we're thinking we need to make a special pumpkin patch next year, dedicated to giant pumpkins.

Review of In the Ghost House Acquainted (a book of poetry)

In the Ghost-House Acquainted, by Kevin Goodan, Alice James Books, Farmington, Maine, 2004, 56 pages

If the poems of In the Ghost-House Acquainted were not composed in the moment after—after love’s loss, after revelation, after moonset, after lamb-pulling—then surely they were meant, at least, to be read in that moment. They are messages from a man acquainted with work and rest, grief and joy, death and life. It is not essential to have experienced all that Goodan writes of in order to appreciate his work; and if we are novices in the occupation of grownup life, the poet will instruct us in our necessary preparations for that life.

Informed by an acquaintance with the Bible (both Old and New Testaments), Goodan has written verse that beckons us to consider the lilies of the field—and the dead lambs in the diesel-fueled bonfire—and how our own place in the cosmos may resemble those members of our shared creation. Along with Psalmic structure and diction, many of the poems in this book contain phrases that seem taken directly from familiar Bible verses, yet upon inspection reveal subtle word shifts that point to a particular speaker: farmer as co-creator with God. For example, in “In the Ghost-House Acquainted,” Goodan writes: “I close the simple flowers//and bid the moon now rise//for Death is not my harbor.//And I walk among derelict combines//that they might know//and come unafraid.”

The poet’s speaker sings with humility, with quiet anger, and with pain masquerading as bravado, too. In his “Canticle for the Day-Labor,” the speaker is both taskmaster and servant, waiting on the good graces of his lord, aware that grace is given in many guises:

temper me make me plow blade
an implement for the deep earth
a pleasure in the sowing
and if I bleed make it plentiful
make it sweet like honey
like a train spike through the skull
and I will push the land
and dispatch winter
for the veins of my lord
are always open

Goodan’s poems are redolent of country life—not the pretty, polite kind pictured in glossy magazines for weekend gentlefolk, but the kind of living that coats one’s hands with amniotic fluids from pulling a stuck foal and rips one’s heart out from watching the mare clean the already-cooling body of her stillborn. He tutors his readers in the large and small benedictions of farm life, never letting us forget in any single poem that those blessings can be recalled in a moment. And we, Goodan reminds us, hold the power to bestow or revoke benedictions as well—not because we can or want to, but because we must. Consider his “Barn-Cleaning”:

A pigeon topples down,
cocks a dazed head.
I catch it, try snapping its neck
like a wet towel in air.
Stupid bird! [. . . ]
An alien eye.
I set the bird’s head
against a flat rock.
Wings beat my ankle
but I do not rise.
Four and twenty birds
twitch in a barrel.

A word that peppers some of the poems in this collection, scree, is indicative of the precarious nature of life on a farm (or anywhere else). This material life, which feels solid and sure because it is the only existence we know at present, is so much loose rock beneath our feet, Goodan tells us. A gust of wind, a torrent of rain, or the imperceptible shuffle of emotions across our days can dislodge the precarious debris beneath our feet that we call daily life and throw us off of our mountain into an unfamiliar valley: “I’m in the pasture calming down the mares,//calculating what might be taken//by the hurricane as sacrifice.//Anything not rooted might be taken” (from “If I’m Not a Garden”).

Goodan speaks of human loss with such palpable authority that it is tempting to search for a biography of the poet in order to confirm his right to do so. How could he write of these moments unless he has experienced them? we want to know. What happened to these people? we wonder, for he has created individuals whose fate resonates in our imaginations. A lover, a father, even a horse caught in barbed-wire fencing, are not mere fodder for his poetry: They inhabit his poems and our minds long after we have put down this volume. Consider “His Voice Had Grown Softer Each Day”—a goodbye as eloquent as any elegy read aloud at a memorial service:

I need you to get me a ticket, he said.
For what, I asked, waking at the foot of his bed.
For the train, he said. They say I need a ticket.
Except for the small lamp the room was dark.
The air was cool and clear. The first night of September.
Do you know who they are, I asked
and he said, oh yes. They are smiling and waving—
I haven’t seen them for so long.
They want me to climb on board. . . . I need my ticket.
I want to give you a ticket, I said.

Haboo, the speaker says into the ear of a mare straining in birth—“what the Skagit children said//when the storyteller stopped://keep the story going.” In this collection of poems, Goodan keeps the story going—a story that has been unfolding from the beginning of Earth’s time: life, death, sowing, harvest, burial, blood, ice-laced trees in winter, fragrant loam, rain on scree, keening wind, and the stillness that signals we are “Near the Heart of Happening.”

© Erica Jeffrey

On kisses and clothing

Is anyone else alarmed/amused/bothered/perplexed/saddened by the realization that many people won't buy used clothing at yard sales or thrift stores because it "might have germs"--or insist on fastidiously sanitizing their hands after shaking hands in greeting--but willingly have sex with a number of partners in a week? Without so much as washing their hands first?

An Introduction to Art Gekko (AKA An Introductory Taradiddle)

Art Gecko is the name of a movement long misunderstood in the art world. Art Gecko, which reigned supreme in interior design for about five minutes during 1926, was, of course, a direct descendant of Art Deco. The main difference between the two styles was that Art Deco’s sleek, stylized lines brought elegance to interior design, furniture and very tall buildings, whereas Art Gecko—with its overriding obsession with the gecko form—graced one very short building in Des Moines, Iowa and a rest stop near San Francisco. Both were later torn down and replaced with portable toilets.

The Art Gecko movement began shortly after the Art Deco movement was named in 1925 A.D., following the Exposition Internationale des Arts Décoratifs et Industriels Modernes in Paris. Herb Sillcox, the founder of Art Gecko (who has recently come out of hiding in an attempt to revive the movement), organized and carried out the one-man exhibition that would in turn give Art Gecko its name and small but rabid following: the Exposition Internationale des Rest Stops Décoratifs et Geckos Modernes in Des Moines.

Art Gecko was a natural and understandable effort to amend the previous century’s apparent oversight of geckos in painting, sculpture and tatting. Sillcox often bemoaned the fact that so few extant art pieces portrayed geckos in any form and medium. Whereas symmetry, simplicity and geometric patterns were characteristic of Art Deco, perhaps the only recognizable characteristic of Art Gecko was the predominant positioning of geckos in each work.
Important influences upon Art Gecko were Hulke Sillcox (Herb’s mom), whose crocheted afghans featured a gecko in every granny patch, and Bette Greenhouser, at whose notorious Des Moines card parties female guests were invited to clamp a gecko on each earlobe as they walked in the door. Cubism, with its emphasis on the geometric, had a huge impact on Art Deco—but absolutely none on Art Gecko. Sadly, no leading designers took up the banner of Art Gecko and brought it to the forefront in any of the fine or domestic arts. In fact, it would not be until the late 1970s or 1980s that a popular clothing manufacturer would place a gecko on T-shirts and other apparel, thus lending credence to Sillcox’s insistence that he had changed the way the world looked at geckos.

Art Gecko grew increasingly compulsive in its obsession with the gecko form as it became apparent to Sillcox and his handful of maladapted supporters that the movement was not a major one. While the spiritual center of the Art Gecko movement continued to be Des Moines, a disgruntled adherent who had moved to California attempted to branch off by carving geckos on the stalls of a San Francisco Bay Area rest stop. He was soon arrested for defacing public property and jailed on unrelated charges, where he spent his days writing hate mail to Herb Sillcox.

While the Art Deco form can be viewed today in Radio City Music Hall’s interior and the Chrysler Building’s exterior, there are no remaining public monuments to Art Gecko. Herb Sillcox’s storage building in Des Moines was razed in the 1960s, and the rest stop near San Francisco was destroyed in a freak fire. (Coincidentally, the erstwhile Sillcox disciple had been released from custody just two hours prior.) Art Gecko founder Sillcox promises to rebuild his movement from the ground up.

© Erica Jeffrey 2007

Why taradiddles?

According to dictionary.com, a taradiddle is "pretentious nonsense" or "silly pretentious speech or writing," or "twaddle," or even "a fib."

Excepting "a fib," taradiddle seems a fitting description of much of the writing to follow in this blog. Thanks to drlogan for suggesting the title.

And now . . .

Book recommendation for today: The Small-Mart Revolution, by Michael H. Shuman.

If you're into graphic novels, please consider publications from the new-ish publisher Cinebook Ltd. Check out the Yakari books if you're shopping for young children. They're listed here on www.amazon.com.

And another plug . . . check out the book reviews at
www.curledup.com.

Happy midweek to you!