Zucchini Redux

Rousseau once wrote “plus ca change, plus c'est la meme chose,” meaning “I don’t understand why I have to be dragged into this crap.” Or something close to that. Or maybe it wasn’t Rousseau. Whatever. The point is we all have problems trying to make sense of what the hell is going on around us, both in the day-to-day and in the transcendent. Well, at least the day-to-day. My most recent confusion involves the profusion of zucchini in our garden. Not just zucchini. Giant, corpulent zucchini that apparently hide in waiting for days beneath the elephant-ear leaves of the mother plants before emerging one morning like alien spacecraft that landed in the garden in the silent dark of night. By the time they announce their presence, they are beyond edible vegetables, having become unwieldy zeppelins that would require a skip loader to harvest and a chain saw to slice. And I didn’t even plant them in the first place; they just appeared on their own, albeit from fruit (giant, unmovable fruit) that I had carelessly let go to seed last year, my le péché original. So I live with it. I walk to the garden and look down at the dark-green-turning-yellow leviathans. What am I going to do with them? I could chop them up and dump them in the compost pile. But that would spoil the possibility of them returning next year, of my cursing their monstrous progeny next summer, my questioning my own prowess as gardener and human being, my bitching in general about how screwed life is. No, I think I’ll just let them grow, rot, go to seed, and see what happens next year. More or less the way I deal with my own life.

Myth of Equality

Here’s the problem with both education and health care in this country (and maybe other things as well): We want to provide the very best for everyone — everyone gets a college degree, everyone gets MRIs, CAT scans, knee replacements, etc. But those are unrealistic goals, the Lake Woebegon effect, where everyone is above average, everyone gets what they need. The reality is that that’s not reality. Perhaps it’s an ambition, a goal that we would like to achieve. But policy should face the fact that not everyone can (or should) get a college degree, that not everyone can receive the high-tech, high-priced health care that’s now available to a few. It would be nice to live in an egalitarian society where all are equal and all have equal access to all. It would be nice to live in Shagri-La. But we really need to drop the bar for everyone — if we want all to have equal access — or admit that that is not a possibility and we live, for better or worse, in a culture (like all cultures) of class and that we should make things as good as we can for everyone in whatever class they migrate to (or be stuck in). “Equality may perhaps be a right, but no power on earth can ever turn it into a fact.” — Balzac

The Iranian Hikers

First off, I’m glad that Sarah Shroud, the 32-year-old American hiker, has been released from imprisonment by the Iranian government, and I would hope that Iran would soon release her hiking compatriots, fiancé Shane M. Bauer and their friend Joshua F. Fatall, still being held on suspicion of espionage. Maybe they are all spies. I doubt it (though there’s a long history of the public not knowing what the government is up to). Let Iran prove it. But one thing I do know is that they are idiots. What in the fuck were they doing going for a hike along the border of Iraq and Iran, the former a country we’re at war with, the latter a country we may soon be at war with (and both countries on the Department of State's no travel list)? Why not hike the Appalachians? The North Shore of Lake Superior? Somewhere in Argentina? And to claim that the Iran/Iraq border is not well-marked (as Shroud did in explaining how they got into Iran, by mistake) is but to underscore their stupidity. But they are being portrayed in the press, if not as heroes, at least as victims. No, they’re not heroes or victims, they’re idiots. They shouldn’t be touted as champions of — what? freedom to hike? the right to be clueless? to be Americans? — but rather the inanity of youth. Chastened rather than acclaimed.

Saturday Routine

After a week away, the Saturday routine returns as if it were a program set on perpetual — up, meds, make a pot of coffee, drink the coffee while reading newspapers online and listening to Weekend Edition for a couple of hours, check email, take an hour-long walk while listening to Car Talk, drive to the Farmer’s Market to pick up our week’s CSA share, tend to any work that needs to be done on my classes, go to the store for groceries and run any errands, check email, make dinner, watch the news, eat dinner, watch a movie on DVD, maybe watch some TV, go to bed. There might be an occasional phone call or yard work to do. There might be a nap. There’re probably sports on the radio or TV during the afternoon. There’s usually an hour or so of reading. It’s a comfortable routine — too comfortable, I’m sure, too dependent on what I want to do (or not) and not enough attention to what I should be doing if I were a better person. But then again, it’s a routine borne over time from some combination of responsibility and repose. And rut, no doubt. But ruts make for lazy going, and maybe lazy going is what retirement should be. And perhaps I’ve been rehearsing for years for retirement.

Irish Flats

IT WOULD BE historically interesting in sportsdom could a census be taken of all the former star amateur baseball players who have been attending games at Lawrence stadium. Among them would be Jim McClure, livestock dealer in Wichita. Jim used to be a champ pitcher for Calista and later the “Irish Flats” star twirled many winning games for Kingman and Norwich.

I only have a photocopy of the clipping. There’s no date or headline, no idea even what newspaper it’s from (though probably one of the Wichita papers, as Lawrence Stadium was in Wichita, and probably from the 1900s or 1910s). Jim McClure, the “Irish Flats,” was my grandfather, my father’s father. But I never knew him. He died (“with his boots on,” as he had wished and as was noted in his funeral notice) when I was nine. I only have two specific memories of him: The first was my father taking me to the Wichita Stock Yards to see him at work, herding cattle on the wooden walkways above the pens, in his red flannel shirt, overalls, and muddied work boots. The second was fishing at a farm pond, my catching a large (at least to me) snapping turtle, his landing it once we saw it wasn’t the enormous fish I thought it to be, and his eviscerating it and making it into turtle soup that night.

But I really never knew him. I certainly never knew he was “Irish Flats,” a star “twirler” in amateur Kansas baseball. And it makes me wonder what my granddaughter Ellie will know of me in 50 years or so, long after I’m gone. Will she know that I played in several obscure rock and folk groups in the 1960s? That I had several poems and short stories published in small literary journals in the 1970s? That I had a couple of plays produced, and directed a few myself, in the 1980s? Will she find a vague newspaper clipping about when I was in my 20s or 30s and think, “Whoa, that’s my Grandpa?” I hope so. But I hope also that she has more than just two scant memories of her and me together, that she can remember a series of good times over years of our being together, times where I can become a living memory for her and not just the enigmatic star twirler “Irish Flats.”

Autumn

Autumn is moving into Iowa. Though not officially here for another two weeks, the temperatures have reached down to the low 50s at night, the high 60s during the day, with a crisp sun. We close the windows at night. The quilt is back on the bed and pulled up around our shoulders. The corn is turning brown and the soy fields yellow and both will be harvested soon. Jeans replace shorts. Sound seems amplified in the thin air, light more intense.

Metaphorically, autumn usually represents the on come of loss and death, as Shelley puts it: “Thou dirge / Of the dying year.” No doubt because I’ve lived most of my life in education, autumn has for me represented rather rebirth, the promise of a new (school) year, a new beginning, tabula rasa: Thou paean / Of the coming year.

But this autumn is different. While I’ve just started teaching two new classes, they are online and only two and I’m now retired. I don’t have four or five classes. I don’t have to go up to campus five days a week. I don’t have to go to department meetings once a month. I don’t have to go to professional development days, five this semester. And I don’t look at the season in the same way. I’m not sure what to make of it: Thou ditty / Of whatever the season might bring.

De Facto Locavore

We are, I suppose, de facto members of the “locavore” movement, the trend of eating locally grown foods. We’ve had a vegetable garden for all of the 15 years we’ve lived in this house, shop regularly at the New Pioneer Coop, and this year bought a CSA share with Grinnell Heritage Farm. But we don’t do it for any overtly political motive. We just want good-tasting, healthful food. And that’s what we get.

But I have problems with the movement insofar as it radically calls for only eating within a 100 mile (or so) radius of one’s home. For one, there are just too many foods that I can’t get that are produced within 100 miles that I want to consume — coffee comes quickly to mind, as do bananas (my doctor encourages my eating them), avocados, pineapples, wheat products (no bread? no bagels?), et cetera. To just live on only foods available within 100 miles would mean a severe limitation of what I consider a healthful and sustainable diet. I could survive, I’m sure, but why? I could survive by just eating the foliage and critters that inhabit my own yard (dandelion greens, mourning doves, and chip monks), but I’m not Jed Clampett.

Moreover, if everyone should decide to go locavore, who would work these millions of local farms? How many lawyers, doctors, teachers, sanitation workers, department store clerks are ready to move out to the county, buy a few acres, till the land, plant the crops, harvest them, and haul them to the farmers market? And then what would happen to all those depleted professions? And then there is a big difference between the farming possibilities in Iowa or California or Maryland and that in Arizona or Mississippi or North Dakota. I’ve lived in places where if I had to survive off food from within 100 miles of my home I’d have to survive off pinecones and lizards.

Truth be known, the whole “locavore” movement is a very yuppie, a very privileged pose. And again, we are a part of it. I’m not apologetic. I enjoy the fresh, sustainable, healthful food. But I live in Iowa. I can afford it. I just can’t go so far as to proselytize others to join the congregation of the locavorian saved. It’s a privilege that should be enjoyed by those able, but not pressed on those not so able.

Sophisticated Slavery and the Gravy Feeding Socialists on Casino Bay

Sometime this afternoon we received on our front porch the follow messages, miniature photocopied pages, neatly printed on legal paper, signed by one Brian Sargent:

Sophisticated Slavery and the Gravy Feeding Socialists on Casino Bay

Triune the bird gods of utter blackness, further dark the veiled harp of Antichrist, blindly they pluck this viol, cackle, sway.
Bird men adorning coins, framed the horned retrievers of state, feasting beagles prey passages, lean eagles, terrorist terriers lick the plate.
Casino key notes unlock accordingly, venomous vulture claws of strum, triune the bird gods of plummeting darkness, skeletal slots, feathered clause.
Carpicide river bombers loaded with Cain’s white powder, suckers coaxed, alluring barbs, doll hairs, men owe guzzling flat heads, crushing drain.
Gamma rays blur, hell’s coffers designed, twirling, hurling dollar signs, blinded to the Son, descending fleets of ferocity, madness, programmed pelting.
Triune bird gods of economic sway, teeter-totters become rocket launchers, padded pockets changed, inflamed loss, liens, inflated albatross reign, play.
Adorned, horned, coined the bird men of economic phrasing, albatross word mean oversee the zoo, mirrored, the caged sky, fetter feathered.

Oh Cultic I.C.

Medieval retrieval, devilish dogs embark the plain, cultic I.C., hellish these devils of heave, thy unregenerate mother regurgitates. O cultic I.C. Earth thy domain after the tradition of Cain, so sweet, loving, tree-huggers famed.
O say can you see through the Luciferian light, deception sleeved, armor of knights. Dark thy domain, O cultic I.C., plainly stated, thy worms must ever feed. How hellish these pits of nether, of nether.

A Peace From Above

World worship, clever questionnaires, knee deep, steeples and those wholly steeped in man made religion. Jesus answers this grave equation amongst such singed whirlwinds, thy soul ever keep. Thy soul ever keep I say, even amongst such flames and nameless ones, nameless ones say I, thy soul ever keep.

Each of these messages are followed by several Biblical passages, so we have to believe that Brian Sargent is disseminating some sort of religious prophecy or divination, though the chaos of the diction and syntax makes it difficult to discern what the message might be. But ya gotta love the poetry. Usually these kinds of tracts are rants of marginal literates, lacking in linguistic acumen, unable to spell or construct a simple sentence. But Brian Sargent demonstrates quite a knack for poetic imagery (“Triune bird gods of economic sway, teeter-totters become rocket launchers,” “hellish these devils of heave, thy unregenerate mother regurgitates”), alliteration (“Sophisticated Slavery,” “venomous vulture claws,” “fleets of ferocity,” “fetter feathered,” “Dark thy domain”), internal rhyme (“Adorned, horned,” “Medieval retrieval,” “thy domain after the tradition of Cain”), and of course poetic obtuseness (“further dark the veiled harp of Antichrist, blindly they pluck this viol, cackle, sway,” “feasting beagles prey passages, lean eagles, terrorist terriers lick the plate,” “Earth thy domain after the tradition of Cain, so sweet, loving, tree-huggers famed” [note again the internal rhymes]).

Clearly Brian Sargent cares deeply about whatever it is that he believes or is trying to advocate. I’m not sure, though, who I am in his message of apocalypse. Am I a “Gravy Feeding Socialist”? (Where is Casino Bay?) Maybe I’m a bird man. Or a “devilish dog.” “Devils of heave”? “Unregenerate mother regurgitates” sounds interesting. Or “deception sleeved, armor of knights.” Or maybe I’m just one of the “nameless ones.” I assume I’m among the “cultic I.C.,” though whether that cult is Iowa City, Intensive Care, or Immaculate Conception, I’m not real sure.

There are too many unanswered questions raised in Brian Sargent’s homilies. I only hope that should he pass this way again, he knock on my door and introduce himself rather than just tuck his tracts under it and skulk away into the Luciferian light. If only to see what this kind of religious nut case looks like in the wild.

Chicago

Chicago — the best city in the world, “that toddlin’ town,” “Second City” (not to me), “The Windy City,” “City of big shoulders,” blue collar city, sophisticated international city, city of melded cultures and races, city of blues (living on the south side, embalmed on the north) and jazz (alive throughout), city of fabulous food (street to steak house to, yes, seafood), city of theater (Apollo, Goodman, Steppenwolf), city of tacky tourism (“Untouchables Bus Tour,” Navy Pier), city of grand museums (Field, Science and Industry, Art Institute, Shedd Aquarium) and hidden museums (Smith Stained Glass, Chicago Botanic Garden), city of architectural history, city of exploration (walk, boat, El, trolley), city of views (Willis Tower, Hancock Building), city of festivals (Blues Festival, Printers' Row Lit Fest, Grant Park Music Festival, Taste of Chicago, Folk & Roots Festival, Jazz Festival, etc.) — the best city in the world.