Ask a Terrible Gardener

"We've left our future largely in the hands of people whose single greatest characteristic is that they are bewildered by the present." Joshua Cooper Ramo, The Age of the Unthinkable: Why the New World Disorder Constantly Surprises Us And What We Can Do About It
 

If I find a buried treasure in the backyard when I’m digging a hole to plant a tree, do I have to share it with my deadbeat grown children?

Only if you don’t kill them immediately after you tell them about the treasure.

Is time travel possible?

I answered that question tomorrow. 

Why must I be a teenager in love?

You should really be asking a lawyer about this; preferably, one who specializes in estate planning.

Is the war in Afghanistan futile?

Some say so: “I say futile as (we) have 100,000 men in theater to engage in a fantastically unrealistic nation-building effort amidst a Pashtun population who largely detest our presence, simply to ferret out perhaps 50-100 residual al-Qaeda operatives, and with their leader already felled long ago in Abbottabad.” Gregory Djerejian

 

Can the Supreme Court force me to grow broccoli?

That remains to be seen. But if they do, you can always smother it with melted cheese.

Was Hunter S. Thompson an admirer of Spiro Agnew?

Probably not: “Hunter S. Thompson once characterized Agnew as a ‘flat-out, knee-crawling thug with the morals of a weasel on speed.' But he was Nixon’s vice president for five years, and he only resigned when he was caught red-handed taking cash bribes across his desk in the White House.’  This was absolutely untrue.  As any undergraduate zoology major knows, weasels on speed behave very differently." Brainstorm 

Does anybody here speak jive?

Beaver’s mom, but she’s dead.

Twenty-four Hours in Four Words

Moved piano. Slept well.

Experience vs. Dreams

“Everything in this book really happened, but some of the things that happened only happened in my head.” Geoff Dyer, Yoga for People Who Can’t Be Bothered to Do It.

“People always think something's all true.”
J. D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye

“Of course it is happening inside your head, Harry, but why on earth should that mean that it is not real?”
J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows

The other day, I arranged more than one terrarium on the table outside by my mural. The small terraria are real; the view from the painted window is not real. But the overall effect is pleasing.

The other day, a person I know described a vivid experience involving a train passing outside her bedroom window. In passing, the noisy train had woken her from a nice nap. She recounted that there was a neighboring lady who was going to buy the train, which was clearly frivolous and impractical.

The person recounting this experience is a dementia patient confined to a wheelchair and living in the midst of suburban houses where the nearest passing train is more than ten miles away. Her days are so routine as to be mind-numbingly boring, and I figure her dream-life is compensating by giving her something interesting to experience.

I am not the first person to speculate that if something does happen but only inside one’s own head such events are as real as experience as far as our brains are concerned. But what about the flip side of the question: can my brain insist that something I saw while awake was merely a dream, to be kicked to the curb of memory lane? There are more things these days that I’d rather forget than remember. At least, things that I can recall at the moment. For example, I’d rather remember the lovely blooming white iris, and forget the small crocodile lurking in the background.

It is sobering for me to consider that the foundation of my cognitive functions in the future rests on the shaky structure being constructed of my present experiences. Perhaps it’s time for me to research the whole lucid dreaming thing, so I can attempt to establish a less bewildering muddle of experiences to remember.

Then again, perhaps not. I do like trains.

Seize the Vicodin

Remember when you were young, you shone like the sun
Shine on you crazy diamond
Now there’s a look in your eyes, like black holes in the sky
Shine on you crazy diamond
- - Gilmour, Water, Wright, Shine on You Crazy Diamond

It’s poppy season in Afghanistan: beautiful but deadly, and not just for those who grow and consume the harvest.

Meanwhile, back in America, it’s April Fool’s Day. The news stories about New York school officials censoring words from performance tests to avoid upsetting children are, regrettably, not a joke. After all, it’s not just New York where, for example, censoring words that might make kids feel bad like “poverty” and “divorce” are not the only example of such attempts to cocoon children from the really, really bad old world. It’s also no joke that California apparently bans the word “weed” from tests. Of course, as a gardener, I too, am upset by weeds…

In honor of poppy season/April Fools Day, I am hereby instituting a dress code for my blog. Please don’t read or post here if you’re not tastefully and modestly clothed. A bit of cleavage or a glimpse of a bulging codpiece is upsetting enough to your friends and family. Please spare the rest of us.

On a related note, there’s another line from the Pink Floyd song quoted above that has always mystified me: “… you wore out your welcome with random precision…” Does anybody know what that means?

Once again, I have achieved a world record in labels that will never be seen together again.

Tea Gardens

“Tea is nought but this.
First you make the water boil,
Then infuse the tea.
Then you drink it properly.
That is all you need to know.”
Sen Rikyu

It may be hard to believe, but back in the day, many people in my generation were loud, opinionated, and ready to protest anything that offended our sensibilities. It was exhausting work being so passionate and ideological, particularly about stuff I understood so little. Some of us educated hippies who survived mellowed down as we aged. Many of us came late to discover the appeal of Asian arts and philosophies. Something about Eastern arts are particularly peaceful and refreshing to Western eyes, particularly when it comes to gardens. Pictured first is a portion of the zen garden at the Japanese Friendship Garden in Balboa Park, San Diego.

Like Chinese scholars striving to master the four art forms we cultivated various oriental arts. Some of us got tattoos of Chinese characters. Some of us took calligraphy classes in adult ed. Some of us took up yoga or tai chi or some more clearly martial arts. Some of us became Buddhists, as sincere and innocent as Lisa Simpson. Some - in denial about their OCD - learned to practice the strictly choreographed formal art of tea, or Cha-no-yu, which literally means hot water for tea in Japanese.

I fell in love with the Japanese Tea Garden, a supreme expression in gardening of a style of spare but not austere rusticity. Japanese tea gardens are subtle with muted lights and colors, never flashy with banks of colorful flowers and foliage. Like the tea and the ceremony, Japanese gardens originated in China, a place known for their own unique gardening style that is both substantially different from and similar to what evolved into the Japanese Tea Garden style. My backyard has become what a polite and charitable observer might call a fusion of Japanese Tea Garden and the kind of small scale Chinese Garden designed to permit many small vignettes for “’in position viewing’ i.e. lingering observation from fixed angles” as Chen Congzhou calls them.

Pictured here is the tsukubai arrangement at the Japanese Friendship Garden in Balboa Park. Close outside the door onto the small sheltered patio (the fourth picture, below) is my attempt to create an authentic tsukubai water basin with a stone lantern. Apart from a struggling carpet of thyme which is the closest I can get to moss, there are three small trees: a black pine that will be another 20 years before it even begins to take the shape I intend, a small clumping bamboo, and struggling weeping cherry that I happen to love it despite it’s inappropriateness for this style and for this climate zone. These three – pine, plum, and bamboo – are known as the three friends of winter, which is a story for another post.

Because my backyard is not conveniently located Japanese mountain stream my water basin filled from a small bamboo pipe flows over into a basin with a pump to re-circulates the water. The basin itself is from a local Chinese importer: a grey granite-colored carved stone basin that has been worn shiny and black over the years.

The stone lantern pictured here is a Japanese s style named after a famous tea master Furuta Oribe. An Oribe doro is distinguished by its cleaner line, its secular lack of carvings religious iconography, and its lack of pedestal stone. This one is in the Japanese Friendship Garden has a tiny slice of new moon that would glow when lit in the long summer twilight. A.L. Sadler says (in Cha-No-You: The Japanese Tea Ceremony (1933)), “Where a stone lantern has a ‘New Moon’ shaped opening in its top this should always be turned toward the west, while a Full Moon shaped one should be turned toward the east, but others consider this of no great importance and prefer to turn the lantern so that the light looks best in the garden.” The one pictured here has been placed with the tiny moon facing west.

The partly obscured lantern pictured here in my tsukubai garden is clearly Japanese, with 8-petaled lotus the Buddhist symbol of purity comprising the heavy pedestal, and the top finial shaped like a lotus bud. Called the Kasuga lantern, this style takes its name from the famous Kasuga shrine in Nara.

Apart from the technicalities, there is another deeper layer of understanding tea gardens that appeals to me. Imitating style is relatively easy to learn. Mastering design is difficult. The reasons for this have something to do with the way experts teach. I’m used to the Western approach where it’s all outlined in books with footnotes and exhausting detail. It was relatively easy for me to compose and execute my tsukubai based on a bit of research, a few really nice local rocks, and some plant substitutions: like drought-tolerant creeping thyme in lieu of dew-drenched moss.

Much of what we consider inscrutably mysterious teachings in Japanese expertise - from designing and building tea gardens, to conducting proper tea ceremonies, to that thing about the white cat statues that wave hello - is simply due to the unfamiliar Eastern way of teaching. Asian teachers teach by silence, instead simply doing. The student learns by watching, over and over again, sometimes for years and years, until the student learns how to see and to understand the subtle language of the art. “For it is a rule of this art that its experts do not explain the reason and cause of the things they do in this matter by words but by deeds only, for they leave everything to the consideration and reasoning of their pupils.” (Jao Rodrigues, Account of Sixteenth-Century Japan, quoted in Marc Peter Keane’s The Japanese Tea Garden).

Rikyu’s entire spoken words on teaching the tea ceremony he is largely credited with formalizing is quoted at the top of this post. Simplicity itself. Thus, a wise man once said, the student becomes the master.

All this is to report that we went to a few genuine Japanese gardens last week, notably the Huntington Garden’s Japanese Garden (pictured immediately above) and the Japanese Friendship Garden in Balboa Park in San Diego. The more I learn about tea gardens and Asian gardens in general, the more there is to learn, and the more pleasure I derive from the study. Although I love reading and copying and probably corrupting authentic Asian garden styles, I learn more from the pleasure of seeing the real things.

Nutritional Tomatoes

“Homegrown tomatoes ripened all the way on the vine have about 1/3 more vitamin C than artificially ripened supermarket varieties; and organic tomatoes – those that get their nitrogen fro manure and compost – are higher in antioxidants than conventionally grown tomatoes fed on commercial fertilizers... A study conducted at UC, Davis found that organic tomatoes contained nearly twice as much quercetin and kaempferol – flavonoids with potent antioxidant activity – as their conventionally grown cousins.”
Rebecca, Rupp, How Carrots Won the Trojan War

Our last frost date in So Cal is 3/31, so we have already selected and started our warm season seeds for the Veggie Garden. I happened to be reading Rupp’s book a month ago when we began planning our summer veggie garden.

Rupp’s book goes on to mention that some tomato varieties have been specially bred for high nutrient content. So, I went online searching for nutritious tomatoes, and particularly the P20 Blue tomato and the Health Kick. Solana Seeds in Quebec had the P20 seeds (pricey at $0.30 each), and we got the Health Kick seeds from Burpee.

Since this is the first season we’ve selected tomatoes to plant based on nutritional recommendations, I also made up an informational sign with the part of Rupp's book quoted above that will be posted next to our nutritious tomatoes.

A bit more research on the P20 reveals it’s a challenge to get the tomatoes to stay purple because the color is "light-sensitive" i.e. the more sun, the better. The Oregon State University FAQ was written a few years before the seed became commercially available, but it includes the interesting information that OSU bred this seed from a rare that is one of the few that has not only blue skin but blue meat in the center. I'm not sure if I'm ready for purple tomato sauce.

We have bought a few heirloom starts from local nurseries to get us up and running as soon as the rain stops. But we are trying to start most of our tomato crop from seed this year, something we’ve not done for the last few years. Since last summer’s weather worked against a bountiful tomato crop, we have high hopes for this year. Let’s hope the weather cooperates.

Spring Cleaning

“Come spring
You can find me rolling in fields
That are exploding in
Holy battles

Of scents, of sounds—everything is
A brilliant colored nova on a stem.”
- Hafiz

Spring cleaning is at least spring something, right? Now I don’t want to say anything bad about hoarders, but… Oops, just did. So I might as well.

It’s not like I’ve been denial about the hoarders I live with. But this seriously surpassed my worst-case scenarios by several orders of magnitude. Ok, there is no reason for a reasonable person to keep empty househould appliance boxes. But empty blisterpaks trump empty blender boxes, my friend. Thankfully, I have a friend with a pickup truck and some strong helpers. She even brought me boxes!

A lifetime of greeting cards filling two big filing boxes. Three generations of photographs filling approx 6 big filing cartons, but spread out into rubber-banded bundles stuffed absolutely everywhere. And a carton of tin film canisters for movie film, plus cameras, splicing supplies and snippets of film. Another carton of obsolete cameras. Some of the kitchen household products like corn starch are suitable to grace an “Antique” (sic) store kitchen filled with obsolete kitchen crap. Several decorative oil lamps in addition to an appalling number of even more appalling ceramic figurines about which the less said the better. (I've said too much).

Tech Support Guy: Some of the cameras are worth a lot.
Weeping Sore: Not to me. The 78 rpm records? The LPs?
TSG: (Crickets)

There was a DAV Auxiliary rulebook from 1934. But the logic of keeping this must have been the update from 1959. Drawer after drawer of junk drawers. Anybody a Firesign Theater fan? Remember the game show where the contestant, handed her prize, complained loudly "Why this is a bag of shit?" The announcer said, "But it's GOOD shit" which the shit in these drawers is not.

New rule: no household may have any more than one single junk drawer, preferably in the kitchen. Corollary: no saving broken crayons, unused yellowing address books, calendars for 1983, broken screw drivers. And for god’s sake – no empty packages for household products that were then stored separately and never used. That’s not three rules by the way, it’s a compound Junk Drawer Rule worthy of this situation.

To date Tech Support Guy has mailed 8 big cartons of primo crap to family members, like a small sample of the lifetime’s worth of mothers day cards and including the photos I’d put into albums years ago until I realized the Stygian nature of this effort. There are five large cartons on the closet shelf of loose photographs in no particular order for TSG to review. Fat chance: medical science has conclusively proven hoarding is an inheritable disorder. I've left several notes among my cartons of my own crap apologizing to my descendants.

But it's not all old stuff. Some stuff is from my lifetime. To date I’ve emptied over a dozen large garbage cans of ordinary crap – dragging the laden cans down the hill and the empty ones back up. We have 5 garbage cans and only three lids, but that’s another story). And it’s been raining. And you don’t want to get on of those red tags stuck to an overloaded can full of water soaked greeting cards so all your neighbors can see you don’t have an experienced gardener to take care of these chores. (Then there’s the recycle bin full of empty wine bottles: yet another story.)

The frickin’ ray of sunshine to brighten my life is having an up-to-date reference if I step on a tetnus-infected needle amid the clutter. Yeah. 1933. That, and knowing that ALL of the drawers are now empty. The boxes are almost all packed up. The pickup comes tomorrow for the rest of the boxes and much of the furniture. And this just in: my marmalade not only gelled, it kicks ass!

So, in case I was in denial about the hoarders before, I have been rolling around in a dusty closet amid overstuffed boxes about to explode, and I have seen the light from brilliant colored novas in packing boxes. Close enough, Hafiz?

So, I made Meyer Lemon Marmalade

“THERE HAD BEEN earlier drinking than usual in the wine-shop of Monsieur Defarge… This had been the third morning in succession, on which there had been early drinking at the wine-shop of Monsieur Defarge.”
Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities

It takes three days for Rachel Saunders’ Blue Chair Jam Cookbook recipe entitled Meyer Lemon Marmalade with Mandarins & Lavender. My only prior jam/jelly experience has been decidedly “small batch” compared to this undertaking, and the mystery of how to make the stuff gel has sometimes escaped me. This is a big recipe and I opted not to reduce it in the hopes that my gelling problem would be avoided. I ended up with about 8 cups. The success of this adventure remains a bit of a cliffhanger. I am not supposed to move the filled jars until tomorrow morning when they’re cooled. To move them before they cool overnight is to risk un-gelling.

I encountered problems.

The first problem was mandarins; specifically, there are none. I got fat California tangerines, not tiny Clementines, but orange-sized fruits a lovely golden red orange instead. All fruit, including the 4 ounces of Eureka lemon juice from lemons I picked myself, is organic. The sugar is not, regrettably. Since they are a bit more tart than oranges – one might even say bitter, if one was inclined to dramatic foreshadowing - I increased the sugar. So, I actually attempted to make Meyer Lemon with Tangerines & Lavender Jam. The tangerines are discarded after cooking down to a sticky broth and draining overnight, but their juice is a redder gold than oranges and imparts a deeper color to my final product.

The second problem was finding what Saunders optimistically calls “doneness.” She says that will take boiling the lovely ingredients “at least 30 minutes” but neglects to specify an outside time. She also has a doneness test more complex than learning to fly a B737 that involves taking a “representative half-spoonful” with pre-chilled spoons chilled and returning the sample to the freezer for a somewhat imprecise “three or four minutes”. She instructs you to freeze five spoons for this purpose. Two and a half hours of rapid cooking and about 12 spoons later, the gloop was still dripping off the spoon, albeit more slowly. Perhaps I’m unskilled in selecting a truly representative half spoon consisting of a jury of my peers; which is ironic because some of my best friends are slow drips.

Instead of using a lavender sprig, I put some culinary (French) lavender in a muslin bag and moistened it with about 4 drops of lavender extract. Then I put the bag in instead, as the recipe instructed, when the mix was removed from the heat.

By this time, my blood glucose level was probably in the low thousands from continued tasting of the delicious gloop drips. You don’t expect me to let the stuff drip off the spoon and down the sink do you? It’s delicious. And the payoff for risking a blood sugar spike that might leave me comatose, was that I learned something that, let’s say, justifies the tasting. The volume of my jam was reduced by more than ¼, and as water was lost in steam, the remaining liquid got heavier and sweeter. So while I offset the bitter tangerine taste by adding an extra half-pound of sugar to the 2.5 pounds of sugar specified in the recipe, I’m glad I didn’t add more because the mix gets much sweeter as it evaporates water and thickens.

In addition to the specific challenges enumerated above, and not even counting probably even more I’ve blissfully already forgotten, I overcame a number of general problems.

First of all, for some reason possibly related to all my bad karma coming home to roost, everybody called on the phone today – each call arriving at the perfectly awful time when I had sticky hands. Tech Support Guy was out shopping. He called. The cooking store has my new slow cooker, aka crock pot. They called. The furnace filter guy is going to be late, is that ok? Ok? I didn’t even know he was scheduled. But interruptions derail my train of thought, as well as my jam procedures and I had to wash my hands about 100 times because of interruptions. And this floor isn’t going to get itself sticky, you know.

Then there is the stipulation of the parties that I’m a klutz. I’m what you’d politely call “clumsy,” and working with sticky stuff in spoons being carried back and forth from stove to freezer to sink, was a Challenge that defeated my pathetic attempts at Poise with one hand tied behind it’s back. Turns out however, the floor took on a delicate non-skid sticky quality that actually steadied me. Finally, I used some delightfully shaped jars that hold 4 ounces, and filling them without a proper funnel is an exercise in making a sticky mess. The small sized jars enable me to give samples to friends – assuming I’m not ashamed of the final product tomorrow. Counter tops are also sticky enough that I believe my cat would be stuck like a fly to a flystrip had she attempted to traverse them. My stovetop is a mess worthy of the witches scene in Macbeth.

But there are rewards already, even though the final mission is yet to be accomplished. First, the house smells yummy with lemon and garlic. And no. I was roasting some garlic and onion to add to the fresh asparagus and broccoli and bok choy harvested from the Veggie Garden this morning. I was caramelizing the garlic and onion tossed in garlic olive oil and balsamic vinegar and roasting in the tiny toaster oven. The roasted onion garlic mix is now marinating with the green vegetables and will be returned to the toaster oven for dinner. Surprisingly, lemon and garlic work on an olfactory level.

And here’s the real payoff. Figuring my blood sugar was pretty much toast anyway from all the tasting, I found a way to use the leftover jam that wouldn’t fit in the jars I’d sterilized - about 1/3 of a cup: 3 parts vodka, 2 parts runny lemon lavender marmalade, and a dash of lavender bitters. I’m having the first martooni I’ve had in months. So, like that flyer I got in this afternoon’s mail, I may already be a winner.

Calla Lily “Green Goddess”

"To gild refined gold, to paint the lily,
To throw a perfume on the violet,
To smooth the ice, or add another hue
Unto the rainbow, or with taper-light
To seek the beauteous eye of heaven to garnish,
Is wasteful and ridiculous excess."
- William Shakespeare, King John Act IV, Scene 2

Calla lillies (Zantedeschia aethiopica) are grown from rhizomes and bloom late in the spring. Callas are native to South Africa, where they thrive in the humidity of places like Madagascar, often blooming throughout winter. Its African origins probably account for one of calla lily’s common names, Varkoor, which means pig’s ear in Afrikaans. Other common names for this magnificent plant are arum lily, trumpet lily and pig lily.

The calla lily is not a true lily at all. Typically, this misnomer was the fault of Carolus Linneaus, who, in the mid 18th century messed up a lot of botanical stuff in his attempt to classify everything that moved. Linnaeus called it Calla aethiopica. It wasn’t until 1826 when it was placed in a genus of its own: Zantedeschia.

Like many ancient flowers, lilies carry a lot of symbolic baggage. The ancient Greek myth held that the lily grew from Hera’s (Roman: Juno) milk, which was spilled when she was nursing Heracles (Roman: Hercules). The Romans associated the calla lily with lust and sexuality because of the phallic flower stalk and the yellow pistil. Strangely, despite its decidedly male shape, the pistil is the female sexual organ of the plant.

Before the Victorians invented the Language of Flowers based mostly on appearance, the symbolic meaning of the lily had been overtaken by the hegemony of Christian iconography. Christian myth has it that lilies used to be yellow. When picked by the Virgin, they became white. It’s also said that the lily grew where Eve’s tears fell when she was expelled from Paradise, but that myth might just be the first recorded instance of seasonal allergies.

In Roman times, lilies were associated with death and symbolized sympathy. Now days despite (or perhaps because of?) its toxicity, calla lily is associated with marriage. It contains calcium oxalic crystals that can be toxic if ingested.

Lilies are associated with the Virgin Mary, often painted in the hand of the Angel Gabriel when he announced that her pregnancy test was positive. Because of its associations with virginal purity and chastity, one of my favorite legends is associated with a test for virginity involving the lily. According to Ruth Binney, Natures’s Ways: lore, legend, fact and fiction:“Following witch lore, parents anxious that a daughter might have lost her virginity would feed her powdered yellow lily. If still a virgin she would at once experience the urge to urinate”.

It’s a mystery to me what the urge to pee has to do with virginity, but I do love the evolution of meanings assigned to flowers. I particularly like the “Green Goddess” variety that grows in the bog end of my pond. The green stains look just like the knees of pants worn by a gardener who should have known better than to wear white pants while gardening. Then again, it might just be that I'm rebelling from the whole virginal purity thing and I prefer this variety in my garden because the Green Goddess is stained.

The botanic illustration at the top of this post is from Fragmenta botanica, figuris coloratis illustrata : ab anno 1800 ad annum 1809 per sex fasciculos edita / opera et sumptibus Nicolai Josephi Jacquin.

So, I Made a Quilt

“When money’s tight and is hard to get

And your horse has also ran,

When all you have is a heap of debt –

A PINT OF PLAIN IS YOUR ONLY MAN.
……….


“When stags appear on the mountain high,

with flanks the colour of bran,

when a badger bold can say goodbye,

A PINT OF PLAIN IS YOUR ONLY MAN!”
Flann O’Brien

This first picture is the quilt sandwich being pinned together for final quilting. The solid-colored blocks in olive and red-orange are each embroidered with an art nouveau flower. This picture was about a week ago. My quilt is finally finished.

When I was in high school, our class took a trip to New York City, and we toured the UN. There was a lovely large rug hanging on display somewhere and the guide explained that the traditional weavers of what were then called “Oriental” rugs, always included an error in the intricate patterns because only god was supposed to do perfect. Of course, somebody asked where the error was, which prompted the guide to sigh with exasperation at how widely the high school students had missed the point. Clearly, he/she had no clue where the mistake was. Which is another difference between the UN rug and my quilt because I know where I went wrong.

Operating on that lesson learned long ago at the UN despite the humorless tour guide’s judgment, I intentionally included an error in my quilt. In fact, operating on the tried and true American maxim that if a little is good, more is better, I intentionally included more than one error. Many more in fact, and I hereby state for the record that all errors were intentionally made out of my extreme humility and desire not to be godlike at which I must admit I succeed admirably. I make no admission that drinking while quilting is perhaps an unwise practice, or that a couple of pints of plain while quilting is likely to introduce more errors than a humble sober quilter might make. No badgers said goodbye while I was quilting, although a cat appeared intermittently.

By the time I was done, my sewing machine said I spent over 80 hours of sewing time. I estimate I spent 2-3 times that much time in cutting, piecing, pinning, and ironing, and I’m not even including time spent in ripping out mistakes, drinking beer or saying goodbye to my kitty. The quilt is kitty-approved.

I Am a Woman and I Vote

“ Quot capita tot ingenia.”
- Erasmus Adages 1.3.7; see also Tilley M583, quoted in Gratiae Ludentes, or Jestes from the University A Renaissance Jestbook

This common Latin proverb attributed to Erasmus is generally translated, “So many men, so many opinions.”

However, those wacky English once translated this proverb: so many heads, so many wits. A problem then arose because the proverb was found to be a manifest untruth. As one guy said: “For I, though my acquaintance bee but small;
 know many heads that have no wit at all.”

Don’t we all?

Going Off the Rails

“Today I want you get up and get dressed to lace-up shoes when you first get up in the morning. This means fix your hair and face, too. In order for us to change ourselves, we need to remind ourselves of what we are doing. I did this with yellow sticky notes throughout my home to guide me through my day. This was the beginning of my home control journal. I had little notes on my bathroom mirror to remind me to get dressed to shoes. Shine your sink before you go to bed.”
Flylady.net

Shining sinks. That’s it? Why didn’t my mother teach me this? I’ve lived my miserable disorganized life sunk in the squalor of sinks stained with grime and particulates filtered from leftover dishwater; scarred with rust resembling bloodstains; slimy with grease gobs around the fixtures; fouled with the odor of an overworked garbage disposal belching undigested garlic and fried cabbage into the miasma of a decidedly unshiny sink overflowing with bowls of dried up uneaten cat food and congealing mystery meat fused to plates with egg yolks; stacked to almost toppling with the evidence of my disorder that shames me every time I shuffle into the kitchen wearing my bedroom slippers with smashed down heels, and a dingy cotton robe trailing its tattered sash behind on the unwept linoleum me to get more Doritos.

It is no wonder that I’ve had to stick notes on my bathroom mirror to remind me to do some stuff like put in my false teeth; put on shoes; and stop doing other stuff like to stop like meth; and spreading STDs; and watching HSN all day.

Shining frickin’ sinks? If I was given to profanity, I would have added some at the end of the previous sentences. Fortunately, I awoke this morning and found a note on the mirror to clean up my potty mouth, and shine some sinks sporting shoes.

What, you ask is Flylady.net? Let’s just all hope it’s satire.

After the Thing Has Happened

"When one is a child, when one is young, when one has not yet reached the age of recognition, one thinks that the world is strong, that the strength of God is endless and unchanging. But after the thing has happened--whatever that thing might be--that brings recognition, then one knows irrevocably how very fragile is the world, how very, very fragile; it is like one of those ideas that one has in dreams: so clear and so self-explaining are they that we make no special effort to remember. Then of course they vanish as we wake and there is nothing there but the awareness that something very clear has altogether vanished." 
-- Russell Hoban, Pilgermann

I too, have known the feeling that something clear has vanished. Increasingly frequently in fact. True, I make no special effort to remember these things that seem clear at the time because such moments of clarity are often accompanied by my use of prescription medications and/or alcohol. Coincidence?

Sometimes, I try to write things down to recall later, but this most often leaves me with an even greater sense of frustration because all I am left with upon awakening from my dreams are fragments of sentences that make no sense without some mysterious and now missing context. Here are examples:

• Referring to self in 3rd person is pretentious. Someday, I should have invented time travel in order to refer to myself in the fourth person

• My smart wool socks have all shrunk. Slightly retarded socks?

• Désolé, la page que vous demandez est introuvable

• Compare/contrast offense being given vs offense being taken

• “In later editions of TOKOLOGY, alluding to methods of limiting offspring, the following paragraph occurs: ‘By some a theory called sedular absorption is advanced. This involves intercourse without culmination. No discharge is allowed. People practicing this method claim the highest possible enjoyment, no loss of vitality, and perfect control of the fecundating power.’" - Alice Stockham, M.D. Karezza: Ethics of Marriage (1903)

Perhaps I will institute a policy of simply listing these shards of ideas in my blog so that if I ever recapture those fleeting states of mental clarity I might remember an entire self-explaining blog-worthy concept.

Meanwhile, why should my blog be any more coherent than my mind?

What Year is This?

“Let me prophesy that different and improved methods will be devised to accomplish woman's work. The mothers of the future will be less burdened, and at the same time achieve more satisfactory results in the labor performed… Under the present system, many instances of demoralization in domestic life are in consequence of the mother's inability to fulfill all the requirements of her position. She is the tie that holds the home— mainspring of home-life. In the prophesied future, she may not wash all the dishes and bake all the bread, any more than she now does the spinning and weaving; yet the maternal love, life and instinct will build a nest far more adapted to successful rearing of offspring than is done under present conditions.” (Page 97—98)
Alice B. Stockham, M.D. Tokology, A Book for Every Woman (1893) “CHAPTER VII. HYGIENE OF PREGNANCY—DRESS. Congenial surroundings—Overtaxed mothers—An old lady's story— An every-day experience—Lucrative work—An author's interesting testimony—Prophecy for the future—Dress and fashion Commonsense shoes—Can ladies stand in street cars? —Bates waist—the divided skirt—Equestrian tights—Dress and freedom for women—Dress in pregnancy—What corsets can be worn—Fashion in deformity”

In Victorian times, some gentlemen of good breeding considered improper for ladies of good breeding to cultivate orchids because they had disturbingly shaped flowers that might suggest genitalia. Which makes sense because women might have otherwise learned that their genitalia disturbingly resembled flowers – at least those brazen whores who actually peeked.

Just yesterday, responding to a question about female soldiers in combat, Rick Santorum said, in his typically articulate and cogent way, "I think that could be a very compromising situation, where people naturally may do things that may not be in the interest of the mission because of other types of emotions that are involved." In fairness, he later explained that he meant that the men soldiers were the ones who might get too emotional seeing the ladies in dangerous combat situations. So, calm down girls.

Catholic institutions object to paying for prescription contraceptives, not because of the money, and not because their teachings have failed to deter the people choosing to use them, but because the practice conflicts with church doctrine. Those who propose that churches should not have to comply with civil laws when they conflict with their religious beliefs would presumably also concede that other religious groups should not have to comply with laws prohibiting female “circumcision” or marriage for 13 year old girls.

While we’re at it, let’s bring back laws that legally protect women - just like any other property owned by their menfolk. It might be best for everyone if we go back to the days when society sheltered and protected delicate little ladies from the coarse and throbbing world lest they become - as Mr. Santorum almost said - hysterical. No wonder there is such widespread "demoralization in domestic life" going around these days.

Upon consideration, that whole equal rights for women idea has probably run its course. Think what a relief it will be for us all when we can go back to having men give up their seats on street cars so ladies don’t have to stand, instead of having to compete with them for jobs.

The Ineluctable Modality of the Visible

“Have nothing in your house that you do not know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful.”
William Morris

Ok, this could be a problem. While I’m not ready to debut on the Hoarders TV program, the house I inhabit is also occupied by those whose aspirations toward that doubtful goal are thwarted only by their chronic indolence, low expectations and ultimately, by a failure of imagination.

Yesterday, while discoursing on this very topic, Tech Support Guy reminded me that we only have one junk room. He was referring to the room that is piled eight feet deep and high with the furniture of our descendents to the point where you can open the door, but only the cat can proceed further into the room - as if the entire stack of boxes and furniture was placed there for her climbing pleasure. And who’s to say?

In fairness, TSG is correct. The junk in the rest of the rooms of our home is loosely confined to stacks, dusty corners, and generally reposing languidly on indulgent furniture no longer being used for its intended purposes. In theory, an adventurous archeologist untroubled by any trace of claustrophobia might be able to carefully deconstruct these stacks layer-by-layer and read therein the history of my ultimately futile attempts to disperse the clutter. The trained expert might discern patterns there that might explain my descent into madness.

I could have as likely unscrambled an egg, but there was a time when I tried to organize my home, because I become more agitated in a cluttered environment than a canary in a coal mine.

I now realize that canaries in coal mines don’t struggle - they simply fall peacefully unconscious. Which is totally better than being crushed to death by a toppling pile of old shoes; or being speared through the heart by a broken umbrella knocked off a pile of cardboard boxes filled with broken strings of Xmas lights. Or dying of an anxiety attack brought on by inhaling hazardous waste dislodged in a misguided attempt to dust.

These days, I prefer instead to drink cheap wine and fashion my own creation myth from the clutter slowly burying me. I like to imagine that Chaos might one day arise from deep within the vast unreachable spaces filled with three lifetimes of crap, possibly exploding with a big banging noise from which gods, men and all the other stuff of a new universe might burst into existence from a dispersing cloud old papers, manuals for obsolete software, discarded articles of clothing, paper clips, ancient AOL trial offer CDs, and broken teacups waiting to be glued back together.

For all I know, the precise composition of crap needed to create this new universe might be forming at this very moment deep within the clutter in my junk room, a sort of cosmic spontaneous generation stirring unseen beneath the surface layers. Perhaps the formula lacks only a fragment of a handwritten musical score, a torn antimacassar, or some chipped cowrie shells. I’m sure they must be here somewhere…

To My Husband of 25 Years

"Most like an arch-two weaknesses that lean
into a strength. Two fallings become firm.
Two joined abeyances become a term
naming the fact that teaches fact to mean...

" It is by falling in and in we make
the all-bearing point, for one another's sake,
in faultless failing, raised by our own weight."

- John Ciardi, Most Like and Arch This Marriage

This isn't how we planned it. How could we not have realized that we'd grow old? But here we stand, holding on to each other's arms for support; two weaknesses leaning blissfully into each other to make a strong marriage. It's been quite an adventure so far. So, what's next? I'm signing on for another 25. Another quote, this time from Dag Hammarskjold:

For all that has been, thanks
For all that will be, yes.

Stir Fried Rice and Advance Directives

"If I could wake up in a different place, at a different time, could I wake up as a different person?"
Chuck Palahniuk

If I were nominated to serve on the Supreme Court, Congress probably wouldn’t approve me. I hasten to add that it’s not what you’re thinking: i.e. because my dues to the California Bar Association are almost ten years overdue. It’s the other criminal activity I have engaged in during the course of my lightly checkered past. Let’s face it, who hasn’t at one time or another committed an illegal act like, say, failing to return library books on time.

I was reminded that today when I went to make pork fried rice to use up the leftover pork shoulder roast. My favorite Chinese food cookbook is “Victor Sen Yung’s Great Wok Cookbook”. You might know this author as “Hop Sing, the Chinese cook on the ‘Bonanza’ TV series”. My copy of this 1974 edition was due at the Department of Public Libraries, Montgomery County, Maryland, Silver Spring a while back. Specifically: 2/14/75.

In my defense, I was moving to San Diego then, and plus the book is really good, notwithstanding that I didn’t particularly care for Bonanza and the homoerotic overtones of all those guys riding horses; or that I envied Little Joe’s perfect frosted hair. Perhaps not so strangely, he’s (Victor, not Little Joe) never steered me wrong, or should I say, “stirred” me wrong, particularly when making fried rice.

Which isn’t a terribly smooth segue to the topic of today’s post: posting about stuff besides gardening. In fact, it’s no segue at all: from stir fried rice to blogging -- unless you want to consider the existential similarity that when either are good, they are very very good, and when they are bad they are inedible, or illiterate, or both.

Truman Capote famously distinguished between what he called writing and what he called typing. I am not so discriminating, I carelessly type my outrage du jour or whatever I’m inspired to write by what I happen to be reading. I submit that sometimes typing is the best way to vent, particularly when you have, over the years, had your own personal spell-check learn all manner of profanities, thus preventing it from whinging about their prolific use.

But back to posting. I make no apologies. My garden blog has, much like my life, overflowed the tidy stack of garden-oid topics like a stack of 2011 financial stuff being assembled for the tax lady that I just knocked over this afternoon. Like this once tidy stack, like my blog, now spills all over the floor with posts about train rides, fried rice, lethally incompetent bureaucrats, and the therapeutic benefits of posting the accumulating evidence that there must be some conspiracy that is making me feel old, sore, tired and in need of updating my advance directive.

Which brings me back to the other part of the title of this post: Advance Directives, updating. After due consideration, I’d like mine to depart from the state-approved form into a more creative writing exercise. I’m still polishing my customized AD but here’s what I’ve got so far:

In the event that one – no make that two – or more of the following conditions are manifested in my behavior:
a) Drooling even when sober;
b) Wearing diapers someone else has to change;
c) Letting my once excellent personal hygiene practices slide like congealing gravy down a volcano of mashed potatoes on a chipped dinner plate;
d) Become just another tedious old lady whose spittle-punctuated rants involve rage at inanimate objects that piss me off;
e) I happen to wake up one morning as a different person and cease to be the devoted, compassionate and generous friend/relative/sister/favorite aunt who you all know and love:

I hereby authorize my authorized representative to respectfully hold a pillow against my face so I can “Say goodnight to Mr. Pillow”, subject however, to the following:

In the event that said authorized representative determines that greater comedic value can be realized thereby, authorized representative is hereby authorized instead to dress me like a Franciscan nun and write with a magic marker on my pristine white over starched bib: This is what happens if you don’t make the Nine First Fridays, or you have sex before marriage; and prop me in a folding chair along the path to the parking lot after Mass. (For the record, I must have made 8/9 of dozens of First Fridays and effort should count here).

Notwithstanding the foregoing however, and subject to all the other provisions of this advance directive without regard to the degree said provisions may be found inconsistent or simply contradictory, please change my diaper sometimes.

(Finally, imagine you were trying to set a record for keywords or labels for a post that were extremely unlikely to be seen in each others' company. If you were, I just did.)

Sleeping on a Train

"In the morning I came awake as I always do, like a man trapped in a car going over a cliff."
-- Russell Hoban, The Medusa Frequency

It sounded like a good idea – taking the train from the bottom of California to the top of Oregon. I have the time and the scenery alternates between lovely and imaginative in a surrealistic kind of way. Between Richmond and Oakland, there are miles and miles of trackside graffiti, some of it displaying a sophisticated use of color and line, and some of it clearly violating the Sponge Bob franchise copyright.

Only it takes a long time. The first leg, from San Diego to LA is just over 2.5 hours. The trip from LA to Portland is a nice round 30 hours. Together, the trip is, let’s see now, wait for it: too damn long. And that’s not counting a layover of several hours in the gorgeous art deco station at LA. The experience is spoiled a bit when armed police demand to be shown tickets in order to prevent beggars and homeless people from living in the nice comfortable chairs in the nice heated station. Only the police don’t prevent it, managing instead only to keep the desperately poor people moving and sleep-deprived and a bit cranky.

The accommodations in what is disingenuously not called steerage are tantalizingly almost comfy. Although the seats provide more foot room than first class airline seats, and although they not only recline to about 45 degrees they also include an occasionally functional shelf under the seat designed to lift up your lower leg at a 30-degree angle, they don't promote an optimal sleeping experience. The idea that with the seat reclined and the footrest thingie raised is that you get to attempt to sleep stretched out in a zig and then a zag, a bit like sleeping on three steps of a narrow padded staircase.

The seats take away in width what they give in length. They also lack a center arm, acquainting you with your seatmate perhaps a bit more than would be desired. When you try to sleep, you find yourself snuggled up against a stranger close enough to smell the beer he/she had in the billiard room or whatever they call the car with the bar.

Then there’s the other passengers sleeping in the same room: the smokers making a stampede to the doors when station stops are longer than 30 seconds, the lurching drunks, the fussing babies, the kicking toddlers, and the sprawling sleeping teenage girls whose untidy luggage in matching plastic grocery bags migrates to the center aisle while they fling the stray arm or leg out to snag the wary traveler.

And don’t get me started on the restrooms. In fact, competent Amtrack staff manage to keep the restrooms mostly tidy, if a bit under-ventilated. Too bad passengers seem intent on bathing (or perhaps doing their laundry) in the miniature sinks while managing to spray water throughout the tiny compartments and not bothering to wipe it up. Perhaps such careless behavior is prompted by the signs on the mirrors saying Clean Up After Yourself without using the word “Please”. How rude, am I right?

In the end, apart from discovering that I am too old to enjoy the adventure of spending two days and a night on trains with strangers, I found my faith in my fellow travelers renewed. People are generally kind, tolerant, and quick to aid one another. An older man saw me taking pictures out the window and stopped by to advise me of an approaching photo op. A younger man saw me struggling to place my suitcase in an overhead bin and quickly did the job for me without even being asked.

A guy in the café car told me the small bottles of red wine were chilled adjacent to the white (!) but would be warmed up just right by the time we made it to through the five intervening cars to the last car we both occupied. I had the perfect lunch. A grandma with a small child shared a sympathetic smile as she saw me cringe away from my zaftig seatmate during the dark of an almost endless night.

And best of all, the gentle swaying of the train, accompanied by the squeaks and rattles and bumps is one of the most soothing experiences in the world.

Out of the Dark

After a million years of shining
The sun doesn’t say to the earth –
‘You owe me.’
Imagine a love like this.
-- Hafiz

A day outside like spring, mild in the low 70s and sunny. Because I’m leaving for 10 days, I watered because we haven’t heard the sound of rain in a while. While rain would be a sound for sore ears right now, I expect my wish will be granted in Portland OR. So, I went outside to say hello to the sun as it begins it journey back north, lengthening my days by merely perceptible moments. But something inside me feels the change and knows we’re heading back into the sun.

My petite lemons in the shade nevertheless seem to glow in the reflected light, and to sparkle with the dewy secret of their ripeness. The sprinkler drops have yet to dry on their fragrant skin; their fragrance is a presence in the air nearby, smelling like sunshine.

I see the sun everywhere in the yard this afternoon. This is a good time and a good place to thank my love for this year and bid it gone and, and to imagine more love for everyone in the new year about to begin.

Goodbye 2011, and Good Riddance

“As is the generation of leaves, so is that of humanity. The wind scatters the leaves on the ground, but the live timber burgeons with leaves again in the season of spring returning. So one generation of men will grow while another dies.”

~Homer, Iliad

I’ve been caught up in a plague of stupid. It's too soon to tell if it's fatal.

My recent visit to the Cardiac Nurse Practitioner to recount my increasingly troublesome symptoms and drug side effects was another exercise in futility that always ceases to amaze me. My concerns were met with a blank uncaring shrug and the advice to increase my medications. I've experienced better bedside manner from hospital nurse call buttons. I've experienced more compassion from Chase Bank.

Trying to explain the details of how Chase Bank has once again screwed me would make my eyes bleed, and reading them would make your heart break. That is, unless you already suspected what the greedy, rapacious, inept thieves at Chase Bank do for a living. I've experienced more competence from the California Department of Human Services.

Meanwhile, my friends at California DHS have embarked on yet another round of vague demands for further documentation before ruling on an application for a family member to receive MediCal. In case you’re playing along at home, this is the fourth time they have demanded, and I have submitted, documents to validate the qualifications of the applicant. I have to wonder how many potential applicants simply give up, pack their belongings into a grocery cart, and move into the nearest alley to await death.

If 2011 was a patient on life support, I would tattoo "DNR" on it's forehead. The winter winds can't scatter the misfortunes of 2011 like dead leaves on the ground soon enough for me.

RIP Christopher Hitchens

‘From quiet homes and first beginnings, out to the undiscovered ends, there’s nothing worth the wear of winning but laughter and the love of friends’
Hilaire Belloc’s ’Dedicatory Ode’

Christopher Hitchens died the other day.

To me, Hitchens was an inspired writer. His writing was articulate, amazing, cogent and sparkling throughout with literary gems and original thoughts. He was a master who could craft the perfectly expressed thought and clearly present the most inspired original idea. He could nail the most devastating argument; or voice the most scornfully appropriate criticism; or coin the most delightful term. And because we were both the same age, and shared a similar taste for dark humor, I persuaded myself that I had at least something in common with this complex man whose writing has given me such pleasure over the years – even when I disagreed with him.

You can probably find dozens of tributes by his famous admirers, and samples of his writing on line (here’s one of my favorites) but I particularly was struck by the impromptu eulogy in his brother Richard’s blog today, and from which I take Belloc’s poem quoted above. The post thanks people for their kind wishes and then takes Christopher’s courage as its topic:

“Much of civilisation rests on the proper response to death, simple unalloyed kindness, the desire to show sympathy for irrecoverable less, the understanding that a unique and irreplaceable something has been lost to us. If we ceased to care, we wouldn’t be properly human…

“Here’s a thing I will say now without hesitation, unqualified and important. The one word that comes to mind when I think of my brother is ‘courage’. By this I don’t mean the lack of fear which some people have, which enables them to do very dangerous or frightening things because they have no idea what it is to be afraid. I mean a courage which overcomes real fear, while actually experiencing it…

“He would always rather fight than give way, not for its own sake but because it came naturally to him…

“Courage is deliberately taking a known risk, sometimes physical, sometimes to your livelihood, because you think it is too important not to… I’ve mentioned here before C.S.Lewis’s statement that courage is the supreme virtue, making all the others possible. It should be praised and celebrated, and is the thing I‘d most wish to remember…”

Peter Hitchens on the death of his brother Christopher Hitchens on 12/15/11

Margins of Error

The bells jostle in the tower
The lonely night amid.
And on my tongue the taste is sour
Of all I ever did.
- A.E. Houseman

The days are getting shorter, but soon they will begin to grow marginally longer. There is something about December that makes one think of endings more than beginnings. I always take a deep breath of relief when I make it to the winter solstice. It feels to me like I have rounded the racetrack once more and crossed the finish line to begin another lap. Right now though, tonight is the last full moon of 2011, and I'm not quite at the line, and sorrow dogs my steps.

Right now, as I approach the end of the final lap of the lunar year, the doubts and regrets I carry are heavy, and I keep my thoughts from freezing only by blowing on the last coal of slowly smoldering anger deep inside. If I can hold on another ten days, we can chuckle at the tired family joke – always told on 22 December – about how the days seem to be getting longer.

I came across an old poem I’d saved many years ago on a similar dim December day, and I imagine its speaker must have been writing it on a similar day. It’s a sort of science fiction imagining of a post-apocalyptic future, and it has seeped into my restless dreams, accompanied by the mysterious thumps and squeaks the dark house makes in the night.

I know I should lighten up, just like Houseman should have. It's going to be close this year, but I estimate I have just enough energy left to make it to the solstice. I can only hope my estimate is within the margin of error. After that, things will begin to look up. Which is more than you can say for the people who left this epistle behind.

Blogger removes the lovely spacing of this poem and makes it into solid blocks below. You should really appreciate the poem as the author wrote it by clicking on the link at the end of the poem.

...It is colder now
there are many stars
we are drifting
North by the Great Bear
the leaves are falling
The water is stone in the scooped rock
to southward
Red sun grey air
the crows are
Slow on their crooked wings
the jays have left us
Long since we passed the flares of Orion
Each man believes in his heart he will die
Many have written last thoughts and last letters
None know if our deaths are now or forever
None know if this wandering earth will be found

We lie down and the snow covers our garments
I pray you
you (if any open this writing)
Make in your mouths the words that were our names
I will tell you all we have learned
I will tell you everything
The earth is round
there are springs under the orchards
The loam cuts with a blunt knife
beware of
Elms in thunder
the lights in the sky are stars
We think they do not see
we think also
The trees do not know nor the leaves of the grasses hear us
The birds too are ignorant
do not listen
Do not stand at dark in the open windows
We before you have heard this
they are voices
They are not words at all but the wind rising
Also noone among us has seen God
(... We have thought often
the flaws of sun in the late and driving weather
pointed to one tree but it was not so.)
As for the nights I warn you the nights are dangerous
The wind changes at night and the dreams come

It is very cold
there are strange stars near Arcturus
Voices are crying an unknown name in the sky

Archibald MacLeish, Epistle To Be Left In The Earth

My Tax Dollars At Work, Not to Mention My Public Education System

I have been dancing with California Department of Health and Human Services since September to apply for benefits for a family member. Because they routinely lose papers sent via mail, I have braved the online application system. This system is fraught with its own perils, mostly associated with attaching documents to verify various and sundry things about the applicant's status. In response to my latest attempt to reply to an earlier request for additional verifications, I received this message this morning.

I have altered the following document only to remove the case number at the beginning and the lengthly privacy notice at the end. I have also, mercifully, deleted the name of the person who sent the following:

Good Morning,

Case number XXXXXXX

Thank you for emailing us at ACCESS Center. We apologized, we do not
processed paperworks here at ACCESS. I will just send your
verifications to the imaging to be imaged and so the worker who will
processed your case and see these verification provided.

Thank you.


“Please feel free to contact ACCESS again if you have any additional
questions. Thank you….”

Await Anticipation

“I Like You. I’ll Kill You Last.”

- My favorite Hallmark birthday card ever

Douglas Adams once wrote two sentences that sum up my day so far. I’ve been trying to tilt my virtual lance at the metaphorical windmill of Internet banking. Got knocked off my faithful steed within the first nanosecond I tried to access my account so I could balance my checkbook prior to paying bills. Now, balancing my checkbook is fraught with peril at the best of times, but today has been more perilous than most in recent memory. (Good thing recent memory goes no farther than 48 hours.) I had to offer up the name of my first pet to even get through the door of the credit union online banking site. A dark foreboding filled my veins like ice water filling your boot as you step onto the thin ice.

But I was talking about Douglas Adams. Here’s his existential brainteaser: "He hoped and prayed that there wasn't an afterlife. Then he realized there was a contradiction involved here and merely hoped that there wasn't an afterlife."

In the event that there is an afterlife, consider this post my sincere, desperate, hope and prayer that incompetent bureaucrats get their guts eaten out for all eternity while they’re chained to rocks like that mythological character What’s His Name.

In a completely unrelated but equally baffling message from beyond, there was a marquee on the church down the hill from me that said “Expect Hope”. This infuriates me, and not just the gratuitous capitalization. Next week will they have something else repetitious and redundant and not to mention content-free like “Believe Faith”? I hope not, but I expect so.

For someone constantly on the lookout for meaning, I can only take these recent events as a clear message that the end of civilization is near.

Once I was a bureaucrat myself. I know firsthand how depressing the quotidian existence of one who is paid too little to sort forms at a metal desk where one’s predecessor died of a massive stroke while sorting an earlier version of the same forms. So, there is a special place in my heart for the bureaucrats who have been pecking at my own guts while I try to comply with The State, the Internet, and the “would you like to complete a survey about our service?” pop-up windows.

Unfortunately for us all, that special place in my heart has been clogged with atherosclerotic plaque and slowly shriveled into a blackened scab through which blood flow is only a distant memory. So I merely hope.