But Can You Do The Salad In Latin?

I came to the conclusion today that I am going to need to carry the notebook that I take notes in with me even more places than the library and bookstore (to say nothing of leaving it on my desk next to my computers).  While at work I remembered two things I learned from an article I read the other day (on my computer), but was way too tired to write down (even on my computer!).  So I wrote the information I will be using in todays post on a piece of two by four with a carpenters pencil.  Hmm... I thought I promised myself a few years ago I would never take notes again on a two by four.  My friends who have worked with me would be able to clear up whether that's a tad bit of revisionist history.  Luckily, very few of them read this blog.  And the ones that do are far, far to loyal.

So the thing I had to write on a two by four, making my buddy Ron think I was a nut case, was concerning an article I read on the Purdue extension website, or one of the extension websites, in any case.  The article was written by a guy in the nineteen-forties (which I didn't realize till I looked at the websites fine print) and concerned the history of our most popular vegetables.  One of my favorite subjects actually.  So I was reading, vegetable by vegetable, from Broccoli to Watermelon (they grow wild in Africa, wow!) and right away I couldn't believe my eyes.  It turns out that I have been wrong on the history of broccoli.  I had thought it was developed in the nineteenth century (which I thought an amazingly recent occurence) due to a history of vegetables I read four years ago.  But, no.  It was developed in Italy, in the 1600's, from, like all Brassica, a wild version of Kale.  Interestingly, the article pointed out a fact that I frequently forget which is that Broccoli Rabe is actually a version of the same plant that Canola oil comes from. Also a member of Brassica, or Cruciferae (the old name, that frustrated some because of its reference to the crucifix shaped flowers common to the genus), or if your a real fan of plain English, the Cabbage Family).    Canadians actually call it canola.  

The 1940's article's deadpan style of writing is enormous fun to read.  I will put a link up to it in a future post.

I spent too many hours after work today planning my garden (I found out lettuce germinates in soil as long as the soil is at least 35 degrees.  Can you believe anything can germinate at that temperature?  So needless to say I am going to be planting mesclun, and lettuce in the next few weeks.  My friends Mike and Luanne have a great technique in their insanely cool garden, and yeah, I think I'll probably slavishly copy their techniques.)  So now I am blogging a little later than I would like, 'cus I have to get up early in the morning to swim before I have breakfast with my friend, then go to work by eight AM.  And I love sleep, so go figure.  But the garden I will be following on this Blog is going to be great. 

One example of the style of the article is where it is discussing Jerusalem Artichoke:  "The Jerusalem Artichoke is neither from Jerusalem, nor an Artichoke."  I am not even sure the author meant to do anything other than speak the plain truth, but man, that made me laugh.  Of course those of us familiar with such things know that a Jerusalem Artichoke is a tuber of a species of Sunflower.  And it's delicious cooked, or pickled.    It is also native to America, which for some reason makes me vaguely patriotic, in a natural history sort of way.  Not very rational, but neither is the Sean Hannity variety of patriotism.  I saw a new book out by that ding dong who wrote (or annotated, rather) The Book of Virtues.  I don't remember his name, and I don't remember the books name, but in any case it's theme is patriotism.  Really makes me wonder, what, is this guy living back in 2002, or something?  I am patriotic.  And curious about this countries history.  Call me crazy, but flaggy, stylized, for profit patriotism is disgusting regardless of its red, white and blue makeup.  Though, I dearly love that country song that goes, "There's a star spangled banner, waving glory."  That's the genius of music.  It's rhetoric is so transcended by spirit, that it's practically beside the point.

The last thing that I wanted to share about the article called, I think, "Our Vegetable Travelers", was that the author mentioned in the article that the common description "truck farm" has nothing to do with the vehicle we call a truck.  I found this flabbergasting, as the image of a truck has always coincided with the words "truck farm" when I encounter them, or use them.  But, it turns out, that the use of the work "truck" in the case of  "truck farm" is apropos of its meaning when used as the noun roughly synonymous with "archaic barter" or "association".  As in, "I have no truck with scum like that."  This is due to the fact that a "truck farm" was long a place of bartering for your greengroceries.  I certainly never would have guessed this etymological fact were it not for that ancient National Geographical article, "Our Vegetable Travelers".  The internet.  Just amazing.

Well, I gotta go to bed.  Egg Timer Rules.

Andy Coffey

It's Twilight Time

I took my friend to work this morning.  Round about six. I managed to awake with ease (always easier for me very early in the morning, than around seven thirty to nine---- go figure) and ready myself to drive him downtown.  The weather was clear, cool and without wind.  I stepped into the Bagel store where he works to get a couple bagels and some utterly forgettable coffee, then returned to the truck and drove back toward home.  About halfway home, I had that high, lovely, early morning feeling that comes all by itself.  I suppose that is what morning people get up for, and night owls can only dream about.  If my values didn't somewhat prevent it, I would have continued driving for a couple of hours (I used to do that all the time, especially in the lost years of my early twenties, and out West, when I lived in Arizona-- God what lovely mornings those were), but as it were, midwestern middle aged honkey that I am, I went to the supermarket (Kroger) instead.  

The vegetables at the Kroger were extremely beautiful.  I wished I had a camera, just to show you.  Four colors of cauliflower, huge bunches of broccoli rabe(!!??!!), gigantic globe artichokes (which I looked into ordering from California three weeks ago, on a lark, and was instructed on the website of some random Google result that the Artichoke season doesn't really begin till the dead end of February, better even the ides of March).  Its always sunny beneath the florescent sunshine of the Kroger produce department.  You should have seen my current favorite vegetable, yellow beets.  Two bucks a bunch (the leaves are like the most tender spinach you have ever eaten, not to sound like a food writer, but, great when cooked briefly in a chicken broth), and huge, round, and ready to bleed gold.  Ahh, what has natures bounty to do with the best laid plans of mice and men?  The economy continues to tank, but in the industrialized world, at the supermarket, you'd hardly know it.  Six A.M., seventy degrees (inside), a bright and shining beginning of a salad day in midwinter.

So, restraining myself, I only have one shelf of my own at home in my refrigerator, I saved room in my arms for some kind of protein (this is somewhat hard for me, thanks to my Mom, who fed me vegetables like a foie gras goose as a kid).  Just as I was getting ready to check out at the grocery store, I was forced to set my items down at the self check out station (typical guy, without a cart), and this nice employee said good morning to me.  We chatted for just a few seconds, and I walked over to get some soda from just a few aisles away.  The store at that hour was deserted, and yet, sometimes is busy at six A.M.  It reminded me of shopping each morning for items when I worked at the Courtyard by Marriott, as I was picking some strange assortment of soda flavor (I chuckle every time at the option of purchasing diet grape soda, and yet, what is the difference between that, and Sunkist, or even Coke.  I would love to explicate my opinion on such choices in a different entry.)  And as I put my soda beneath my arm and returned to the checkout stations I wondered, again, why it was I genuinely enjoy the company of this checkout guy, why I find this swirling artificial wonderland of the supermarket something more than just another sign of my distance from Mt. Authenticity.  So, I am thinking such thoughts, and I return to the checkout, and the guy I was just talking with has checked out all my groceries for me even though it is a self checkout station.  "All you have to do is swipe your card and swipe your sodas, sir," he says.  Gee whizz.  

You might wonder why I should relate this pretty pedestrian story.  You'd almost have to wonder why you're reading about running errands, for crying out loud.  And yet, I was wondering myself, what the difference is, really, between say, sitting at my breakfast table and staring at the wall, listening to NPR, and being there, in the checkout aisle, talking to, interacting with, and being presented with gifts from and entry level grocery store clerk.  It embarrasses me to remember how thrilled I used to be with myself for having such interactions with individuals in public, given that, as is so abundantly clear in this example, the other guy was doing all the heavy lifting, literally and figuratively.  Perhaps even more to the point, kindness is pretty typical in the world, even amidst the worlds best NASCAR Dads.  

So, on balance, I felt a strange mixture of gratitude and pride this morning, as my day became cradled in the rosy fingers of the sun.  Clearly I am lucky enough to see in the inky beginnings of the dawn a promise that to others might just as well be an empirical deduction: dark and without color.  Clearly, I find the neon blue vested, supermarket entry level workers of the world potentially inspiring.  I suppose it is a new thing for me, this last few years, to really ask these questions, though.  I remember, long ago, laughing at the beauty of the morning, when the darkness of my life threatened, but failed, the sunrise.  Today, I am not laughing, just grateful that the farewell of the ink black night and the salutation of the morning come at all.

Lincoln's Lands

Being surrounded, in Indiana, by states that have claims to make on Abraham Lincoln, I have become accustomed to not really thinking much about Honest Abe.  With the recent election of our President, however, and the apparent need on Public Television for a Doris Kearns Goodwin Hour each week (so often do we see her), I've become somewhat more aware of my ignorance about the Great Emancipator.  Then, this week, I saw that at least three hours of programming would be aired by American Experience, and a special made by Henry Louis Gates Jr. called Looking for Lincoln.  With all this Lincoln this season, and this week, it seemed like it behooved me to at least look up info on the little experience I've had in Indiana with everyone's favorite President.  Concerning the map above, I couldn't find a size that was small enough for the blog, but big enough to see in great detail.  So you might, but probably cannot, see that part of the path of Lincoln's funeral train back to Springfield, Illinois goes through Boone County and my childhood town of Zionsville.  In fact, I remembered once I started thinking about Lincoln, in Zionville, at first and Oak streets, is a park named Lincoln park, for the train that stopped in Zionsville.   My friend Casey was married there a few years back.  I used to eat breakfast there with my brother before our tennis lessons, and I used to take breaks there when running to, I'm not really sure what, chew gum?  Maybe.  It wouldn't surprise me.

The website I got that map off, it turns out, has a lovely chart showing where the train went on its way from DC to Springfield.  Very thoughtfully laid out, all the way down to little 'ole Zionsville.  Kind of amazing.

There has been alot of other stuff that I have learned and seen recently as well.  For some reason we humans are real suckers for the memorialization of the dead.  So whenever I come across a long list of reminisces about a figure whom I know a little about I usually can't help but read for far too long. Such was the case on David Foster Wallace yesterday when I came across a blog called Hermenautic Circle Blog.  Apparently it is made up of a somewhat exclusive group of contributers 100 members strong.  Writers, musicians, carneys (carnival workers), ect.  Apparently the circus isn't looking for new members.  I enjoyed reading their memorial to David Foster Wallace anyway.  My favorite reminisces were the ones that started, "I've never actually read David Foster Wallace but, he changed...."  To be followed by the heartbreaking, "I have felt guilty about not reading Infinite Jest (Wallace wonderful novel from the '90s), but I love his short ficiton and non-fiction."  My point isn't of course that you had to read Infinite Jest, just that the confession seems motivated by some kind of macabre shame due to his death.  Needless to say, I enjoyed Infinite Jest.  Read it in Arizona in 2001, Tucson I believe.  Took a couple days in a Barnes and Noble that looked out over the desert mountains.  I frequently remember a scene where a character is described by Wallace as suspended between his impulses, in his living room.  Suspended between a desire to go into the kitchen, and a desire to sit and absorb info-tainment.  Or something to that effect.  The image in my head was, and I think it was Wallace's intention to allude to this, a crucifixion.  Between a microwave beep and Bob Barker, is sort of my molested recollection.  About once a week I see, feel, hear, get a sort of Deja Vu ish feeling about that scene. And that was before Mr. Wallace hung himself.  I really hate the idea that depression can be so powerful a force in peoples' lives.  I get depressed sometimes, but never that kind of depression.  Everything read about it makes depression seem worse than I could imagine.  And yes, like everyone, I have lost a lot of friends to either suicide, or some slower form of death due to depression.  It is awful.

On a completely more pointless and joyful (read: lifelike) note.  I was trolling random blogs last night and I came across this insane graphic artist's rendition of a series of kids books called "I Can Read Movies".  The artist calls himself SpaceSick, check it out.  Guy seems like a genius to me.  I don't know why I like flippant whimsy so much in this world.  Though, the paragraph above would seem to suggest certain influences.  In any case, a great deal of pleasure is going to be had by me through the work of SpaceSick in the future I imagine.  I haven't got a problem with that.

Dead White Guys, Dead Promise, and SpaceSick makes a EggTimer Ring.

Andy Coffey

Flowers For Neanderthals

Robert Boyer was having a interesting day today.  I came home while he was eating some Chex mix and watching golf.  After waiting to see that he had finished his mouthful of food (a slow process as he comes from the HR Kellogg generation of chewing your food for health!) I quickly slung a question at him about something or other I can't remember, and by and by, between mouthfuls, he asked me, "What's your mothers maiden name?"  

"What did you say," I said to him, "what's my mothers maiden name?" 

"Yeah, that's what the bank always asks, 'What's your mothers maiden name?'" said Robert.

"Oh," I said, "Yeah that bank always asks me that, and score! my Mom's maiden name is, I think, an Ellis Island erratic that exists nowhere in the world but Northern Indiana, and Montana."

"And what is it then?" said Robert.

"Wilondek," I said, "supposedly Americanized Polish.  What was your Mom's maiden name?"

"Lanquist," said Robert.

"Wow," I practically yelled, "was she buxom."

"My Mother?"  asked Robert.

"Ah, I guess thats none of my business." I said.

My thinking was improving, his total lack of response seemed to indicate.

Pearl Lanquist.  Man, what a great Mom.  Her name was Swedish (seemed obvious to me, hence the question about her chest... truth in jest, and all that, you know---) but she was, in fact, only half.  Her Father was Swedish, which you have already surmised, but her Mother Emma, her Mom, was full blooded, roaring, Pennsylvania Dutch.  What a woman.  One of those about whom you'd say "She was a hard woman, but she had to be, for she had a hard life."  Hmm...  Emma's husband, who's name Robert could not remember, (maybe John, maybe Luke, Mark seems a possibility, but not Igor) was a factory worker who found drinking to be exceedingly easy on the nerves, and his wife not so much.  

"Did Emma's husband drink his paychecks away, "I asked Robert.

"It's very likely, " said Robert, "that Emma was one of the few women to be found waiting on Friday outside the factory to collect the money my Grandfather made.

"So you think she got it before the bar," I asked.

"Well, " said Robert, "my Grandfather didn't speak much English, even at the end of his life, but he always said he wished she wouldn't take his money AND his drinking money on Fridays."

"Now, that's what I call a drinking problem everyone should have," I said.

Cheerio Emma.  Cheerio.

Bedford

I can't be certain, but I have always believed due to the striking similarity between the words: "bed", "bedrock", and "Bedford", that Bedford Indiana was named for the Bedrock it shares with Bloomington, and the Pentagon.  The limestone.  And I can't be certain, but I have always believed due to the striking similarity between the concept of:  an "ectomorph", and a "typical Bedfordian" that people from Bedford were unnaturally selected through the history of that town for big strong bodies, the better to lift and move, manipulate and monetize, limestone.  God bless them, of course.  Nobody ever mistook me for a guy who can really fill up a pair of jeans (I'm thinking of a friend cooing over a gentleman to me.  I was wondering should I nod, "yes, he does fill the jeans, he really fills the jeans.  Like for example, how I do not.) These Bedfordians, however, their cups overfloweth.  God bless 'em.  

Last night, I was walking back from the school after a session of crooning at the windows and radiator, with feeling.  And perhaps a kind of gentle and other-worldly compassion sprang in my heart from my having been so near to the spirits that come so close to a singer at those shorn places in the universe where we sing.  So, when I entered the Village Pantry, while this compassion could not protect the third shift Bedfordian working that night from my basic prejudice, a reckoning awaited us both when I performed a classic Andy dum dum in the presence of said employee.  He was giving me my change, for a package of pink, sugarless, bubble gum and his palm brushed my fingers and I felt something discordant with my prejudice upon his skin and so, naturally enough, began with the personal questions.

"Say, buddy, do you work two jobs?" I asked.

Giving me the, what----me? are you crazy? I'm working at a VP for Chrissake, look, the Bedfordian, aligned his eyes in a somewhat more symmetrical fashion, and focused the customer fresh on his brain.  Once the image and words were more "talky" than "silent film" the Bedfordian seemed almost charmed by the question, and I found his smile somewhat reassuring.  Gradually he seemed to barely consent that, "This is sorta my job."

"Well, " I ventured, "I was just, kinda' wonderin' if you weren't framin' houses in your spare time.  You see, when you gave me my change, I noticed your palm was pretty calloused."

The Bedordian looked really pissed.  He looked at me briefly, then down at his hand, then looked back up at me drawing his fingers into.... his palm, and smiling.

"I worked five years in the stone yards, Oolitic," said the Bedfordian.

"Look on the bright side dude, even Neaderthals buried their dead with flowers!" I said (I would never.)

"Oolitic, yeah, that's close to here. Down West on 17th, way out," I said.

"Yeah," he smiled again. Seeming perfectly normal.

Right about then I began to realize I was feeling pretty crummy about my prejudices.

I stopped then and stood and talked to the guy, wondering, as he showed me pictures of why he wasn't in school (his kids), why I am so willing to classify poor white folks from the hinterlands, without fear of some serious Karmic disturbances.  I guess I just never really have believed my own talk about the guaranteed wickedness of classifying an entire community (thousands really) all over the face of the country and earth, as fools beneath my contempt, born funny lookin': dumb.  Don't get me wrong, in polite company, like Quakers, or Unitarian sewing groups, you probably couldn't go on about about the stupid rednecks for too long (unless a member of that group had recently been on the local news doing something that gets on an evening broadcast).  But, really, in most circumstances a kid from a redneck family is going to grow up defiant, or ashamed.  And that's do to the choices at our spiritual buffet on offer:  we call you dumb as you came from, and you agree, or you are our object of pity, our enemy.  Or something like that.  While talking with the admittedly not strikingly self assured, composed, articulate, and aggressively ambitious guy at the VP, I couldn't help but shudder at how convulsed with the opposite of compassion I have felt toward the man until his palm scratched the nerves in my hand while giving me change.  How that led to conversation, a kind of mutual sympathy, laying down of arms, and finally real insight into each other is a mystery to me.  The impact of that not happening more between me and others, between all of us who imagine ourselves separated by abstractions, instead of united by our needs and the courage of our humanity, is surely staggering.  Big enough to bring on down, a Bedfordian to... come to think of it, my level.

Andy Coffey

I Can Hear 'Em Buzzin'

Bill Gates...  I read a random headline on a blog today that indicated Bill Gates decided to make an impression at this years TED conference... by opening a can full of mosquitoes.  The generalized consensus on the blog was a call for outrage, but I'm not feeling it.  In some ways, it seems to me, there is nothing more appropriate than a bunch of kings of culture seething in mortal fear at a can full of mosquitoes.  What do these Bay Area mavens do in the summer, stay near to the cool breeze of the shore?  It must frustrate them when TED invites people calling for systemic change in the way we organize society----- oh wait, that would never happen.  So, the Mosquitoes.  How ironic that a capitalist such as Gates should find himself so desperate to speak to the hearts of the TED congregation.  Their hearts are there.  I actually believe that.  From an evolutionary standpoint, so do the Mosquitoes.

I really enjoy TED, which should be obvious to anyone who reads Brand of Make Believe.  I mention TED constantly, and since I don't avail myself to the charms of television, have plenty of time to watch TED's brilliant and seemingly endless supply of twenty to thirty minute improvisations by technology, entertainment, and design professionals.  Many of the "talks" are ridiculous in tone and exposition, but have nuggets of fascination that keep me from doing more with my attention and eyes then rolling them, and waiting.  Some of the "talks" are genuinely brilliant, humane, and heartfelt.  I try to stay away from the ones that promise advances in longevity, as they remind me a little too much of the fact that we live in a culture that takes license with, rather than takes seriously, our spiritual responsibilities as mortals.  Then again, what culture doesn't.  Oh well, that isn't my problem.

The days grow longer.  Holy Mackeral!  I just found this in thirty seconds by Googling "Chart of the length of the dya".  Yes, Google kindly asked me if I meant "day", not "dya".  Offended at a lack of deference from a mere machine, I clicked its wild guesswork, and damn, if it didn't give me what I actually wanted.  Landsakes!:

For Thursday, Feb Fifth:

Begin Civil Twilight        7:21 AM

Sunrise                               7:49 AM

Sun Transit                       1:00 PM

Sunset                                6:12  PM

End Civil  Twilight           6:40  PM

How do you like that:  "civil twilight".  What a great thing that it actually takes into consideration the dusk and dawn.  This time of year, twenty-eight minutes may not seem like much light before the rise of the sun, or after its setting, but it makes a difference to me.  Some people claim, from what I've heard that February is too dark.  Well, compared to what?  Lets look at December fifth on the same fabulous website: www.aa.usno.navy.mil/cgi-bin/aa_pap.pl 

SUN December Fifth:

Begin Civil Twilight 7:21 AM

Sunrise 7:51  AM

Sun Transit 12:37  PM

Sunset 5:23  PM

End Civil Twilight 5:53  PM

Notice, and this is consistent from something I read a long time ago, that the actual time of Sunrise has changed little in the intervening two months, but the time of sunset is almost an hour later.  Something to do with the 23 degree angle of the earths axis.  Upon checking Wikipedia, I have found that the day's length relies upon latitude as well.

The point is, we have nearly an hour more daylight in February, than December.  Do you really need data to notice the beautiful rosy glow of the sun an hour later.  Maybe you do.

Enough of that, except one thing:

The present day length in the Northern Hemisphere is about 9 to 10 hours.  The day length in July will be close to fourteen.  It's no wonder I feel so good in my garden round about 9:00 PM in July.  Just incredible to have fourteen hours to get stuff done.  Eight hours of work, six of free time.  In winter, two hours of free time.  At least while you are young it feels like a piece of cake to use that extra time in the summer.

Lastly, yesterday I saw a 60 Minutes show from sometime in the last couple of months (since the market crashed anyhow) about the cost of oil.  While I had realized that the manipulation of the commodity markets by investment bankers had played some role in the price of commodities such as metals and oil, I had felt for a very long time that the price of oil was predominantly a matter of supply and demand, and its rise mostly due to a much larger presence by players in Asia, and the former third world.  The 60 Minutes show contraindicated my assumptions with very very clear evidence.  Investment company assets including oil storage silos on the east coast and extensive pipeline ownership in the west were shown and discussed.  And holdings by the investment companies (banks) were shown to influence the price of oil over the last few years independent of supply and demand.  Even given the increase in the energy demands of China, India, and other emerging economies.  Perhaps most damning of all was the discussion on the show of Enron, and some legislation passed by Enron (well, actually passed by your representatives, paid for in full by Enron:  I guess you shouldn't call something paid for "theft").  This little revelation of how Enron got passed legislation to free up control and monetization of commodities like oil and natural gas is just one of the things that makes me laugh when I hear people's high hopes for Obama.  It is going to take a new attitude on the part of we westerners and toward our representatives and their system of incentives before we have any hope of a President (or God for that matter) making any inroads on our fabulously complex lives.  I keep hearing metaphors that are variations on Warren Buffets comments round about late September 2008 where he compared the US (or the West) to a patient in the ER.  Well, those heart problems turn out to be conveniently treatable compared to the better metaphor I see:  a burn victim with eighty percent of her skin charred.  It's gonna take more than mortally dangerous procedures to fix Lady Liberty, Uncle Sam and the rest of the posse that got sick on these fixins of jimson weed from the powers that were.  How many dollars were taken from the economy (or redistributed) due to the inflation of energy prices from legislation passed by lawmakers and written by criminals?  

Not to beat a dead horse, but it's probably too late to let myself off the hook.  My basic instinct on hearing that 60 Minutes thing was to ask myself what I was thinking when I used (last couple of years) to tell people I thought the rise in the price of energy was a good thing.  I still think, ala Thomas Friedman's argument, that a price floor for energy has to be established in order for the private sector to have a place by which to plan a new energy infrastructure.  It was a new infrastructure that I thought I was seeing an impetus for in the price of energy, and a changing system of values that I thought I was hearing in the frustration of my community, country, family and friends. So I supported that pain, high prices, in hopes for a gain of a new world of conservation, and really, individual awareness of what impacts we are having on the world in terms of our behavioral footprint.  I still pine for these things.  I still pine for a floor for energy prices.  I still believe that the private sector will find a way through these hurdles, and this criminality on the part of Enron's policy progeny.  But it did bother me, watching the numbers on my computer (via the 60 Minutes great reporting) detach themselves from the macro-economic standby of supply and demand.  Why?  Not because I only wished Americans and Westerners in general needed cheaper energy, but also because I had believed we were subsidizing in part, through higher energy prices, the infrastructure that was lifting the remaining undeveloped world into the twenty first century.  It turns out our end of the lever was far shorter than I hoped.  Far shorter than my memory will be in the future as well.

It will not be Obama who gives America its place of leadership, and a new agency by which to exercise our powers.  It will be the exercise of our brains, and our own caution learned by long struggle with our species.  We can hold those fools feet to the fire.  We can discuss the mechanisms of hope, separate from the notional symbolism of politicians.  We can make hope more than an election, and not let the bastards get us down.

Andy Coffey

Jesus Was A Carpenter---- and yet....

Sometimes you never learn.  Over and over in my life I have lived for a period thinking that I was somehow pretty happy or well off (and certainly always privileged) but somehow missing out on something one friend or another was experiencing, and then a conversation occurs that makes me realize how simple and straightforward my existence really is:  how lucky I am to be in that difficult to explain state of grace that almost embarrasses me to talk about.  Writing in this blog being no exception to this embarrassment. I'd rather talk about the weather... and yet.

The other day I was working with a friend who I hadn't seen in a long time but had for years admired.  She spoke to me about the usual things, and as the hours passed, lunch came and went, then the last hours of the day lay before us, just a little time till we'd be done.

Such moments are peculiar with friends.  Sometimes you tire of one another, or one of you does.  Usually, I suppose, it is the better listener who feels used, and finally decides they've had enough.  "I love this person, but only in small doses."  So while I would usually categorize myself as more of a talker than listener, for some reason, that afternoon, I found myself listening intently to a friend who had a lot on her mind.  

Like I said, for years I have admired this person, and for years enjoyed what time we have had together.  Only now and again do we work together, she's a designer, and I am a carpenter for crying out loud.  

"I'm good at squares and triangles already," I tease her.  

"I hate squares and triangles," she tells me.  

"Don't say that," I reply, wounded by such Euclidean heresy. "Streets are named after Euclid in many, many towns:  who ever named a street after a designer?"

"Jesus was a Carpenter, he ate organic foods,"  she replied.  "He believes in love and peace, and Andy, I hope they kill you too."  

So we go around and around at times.  It isn't philosophy exactly.

Near the end of the day we found ourselves lolligagging, intent on convincing passerby that we were those sort of slothful ass crack workers, enjoying our unearned pay even while pretending to go into the homestretch, approaching the five o' clock blues.  She began to take a fairly earnest tone, and I found myself staring into my old friends eyes, while they teared up a little and she recounted the disappointment of a relationship that had ended last May.  In recounting her experiences, I noticed that I had never realized she had been experiencing the slightest trouble in that relationship other than the usual sort:  things just weren't so great, she merely wanted better.  Whereas the truth had been that for years she had felt enormous desire for the relationship to improve, and even cloaked a secret, almost hopeless desire that her boyfriend would ask her hand in marriage.  Then after a long while it ended.

The amazing thing about my conversation with my friend was not that she had romantic troubles, or had experienced misery.  Those are things most of us can expect from time to time.  The amazing thing for me was how I looked at her due to these issues she had experienced.  Whereas before she was this upwardly mobile, free spirited, woman of the world without a care in the manner of old world expectations of domestic contentment.  Now she appeared just another fragile person, lost in the oldest lyrics of unrequited love.  I had experienced her always on a pedestal, soaring somehow with the high flyers of the world.  And all this while she had merely (even if in flight) wanted a nest, a place to abide, someone to share the deeper patterns of life than sight of the sun dappled earth on the wing.  It was startling, really, the difference between what I imagined, and what she experienced.  And it was startling the difference between her and myself.  I had for so long imagined her as living in emotional realms somewhat more exciting than me.  I had imagined her as having a security I couldn't really expect at this stage in my life.  I had imagined, in short, her a happy person that she was not. And somehow I had imagined myself as less secure and (frankly) happy than I am.

Well... we finished the job, and knew we'd have a little more work together in the near future, then went to dinner to continue the conversation.  I could tell this wasn't a subject she particularly wanted to bring up routinely (and really, that's a mercy).  I might of learned something about listening that day.  All the regular stuff about actively listening, and repeating what you hear back, sure.  All the regular stuff about talking in the same ratio as your two ears to your one mouth, sure.  But what about the gifts of recognition that the narrative of another brings to you.  You read about the power of narratives in our lives to deceive us, to cause us to imagine our world as a predictable and recognizable place, whereas in matter of fact it is anything but.  You read (or hear, or believe) that the world is inexplicable, unknowable, has no end and no beginning.  You maybe start to believe that all stories we tell each other are a little foolish.  We a bunch of ants, crawling in alarm at the overturned logs of the bigger more real world.  Mice and men and all that Jazz.  And then, you get washed up in the story of your suffering friend.  Someone you admire for all the right reasons.  Someone you have always felt gave promise to a world that the purist cynic and pessimist could not afford to believe in.  Someone who now told you of the darkness that they had been in even while you believed them happy.

I can see how her story might confuse me.  Turns out I can't count on people being as happy as they act.  Can you see, however, how she moves me?  How the failure of her narrative to account for her behavior only speaks to the host of things that makes us human beings so much more than life forms, or animals, or risk averse actors in a web of self vs. social interest.  Sometimes the personhood of another reaches out and rearranges the letters that spell your bonds of friendship out.  And you realize that those old words look foreign now, but your selves are lit anew.

Andy Coffey

Egg Timer Blog

Since I seem to get carried away every time I write a post, I am naming todays post after the activity I am engaged in just now, cooking hard boiled eggs.  I guess I figure that I should be able to write at least one blog entry a day in the time it takes to cook eggs, start to finish.  Thirty or forty minutes max (from entry to kitchen, to dishes done). Not plopping eggs than scooping them out.  No way.  That's not nearly enough time.

Today was just a beautiful day.  The wintertime gets old, as everyone knows.  But I'll never forget when I was a baker, how after I was done baking, it would be like eight in the morning, and my workday was nearly finished.  The last thing I did every shift was take out the trash.  And it was a rare day that there wasn't a little sun in the midmorning I walked out into.  Your body would feel limber from the effort of baking (considerable), and your breath would come out in clouds like steam, and you were feeling the cold, but enjoying it.  Then after my shift I would walk or drive the seven or eight blocks home, and man the morning looked so beautiful, in its crystalline, shimmering loveliness.  Times like those it was hard to imagine what it would be like to walk those same streets and feel any sort of melancholy.  Lucky me, I suppose.

After supposedly the sixth largest snowfall since folks began measuring such things (occasionally I think I can see why they waited so long;  I mean, who cares how the weather ranks; though I know that's practically a crazy thing to even suggest) we immediately received a string of days in the fiftyish degrees category.  The animal tracks disappeared from the surface of the snow, and water dripped from everything.  It has been so nice.

Then this evening I went down the street to eat some Chinese, and while sitting and eating looked out the window at two storm clouds that looked like they were dancing, so twisted and beautiful were their movements.  They were backlist by the sun, so their edges were in flame, and one cloud was closer than the other, so the sun bounced off the back side of the close one and lit one of the bottom facets of the other giving it such a beautiful glow.  I stared and stared.  Water surely cannot realize how lovely it is.  It cracks me up to imagine a schoolteacher telling his class, "Statistically, there is guaranteed to be at least a little of the Water from Julius Caesar in that cloud."  The real question,I suppose, is whether that is significant or not. My guess is not.  Leave it to Caesar. 

Well, sad to say, but my eggs are nearly done.  I only have time for one or two more things.

My Grandfathers funeral was the other day.  It was a real shock when he passed away so quickly once he went into hospice.  It seems like he was truly ready to die once he realized there was almost nothing that could be done for him.  The funeral was a huge surprise due to the fact that the current Priest at my Grandparents long time Church is not only from India, but also fantastically well spoken, mellifluous, and balanced in his handling of my Grandfathers memory.  He actually called my Grandfather a saint.  You would figure such a statement would not go over very well with Catholics, but nobody stirred.  My Grandfather was something else.  The big joke the whole time we were at the viewing of his body (in the funeral home next to the house my Mother grew up in) everybody recalled holding Grandpa's hand and walking down the street in our respective childhoods (we all had done it).  The wall in front of the funeral home was just the sort of wall that can't be resisted by kids.  We all loved climbing on it.  Most of us apparently had asked Grandpa at one time or another, "Grandpa, what is that building."  And in the classic colloquialism of Grandpa, he'd reply, "Oh, you don't wanna go in there."  That's right Gramps.  We didn't want to.

Egg Timer Ringing

Andy