For those of you who already know what's going on, I present this as my opinion. Wang Lung speaks for me.
For everyone who doesn't know what's going on, it's good literature.
Either way, enjoy.
From Pearl S. Buck's Pulitzer winning novel, The Good Earth:
Spring passed and summer passed into harvest and in the hot autumn sun before winter comes Wang Lung sat where his father had sat against the wall. And he thought no more about anything now except his food and his drink and his land. But of his land he thought no more what harvest it would bring or what seed would be planted or of anything except of the land itself, and he stooped sometimes and gathered some of the earth up in his hand and he sat thus and held it in his hand, and it seemed full of life between his fingers. And he was content, holding it thus, and he thought of it fitfully and of his good coffin that was there; and the kind earth waited without haste until he came to it.His sons were proper enough to him and they came to him every day or at most once in two days, and they sent him delicate food fit for his age, but he liked best to have one stir up meal in hot water and sup it as his father had done.
Sometimes he complained a little of his sons if they came not every day and he said to Pear Blossom, who was always near him, "Well, and what are they so busy about?"
But if Pear Blossom said, "They are in the prime of life and how they have many affairs. Your eldest son has been made an officer in the town among the rich men, and he has a new wife, and your second son is setting up a great grain market for himself, " Wang Lung listened to her, but he could not comprehend all this and he forgot it as soon as he looked out over his land.
But one day he saw clearly for a little while. It was a day on which his two sons had come and after they had greeted him courteously, they went out and they walked about the house on to the land. Now Wang Lung followed them silently, and they stood, and he came up to them slowly, and they did not hear the sound of his footsteps nor the sound of his staff on the soft earth, and Wang Lung heard his second son say in his mincing voice, "This field we will sell and this one, and we will divide the money between us evenly. Your share I will borrow at good interest, for now with the railroad straight through I can ship rice to the sea and I ..."
But the old man heard only these words, "sell the land," and he cried out and he could not keep his voice from breaking and trembling with his anger, "Now, evil, idle sons -- sell the land?" He choked and would have fallen, and they caught him and held him up, and he began to weep.Then they soothed him and they said, soothing him, "No-- no-- we will never sell the land --"
"It is the end of a family -- when they begin to sell the land," he said brokenly. "Out of the land we came and into it we must go -- and if you will hold your land you can live -- no one can rob you of your land --"
And the old man let his scanty tears dry upon his cheeks and they made salty stains there. And he stooped and took up a handful of the soil and he held it and he muttered, "If you sell the land, it is the end."
And his two sons held him, one on either side, each holding his arm, and he held tight in his hand the warm loose earth. And they soothed him and they said over and over, the eldest son and the second son, "Rest assured, our father, rest assured. The land is not to be sold."
But over the old man's head they looked at each other and smiled.
I was going to say something witty about how I'm feeling marginally better today after a full twelve days of suffering under the Creeping Croupy Evil, but I'll let good old Neil say it for me:
I'm getting better, thanks. ...Taking it very very easy on myself currently, which is a good thing, and was necessary. Sometimes your body tells you it's time to rest. If you ignore it, then sometimes your body whacks you over the back of the head with a hefty iron crowbar, kicks your feet from under you and then, while you're lying on the floor in agony, gets in really close and shouts "Now will you listen?" at you through a megaphone.So I'm listening.
So who is this John Bolton guy, anyway? And how does he feel about the UN? Via truthout.org.
I caught my husband's creeping crud on Sunday, and by that evening it felt like someone'd taken a belt-sander to my throat. Of course, this illness arrived three days before I was to present before two hundred librarians at a major library conference. Wednesday morning at three am, twelve hours before the presentation, I woke up feeling like someone was trying to pull my molars out with a pair of pliers, while simultaneously ramming cotton balls down my ear canals with a pointy chopstick. My head was threatening to explode, my throat ached, I couldn't swallow and the lymph nodes in my neck hurt so badly I was afraid I had caught Captain Trips.
I staggered down to the 24-hour Walgreens, bought zinc lozenges and a second Pseudofed med to accompany the Claritin I was already taking (you CAN take an anithistimine AND a decongestant simultaneously...) and somehow fell asleep on the couch.
I gave the presentation and had a grand time, sold a bunch of books and was again reminded that I have the best husband in the universe. He drove both ways and kept checking up on me to make sure I had my meds and was okay.
We also got to have dinner with Jef Mallett, the guy who does the comic strip Frazz, and Dave Coverley, the guy who does Speed Bump. The keynote speaker for the evening was one of the 2005 Newberry Honor winners, Gary Schmidt. His book, Lizzie Bright and the Buckminster Boy not only won the highest award for children's book, but also the Prinz Honor, a slightly lesser-known award for the best teen book.
Gary was amazing. His keynote speech was jawdropping. You could've heard a pin drop the entire time... we were all stunned. Paul, Jef, Dave and I all felt like utter morons -- we'd been sitting at his table throughout the entire dinner and hadn't said so much as a single word to him. So we immediately all ran out and bought Lizzie and had it autographed. What an amazing guy, an amazing historian.
So today I'm back home, unable to speak. I literally gave my entire voice away yesterday, and when I try to talk, it sounds weak and strangled, and breaks frequently, like a dog's squeaky toy. So I'm giving Dr. Atkins the boot and am baking fresh bread to be my comfort food, and will be reading Lizzie tonight in the bathtub.
What a good day.
Now, this is a home security system I can get behind.
Michigan is taunting me.
It's been at least 60 degrees Fahrenheit for the last two weeks, clear and sunny and beautiful. I am so so so tempted to start my plants in their brand-new bed. I know as soon as I do, though, that Michigan will rare back and pound them with a root-freezing frost.
So my wee baby seedlings aren't going anywhere till Memorial Day weekend. Tricksey Michigan. We hates you, we does.
I'm so torn lately.
Some of this goes back to the entries a few months ago about TC Boyle's Drop City and The Tortilla Curtain, and some of it is related to Peak Oil worries, and still more of it is related to my rural upbringing.... but I'm feeling the constant urge to be as self-sufficient as possible.
We're living in a small city -- an overgrown town, really, ringed with hellacious wastelands of 'burbs and container stores and chain restaurants with shit tacked to the walls. Our house sits on about a hundred square feet of back yard. Not exactly what you'd call a farm kid's paradise. Perhaps this is making be a bit nervous in and of itself. I'm kind of living vicariously through my comics buddies Donna, Layla and Colleen, who have all recently purchased land Out In The Middle Of Nowhere and are loving every minute of it.
I remember the boundless freedom of growing up in the country. I remember playing in mud pits, sand pits, digging my own clay for sculpting, flying kites, tapping maple trees with the neighbors, sweet corn pigouts and kitchen sink tomato sandwiches, swimming at our pond and cutting wood for our stove. I remember the wonderful feeling of self-satisfaction that comes with being almost entirely self-sufficient: it seemed like there wasn't anything my parents and grandparents couldn't do, from building fence to making apple butter, refinishing floors to welding I-beams. It's no wonder I want that feeling back, and feel awkward in a city. Awkward in my own skin -- because even though I'm strong and handy, I never learned how to do any of those things. I never learned to spot weld or run a lathe, drive the big tractors or inoculate the cows. But I know about them, know that they can be done, and I'll be damned if that basic intuition doesn't come out in my everyday life like it's some sort of creepy genetic memory.
However, Kalamazoo has an awful lot going for it, in some ways more than the farm. The hard things about the farm was the isolation -- it was miles and miles to the nearest store. I remember what an incredible thing pizza delivery was, when I got to college. I'd order pizza just because I could. It was a 45 minute bus ride each way to and from School, and I was in a different area code from everyone else, which meant I wasn't even allowed to call my friends when I was in high school. There were a few neighbor kids around, but I didn't seem to connect well with any of them. I felt left out most of the time, and if there'd been a healthier home life at the farm, or more nearby country-friends to fill in those gaps, it'd have been better, but it wasn't. I left for college as fast as I could.
Kalamazoo is proving to be an excellent fit, at least for this point in my life, and trumps Ann Arbor on all sorts of levels. We have a thriving Farmer's Market and we're surrounded on all sides by farmland which is legendary for having just about the most fertile soil in the state. There's no housing bubble out here waiting to burst. Decent houses cost around $80 - $150K here, unlike the unbelievable housing market further east in the state. We still have a lot of family-owned businesses and small, old-fashioned craftsmen: we have a cabinet maker, cobbler, tailor, breadbaker, milliner and bike shop all within walking distance. And that's another thing -- everthing here's within walking distance. I can walk or bike to all the above, as well as the food coop, post office, hardware store, party store, used bookstore, library, ice cream parlor, hospital, two 24-hour coffee shops, three breweries, four art galleries and a dozen good restaurants. True, Ann Arbor has most of those in their downtown, but the exhorbitant rents are squeezing out the old craftsmen one by one, and I was paying more for my 400 ft2 apartment on the edges of downtown than I am currently for my entire 2000ft2 house. It's much easier to get by here, and I love the overwhelming sense of community, convenience and togetherness that a small downtown provides. In many ways, it really is like living in a small town.
On our block, specifically, our neighbors are totally awesome and look out for each other, which is a wholly new phenomenon for me. Just last night we found out our next-door neighbor finishes attics among his many skills, so we'll probably be hiring him within the next month or so to do our insulation. The store owners all support each other, too: When you go to the antique store, they've got freshbaked cookies from the bakery around the corner. You see stuff like this all the time. There's a fair mix of liberals and conservatives, but most everyone just likes the idea of supporting local businesses. It's so refreshing to see that, to see people valuing small stores and community over money, prestige and doggie-sweaters. To step back into that Lake Wobegon-esque style of living that I'm used to. It's a bit like having all the perks of country living without having to fill the hayloft three times a summer.
It's funny -- Layla and I were talking about the Lehman's catalogue the other night, and how many things we recognize in there from our own upbringing. I'm often tempted by things there -- until I realize that my grandparents would have laughed me out of town for buying a plastic egg separator. (Use a spoon!) Stores like that are for people who want to play-act at self-sufficency, not actually be self-sufficient. True self-sufficiency is hard work, pennypinching, gardening, laying up food, and doing without... hardly glamorous. And I miss it -- not only because it is my nature, but I am drawn to it because it feels real, unlike the fake plastic I see around me every day.
Yes, I miss the wide open spaces, and am still -- even after nearly 15 years -- still getting used to this concept of locking your doors. It's frustrating as hell to have to ask for permission to do things to your house (Thank you, Historic District), but it's also nice to be involved with people who are genuinely concerned with revitalizing their neighborhood. I am very happy here, right now. Very Very happy. Someday, however, I envision a return to the country... maybe some acreage around here, maybe a return to the family homestead. Who knows where the world will lead me. Until then, I'll be in the garden, coaxing my tomaters into their trellis, driving my bean-car, and trying to sneak solar panels past the Historic District Board.
My father would kill me if he ever found out I was paying actual money for cowshit, composted or not.
The doubling of child malnutrition in Iraq is baffling
Terry Jones
Tuesday April 12, 2005
The Guardian
"Let them eat bombs"
A report to the UN human rights commission in Geneva has concluded that
Iraqi children were actually better off under Saddam Hussein than they
are now.
This, of course, comes as a bitter blow for all those of us who, like
George Bush and Tony Blair, honestly believe that children thrive best
when we drop bombs on them from a great height, destroy their cities and
blow up hospitals, schools and power stations.
It now appears that, far from improving the quality of life for Iraqi
youngsters, the US-led military assault on Iraq has inexplicably doubled
the number of children under five suffering from malnutrition. Under
Saddam, about 4% of children under five were going hungry, whereas by
the end of last year almost 8% were suffering.
These results are even more disheartening for those of us in the
Department of Making Things Better for Children in the Middle East By
Military Force, since the previous attempts by Britain and America to
improve the lot of Iraqi children also proved disappointing. For
example, the policy of applying the most draconian sanctions in living
memory totally failed to improve conditions. After they were imposed in
1990, the number of children under five who died increased by a factor
of six. By 1995 something like half a million Iraqi children were dead
as a result of our efforts to help them.
A year later, Madeleine Albright, then the US ambassador to the United
Nations, tried to put a brave face on it. When a TV interviewer remarked
that more children had died in Iraq through sanctions than were killed
in Hiroshima, Mrs Albright famously replied: "We think the price is
worth it."
But clearly George Bush didn't. So he hit on the idea of bombing them
instead. And not just bombing, but capturing and torturing their
fathers, humiliating their mothers, shooting at them from road blocks -
but none of it seems to do any good. Iraqi children simply refuse to be
better nourished, healthier and less inclined to die. It is truly
baffling.
And this is why we at the department are appealing to you - the general
public - for ideas. If you can think of any other military techniques
that we have so far failed to apply to the children of Iraq, please let
us know as a matter of urgency. We assure you that, under our present
leadership, there is no limit to the amount of money we are prepared to
invest in a military solution to the problems of Iraqi children.
In the UK there may now be 3.6 million children living below the poverty
line, and 12.9 million in the US, with no prospect of either government
finding any cash to change that. But surely this is a price worth
paying, if it means that George Bush and Tony Blair can make any amount
of money available for bombs, shells and bullets to improve the lives of
Iraqi kids. You know it makes sense.
Terry Jones is a film director, actor and Python.
He is the author of Terry Jones's War on the War on Terror.
www.terry-jones.net
Some of you (Kat and JimO) have been forced to sit through my spirited retelling of the Pycnopodia vs Sea Snail battle on PBS's The Shape Of Life series, better known as the Giant Killer Monster Starfish story.
I'm putting these links here so's I don't lose 'em, cause people don't tend to believe me when I tell them about the Starfish As Big As Manhole Covers.
For further proof of the size and fear-inspiring nature of these undersea badasses, here's a video of a bunch of divers using a baby pycno to scare the shit out of a poor abalone. Boo!
Freecycle.org is a marvellous thing. It's basically a bulletein board for people looking for free stuff and giving away free stuff.... everything from baby clothes to old TVs. If you're too lazy for a garage sale but don't want stuff collecting in your basement, post it on freecycle and someone will come and take it from you.
I wanted some big pots for my container herb garden, so I posted to Freecycle... and a kind neighbor gave me a whole bunch, some plastic and some terracotta, and her next door neighbor saw us loading the car and threw in some old tomato cages he had in the garage -- perfect for my peppers and eggplants. I saved at least $100.
I heart the innanet.
I am now running B50 -- that's 50% soybean, 50% petrodiesel. It costs $2.64 per gallon -- not horrendously bad considering regular petrodiesel is hovering around $2.30 - $2.50. In a week or two, Wackers will have B100. I can't wait.
In other news, Kalamazoo now has a B20 pump! It's at the BP on D avenue, north of town, and the pump is there on a trial basis to judge the market. If you're a TDI or diesel driver in Kzoo, getcha butt over there and show demand for this product.
Hey, there, readers.
I'm trying to convince the husband that we don't need cable TV. The only two things dissuading me from jumping on the wagon myself are Good Eats and Mythbusters.
Do any of my readers have TiVo, and would any of them be willing to record and dump GE and/or MB to tape for me? I'd pay $20 per 6-hr tape of each, plus shipping. Extra super-huge bonus points if you can do DVD-Rs.
Any takers?
Seeds. Such little things. And what a difference they make, and how happy they make people.
(I'd better be careful, or this is going to sound like a Sunday sermon.)
I've been so very very stressed in recent months -- 90% of it self-inflicted, of course -- and so lately I've been dumping all that harried energy into gardening. Why? Because, as I'm fond of saying lately, I can't eat my ulcer. If I keep navel-gazing, I'll get one. If I obsess, instead, over pretty green growing things, at least we'll get some salad out of the deal.
Paul says I'm like a mother hen with all my seedlings. They're sooooo cute with all their wee little leaves. I really love watching them sprout.
And it's bringing great goodwill amongst me and my neighbors -- we're all so ready for spring that we're hovering around anything green like bugs around a light. B and I are plotting a seed order. My next-door neighbor N was absolutely thrilled that I'd swap her tomatoes. She works at night, and left me a note saying "Thank you! Thank you! Thank you!" when I offered to start her seeds in the peat-pot-starter. Our immediate neighbors A and M have given lots of good advice and moral support as I figure out the raised beds. B's friend S is talking herb pots and such, too.
Tiny wee seeds. How they bring us together.
First one's 90% done. I broke one of the concrete pavers trying to put it in, which means I gotta go get another one.
And let me state again: Gorilla glue rules. I wanted a nice edge to the bed, so I glued paving bricks to the top of each paver (the cross-section of the wall looks like a capital T). Thirty minutes after putting the bricks down I couldn't budge the bricks, and was able to sit on them without wobbling.
W00t.
Other projects this summer, provided I have the mo-nay, include starting a container herb garden, getting a dwarf cherry tree, a strawberry bed, and some dwarf blueberry bushes. And possibly pave the patio with slabs, if we can afford to. But that may have to wait till next summer.
Oh, yeah. And get the house rewired and the attic insulated. But those aren't fun, and you can't eat insulation, or put lawn chairs on the rewiring.
So one thing that I did find out while attempting the Great Raised Bed Caper was the importance of Gorilla Glue.
I was in Lowe's, buying the concrete slabs (Shut up! Hoekstra's doesn't carry pavers!) and since there wasn't going to really be enough room for mortar, I went looking for some sort of concrete patch or adhesive to "glue" the slabs together for extra strength.
After much looking, I found Masonry adhesive, which is primarily used for putting brick veneers on existing concrete. Bingo, I thought. Then I turned it over and read the label, which basically said:
This product will give you cancer, cause migranes, suffocate your dog and visit birth defects on all your children. Don't touch it, smell it, swallow it, lick it, or look at it crosswise. It'll kill you dead and then come for your grandmother, just for spite.
All the masonry adhesives had pretty much this same warning label, as did all the exterior silicone caulking. Phooey. What's the point of having an organic garden if your toxic-waste caulking will seep its loving toluene into the soil? I moved to the stuff clearly labeled "Kitchen and Bath" caulking. Smaller kill-you-dead labels, but every one of them said "Not for food preparation areas". Why the hell market deathbringing caulk as "For Kitchens" if you can't have it near food?!
So I branched out into other adhesives, seeking something that was at least inert when dry. Epoxy? Nope, can't put it in aquariums, cause it'll kill your fish. Sounds pretty toxic to me. Aquarium epoxy? Nope, won't work on concrete. How about... Gorilla glue? I'd heard of the stuff, and the general consensus is that if you've got two things you want to stick together and never come unstuck, use this. Hm. Says it works on concrete... what the hell, I'll give it a try.
I can tell you now that Gorilla Glue will, in fact, glue two concrete pavers together and hold them together so that you can pick them up as one unit. These things weigh at least 20lbs each. I am thoroughly impressed. A good repeated kicking finally separated two of the glued-together pavers, but it also split one of them in two, so there you go. It dries non-toxic, and is more-or-less inert polyurethane when it's done foaming and bonding and stuff. Hooray!
However: do heed their warning labels. No one else should touch this glue unless they wore a glove.
The plan for this weekend was to put in the raised beds for my Square Foot Garden. This plan, as they say, did not survive first contact with the enemy.
Since I don't have a ton of money, and I don't want to be replacing rotten wooden boards in a couple years (can't use weatherproofed lumber for gardening -- it'll killya dead), I elected to use precast concrete stones. The little retaining wall guys were pricey ($1 each) and being 8" deep I would have lost over a foot of arable land to stones. So I settled on big concrete patio pavers. Cheap, effective, heavy, sturdy.
Emphasis on the heavy.
I struggled with the blasted things for over five hours last night, and after about three tries, finally got them all in a straight line. I thought I could just eyeball the things and get them in the ground, but the line went so far off true that I had to start over, and over, and over. If I'd just given in and gotten a piece of farking string I could have been done in ninety minutes, but noooooo, I thought I'd just go ahead and try to sight them in one at a time...
So now my back, neck and legs are singing The Ow Song. And tomorrow, I have to go put the back on the bed -- I only got the front and two sides put in last night.
Siiiigh.
After that experience, I think we're a-gonna hire somebody to put in the patio for us.
It's odd, but immediately after I asked about the cucumbers/muskmelon question, I found a FAQ in the Square Foot Gardening book that said it was fine to grow them next to each other-- and then Tish and Karen each found a contradicting answer.
So... I think what I'm going to do is grow them both but start the cukes early so that they oughtn't be flowering simultaneously, which is what Tish suggested, and possibly hand-pollinate the muskmelons. Tish said what you do is pick a boy-flower off the vine and have him visit all the girl-flowers. He may die, but he goes out in a blaze of glory!