conceptualization

The carpool was a great idea, what when gas was $4 a gallon and the new HOV lane opened up and the company transferred to a site on the west side of the city, some 45 minutes from where it had been located, but only a ten minute drive for the CEO, who never showed up, anyway.

So sign up sheets had been posted and organized by a few of the ambitious early careerists, rotations of cars or alternative cash donations calculated, and once the habit was set up, it seemed churlish to break away, regardless of how infantile the entire procedure seemed -- no workday impromptu sleepovers somewhere else without a lot of calculation, and severe curtailment of daytime doctor's visits or lunches with acquaintances the next town over. The management was thrilled: having the work staff divided into carrier groups meant fewer late arrivals, early departures, and productivity skyrocketed, so carpool vehicles received pride of place in the corporate lot, and certain highway tolls were deductible through a special human resources fund : anything they could think of to preserve this spike in worker output.

Slowly, though, workers forgot quite what a boon the carpool was supposed to be, as gas dropped back to levels of pocket change and arguments over preferred radio stations, cell phone conversations, and in-car discussion topics became heated.

For a time the east-northeast commute group drew up a policy on radio/phone/seating within each rotation of the appointed car pool driver, but then they got a new member who lived slightly further east-northeast, preferred to do all the driving, and had a behemoth of a car with leather seats, so everyone transferred to the new overwhelming personality and worked out a new mileage charge to be paid to the driver. They were always on time, plowed through the worst of the weather, and soon enough felt like children with assigned seats in the school bus, cowed into only listening to the incessant blowsy talk shows of the driver and squirming like restless children too terrified of some unknown punishment to disagree.

The far south commuting group suffered from a different, more perplexing problem. The four women had easily agreed to a schedule and driver assignment, felt no qualms locating common ground with music preferences, and tacitly agreed that family business was acceptable cell phone use but medical interrogations were not. For the first six months, everything ran smoothly, and then the new executive secretary to the head of human resources moved to the far south carpool catchment zone.

The company was filled with whispers of impending layoffs, and no one wanted to raise alarms in the human resources division, so they meekly accepted a schedule change that had them arriving at work a half hour earlier and departing a half hour later each day. Family discussions were severely curtailed, with the fear that any sign of domestic turbulence would make it into their files, and the news and only the news and always the news was played, while the executive secretary somehow multitasked and worked on endless mysterious spreadsheets on a laptop in the back seat. She declined to join the driving rotation, and was unwilling to commit a penny more to commuting expenses than she felt was justified. Her stomach was upset by the smell of food, so anything in addition to coffee in vacuum sealed mugs was out of the question. The easy camaraderie of the women was replaced by a jittery fear, but they saw no benefit in speaking out against one who had the ears of the powerful.

The city dwellers quickly formed a pack, united as they were with their anti-car urban identity, they had all reverse-commuted on the train to the old location, and now found themselves hostage to the lone automobile owning member in their midst, a questionable ex-hippie with an unpredictable, age-worn, battle-scarred Volvo covered in bumper stickers proclaiming allegiance to everyone from Jerry Brown for President to a Free Tibet to Equality for One Eyed Space Aliens. But it was a car, and on most days it both started and ran, and the driver was never more than twenty minutes or so late, and he was happy to drive for nothing more than a weekly rotation of who brought his coffee, bran muffin, and banana, so they companionably listened to public radio and Afro pop and tried to ignore the lingering scent of marijuana in the upholstery.

Two years into being the urban anti-commuters, and they had formed betting pools on everything from the final four to the Oscars to the World Series to the elections, commissioned matching t-shirts screenprinted with the outline of the old Volvo, and were forming a weekend brunch rotation when the expected happened, and the car was impounded by the police for possession, as it had been making the weekend run up to the border to supply organic pot to the city's demanding clientele. With a group suddenly bereft of sole car and driver, they gazed forlornly over their brown bag lunches and tried to hatch an alternative transportation plan, then decided to instead tender their resignations en masse and find work which didn't require a commute using a car.

The company suddenly found the legal department and research department staffs decimated, but by this time restructuring was well underway and there was no need to replace the vanished workforce. Slowly the details of the restructuring plan became firmer and were announced, in bite-sized morsels, to the employees; it seemed like the restructuring had been organized by nodes of commuting groups rather than any business efficiency expert. Following the loss of the urban anti-commuters, the company laid off all members of the far northern alliance, a group that had braved the worst traffic snarls and steepest toll increases for the time since the move; the internal accounting office was therefore almost completely eliminated except for the intern, who was the nephew of the CEO and lived in the next town over with his parents.

The next group to be summarily dismissed from the commuting roster was the southeasterlies; it was reckoned that the extreme unreliability as regarded arrival and departure times figured into the decision, but the result was the loss of the paralegal team that was the only remaining legal expertise following the departure of the urban commuting lawyers. The far south branch felt themselves protected by the presence of the executive secretary; the east-northeast group hoped to lose their controlling dragon, but no such grace manifested.

For a time this equilibrium was maintained, the disappearance of the legal and accounting teams deemed sufficient to meet the needs of a slimmer company, but soon questions began surfacing in the cafeteria: was it safer to drive alone, were individuals less likely to be cut out than members of an obvious group, and if safety was in the singular rather than in the collective, what was the protocol for leaving one's commute group while keeping one's job at the company? Does one inform them the Friday before, the week before? Does a carpool group receive two weeks' notice? Who is responsible for recalculating the driving rotation and time schedule and fees, and whose duty was it to notify the other group members? Would the defector be shunned at break time, or their decision accepted with equanimity?

Tensions ran high enough from the restructuring before the order of the carpools started to collapse; now that this underpinning structure was weakening, the managers were in a panic on how to raise morale and productivity to the heights it had attained just after the relocation.

In the end, it didn't matter. The CEO sold a majority stake in the company to its primary competitor, and everyone whose position survived the shuffling now found themselves faced with the option of moving to the next state south or being demoted to a skeleton office crew downtown. Whispers of company insurrection were heard, but nothing came of it. The new headquarters building on the west side of the city became a charter school, before losing its accreditation and being left, vacant, to the forces of nature.

reading
Dear mustachioed junior captain, stay well and happy.
Yours,
A. Chekov
{to Ivan Leotyev 3/22/1890}


weather
ducks then picnics

{photo credit K.G.G.}

How To

Instructions for the care and feeding
(A) of a houseplant.

Houseplants are notoriously fickle. Read the back pages of any seed catalog or Chapter 1: Assembly of any container gardening book, and on and on and on they go, listing the nutrients, fillers, fertilizers, aerators that are absolutely necessary to ensure the health and well being of the four-inch green leafy number, and before two blinks of an eye the soil has been checked to see if it has the right pH, a twice weekly automatic watering system has been installed, several hundred dollars spent on lightbulbs that emit wavelengths at just the right parts of the spectrum, and all the best windows in the house are taken up by rather scraggly looking plant growth.

After measuring out bone meal, manure, coffee grounds, after checking for infestations of spider mites and aphids, after discovering a mysterious fungus on the African violet and mushrooms growing in the hibiscus, then the cat decimates the fern, and, you know what? Fuck it. If god had intended plants to grow inside houses, they would root and flower without human intervention.

Instructions for the care and feeding
(B) of a goldfish.

Congratulations! You've just won a free goldfish by participating in the school's Halloween festival bean bag toss! This goldfish, which retails for 29¢ at the local pet store, will require the following accessories to experience optimal fish-quality of life.

A glass aquarium. Many people erroneously believe that a fish can live a long, healthy life in approximately one gallon of stagnant, scuzzy, unfiltered water. This is not correct. Each fish requires approximately three gallons of water space per inch of fish. Additionally, a water filtration system, to clean bacteria, fungus, and micro-organisms, using a dual carbon system is necessary to maintain water quality, along with an aeration pump to increase available oxygen. Fish breathe through gills, but this doesn't mean that they can manufacture oxygen, and their water will quickly become poisonous if air quality levels are not ensured.

One to three inches of pebbles in the bottom of the tank will provide camouflage for fish waste and unconsumed food, while offering a means to anchor the requisite plant life to the aquarium floor. Be aware that a selection of plants should be purchased, in order both to improve air and water quality as well as providing a dietary supplement for the goldfish, which will consume approximately two plants per week. One method of reducing the grimy film which inevitably accumulates on the sides of aquariums is by purchasing snails; they vacuum off the muck and leave the glass clean, at least until they are attacked and eaten by the goldfish, which are not herbivores but primarily carnivores. This is why it is essential to purchase a high-protein grade fish-food, and to feed regularly, up to twice per day.

Once a week, suction out all but the last three inches of water, being sure to thoroughly vacuum out amongst the rocks and pebbles, and replace with specially treated pH balanced water, that does not contain flouride. Finally, be sure to invest in a well-fitting lid with light for the aquarium: goldfish are accomplished jumpers, and their scales adhere to the pile of the carpet if left longer than fifteen minutes. However, replacement goldfish are only 29¢, so feel free to take a few months to figure out the routine.

Instructions for the care and feeding
(C) of a grandparent.

While grandparents are primarily self-catering (for exceptions, please see Appendix A: Alzheimer's, senility, and long term disability: a user's guide), certain steps may be taken to ensure an optimal grandparent experience. Please be aware that the details may vary depending upon the gender of the grandparent.

With grandparents, be sure to maintain a 3 to 6 month catalog of politically neutral personal anecdotes, preferably which offer a more, enriching human interest story where good ultimately prevails, and where the villains are either villains with a black soul or bad guys with a heart of gold: it is best to avoid gray areas, but perfectly appropriate to embellish anecdotes with puppies and/or small children.

Grandparents are inordinately fond of card games; be forewarned that they may look compassionate and caring, but be sure not to engage in any games of skill or chance that involve the exchange of money, even if it is just "playing for pennies." These people play bridge, gun rummy, and canasta up to 5 times per week, and winnings aren't returned at the end of the game. Would you go against a professional poker player? No. Likewise, use the aforementioned anecdotes to keep the atmosphere at the card table light and conversational.

When interacting with grandparents, be prepared to encounter a greater than normal ration of dramatic movies about unsung heroes, weaker than usual coffee, earlier breakfast times, shorter showers, and obligatory pre-breakfast bed-making. These extra hours of the day will then be spent playing card games, working 30,000 piece puzzles, walking the dogs, and watching reruns of the Merv Griffith and Lawrence Welk shows. At holidays, "I Love Lucy" and screwball comedies may be substituted.

The primary feeding requirements for grandparents may be distilled from early editions of The Joy of Cooking and Julia Child's first publications, but grandparents thrive best on recipes handwritten onto 3x5 index cards, with mysterious allusions to relatives long since deceased.

For optimal enjoyment of the grandparent experience, avoid mentioning ancient family feuds, complaining about cross-stitched gingerbread house tissue paper covers, or criticizing macrame projects. With proper attention and care, grandparents will thrive for years to come.

Instructions for the care and feeding
(D) of a next door neighbor suffering from a paranoid messiah complex based on compulsive lying and suspected kleptomania

This acquisition is almost impossible to find a new home for after the initial gregarious "local color" charm wears off, so it is necessary to properly maintain neighborly relations so that one is free from arson, libel, and lawsuits. Under no circumstances should one ever attempt to lend to or borrow from this neighbor items including but not limited to: lawn mowers, rakes, shovels, flower pots, dogs, small children, cups of flour, eggs, books, money, laundry detergent, or the newspaper.

If it is suspected that said neighbor is reading one's magazines out of the mailbox or appropriating one's newspapers from the front porch, under no circumstance, repeat, under no circumstances, should they be questioned, much less accused, about the missing and / or damaged reading material, as they will only become defensive and are likely to strike out or extract revenge when angered. Rather, the best solution is to secure a p. o. box at the local post office, and to have one's newspapers delivered to the office.

This neighbor may be successfully co-existed with through the sharing of conspiracy theory stories, gossip about the new family across the street, and tales about old lovers, provided one is prepared for the new neighbor's across the street to then hear the stories about old lovers as told by you, the originator of conspiracy stories. It is appropriate to give this neighbor potted plants for birthdays and at Christmas, provided one is prepared to watch the plant wither away on the front porch, from neglect, spite, or some combination of the two.

With proper management, the potentially troublesome next door neighbor can be maintained in a cordial detente where one's lawn is not poisoned, one's dogs are not reported to animal control, and one's mail is not absconded with, a relationship that can exist, carefully tended, for years.

Instructions for the care and feeding
(E) of a car.

With any vehicle, it is necessary to begin with a large wad of cash. Should the prospective owner not have access to high quality etching plates and a printing press, some banks will provide temporary wads of cash in exchange for a lifetime of monthly payments and an ownership stake in the acquired vehicle.

It is a common misconception that modern cars do not require oil changes; quite the contrary, one should not only regularly perform the religious ritual of the oil change, but one should also pay the premium demanded for non-petroleum based oil, which 9 out of 19 cars prefer. One will additionally be required to keep a mechanic on monthly retainer, so that any concerns with the car's brakes, windshield wipers, seat warmers, acceleration systems, fuel injectors, radiators, and electrical components may be dealt with within a 2-4 day window rather than the 2-4 weeks required for new customers.

Cars will desire being fully and properly insured, a monthly premium which may double the payments made to the bank for driving privileges; insurance plans will vary according to neighborhood and make, model, age, and color of car and driver, but no insurance bonus points will be awarded for perfect driving record, lack of vandalism or damage to the car, or for dutifully performing required maintenance every 15000 miles.

During the months when temperatures are above freezing, cars should be washed and vacuumed weekly; under no circumstances should trash ever be left in a car once a journey has ended. During the winter months, the automobile will function best with a set of custom designed studded snow tires with dedicated rims and hubcaps, a cost which is not reimbursed by the bank, insurance company, or mechanic. Every six months, exchange and repeat, followed by the ritual pre- and post- road salt season washing and detailing of the vehicle.

For the same lifetime cost and hassle, one may consider renting a car or using a taxi cab service; for the truly brave and foolhardy, a bicycle may be substituted for the approximate cost of one (1) tank of gas.

Please purchase volume 2 for instructions for the care and feeding of

(F) Small children.
(G) Hamsters.
(H) Ex-boyfriends.
(I) Chickens.

---

reading
pase de abordar

weather
pretty, eh?

The Ligature Project: A Manifesto

So, what is it with all those ampersands, anyway? Why do I go barreling down old state highways, driving erratically, and then snapping photos with a rather distressed secondhand camera, photos which may or may not be in focus?



What the hell is a ligature, anyway? {the briefest of history lessons}

To begin at the beginning: in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was God, and all those monks were nothing if not industrious -- and sneaky little scribes who would insert faces of colleagues into the heads of demons, leave out important lines and then add them in the margins, and create shortcuts so that words took up less room per inch, allowing more text to be bullied onto a page, therefore fewer days spent preparing vellum and binding up the pages and all that processing stuff.

Printers liked the more-characters-per-inch idea, and kept at it, and expanded upon it. And the language in use at that time? Latin, of course. The Athenæum is an example, as is the Encyclopædia. And the ampersand, defined by the dictionary as “a corruption of the phrase "and per se and", meaning "and [the symbol which] by itself [is] and” developed from squishing together the e and the t of et; this can still be seen in the italic variations of the form. For further information along these lines, wikipedia is as good a source as any.
on the ampersand | on ligatures

Each typographer has reveled in the opportunity to let his (almost always his) fancy free with the italic ampersand of his pet font – this is where the personality of the designer can be seen in all its unfiltered glory. Graphic designers got into the show, and started using ampersands not because space was at a premium, but just because they were nifty design elements: the same way clip-art has functioned, for better or for worse. Artists and book snobs like ampersands, too, the former for the design relationship and the latter for the “I know Latin” element, and here we are, in a day where the incorporation of an ampersand into a corporate logo is rather more likely than not.



None of this explains why I like the ampersand, and as the collector and curator of the Ligature Project, as the driver of the erratic car that zips and zooms through dodgy neighborhoods and down old state highways, as the corporate sponsor that pays for the petrol and the sandwiches and the internet connection --and what is it with all those ampersands, anyway?



First, let it be duly noted that no less a source of divine word from on high than the Museum of Modern Art (NYC) has just admitted a ligature into its permanent design collection: the rather humble “@”. You know it, I know it, we all use it, in invoices, in correspondence, and there it is. Suddenly elevated to the hallowed halls of the design establishment. Yes, this is one of the best museum stories this year. Maybe it’s been a slow year, but I’m thrilled for ligatures to be getting their due, not just in popular culture but in the realm of the meaningful. So if it’s good enough for MoMA; if it’s experienced a revival in book and magazine publications and commercial applications; by golly, it’s good enough for me.
The NYTimes on MoMA and @

But what does collecting ampersands do?


Start with what it reveals of the urban landscape, the palimpsest of all that has come before. Typographical trends ebb and flow with time; the growth of businesses, their upkeep and their product and their market, reflect the who-is-doing-what-where aspects of a community as gentrification sets in, or as developers bull-doze old markets for new strip-malls. This collection has intentionally avoided acquiring behemoth chain examples, under the expectation that everyone sees Bed Bath & Beyond and Barnes & Noble wherever their eye chances to land. The one exception has been a grocery store chain that can’t seem to make up its mind which ampersand belongs in its logo, and currently has four variations, at least, active in the same market zones.



When was a town built? When was a shopping district expanded? When did a store move in? What does that store sell? Who are the intended clientele? All of this is revealed in the typography of the ampersand, hand painted or steel forged, elegant and quiet or loud and raucous and demanding attention. What endures over time, what lasts even after the business closes, how does the memory of place continue to grow even as the physical anchors themselves become obsolete? Hints to these stories of growth, decay, and renewal are present not only in the architecture of a place, but in the details.



Collecting ampersands completely changes the way that the landscape exists: rather than taking the interstate and driving (the posted speed limit, of course), listening to NPR, and watching traffic and the clouds; instead, the state highway, always an attractive alternative, becomes a necessary alternative. (I’ve taken a few photographs on the interstate. (1) They’re boring. (2) It’s really unsafe at those speeds.) So trundle on over to the state highway, where the posted speed limit is a manageable 50, then act like a Sunday farmer out for a drive, and putter along at 35. Maybe 40, tops. Those V-8 monsters will happily pass on the left, shaking their heads but not offended, leaving the collector free to suddenly swerve into the shoulder or a gravel pit to catch – aha! – a token. I was here. Zap.



The drive slows down, the road trip slows down, and all of the details that make driving such a necessary outlet of modern experience come into focus: the stores, farmhouses, hand-lettered eggs-for-sale signs no longer blur into the fabric of “next to the road,” but suddenly jump out, screaming for notice. How many of the gorgeous buildings that I’ve taken mediocre photographs of would have otherwise merely been ten seconds, tops, of my attention? Suddenly, the impromptu abandoned storefront art exhibit is actually seen – and actually documented, rather than partially remembered as a half-glanced memory of something cool somewhere on some drive.



But with the expectation of slowing down, swerving, and stopping, the two-dimensional buildings pop-out into active real glory, and I see them. Really see them. The bridge that I’ve always meant to photograph? Hey, the camera’s on, sitting in the cup holder; there isn’t any traffic of note; NOW, damn it, NOW. The silhouette of the favorite tree on the way to the interstate? Finally captured. The sunset on the way to the parking lot? Here it is. What a beautiful day.



I’ve always loved the meandering of the drive-to-lunch two-hours-away; and now it has a justification, a purpose, and a project. My own earliest family memories involve endless drives back and forth along the Eisenhower Interstate System, god rest his soul, and in those memories the landscape slowly changes, the landmarks of childhood almost-there’s and look-at-that’s becoming the victims of age, neglect, arson, gentrification, development. Not only was there the theme park with a paper-mache version of the Matterhorn; there were geodesic domes and 1960s teepees and billboards.
The Texas Matterhorn

Oh! The billboards. Ray Bradbury hated them. Urban designers hate them. Suburban developments hate them. But they are such a window into the world of the consumer; and indeed, I can still remember being grade-school-aged and redesigning the billboards: changing the colors, the layouts, the images, the fonts – except I didn’t know the word font, in my mind it was “shaped letters.” And in my mind, I was cruel, heartless, and thorough in my editing. The eighties in semi-rural Texas were nothing if not a bonanza of bad typography and design, and I loved it.
Bradbury on Billboards



So here I am, swerving through country lanes, down dingy side streets, and actually seeing the place where I live, have lived for some time, for the first time. And again, again, and again. With a renewed sense of purpose, I’m stalking the places I’ve been and the places I’ve always intended to go. One sign or one shop will remind me of another sign or another shop, and suddenly there is a secondary collection; two months ago, I had no idea that pizza shops were often also sellers of submarine sandwiches. Two weeks ago I didn’t know that subs were also referred to as grinders in this area. One week ago I hadn’t realized that Pepsi really had the market share of small shops and cafes in the region (since gone out of business). One month ago I had no idea that the ampersand may or may not be used in languages other than English (and Latin, of course). My eyes have been taken off of the endless examination of the printed page, and focused upon an examination of the printed landscape – and it’s quite a ride.

---

reading
what, you want more? Go find the New Yorker.

weather
rain sun rain sun rain sun rain

homeward bound

That was the year the plants took over.

It started slowly, an exuberant bed of tulips and a lawn covered in naturalized daffodils, spring bulbs whose flowering season, scent, and even color were amped up, lengthened, exaggerated for dramatic effect.

As the lilacs riotously came into bloom, the scent was so overwhelming as to knock unwary cyclists into the gutter, and caused several women to prematurely go into labor. The roses played their part, even the high maintenance tea roses growing with such profusion and enthusiasm that fences were covered in blooms and front porches obscured from view.

To say that lawns were lush and verdant would be a gross understatement; they were a vibrant emerald green from the first warm day of spring, grew thickly even in the darkened shade of ancient trees, and required twice weekly cutting in order to not choke the lawn mowers.

Gardens were so bountiful that even compost piles had seedlings of avocado and pear trees and potatoes growing in anarchic profusion, and green beans and summer squash became objects of terror rather than warm weather social currency. The rivers were choked with an abundance of weed, and under the canopy of leaves entire blocks were enshrouded in darkness.

The Farmer's Almanac had failed to predict any of this. It had been a drier than normal winter, a spring with the usual alternations between torrential downpour and clear blue skies, and a slightly arid summer: and still plants grew. And grew. And grew.

A windowbox of geraniums broke through the window upon which they perched; boxes of pecans in kitchen pantries spontaneously germinated; and a small grove of orange trees began to grow next to a picnic area downtown. The Ladies' Auxiliary was ecstatic as their Mother's Day Lilac Parade set new records for participation; high school boys were able to demand top dollar for promises of regular lawn care; and squirrels grew potbellies from the surplus of nature's larder.

The only real complaints came from the city's Manager of Parks and Cemeteries, as an emergency bond bill had to be passed before there was sufficient funding for the new work expectations; but the mayor and the Boy Scouts chipped in, and things were mostly kept under a modicum of control.

Until the weeds joined in.

Soon, the cracks in sidewalks rivaled tree lawns for vegetation growth; vegetable beds became tangles of impenetrable doom if they were not tended daily, at a minimum, and even gutters which needed cleaning and the damp areas behind woodsheds became scenes of tropical profusion. Everyone gamely trimmed and weeded, vases of fresh flowers adorned every counter, and the emergency bond bill unanimously passed.

What was thought to be an isolated incident of extreme flora was soon discovered to be a region-wide epidemic; farmers who had thoughts of walking away with prizes at the agricultural fairs found themselves once again with odds no better than average. Strawberries were left to rot on the vine, and the raspberries grew brambles of such density that most of the harvest was forfeit to the birds and chipmunks.

I spent that summer in my treehouse, a simple plank of plywood twelve feet up that suddenly became a fortress secured against all takers; it disappeared behind the thicket of branches and leaves, and once out of sight, also became out of mind. In this way I avoided lawn mowing duty, weeding rotations, marching in the Mother's Day Lilac Parade and the Father's Day Rose Parade and the Fourth of July Parade, dog walking duty, and almost, but not quite, the family trip to the beach for a week in August.

Even the beach was obscured by plant growth; where previously only the hardiest of wild roses had fought for their survival in the sand dunes, they were now joined by scattered pine tree saplings, unexpected shrubbery, and even brave incursions of lawn, which had hitherto demanded constant care and nourishment in order to survive, much less flourish. What little sand remained uncolonized by plant growth was covered in the peculiar dark grey-green of seaweed, spongey below bare feet, building up into dense layers upon what had been beach.

The water was equally overtaken; kayak paddles struggled to make any headway at all, and swimmers were subject not to the endless cool caress of the water but to struggling against the tickling of the all-pervasive seaweed. The only benefit was that the abundance of the growth cut back on both the jellyfish and the poisonous red tides, but it was hardly a week of sunning and swimming as had been expected.

When we trundled home, sunburnt but otherwise unimpressed, the house showed evidence of the power of plant life to wreck havoc even with an absence of six days; a scythe had to be rented from the hardware store in order to hack through the lawn to the front door, and all of us were enlisted for the next week in a massive onslaught of harvesting, weeding, pruning, mowing, and edging. When I finally reclaimed the sanctuary of the tree house, school hovered a scant week away, and the conversations had become laced with dread: no one knew if federal emergency relief funding would be available to assist with an autumn whose quantity of leaf-fall would be unprecedented in state history.

This cast a shadow over the fall fairs, where new records were dramatically set for largest pumpkin; even the annual corn mazes started sending portable GPS units in with all participants, and neighborhood committees met with the city's Manager of Parks and Cemeteries to draw up mulching schedules in preparation for the coming autumn. As it was, school was canceled for almost two weeks so that everyone had a chance to shovel out, and a special quadrant of the town dump was set aside for the disposal of leaves and grass clippings.

What no one remembered, though, was the situation of the compost piles: given that individual piles of kitchen waste suddenly produced such abundance, it would have been wise to screen all deposits for acorns, pine cones, and other seeds. Unfortunately, everyone had been in such a panic about clearing out from the leaf-fall that it was Thanksgiving before reports began to surface of a mysterious and forbidding forest growing in the town dump.

A crew of men with chainsaws was promptly brought in to bring the plant life under control, but it was a losing battle: by spring, root systems had been established, and the trees grew in such profusion that deforestation seemed overwhelming, not to mention the fact that each individual continued to battle their own property. The plants' behavior if the previous year began to be seen as a sample, a tease, as the vegetation invoked eminent domain rights and claim what rightly belonged to the world of vegetation, for the world of vegetation.

The Mother's Day Lilac Parade and the Father's Day Rose Parade were unenthusiastic affairs, and the Fourth of July Parade and fireworks were canceled due to lack of interest: all anyone did, in their nonworking hours, was fight the invasion of plant life. We were pioneers in our own town, and even my tree house was lost between the growth of the tree and the necessity to perform constant agricultural chores.

Families began to leave, to list their houses for sale and then abandon them, unsold, unmaintained, to relocate somewhere, anywhere else. The lucky ones had relatives they could stay with, enough professional contacts to continue to work in their field; the unlucky ones were compared to Steinbeck's dust bowl refugees, cruelly abandoned by the forces of nature to life a life of day-to-day survival. Local groups lobbied state and federal agencies for relocation funds, but the territory was too large, and the demands of the population too overwhelming, for the government to take effective action.

My family lasted another year. We children were taken out of the schools and put to work on the land, and eventually every part of our day was scheduled around keeping as much plant life out of the house as possible. When the root system choked up the plumbing, though, we left, weaving our station wagon through fields that had once been roads, never to return.

---

reading
alternating between The Economist and Vogue

weather
planning martini-bocce-lilac picnics!

stalking the ampersand

on the hunt in Haverhill & Lowell, almost to the century mark!





reading
just watching Lady Gaga video clips; much more amusing

weather
monsoon season

statements of the obvious

by Emma Worthington, a contributing editor to Reader's Digest. Her columns are syndicated in newspapers across the country, and appreciated for their keen wit, emotional sincerity, and steady outlook in the face of societal turbulence.

Dear Reader,

Welcome to the March issue!

Over the past month we have watched daffodils ripen and bud, babies blossom into toddlers, silently endured the indignity of a root canal, remonstrated with recalcitrant spouses about the need to reorder lipitor and ssri uptake inhibitors before the pill bottle is empty rather than after, poured a bottle of hydrogen peroxide down the throat of a yellow lab after it ingested all of the chocolate candies that were intended for the fifth grade valentine party, then had the oriental rug professionally shampooed, and now we are ready to embrace spring and all that spring has to offer: clothing that is a bit too snug about the hips from those stick-to-the-ribs winter meals, and never having a jacket that is quite warm enough in the evenings, and the approach of tax season and the haemorrhaging of the bank account, a jury duty summons, annual work performance reviews, and, don't forget, the end of year bake sale and fifth grade play featuring the theme of Our American Forefathers!

It seems like it was just last month that the fifth graders held a sit-in to protest having to be old men with powdered hair and vests rather than pirates with eye patches and wooden legs, and then of course the teacher received a good talking-to from the principal and the PTA on whether non-violent protest was an appropriate subject matter for ten year olds, but in the end we did all compromise and allow the students to wear handlebar mustaches and meet with an accent coach from London so that they would atop 'aargh'-ing at the dinner table; oh, I don't know about you, but it seems like fifth grade has gone on long enough.

Let's not forget that now is the time to check on the horseshoes and bocce supplies prior to hosting the spring block party, and if the men get organized it might even be possible to hold the craft fair in the historical society's dairy farm; it just needs a bit of work on the roof, and at the end of this article I'll be sure to include a list of crafts and suppliers for stocking your community's spring craft bazaar.

The money this year was supposed to go to earthquake relief, but there have been so many earthquakes of late that at our February Town Meeting, after we discussed proposed changes to regulations concerning the tapping of sugar maples and architectural requirements for tool sheds located on lots of less than five acres, there was a motion to redirect craft bazaar funds from Haiti, Chile, and/or Turkey to the new senior enrichment center, and even though a certain fifth grade teacher argued vehemently that "they" required housing and hospitals more than "we" require an indoor shuffleboard court and expanded paperback lending library and lumbar supporting chairs for the bridge club, the motion passed with a significant majority, and the director of the senior enrichment center (who happens to be the mother-in-law of the head of the board of selectmen, but that had nothing to do with the vote) immediately went to work organizing the repairs to the roof of the dairy barn.

How the new regulations will affect sugaring season is another matter altogether, and I still don't quite understand how that rule managed to pass with a rider that pancakes be made using soy milk and only soy-bacon and soy-sausage can be served at seasonal sugar houses. I think the senior class just finished reading The Jungle, and we unfortunately lowered the age of town meeting participation to 17 five years ago, and some of the draconian rules these kids get passed are amazing. The fitness program they instituted for the Chief of Police -- well, now, that was hardly kind, given that he's had two bypass surgeries and it just isn't dignified to have a squarely built man of a certain age forced to do sit-ups and run with the high school phys. ed. class.

We managed to repeal that one, but only last year, and only by moving the date of Town Meeting and sending the high school senior class on a field trip to Ottawa, to observe a parliamentary form of government. There was no way our parents were willing to send their children to the scandal-mongering den of iniquity of Washington!

So Town Meeting went along alright, and there don't seem to be any glitches with the fifth grade play, and I know all of you are thinking about gardening, even though the frost date is a good month away. I personally am getting just the slightest bit fatigued from all of the pressure to be more-organic-than-thou, and even though I ordered my seeds from a reclusive back to the lander who only grows heirloom varieties from a 300 mile radius and plants on the new moon and transplants on the full moon, and my fertilizer is brought over from the goat farm next to the old saw mill, and my root cellar is filled with over three dozen cases of green tomato salsa, you know, sometimes it's just easier to spray a bit of insecticide onto the potatoes and the apples, because who wants to wake up at five a.m. every day and individually pick off beetles while meditating on the sutras of mindfulness?

It gets exhausting, and I don't mind admitting that it is no cheaper at all than just driving to the grocery store -- no one really knows the difference between my green beans and the ones that someone else nursed to perfection. Perhaps your garden grows with a giddy delight and a freedom from slug infestations and white rot, and your tomatoes ripen on schedule and the broccoli doesn't bolt, and I admire and respect that about you.

So instead of focusing my energies on the garden this season, the theme which my household is embracing and I encourage you to consider is, instead, spring cleaning. A well-ordered home is a place of calm, loving beauty, where the linen closet is arranged by bedroom and the pantry separated by food group, where there is at least a 30% likelihood of wearing any given item in the closet, and socks are hole-free. Join me in making this season the season of domestic order, and watch as our children perform their contributing chores with gusto and appreciation!

Barring that, I challenge each and every one of you to finally give away all children's clothing that is two years smaller than the youngest child in residence, and all craft projects, ticket stubs, programs, and memorabilia that you were saving for the scrapbooking project, which you're really never going to have time for and the children won't actually care about.

Spring! This year, it is all about reality, and embracing who we are; aspirational living is so passé!

S I D E B A R
Recommended crafts and supplies for the spring craft bazaar to benefit the senior enrichment center

Ancestral Eyes photo frame
materials: picture frame, hot glue gun, googly eyes

Birdies for Court Play
materials: tennis balls, hot glue gun, multicolored feathers

Milk Mustaches
materials: white ceramic mugs, hot glue gun, false mustaches

Seductive Sights
reading glasses, hot glue gun, false eyelashes

Sock Monkeys, Sock Mice, or Sock Aliens
materials: odd socks, filling from a lumpy pillow, googly eyes, contrast thread for stitching mouth and accents (advanced)

Tournament Paddles
materials: ping pong paddles, Swiss Mountain Scenes stencil kit, acrylic paint

Constellation Installation
materials: ping pong balls, glow in the dark stars, fishing line

Instant Fire Kit
materials: pine cones, paraffin wax, glitter, turpentine, matches

Custom Canine Collar
materials: bandanna, jingle bells, iron-on letters

The Eyes of God
materials: swizzle sticks, martini glasses, googly eyes, epoxy cement

Requisite pot pourri packet
materials: the wedding veil from your first marriage, dried rose petals, dried lavender, scissors, feathers, glue gun. Dye veil acid yellow or lime green for a more contemporary effect.

That's all for this month's Statements of the Obvious! Don't forget: sharpen your pencils, reset the clocks, and don't look under the sofa cushions!

---

reading
Science Experiments You Can Eat: Vicki Cobb

weather
somebody stole my girl scout cookies
somebody stole my girl scout cookies
somebody stole my girl scout cookies

Artists' Book Group

Pioneer Valley : Artists' Book Group
prepares for the first monthly meet-up
on April Fool's Day, 2010
(really!)


Meredith and I are finally, finally starting up an artist's book critique group! Topics for discussion at the first event will include the meeting schedule and location, how other people would find the time most productively and interestingly spent, etc.


The idea is that a friendly group of artistically minded types who appreciate the book as a format for interacting with other visuals meet together on the first Thursday of the month, from 6.30 (potluck) or 7 (group starts), each person bringing with them a project, that is anywhere along the timeline from conception to completion, rough or spit-polished, to talk about ideas with the group.



The focus isn't so much on technique (is the joint big enough? are the boards too thick?) but rather on the visual side: page layout, image, design, etc. And of course the goal is to be supportive and democratic and not at all hierarchical. So there's no cost, and no expectation, and people are welcome to bring intricate projects or scribbles on the back of a napkin, and, of course, friends, colleagues, and other interesting types.




Basically, we suffer from what many working types experience -- art doesn't have deadlines, so it often gets shunted to the end of the priority line. And having a group will keep us on track. Or at least encourage us to get a bit more done!

We'd be thrilled if you joined us -- email stephanie.gibbs[at]gmail.com for more details.

---

reading
what more can there be than preparing for the cinematic wonder of Alice in Wonderland?

weather
first al fresco brunch of the year!

the rules

The book that he hadn't written yet had a title: "Don't Play With Matches!"

It had a cover design, the hardback dust-jacket suitably literary and ambiguous, with an outline of a stain from a wine glass -- no, make that a coffee cup ring stain -- and a box of matches, the old style matchbox where the tray slid out and 6 or 7 matches nestled together in the interior, and had to be struck against the special chemical surface on the side of the box to light, but on the cover, graphically depicted in sharp Bauhaus tones, just the dark stained ring of coffee, a black closed matchbox, and the title, "Don't Play With Matches," lose the exclamation point, neatly spaced in a sans serif font. Not Helvetica, too common man corporate, maybe Futura, not so abstract as to be off-putting, but it would make people wonder, pique their curiosity.

The paperback cover would be more accessible, of course, less esoteric, could even verge on being called frivolous. The paperback would reference worn down old diners, bright colors muted through evening light, Edward Hopper reds and yellows. Instead of the matchbox, there would be the naked, raw, unadorned matches, three or four of them, maybe in a line, or better still, in a crumpled heap, as if they had just landed on a Formica table top, dropped in the hurry to start a song on the jukebox or pick a fight with the thug at the table in the corner or help a lady off with her overcoat, or where they were tossed aside in anger after trying but failing to light a cigarette in the midst of a tortuous argument with a lover. The rest of the cover would be blank, except for the title, and of course the line about being a New York Times bestseller, and the footprint of a stiletto heeled shoe. That should do it. The font on the paperback cover might even be one of those playful ones, with little squiggles instead of serifs, just to show that even a literary work of exceptional genius, a New York Times bestseller, could still be playful, wasn't all serious ambition.

He was having some trouble with his biography. Was it pretentious to mention Harvard? What about Princeton? Would the professional photographs he had commissioned last month look too posed, too formal, or would he be better off restaging the entire shoot, maybe in Central Park, or, even more inspiring, at the shipyard, show that a well-trained mind was still in touch with the people, the working class. Should he mention his directing credits of Ibsen and Gilbert and Sullivan and Puccini, or just a casual dropping of Perdita and The Frogs so that his best read readers would be in on the joke, appreciate that here was a man who could easily transition from Shakespeare to Aristophanes without batting an eye. He had heard that everyone should have a quirky hobby, show they were part of the game, so he had mastered the harmonica, but was uncertain if that belonged in the biography. Maybe just for the paperback edition, that would make sense.

"Don't Play With Matches" was really starting to come together, was really almost writing itself. He had sent a bold cover letter to the publisher with the abstract, sternly worded to the effect that film rights were not being offered at this time, and that the author would also retain the translation rights and final say on all questions of design, layout, and publicity, with a provided schedule of potential readings for the book tour, for which the publisher could finalize dates and hotels once the book was in production and a few press conferences -- no, interviews would be more intimate, readers preferred intimacy over efficiency -- anyway, the publisher would see to the interviews. But it was undoubtedly the delay caused by having to custom write a contract rather than sending him the standard acceptance packet that was postponing the publisher's response. These days an author had to look out for his own interests, take care of the business side of things rather than just the creative side, if he didn't want to end up screwed over and penniless, and any editor would be sympathetic.

The book was fiction, really, not quasi-autobiography or that awful memoir, but if some of the research he had conducted plumbing his own mind during twice weekly therapy sessions made its way into the text, well, that couldn't be helped. Even the most unbiased authors have a distinct perspective, and keeping his own voice off the page would cause everything else to deflate into so much idle verbiage.

So the people were a bit like his mother and her incessant whining about his dad, and that bitchy ex-girlfriend who had left his custom stitched oxfords in the "sanitize -- hot wash" cycle of the dishwasher when she had left, ruining the leather, and the cameo appearance by his therapist because everyone likes a good shrink joke, and who doesn't keep their therapist on speed dial these days, and, yes, he had mined the tenth grade geometry class for all the humor that a dour basketball coach who owned an English bulldog and told bad jokes to a room full of angst ridden 15 year olds who refused to laugh, and included the bit about his classics professor who was always suing the makers of children's toys for violating European safety standards, even though they were in New Jersey and there were no safety standards for children's toys, and that mysterious woman he'd been flirting with in line for coffee sporadically for the past six months, who he still hadn't been able to persuade to meet up with him for a martini downtown, all these people were mentioned, it's true, but not as a real part of the plot, just to breathe life into the story, a touch of color, borrowed from his years of delving deeply into the heart of life.

Really, the story couldn't be too racy: he had a future career in politics to think of, but there had to be enough of the bad behavior bits to keep the distraction prone American public hooked on his story, and just enough dirt to show he was a man of the people, not some effete elitist who had no sense of feeling or pacing of the realities of life. This would make a great audiobook, actually. It would be best if he was the narrator, giving that extra piece of himself, the warmth of verisimilitude, although if Rupert Everett or Colin Firth or Jeremy Irons wanted to read, maybe they could work something out, let the actor read for England and the European markets.

God-damn this was one amazing book. Once the grant money for his writing assistant came through, they could really get down to business, but all that bunk about writers leading tortured lives -- it wasn't an easy life, of course, but he was man enough for it. He had a book to write.

---

reading
two years of writing with the Northampton Wednesday night writers! what a lovely anniversary.

weather
sugaring season! fresh blueberry pancakes, warm maple syrup make everything happy and bright