Sharritt Christmas Letter, 2018

Dear Friends of the Sharritts,

Ajlnele lnljenion. Jnaiijj[ji[, kkkkiehhihl.  Jjio . . .

Wait a second! Wait a second! Let me get the assistive tech activated without waking Grandpa (Arch Duke Ferdinand—as he likes to be called). I can’t believe that it is the 27th and he and Grandma have not started their Christmas letter. Who lets the adults decide what we, the hope of the future, would call them? Mom and Dad didn’t even let me name myself. Instead, I came out Margaret Rosemarie on August 12. Don’t get me wrong, Margaret is a great name. Especially when they shorten it to Marge. Marge in Charge as I like to say. Don’t believe me? Let me loosen my vocal cords and Mom and Dad will snap to attention. Ssshhh! They're crashed on the couch after a big Christmas brunch.

Isn’t this assistive tech great? At 4 1/2 months, my hands are just starting to grab things and shove them in my mouth, so without it, it is all Ajlnele Inlienion, Jnaiiij[ii[, kkkkiehhihl. Jjio. With it, I can start and finish Grandma’s and Arch Duke Ferdinand’s Christmas letter. They say they’re busy. But really, its just 1000 words of narrative that practically writes itself.

Speaking of assistive technology, Grandma Bev continues to work at PATINS, the assistive technology specialists helping schools test, install and utilize many gizmos that help kids with blindness and low vision and their pals navigate their academics. It is a great job that takes her all over the state in search of the perfect piece of diner pie. She also spends weekends from May through October putting together cut flower bouquets for Garfield Park’s Farmer’s Market. Stop by Flying Dirt Farms booth next summer on Saturday mornings and meet the cutest member of the sales force (me). See you then.

Gran . . . “Arch Duke Ferdinand” has too many hobbies. Besides his day job, he continues to make dirt fly tilling the flower gardens. He may be going a little bit deaf as I heard grandma’s admonition on several occasion as clear as day,

“No more perennials for the flower beds out east. We have too many the way it is.”

The next week he would be sneaking out to the perennial garden with another box full of plants and a hoe. An hour later he would come back in, the box empty, with dirty knees and a smile on his face. That’s not all. There are bees, and sometimes bike riding, and less often blog writing. Finally, he just finished off Christmas presents in the shop for practically everybody. Well not exactly finished. He still has a couple of tables to finish for Mom and Dad and Aunt Lisa and Uncle Ben. He says that he is close and that he would love nothing more than to visit us in Indianapolis and Lisa and Ben in Cincinnati to deliver the goods in the new Honda Pilot.

What do my Grandma and Gr . . . Arch Duke Ferdinand need with a big ole Honda Pilot? They should be thinking about downsizing. What about saving the planet for little ole me in a Prius? Well even though they know better, their family just keeps getting bigger. Last year you met their foster son J.D. and this year Viki and Vaeh, two sisters returned to the end of the driveway in June after being with their dad for a couple of years. The Subaru Forester was suddenly full with five people. Any time a friend came over (and what jr. high or high schooler doesn’t want friends to come over) the family would have to take two cars to the destination to transport everyone.

I can’t wait to get in the back seat to watch Little Mermaid on the in-car entertainment system. In the mean time, making sure that homework is done, going to band concerts, and monitoring Snap Chat with the fosters makes time fly by for G & ADF and eliminates all of those ridiculous questions about “what were they going to do when they were empty nesters?”

I know what you are thinking. What about you Maggie? What did you do during the past year? Well I started out January the size of a raspberry. I bet you’re wondering, “what can a raspberry get up to?” As it turns out, I was very good at making my mom sick and tired. As I grew through the spring I mastered bladder kick boxing—delighting mom and dad as they anticipated my arrival. Admittedly, even I was a little bored in the summer months while I waited to become a fully cooked watermelon and apparently with me it took nine months and 9 days. Those last few days were pretty stressful.

The families came to Michigan for my big debut and I was a little shy. While the fam was starting to feel like witnesses in a safe house, I grew to be 7 pounds, 4 oz with a 98th percentile head by the time I was born. Since August, I have slowly but steadily been learning new tricks.

I can smile, laugh, spit up on my mom and dad with incredible accuracy, and I’ve already moved to a new state and visited two more. Mom in particular enjoys my sleeping all night trick, which I’ve been doing since I was six weeks old. Currently I am working on my first tooth and my Uncle Ben is teaching me cool dance moves, photoshop fun, and the difference between wood, yarn, and drywall. My best trick is getting grandpa to fall asleep when he gets cranky. Shhhh, he’s asleep he’ll never know that I called him Grandpa. That Arch Duke Ferdinand stuff is such a wacky mouthful.

Jdgghsj kki nnnnhy,b dddd us. Well it looks like jioyhlkjljl technology is about to run out of llttrnny, battery. It has been a lovely and blessed year. I am pretty happy to throw my lot in with this bunch for it is a house of many blessings.

Merry Christmas, Maggie Kozak

Limerick Contest 2018. . . And the Winner is?

It’s time to announce the winner of the 2018 Limerick Contest. This year we thought we’d build the suspense way past when you’d even remember entering or reading the entries. We’ve waited a full season just to make sure. Also, our lives have been overcrowded with the joys of abundant flower harvests, and new grandparenthood. Our buckets and burp rags surely overflow.

Hint: One of these two beauties is the winner!

This year’s theme was . . . hold on, I’m going to need to look it up on my July timeline: “Summer Festivities”. Today, November 12, when the last of the leaves are blowing down in advance of tonight’s first snow, is a great day to hear these again. Here’s a link to the post if you’d like to get sweaty reading them all.

We always do a first round rubric with all the limericks, and the ones that score the highest make it to the finals. This year, seven entries scored 18/20. All good, but no clear frontrunner as in other years. So we contacted these finalists, and gave them an opportunity to edit their work,  tweak their rhythm, and give that ending line some extra zing.

Here are those finalists, with the WINNER listed last:

Joyce Young

Dave Dziabas, Chris Burke, Mikey Benton, 

grew more hunky as summer went on, 

the balers of hay 

to gaze at all day 

Dad's hay camp had all of my attention.

Danielle Grandholm

While most are out campin’ and fishin’

I am at home rhymin’ and wishin’

That this might be the July 

that I finally win pie

That Aunt Bev is bakin’ and dishin’

Jake McKowen

Wake up late barely feeling alive

But I know that I still have to thrive 

Check traffic and shout

The schools are out!

This summer has shortened my drive.

Jacob Rathmacher

Five weeks smelling like pigsty

Fighter jets high in the sky

Marching hut, two, three, four

Keep those blues off the floor

Now please give me that damn pie

Lyn Ellis

So humid you can swim from here to there,

It’s totally affecting my hair,

It’s really so big

I’m considering a wig

But that’s really too hot to wear!

Kelly Moe

Roger celebrates his birthday in June

Eating pie under the Strawberry Moon

He will whoop, holler, and cheer

With news that Maggie is here

Baby cooing is his favorite tune

WINNER! Grace Kozak

Grandpa Doyle turning seventy-five,

We played kickball when all had arrived.

Johnny Cash cover band

Pie and ice cream at hand

Sharritt’s yard was a buzzing beehive

Congratulations Grace! We’ll bake an extra pumpkin pie just for you this week as we prepare to feast and give thanks. We are grateful for poetry to make life richer, and friends and family who are patient with deadbeat judges.

Ah What a Smart Little Monkey

Dear Blog Reader

I hope that this finds you doing well and ensconced in blissful air conditioned environs. I am doing fine. I have not written for a while. It is all my fault. I am to blame. Look no further, the buck stops here. 

I have three different ideas floating around in my head and none have crystallized into the blog topic du jour. I spent yesterday writing in my head while working in the garden; remembering each of the three ideas. I was weighing the pros and cons of each; cataloging each of their major points and then setting them aside. No one was proving to be a clear winner of an idea. I do not pretend that three non-winners will coalesce into the blog of the century. While mixing three blood lines will make a great dog, it will make a blog of hash. However, it is time to stop procrastinating, stop the dithering and put finger to keyboard and see what happens.

First, I just want to point out that Twitter is making once Shakespearean quality monkeys stupider and stupider. I feel for them. I had held out such great hope for monkeys everywhere. This hope was fueled in high school by Mrs. Gray. Old Lettie Gray as we slyly called her behind her back. However, it appears that she had the last laugh on us. She is still teaching 38 years after I graced her classroom. This causes a great conundrum for me. She had kids who graduated with me. So obviously, I have no idea how long she has taught or how long she will teach. I should probably find a current student and find out if they call her old energizer bunny Gray.

Mrs. Gray had a belief that high school kids should be exposed to issues surrounding death. The desirability of that exposure may or not have been true. It may or not be true today. It was a very effective use of literature to teach lessons about life and in this case death. I remember reading James Agee’s “A Death in the Family” and Nevil Shute’s “On the Beach.” I do not remember reading Faulkner’s “As I Lay Dying” until college. It has my favorite chapter in the world “My mother is a fish.” That’s it. The rest is blank space. Turn the page and on to less psychotic characters. I don’t know why we didn’t read As I Lay Dying in high school. Probably, because some in Pendleton, Indiana might have recognized certain family traits in the Bundren family tree or wreath as I like to joke with my Kentucky readers.

For what ever reason, we did not read Faulkner. Which is fine. I do remember “On the Beach” to this day. It was an apocalyptic story using the Russians as the vehicle for our destruction. The Russians were the only villains we knew in prehistoric times for you youngsters out there. No zombies for us. Our villains were real and had the intent of blowing us up. No fabricated dystopia for us.

In the book, it appears that the Northern Hemisphere had an itchy trigger finger and pushed the button. Russia and the United States did have enough nukes to destroy the world many times over or at least the upper half. Their work was successful and the superpowers destroyed one another. However, it appears that no one in the Southern Hemisphere had the bomb, so they were spared the gruesome millisecond vaporization that had kids of my generation hiding under desks during our bombing prep drills. “Put your head between you knees, your hands behind your head and kiss your a#### goodbye.”  

No the Southern Hemisphere was spared and had to suffer the exquisite death of 200 pages of decent prose while coming to terms with their lives and death; thereby teaching future generations of high schoolers a little bit about their own mortality. 

One of the devices in the book was an American Submarine that was stationed in the Sydney Harbor awaiting orders that would never come. While they were waiting for the lethal radiation cloud, they were scanning the airwaves for any possible communications from survivors. It is doubtful but everyone thinks that it could be possible. Maybe the President made it to the mountain bunker and was getting information out. Maybe only the private who made sure that the lights were on in the mountain bunker. Who knows but they were hopeful. 

Then one day the Australians heard the distant tap of Morse Code coming through the radio waves. Although it was mostly gibberish, hope sprung eternal because one of the words that came through most often was “Help”. So the Americans loaded up their radiological suits, got into their submarine, and headed north. As they got closer to Seattle, the transmission’s origin, speculation rose to dizzying heights. One of the hypothesis was that someone with horrible Morse code skills was typing and doing a decent job at getting something close to help tapped out. Of course they didn’t have the skills to answer when the Australians tapped back “who are you and where are you at?” The coder knew just enough to code out help sporadically. Others thought that it was just random banging on the telegraph key. Who knows? 

So Nevil spent a chapter having his characters argue back and forth. One of the arguments that has stuck with me through the years. In answering the hopeful arguments, the skeptics argued that the repetitive “helps” meant nothing. It was just random. In fact taking the argument further, they maintained that if you were to set an infinite number of monkeys in front of an infinite number of type writers (60 years ago you whippersnappers), one of them some day would type the complete works of William Shakespeare. Every time I hear that analogy I picture a giant room of Curious Georges sitting at type writers with one teacher looking over one of the monkey’s shoulder saying “No I am sorry it is “To be or not to be that is the question not what was the question again?” “You’ll just have to start over and please George, be careful this time?”

I find it striking that the measure of great communication 60 years ago was Shakespeare. Now it is 140 character tweets. What monkey couldn’t quote Beyoncé, the Kardashians or even the President if they only had to pound out 140 character’s in the proper order. Shoot! we even lower the bar by giving you credit for LOL, OMG and WTF. Don’t even get me started with emoticons. “Ah, is poor George feeling sad today?” “Well turn that frown upside down and put on a happy face.”

No wonder the cretins are coming out of the wood work and onto our phones, and iPads. Sooner or later they are going to say something that makes a little bit of sense, and we will all go rushing over to them and coo, “What a smart little monkey.”

Take care

Roger

Loneliness Kills

Dear Blog Reader

I hope that this finds you doing well. I am fine. We at Flying Dirt Farms have nearly exhausted the lilac supply. With January lasting 127 days this year, we are pretty late with the peonies, nigella, sweet peas, larkspur and other hardy annuals that get us to that magical second week of June time when we can coax sunflowers, and zinnias into our flower pallet. I know peonies are perennials not hardy annuals but work with me here all of you Master Gardeners. So we have relied heavily on the lilac supply. Each week going to our favorite abandoned farm houses, skulking around back and finding the old dilapidated outhouse. It never fails. You walk around to the backside of old farm houses and there will be the outhouse and its lone sentinel; a dark purple lilac bush. It does look the worse for wear. It could use a restorative pruning; a hacking away at the old growth allowing fresh growth to come in and produce more blooms.

All of the outhouses had them. Can you image how much you would look forward to the end of winter and the start of the aromatic magic of the lilac? That sweet fragrance so strong that it meant your poop didn’t stink for two whole weeks. Our grand parents (unless you are my children’s ages; then our great grand parents) were made of sturdy stuff. To imagine that two weeks of relief would make it worth spending your Mother’s Day loot on a sweet smelling, flowering shrub is a bit amazing in this day and age of instant gratification where playing “Fortnight” will consume our children’s time for the next month before the newest craze hits the  gaming universe.

Enough about the sweet smelling, beautiful flowers that the lovely Miss Beverly is selling that the Garfield Park farmers market every Saturday from 9:00 to 12:30; May through October. 

I am here to share the concern that I have for you, my dear blog readers. Over the past two weeks or so a new epidemic has had the bright media spot light shined upon it. No fewer than four media eruptions have occurred highlighting this societal nemesis. According to the experts, it is deadlier than obesity but not as deadly as smoking; proving once again that if it isn’t one thing its another. How am I ever going to live to be one hundred and fifty years old with all of these longevity stalkers trying to track me down?

So naturally my thoughts turned to you blog readers. Are you okay? Are you lonely?

Who is this new stalker? It appears that loneliness is the latest thing dragging us down. The first article was published on May 1. I am thankful that the editor showed restraint and didn’t give the article the headline “May Day! May Day! We are All Going to Die!” The article lays out the following premises:

1: Loneliness has huge impacts on public health.

2: Loneliness is particularly bad in the US with most people (more than half) feeling lonely.

3: The young appear to be most vulnerable.

4: We need a systematic approach (read big government program) to overcome loneliness.

This study was conducted by Cigna, a mega big insurance company, and reported in Business Insider; written by Kevin Loria.

Around the same time the same statistics were spewed forth from our local Indianapolis Star. I was also listening to a pod cast where the Buddhist author was antidotally reporting that 78% of all people were lonely and . . . all of them were going to die. Unlike all other bad news coming in threes, the loneliness bad news train had four cars. Mattie Quinn reported on “The Loneliness Epidemic” in May’s issue of Governing. In the article, Brigham Young University “found that weak social connections can shorten a person’s life at roughly the same rate as smoking 15 cigarettes a day. In England, they are planning to establish a minister of loneliness. OMG.

How did this epidemic sneak up on us? I was busy exercising, riding down lonely roads on my bike at 5:00 a.m. and shunning my favorite bars that allowed me to continue smoking on guys night out, all in an effort to live a long healthy life, and I suddenly get ran over by the loneliness bus. Or, should that be the loneliness unicycle?

Let’s face it. Loneliness isn’t new. The Beatles sang their tribute to the lonely 52 years ago with Eleanor Rigby on the Yellow Submarine. Were she and Father McKenzie were patients zero and one in this epidemic. Father McKenzie was the guy in verse two but received no naming rights in the deal; lonely and no royalties. The father really got screwed.

The reason for their loneliness? I would appear that they spent too much time in church. Thankfully, that organization’s relevance has been eroded to the point that the church can’t be the loneliness virus. I guarantee that regular church attendance is less than 40% in America now. So don’t go blaming the church for this one. Marx said the religion is the opiate of the masses way back in the 1840’s. Thankfully, we have turned that corner and heroine and fentanyl are the opioids of the masses now. Phew! It is good to get that religion opioid problem solved.

I know what you are asking. “So what do you suggest that we do about it Mr. Smarty pants?” 

Two answers:

1: The answer isn’t a systematic (government program) approach. Remember the war on poverty, the war on drugs, the war the end all wars, no child left behind? The systematic approach only institutionalizes the problem and forces it’s continuation in order to maintain the infrastructure of the solution.

2: This is not my idea. In a recent reading Love Does by Bob Goff, I was impressed by his practice of making a difference. He put his cell phone number on the last page of the book. The opportunities brought about by that openness were inspiring. So here goes. My phone number is 317 519 5902. If you are prepared to carry on a conversation with an extreme introvert, I am prepared to do my part and answer the phone.

Or even better, if you show up at the end of our driveway, knock on the door. We can go out to the garden and hoe this long row . . .

Together.

Take Care

Roger

Scratching Post

Dear Blog Reader.

I hope that this finds you doing well. I am fine. I am managing the sudden increase in Vitamin D production; no overdoses yet. Sure I had gotten a few minutes while walking along the canal at lunch the past week. However, it was nothing like an entire day in the garden at Flying Dirt Farms. We are way behind. I had bundled up for a few Saturdays and gotten the perennials set out; arms very protected with SPF sweatshirt and a knit hat pulled low on my head to protect the tips of my ears. Now, it is time to get the bi-weekly rotations started. The winter rye has to be tilled under. Potatoes, onions and peas oh my. Dirt is flying everywhere.

Speaking of walking along the canal at lunch time, it is bittersweet. The realization that you have allowed the educational system to bundle up your eight and nine year old put them on a bus and sent them to a downtown greenscape, is nice. They get to see western history at the Eiteljorg museum. They can jump up and try to climb the mastodon sculpture outside the Indiana  State Museum. Or maybe they are aping the orangutans at the zoo as they careen into my path and shatter the peace and quiet of my daily walk. It is a wonder that any eight and nine year olds ever reach mature adulthood. But we manage to hover, to watch, and to chaperone them until they can exhibit some manifestations of self preservation. Plus, I have plenty of time for peace and quiet on those January days when the high temperature was - 5 degrees.

I must admit to a bit of a mean streak when I mention the following. This is for all of the helicopter parents who look at your young’s inability to manifest self preservation tendencies and decide to protect them from all possible harm and or hardship. The ones who buy hand sanitizer by the boat load and then fret when you hear that the lack of germs suppresses their little immune systems so you make them eat probiotic yogurt by the tub full. This is for you. Your children while wondering around this beautiful greenscape; chasing one another, knocking one another down trying to get to a makeshift ball rolling across the ground are doing so in about an inch of goose poop. 

Yes, the geese have been walking around on this three acres of green space for the past two months. The surrounding buildings provided protection from the wind and held a bit more heat. The canal provided a good source of water without any alligators to eat the geese. And about three acres of slowly growing grass to provide nutrition. And where you have goose nutrition, you also have goose poop. Because, geese poop right where they eat. I have no idea why. Maybe it is a circle of life kind of thing, or maybe they have little tiny brains on top of a really long neck and they are just stupid. But they are pooping all over the place and your children are having the time of their lives frolicking in it. So helicopter parents have an nice day doing your Lucy VanPelt imitation.

Speaking of bird poop, causing havoc with somewhat compromised immune systems, we are finally emerging from two separate huge food scares. With the first, our federal government was so flummoxed by where the romaine lettuce came from that was poisoning us that they were actually in my garden trying to recall my home grown heads of romaine. Any romaine grown any where? How can you lose track of the food supply so completely? But it would appear that we don’t know where romaine lettuce originates from and that it is commingled in huge vats of lettuce mix so throw it all out.

The second incident involved 200,000,000 eggs from one farm in North Carolina. The owner of the farm, Rose Acres an egg conglomerate, is headquartered right here in Indiana. Makes you proud doesn’t it. The eggs went to seven states and were sold wherever cheap eggs can be found. It appears that eggs are tracked better than heads of romaine lettuce so they have lot numbers and know the point of sale by state and stores. 200 million eggs is a lot of eggs. I am mind boggled just a little bit by the size of the pile that would have to be to throw all of those away; not to mention the 16,666,666 egg cartons. That is a mountain of yolks, folks. The king is going to have to get more men to put that one back together.

I took the opportunity to look a bit further into these already impressive stats. The farm has 2.3 million hens and they lay about 2 million eggs a day. This tells me that Mrs. McGreedy of Chicken Run has some culling to do. Chickens should lay one egg a day. Sure some days are going to be missed from time to time but a 15% rate would seem to me to be a bit high. Get ready for some really cheap pot pies. So 2 million eggs a day and 200 million eggs recalled that means we have eggs out there that are three months old. The seems a bit old to me. That is quite a long time for salmonella to get its tentacles into a moist, protein rich, environment and multiply even if it is in cold storage.

Thankfully the media dug into the issue and provided clarity and an explanation. A couple of weeks ago the Indianapolis Star interrupted my work day with the following headline:

FDA inspectors found rodents, filth and butt-scratching workers at farm tied to egg recall

You newspaper people crack me up. Sure there was some “touching of the inter-gluteal cleft” without subsequent hand washing going on according to the inspector’s report. Do you realize how much touching of the inter-gluteal cleft would have to go on to contaminate 200,000,000 eggs. Let’s just say some one may want to have a doctor look at that. No the problem here lies in the fact that the workers continually wiped the sanitizing solution from the eggs before the prescribed time on a regular basis. Let’s face it chickens produce two things; poop and eggs, and probably more of the former than the latter. Also not to put too fine a point on it, they use the same vent for both operations. 

You need to leave the sanitizer on the eggs for the proscribed period of time. That was the problem. It is described elsewhere in the FDA report. Also the report is only describing conditions as they existed prior to the outbreak. It had little ability to assess the actual source of the bacteria that made so many people ill. However, that doesn’t sell papers like butt scratchers. I know there are newspaper people out there screaming right now “but touching the inter-gluteal cleft is butt scratching.” Yes, but it doesn’t contaminate 200,000,000 eggs. It only drives page views and clicks.

In the end, (pun intended) understanding food safety in an landscape dominated by huge agribusiness concerns whose interests are served by cutting corners with the few minutes it takes to leave the eggs in the sanitizer for the proscribed time is too important an issue to have the news media just scratch the surface.

Take care and enjoy the sunny side up.

Roger

a picture is worth a thousand words

New feature for the blog.

Caption this. Add captions in the comments or on Facebook 

It makes a nice follow on from last weeks blog.

Take care.

Roger

When Will It End

Dear Blog Reader

I hope that this finds you doing well. I am fine. I started writing this from the third floor penthouse of a little apartment building in Long Beach, California. The view was spectacular. We were looking out on 600 yards of sand lovingly groomed to the edge of the Pacific Ocean. Strong winds made for great kite flying. A strong sun and midwestern hardiness made for some back of the legs sunburns. An eclectic beach community made for some great people watching. 

The lovely Miss Beverly and I were on vacation and had tag teamed it with a nephew’s wedding: two birds with one gift so to speak. I do want to give a shout out to Janice, Bev’s sister who put herself out there and went on line and found a great place for 11 of the spawn of Bonnie to get together for the week. You will remember the spawn of Bonnie was described in a recent blog called “Go Your Own Way.” To date, the total stands at 54 of the most intelligent and attractive offspring and in-laws the world has ever known. So 20% is a pretty good start.

But I could not finish the blog. I had all week. The weather was great. The view was fabulous. However, every time I sat down my brain would scream I am not at home. I am turning into more and more of a homebody. I enjoyed the vibe of California, seeing shoppers in Trader Joe’s in shorts, a winter vest, and Uggs. All the while, wiping sweat from my brow because 62 degrees was quite the change from what we had left and what you all were experiencing in that 60 mile wide band of snow that ran from Iowa through Rushville. I am so used to seeing the “bizarre weather picture” from the NE, or tornado alley that I grew a bit nostalgic when the airline passenger took the snow demarcation picture on the Weather Channel over INDIANA.

Four take always from California: 1: I enjoy the time difference. My news queues were all full by the time I woke up because things have been happening for three hours. I also really like that the NCAA games are over in a decent time. 2: You get all of the best fruit and vegetables. Since your strawberries don’t have to travel 2,600 miles they aren’t picked until they are ripe. We ate a lot during the week. Not a one of them were white and the consistency of a ping pong ball. 3: If you live in a place where you think that a high of 62 is a cold snap, do you really deserve a spring break. Toughen up buttercup. You are not going to be eaten by a polar bear in 62 degree weather. 4: I don’t understand the off shore oil drilling kerfuffle. All of your cars (and there are billions of them in the valley) run on gasoline and the off shore rigs are no less unsightly than the 14 cargo ships lined up off shore waiting to unload their cargo to take to an Amazon warehouse to wait until I order that doodad that I will be incensed about if it doesn’t arrive two days later via Prime. Logistics!

As I sit here writing, my phone is warning me of 2 to 3 inches of snow tonight and are not following the warning with “April Fools.”  Speaking of warning, I warned you. Look at my blogs from October. I was telling you to chill out about Augtober. Remember? It was an unusually warm fall. The leaves didn’t turn very much. One day they were hanging there, holding on by their finger tips but still green. The next day they just gave up and fell off. We were sweating and playing golf. The children didn’t have to wear jackets playing soccer. There were no hypothermia cases in local hospitals. I was even temped to start tomatoes to over winter. In fact, we were begging frost to set in to stop the flowers that the lovely Miss Beverly was selling at the Garfield Park farmer’s market. (We are going to be selling there again this year. Saturdays; May through October. All of the profits go to braces for a couple of neighborhood kids whose parents would have a hard time being able to provide them. Nature’s beauty and straight teeth to boot.)

During the middle of talking about Augtober, I admonished everyone not to worry about it. It would all work out. I was sure that we would all be complaining about Janpril. Here we are. We buckled down. We knew that we had to get through March. That horrible month of thaw. One day a week of tolerable weather surrounded by six days of gray, cold, damp weather. Every step off of a sidewalk is into ankle deep mud. The wind is blowing that damp air into the marrow of your bones. We desperately try to remember if the ground hog saw his shadow in Pennsylvania. Then we try to call grandma, “how many more weeks of winter is it until spring if he sees his shadow?” She can’t remember. So we made it though warnings about the Ides of March. We watched the Irish co-opt the stage a couple of days later so the canal, river, or some other similar mud puddle can be turned green. We endured it and more. I don’t blame you. We just want spring to come.

While waiting for that day when the birds are singing, the sun is shining, and the flower’s break their dormancy, we finally succumb to March’s madness. We crawl into our man caves for three weeks. We make sacrifices to our alumni gods and burn them on pyres fueled by the smoke from our busted brackets. And as the good sister’s hopes die with her hopes for her Loyola Chicago, we are faced with another 2 to 3 inches of snow on April 1. This is not an April fools joke. As the announcers of March Madness started to cry when Sister Jean rolled from the floor 2 minutes before the final shot, we start to lose hope. Our reserves from spring break are as faded as our tans.

While it is hard to remember, we are just paying the bill for all of that wonderful Augtober weather. Mother Nature isn’t out to get us. We just get used to a rhythm. We become so habituated to that average that we think we will die if more than the average is to be endured. We are dipping our toes into the far edge of the bell curve. That’s all. We will be okay. Maybe we should learn to adapt like our friends on the Left Coast. We just need to learn to put on our winter vest with our shorts and wear a pair of Uggs to keep our toes warm. And since I am home, maybe throw another log on the fire to be on the safe side.

Take care

Roger

Why can’t we have nice things?

Dear Blog Reader

I hope that this finds you doing well. I am fine. Finally, the days are getting noticeably longer. It is nice to see that all of the parts of our landscape are still there. It has been quite a while since they have been seen in the light of day. Leave in the dark, home in the dark, that mid-November to mid-February always seems to stretch on and on. To all of my Greenland, or Norway fans, I apologize for the whining. We all have our cross to bear. I recognize that yours is  bigger than mine.

We have turned the corner. The seed order has arrived. The snap dragons and celosia seeds have been delivered to the greenhouse to get starts going. The pruning is nearly done at my favorite orchard. The sap in the maple trees is starting to rise. And speaking of bears, I suppose they are starting to stir from their hibernation. I know that I am starting to rouse from bed a bit easier everyday. All we have to do is get through that mud pit called March and the two weeks of Janpril. Then, it will be off to the grass mowing and gardening races.

The topic of today’s missive presented itself about 4 weeks ago. A lot has happened since then. The American’s solidified their claim on most boring people in the world by winning Olympic Curling gold. The spring floods have returned to the mid south. And the national gun debate has been reignited at the cost of 17 lives. This time the debate is clouded by failures of local and federal law enforcement with a bit of cowardice to make us all shake our heads.

No, about 4 weeks ago it exploded on the news. It appears that a consumer advocacy group called a news conference in DC and took on big detergent. You would have thought that the holy grail had been found. It was all over my Facebook pages for days to come. However, in doing the exhaustive research that goes into this blog, I found out that it has been a hot topic, making an annual reboot, since 2012 when Chuck Schumer proudly proclaimed “I saw one on my staffer’s desk, and I wanted to eat it.” A little self control Chuck, not to mention take a refresher course on office etiquette. What are you doing rummaging around a staffer’s desk for snacks? That staffer probably makes $30,000 a year. Go buy your own d&#%ned snacks.

Of course, the emphasis has shifted. In 2012, the focus was on young children and adults with dementia eating them and getting sick and in 10 cases dying, a tragedy. Any steps that can be taken to eliminate those deaths are a good thing. Those steps have been taken. Child resistant packaging, PSA’s, etc.  But now the focus is on high school and college kids creating a social media sensation called the Tide Challenge. Google it. I refuse to try to use my wordsmithing skills describing idiots. 

As you can tell, I feel no sympathy for this iteration of the Tide menace. I like those little, squishy, transparent packages of grime busting goodness. I fill up the washer with cloths. I reach in to the container throw one in and am off to write my blog. I don’t have to worry about where the measuring cup is. Did I take it to the barn to measure herbicide, or poke a hole it one corner and create a funnel hack for pouring oil into the car? And who hasn’t had a puddle of detergent eating the enamel paint off of the top of the dryer because the no spill spout wasn’t no spill when you twisted the measuring lid back on top of the bottle? 

No detergent pods are a nice thing and they are about to be taken away because of the youth of America. As the lovely Miss Beverly said, “once again another nice thing we can’t have because of kids.” Thankfully, the lovely Miss Beverly went proactive and bought a dozen packages to “Tide” over this little crisis.

Grace our lovely daughter was pretty excited and pointed out that this may be the first thing that her mom and dad couldn’t blame on the millennial generation. It’s true. This one is on the un-named generation. Actually, it has been named. The internet just hasn’t settled on a name. Gen-Z, iGen, post-millennial are in the running. I am currently voting for post-millennia because you have to be dumb as a post to eat detergent.

I do want to step back for a second and question the idea that this is a story. To the best of my knowledge gained from less than exhaustive internet analysis, 10 people have died since 2012 from the ingestion of detergent pods. A little perspective; last year over 20,000 people died from synthetic opioid overdoses. The trend on that disturbing number looks like a Sherpa going up the side of Everest. Why aren’t we taking on big synthetic opioids? It is hard. Addiction is hard. There are no easy answers there. Rather than talk about a difficult problem, society spends four weeks wringing its hands that Johnny and Mary walked around spitting bubbles for a few hours. When I was growing up, that is how we identified who got caught cussing by their mom. 

Maybe the mom’s of America were doing more than cleaning up our language or encouraging us to think about lying to her again. I think inadvertently they were helping us keep nice things.

Take care.

Roger

Go Your Own Way

Dear Blog Reader

I hope that this finds you doing well. I am fine. I sit here thankful that I didn’t go all Bill Murray after the 2nd. It would have been an especially difficult day to finally get right because the lovely Miss Beverly was at a conference in Florida. It would have taken self-actualization galore to get missing Beverly to turn out okay.

Thinking about this blog has caused an old Fleetwood Mac song to run on a continuous loop inside my head. Two months is long enough. It is time to exorcise it from my noodle. It is a good song. I just knew that I should copy its title for this blog. 

Nearly two months ago the lovely Miss Beverly received word that Bonnie, her mother, had suffered a severe stroke. Bonnie was 85 years old. Twenty years ago she had received 2 new hips. Well the warranty had expired and one hip had deteriorated and was causing Bonnie a great deal of pain. The doctors counseled that the surgery would be very risky. Bonnie decided that a chance of being pain free or even in less pain was better than the prospect of increased pain going forward.

The surgery went well but as they say there were complications. Repeated procedures left her weaker each time as her body had difficulties metabolizing the anesthesia. The stress on her body grew to the point that she suffered a stroke. She was mostly unresponsive at that point. Doctors were unable to do anymore for Bonnie so hospice was called. We used to call it the Grim Reaper. But apparently, he went corporate and needed a new image and so we call hospice now. Family and friends gathered and reminisced and said goodbye. A few days later she succumbed.

We try to capture our loved ones live and essences in a few paragraphs in the newspaper. But as Abraham Lincoln once said in the Gettysburg Address  “We cannot consecrate . . .” However, the lovely Miss Beverly did a pretty good job catching the essence of her mom in this obituary.

“Bonnie will be remembered for her love for her husband and family, her prowess for making pie, and her skill at knitting. She drove her kids thousands of miles to basketball, cheer clinics and 4H meetings. Only her well-worn black cast iron skillet knows how many potatoes she fried. Millions of inches of yarn passed through her clever fingers, transformed into sweaters, afghans, mittens, and hats. So many hats for so many beloved heads.

Bonnie’s highest renown, though, will be for her kindness and generosity to all, as her family’s boundaries did not end with her 8 children. Neighbor kids hopped in the van for rides to town.  Hired hands sat with us at our table. Nieces and nephews confided in her.  Co-worker’s waited for their birthday pie from Bonnie. Her friends shared mischief, nights on the town, and all of the heart-crushing griefs life brings. Her listening ears and giving heart will be missed by all who loved her.”

Two months later the jobs that Bonnie tended to are being shifted. The mantles of responsibility, for finishing knitting projects, bearing witness to heart crushing griefs, and maintaining and initiating the grapevine needed to keep 8 children (brothers and sisters) 46 nieces and nephews, great grands, and in-laws connected when they are spread out across the country, are being picked up and carried on. Plus, there is always more birthday pie to be baked. 

I think that I missed her most of all on January 28th when Purdue played IU. It must have been very difficult through the years for Bonnie. All of those children and only Bill going to IU. Not only that but all of those daughters going to Purdue and marrying somewhat rabid and obnoxious Purdue boys. That afternoon, I missed the one ring phone calls announcing a particularly good IU play; a late game surge, or hopeful anticipation. 

One ring phone calls really were the prehistoric text messages. Back when there was such a thing as rotary dial phones, and long distance phone charges, our grand parents would let their brood know that they were thinking about them by dialing, letting the phone ring once and hanging up. No completed call, no long distance charges. I missed that on the 28th. However, as I said the mantle of responsibility has shifted because the lovely Miss Beverly’s phone blew up with text messages all afternoon.

The other mantle that has shifted or is shifting during the past two months, and has been a little difficult for me to put on, is that we are next. I didn’t realize how comforting it was to know that my great grandmother Keenan would pass before Grandma and Grandpa would pass. And she did. It was comforting believing that Grandmas and Grandpas would depart before moms and dads did. And they did. For the past 20 years, deep down in my lizard brain, I have believed that I wasn’t my time yet. Lloyd, Stell, Doyle and Bonnie were all much more mortal than I. It is no wonder that the grief is so much greater when the order isn’t followed. It is an unmentionable expectation. And the unmentionables are often the strongest.

No, when hospice comes calling, I can no longer stand there hands in pockets, eyes on the ground, shifting from foot to foot kinda nodding my head towards the generations before me. “Take them. They have lived their life.” If I were an Inuit, I would be the one getting on the ice flow when times got tough. No, he will be here for me.  It has been a sobering realization, and yet another gift from this remarkable woman.

Bonnie went her own way. I’ll go mine.

Take care.

Roger