Shelter in Place

Dearest Blog Reader.

I hope that this finds you doing well. We are fine and asymptomatic. Which really is about all that you can say during these times.  They say we can be carrying and asymptomatic for two weeks. So who knows, we may be a percolating cesspool of Covid 19 waiting to leap out at the world. For now we remain untested wondering if that sudden sneeze is a harbinger of spring allergies or the of the world as we know it.

Speaking of testing. How in the world can an actor get on social media and say I tested positive for Corona (virus not beer) but am asymptomatic when people who are hacking up a lung, on a ventilator can’t get tested and are presumptive positive for Covid 19? Don’t answer that. I know. It’s because he’s and actor and his poop doesn’t stink.

I have decided to pick up some blogging (at least for today) while staying at home. It is an effort to connect with people again. While being an introvert, I have a really strong baseline of the human contact that I desire. It is as if by limiting social contact all of these years for my emotional comfort any reduction in its level throws me into panic. So I am taking up an old hobby for a while to connect in a one-sided manner with you. We can make it two-sided if you comment back on the face book post.

The extended Sharritt’s are camping out around the lunch table right now trying to figure out how to get our 19 month old grand daughter, Margaret (or as we like to say Marge in Charge) (actually we call her Maggie); trying to figure out how to get Maggie to eat left over beans and Thai chicken. She loved them 18 hours ago. Ate 3 helpings. We all thought, this is a keeper recipe. And now 18 hours later it is kryptonite and her name is Maggie-El. (Look it up. You’ll figure it out) She squawks when you put it down in front of her. I kid you not she just threw an expression on her face that looked exactly like Jack-Jack on the Incredibles.  I said a little prayer; “Lord I pray she is wearing the asbestos diapers!” She is not liking the Thai chicken. At 19 months, her significant others are wondering how to increase the palatability of any vegetable based meal. Nothing doing. Those fancy French cut green beans were not gaining access to her digestive track.  Success was finally found via the quesadilla Trojan horse. Success until she tasted a green bean and started to perform queso dissection. Our nefarious intentions were discovered and queso hit the floor.

I know what your saying, “why are you visiting your children and grandchild during these times of social distancing and quarantine?” Well decisions were made early on to shelter in place together. Grace and Chris brought Maggie and Kevin the cat to quarantine with grandma (the lovely Miss Beverly), grandpa, Viki and Vaeh, our foster daughters, Marlin the dog and Jacques the cat. There are lots of expectations of child care, elearning, and work from home. So the hope is that we can help one another out. It really does feel a little bit like we are in the middle of a three hour tour that went wrong.

Just like Gillian, the weather started getting rough and our tiny ship was tossed. But the courage of our fearless crew and passengers has kept our tiny ship from sinking. As we enter the second week of this stay at home thing. We are doing pretty good. Viki and Vaeh wish that they could visit friends and are doing the calculus budgeting social media time between TicTok and FaceTime. Adult children and parents are doing a good job breathing deep and thinking “not the way I’d do it but no one is going to die from that method.” The stranger cats are having a stare off at times and small skirmishes at other times. And the dog is laying asleep underneath the kitchen table.

I am coping by writing about what is clacking around in my head. I was telling my counselor the other night via FaceTime; “this would be a great time to be a sociology PhD candidate. You could freeze all of your data points during a calamitous time and spend the next forty years writing scholarly papers about it.”

So stay tuned. The Sharritts, Kozaks, and Becks have placed a tablet and pen on the dining room table and we are writing down possible topics for another day’s blog. Who knows? If this lasts, we may create a virtual tablet and I may write about the things you put on it.

I want to leave you with a great story that I saw in the paper this morning. A pregnant woman was due April 8th. However, she started having contractions yesterday morning. With social distancing and its challenges, they intended to stop by a gas station on the way to the hospital to hook up with grandma and grandpa to drop off the soon to by oldest sibling. The paper said in the couple of minutes it took for the handoff to take place things progressed in the car with mom. I’ll say! When dad got in the car, he looked over at mom and saw the baby’s head, How shall I say this; sticking out, making an appearance, coming through the door, oh crap (my personal fav.) Let’s stick with the medical term crowning.

So the baby was crowning; dad shouted out to the Pilot employee “call 911”. He ran around to the other side of the car, opened the door, and at 7:45 a.m. on Saturday March 29, 20Covid, made a diving catch in the outfield. Baby and mom are fine. 

As you are want to do after catching a baby, you stand around the parking lot waiting for the emergency personnel to arrive, the Pilot employees ran inside, grabbed a blanket, a couple cups of coffee and cigars for the new father and grandfather. I read that story and started to cry. In the midsts of dark times we need some new birth, some regeneration, some hope. Just like Jeremiah once wrote about a plague of Babylonians. “Build houses and settle down; plant gardens and eat what they produce. Marry and have sons and daughters; find wives for your sons and give your daughters in marriage, so that they too may have sons and daughters.” Shelter in Place.

Take Care.

Roger.

Winner of the 2019 limerick contest

Dear Blog Reader.

It is my distinct pleasure to announce the winner of the 2019 Hoover family/friend/acquaintance limerick contest. This year marks the 7th anniversary of the event to honor Doyle Hoover, Bev’s dad. Doyle loved things like skipping with his grandkids, taking the grandkids to the state fair, ripe tomatoes, and a rhyming poem that makes you smile or even laugh out loud. This year's theme will be BABIES AND EARLY CHILDHOOD MEMORIES. 

You’ll remember the announcement for the contest. It include an internet GIF of a baby having its poor little cheeks squeezed. Did you find that disturbing? I did. How does the little baby ever outrun that memory? When the memory fades, Facebook will throw up “remember 7 years ago post” and he or she will run from the room screaming “I hate the name sweet cheeks!” 

Hasn’t social media changed the way we remember things? Rather than “I was sitting in the living room of our house watching the town cop hassle my dad for lighting fireworks celebrating man’s steps and mankind’s leaps on the moon”, we get pictures of a bunch of geriatrics posing for the 50th anniversary of moonwalkers.

Memories are complicated. They get more complicated as the years roll by. Speaking of rolling by, my iPhone has pointed out another disturbing reminder of days past. Every time an application asks for a date of birth, it provides a virtual wheel for me to scroll back to my birthday. My thumb gets tired rolling that far back. I feel like I am on the wheel of fortune really having to put my back into it to get the big wheel to spin an entire rotation so I can qualify for the big show case. (Chevy Nova $3950)

Memories are complicated and so hard to wrap up in five AABBA rhyming lines with an anapestic (thanks Lisa Low for a  PhD word to impress my friends) rhythm. Memories free us or trip us up and often come unbidden. To that end, I would like to thank everyone who went for the gold or pie this year and did such a great job encapsulating their memories in those 5 lines of witty humor. There were trike rides, fudgesicle stains, accidental 911 calls, water slide rides, and birth order recaps. Everyone did a great job putting themselves out there.

But as will all great contests, winnowing must take place, points assigned and a winner’s pie selected and made.

Drum roll please ! ! ! 

In third place . . . Cyndi Rohlf “rohlfing” a banana.

Time after time drives to see Nana

I remember throwing up a banana

The Rathmacher Kin

Say pass the trash bin

Many memories in Indiana

In second place . . . Grace Kozak evoking vivid memories of a slobbery game of fetch.

Busi brought me a slobbery ball

I can’t have been four feet tall

Threw with all of my might

The dog’s eyes were alight

As she obediently heeled to my call.

Finally winner of the pie of her choice and one of the many apples of her father’s eye . . . Cindy Pyle pulling all of the grandparent strings of this grandpa.

As a mom I truly was blessed

With little to zero days rest

But then came the day

I was happy to say

“Being a Memaw is simply the best!”

Until next year, may your pie winning dreams fuel a host of Doyle’s 5 line ditties, share them with your friends, neighbors and kin. As Johnny Cash once sang, May the Circle be unbroken.

Take care,

Roger

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