Batting 333

Dear Blog Reader

I hope that this finds you doing well. Winter has arrived in Hoosier land. The temperature is supposed to dip its toe below the zero mark tonight. I suppose that I will not be riding my bike outside tomorrow morning. Zero with a 17 mph head wind would make for some pretty frosty toes and fingers. Every time the temperature dips towards the nether regions of below zero, I teleport back in time to 1990. My father had passed the summer before and I had come back to the farm for a weekend to help with the milking of the cows; giving others who had thrown themselves into the breech for the Sharritt's a break.

On Saturday morning at 5:00 a.m., the temperature had fallen to 15 degrees below zero. Walking through the barn, the harsh incandescent light bulbs cutting through the steam rising from the cow's breath to the low roof of the barn; on its way to adding to the frosting of spider webs from the prior summer. The animals were chuffing as I extolled the virtues of getting at it for another day. As they would stand, they would take their morning constitutional; releasing a semi solid cow flop that would soon turn into a frozen solid ankle twister in the freezing barn at it too released its steamy breath to rise and cling to the strands of blown spider webs. The morning was without wind or clouds. The stars shining like jewels with no competition from the moon which must have decided to vacate the hemisphere for warmer a climate to the south. Outside the barn the ground was covered with snow, that would creak as you walked through it with feet layered in insulated socks, and muck boots that were not up to the task of retaining warmth in such frozen conditions.

As I am transported through that scene once again, I remember thinking two things. First, this is a dangerous kind of cold. Cold that desires to enter your nose and throat deep into your lungs with the desire to freeze your lungs in its cold embrace. These temperatures could kill a person. If I weren't careful or at least cognizant of my surroundings and what I was doing, the forces of nature would kill me. Second, I thought, "it is 47 degrees below freezing. I have always felt that freezing is the point where it is officially cold. I can run to the mailbox in a sweatshirt and sock feet above 32 degrees, but at that point, I take the time to put on a coat and real shoes. But 47 degrees below freezing is COLD. If the temperature was 47 degrees above freezing, I would be close to sweating at a balmy 79 degrees. My oh my, 79 degrees on a sun soaked beach with the deep blue ocean waves gently breaking against the shore.

So I won't be riding on a bright sunny blue sky'ed Monday morning. It will be a morning off on a 5000 mile 2016 road trip. As you may have recalled from a late 2015 entry and the Sharritt Christmas letter, I managed to ride 5001 miles in the year of our Lord 2015. A cold day in January is a fine time to sit beside an electric space heater and reflect on the attained resolutions of 2015 and those unsuccessfully chased. 5001 miles is a long way for me. Although there is a man from Florida who wanted to break the record of riding 75,065 miles in a year. Yes, that is correct 75,065 in 365 days. That is more than 205 miles a day. Which means in order to pay for my resting in a comfy chair by this sunny window, I would have to ride 410 miles tomorrow. It is mind boggling.

The story written up in Bicycling Magazine tells of the rider's dog days in July when he and his wife were suffering the doubts of assailing such a lofty pursuit. There were days when he could only ride 160 miles. That's right on his worst days he was riding as many miles as I can ride on my best day. I know because I once road 160 miles across Indiana in one day a couple of summers ago. It nearly killed me. I remember it with such fondness that I have convinced the lovely Miss Grace to ride the same ride this summer on a tandem bike.

No my goals were much more sedate. Last January, I wanted to ride 5000 miles in one year. I had an ace up my sleeve. I knew that in July I would be riding 480 miles across the great state of Iowa in one week. That would jump the distance curve. 10% of the total goal in one week. That makes it easy peasy. And so I road. Everyday making a most careful count of my rides; doing my best to come close to the 100 mile a week average that I needed to maintain. As the calendar turned from October to November, I knew that I had to pick up the pace. A blistering 150 miles during Thanksgiving week, with the extra days off from work, put me over the top and let me coast home with 360 miles in December.

However, as the daylight grew shorter and the weather worse there were some doubts on the horizon. I was telling the lovely and supportive Miss Beverly of those doubts about halfway through December. She graciously mentioned that it would be okay. 5000 miles was just a number. I had been dedicated through out the year. No one could accuse me of being lazy and unmotivated. "Take it easy on yourself. There is next year and you can go for 5000 miles then." She was right. I could ride 4900 miles and be proud of my accomplishment. It would be 250 more miles than my previous best year. It would be a great improvement.

I would have been okay with it except for the mental exercise of realizing that on December 26 I was only 100 miles from my goal and on January 1 I would be 5000 miles from by goal. I was never going to be closer. So I put my head down, got up on my seat and started pedaling the 101 miles that I needed that last week of December.

Sure there were a lot of goals that I did not make during 2015. I did not learn Spanish 10 minutes a day using duolingo while at lunch sitting in my car enjoying a very inexpensive lunch of leftovers and a can of soup. I did learn about el hombre and una mujer for about a week and quickly learned to take a 20 minute power nap on a consistent and daily basis. Would I have been better off expanding my knowledge of other languages, languages that care way too much about the gender of the noun when choosing your articles? Argh. Maybe. However, those naps were very refreshing and provided the extra energy that I need to make up for the lack of caffeine since I swore off Diet Coke 2 years ago.

I also had wanted to write one blog entry a week for the year 2016. I know that consistency in posting is very important in building readership. You have your rhythms too. You need to be able to expect the next blog to be posted on Sunday afternoon like clock work. That allows you to plan your week. Get home from church, do the cross word, procrastinate doing the laundry by reading Roger's blog. These are important rituals, and if maintained will increase the readership of these ramblings. It didn't happen. The Sharritt life became complicated by opening our home to helping a family through Safe Families as described in the Christmas letter, and poof, that schedule was thrown off by practices, games, and homework and a sapping of energy that was much easier to marshal in my 30's. So posts slipped to one every other week.

That's it. I had wanted to do 3 things in 2015. I managed 1 of them. True, hitting 333 would get me into the hall of fame if I were an overpaid man child playing baseball. But I am not. Life is full of choices. Riding 5000 miles, taking a daily nap, and doing the best that we could for a family in need were very important to Bev and I. So that is what got done.

That's it. Life is full of choices. Do your best, and don't let the cold weather kill you. Pretty good advice while sitting in a warm spot by a sunny window on a cold morning in January taking stock of 2015 goals and wondering what I will accomplish in 2016.

Take care

Roger

Sharritt 2015 Christmas Letter 2016 version

 

Dear Blog and Christmas Card Reader.

 



Nursing home committee

The Sharritts hope that this finds you doing well. We are fine on the cusp of the new year. The lovely Miss Beverly leapt into the 2nd of her 3 half-century time blocks, and we both like the view from our fifties. One of our favorite exercises when we lead a small group or study at church is to have folks draw a timeline of their lives and mark 5-10 events significant in some way to share with the group. Besides giving Roger a chance to recount his bitter defeat in the 8-year-olds 4H cookie competition, the exercise opens a window to zoom out on the big picture of life.  Ben, Grace and Chris continue to light up their worlds and make mom and dad thankful that they compose our future nursing home admittance committee. When we draw our own timeline, we start to glimpse our 85 year retirements (150 life expectancy - 65 retirement age = 85 years of retirement) slowly approaching. Just a fuzzy dot on the future timeline, but feeling the downward rush of gravity on this side of over the hill--enjoying the wind in our face.

We made a wide, sharpie-sized mark on our timelines this past summer becoming volunteer hosts for Safe Families, an organization that works with families in crisis outside of the courts and foster care system. Their philosophy is based on Biblical hospitality and restoring families.

 http://safe-families.org/

 

After the vetting process, during which Roger managed not to rub his hands together too gleefully at the prospect of a new garden workforce, we welcomed a family into our quiet, uncomplicated nest in September, soon followed by connections with their extended family and their community. We have many stories to share. The intersection of these many timelines has disrupted and enriched our lives in big ways.

 


Sometimes the intersection looks like this:

 

 

 

 

And sometimes it looks more like this:

 

Roger also stepped his toe across an important age milestone this year. In early July, his timeline inched past the length of his father, Lloyd's who died too young. It is milestone for most men when they surpass their fathers in any endeavor. Ben remembers fondly the day he grew taller than Roger. Roger certainly felt the sting of being eclipsed by Ben and did everything that he could to keep it from happening; including rubbing Ben's feet with shortening every evening before bed from 8th grade on. So at 53 years and 15 days, Roger took a deep breath and came out of his protective cave.

 

The Sharritt world expanded with an opportunity to grow produce for the church's weekly community dinner. The premise was simple. Every Thursday night the church would provide a free meal to anyone who would show up. Some lovely people stepped up to do the cooking and clean up each week. The lovely Miss Beverly and Roger had a vision that they could provide fresh produce weekly in season. After a nine year hiatus, Roger still remembered how to order bulk seed from the garden seed catalog. Bev encouraged temperance. Roger committed to the tilling, planting, and weeding. The lovely Miss Beverly agreed to do the thing that Roger does not like, which is picking. (is it any wonder the market gardening didn't work out? What farmer doesn't want to pick and get it to market?)

t took a while. The tiller and hoes had to be overhauled and sharpened, and glorious spreadsheets built for planting/harvest schedules. In May, we invited the kids from the after-school childcare ministry out to set out the tomatoes, cucumbers, and squash. True, the rows were a bit haphazardly spread throughout the garden, but Roger calmed down and we were in business.



There was also a bit of customer education to accommodate, as the menu prior to our contribution only included anemic vacuum packed bags of iceberg lettuce. "Yes, that dark green stuff is lettuce." By the end of the season, those eating were taking more arugula and mizuna greens mix than the iceberg stuff. The green beans with sausage and potatoes were a big hit. We were sorely reminded that it takes a lot to feed a village. By a lot we mean 40 lbs of potatoes and 60 lbs of green beans. Roger wanted to help the lovely Miss Beverly do all of that harvesting but agreements were agreements. She managed to corral some kids into picking with her, but for the most part, the good thing to do sometimes became the hard thing to do.  We had a bumper crop of delicata winter squash, but no matter the amount of education, winter squash casserole did not make it past the menu committee.

 It was also a great year for traveling for the lovely Miss Beverly and Roger. Memorial Day weekend had us piling in to the car for a 14 hour road trip to Dallas and our niece's wedding. We remembered vaguely that we could once get into a car and drive for a  28 hour round trip on a three day weekend. Our memories were fuzzy and incorrect. Brenna's wedding was wonderful. The torrential Texas rains stopped long enough to let the outdoor wedding take place. An hour with the massage therapist prepared our 50 year old bodies for the trip back home a bit wiser and committed to saving enough money to buy plane tickets next time.

June took us to Seattle for nephew James' high school graduation. Having learned our lesson, we flew to Seattle. We also took our time and enjoyed a week of vacation in the environs of the Pacific Northwest. We found a cycling tour guide and took a fantastic riding tour of Bainbridge Island. Our guide was living the life of biking through beautiful scenery for pay. He showed us a cove where our hearty forefathers had cut down trees, floated them through the sound and chopped them into huge beams. The one picture that he showed us was of a finished timber about 16 by 16 ft. He also had a very wry sense of humor. As we started riding after a brief stop for pictures of the Seattle skyline, he pointed out that the next hill was very "walkable" (translation: straight up and down.)  Mr tour guide was a bit of a show off as he rode up to the top, rode halfway back down to see that we were able to walk up the hill. Reconnaissance completed, he turned back around and rode the hill to wait on us.

Next, we explored San Juan Island. (I was very surprised that Puerto Rico was located in the Pacific Northwest. I guess there is no substitute for traveling). We waited on a pod of Orca that mocked us with their absence, strolled through a lavender farm on the verge of full purple, and ate a great meal on the island. The lovely Miss Beverly searched out a mountain hike to a serene Alpine lake an hour east of Seattle. The hike from the trail head was listed as moderate and about an hour long. These things are relative. In hoosier land compared to our Turkey Run or Brown County State Park trails, it would have been considered a defcon 5 and hold the nitro glycerin tablets by my fellow elephant-ear-eating midwestern kinsmen. However, the view of the lake surrounded by snow melting peaks was a balm to my tired feet and weary limbs. The lake had the clearest purest water that Bev and Roger had ever seen. It was amazing. We may never see a more beautiful sight in our next 100 years and that would be okay.



Our third trip of the year took us to Iowa. In late July, Roger, Ben, Chris, and the lovely Miss Beverly decided that it would be good to ride across the great state of Iowa. Over time, I continue to search for opportunities to participate in big rides. This year we set our eyes on RAGBRAI. (Register's Annual Great Bicycle Ride Across Iowa). Imagine 20,000 people hopping on a bike, stopping every few miles to drink beer to be followed a few more miles down the road to water the first few rows of the nearest corn field. (We had plenty to choose from it being Iowa and all.) The lovely Miss Beverly agreed to be Support and Gear for the ride. Chris, Ben, and Roger would not have made it without her tearing down the tent, washing the breakfast dishes, driving to the next town, finding the nearest Y with shower facilities, setting up the tent, getting supper ready. She was fantastic. 480 miles across Iowa on a bike, in a week. It was so much fun.

All of those great vacation memories and we still weren't finished. Our expanded family expanded a little further with a trip to a rented house at the Indiana Dunes on beautiful Lake Indiana. We met Kelly and Kevin Moe, explored the local sites and restaurants and sat on the beach. It was Columbus Day weekend. Thankfully everyone looked at their calendars and not their thermometers and we had the beach nearly to ourselves and the balmy 70 degree weather.

Bev took a creative journey last spring on a challenge from niece Cyndi Rae and nephew Jon. She did the 100 day challenge of choosing a creative pursuit (using the hundreds of fabric pennants from the Kozak wedding) and making something new or at least work on something each day. Her favorite projects were making jester hats for the dogs, and this crib quilt for a former intern's 4th baby.

What a great ride for the year. As our timeline stretches into our middle 50 years, our line looks more like a tree with branches through the garden, a visit at family milestones and and rejuvenation with beautiful scenery. It was a road that led Roger on 5001 miles riding a bike and the lovely Miss Beverly on igniting a passion for creating with pennants from past highlights. Finally, it led to opening our house and lives to a family in need. It is a timeline with many twists and turns, and highlighted with many blessings.

Take Care

Roger and Bev.

The Parable of Falling off my Bike

Dear Blog Reader

I hope that this finds you doing well. I am fine. When I started this blog, I wrote, “I am sitting here on the eve of Thanksgiving.” That is the way of life for the lovely Miss Beverly and I this fall. With a complicated life, Thanksgiving blogs are published the 1^st week of December.

This blog is a little bit a Thanksgiving but mostly it is about biking. If you would like to read a very good Thanksgiving blog, look at Turkey in the Straw. It was one of the very first blogs that I wrote. It is one of my favorite all time blogs.

I am thankful for biking. To be precise, I am thankful for the lessons that biking has taught me. Because of biking, I now know that I am never as fast as when I have a tailwind, and I am not as slow as when I have a headwind. That is a lesson that serves me well in other areas of my life. I now know that if you are going to ride 5000 miles in one year, you are going to have to be doggedly determined from January 1 through December 31. While coming up a little short isn’t a big deal, if I don’t get 449 miles by in the next month and a few days, it will take 365 days of pursuing those miles to get there again.

I have learned that I can ride 160 miles across Indiana in one day. The lessons learned riding 480 miles across Iowa still sink in a little bit each day. I woke up last weekend hearing that the same roads that I rode in 92 degree heat were under 10 inches of snow. The contrast still makes me shiver. I have learned my friends are very generous in sponsoring a century ride for the fight against MS and sponsoring a 360 mile ride for Habitat for Humanity. I have learned that a 20 mile ride can become a warmup. That is hard to believe when a 7 mile ride was a struggle when I began 4 and a half years ago.

I have learned that assassin deer are not the biggest hazard on the road. While I have come upon the assassins staring at me from a distance while I ride past the fields they inhabit, I have also had closer encounters as I chased them down the side ditch along a corn field, watched them pass across the road 50 yards in from of me. Some have been very close encounters, like the 8 point buck that was standing under a street lamp in front of the house two weeks ago. Like I said assassin deer are not the biggest threat out on the road. That dubious honor is split between teenage boys in pickups with equipped with smoke boxes and, what I affectionately call the moth people. The moth people are those unfortunate souls who tend to drift towards small lights on dark roads. They continue to drift to my side of the road until the last second when the mesmerizing pull of my bike lights is broken and they jerk back into their lane.

Fortunately, I have also learned that the danger posed by these losers is pretty small. Small enough that I continue to enjoy my rides in spite of the occasional smoke attack or drifting car.

Three weeks ago, I learned a lesson that has had a profound impact on me. I am a bike geek. Any new gizmo or gadget I like. Now clips aren’t new. Competitive bikers and pretenders like me have been using them for decades. The smart people in the world figured out that traditional shoes and pedals only provided power to the bike on the down stroke. That left 50% of the time when one of your legs was freeloading at the expense of the other leg. Not only is the leg pushing down moving your bike forward, it is spending some energy pushing the lazy leg to the top of the hill. Bike geeks originally solved the problem by building cages over the top of the pedals. This allowed the overly ambitious the opportunity to lift the ascending leg. The toe of your shoe would bump against the top of the cage, lifting the pedal on the upswing, making mere mortals more like Greg Lemond.

This worked for a while. It was a simple solution. A few strips of nylon, a buckle, a little bit of aluminum; people were going faster. Muscles used to lift our legs were getting stronger. However, it was a simple solution. That was unacceptable because it was unattractive and cheap.  Someone called the engineers and told them to make lifting your leg more difficult, more attractive and profitable. So they went the way of ski boot binders and found a way to keep your feet firmly attached to the pedal through the full range of pedaling motion. Yet with the slightest turn to the left or the right the cleat detaches and your foot comes free and you can put your foot on the ground as you come to a stop. Claim that you can go ½ mile an hour faster and charge $100 for the increase in speed and you can sell millions of these gadgets to Lance Armstrong wannabes. 

As soon as I learned about what I was missing, I put my money on the barrel head and got a pair of cleats. I put them on my bike and quickly learned about the dark side of riding with pedal cleats. While you can detach with the “slightest turn of the heel”, that is not the most natural action to perform. This plus there is a timing issue involved. If you are going too fast, you are buzzing along with a foot dangling off like a participle; useless and leaving people confused about your intent. If you are going too slow, you are going to fall over with both feet firmly attached to your pedals. As you are buying the cleats, you are warned of this possibility. You are encouraged to get on your bike in a doorway, lean against the door jam and practice getting clipped in and out of the pedals. Even with practice you are warned that you are still going to fall, just be prepared for it and make it a “controlled fall”. I have fallen 5 or 6 times since I have been riding usually because I was not paying attention and did not unclip as a precaution and found myself in a situation where I had to stop or get run over or run into something.

The last time was completely unexpected. Three weeks ago, I was just finishing up my appointed 17 mile morning ride. I was coasting up the walk to the front porch. I had just unclipped and was slowing down. I took one more pedal to get me within 3 feet of my dismount. I felt my foot clip back in.

I was stuck, no place to pedal, no way to get my foot disengaged, nothing to grab ahold of and keep vertical. My immediate future opened up before my eyes. I was going down. I could have cursed. I could have shaken my fist at the laws of gravity. But I didn’t. I was incredibly calm. I coasted to a stop, felt the bike lean to the left. I crouched down, bent my knees and let my shoulder hit the ground. I went down as gently as you could expect for someone of my size and age. Laying on the ground, I took stock of my skeleton, my head. It was good. No broken bones, or even muscle trauma announced itself as I lay in the flower bed mere inches from my intended destination.

It is said that in instances of danger the world slows down and the person under pressure suddenly sees thing in great detail. All of the senses are recording events in intense detail. It appears that in this case at least, the recording was made straight to long term memory. I can recall everything; the click of the clip, the oh crap in my head, the loss of momentum, the attempt to disengage the clip, complete stop, keep your hands on the handlebars, no need for a broken wrist,  the lean to the left, the crouching of the shoulders, the ducking of the head, the look towards the ground, thankful that I was not going to crash into the huge planter at the corner of the porch, (man that would hurt), half way down, three-quarters down, knee engaging with concrete, shoulder to concrete, all is quiet. Well crap. -- Just as clear now as when it happened.

There was a residual clarity left from these events. A clarity that I have been chewing on and mulling over during the intervening time. My response to falling off my bike was unusual. Faced with any crisis no matter its severity or its inevitability, I have always responded the same way. I fight it until the bitter end. I try to twist my cleat out of its bindings. Once an idiot driver turned into my lane. The crash looked unavoidable. Rather than cringe and slam on the brakes, I mashed the accelerator of that stupid van to the floor, turned the wheel towards the curb and cursed like a mad man as she pass scant inches behind me. I thought that Windstar was ready for Daytona.  I run hundreds of what if scenarios when encountering a work problem and continue to expend resources in an effort to soften the landing. I spent 5 years of a 10 year organic farming career trying to save a fatally flawed business plan. I fight that is what I do.

So seeing an impending fall, accepting it and going down in a heap calm and serene, is an unusual response for me. It is not unpleasant, just unusual. In fact, it is far from unpleasant. I found it very soothing. I am not fooling anyone. At my age, one starts thinking from time to time that the end is closer than it was in the 1960’s. As I have firmly crossed the 1/3 mark of my 150 years in this sack of bones, I have started to think that there is a crash out there that will not be recoverable.

And after this little glimpse and parable of the future, I hope that I can recognize the inevitability of the end. To tuck myself in and watch my head but not fight the forces of gravity. Not because the fall is good, it just is and gravity is going to win, but because, it is inevitable and a little calm at that time could help me feel better.

Take care

Roger.

I Didn't See That One Coming.

Dear Blog Reader.

I hope that this finds you doing well. I am fine. We have finally had two cold mornings back to back and the insect world has taken it on the chin. The one cold morning in October damaged the little buggers but the subsequent mild temperatures let them up off of the mat. These were evolved insects. Their stupider brethren had died off long ago. They knew that the respite from the cold was temporary. They along with the mice were headed indoors. How did they know that indoors was the only place to come in from the outside? I do not know. But there they were loitering around the front and back door waiting for that opening, letting them buzz into that constant 70 degree weather. Or so they thought.

Actually, they were actively seeking their own demise. Once inside, they had to dodge the fly swatter. Yes, we are old school in the Sharritt household; no toxic chemicals for us. The lovely Miss Beverly and I arm ourselves, with the trusty swatter, against the winged invaders.  As with all great athletic feats, the secret is in the wrist. You have to keep it limber. Poise the swatter above the fly, cock the wrist, take a deep breath, let it out slowly and pull the trigger firmly and decisively. The goal is to stop the swing just as you reach the surface. Any more is over kill, and is going to leave a greasy mess on the table. No, kill the fly and wipe it to the ground.

This extended run of glorious weather has made the perfect setting for the harvest and bike riding. I have a favorite road. It is narrow and winding and some up and down. During the fall, the overhanging foliage is a cave of red, gold and stubborn greens holding on to their photosynthetic lifeline. I find it soothing to ride through this cave. It is interesting that while I get comfort from riding down this road, I have a cousin close in age and, during our formative years, close in geography. He found this road absolutely horrifying. He always thought that snakes wandered the branches above and at any second one would drop out of a tree onto the tractor that he was driving an kill him. To each their own.

I have to admit to a guilty pleasure of fall riding. That is squishing wooly worms. I know that I said I wanted to stop squishing them a couple of years ago in the pages of this very blog. That year while riding in the Hilly Hundred, I must have squished 50 of them in Southern Indiana. The superstitious part of me started to believe that the cold weather later that winter was nature’s retribution. So I glibly promised to stop the wanton killing. But this fall once again, they were crawling across the road. They were trying to get to greener pastures after their current field had been harvested. While their legs are many, they are also very short. If they just had two longer legs, they would be able to see that the field on the other side of the road was just as bear. With that foreknowledge, they would not have been out in the road while I rode by. However, that is not the way of the world. They do have short legs. The did not have foreknowledge of harvested fields across the road. They did slink out to the middle of the road, and . . . Squish, squish, squish, let it snow, snow, snow.

We are down to the last few fields to harvest. In our area, they are mostly part time farmers who can’t afford to keep the mechanical miracle of a combine running with any reliability. In this new age of agriculture, you would be hard pressed to find a combine more than three years old on any farm. I just got on the internet and found that I could buy a used 2014 John Deere for $330,000. They do throw in a hat with it for no extra charge. So this machine has been through the 2014 and 2015 harvest. There is a farmer out there who crunched the numbers and determined that it was cheaper to buy a new one rather than take the time and expense to replace the hundreds of bearings chains and belts all with no guarantee that sometime in 2016 a bearing will go out leaving him stranded in the middle of the field. Yes, in today’s agriculture, time is money.

The small farmer cannot afford that kind of capital outlay to afford even a slightly used combine. It would take them about a million years to pay off a $330,000 combine harvesting 200 acres of corn. So often they wait and then approach one of the big farmers who isn’t tired of riding around in his combine yet, and they custom combine the small farmer’s crops for a few dollars an acre. A good deal for everyone involved.

Please don’t think that the big farmers have it made, riding around in their $400,000 rigs. First, they have to push those rigs around a lot of acres to make the payment on that much green. Which brings me to a question that I have been pondering for a few years. How in the world do big farmers remember where their farms are? There are over a thousand farmers in Indiana farming acreage of more than 2000 acres. These farms are not in one big field. No they are spread out hither and yon; across several counties in many cases. I would just lose track. I know that they use GPS and have maps. But I know that I would lose track around acre 1756 and just quit for the year. What’s 46 acres between friends?

This loop hole makes me wonder if there isn’t an opportunity for the aspiring farmer wanna be. We need to come up with a date in November when once it expires all fields become public domain. Sure it can change, just like the deer hunting season can change. If there are a lot of deer in a year, the DNR extends the season some. An extended season means more deer taken from the woods. I am sorry for the digression but a week ago during my early morning bike ride, I came around the corner near my house only to find an 8 point buck standing in the middle of the road loitering under a street lamp. Obviously, the assassin deer are feeling frisky this year. I aggressively pedaled toward him and he scampered off like the coward we all know him to be.

See I told you they were out there.

The dates would work in reverse. Some years the harvest proceeds more smoothly than other years. The weather is the determining factor usually. Dry years the harvest is done earlier. You could make the free for all as early as election day. Other, wetter years the harvest is delayed and so should the harvest free day. Let’s push it back to Thanksgiving. Then release the hounds. That way you would not have those unsightly fields of forlorn corn all broken off; a sanctuary for hundreds of assassin deer. Nor would there be rank upon rank of stubby soybeans standing defiantly against the rising snow. Although you don’t have to worry assassin deer being sustained in the bean field. They would never be caught dead eating tofu.

Once we get the day of “free for all” established then the real fun can begin. The biggest current challenge that I see is farmers know which fields they have to harvest because they logged the planting of those acres with a GPS and computer combo way back in the spring. A system so precise that once they have driven over the ground, a farmer can replant or harvest it by pushing a button, taking their hands off of the steering wheel and relaxing and reading the paper or taking a nap. Self-driving vehicles have been here for a few years. Google is way behind John Deere. Although to be fair, the challenges for Google are much more daunting. If you were to set a car or a baby stroller in the middle of the field, the combine would run right over it. Its technology is simply following a line on a map and there is no detection of boundaries or obstacles. If the field got 100 feet shorter because you built a house in the corner during the summer, the combine would be harvesting in your living room that fall.

Yes, the GPS - computer combination is simple, and elegant, but stupid. Utilizing that stupidity is where my ingenious plan comes to fruition. We simple give the North Koreans a few hundred bucks and have them hack the John Deere computer system. You could easily wipe out 10% of the memory of farm fields from the farmer’s database. The “Free for All” date would be established. The calendar would turn, and viola, we can all be thieving rotten scoundrels.

Wow, I didn’t see that one coming. What I thought was a great plan for taking a little bit of corn, still standing in the field, away from the assassin deer suddenly turned dark at the end; thieving rotten scoundrels. I did not see that one coming.

Isn’t that the way with the world? Not having the height or proper perspective leaves us blind to the other side of the road, so we go crawling inch by inch toward that greener place only to find it just as desolate, if we are lucky or squished if that idiot on his bike rides by.

Take care

Roger

Self Control of Halloween

Dear Blog Reader.           

I hope that this finds you doing well. I am fine. We are turning to the end of October. The remnants of hurricane Patty will soaked us last Tuesday and Wednesday. Thankfully the shingles were secure on the roof and we were okay. I must admit that the rain was appreciated here in Sharritt Land. I have spent much of the last three months toting a hose around the garden in an effort to keep the greens growing. I am glad to report that the arugula, mizuna, chard, and lettuce all look great; the spinach not so much. I believe that I was using some old seed and spinach seed does not age well.

While this contrary farmer is planting clover and rye cover crop to take advantage of some warm weather and some rain in spite of the shortening day length, the rest of American Agriculture is busy wiping the slate clean. They are nearly done now. The big famers have not only pushed their combines across the acres like giant erasers; they have also taken advantage of the dry weather to erase all of the corn stalks and bean stubble from the scene. It is an amazing transformation. I am not here to comment on the wisdom of exposing your soil to the wind, snow and rain for the next six months. Some say that the winter landscape can benefit from some patches of green cover crop. It does my heart good to think that the oxygen generation will continue for those rare sunny November days and get a bit of a head start next March, and I like seeing a patch of winter rye and alsike clover getting established and knowing that there will be green emerging when the snow melts.

Who knows? With El Nino brewing away out in the Pacific we may have some photosynthesis in February. I hope not. I vividly remember three years ago (that’s my motto “Keeping forgetfulness at bay since 1962”) when we had the very warm winter and many of you removed the flannel sheets in March. Suddenly, the apple trees, sensing the portent of warmer weather, started to bloom only to be nipped in the bud by a three day freeze in early April. Thankfully, all will be revealed in the fullness of time.

I love October. I love the way that it makes you wait until the very last day to enjoy its major celebration; no early days off for good behavior like September’s Labor Day, no unseemly impulse control issues like January, celebrating on the first day and just a week after the last big celebration. Sure, December, May, and November make you wait for most of the month. But October is an unyielding task master making you wait until the very end.

It is trying to teach us valuable lessons. Natural consequences, that best teacher of all, shows us that good things come to those who wait. How many first week of October Jack-o-lanterns have melted by mid-month on the porch, their orange gapped tooth grins turning to black grimaces of horror? “I’m melting.” How many bite sized Snickers bars have been gobbled down long before the goblins and ghosts arrive to be disappointed by smarties and candy corn on the 31^st. It is sobering to realize that your lack of impulse control will cause so much sorrow as you wake up from your coma sitting on the couch, surrounding by snicker’s wrappers, a thin line of brown drool tracing down your chin. Better luck next year sparky.

But October must become very frustrated as a teacher. While it is unyielding in desire to make us wait and to develop patience to become more temperate in our lives, we often rebel. Thousands of pumpkins are sold the last week before Halloween as replacements for their sad saggy brethren being hauled off to the compost heap. I have been eating Halloween candy at work since mid-September. I have learned to wipe my chin thoroughly after waking up on the couch. Very few adults are showing any kind of impulse control while choosing costumes. Parts that have blossomed with age and calories and have been tastefully disguised in vertical stripes and layers are suddenly being displayed loud and proud. It is all very frightening.

And tonight we shall release the hounds in the annual blood lust of trick or treat. Millions of pounds of candy will be redistributed this evening. Garbage bags and pillow cases will be filled. We used to like to send the kids out early, have them bring back their candy and augment our reserves. We all know it is too much. How can 15 lbs of Snickers bars be good to you? As I typed that last sentence, my pancreas started crying in the corner. When I was younger, it would have broken into a Scottish brogue screaming, “I can’t do it Captain. No way to create that much insulin. It can’t be done.” My brain would have screamed back, “Dammit Scotty. You have to. These are Snickers bars and I am going to eat them all tonight. No way is my sister going to get her hands on them.”

We know it is obscene. We know it is too much. We dread the thought of the little sugared up monsters coming home and having to be wrestled into bed. It isn’t their fault. We created them.

As with every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. Thank God Newton was so smart. I have come across a new phenomenon to combat the largess of the season; actually, 2 phenomena. I developed one and the other I choose to argue against.

I love the candy tax. I rationalize it that it taught our children valuable life lessons. Nothing in life is free; now you know the pain that I feel with my pay check; it is the way of the world, you are going to have to get used to it. The plan is simple; go trick or treating, pour all of your candy out on the kitchen table, divide it into groups of ten, I get to choose one piece from each group. Yes, I get to choose. No pile of smarties for me. I get all Snickers. And there you have the candy tax. Sure, the kids scream it’s not fair. I agree. They are paying a 10% tax. The people who bought the candy paid as much as 25% on the money they earned to buy the candy, 6% on the sales tax, 3 to 5% on the property tax so that they would have a door for you to knock on and scream “Trick or Treat”, and 12% for the social security tax so that they will be able to continue to finance your candy stealing in their old age. You’re absolutely correct 10% candy tax isn’t fair. It isn’t but it is the way of life. Get used to it.

As usual my suggestions for life’s little conundrums are a bit harsh. There are people who believe that children should spared the cruel realities of adulthood. You can understand. It is a compelling argument. Taxes are a scary concept for a 3 year old dressed up a Freddy Krueger. Yet caring, sensitive, parents know that their children should be separated from as much candy as possible for the sake of their poor little pancrei. Necessity is the mother of invention. I have a co-worker who, faced with this situation, went searching for a solution. As with all of modernity’s solutions, it was to be found on the internet. It is a book. This book sensitizes guileless children that the witches are in desperate need of candy but that they will exchange a toy with the child for their candy on Halloween night.

As Goebbels once said “when one lies, one should lie big, and stick to it. They keep up their lies, even at the risk of looking ridiculous.” To that end the authors have created an “elf on the shelf” type doll that the parents can use to repeat the lie for 30 days. Thirty days of operant training will probably have your kids drooling just like Pavlov’s pooches as they hand over their hard won loot for a rubber ball and some jacks. It shouldn’t take more than a session or two on the couch to get your children over the lies you told them growing up. Maybe you can get a two for one discount for Elf on a Shelf and Witch on a Shelf.

There you have it. All of you Frostians at your fork in the road. Which path to choose in your parenting wood? Should I lie or bully them into behavior that they should choose? That is often the problem with quick and easy parenting advice. It relies on coercion rather than recognizing that parenting is a long road of constant urging, encouragement and correction. And just like October, you are going to be pretty frustrated with the results.

Take care

Roger.

My Brush with the Academy

Dear Blog Reader

I hope that this finds you doing well. I am fine. I know that it has been three weeks since I last put my missives in electronic form for the eyes of the world. I have been busy. It is the first time that I have had a three week vacation from writing. I thought that I would have plenty of time to write last week. The lovely Miss Beverly and I spent last weekend with friends at a rental house built into the side of a tall dune in Beverly Shores, Indiana; a scant 200 yards from the shores of Indiana Lake. Yet, the weekend slipped away; time sitting on the beach, time going out to fine dining, time playing games in front of a fire place as the temps outside fell quickly during the evening.

Thankfully, people looked at their calendar instead of their thermometers when making decisions about how to spend this weekend before the day we pause to pay homage to the Capitol of Ohio. By not paying attention to the thermometer, we were left with a wide open beach and balmy 75 degree weather. It wasn’t warm enough for swimming but I wasn’t going to do that at any temp below 90.

We certainly have pushed the first frost date of fall around this year. The tree color has suffered but my greens garden has flourished. With the help of a little plastic and some hoops, I may have arugula for Thanksgiving. I look forward to it. It was close; this race with Jack Frost.

Each fall, the lovely Miss Beverly and I play a game of chicken with the first frost. Every year on August 1, we plant 500 sunflowers and sit back to see who will blink first. The sunflowers are a 75 day variety, but they seem to sense that time is short and usually get the job done in the 61 days allotted. With frost coming nearly two weeks later than usual this year, the sunflowers came, saw and even produced nice seed heads for winter aviary consumption.

While the sunflower frost chicken game was uneventful, the fall has not been without high drama in the garden. We have been too busy to bring in basil and cilantro. Bev makes a great curry sauce with basil, cilantro, garlic, onions, and cumin. She uses it in a couple of yummy dishes. The recipe calls for copious amounts of basil and cilantro. I had planted a couple of rows late in August. It had not grown very fast with all of the dry weather. It was getting close but so was the frost. I thought that we were sunk on Wednesday morning. The frost wasn’t on the pumpkin but this far out from the big city heat sink the frost was on the top of my car as I left for work. Thankfully, the frost didn’t make it all of the way to the ground. A trepidation filled trip out to the garden after work showed that we had barely been spared. So it was out with a knife and a plastic bag for some harvesting. An afternoon of hard work later the lovely Miss Beverly has a winter’s supply of curry sauce safely and a bit ironically in the freezer.

 

In unrelated news, I have had occasion to help with the youth of America’s homework. The reason for this close encounter is complicated and unimportant to the theme of this entry into my blog. So don’t worry about that. Two weeks ago, I came across two assignments that have given me pause. The assignments have been part of packets that were sent home to be completed over the course of a week in an attempt to convince the youth of America to not procrastinate; to show that a little bit of work each night is easier than a last gasp effort on Thursday evening.

The first pause inducing assignment had a man holding up a sign that said the following:

VOTE FOR STEVE JONES FOR MAYOR.

STEVE IS HONEST.
HE IS SMART.
HE HAS LIVED IN THIS TOWN HIS WHOLE LIFE.
STEVE WILL MAKE OUR TOWN SAFE.

Then the youth of America were given a series of statements that they were to agree or disagree with based only on the information provided above.

1. Steve would not make a very good mayor.
2. Steve is the best person for the job.
3. It is important to have lots of money to be mayor.
4. People want to feel safe in their town.
5. Steve does not like the old mayor.

After reading this tripe, it was all that I could do to instruct the youth of America not to respond HTFWIK. There is no information there. It is basically a tweet by someone who may not know anything. Why would the academy try to show that tweeting is a good basis for making informed decisions about anything? Of course, it is the kind of communication that the youth of America know about. However, I thought school’s purpose was to teach us things that we didn’t know.

Steve may not be honest. He may have paid this poor schmuck to tweet out this message for $15. This poor schmuck may not have been a poor schmuck but a local celebrity to which Steve paid $1500 for his endorsement. We don’t know if Steve likes the old mayor or not. He doesn’t call him any names in the post. We haven’t seen if Steve has written any scathing letters to the editor calling the mayor a repugnant, money grubbing, pedophile. There is no opinion expressed about the old mayor. For all we know the old mayor is old and is retiring from his many years of selfless (and low paid) public service. For all we know, Steve may want to give millions of $ to an NFL franchise to move to town, so he can make sure that the city has a suite where he and his cronies can watch the game in comfort.

The thing that gives me the most pause is this is what public life has become; a series of tweets with no depth of thought or analysis to the situation. It is not an indictment of the academy. It is an indictment of a society that chooses to make public discourse a hashtag for solution. An indictment who’s most egregious charge of lazy, shallow discourse was embodied by the picture of the first lady holding up a sign saying #bringbackourgirls. That was a year and a half ago and to date none of the girls kidnapped by Boko Haram have been returned or rescued. Can you imagine the horrors suffered by those girls and their families? Yet we feel like we did something.

The second assignment had the youth of America use their imagination to invent a scary monster that had super powers and would unleash those super powers on a defenseless community. The assignment went out of its way to say that the monster could be humanely trapped and taken away. It would not be killed or harmed in any way. I mean the assignment went way out of its way to communicate this message.

It is a bit ironic that free public education will be replaced by paid psychological sessions where the therapist will help the adult patient kill those old irrational fears that were humanely trapped in the youth of America’s mind many years earlier. Isn’t there a thoughtful way to teach that the scary monsters in our head should be killed, banished, trussed up like the wild nasty vile things that they are and done away with? I can guarantee you that given enough time to grow and ripen they will not go quietly into the night. They will gnaw at the wires of your humane trap and demand to be released because “you are hurting me.”

It isn’t like the youth of America aren’t learning to kill the enemy in HALO, or Assassin’s Creed. There is plenty of killing going on. It just strikes me that the adults want the youth to learn that off by themselves; away from the adults where uncomfortable questions will have to be answered.

In that vacuum of teaching, we let the weeds grow. Not uprooted by critical thinking, those weeds flourish unchecked, choking out the facts and insights that will permit learned, mature development which could someday lead to a race well ran against a “frost” that has no intention of humanely trapping us.

Take care.

Roger

Manifest Destiny's Child

Dear Blog Reader,

I hope that this finds you doing well. I am fine. The world spun on its axis recently and a truth that was beaten out of me has been re-established as true. Once a long time ago, a very long time ago, I was forced by a well-meaning educator to adjust my world view and accept, through a coercive grading regime, what I at the time thought was obviously wrong. We were learning about countries and borders. As any child would notice, I figured out that not all countries are the same size. As any competitive child would have noticed, the USA was larger than the evil Soviet Union. For all of those in your 20’s and younger, the USSR was the country who had the US targeted with their InterContinental Ballistic Missiles. Fairness dictates that I point out that we had our missiles aimed at them. So it wasn’t like we and they were not following the Golden Rule.

Being a second grader, I intuitively knew that size mattered, and that while staring down your nemesis in a game of mutually assured destruction, bigger was better. You could imagine my shock that any teacher could be certified when they could not make the visual spatial comparison of the obvious. The United States of America was larger than the USSR. She was none too pleased that a mere 2^nd grader could so patently show her the error of her ways. I am guessing the Mrs. Gesundheit felt the same kind of inferiority when little Albert Einstein corrected her regarding the relations between energy, mass, and the speed of light.

I was patient. Our country was called the United States of America. The size of North America was bigger than the USSR. Mrs. Torrence told me that North America contained both America and Canada. What? What nincompoop let that happen? It was called North America not North America and Canada. Sure there wasn’t much happening in Canada past the southern 100 miles or so except herds of reindeer. Who knows? In a great conflagration with the evil empire, it may have been the reindeer that turned the tide; releasing a Vixen could have had devastating effects on those Russian commies. Then we could have unleashed Rudolph’s red nose on them and it would have been game over.

I was heartened three years later to find that second grade Roger understood more than he knew when in fifth grade I learned that other great Americans thought that Canada should be annexed through the Monroe doctrine. For those of you saying “huh, the Monroe Doctrine, Manifest Destiny? We didn’t talk about that in school.” I pity you for your lack of education. I suppose that you can have binge watching House of Cards on Netflix as a substitute teacher.

In the end, like Monroe I had to give up the idea of a United States extending from the Rio Grande to Santa’s workshop. It is a shame when the political will expends itself before one’s destiny is fulfilled. Then last weekend 46 years later, I was reading the international news in Flip Board and this headline caught my eye. “Chinese General: “Of course we have the right to build islands in the South China Sea. It has China in its name.” God love his little commie heart. He did not succumb to the strictures of an onerous grading system. He simply had his teacher killed in the Cultural Revolution and suddenly he was getting A’s for such stellar thinking. Rather than bend to the will of his teacher, he broke her and was able to start looking for a really big dredging machine to fulfill his Machiavellian schemes.

I would condemn the Chinese General for being an imperialistic goon, and wag my finger at him and go tsk, tsk, tsk. He should know better. Sure I thought that the United States of America would include all of America. However, I was in second grade. I got over it. He should get over it to. I would condemn his egotistical, center of the universe way of thinking, but then I realized that we all live in glass houses.

It hit home as I was reading another newspaper article recently. In last week’s Indianapolis Star, they were desperate for news. So in the life style section, they had an article answering the age old question “What if James Dean had lived?” Which is a little stupid. Of course he lived. I suppose they meant what if James Dean hadn’t been killed in an automobile accident 60 years ago at the tender age of 24 (not very catchy but more accurate.) The question was posed to a variety of people of no particular importance. It was good to see that a cousin and a high school classmate were asked. At least they knew him, had spent time with him. As a result their hypothesis seemed the most plausible. “He would have continued to make movies,” said one. The other, “I think he would have stayed in show business.” People who knew him thought that he would stay in his world of make believe not a world of make believe of their own design.

But when the same question was posed to those who didn’t know James Dean the person; only knew James Dean the persona, the answers flew off into flights of whimsy. According to some, he would have taken movie roles away from Dennis Hopper in Hoosiers and have been the God Father instead of Marlon Brando. He would have come out of the closet at age 80 “like his good friend Jim Nabors.” A closet, which according to the internet, whose door was not completely shut even in a more circumspect time of the 1950’s. Others thought that he was going to be the next Paul Newman and worry more about race cars than acting as he aged. The oddest prediction was that he would have beaten Ronald Reagan for the Presidency. Of course that would have put him in his early 50’s for the first presidential run. He would have had to put his political career into over drive to go from Rebel Without a Cause to the Oval Office in 25 years.

It intrigued me that when describing James Dean’s destiny, others were merely proposing what they wished to be true. If wishes were horses, beggars would ride. One wisher said that James Dean would have pushed through the Gay Rights Act in 1966 just two years after the Civil Rights act got African Americans off the back of the bus.

Why don’t we realize that destiny is really wishing? Dangerous wishing since manifestations of destiny are wishes of people who have set themselves at the center of the universe and projected their wishes out to the ends of time and imposed them on all of God’s lessers.

To know the design of the world is a practice we all participate in. However, it is a game that should be left to 2^nd graders. It just seems safer that way.

Take care.

Roger.