vol. 6 issue 3
Greetings
I took a nap yesterday. The strong breeze through my open bedroom window was so laden with honeysuckle and honey locust blossoms, it woke me. I inhaled the sweet scent and remembered how in spring through late autumn, I would ride my bike for miles and miles all over Upstate New York, when I was just out of college and working the evening shift at a public radio station.
My favorite rides were along the border with Pennsylvania. The hills were high, but not too vertical, and there wasn’t much but dairy farms, Amish enclaves, and every kind of wildflower native to the region: dame’s rocket, crown vetch, clover, dandelions, Queen Anne’s lace, mustard, goldenrod, asters, milkweed, and so much honeysuckle. There would also be lilacs everywhere — along the back roads and in front of nearly every farmhouse.
It used to be like that in a lot of the places I subsequently lived along the East Coast, but now it’s mostly tract homes and highways where the scents of spring and summer used to flourish.
Anyway, I don’t usually take naps, but I think better when I am rested, and this has been a busy week with lots to think about.
There was the conundrum about where to plant the many pots of vegetables and herbs I have been growing from seed since March. When I moved into my apartment, I was delighted by the raised beds that I saw scattered around outside the building. I anticipated growing really good tomatoes for the first time ever. There is a local farm nonprofit that supplies all the materials for growing your own food, pretty much at cost. I got all my materials and sketched out my plans.
But a few weeks ago, I was looking out my bedroom window and noticed that the little raised bed that had been there was gone. It’s owner, my neighbor had just died (she was elderly), but I couldn’t figure why the garden had been ripped out.
After a few phone calls, I learned that gardens are no longer allowed. Too hard to mow around. That’s funny, because one can hardly say these are the most well-kept grounds anyway, given that it’s just one sweet old country boy who’s tasked with it all. The roses are half dead and have no shape, while the holly bushes menace the sidewalk like small dinosaurs.
The country boy himself told me maintenance isn’t the issue, selling the building is. Gardens are a turn off to buyers: low-class, apparently.
Meanwhile, zoning and planning being what it is here, my apartment building is plunked down in an agriculture zone that, as fast as farmers can sell, is turning commercial. So, there is honeysuckle, a creek, lots of cows, and when you wend your way out the remaining little slice of rural heaven where I had been dreaming of raising hardy red tomatoes and endless bunches of basil, past the wrecking service’s lot of mangled semi-trucks, a Kentucky State Police impound lot, and the truck stop of probable ill-repute where earlier this week I saw the county sheriff cuffing a smiling young woman who chatted away as she was gently helped into the back seat of the cruiser, there are seven — seven! — fast-food restaurants clustered in about two-tenths of a mile.
What would the math be on the amount of acreage across the globe upon which sit fast-food establishments that are shit for everyone’s health, compared to the amount of acreage where people are growing their own food and enjoying good health and well-being?
Since I don’t get enough sun for container gardening, what is there to do with my 100+ pounds of dirt still in the back of my pick-up, and the sizeable jungle of sprouts now crowding around my too-shady deck?
I was explaining my situation to a nice man I met at a party out in Big Hill, a couple of weeks ago. Come to think of it, the county sheriff was there, too. He sat in his cruiser across the road from the get-together, in the lot outside the liquor store, annexed to the only gas station for miles. There’s an ice cream “parlor” in the gas station, too.
The shindig was held on a dusty little bit of land along the main road where the flea market is sometimes held. I don’t know if the sheriff was hoping to nab one of us driving away with an open beer, or if he thought the whole thing was so bizarre he should keep an eye on it.
There has been an old semi-trailer parked on that lot for at least as long as I have been hiking and driving around out there. Recently, its owner offered the old rig to a group of local activists to use as a canvas for a massive art demonstration.
The party was to kick off the beginning of painting a mural that, when completed, will depict how the power co-op’s insistence on clear-cutting 9 miles through the viewshed of the area’s most pristine hiking area as well as the watershed for the southern end of the county’s drinking water reservoir, will play out.
The locals say they are being forced to give up their land (eminent domain is a likely outcome) for industrial power demands being made miles away in a region that has nothing to do with this one, on a grid that is far too fragile to support what the state has told industry is possible. Lawyers for the local college that owns much of the land in Red Lick where the powerline is to be built are now involved, so who knows.
I was invited because I wrote a story about it for the local paper, and if all goes to plan, will also cover it for a wider audience. I took lots of pictures of the scaffold going up alongside the trailer, and of some of the activists dressed in Godzilla costumes, I guess to make the point that the powerlines will look like monsters.
I also chatted with some folks I hadn’t met before. That’s when I was introduced to the aforementioned man who, it turns out, is a volunteer firefighter. In our conversation, it came up my experience driving commercial rigs, and so…would I like to drive the fire engine for the fire house?
After two weeks of my considering it, we went for a walk to discuss how that might work. After we’d sorted the details, and after he’d reassured me I would not have to rush into any flaming buildings, the conversation turned to my thwarted vegetable garden. Turns out I can rent a plot from him, as he has a farm out in Red Lick, near the water reservoir.
This is a good solution, but the best solution would be if people didn’t look down on folks wanting to grow their own food. When we go to war, as I am fairly certain we will, and food shortages become real, I reckon abundant gardens likely won’t be viewed as tacky.
Another thing on my mind this week was leaving a part-time job I have enjoyed because I can’t sustain it and all the other things I am doing, such as hitting the road again for a little while.
I have been working at a family-owned flower and plant shop, tending all the plants, as well as doing deliveries. The job has been highly therapeutic, and it has been my pleasure to work with the patriarch of the family, especially; he has had some health issues, so I did a lot of the physical work necessary to prepare the greenhouses for the big selling season.
Earlier this week when I was helping him load the van with trays and trays of succulents he’d asked me to arrange for sale at the Amish plant and flower auction down in Lincoln County, he told me he was sad I was leaving. He is a large, often gruff man who isn’t particularly sentimental, at least not outwardly. That he said that made me even sadder I was leaving, too.
So, yesterday, my last day, I arose early to bake my county fair prize-wining blueberry muffins for the flower family. Then, before my workday was through, I walked through the greenhouses, saying goodbye to all the babies I had helped raise into the vibrant beings they are: the geraniums, ferns, roses, cacti, salvia, clematis, dahlias, jumping jennies, hens and chicks, hydrangeas, Russian sage, and so, so many other verdant beings.
I’ve also been thinking about my bird family. As they will do, if you’re not paying attention and leave a flowerpot unattended on your deck, a pair of house wrens have nested in one of my fanciest flowerpots. It’s actually the smallest pot in a set of three that I bought a couple of years ago at Terrain, which if you are a Washingtonian, you will know is the schmancy plant-centric giftshop in Bethesda. I did get a discount, because that was when I worked there part-time making terrariums and other plant arrangements, but still — these are not cheap pots.
I worry that one of the also newly fledged red tail hawks that nest in the sycamore along the creek might feast on a little wren supper. Not that I can do anything about it, but still. They are like my little feathered kin. (I don’t have any good pictures, sorry.)
Lastly, in preparation of the book I have been plodding through writing, I have been going through all the years of this publication. It has been quite the exercise. These five years plus truly have been a thinking-out-loud experiment, and while not all of my work has been stellar, it has almost always been honest. I qualify that because, especially in the first year, I was still too hesitant to be fully candid, and I find my writing during that period is stilted, amateur even.
But I sure have been prolific. There are hundreds of essays, opinion pieces, interviews with some top-notch guests, reviews, reports, memoirs — all of it an evolving thinking-out-loud experiment about the intersection of corporate power, individual agency, and democracy and how that all adds up to our states of mind, our mental wellbeing.
Going through it all, there are definite themes, and that is what I am paring down to so that I can highlight what they are, and then more confidently move on to the new projects I keep saying I am working on, which I am, but slowly because I have been living such a full life, as you can see from this post, and I am crap at multi-tasking.
The book is tentatively titled, “The Earth is My Bitch: Twelve Steps to Demoralizing Humans (and What Humans Can Do Instead)”. It’s an amplification of ideas we’ve explored here over the years. Namely, what I see as I review my work, is that I pretty much think that the break in our connection to the earth is the root of every. single. problem we have ever had. Period.
Gosh, am I ever looking forward to wrapping up the past, getting out the book, and possibly a “best of” anthology if I dare, and moving on to the stuff about the apocalypse I promised, and also another idea that has been rooting in my brain for a while now. Thank you for being there for me throughout all of this.
Peace,
Whitney
I don’t know how I missed this entry. I worked in a plant nursery during the 2007+ recession, in-between tech jobs when no one was willing to pay enough to even cover groceries. Even this job was barely above minimum wage, but it was much more fulfilling. Wishing you the best, and looking forward to hearing more about the book’s progress.
It's fascinating getting such a rich visual image of the varied aspects of your life in America (and the ways of America in genera), while all the way over here in Adelaide, South Australia. I enjoy your writings a lot.
I sadly expect you are correct in your prediction of impending war, both civil and world, and we won't be far behind, I suspect.
My daughter and her hubby have a modest sized home block, yet have managed to plant a mini orchard; one of each of lemon, orange, lime, apple, mandarin, pomegranate in the front yard and a myriad of herbs and vegetables in the back. She also has a number of healthy and happy chickens who provide them with fresh eggs daily. The mandarins produced this year were the best I've tasted in years. With pomegranates here selling for $9AUD each, and the three producing over one hundred fruit, its potentially lucrative - although she gave most away being the kind hearted soul she is.
Anyway, I really just wanted to write to say that I always enjoy what you share.
Take care.
Carol