According to the Garden - 2017

The garden reveals plant lore continually.  I have been schooled by tomatoes (and many other plants), for several Idaho summers.  Prepare beds well.  Use supports, twine and tomato clips, for anything resting on the soil will be consumed by others.  Corrugated cardboard also works to isolate tomatoes from the ground if it stays dry. And on and on every season.

My grandmother had these problems figured out in some different but equivalent manner.  When we mostly ate from kitchen gardens many people knew how to grow their food.  Mostly they did not record that knowledge.  One learned as a child by doing chores, practiced as youth with your own plots.  Growing stuff was common knowledge, therefore without much market value.  Farmers know as much as anyone.  As much about the land, the crops, the animals. Where land is free, requiring only an army to drive off it's inhabitants, farms multiply, production increases until the market collapses. Forget the railroads, electrification and the rest. Common farming knowledge has no value without land.  City folks or more successful farmers are quite happy to buy that land, for very little if the farmer has had a few bad years.  Skip forward a few generations.  Can kids grow anything today?

So, an old man, I garden.  I learn.  Someday this knowledge might come in handy.  But that is the rationalization.  I grow stuff because that is what people have done for 5000 years.

Confining Cinnamon

Cinnamon, my almost Maine Coon cat friend, rebelled at a shock collar. You might think me cruel, but Cinnamon figured out how to get across the radio wire clean within a day. Back and forth. Speed is the secret. Go too fast for the device to even register a boundary signal.

Now in the neighbor's yard. Now under a parked car. While I watched she went and sat in the middle of the street as if she were really stupid. When I went to get her she ducked under a car. She let me crawl halfway under that car after her. A few more like that and she considered my loyalty sufficiently demonstrated. She never gets close to the edge now. She just does not care to. The yard is her territory. She hangs out there with me. When it is winter she watches me from the closest window. 

If we are both outside and she isn't sleeping, she will sit ten feet away and watch me. She stalks the ducks, and knows they are too fast for her. They pretty much ignore her too. Probably remember the squirrel laughing at her and feel much the same. They know exactly how far she can jump and stay just over the line.
Occasionally she charges. She gets within a foot or two, but they have exploded into the air. They settle in the stream, flying all of fifteen feet. If you were a cat you would enjoy watching them too. But you would not waste energy. She accepts the score.

She will sit on the front porch and watch what happens on the street. For endless hours. You cannot beat the attention of a cat. Often she sleeps nights on the stairs so no one can get to me without stepping on her. We look out for each other. She is not a junior partner. I belong to her.

written on Facebook 5/28/17

What I Write vs. Might Write

Stories are the most efficient way to transmit thought between people.  The essay is nevertheless what I write here.  Story is all innocent adventure, pretends pleasure, fascinates through characters.  Essay implies purpose, has a job to do.  Story is the original indirect attack, denying significance while floating you over the falls.  Essay is obvious, demands attention.  Story insinuates itself, beckons to the casual listener.  Essay hits you on the head, tells you right up front what it wants.

Stories comfortably carry their loads, float them through narrative.  Stories situate themselves within life.   Essay is immediately present, story is deniably pregnant.  Story can be subtle, can disguise discomforting, dangerous thoughts beyond a censor's sensibility.  Stories often pretend other purpose.  Essay leads with sharp blade and thunder, cuts through objection, seeks to throttle doubt.  Stories pretend, meander like old streams oblivious to purpose.  Stories are not above flowers and butterflies.  Essay scuds along in tight paragraphs fairly bursting with supporting sentences.  Essay takes logic's straight path to conclusion.  Stories distract, indulge their author's eccentricities, take you by surprise.

So why do I not write stories?  Or poetry?

Economical poetry, so much with so few. Blank verse I will venture. Rhyme and meter require real work.  Troubadour I am not.

Twitter taught succinctness.  The 140 character format favors parsimony.  Trim thought's expression to the bone.  Comb through tangles, sieve distraction. Render smooth and slippery to the ear. . . .

revised 8-22-17

That Thin Veneer Disguising Feelings

May 24, 2017, mid-day:

Email received. . . .
 
"The funeral service for Rich Kirkness has been changed to Wednesday, May 31st.  The time is 2:00 p.m."



The evening of the same day:


My perfectly unconscious reaction

To: (various people in my Lutheran church congregation)

I'm just randomly copying a selection of church taste-makers. That is why you received this email.  I assume we talk about this, whatever. Crazy idea.

I suggest Trinity host a small fruit desert bar at Rich's funeral.  He was quite excited with the frozen Three Berry Blend from Costco.  Unsweetened Raspberries, blueberries, blackberries.  Almost ordered me to get some. Hey,  plastic cups and spoons. Or nice stuff.   Melting punchbowl of fruit, dipper.  Paper napkins.  Waste container.  Good with whipping cream, whipped cream, sugar, chocolate sauce - like liquid box of chocolates with the Hershey chocolate sauce. Seriously good in small doses. Have not tried honey. You will know anything else.

Might work served in the narthex at the church before the funeral service, Let's think about not policing the sanctuary.  Letting people sip on something so intensely Rich might help them feel better.  We're talking adults here, not spilly children.  Not expensive, not lots of trouble.  Fabulously hospitable.  

Pure Richard Kirkness Bliss.  He will get such a kick put of it. Amen.

David

The next morning:

Perhaps just save the desert idea for my own funeral  

(To the same recipients, having considered the absurdity of the previous.)

The iced fruit with chocolate sauce must be one of those deserts God is served after a particularly fine day.  Certainly the Mormon God, physical body and all, would appreciate this treat.

Currently, on a promise to my Daughter, reading the BoM.  Unusual style, somewhat hypnotizing when listening through earbuds.  Too strange to read for me, raised on King James.  The style in 2 Nephi is almost recursive. Takes the longest time to go the smallest distance. I'm making embarrassingly slow progress.

I have never met such cheerful young adults, the two female missionaries that helped me plant flowers yesterday.  To send young women to convert me must be cheating.   I should tie a rope around my waist and toss you the end.  Please hang on. 

Perhaps it's all feeling, that is why no one inside notices the peculiar things.  (All religious literature has claims that outsiders find peculiar.)  Consider the practice of re-experiencing full immersion baptism in proxy for one's ancestors under dramatic circumstances.  Repeatedly.  A full-sensory religious experience.  Not just tucking your head under the bathwater.  What do others make of this?  Must make my way through more apostate literature.

Jonathan Haidt describes religion as "binding and blinding."   I'm getting a real feel for the blinding part. 

I also better understand how quickly every Saint is reduced to choking up when delivering their testimony.  Don't think William James reported this.  Must reread "The varieties of Religious Experience."

Also, James goes through the full logically persuasive case for Christianity in "The Will to Believe," pretty much fails entirely, and his conclusion turns on how it just "seems so right."   Logically impervious.  A stumbling block to we Greeks indeed.  Faith does not consider what you fix it on.  Just works.  How can we think to know anything?

We must be heading for another Great Revival in America. So much social anxiety.  Perhaps we are there, just not seeing it for being in the middle of it.  Martin Marty's project on Fundamentalism says fundamentalism shows up necessarily during highly uncertain times.  What, no work in the future?  About as uncertain as possible.

Thanks for following along.

in Christ, David.