Margotlog: Clean Dirt: What You Learn Crossing an Ocean
He was young and full-faced, pleasant, with that mid-western regularity of speech--a young man on his way from the western edge of Iowa to Johannesburg, South Africa. I wasn't going nearly so far, only to Florence, Italy. It never occurred to me to visit South Africa, but he had a product to sell--a machine developed by his farmer-tinkerer father that did something neater than usual with fertilizer.
The urge to question as I travel sometimes leads to learning the unexpected. It seems possible to pick a stranger's brain miles high in the atmosphere in ways I'd never do on the ground. Something about proximity amid relative safety--after all, we are surrounded by others and there are the flight attendants if something goes awry.
We were talking about dirt, as in mid-western farm soil, and what has been dumped in it for decades, with mounting consequences. As in the herbicide Round-Up and its persistence in the soil and plants far longer than the package suggests. As in evidence that Round-Up causes cancer. As in Round-Up's ability to bind calcium and thus give test results that say plants contain calcium, yet that calcium is not available to the human body..As in the decimation of North American bees caused in part by the die-off of flowing plants in fields (and lawns) necessary for honey-gathering insects. (Not to mention the danger to humans from pesticides used in farming that leach into the water we drink.)
As in the fact (he tells me) that most bees in the U.S. are no longer native but imported from Italy. As in the fact that to keep "pests" from damaging corn (the largest crop grown in the U.S.), more and more pesticide must be used every year. As in the only way to avoid this is a very simple and ancient practice of crop rotation and allowing fields to go fallow (i.e. run to weeds) every so often.
We land in Amsterdam and he heads off to visit the city before his much later flight, and I go to my gate for Florence. Our conversation becomes a lens through which I view all the Italian rural scenes from train and bus windows for the next two weeks. Here is what I ponder:
* Poppies are the Italian dandelion. If a field is left to itself, it will sprout poppies with abandon. Beautiful red, vibrant cups on stems studded hither and yon across relatively small fields.
* There is almost an equal ratio of planted to nonplanted (i.e. fallow) fields. The Italians are thus following this old measure for reducing the insect pests of their crops. (And by plowing in the weeds, adding nutrients to the soil.) Thus they need to use far less, or perhaps no herbicides or pesticides at all, since in a field deprived of corn, the corn borer dies from lack of fodder. And when corn is then planted a year or two after the field is fallow, the corn borer has melted away.
* I heard just before I left that the European Union outlawed the use of pesticides called neonicotinoids, the pesticides most damaging to bees. I hail this as I assume that now Italian bees are less vulnerable than before, I wonder what it will take for the U.S. to show this kind of sensible self-interest as I remember my father's outrage when a single roach dared show itself in our South Carolina kitchen. We were instantly at war.
* I try to imagine a cartoon character that's an insect and shows itself a friend of humans. Kafka's short story "Metamorphosis" is the only thing that pops up--a gigantic coackroach with human faculties. I want someone to help me love all insects the way I'm learning to love all birds, even the hawks and harriers that capture in spectacular swoops the pigeons and sparrows (and an occasional cardinal) I feed in my backyard.
* I delight in the wonderful simplicity and flavor of Italian food, Yes it costs more than food does in the U.S., but Italian tomatoes are like tart ambrosia not the cardboard simulacrum we have here. Italian ice cream (gelato, thank you very much) is almost always light and delicious, flavored with just the right amount of pistachio or chocolate or cherry. Vegetables on the grill--zucchini, eggplant, for instance--sprinkled with balsamic vinegar--well there's no better way to enjoy summer veggies. And the pasta, almost always made from scratch, is melt-in-your-mouth. These people care deeply about the flavor, texture, the rightness of food. Yes, they drink our junk--the colas. But other than that, they eat what makes eating a pleasure, and now they have helped make growing human food part of a natural cycle that does not destroy or cause illness. THAT'S A HUGE ACCOMPLISHMENT, given what happens not so far away from my front door in Minneapolis/Saint Paul.
Sunday, May 26, 2013
Thursday, May 9, 2013
Margotlog: Insects Among Us
Margotlog: Insects Among Us
About eight summers ago, driving home to the Twin Cities from vacationing on the North Shore, I routinely encountered many Monarch butterflies taking their lazy flight south. Then suddenly a year or two later, there were almost none. Around the same time, I began reading (Elizabeth Kolbert in The New Yorker) about "colony collapse" among our nation's bees. As the excellent article by StarTribune Josephine Marcotty (5/3/2013) reports, this die-off of bee colonies is accelerating. Culprits identified by Marcotty and earlier science writers include loss of flowering habitat, and even more clearly, the increased use of pesticides on farm fields (and orchards too), notably insecticides in the class of neonicotinoids. Genetically modified corn which is resistant to the effects of insecticides and herbicides allows farmers to spray their fields with greater and greater doses of these toxic chemicals. Just as Rachel Carson warned in Silent Spring of bird and insect deaths due to DDT, so now we as a people are facing the loss of beautiful and very necessary insects Small-scale beekeepers I know within 60 miles of the Twin Cities report no trouble raising and maintaining their hives, but they neither live in heavily farmed neighborhoods (as perhaps does Steve Ellis, Barrett, Minnesota, beekeeper quoted in Marcotty's article), nor do they truck their colonies to California to pollinate almond orchards. Such disruption is also potentially harmful to bees (Kolbert). The European Union has just banned the use of neonicotinoids, and Marcotty remarks that University of Minnesota bee scientist Maria Spivak "said Europe is more willing to ban pesticides based on perceived risk." Marcotty then quotes Spivak directly: "The U.S. has a much stricter policy and approves pesticides until [it's] proven that they are a problem." I'm an English teacher, and as such encourage my students to look for illogical and prejudicial use of language. Try this on for size: A "stricter" policy approves pesticides until they are proven a problem. This seems not stricter at all, but rather a "looser" policy, favoring chemical companies who produce not only genetically modified corn but also the pesticides and herbicides spewed on fields where such corn is grown. Note my prejudicial use of "spewed." Not a nice word, suggesting "indiscriminate, reckless," and yes "harmful." It becomes clearer and clearer that unless the U.S. bans these damaging pesticides and probably the genetically modified corn they're used on, we will soon have no flying insect friends to pollinate our apples, strawberries, almonds, blueberries, and many other trees and plants which still abide by natural "unmodified" procedures. Given the evidence that the enormous U.S. corn crop goes largely to bulk-up feed lot cattle, producing beef far higher in fat than grass-fed cattle who come to "market weight" walking the range and eating grass (which their stomachs are naturally formed to digest)...evidence that the hugely damaging use of corn syrup to sweeten colas has created a U.S. epidemic in childhood and adult diabetes and obesity...evidence that using corn to create ethynol is neither environmentally nor economically viable... (see the documentary movie "King Corn")... Well, the choice from this side of the supermarket aisle seems all in favor of veggies, fruits, and nuts. And bees and butterflies.
Wednesday, April 24, 2013
Margotlog: Slaughter of the Innocents
Margotlog: Slaughter of the Innocents
What explains a passion for an animal and a faraway place? I certainly did not grow up with live elephants. When I was a kid in South Carolina, there were no elephants in sight. Not even at the zoo, a rather pathetic affair with open-air cages--it was warm 9 months of the year--where creatures stared or paced and made me rather uneasy.
But within the pages of the Babar books - stories of an elephant family with grey pliable bodies, and large, picture-hat ears, and trunks like arms on their faces--I met an elephant family to adore. The girl wore a tutu and in her pink toe-dance slippers, she was even more awkward than I in my orthopedic shoes. Her father was Babar, King of the animals, and the mother his Queen. The boy (all had perky, intriguing French names--after all, their author was French), the boy, as I recollect, was rather docile. Now and then he did something naughty, but never destructive. He had no toy gun. He never played cowboys and Indians, the way boys in our Old Citadel complex did, shooting at each other around the edges of our elephant grey buildings. The Babars were far from a violent family, rather musical and arty, a bit like my own. From their stories, I grew a companionable love for them which has never abated.
Time passed. I moved to New York, Atlanta, Kansas City, finally Minneapolis/St. Paul. By this time I was 25, I'd seen real elephants, probably at a circus or two. But my youthful zest for them, my sense that they deserved honor and respect, similar to what I would give my parents, friends, teachers--that had quieted. Then, in the early 1990s, remarried, my daughter grown into an accomplished teen, I was standing in my Saint Paul kitchen staring into the brightness of a summer backyard. Seeing not the tall elm lifting its fountaining shade or the birds feeding on the feeders. But African elephants slaughtered for their tusks and left to rot.
It was a horrific hallucination--their tusks hacked off, their bodies--the grey children huddled beside the huge parents--brought low by powerful rifles. That this was happening half the world collapsed. I felt as if it was taking place just beyond my own backyard. The shots broke a pact I'd made unconsciously as a child. A pact of love and honor, which extended far beyond my own skin to include elephants as a tribe. And becasuse I was one of the kind who had killed them, I was responsible.
Now bear with me a moment. Let's imagine that the 3,000 Americans who have been shot between the slaughter of the 22 innocents at Sandy Hook Elementary in late October and the present moment are elephants. Let's imagine that these huge, gentle giants are protective parents, whose family groups extend to aunts and uncles, oldsters and youngsters. When a small elephant is trapped in a sink hole, somewhere in Africa, the child's aunts and mother gather around, drop to their knees and lift the baby elephant out by their trunks. It is a touching sight to behold: the largest land animals extending to their child the care and concern we extend to our own children, just as did the teachers at Sandy Hook--those who died and those who survived--did that horrible day. Extending themselves to help the small ones of their kind. Not parents or other direct relations, but caring people whose immediate, instinctual response was to protect the innocent.
Now, another slaughter is taking place. Over the last two months, I have received word from the African Wildlife Foundation and other wildlife welfare efforts that large groups of elephants--thirty or forty at a time, mothers, fathers, aunts, uncles, children--are being gunned down by high-powered rifles. All shot within seconds by automatic weapons with huge magazines of bullets.
There is an economic motive for shooting the elephants: selling the adults' tusks to China and other Asian countries where ivory is deemed an aphrodisiac. International agreements exist against trade in ivory, but there are obviously not observed. I imagine (bolstered with information gathered over the years) that poor Africans (in the Cameroons currently) do the killing (like Herod's henchmen in the Bible when another slaughter of the innocents took place). What they make by this slaughter is little compared to what middlemen capture in the sale.
The motive that spurred the young man who killed at Sandy Hook may never be entirely known, though someday I hope the remainder of his family comes forth and speaks about him. Knowledge will help focus our attempts to outlaw automatic weapons and large magazines of bullets, and create a system of background checks to retard the sale of guns to the mentally ill.
But not until we as a people fall deeply in love with human life, not until we come to accept that we are harboring a culture of death by our unwillingness to protect the innocence in ourselves, not until we see that we are selling our own for a pittance, and allowing groups far from the violence to suck on the rewards, only then will we cry out, "Let us be brave. Let us truly stand by the tenets of our country's faith. Let us truly link LIBERTY and the PURSUIT OF HAPPINESS to the bedrock of being, to LIFE. .
.
I could not see straight.
What explains a passion for an animal and a faraway place? I certainly did not grow up with live elephants. When I was a kid in South Carolina, there were no elephants in sight. Not even at the zoo, a rather pathetic affair with open-air cages--it was warm 9 months of the year--where creatures stared or paced and made me rather uneasy.
But within the pages of the Babar books - stories of an elephant family with grey pliable bodies, and large, picture-hat ears, and trunks like arms on their faces--I met an elephant family to adore. The girl wore a tutu and in her pink toe-dance slippers, she was even more awkward than I in my orthopedic shoes. Her father was Babar, King of the animals, and the mother his Queen. The boy (all had perky, intriguing French names--after all, their author was French), the boy, as I recollect, was rather docile. Now and then he did something naughty, but never destructive. He had no toy gun. He never played cowboys and Indians, the way boys in our Old Citadel complex did, shooting at each other around the edges of our elephant grey buildings. The Babars were far from a violent family, rather musical and arty, a bit like my own. From their stories, I grew a companionable love for them which has never abated.
Time passed. I moved to New York, Atlanta, Kansas City, finally Minneapolis/St. Paul. By this time I was 25, I'd seen real elephants, probably at a circus or two. But my youthful zest for them, my sense that they deserved honor and respect, similar to what I would give my parents, friends, teachers--that had quieted. Then, in the early 1990s, remarried, my daughter grown into an accomplished teen, I was standing in my Saint Paul kitchen staring into the brightness of a summer backyard. Seeing not the tall elm lifting its fountaining shade or the birds feeding on the feeders. But African elephants slaughtered for their tusks and left to rot.
It was a horrific hallucination--their tusks hacked off, their bodies--the grey children huddled beside the huge parents--brought low by powerful rifles. That this was happening half the world collapsed. I felt as if it was taking place just beyond my own backyard. The shots broke a pact I'd made unconsciously as a child. A pact of love and honor, which extended far beyond my own skin to include elephants as a tribe. And becasuse I was one of the kind who had killed them, I was responsible.
Now bear with me a moment. Let's imagine that the 3,000 Americans who have been shot between the slaughter of the 22 innocents at Sandy Hook Elementary in late October and the present moment are elephants. Let's imagine that these huge, gentle giants are protective parents, whose family groups extend to aunts and uncles, oldsters and youngsters. When a small elephant is trapped in a sink hole, somewhere in Africa, the child's aunts and mother gather around, drop to their knees and lift the baby elephant out by their trunks. It is a touching sight to behold: the largest land animals extending to their child the care and concern we extend to our own children, just as did the teachers at Sandy Hook--those who died and those who survived--did that horrible day. Extending themselves to help the small ones of their kind. Not parents or other direct relations, but caring people whose immediate, instinctual response was to protect the innocent.
Now, another slaughter is taking place. Over the last two months, I have received word from the African Wildlife Foundation and other wildlife welfare efforts that large groups of elephants--thirty or forty at a time, mothers, fathers, aunts, uncles, children--are being gunned down by high-powered rifles. All shot within seconds by automatic weapons with huge magazines of bullets.
There is an economic motive for shooting the elephants: selling the adults' tusks to China and other Asian countries where ivory is deemed an aphrodisiac. International agreements exist against trade in ivory, but there are obviously not observed. I imagine (bolstered with information gathered over the years) that poor Africans (in the Cameroons currently) do the killing (like Herod's henchmen in the Bible when another slaughter of the innocents took place). What they make by this slaughter is little compared to what middlemen capture in the sale.
The motive that spurred the young man who killed at Sandy Hook may never be entirely known, though someday I hope the remainder of his family comes forth and speaks about him. Knowledge will help focus our attempts to outlaw automatic weapons and large magazines of bullets, and create a system of background checks to retard the sale of guns to the mentally ill.
But not until we as a people fall deeply in love with human life, not until we come to accept that we are harboring a culture of death by our unwillingness to protect the innocence in ourselves, not until we see that we are selling our own for a pittance, and allowing groups far from the violence to suck on the rewards, only then will we cry out, "Let us be brave. Let us truly stand by the tenets of our country's faith. Let us truly link LIBERTY and the PURSUIT OF HAPPINESS to the bedrock of being, to LIFE. .
.
I could not see straight.
Wednesday, April 10, 2013
Margotlog: You Are My Sunshine
Margotlog: You Are My Sunshine
My only sunshine. You do make me happy. Dreaming of catching you in sun flower disks, and little peaked roofs, in giant mirrored faces that track across the sky. My sunshine, our sunshine, with as much potential as Houston, as New Jersey. Never thought of that, didja, Minnesota?
At home, we had our 1912 peaks and valleys assessed. Not so fine, with many "facets" high along a crowded urban street. Not so fine for applying shining solar panels. Better would be a roof with a long sun-south facing slope like friends we know closer to the Big River. Perfect for gathering rays and transmiting them to the electrical grid. Not only to beam heat and light inside, but sell the extra bucks back to Xcel! How bout them bananas?
Yet I persist, calling to help the Sierra Club entice outstate Minnesotans to spent Earth Day, April 22, at the State Capitol in Saint Paul. To whisper in the ears of legislators from Austin and Winona, Duluth and Grand Marais, Rochester and Hibbing, Moorhead and Mankato: we want renewable, we want a standard even better than 25% renewable by 2025. Let's aim for 40% renewable by 2030. Think of the jobs!
Think about creating better roads to Minnesota farms who've opted to have an immense wind turbine installed. There goes the dirt track. In comes a modern cement ribbon strong enough for a behemoth to pass over.
Think of significant pollution decrease--no more coal-fired mess. Less mercury in waters, thus in fish, thus in people, especially children more prone to suffer neurological damage. Far less asthma. Think of that, you parents whose childen wheeze, who don't dare run fast, play sports, play hard. Fear fear fear waking at night and not being able to catch that disappearing breath.
Yes, it's true: If we covered the Sahara desert with solar panels we could power the entire planet virtually until the end of time. But nobody's factored in the weight of those panels. Enough to dent the Earth, wouldn'tja bet? Me, I wouldn't. But I would drop my socks if the Earth got it together sufficiently to create such a life-saving measure. Better luck starting close to home where we can lobby, and suggest, plead and connive.
Me, I want a solar disk or two shared by our block, proceeds to cleaner air, slower global warming, to our own pockets.
Me, I want a solar sculpture part along the river in Saint Paul. It's a million dollar idea. But instead of proposing it to the give-away by that name, I opted to ask for funds to help our threatened SPCO orchestra. The solar sculpture park idea is there for the taking. What a novelty! What a kick? Huge robots powered by the sun. Kids agaga! Parents trying to recall the lay of their roofs. Everyone romping around in and out of the sun, even in wnter. In our coldest, clearest, sunniest days. Solar cooking hotdogs outdoors. Dogs trying not to get cooked outdoors. Shades on the sun who's smiling down on us.
.
My only sunshine. You do make me happy. Dreaming of catching you in sun flower disks, and little peaked roofs, in giant mirrored faces that track across the sky. My sunshine, our sunshine, with as much potential as Houston, as New Jersey. Never thought of that, didja, Minnesota?
At home, we had our 1912 peaks and valleys assessed. Not so fine, with many "facets" high along a crowded urban street. Not so fine for applying shining solar panels. Better would be a roof with a long sun-south facing slope like friends we know closer to the Big River. Perfect for gathering rays and transmiting them to the electrical grid. Not only to beam heat and light inside, but sell the extra bucks back to Xcel! How bout them bananas?
Yet I persist, calling to help the Sierra Club entice outstate Minnesotans to spent Earth Day, April 22, at the State Capitol in Saint Paul. To whisper in the ears of legislators from Austin and Winona, Duluth and Grand Marais, Rochester and Hibbing, Moorhead and Mankato: we want renewable, we want a standard even better than 25% renewable by 2025. Let's aim for 40% renewable by 2030. Think of the jobs!
Think about creating better roads to Minnesota farms who've opted to have an immense wind turbine installed. There goes the dirt track. In comes a modern cement ribbon strong enough for a behemoth to pass over.
Think of significant pollution decrease--no more coal-fired mess. Less mercury in waters, thus in fish, thus in people, especially children more prone to suffer neurological damage. Far less asthma. Think of that, you parents whose childen wheeze, who don't dare run fast, play sports, play hard. Fear fear fear waking at night and not being able to catch that disappearing breath.
Yes, it's true: If we covered the Sahara desert with solar panels we could power the entire planet virtually until the end of time. But nobody's factored in the weight of those panels. Enough to dent the Earth, wouldn'tja bet? Me, I wouldn't. But I would drop my socks if the Earth got it together sufficiently to create such a life-saving measure. Better luck starting close to home where we can lobby, and suggest, plead and connive.
Me, I want a solar disk or two shared by our block, proceeds to cleaner air, slower global warming, to our own pockets.
Me, I want a solar sculpture part along the river in Saint Paul. It's a million dollar idea. But instead of proposing it to the give-away by that name, I opted to ask for funds to help our threatened SPCO orchestra. The solar sculpture park idea is there for the taking. What a novelty! What a kick? Huge robots powered by the sun. Kids agaga! Parents trying to recall the lay of their roofs. Everyone romping around in and out of the sun, even in wnter. In our coldest, clearest, sunniest days. Solar cooking hotdogs outdoors. Dogs trying not to get cooked outdoors. Shades on the sun who's smiling down on us.
.
Wednesday, March 27, 2013
Margotlog: Two Cousins Take their Landscape with Them
Margotlog: Two Cousins Take Their Landscape with Them
Sadie and Eleonora, younger and older, first to die at 86, second to die at 95, I've known since my earliest memories. My father's first cousins who grew up down a hilly Pittsburgh street from him, whose adorable little mother was tiny as his, Josephine and Rosalie, another Italian sister pair, the older dead first--the grandmother I hardly knew. The younger, Sadie and Eleonora's Josephine, who lived well into her 90s and was my grandmother substitute.
Sadie and Eleonora, who lived together and took care of tiny adorable Josephine, and teased their cousin, Leonard my father, for his terrible driving, confirming my terror since childhood. Sadie and Eleonora, whom I visited when they lived in Washington, D.C., and I went to college in Baltimore. Then when they moved first to Arlington, then Silver Spring, Maryland, I introduced them to my daughter and first husband.
Sadie and Eleonora, whom I visited most often in their last location, a senior-living complex in Dover, Delaware. Finally freer to come more often, and almost always alone, I drove south from Philly down Hghwy 95, then sequed to Hghwy 1 and over a soaring bridge of golden fluted wings, until I was almost there.
Sadie's dying in 2008 enriched her rather tart, emphatic personality with slow languor, with acceptance one would not have predicted. Her last few weeks were threaded with agony as her lungs needed to be drained, and she could no longer eat or swallow much. But earlier she gave in to death. She became simply more quiet, more langorous, sitting with us, nibbling saltines, sipping water, looking at us intently. I mourned losing her humor and insightful political mind. But she left me Eleonora, her older sister, who then blossomed even beyond her previous vibrant strength.
Her death was protracted, crazy, stubborn with pain. I saw her between bouts of wrestling with dementia, cancer pain, incontinence, depression. When I last saw her alive, she'd survived a face-out with death where, had there not been her good friend Jo beside her, the nurses would have had to tie her down.
At the end she moaned solid for nine days and finally was gone.
. Now I've discovered that the landscape and social ties which I treasured and enjoyed so much when they were alive--the walks around the Electric Company grounds, with its buffer of feathery white pines, the friends of theirs who sat with us for lunch and dinner, whose stories intrigued me, who gave other faces to age, and the kind, attentive nurses and aides, the activity director Linda and her little dog Molly--whom Eleonora smothered with hugs--I have lost them now.
My last visit for Eleonora's memorial service I tried to believe that if I visited again, I could enter that envelope of love in which these two sisters surrounded me. But I am reminded of Charleston, South Carolina, where my parents lived on after I moved away, of how this most charming of Southern cities also lost its power to comfort and delight me in a deep and life-giving way. How slowly the magic that touched every leaf and rooftop, every tree and singing bird when they still lived to set it ablaze, how that gradually diminished, because they were no longer there. Now though I occasionally return and recognize the beauty and kindness of the city, yet they no longer ease the ache of care and affection. They no longer belong to me or I to them as I once did.
This is because the center of affection is gone and no other has taken its place. Because I came to where they lived until they died, but never put down my roots myself. They watered the place for me, even though I thought I walked to escape from our intense togetherness. How odd, now, to find I simply spun the thread of their love out into streets and by-ways, how it wove me into the arms of every crossroad until they, dying, cut it.
Sadie and Eleonora, younger and older, first to die at 86, second to die at 95, I've known since my earliest memories. My father's first cousins who grew up down a hilly Pittsburgh street from him, whose adorable little mother was tiny as his, Josephine and Rosalie, another Italian sister pair, the older dead first--the grandmother I hardly knew. The younger, Sadie and Eleonora's Josephine, who lived well into her 90s and was my grandmother substitute.
Sadie and Eleonora, who lived together and took care of tiny adorable Josephine, and teased their cousin, Leonard my father, for his terrible driving, confirming my terror since childhood. Sadie and Eleonora, whom I visited when they lived in Washington, D.C., and I went to college in Baltimore. Then when they moved first to Arlington, then Silver Spring, Maryland, I introduced them to my daughter and first husband.
Sadie and Eleonora, whom I visited most often in their last location, a senior-living complex in Dover, Delaware. Finally freer to come more often, and almost always alone, I drove south from Philly down Hghwy 95, then sequed to Hghwy 1 and over a soaring bridge of golden fluted wings, until I was almost there.
Sadie's dying in 2008 enriched her rather tart, emphatic personality with slow languor, with acceptance one would not have predicted. Her last few weeks were threaded with agony as her lungs needed to be drained, and she could no longer eat or swallow much. But earlier she gave in to death. She became simply more quiet, more langorous, sitting with us, nibbling saltines, sipping water, looking at us intently. I mourned losing her humor and insightful political mind. But she left me Eleonora, her older sister, who then blossomed even beyond her previous vibrant strength.
Her death was protracted, crazy, stubborn with pain. I saw her between bouts of wrestling with dementia, cancer pain, incontinence, depression. When I last saw her alive, she'd survived a face-out with death where, had there not been her good friend Jo beside her, the nurses would have had to tie her down.
At the end she moaned solid for nine days and finally was gone.
. Now I've discovered that the landscape and social ties which I treasured and enjoyed so much when they were alive--the walks around the Electric Company grounds, with its buffer of feathery white pines, the friends of theirs who sat with us for lunch and dinner, whose stories intrigued me, who gave other faces to age, and the kind, attentive nurses and aides, the activity director Linda and her little dog Molly--whom Eleonora smothered with hugs--I have lost them now.
My last visit for Eleonora's memorial service I tried to believe that if I visited again, I could enter that envelope of love in which these two sisters surrounded me. But I am reminded of Charleston, South Carolina, where my parents lived on after I moved away, of how this most charming of Southern cities also lost its power to comfort and delight me in a deep and life-giving way. How slowly the magic that touched every leaf and rooftop, every tree and singing bird when they still lived to set it ablaze, how that gradually diminished, because they were no longer there. Now though I occasionally return and recognize the beauty and kindness of the city, yet they no longer ease the ache of care and affection. They no longer belong to me or I to them as I once did.
This is because the center of affection is gone and no other has taken its place. Because I came to where they lived until they died, but never put down my roots myself. They watered the place for me, even though I thought I walked to escape from our intense togetherness. How odd, now, to find I simply spun the thread of their love out into streets and by-ways, how it wove me into the arms of every crossroad until they, dying, cut it.
Sunday, March 24, 2013
Margotlog: Maggie's Advent
Margotlog: Maggie's Advent
We were at the North Shore in a favorite cabin high above Lake Superior. No phone, no cell phone but the friends up the hill did. They received a phone call from our landlady: Fran's mother had died in Tennessee.
Fran, my husband, who by then didn't love the North Shore as much as I did, had no trouble packing up to go. Maybe a little regret at ditching the warblers and night full of stars, but for him, there was no question about the proper route. The funeral was a week hence.
I, on the other hand, chafed. I didn't want to go home early, but I would. I would come home after four days, He would already be gone, and I would settle into gardening and cat care while he was in Tennessee. No one expected me to attend Lou's funeral. That's what sometimes happens in second marriages.
Fran had trouble getting a flight. For three days he was home with the two cats we already had: aged Bart the Brute who used to bite ankles, and leap three times his length after a piece of string. But now spent his days lying around, snarling if you came too close. Bart and newish Tilly-the-terrified, beautiful but lacking confidence.
The day before Fran was to leave, I called from a pay phone to see how he was doing. "There's a surprise for you here," he said. "Four legs and a tail. Named Magnolia." What!? Another cat? Just after he'd been teasing me on vacation about my wanting another critter "to keep Tilly company?"
"I couldn't resist," he said, sounding a sheepish. "She was sittiing in a cage at Peg Smart, putting out her paw, and she had the most beautiful cat face. I had to adopt her."
Right, I thought. Smitten first, but lonesome second. Lonesome for Lou, your nice mom, leaving your peculiar dad for you to tackle alone. Yup, I'm sure this Maggie the Cat is a beauty. Maggie a real cat named for Maggie the human cat in Tennessee Williams' Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. Maggie the Cat as in Elizabeth Taylor. That kind of beautiful.
I was hot and sweaty. It was July and I'd just driven five hours, the last half on a freeway through sun-wavery fields. Opening the back door, my shoulders weighted down with backpack, I set a cooler on the table and called, "Here, Maggie." Almost as nervous, I bet, as she was, hearing an unfamiliar voice, being left in a strange place alone over night.
I brought in more gear. Hot, tired, dazed, disoriented. "Here, Maggie." Another trip, then another. Finally the kitchen was piled with clothes, bags of groceries, cooler, hiking boots, binoculars, bird books. Fran had watered nothing the days he'd been home. Our cat-care trio had gone as soon as he arrived. I went out to water, fill the bird feeders.
When I came back, I called again "Here, Maggie." There was a faint "meow." Calling and listening I tracked the faint response to the second floor, to our bedroom, and then under our bed. Kneeling down, I peered into the dark. Light came from a window near the other side. There staring at me was a wide cat face belonging to a calico cat with stout tail and white paws. But what a face! A square of orange sat unevenly over the eyes and nose. Through the left eye, ran the edge of the square. Acat put together by a kid using stubby scissors and construction paper.
This cat looked ridiculous. Not ugly, just goofy. I tried to reach in and tickle her under her chin, but she backed away as if she knew what I was thinking. I didn't apolotize but I did sympathize with her obvious fear. "Come on out, Girl. Come on. I won't hurt you," I crooned. But she only stared at me with glittering eyes. Not hissing, but not advancing either. I left a plate of food under the bed, and a bowl of water.
Later, when Fran called, I told him, "This is the strangest looking cat I've ever seen. How could you think she's beautiful." Ah, the eyes of the beholder. The yearning of a son for a lost mother, and finding her in the face of a lonesome cat.
He still teases me about yelping "How could you think she's beautiful." Originally, there was an edge of pain in the teasing. Now, that's muted. But still there. We both love Maggie. She knows her place--in the middle between Terrified Tilly and Adorable Julia, the Teenage Mother. Sometimes when she sits up very tall, her ears lifted and eyes very alert, Maggie looks regal. Other people have called her pretty, "What a pretty cat!" I love her, I feel guilty because she's the middle cat and defers to the other two. I try to make it up to her by playing with her in the dark after the other two have gone to bed. But I think she still knows. We've come to an understanding: I love her for her goofty, funny face, and she tolerates my misperception.
We were at the North Shore in a favorite cabin high above Lake Superior. No phone, no cell phone but the friends up the hill did. They received a phone call from our landlady: Fran's mother had died in Tennessee.
Fran, my husband, who by then didn't love the North Shore as much as I did, had no trouble packing up to go. Maybe a little regret at ditching the warblers and night full of stars, but for him, there was no question about the proper route. The funeral was a week hence.
I, on the other hand, chafed. I didn't want to go home early, but I would. I would come home after four days, He would already be gone, and I would settle into gardening and cat care while he was in Tennessee. No one expected me to attend Lou's funeral. That's what sometimes happens in second marriages.
Fran had trouble getting a flight. For three days he was home with the two cats we already had: aged Bart the Brute who used to bite ankles, and leap three times his length after a piece of string. But now spent his days lying around, snarling if you came too close. Bart and newish Tilly-the-terrified, beautiful but lacking confidence.
The day before Fran was to leave, I called from a pay phone to see how he was doing. "There's a surprise for you here," he said. "Four legs and a tail. Named Magnolia." What!? Another cat? Just after he'd been teasing me on vacation about my wanting another critter "to keep Tilly company?"
"I couldn't resist," he said, sounding a sheepish. "She was sittiing in a cage at Peg Smart, putting out her paw, and she had the most beautiful cat face. I had to adopt her."
Right, I thought. Smitten first, but lonesome second. Lonesome for Lou, your nice mom, leaving your peculiar dad for you to tackle alone. Yup, I'm sure this Maggie the Cat is a beauty. Maggie a real cat named for Maggie the human cat in Tennessee Williams' Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. Maggie the Cat as in Elizabeth Taylor. That kind of beautiful.
I was hot and sweaty. It was July and I'd just driven five hours, the last half on a freeway through sun-wavery fields. Opening the back door, my shoulders weighted down with backpack, I set a cooler on the table and called, "Here, Maggie." Almost as nervous, I bet, as she was, hearing an unfamiliar voice, being left in a strange place alone over night.
I brought in more gear. Hot, tired, dazed, disoriented. "Here, Maggie." Another trip, then another. Finally the kitchen was piled with clothes, bags of groceries, cooler, hiking boots, binoculars, bird books. Fran had watered nothing the days he'd been home. Our cat-care trio had gone as soon as he arrived. I went out to water, fill the bird feeders.
When I came back, I called again "Here, Maggie." There was a faint "meow." Calling and listening I tracked the faint response to the second floor, to our bedroom, and then under our bed. Kneeling down, I peered into the dark. Light came from a window near the other side. There staring at me was a wide cat face belonging to a calico cat with stout tail and white paws. But what a face! A square of orange sat unevenly over the eyes and nose. Through the left eye, ran the edge of the square. Acat put together by a kid using stubby scissors and construction paper.
This cat looked ridiculous. Not ugly, just goofy. I tried to reach in and tickle her under her chin, but she backed away as if she knew what I was thinking. I didn't apolotize but I did sympathize with her obvious fear. "Come on out, Girl. Come on. I won't hurt you," I crooned. But she only stared at me with glittering eyes. Not hissing, but not advancing either. I left a plate of food under the bed, and a bowl of water.
Later, when Fran called, I told him, "This is the strangest looking cat I've ever seen. How could you think she's beautiful." Ah, the eyes of the beholder. The yearning of a son for a lost mother, and finding her in the face of a lonesome cat.
He still teases me about yelping "How could you think she's beautiful." Originally, there was an edge of pain in the teasing. Now, that's muted. But still there. We both love Maggie. She knows her place--in the middle between Terrified Tilly and Adorable Julia, the Teenage Mother. Sometimes when she sits up very tall, her ears lifted and eyes very alert, Maggie looks regal. Other people have called her pretty, "What a pretty cat!" I love her, I feel guilty because she's the middle cat and defers to the other two. I try to make it up to her by playing with her in the dark after the other two have gone to bed. But I think she still knows. We've come to an understanding: I love her for her goofty, funny face, and she tolerates my misperception.
Tuesday, March 19, 2013
Margotlog: Life Without a Car
Margotlog: Life Without a Car
Or I should say, Life in fly-over land without a car. It's quite possible to live a decent, middle-class existence in Chicago without a car. Buses and trains are excellent, the elevated trains get you to the airport far faster than you can drive. Life in New York and probably Boston, fine without a car. New York has a subway system par excellence except when it's flooded by Superstorm Sandy. Life without a car in Manhattan is almost imperative because car traffic is ridiculously slow--in my earlier life, my husband and I were stuck in Manhattan traffic three hours and went six blocks. It was the Wednesday before Thanksgiving. We sat and fumed. Eventually we turned around, parked the car, and took a train to Baltimore.
Maybe in Washington and Philadelphia, life can be fine without a car, as long as the suburbs are serviced by frequent buses or trains--as they are in Chicago and New York. On a flight recently into Philadelphia, I suggested to a smart young dame beside me that instead of taking a cab downtown to catch a train to Washington (our flight was late 90 minutes, and she'd already been bumped from the Washington flight of her dreams due to predicted heavy snow, which never materialized). "Take the train from the airport," I urged. "You'll save a lot of money."
"There's a train?" she asked. I couldn't believe she wasn't aware of it since as I've often walked from the airport to rental car pick-up, I pass over freeway and train tracks, where often a train is passing. But maybe my seatmate had never before flown into Philly.
Los Angeles without a car? IMPOSSIBLE. Maybe in San Fran. Maybe in Seattle because their ferry system brings in commuters in a timely fashion and buses ferry them throughout the city. But Minneapolis/Saint Paul without a car? RIDICULOUS. We have one of the most spread-out "Metro Areas" in the US.One hundred miles from western Minnetonka to eastern Stillwatr.
My Minneapolis-based friend Pat Blakely has just published a handy, cheery green book called Carfree Living (CAREFREE Living is how I rad it at first). Order it on Amazon and have it printed off and sent to you. It's more than handy--you don't have to leave your house.
Then enjoy her jaunty, personal style, but do not be surprised to learn that living without a car in Minneapolis (even near downtown) is NOT without care, not open to impulse or whim. PLANNING required. Memorization of bus schedules required. A box of "takeables" beside the door - necessary. Acceptance of missed possibilities CRUCIAL - making cookies rather than attending a tango dance class, reading a good book or even a bad book rather than braving sub-zero weather.
In fact, winter wind, cold, snow, ice are the context of her experiment. They make her attempt at a carless life much more difficult than it would be, say in Baltimore, Maryland, or Chattanooga, Tenn. We often have six months of real winter, or four with a month on either side of crud, slush, and freezing rain. YET, she settles into acceptance and comes to appreciate what she learns about herself when she rides the bus.
I like the bus-riding life she describes. Slower, more meditative, giving time to muse about other riders, about scenes at 20 mph. Beautiful glances at city and lakes. And now I'm remembering a bus tide in Honolulu from maybe four years ago, up, up curving ever upward from the harbor and tall buildings into little communities crouched on hillsides, families with chidlren getting on, school kids getting off. An old one helped up by the soft-bodied, pony-tailed driver, with his gentle Island speech, and expert turning around the curves.
Then he told me, it was my stop. The National Cemetery of the Pacific was maybe five blocks up a road edging a cliff, lined with pink and orange azaleas. The blue Pacific spread below disappearing into distant haze. I walked alone, breathing moist, redolent air. So happy to be alive, and paying homage to the men and women buried here who originated far away.
Pat Blakely is also engaged in a war, less damazing potenially, more internal, yet fighting against cultural norms and her own long habit of a car. She fights with herself and a transit system not particularly bad, nor particularly good. And she wins through to make a difference. Entertaining us along the way with her pluck and candor.
Or I should say, Life in fly-over land without a car. It's quite possible to live a decent, middle-class existence in Chicago without a car. Buses and trains are excellent, the elevated trains get you to the airport far faster than you can drive. Life in New York and probably Boston, fine without a car. New York has a subway system par excellence except when it's flooded by Superstorm Sandy. Life without a car in Manhattan is almost imperative because car traffic is ridiculously slow--in my earlier life, my husband and I were stuck in Manhattan traffic three hours and went six blocks. It was the Wednesday before Thanksgiving. We sat and fumed. Eventually we turned around, parked the car, and took a train to Baltimore.
Maybe in Washington and Philadelphia, life can be fine without a car, as long as the suburbs are serviced by frequent buses or trains--as they are in Chicago and New York. On a flight recently into Philadelphia, I suggested to a smart young dame beside me that instead of taking a cab downtown to catch a train to Washington (our flight was late 90 minutes, and she'd already been bumped from the Washington flight of her dreams due to predicted heavy snow, which never materialized). "Take the train from the airport," I urged. "You'll save a lot of money."
"There's a train?" she asked. I couldn't believe she wasn't aware of it since as I've often walked from the airport to rental car pick-up, I pass over freeway and train tracks, where often a train is passing. But maybe my seatmate had never before flown into Philly.
Los Angeles without a car? IMPOSSIBLE. Maybe in San Fran. Maybe in Seattle because their ferry system brings in commuters in a timely fashion and buses ferry them throughout the city. But Minneapolis/Saint Paul without a car? RIDICULOUS. We have one of the most spread-out "Metro Areas" in the US.One hundred miles from western Minnetonka to eastern Stillwatr.
My Minneapolis-based friend Pat Blakely has just published a handy, cheery green book called Carfree Living (CAREFREE Living is how I rad it at first). Order it on Amazon and have it printed off and sent to you. It's more than handy--you don't have to leave your house.
Then enjoy her jaunty, personal style, but do not be surprised to learn that living without a car in Minneapolis (even near downtown) is NOT without care, not open to impulse or whim. PLANNING required. Memorization of bus schedules required. A box of "takeables" beside the door - necessary. Acceptance of missed possibilities CRUCIAL - making cookies rather than attending a tango dance class, reading a good book or even a bad book rather than braving sub-zero weather.
In fact, winter wind, cold, snow, ice are the context of her experiment. They make her attempt at a carless life much more difficult than it would be, say in Baltimore, Maryland, or Chattanooga, Tenn. We often have six months of real winter, or four with a month on either side of crud, slush, and freezing rain. YET, she settles into acceptance and comes to appreciate what she learns about herself when she rides the bus.
I like the bus-riding life she describes. Slower, more meditative, giving time to muse about other riders, about scenes at 20 mph. Beautiful glances at city and lakes. And now I'm remembering a bus tide in Honolulu from maybe four years ago, up, up curving ever upward from the harbor and tall buildings into little communities crouched on hillsides, families with chidlren getting on, school kids getting off. An old one helped up by the soft-bodied, pony-tailed driver, with his gentle Island speech, and expert turning around the curves.
Then he told me, it was my stop. The National Cemetery of the Pacific was maybe five blocks up a road edging a cliff, lined with pink and orange azaleas. The blue Pacific spread below disappearing into distant haze. I walked alone, breathing moist, redolent air. So happy to be alive, and paying homage to the men and women buried here who originated far away.
Pat Blakely is also engaged in a war, less damazing potenially, more internal, yet fighting against cultural norms and her own long habit of a car. She fights with herself and a transit system not particularly bad, nor particularly good. And she wins through to make a difference. Entertaining us along the way with her pluck and candor.
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