Margotlog: The Unbelievers - from Orchestras to Global Warming
Every time I try to remember my breakup from my first husband, there are loud voices, the two of us standing in the kitchen shouting, then phone calls when he pled with me not to leave. At least we were communicating!
Lately the Minnesota Orchestra musicians and management have come under more scrutiny than perhaps ever before in their 14-month (?) lockout. Are their patrons becoming restive? Does it look like the organization may disintegrate before our very eyes? I think the chances are good. And I blame both sides.
It's a stretch but I imagine that the musicians, priding themselves on their excellence, can't, still can't believe that their former management could do such a dastardly thing to them. Their audiences have something of the same problem--witness the ploy in the only public meeting I've attended: "Answer the following question in your small-group discussions: "Do we want to have a worldclass orchestra?"
Hmmm! Is that really the question to ask at this juncture, when there's been virtually no negotiation face-to-face except through the mediation of George Mitchell? And even that has fallen flat. As someone said to me recently, "Of course, Mitchell will succeed. He negotiated with the two Irelands." Well, he's just met very stubborn worldclass musicians.
Aren't they hurting financially? Some must be because they've left. But I'm guessing the bulk of the orchestra is still sitting somewhere with their arms folded across their worldclass bodies, a very aggrieved look on their faces.
As to the management--well I can't speculate, though I suspect the management NEVER expected their worldclass musicians to hold out so long. From what I've read in the paper, the offers from management do cut salaries, but as several friends have commented, these are still living wages we're talking about--hovering around $90-100,000 a year. Worldclass by my standards.
Now let's stop to contemplate recent news about global warming. A beautiful and extremely sad article in the Star Tribune Sunday about a search for living coral reefs. The swimmers found many bleached beyond redemption. Gone for good. Another article, also in the Sunday Star Tribune, about forests in N. Minnesota showing evidence of extremely rapid change, either through die-offs of boreal trees who can't tolerate increased warmth, or the appearance in northern range of more southern trees. Some extrapolate a loss of forests entirely along the northern tier of Minnesota within 50 years--only a rough-hewn form of prairie.
I've been convinced of global warming for almost ten years. And I've done things that a single-family can do--put in UV-protective glass and very tight windows, changed almost entirely to compact flourescent or LED lights, led a plan on the homefront to reduce energy use--everything from turning down the furnace AFTER we turn it up in the morning to simply doing without as many lights. Plus both my husband and I drive a Prius, not the only low-energy choice, but a good one.
Still I know it's not enough for one family. The entire neighborhood, city, county, nation needs to make changes in energy production--to wind and solar. In transportation energy use--to mass transit and cars that run far less thirsty for fuel. If we did these two things, and did them very very fast, say within three years, or four, we just might be able to keep from the tipping point, after which there is no return in anyone's lifetime. We are headed for sunstroke disaster.
Yet, bigger and bigger cars (really they're small fat trucks) idle daily in my neighborhood for no apparent reason, spewing CO2 from their tailpipes, Here are houses lit up like carnivals. Here are traffic jams that boggle the mind. Isn't being stuck in a jam every day of the week evidence enough that something is truly wrong with the way we've orchestrated our cities?
I've very very pessimistic that we can change our tunes, step up to the plate and actually play the game we are supposedly interested in playing - let's go all the way and saying, interesting in staying alive in relative comfort and handing over a decent world to our children and grandchildren.
Monday, October 21, 2013
Sunday, October 13, 2013
Margotlog: Dickens' Divine Extremity
Margotlog: Dickens' Divine Extremity
For sheer outrageous characterization, Charles Dickens has no match. It helps that his England was rife with class divisions (probably still is). Whereas US novelists play around with outlaws, hoodwinking innocents with snake oil and motley, Dickens almost always draws a firm line between haves and have-nots, between the benign and the criminal, and then dares one or the other to step across and challenge the other. It's a fight within a tight arena, and the players remain vividly recognizable, until the mean crumble under their own weight.
Hard Times, one of the master's most extreme satires, gives us two extraordinarily bad (often ridiculous) men: Mr. Josiah Bounderby, and Mr. Grandgrind. Coke Town where these two preside is filthy with fumes and poverty. And though we soon meet one of the mill hands, a mild-mannered sort named Stephen Blackpool, most of the action centers around these two giant malefactors sounding off in various locations, including a circus.
Usually I wait at least six months before listening to a book on disk again because I have to forget the story as well as the reader's voice. But for Hard Times, I'll probably have to wait twice that long. Not that I can quote much verbatim, but I can still hear the reader Patrick Tull announcing, "I am Josiah Bounderby of Coke Town," as if Bounderby were Moses reciting the Ten Commandments. Tull has a deep, incredibly variable voice, and to portray Bounderby he puffs up with swaggering self-importance, which includes a ready reminder that "I, Josiah Bounderby have come from nothing," an orphan who fed on offal, raised by a snarling she-wolf of a grandmother.
His sidekick, Mr. Grandgrind, is not much better, though he is capable of affection for his children, Dickens tells us. Strange how he shows it, drilling them with "facts" until he drills all sentiment, frivolity, imagination, sympathy, desire, enjoyment out of them, leaving his eldest daughter Louisa to sit for long hours in silent contemplation of the fire. He's ground down her surface with "facts," but she has kept an inner life burning. We suspect intelligence is her fuel.
His son Tom, Louisa's childhood playmate and her fondest friend, hasn't been ground down enough, it turns out, but I won't give the plot away, for it is a splendid plot, involving Mrs. Sparsit, a "lady of the highest gentility," who places herself under Bounderby's thumb. With her "Coriolanian eyebrows" and sharp nose, she has powers of discernment far beyond the pliant female she pretends to be. Eventually this discernment and indefatigable industry do Bounderby harm. By then, we're rubbing our hands with glee. We couldn't be more delighted to see class snobbery unseat self-made snobbery.
But Dickens has a huge heart, and the suffering and desires of those mill hands, ground down by facts and greed and snobbery, deprived of joy and hope, even food and drink rouse us to ire. We applaud the storm that drenches Mrs. Sparsit. We cheer Sissy, the daughter of a circus performer, brought up by Gradgrind's facts, who yet can detect the true nature of crime and goodness, and helps set things right in the end.
Hard Times is not fall-down funny, but it is full of wicked self-revelation, where we join league with the author to cheer his nasty fictions to self-immolation. We also weep at the pain they cause to the well-meaning and innocent, and are entirely happy to have Tom Gradgrind forced into the circus for disguise, his face blacked, with his job something to do with a horse. This, prefatory to his being shipped off to the colonies. I do wonder what horrors await him in Canada or in a Kansas prairie snowstorm.
I don't know of any other author who enjoys criminals so hugely and who paints their false denominations with such fervor. The fervor of a convert who himself suffered in working poverty until he gave himself over to practice the literary faith.
For sheer outrageous characterization, Charles Dickens has no match. It helps that his England was rife with class divisions (probably still is). Whereas US novelists play around with outlaws, hoodwinking innocents with snake oil and motley, Dickens almost always draws a firm line between haves and have-nots, between the benign and the criminal, and then dares one or the other to step across and challenge the other. It's a fight within a tight arena, and the players remain vividly recognizable, until the mean crumble under their own weight.
Hard Times, one of the master's most extreme satires, gives us two extraordinarily bad (often ridiculous) men: Mr. Josiah Bounderby, and Mr. Grandgrind. Coke Town where these two preside is filthy with fumes and poverty. And though we soon meet one of the mill hands, a mild-mannered sort named Stephen Blackpool, most of the action centers around these two giant malefactors sounding off in various locations, including a circus.
Usually I wait at least six months before listening to a book on disk again because I have to forget the story as well as the reader's voice. But for Hard Times, I'll probably have to wait twice that long. Not that I can quote much verbatim, but I can still hear the reader Patrick Tull announcing, "I am Josiah Bounderby of Coke Town," as if Bounderby were Moses reciting the Ten Commandments. Tull has a deep, incredibly variable voice, and to portray Bounderby he puffs up with swaggering self-importance, which includes a ready reminder that "I, Josiah Bounderby have come from nothing," an orphan who fed on offal, raised by a snarling she-wolf of a grandmother.
His sidekick, Mr. Grandgrind, is not much better, though he is capable of affection for his children, Dickens tells us. Strange how he shows it, drilling them with "facts" until he drills all sentiment, frivolity, imagination, sympathy, desire, enjoyment out of them, leaving his eldest daughter Louisa to sit for long hours in silent contemplation of the fire. He's ground down her surface with "facts," but she has kept an inner life burning. We suspect intelligence is her fuel.
His son Tom, Louisa's childhood playmate and her fondest friend, hasn't been ground down enough, it turns out, but I won't give the plot away, for it is a splendid plot, involving Mrs. Sparsit, a "lady of the highest gentility," who places herself under Bounderby's thumb. With her "Coriolanian eyebrows" and sharp nose, she has powers of discernment far beyond the pliant female she pretends to be. Eventually this discernment and indefatigable industry do Bounderby harm. By then, we're rubbing our hands with glee. We couldn't be more delighted to see class snobbery unseat self-made snobbery.
But Dickens has a huge heart, and the suffering and desires of those mill hands, ground down by facts and greed and snobbery, deprived of joy and hope, even food and drink rouse us to ire. We applaud the storm that drenches Mrs. Sparsit. We cheer Sissy, the daughter of a circus performer, brought up by Gradgrind's facts, who yet can detect the true nature of crime and goodness, and helps set things right in the end.
Hard Times is not fall-down funny, but it is full of wicked self-revelation, where we join league with the author to cheer his nasty fictions to self-immolation. We also weep at the pain they cause to the well-meaning and innocent, and are entirely happy to have Tom Gradgrind forced into the circus for disguise, his face blacked, with his job something to do with a horse. This, prefatory to his being shipped off to the colonies. I do wonder what horrors await him in Canada or in a Kansas prairie snowstorm.
I don't know of any other author who enjoys criminals so hugely and who paints their false denominations with such fervor. The fervor of a convert who himself suffered in working poverty until he gave himself over to practice the literary faith.
Sunday, October 6, 2013
Margotlog: Grass-fed Beef and Ladies Plates in Amsterdam and Bologna
Margotlog: Grass-fed Beef and Ladies Plates in Amsterdam and Bologna
Three thousand miles up, I'm sometimes at a loss for things to do. Recently, flying home from Italy via Amsterdam, I started reading the KLM packaging. Not only did the flight magazine tell me that Amsterdam's Concertgewau orchestra hall is one of the finest in the world, along with Boston's Symphony Hall, but that the beef served on board KLM planes comes from a cow first bred in the Middle Ages, the blaarkop. Not only do these feed on nothing but grass, herbs, and wildflowers, but some actually are stationed near Schiphol airport.
As we came down for a landing, I spied plots of corn and other crops, but no cows. Using every inch of land makes sense in a country mostly claimed from the sea. I also applaud the raising of beef cattle on essentially wild grasses and flowers. Yes it take longer than the horrible methods of feed lot concentration and fattening on corn in the US, but feeding cattle grass and making them more around to get it, is far better for the environment--no lagoons of sludge from cow feces and urine (in some cases so huge that they dwarf what some major cities) but also no fast-fattening on corn which bulks up cows but riddles their meat with fat. Seems to me I remember the highly enjoyable documentary "King Corn" mentioning that corn-fed beef is around 98% fat, versus 15% for grass fed. Why anyone with any sense would buy corn-fed beef is beyond me, but then I don't much like beef anymore, and our family has the bucks to purchase grass-fed.
As a whole I'd say that the Europeans in Holland and Italy eat better food than do we in the US. And the KLM airplane paper cups tell us (in very fine print along the side) that they are made from 100% renewable resources, and the inside is coated with Inego innovation, made from plants not oil. Hurrah, say I, blinking to readjust my eye sight. Then my heart sank. Four months ago we purchased new bathroom carpeting (it's a bath plus dressing room) made from corn. There I was strutting my environmental green, while the cats (heaven help us) were sniffing themselves into new places to pee! Slowly the lovely new carpeting began to smell suspiciously of a piss pot. Soon I was rendered frantic as I tried all sorts of products shy of sending the offending cat (we have three but were pretty sure the culprit was Tilly, the oldest and most aggrieved) to the rendering plant. After weeks of denial, hope, disgust, more hope and finally resignation, we visited the carpet/linoleum dealer yesterday and selected an oil-based linoleum replacement. There's no telling how Tilly will react, but even if she continues to pee on the floor, not in the litter box, there will be hard, impermeable oil-based linoleum under her. Fingers crossed. As the lovely dame in the carpet store said, "They're family." Yup, she's got that right. Pretty hard to put down a critter who's survived tornadoes, flu, children leaving home, spousal disagreements, aging joints, dashed hopes, and loves you so intensely she walks over your sleeping body for comfort.
As I say, the Italians (and probably the Hollanders) eat better than we do in the US. Food for us is often something to be downed fast and furious. In Europe, it's something to savor well into the evening. My favorite meal in Italy was the first night in Florence when my friend the artist Patricia Glee Smith (check out her website) and I went across narrow Borgo Pinto from our convent hotel to Accadi, a family-run small restaurant. That night huge mushrooms (porcini? morels?) were on the menu. I had pasta with them and Pat had rice. The smooth sauce, just piquant enough for the delicious earthy taste of the mushrooms, was divine. The pasta cooked to perfection, just enough, and the portion not too large or too small. As we ate, we were grinning ear to ear.
Then visiting in Bologna, I encountered a series of plates on the wall of our hostess. Turns out the plates are made by a Bolognese artist Angela Lorenz, or to use her professional name, "L'Aura," the Wind. The images on each plate are of women in antique Renaissance head gear, puffed sleeves and swooping necklines, i.e. "Babes" from 450 years ago. Of course I don't need to mention that women have been in charge of food preparation for millennia. These dames, slyly and in concert, suggest something different. Here, in order of the plates, reading left to right, is their message:
She is round.
She is idealized.
She hangs on the wall.
She is not to be used.
She is not disposable.
She is a dish.
By the end, I was laughing out loud, highly entertained at the simplicity and sly resistance of these plates.
Three thousand miles up, I'm sometimes at a loss for things to do. Recently, flying home from Italy via Amsterdam, I started reading the KLM packaging. Not only did the flight magazine tell me that Amsterdam's Concertgewau orchestra hall is one of the finest in the world, along with Boston's Symphony Hall, but that the beef served on board KLM planes comes from a cow first bred in the Middle Ages, the blaarkop. Not only do these feed on nothing but grass, herbs, and wildflowers, but some actually are stationed near Schiphol airport.
As we came down for a landing, I spied plots of corn and other crops, but no cows. Using every inch of land makes sense in a country mostly claimed from the sea. I also applaud the raising of beef cattle on essentially wild grasses and flowers. Yes it take longer than the horrible methods of feed lot concentration and fattening on corn in the US, but feeding cattle grass and making them more around to get it, is far better for the environment--no lagoons of sludge from cow feces and urine (in some cases so huge that they dwarf what some major cities) but also no fast-fattening on corn which bulks up cows but riddles their meat with fat. Seems to me I remember the highly enjoyable documentary "King Corn" mentioning that corn-fed beef is around 98% fat, versus 15% for grass fed. Why anyone with any sense would buy corn-fed beef is beyond me, but then I don't much like beef anymore, and our family has the bucks to purchase grass-fed.
As a whole I'd say that the Europeans in Holland and Italy eat better food than do we in the US. And the KLM airplane paper cups tell us (in very fine print along the side) that they are made from 100% renewable resources, and the inside is coated with Inego innovation, made from plants not oil. Hurrah, say I, blinking to readjust my eye sight. Then my heart sank. Four months ago we purchased new bathroom carpeting (it's a bath plus dressing room) made from corn. There I was strutting my environmental green, while the cats (heaven help us) were sniffing themselves into new places to pee! Slowly the lovely new carpeting began to smell suspiciously of a piss pot. Soon I was rendered frantic as I tried all sorts of products shy of sending the offending cat (we have three but were pretty sure the culprit was Tilly, the oldest and most aggrieved) to the rendering plant. After weeks of denial, hope, disgust, more hope and finally resignation, we visited the carpet/linoleum dealer yesterday and selected an oil-based linoleum replacement. There's no telling how Tilly will react, but even if she continues to pee on the floor, not in the litter box, there will be hard, impermeable oil-based linoleum under her. Fingers crossed. As the lovely dame in the carpet store said, "They're family." Yup, she's got that right. Pretty hard to put down a critter who's survived tornadoes, flu, children leaving home, spousal disagreements, aging joints, dashed hopes, and loves you so intensely she walks over your sleeping body for comfort.
As I say, the Italians (and probably the Hollanders) eat better than we do in the US. Food for us is often something to be downed fast and furious. In Europe, it's something to savor well into the evening. My favorite meal in Italy was the first night in Florence when my friend the artist Patricia Glee Smith (check out her website) and I went across narrow Borgo Pinto from our convent hotel to Accadi, a family-run small restaurant. That night huge mushrooms (porcini? morels?) were on the menu. I had pasta with them and Pat had rice. The smooth sauce, just piquant enough for the delicious earthy taste of the mushrooms, was divine. The pasta cooked to perfection, just enough, and the portion not too large or too small. As we ate, we were grinning ear to ear.
Then visiting in Bologna, I encountered a series of plates on the wall of our hostess. Turns out the plates are made by a Bolognese artist Angela Lorenz, or to use her professional name, "L'Aura," the Wind. The images on each plate are of women in antique Renaissance head gear, puffed sleeves and swooping necklines, i.e. "Babes" from 450 years ago. Of course I don't need to mention that women have been in charge of food preparation for millennia. These dames, slyly and in concert, suggest something different. Here, in order of the plates, reading left to right, is their message:
She is round.
She is idealized.
She hangs on the wall.
She is not to be used.
She is not disposable.
She is a dish.
By the end, I was laughing out loud, highly entertained at the simplicity and sly resistance of these plates.
Sunday, September 22, 2013
Margotlog: Hummers
Margotlog: Hummers
What inspired me to hang the humming bird feeder in the crab apple tree, early August? Maybe the dismal showing of those helicopter birds during my stint at the North Shore/Lake Superior? It was such a cold spring, then summer, here in St. Paul, and north too, near Lutsen town. Hummers had stalled, no doubt, further south. When I hung the feeder on the deck facing the Big Lake, mid-July, it took days for any to find it--probably still raising broods. Finally when one or two showed up, they were so skittish, they disappeared if even a shadow flickered nearby. Then distracted by a house-mouse invasion, I lost track of hummers.
What I really know about humming birds could make ten drops of red liquid in a hummer feeder. Why they are attracted to red, I don't know. How far south they migrate, I don't know. Why they like northern Minnesota for summer baby-making, I can only guess since red flowers don't predominate in the mid-summer landscape. More like gold and pink--golden rod, golden tansy and sunflower varieties, pink roadside roses, pink fireweed. Why hummers are so feisty when they're so small, and have never heard of Napoleon, I don't know. But for sure, they are fast.
By early August I'd installed the feeder in the crab apple tree just beyond our backyard deck. Finally the weather was warm, even hot. Cloudless days when I walked early morning because it got too hot in the afternoon. Plenty of chickadees, in fact more than I'd ever remembered, ate sunflower seeds like there was no tomorrow. Two kinds of woodpeckers--hairy and downy--went after the solid suet/seed mix in the hanging net bag. Pigeons and European sparrows galore, but what wasn't surprising. Goldfinch on the thistle feeder in front, then goldfinch babies, all tan, on the sunflowers feeders in the back.
One heart-stopping few days of concern for a fledgling blue jay--all puffy feathers, and big eyes, staring at us from the deck railing, then attempting flight, and finally making it half across the yard to the entwined small spruce, its parents rattling and calling it ahead. Our neighbors with the two elderly cats agreed to keep them in--I trust no wandering feline, even deaf and arthritic. Last summer there was a dead baby blue jay waiting for me when I came home from the North Shore. I felt as if I'd failed the bird kingdom.
It's amazing how we humans can come to feel we're in charge. Nature's salvation is up to us. Now, after years of preferring cat lives over bird lives, I've switched my allegiance. I'm all for the winged tribes--butterflies, bees, moths, lady bugs and yes, birds. We used to house two famous outdoor cats years ago, Archie and Justa, but no more. Our cats now stay indoors , with an occasional foray to the deck, held tightly in my arms. Too much evidence that cats kill the birds I am attempting to feed, plus too much expense from menaces like bee-bee guns, vicious dogs, and the cats' own preference for attempting to leap ten times their height in a single bound.
Suddenly two weeks ago, I spied two green mighty mites in the crab apple tree--hummers. For two weeks, they buzzed in and out of the tree, picked invisible insects from the air, dive-bombed chickadees two or three times their size, and sucked at the sugar water in the hummer feeder which I refilled three or four times. Every spare minute I stood at various windows looking out on the yard and watched for them. They were my talismans of summer delight. My connection to hope, joy, and the belief that nature was boundless in its abundance and mystery. Then two days ago, after a very chilly night, I searched the tree and air for them, but they were gone.
Just as the internet information I consulted said they would be. They knew when to leave and they left without a goodbye, without a thank you. For several weepy hours, I was sure I had failed. Maybe my last filling of the feeder had gone awry? I took the feeder down and very carefully calibrated: one cup water, boiled three minutes then cooled, and 1/4 cup of sugar. Even with the new elixir to temp them, they did not return. They are so small, after all, and their metabolism must be enormously fast. They probably can't survive in cold below 45 degrees Fahrenheit. I would not want them to die, still I am sad, very sad. They pierced the membrane of my complacency with an acknowledgment that my place was good for a stopover. They charmed me with their antics, speed, agility, and yes their metaphoric resemblance--green back, oval shape, to green crab apple leaf, oral shaped. They belonged here with me watching for a while. It's probably all we can ask of ourselves and the truly natural creatures we let return us to humility.
What inspired me to hang the humming bird feeder in the crab apple tree, early August? Maybe the dismal showing of those helicopter birds during my stint at the North Shore/Lake Superior? It was such a cold spring, then summer, here in St. Paul, and north too, near Lutsen town. Hummers had stalled, no doubt, further south. When I hung the feeder on the deck facing the Big Lake, mid-July, it took days for any to find it--probably still raising broods. Finally when one or two showed up, they were so skittish, they disappeared if even a shadow flickered nearby. Then distracted by a house-mouse invasion, I lost track of hummers.
What I really know about humming birds could make ten drops of red liquid in a hummer feeder. Why they are attracted to red, I don't know. How far south they migrate, I don't know. Why they like northern Minnesota for summer baby-making, I can only guess since red flowers don't predominate in the mid-summer landscape. More like gold and pink--golden rod, golden tansy and sunflower varieties, pink roadside roses, pink fireweed. Why hummers are so feisty when they're so small, and have never heard of Napoleon, I don't know. But for sure, they are fast.
By early August I'd installed the feeder in the crab apple tree just beyond our backyard deck. Finally the weather was warm, even hot. Cloudless days when I walked early morning because it got too hot in the afternoon. Plenty of chickadees, in fact more than I'd ever remembered, ate sunflower seeds like there was no tomorrow. Two kinds of woodpeckers--hairy and downy--went after the solid suet/seed mix in the hanging net bag. Pigeons and European sparrows galore, but what wasn't surprising. Goldfinch on the thistle feeder in front, then goldfinch babies, all tan, on the sunflowers feeders in the back.
One heart-stopping few days of concern for a fledgling blue jay--all puffy feathers, and big eyes, staring at us from the deck railing, then attempting flight, and finally making it half across the yard to the entwined small spruce, its parents rattling and calling it ahead. Our neighbors with the two elderly cats agreed to keep them in--I trust no wandering feline, even deaf and arthritic. Last summer there was a dead baby blue jay waiting for me when I came home from the North Shore. I felt as if I'd failed the bird kingdom.
It's amazing how we humans can come to feel we're in charge. Nature's salvation is up to us. Now, after years of preferring cat lives over bird lives, I've switched my allegiance. I'm all for the winged tribes--butterflies, bees, moths, lady bugs and yes, birds. We used to house two famous outdoor cats years ago, Archie and Justa, but no more. Our cats now stay indoors , with an occasional foray to the deck, held tightly in my arms. Too much evidence that cats kill the birds I am attempting to feed, plus too much expense from menaces like bee-bee guns, vicious dogs, and the cats' own preference for attempting to leap ten times their height in a single bound.
Suddenly two weeks ago, I spied two green mighty mites in the crab apple tree--hummers. For two weeks, they buzzed in and out of the tree, picked invisible insects from the air, dive-bombed chickadees two or three times their size, and sucked at the sugar water in the hummer feeder which I refilled three or four times. Every spare minute I stood at various windows looking out on the yard and watched for them. They were my talismans of summer delight. My connection to hope, joy, and the belief that nature was boundless in its abundance and mystery. Then two days ago, after a very chilly night, I searched the tree and air for them, but they were gone.
Just as the internet information I consulted said they would be. They knew when to leave and they left without a goodbye, without a thank you. For several weepy hours, I was sure I had failed. Maybe my last filling of the feeder had gone awry? I took the feeder down and very carefully calibrated: one cup water, boiled three minutes then cooled, and 1/4 cup of sugar. Even with the new elixir to temp them, they did not return. They are so small, after all, and their metabolism must be enormously fast. They probably can't survive in cold below 45 degrees Fahrenheit. I would not want them to die, still I am sad, very sad. They pierced the membrane of my complacency with an acknowledgment that my place was good for a stopover. They charmed me with their antics, speed, agility, and yes their metaphoric resemblance--green back, oval shape, to green crab apple leaf, oral shaped. They belonged here with me watching for a while. It's probably all we can ask of ourselves and the truly natural creatures we let return us to humility.
Thursday, September 12, 2013
Margotlog: Morning Medley: the Commons
Margotlog: Mornng Medley: the Commons
"My home is my castle" makes me think of an impregnable, guarded estate, high above the plebs. That might work for some city or suburban neighborhoods but not for mine in Saint Paul. Here with lots leaving about ten feet from the side of a house to the property line, we have a lot in common with our neighbors on either side. Not to mention the common boulevard which stretches down the block and around the corner.
The English who settled New England brought another form of commons to the "new world." A town phenomenon, not a plantation one, so not much visible in Virginia and points south. But I enjoy considering the New England commons as I walk about ten blocks west and back, crossing many property lines, noticing many boulevard trees, and enjoying a small "pocket park" with huge oaks. The New England settlers used a "commons" to pasture livestock, and possibly to cut hay. It was often land in the middle of a group of houses, thus allowing all the users to keep an eye on it.
Recently the Minneapolis city council has passed an ordinance allowing for feral cat "commons," as long as the humans in charge neuter and vaccinate and "chip" the feral felines. One council person opined that she had a bird guide and had learned to identify the English sparrow. Bird-lover that I am, I keep all my cats indoors. That wasn't always the case, I admit, but the more I learn about the enormous damage feral cats do to bird populations, the more firmly I support trapping and euthanasia for feral cats.
Here's a notion that occurred to me as I walked: Let's take the Mpls city council members on a bird walking tour. Let's remind them that the English sparrows are an invasive species (sort of like feral cats--neither has a predator sufficiently strong enough to keep their populations in check). Let's introduce these well-meaning council members to ten native and common American birds, starting with the robin, blue jay, crow, chickadee, nuthatch, and yes the humming bird (more of these in a moment), on to the adorable goldfinch, the slightly less adorable house finch, the beautiful singer the cardinal, and completing the list with several native woodpeckers--hairy and downy. All these birds regularly visit my back yard, which, as I say, is quite small, but full of eight varieties of trees. Plus, regular fresh water, suet, and seeds. You might say I have a bird commons.
Some falls (I think today feels like fall), I have seen maybe one humming bird passing through on its way south. This year, perhaps because I put out a sugar-water feeder with eye-catching red top and bottom, I've seen or heard maybe ten. This morning I stood in awe as one brilliant iridescent green mite hovered in the air, up and down, in and out, closer and farther from a huge silver maple. It was picking gnats from the air. Yes, it took a few sips from my feeder, but mostly it was tooling up on protein for its very long journey south.
I love it that people whose yards I know quite well from this daily walk are now watering their boulevard trees. We are again in a drought, and it's a crucial time for trees. They need to have moisture in their roots before the freeze; otherwise their roots may die and they'll meet the spring without leaves. Dead. Since our street has become a summer cathedral of arching green, I applaud tree care. Also because trees are our best defense against excessive heat and poor air quality, i.e. they're on the front line against global warming, breathing in CO2 and exhaling oxygen.
More and more, I think we're learning that our care of the land, air, water, soil, native birds and animals, bees and butterflies, fish and plants rebounds mightily on our own well-being. It also helps our neighbors--Lady Bird Johnson, years ago, was so right when she urged a clean-up and beautification of American highways. I love the sheets of stamps in her honor currently for sale at the P.O. Beautiful images of lovely landscapes and one of her as a handsome young woman. I think I might have to buy up a whole carton.
"My home is my castle" makes me think of an impregnable, guarded estate, high above the plebs. That might work for some city or suburban neighborhoods but not for mine in Saint Paul. Here with lots leaving about ten feet from the side of a house to the property line, we have a lot in common with our neighbors on either side. Not to mention the common boulevard which stretches down the block and around the corner.
The English who settled New England brought another form of commons to the "new world." A town phenomenon, not a plantation one, so not much visible in Virginia and points south. But I enjoy considering the New England commons as I walk about ten blocks west and back, crossing many property lines, noticing many boulevard trees, and enjoying a small "pocket park" with huge oaks. The New England settlers used a "commons" to pasture livestock, and possibly to cut hay. It was often land in the middle of a group of houses, thus allowing all the users to keep an eye on it.
Recently the Minneapolis city council has passed an ordinance allowing for feral cat "commons," as long as the humans in charge neuter and vaccinate and "chip" the feral felines. One council person opined that she had a bird guide and had learned to identify the English sparrow. Bird-lover that I am, I keep all my cats indoors. That wasn't always the case, I admit, but the more I learn about the enormous damage feral cats do to bird populations, the more firmly I support trapping and euthanasia for feral cats.
Here's a notion that occurred to me as I walked: Let's take the Mpls city council members on a bird walking tour. Let's remind them that the English sparrows are an invasive species (sort of like feral cats--neither has a predator sufficiently strong enough to keep their populations in check). Let's introduce these well-meaning council members to ten native and common American birds, starting with the robin, blue jay, crow, chickadee, nuthatch, and yes the humming bird (more of these in a moment), on to the adorable goldfinch, the slightly less adorable house finch, the beautiful singer the cardinal, and completing the list with several native woodpeckers--hairy and downy. All these birds regularly visit my back yard, which, as I say, is quite small, but full of eight varieties of trees. Plus, regular fresh water, suet, and seeds. You might say I have a bird commons.
Some falls (I think today feels like fall), I have seen maybe one humming bird passing through on its way south. This year, perhaps because I put out a sugar-water feeder with eye-catching red top and bottom, I've seen or heard maybe ten. This morning I stood in awe as one brilliant iridescent green mite hovered in the air, up and down, in and out, closer and farther from a huge silver maple. It was picking gnats from the air. Yes, it took a few sips from my feeder, but mostly it was tooling up on protein for its very long journey south.
I love it that people whose yards I know quite well from this daily walk are now watering their boulevard trees. We are again in a drought, and it's a crucial time for trees. They need to have moisture in their roots before the freeze; otherwise their roots may die and they'll meet the spring without leaves. Dead. Since our street has become a summer cathedral of arching green, I applaud tree care. Also because trees are our best defense against excessive heat and poor air quality, i.e. they're on the front line against global warming, breathing in CO2 and exhaling oxygen.
More and more, I think we're learning that our care of the land, air, water, soil, native birds and animals, bees and butterflies, fish and plants rebounds mightily on our own well-being. It also helps our neighbors--Lady Bird Johnson, years ago, was so right when she urged a clean-up and beautification of American highways. I love the sheets of stamps in her honor currently for sale at the P.O. Beautiful images of lovely landscapes and one of her as a handsome young woman. I think I might have to buy up a whole carton.
Saturday, September 7, 2013
Margotlog: Blood Red
Margotlog: Blood Red
I'm lying beside a window which blushes red, dark, red, dark. I'm aware of myself as a watcher, almost a listener for the first time. This is an awareness of consciousness, of watching rhythm, color, pattern, and silence. Across the hall lies another being in the dark--my baby sister just born. It will be years before I have a memory of her separate from her relation to myself.
What is it that makes us who we are? Years later, I will marry for the second time. On the first date with this eventual mate, we will argue about Lilian Hellman's writing. Sitting in a spring Sunday restaurant, he becomes argumentative. Not harsh or cruel, just engaged. Now I remember only the general subject and the fact of each of us taking a stand and arguing about it. I am also aware of my continuing surprise that from this beginning we evolved into mates.
Why? Because my father's arguments ricocheted through the house of childhood, leaving me stunned, with my back turned to him. I was a child then, and he was arguing with my mother about whether there was a spot on his uniform. Typical work-day anxiety but at exhorbitant decibels. He was racked with anxiety. Later I faced him in our Carolina kitchen and talked back, told him "colored people" were not massed outside our door, ready to murder us in our beds. Talking back--a crucial effort to sustain sanity and the worth of my own opinion.
Blood red. Not a color I would ever choose for a car, but my second husband has bought a number of red cars and drives one now. Recently it occurred to me to consider when I've encountered women writers describing the cars driven by men. Trish Hampl in A Florist's Daughter considers her father's Oldsmobile, a car for the wealthy, it seems to me, and in this case, also of a man edging toward death, and buying himself something fine. Women, as a whole, do not fixate on cars. So I notice my noticing of this red car parked outside our house.
I'm guessing it was six summers ago when I was yanked out of writerly solitude on the North Shore by my husband saying to me over the phone: "My left leg is swollen." Remember how we argued on our first date. He has shown himself to be a man who almost reflexively responds with disbelief when I assert something. A form of argument. In this case I was so concerned that I phoned back the next day. The leg was more swollen.
You perhaps have guessed what I began shouting at him long-distance. Finally after several more days, I packed up and started the five-hour drive back to the Twin Cities. When I arrived, he was not at home. But I tracked him via cell phone to the emergency room where he was waiting to be seen. Quite a bit later, he appeared at home: he had a blood clot in that leg, he had a prescription for a blood thinner and a return appointment in a few days.
Thick blood. Blood is thicker than water. Thick head. Argument is thicker than assent. Three or four years passed without blood trouble, our pattern of assertion and denial, assertion and denial, with me insisting and he usually, though not always, taking the action I urge. Telling it this way makes me sound like a bully. I hasten to add that many times he will assert something, and I will argue back. Oddly enough, given the pattern of our first date, he is not as determined in his stance, or at least he doesn't desire to pursue a point the way I often do. This makes him seem like a softie, which he is not. Result: we occasionally have quite bitter exchanges, arguments, fights--whatever you want to call them, because he has finally had it and let me know. Then I often capitulate. Or not capitulate but come over to his way of thinking. Or act as he wishes because it is he who wishes it.
Blood red. When blood hits the air it is rich, vibrant red, but it soon turns darker. Think of a scab, almost black on your leg. Two summers ago my husband and a guy friend took a baseball driving trip to Kansas City. They were supposed to be gone three or four nights, a long weekend. I invited some friends over for the dinner to keep me company the night before they were supposed to return. That afternoon my husband called and said he was not feeling well and they would be home around 5 p.m. Not to change my plans, he urged, he was going to bed.
He crawled through the front door. I could not believe my eyes. "My stomach feels terrible," he said. "I was afraid to stand up because I might faint." With his friend's help he got upstairs to bed. I brought him some ice to suck on--all he wanted. And a basin in case he vomited. Then I went downstairs and had my little dinner party.
Over the next few hours, he vomited blackish stuff. Argued that his stomach was upset and it was probably the ribs he'd eaten in Kansas City. I went to bed. Around midnight I was aware that he was not beside me. Going into our large bathroom, I found him on the floor. He was not very articulate. I felt the rise of anxiety and decision. I called 911. The paramedics came within minutes and took his vital signs. "You know, his vitals are all normal," one told me. "We usually don't take someone in if that's the case. Call us if things change."
Two hours later, after sleeping and waking to sharp awareness, I found he'd vomited. This time it looked like blood. The paramedics worked upstairs while I gave all the pertinent information by the front door. I saw him carried out, so weak he couldn't hold his head up. They had him in a sling.
I often wake very alert around 3 in the morning. The city streets were eerily lit and very dark. By the time I reached the emergency room, he was being pumped full of blood. He'd been bleeding internally. Various doctors had inspected him. But it was the team of emergency-room nurses that saved his life.Their concentrated and knowledgeable efforts, and the blood that replenished the many pints he had lost.
Several days later, after an endoscopy showed a tear in the esophagus, he admitted that he and his buddy had been drinking quite a bit during their baseball adventure--beer in the ballpark, then several or more shots of the hard stuff in the motel room at night. For someone on blood thinner, alcohol in more than one drink is very dangerous because alcohol also thins the blood. The tear in the esophagus probably resulted from various kinds of acid reflux and eventually vomiting. It's a phenomenon common to hard drinkers.
Needless to say, we don't argue about how much he drinks any more.
I'm lying beside a window which blushes red, dark, red, dark. I'm aware of myself as a watcher, almost a listener for the first time. This is an awareness of consciousness, of watching rhythm, color, pattern, and silence. Across the hall lies another being in the dark--my baby sister just born. It will be years before I have a memory of her separate from her relation to myself.
What is it that makes us who we are? Years later, I will marry for the second time. On the first date with this eventual mate, we will argue about Lilian Hellman's writing. Sitting in a spring Sunday restaurant, he becomes argumentative. Not harsh or cruel, just engaged. Now I remember only the general subject and the fact of each of us taking a stand and arguing about it. I am also aware of my continuing surprise that from this beginning we evolved into mates.
Why? Because my father's arguments ricocheted through the house of childhood, leaving me stunned, with my back turned to him. I was a child then, and he was arguing with my mother about whether there was a spot on his uniform. Typical work-day anxiety but at exhorbitant decibels. He was racked with anxiety. Later I faced him in our Carolina kitchen and talked back, told him "colored people" were not massed outside our door, ready to murder us in our beds. Talking back--a crucial effort to sustain sanity and the worth of my own opinion.
Blood red. Not a color I would ever choose for a car, but my second husband has bought a number of red cars and drives one now. Recently it occurred to me to consider when I've encountered women writers describing the cars driven by men. Trish Hampl in A Florist's Daughter considers her father's Oldsmobile, a car for the wealthy, it seems to me, and in this case, also of a man edging toward death, and buying himself something fine. Women, as a whole, do not fixate on cars. So I notice my noticing of this red car parked outside our house.
I'm guessing it was six summers ago when I was yanked out of writerly solitude on the North Shore by my husband saying to me over the phone: "My left leg is swollen." Remember how we argued on our first date. He has shown himself to be a man who almost reflexively responds with disbelief when I assert something. A form of argument. In this case I was so concerned that I phoned back the next day. The leg was more swollen.
You perhaps have guessed what I began shouting at him long-distance. Finally after several more days, I packed up and started the five-hour drive back to the Twin Cities. When I arrived, he was not at home. But I tracked him via cell phone to the emergency room where he was waiting to be seen. Quite a bit later, he appeared at home: he had a blood clot in that leg, he had a prescription for a blood thinner and a return appointment in a few days.
Thick blood. Blood is thicker than water. Thick head. Argument is thicker than assent. Three or four years passed without blood trouble, our pattern of assertion and denial, assertion and denial, with me insisting and he usually, though not always, taking the action I urge. Telling it this way makes me sound like a bully. I hasten to add that many times he will assert something, and I will argue back. Oddly enough, given the pattern of our first date, he is not as determined in his stance, or at least he doesn't desire to pursue a point the way I often do. This makes him seem like a softie, which he is not. Result: we occasionally have quite bitter exchanges, arguments, fights--whatever you want to call them, because he has finally had it and let me know. Then I often capitulate. Or not capitulate but come over to his way of thinking. Or act as he wishes because it is he who wishes it.
Blood red. When blood hits the air it is rich, vibrant red, but it soon turns darker. Think of a scab, almost black on your leg. Two summers ago my husband and a guy friend took a baseball driving trip to Kansas City. They were supposed to be gone three or four nights, a long weekend. I invited some friends over for the dinner to keep me company the night before they were supposed to return. That afternoon my husband called and said he was not feeling well and they would be home around 5 p.m. Not to change my plans, he urged, he was going to bed.
He crawled through the front door. I could not believe my eyes. "My stomach feels terrible," he said. "I was afraid to stand up because I might faint." With his friend's help he got upstairs to bed. I brought him some ice to suck on--all he wanted. And a basin in case he vomited. Then I went downstairs and had my little dinner party.
Over the next few hours, he vomited blackish stuff. Argued that his stomach was upset and it was probably the ribs he'd eaten in Kansas City. I went to bed. Around midnight I was aware that he was not beside me. Going into our large bathroom, I found him on the floor. He was not very articulate. I felt the rise of anxiety and decision. I called 911. The paramedics came within minutes and took his vital signs. "You know, his vitals are all normal," one told me. "We usually don't take someone in if that's the case. Call us if things change."
Two hours later, after sleeping and waking to sharp awareness, I found he'd vomited. This time it looked like blood. The paramedics worked upstairs while I gave all the pertinent information by the front door. I saw him carried out, so weak he couldn't hold his head up. They had him in a sling.
I often wake very alert around 3 in the morning. The city streets were eerily lit and very dark. By the time I reached the emergency room, he was being pumped full of blood. He'd been bleeding internally. Various doctors had inspected him. But it was the team of emergency-room nurses that saved his life.Their concentrated and knowledgeable efforts, and the blood that replenished the many pints he had lost.
Several days later, after an endoscopy showed a tear in the esophagus, he admitted that he and his buddy had been drinking quite a bit during their baseball adventure--beer in the ballpark, then several or more shots of the hard stuff in the motel room at night. For someone on blood thinner, alcohol in more than one drink is very dangerous because alcohol also thins the blood. The tear in the esophagus probably resulted from various kinds of acid reflux and eventually vomiting. It's a phenomenon common to hard drinkers.
Needless to say, we don't argue about how much he drinks any more.
Monday, September 2, 2013
Margotlog: Go, Musicians, Go!
Margotlog: Go, Musicians, Go!
This is addressed to you, the excellent musicians of the Minnesota Orchestra! Don't be a rhinoceros. Try instead the part of a gazelle. Yes, I know: gazelles are brought down by big cats, and rhinoceros can stand as long as they like in their wading pools without worry. They're covered with horny plates. But, consider this: gazelles can run forward. They can mauenver quickly. And they are not endangered. For all their vaunted impregnability, the fortress-animal rhinoceros is as easily shot from a distance with a high-powered rifle as a gazelle. And there are far fewer of them.
But this is not Africa, you say. True, and musicians with their bows and horns are not four-footed African animals. However, in the dark of night, it may interest you to know these are the comparisons that occur to me.
Your counterparts and competitors across the river in Saint Paul have not only bargained and settled with their management, but they are beginning a new season with a reputation burnished by their flexibility and by the outstanding support of their audience, personified in the organization Save Our SPCO! You, beloved musicians of the sister city, have just been offered a quite reasonable (my opinion, of course) proposal by your management. It's time to come out of your wallow and take action.
In the tides of public opinion, you musicians have received a great deal of compassion and concern. But tides turn (ok, now I'm onto another metaphor, I admit it!). And with such changes, you stand to lose audience members -- after all, they now can cross over to the other side, and it is not a dark side at all.
Yes, the SPCO is a changed organization, smaller and younger. Ten of its older musicians have retired on the package offered by management. But it has emerged from negotiation with two musicians on the leadership team (whoops, another metaphor), and a return of a former president, giving management a broader leadership base. My family is eager to return to our favorite fall/winter/spring arts activity: sitting in the audience and enjoying the SPCO sound.
You too have a loving audience, very eager to see you take up your instruments and play. It's time to bow to reality. Change will occur, with, or without you. If you care about the organization that has nurtured you for many years, and for the audience who have made your talents a high priority in their lives, it is time to negotiate and PLAY!
This is addressed to you, the excellent musicians of the Minnesota Orchestra! Don't be a rhinoceros. Try instead the part of a gazelle. Yes, I know: gazelles are brought down by big cats, and rhinoceros can stand as long as they like in their wading pools without worry. They're covered with horny plates. But, consider this: gazelles can run forward. They can mauenver quickly. And they are not endangered. For all their vaunted impregnability, the fortress-animal rhinoceros is as easily shot from a distance with a high-powered rifle as a gazelle. And there are far fewer of them.
But this is not Africa, you say. True, and musicians with their bows and horns are not four-footed African animals. However, in the dark of night, it may interest you to know these are the comparisons that occur to me.
Your counterparts and competitors across the river in Saint Paul have not only bargained and settled with their management, but they are beginning a new season with a reputation burnished by their flexibility and by the outstanding support of their audience, personified in the organization Save Our SPCO! You, beloved musicians of the sister city, have just been offered a quite reasonable (my opinion, of course) proposal by your management. It's time to come out of your wallow and take action.
In the tides of public opinion, you musicians have received a great deal of compassion and concern. But tides turn (ok, now I'm onto another metaphor, I admit it!). And with such changes, you stand to lose audience members -- after all, they now can cross over to the other side, and it is not a dark side at all.
Yes, the SPCO is a changed organization, smaller and younger. Ten of its older musicians have retired on the package offered by management. But it has emerged from negotiation with two musicians on the leadership team (whoops, another metaphor), and a return of a former president, giving management a broader leadership base. My family is eager to return to our favorite fall/winter/spring arts activity: sitting in the audience and enjoying the SPCO sound.
You too have a loving audience, very eager to see you take up your instruments and play. It's time to bow to reality. Change will occur, with, or without you. If you care about the organization that has nurtured you for many years, and for the audience who have made your talents a high priority in their lives, it is time to negotiate and PLAY!
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