Old letters 1

Posted on March 9, 2009 by K

I am a genealogist.  Well, a sort of lapsed one.  Like a person who isn’t shaking at the moment is a lapsed Malaria sufferer.  I suppose that someday I’m going to have to actually sit down and write about doing this—this ancestor hunting that takes me into dark basements for hours at a time and probably has ruined my eyesight, what with the peering into microfilm-reader dimness and the deciphering of dangnably awful clerical handwriting (what’s the point of writing something down if you’re going to make it illegible?)—which is probably why I now own fifteen pair of reading glasses and can’t ever find any of them.

I blame the wrinkles around my eyes on my ancestors.

So my life is peppered with these genealogical moments.  Some miraculous.  Most of them head-wall bashing.

(I know I am repeating myself.  I just know it.  Do I tell the same stories over and over already?) I spent five years in the basement of the BYU library and in the shadows of the Salt Lake family history library reading endless films of the Abbeville, SC equity court records.  I’ll explain why some other day.  But I’ll explain this now: equity courts are the courts where they take care of things like divorce settlements and land settlements and estate settlements.  Also some law suits.  Guardianships.  Stuff like that. 

Dull, you may think?  Au contraire.

The stories I read.  Umm-umm-ummmmm.  I wonder if I could get a gig writing early nineteenth century soap operas?

The reason I’m bringing this up is because I’ve finished the book I did about my dad’s life and ancestry.  Now, I’ve got to set up my mom’s book.  And pursuant to that, I had to read through a shoe box full of old letters.  I mean OLD letters.  And that, my dears, is the heart of my tale.

I remember reading along in the equities and thinking, “Holy cats!  Did any of these people stop to think that two hundred years after the day when this whole thing was The Most Important Event on the Planet, somebody would be digging up all this self-righteousness and greed and racism and nastiness: that somebody would be saying, “Whoa.  What a witch this little cat was.  Bet he’s sorry her married her.”

Sheesh.  I wouldn’t want anybody peeking into my life that way.  Reading my words and sitting there in judgment.  Not me, boy.  Exposing myself in public like that.

Oh. Wait.

(To be fair, there were also tales of great kindness and integrity—like the man whose will not only freed his slaves, but left all his property to them.  It was contested hotly, of course, by the nephew who had been cut out of the will—with the argument that it was against nature for “Negroes” to own property.  The whole spectrum of human character all in one several page document.)

People like to talk about a “legacy” these days; the legacy evidently being something you leave behind—so that other people can berate you with it later, down the road. For some people, this means a cure for polio or a big beautiful bridge, or some kind of awesome monument.  For the rest of us, it mostly means “how my kids turned out.”  I mean, all those people in those court cases?  Their farms are long gone, covered with houses and parking lots.  Their crops?  Long since eaten and sold.  The horses dead.  The neighbors scattered.  Not much did they leave behind for future generations.  Only kids and their kids’ kids and their kids after that—to prove the ancestors were ever really alive in the first place.  Kids and/or words.  The paper trail.

And either of those “legacies” can earn you a pretty bad rep.

Like the letter from a certain uncle of mine—writing his mother from college about all his adventures settling in.  At the end of the first paragraph, he writes, “Mom—send me a blank check.  I’m completely out—I can’t even pay my house bill.”  And then goes on to tell her about last night’s dance.  He ends with this P.S.: “Don’t be surprised if I write very little between now and the time you see me again. I’m going to be studying continually.”  Uh-huh.

I found several sweet, homely letters from my grandmother’s mama, Maggie.  When I picked one out of the small pile and began to read, I found these  lines, buried in the middle of a mother’s concern for her children and the minutia of domestic life: “Papa is not here, but will give him the socks when he comes.  Haven’t heard from him since he left.  Launa writes that Joe has been sick . . .”  But I didn’t go on to worry about Joe being sick.  I went back and re-read the Papa-is-gone part.  Nobody ever told me that my great-grandfather had run off from his family.  In the same letter, she mentions that she is going o have to give up the house, and that the girls will have to go out and get an apartment on their own.  Maggie simply lays out the facts; there is no complaint in her voice.

A month later, she writes, “Well, your Pa didn’t come home Christmas.  I haven’t heard a word from him since he left.  But have heard where he is—a lady from here saw him in Selina.  Also a man saw him there.  So I suppose he is all right.  I am keeping his presents you sent for him.”

All out of order I found another letter, not dated, but in an envelope postmarked a month before the first one.  As with the others, most of the letter is concerned with hope that my Nana might come home to visit her family and with the business of the other sisters and their kids and husbands—life as it rolls on.  Maggie reports that her son-in-law had gone squirrel hunting and bagged a bunch.  “gave me two.  Well, your papa has gone, left Friday.  Said he isn’t coming back.  But he will.  We had it out before he left.  He denied it all.  Says it is a put up story on him.  He is mad with you and Conway for writing such terrible letters to him – says he will never for get it.  I won’t write you all he said.  I have lost my girls (boarders?).  Hazle and Teddie. They have rented a room to do light housekeeping. I was going to ask them for the room (anyway—but) I hate loosing the money. . .  Did I write you that Albert lost all his corn, in the back water the negros lost theirs too.  So they are in a bad fix as they owe the cotton money. Poor Conway works hard.” [all sic]

In the same envelope, another slightly later letter.  She talks about making lunch for one of her daughters who’d dropped in to visit, and about not feeling well (Maggie was having what sound like TIs), and again asking when my grandmother is coming to visit. (I wonder if she ever did make it?)

 “Well, your papa came home Sunday night . . .” He only came because he was riding with a work friend who had to come see his own wife.  “He is trying to go back.  As he says his business needs him.  Is making a living for (himself)[her parentheses]. That is a help, though.  I want to ask something of you.  When you come home, I want you to speak to your papa.  Even if he has done wrong, he is one in a million.  To do wrong.  It has been going on for years, so I hear.  We all just now finding it out.  Of course it hurts, but he is hurting himself more than any one else.  It made me sick at first but mean to hold my head up.  And want you all to do the same.  I am looking for the pillow slips you said you would send . . . “

Maggie died a year and a half later.  Her husband evidently never did come home.  I had heard a whisper over the years about how my great, great grandmother hated her daughter’s husband, that he’d been a womanizer.  I didn’t think much about it; they were only photograph-people then.  But now I have these letters, and everything has changed.

 My Nana got this letter from her father, Maggie’s husband, a year—almost to the day—after Maggie’s death:

“My dear Margaret and Lucile, I read your nice letter a few days ago and was so glad to hear from Lucile.  I don’t see why you all don’t write me often.  I am always glad to hear from any one of you.  (He fathered nine children in twenty one years.)  He goes on to note that one of his daughters wrote him complaining of back pain, which probably means another baby coming.  “But if I am right I hope it will be a boy and she will name it after her dad—as up to now, not(?) one of the grand children honored me in this way.  Well I am in the hills of Ky. I (?) through a chain of mountains.  I drove around lookout mountain at Chattanogga, Tenn and don’t think but I was scared to death. it was crooked like a snake for miles.  I made it okay with my car. I am some car driver now.  When I get to Louisville I won’t be over 300 miles from Jefferson City, MO.  I might run up and spend a day or so with you all before I get married.  I am (?I think the word is something like sucking) up to a KY widow.  what have you to say old girle about this.  She has about five thousand in the bank and if I can get my hands on this we’ll take the lady.  . .” [again, all sic]

I find that I am disinclined to give him the benefit of a doubt, to assume that he’s just kidding about getting his hands on this woman’s money.  Maybe I’m wrong.  You have to be careful about drawing conclusions, even in real time.  He ends the letter with a loving salutation, but after all that has come before it, I find that it strikes the cynic in me.

And I don’t know – why have I written all of this?  Maybe because I am struck with the trail our choices leave.  That nothing we do stops with us.  And with the odd reality of these people, to whom I somehow belong.  I find questions: obviously, Maggie was a prolific letter writer, but I have only these six or so letters, written in that year and a half period.  Why did Nana keep those, and only those?  Because what we don’t throw away says as much about us as the things we keep, the things we write.   Interesting how I am reading all of this almost one hundred years later, and still taking it so personally.

But I don’t want to end on this note.  So I guess —> to be continued.

Posted in Epiphanies and Meditations, Family, Memories and Ruminations | Tagged , , | 12 Comments

Family

Posted on March 4, 2009 by K

When I was a kid, I had two sets of cousins—one set on my dad’s side, one on my mom’s. Except for one almost two year stint in Kansas City, we never lived anywhere close to our cousins. We were an independent little universe all of our own, floating in a great nebula of humanity.

My mother has one brother. Her extended family was pretty huge—she had all these southern aunts on one side, and tons of cousins on the other. But they all lived in the deep south, which we never did. I remember visiting there once—but all I remember were some frozen, dead wasps on a porch and coloring with Mom’s cousin joy upstairs in their church attic. Don’t ask me to explain that; I can’t.

My father came from a tiny family; on one side, he had a taciturn grandfather, a spunky grandmother and one aunt who never had kids. The grandfather had had one sister, so I guess small had become a sort of tradition with them. There was a huge family on his father’s side, but they were Catholic. Dad’s mother was not Catholic, which made for strained relations, and ultimately little interaction. But my dad, who had pretty much hated Sunday dinner at the taciturn grandfather’s house, came to like the tiny family/tiny obligation concept. And so it was passed down to us kids.

As we moved from coast to coast with points in between (Dad worked for TWA), we were pretty much all we had. Mom, Dad, three kids. I loved my cousins on my dad’s side – all boys and mostly older. But didn’t know them well. And I loved my only female cousin – from my mom’s side, but she was younger, and her brothers were SO much younger, it was like they weren’t even on the map.

So we sort of cobbled family out of friends as we went, certainly out of LDS ward friends (LDS people call their local congregations “wards”). We saw a lot of these folks, played with them, served beside them, had sleep-overs at their houses. They became like cousins – friend-cousins, friend-aunts. We had a set for every city we lived in. But when we left, we left. And the family feeling turned into names on Christmas card lists.

So when I ended up in Utah for university and met my first dyed-in-the-wool LDS from Utah people, I was pretty much bowled over by their concept of family. Not so different from the Southern way, or from the Eastern Catholic or Jewish way, I guess. But worlds apart from my own experience. You can’t tell one cousin from another without a program. People here are awash in family.

My husband came equipped with this feature: I longed to have a chart at the Arrington family Christmas party. It overwhelmed me. The faces and the names and the broad range of behaviors and beliefs and obligations.

The years went by.  And my sibs and I grew up.  And had children of our own.

Now I am the mother of four. And a grandmother.  And the mean aunt. But so many other things, too – sister, sister in law, sister-in-law-in-law, great aunt. And I am a little amazed when I step back to look at it all.

Today, we went to a funeral. A little child, the fourth in his family, who died in his sleep of a bleeding ulcer. An odd thing. A rare thing. A very sad thing. We were all devastated by it. Shaken. Shocked and deeply saddened. Broken hearted.

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Chaz, in formal Kimono (which pleased Saori’s Japanese mother very much)  and G

Ask me how I am related to this child and his parents. I dare you.

As a genealogist—I don’t even know how to explain this. I harvest all these names of people who are related to people who live in counties and states through decades of time. Sometimes, immersed as I am in these families that all connect in me, I use the “find relationship” function in my genealogical program to figure out how two people are connected. I am always shocked when two people who are inextricably connected through my history turn out NOT to be related to each other AT ALL.

But that’s how it is here. Little Ken is—was—the youngest son of the beloved Saori, wife of the brother of the wife of my husband’s brother. There is no name for my relationship with her. There are no legally recognized categories for us. She is the in-law of my in-laws. And yet, she is my cousin, my sister, my niece.

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The beautiful Saori and her mother and son

When we got to the funeral this morning, just before it started everyone but family was shoo-ed out of the Relief Society room (the viewing room) for a family prayer. It was then that I realized that we were not actual family here. That this baby’s grandfather, who was our pediatrician for years, in whose backyard we met a member of The Band about thirty years ago – is NOT our uncle. Or our parent. That there were thirty, forty, fifty people—in-laws branching off in-laws—in that chapel who we think of as family, who we love as family, who we serve as family – to whom it seems we are not actually related at all.

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Yet another branch of the family

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Cousins.  But only by law?  How strange.

It seems that it’s only love that holds us together. I wonder how many there really are? And we are tied now to our children’s partner’s families, too. And some of those people know and enjoy some of our brothers and sisters in-laws. Like some kind of wild plaid cloth, all of these families are woven together. And we like

ALMOST EVERY ONE OF THEM.

It’s kind of the way islands get made out of lava.

And add to that the neighbors we have lived with for thirty years. Or some for many less, but who are like sisters and brothers to us.

And the fact that it was my Gin who re-established the link between my god-mother aunt and my beloved cousin John and his brothers – and me.

Someone at the funeral today said, “Family is the greatest treasure of all.”

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In that case, I am not afraid of financial crisis. Because I live on an island made of lava. I live in the middle of a tartan web. I am as connected to earth as Gulliver was by all those little ropes, staked to the earth. And we laugh together. And we fight. And we mourn together.

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This is the laughing.

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This is the mourning – cousins and cousins of cousins

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It makes me dizzy. But it also keeps me from falling.

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Scott and Saori, I am honored to be yours – whatever I am

So may I say to all of you—thank you. Thank you for it all. And if any of you get confused and don’t know how you’re related to somebody you could have sworn was your cousin? Ask Leslie.

She’ll know.

Posted in Epiphanies and Meditations, Family, Just life, Memories and Ruminations | Tagged , , | 15 Comments

What I miss –

Posted on March 2, 2009 by K

I just came downstairs to find Skye, our blue merle collie, standing with his head nearly in a corner, staring fixedly down at something. I came up behind him, peered over his shoulder and realized that one of the big brown floor pillows we store upright in that corner had fallen flat on the floor. Into Skye’s place. His personal lying down place.

He wasn’t barking at it. He wasn’t whining. He hadn’t come looking for me. He was just standing there, staring at it with that same meaningful focus he uses on me when he stands across the room and silently sends a laser right out of his eyes: I need to go out.

So I reached over and pulled the pillow up out of the way, and he simply inserted himself into the space. Where he is at this moment. Asleep.

Okay. So I run out into the studio where C. is here today, working with his dad on some training videos. I stand in the doorway with a little of that Skye focus until they look up, and then I tell them the story. It’s not much of a story—just a thing. A family thing that we all know about. And to hear Cam’s clear, ringing laugh, understanding it all completely and immediately, and sharing my glee at the absurdity of our mutual experience? I miss that so much. So very, very much.

So this is also a cautionary tale: to my friends whose children still are young—it really is a tough time in so many ways. You’re allowed to be tired. You’re allowed to be frustrated. You’re allowed to look forward to the day when the kittens finally grow up to be nice, quiet independent cats and the puppies stop chewing on the furniture.

But you’re not allowed to miss what you’re making, even as you make it—the kids will be gone, so quickly, and with them will go your context, your quick shared understanding, the laugh that comes after a single significant sound. Keep your friends close while you still got ‘em. Because visits later are never, ever enough.

So just grab somebody. Right now. This very minute. Grab a kid and buzz him on the neck and squeeze him (not too hard) and pay attention while you do it. Close, close attention.

Posted in dogs, Epiphanies and Meditations, Just life | Tagged , | 15 Comments

Women’s work—

Posted on February 25, 2009 by K

HeaderScootGuit01
First, I have two things to say:

1) I do not like saying goodbye.  Goodbye, Gin.  Goodbye, Max.  I can stand it today, but not yesterday.

2) Here’s a neat little technique: find something at Sam’s club that you know someone you love will really, really want – like, that they couldn’t live without – something very cool that you kind of even like yourself.  Then talk yourself into buying the thing as a present, because money spent on other people doesn’t count.  Then go home and FIND OUT THEY ALREADY HAVE IT!!

Works like a charm.

NOW

Here is a story for you:  Chapter One

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Sophie, first day of being in the jail—and suddenly attacked by a goose.

Then

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Saturday Morning, before we went to Burgers, I spent three hours working this brave little tractor for the first time in the arena.  (Sorry that there are no pictures of this—hard to take pictures of yourself while you’re actually operating largish equipment.  But I looked GOOOOOD.  Really, I did.)  And the reason why I did all that work was because I saw these—>

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(Our twenty five year old snowdrops)

And knew that this—>

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(The first spring rain.  Pretend you see it)

was going to start to start falling pretty soon, and I didn’t want this—>

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(ewwwww)

to happen in here—>

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which, as you see, regardless of the rain, very happily

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did not happen.  Mostly.  So you see, my work was not only fun, it was not in vain.  Which is a satisfying thing when it happens.

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Here is incontrovertible proof that I am telling the truth about running the tractor ALL BY MYSELF (after G showed me how).

And then I cleaned out this (hint: not Dustin, which I am not qualified to do)—>

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But did not clean this—>

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the evil, horse attacking goose.  Here is how this goose came to live with us: that rascal of a Dick Beeson brought this thing (you are not going to believe he could be so vile) to the CHRISTMAS PARTY as an ORNAMENT.  He often does this, thinking he is very funny.  Once it was a bowling ball with a cut off cork glued to the top with a hook sticking out of it.  Like anybody has a tree big enough for that.  And the problem with this is that the person who wins these things inevitably decides (in gratitude, I am sure, for my not throwing them off the list every year) to leave their prize hidden somewhere in my house.  Once, it was under my pillow.  I don’t remember where or how this winged thing was stuffed away, but he hung in the garage for years, and has protected our barn against . . . something . . . now for many, many years.  At least four.  Anyway, since we put the barn up and realized we could uninstall the goose from the garage and stick it out here where it will get the horses de-sensitized to swinging, senseless things and Dick’s sense of humor.

I also put up this—>

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This is the outside of the jail.  We call it the jail because Guy’s mother called the place where recalcitrant dogs were sent to cool their heels the “dog jail.”  This is actually not for bad horses.  It’s taking them into custody for their own protection.  We put these panels up when we have to shut the horses off the pasture (hooves and soft ground and growing grass=not a productive combination), which means that Sophie and Jetta have to be in the same tiny space 24-7.  Which means that Jetta will eventually lose hide, blood, dignity and all semblance of confidence.  And ultimately, legs, tail and nose.  So the girls have to take turns in here, every other day.  Pffff.  Women.

I carried every one of those panels and even that gate (and that’s no chopped liver, let me tell you) ALL  BY MYSELF.  Including all these—>

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Which are on the other side of the barn, and with which I am mounting yet another experiment in small pasture maintenance.  Geneva is rolling her eyes at this point.  Woo-hoo, carrying ALL THOSE GREAT BIG TWELVE FOOTERS BY YOURSELF.  Because SHE hefts these—>

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which are eighteen feet, and she does THAT all alone.  These are steel panels, by the way, built to withstand the onslaughts of 1100 pound ravening stud animals who really, really want to get to the other side.  And how do we girls carry them?  You back up to the things, hook your arms through and carry them on your back.  You remember those Buster Keaton movies where the guy’d be carrying a huge long board, and suddenly turn around to look at something, and accidentally knock some poor dude off the building with the tail end of the swinging board? Yeah.  It’s like that.  And the gates are HECK to carry.

But we gladly do it for these—>

Horse Muzzles.  Horse Noses.  Softest things in the world.  And I LOVE ’em.  And I kiss them EVERY DAY, and I have since mid 2001.  Get close enough to smell a horse’s breath, and you smell every green and growing thing.  It’s wonderful.

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Here seen in passive mode.

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Here in active mode.

Yep.  It’s the life.  Just don’t ever invite me in (especially in early spring) unless I take my boots off first.

Posted in Epiphanies and Meditations, Horses, Images of our herd in specific, Just life, Seasons | Tagged , , , , , | 16 Comments

And the winnah is . . .

Posted on February 23, 2009 by K

Drum Roll  Please!!!!

(See, Megs?  I figured out how to do color!!  Woo-hoo!)

Are you holding your breath?  Is your heart pounding?

And if it’s not you, it’s not my fault.  It’s G’s.  Because I made him draw the winning name out of the huge pot of

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names.  But I love you all and I promise there will be another chance.  How’s that?

So.  The winning name is:

AMANDA!!!!!!  YAYYYYYYYYY!  My FIRST WINNER EVER.

So email me with yo’ snail address, girl-o, and I’ll make user sure youse gets it.

This was fun.

Posted in Fun Stuff, Uncategorized | Tagged | 9 Comments

Oh, give me a home –

Posted on February 22, 2009 by K

Okay, home from church and dinner, consisting of a GF grilled chicken breast and left-over basically broccoli soup (where did that word come from, broccoli?  Does it sound French to you?  Latin?  Old high German?  And that spelling? Somebody made it up.  “Broccoli”—uh-huh. Somebody dead and gone now, probably from laughing so hard they bust a gut), eaten.  Guy said the soup was really, really good.  I made it.  From scratch.  Two days ago when I wanted something that wasn’t—what have I been eating? Anyway, something I could make with my eyes closed—at the same time, saving vegetables from a ugly plunge into old age.

It has been an interesting day.  I wrote to M.  Prepared (what a loose word that is) my SS lesson.  We ascertained that the cable box is, indeed, dead (this is the third box in a year downstairs—and it’s NOT because we overwork the dang thing.  Good-bye Gregory Peck in The Big County, good-bye several installments of Stargate Atlantis, a couple of Raymonds and an old Burn Notice.  The boxes just turn belly up and die, flashing, “Stand-by” at us, or telling us it’s two in the morning when it’s actually six at night.  Tomorrow I get to drive it out to Comcast.  Why can’t they drive out to ME once in a while?), so we can’t record Oliver Twist. 

I know.  Life is hard.

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So, after I’d fed the horses (who have to eat, Sabbath or not) and changed into something-more-comfortable, I settled on the couch to catch up with blogs.  I shouldn’t do this.  Especially, I shouldn’tdo this when I’m caught up on everything but Pioneer Woman, which I always save till later. Which was today.  Which I never should have done.  Because it isn’t fair.  How does a woman who lives on a ranch, cooks, homeschools, messes around with Photoshop all day and looks utterly smashing have time to be so funny and engaging and charming?  And why do I, along with the 993 commenters and a small country of other lurkers, want to be her flipping Best Friend?

I think she’s made up.  I think some person with really honed marketing skills made her up so he could rake in the ad revenue.  Really.  Think about it.  How could anybody who cooks the kind of stuff she does not be HUGE?  And what right does she have to write that she loves horse muzzles, when I  love horse muzzles?  Because now that she’s said it, if I say it, it’s going to sound like I got if from her.  And I did not.

Like I said. Unfair.  You think the Fairness Doctrine will make her stop her awful charisma and redistribute some of that sunny wit to the more challenged among us?  Which would be me.  ME.  Does she wander into political complaint?  Does she wallow in philosophical diatribes about religion and parenting and  . . .and . . .stuff?  No.  She just tells all these wonderful stories which are really not all that wonderful – just they seem wonderful and funny and odd because not only does she have a great eye for composition, she’s tuned to the affectionate absurd, too.  And she NEVER writes as much as I do – like going on and on and on.  Deft.  I resent deftness.

Which brings me to lament number two – that thing that Sue  wrote about phone paranoia?  (I can’t remember how to get to it.  You’ll just have to find it yourself.) I didn’t relate to it at all until Tuesday, after the Frazz left my house.  We had a really great time.  We had a great time when Gin was here with him for almost a week, and then on Monday after and Tuesday morning when he was here alone.  With me.   For once, I’d actually remembered to ferret out every toy I’d ever saved for someday when I’d be a grandmother, and the dinosaur sandwich cutters and the adorable kid plates, and I washed a decade of in-the-garage-loft-with-the-bugs off of the hot wheel tracks.  (I was, in short, for once in my life, actually prepared.)  We read, and we played games, and we ate, and we ran around.  It was a GREAT time.

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Then he left.  And all the air went out of me.  Right there in the middle of all the motionless cars and buildings and blocks and books and animals and craft supplies. Pffffffff.  “Well,” I thought, balanced between sorrow that he’d gone and elation that he’d gone, “now I can do my own stuff.”  But I couldn’t remember what that was.  So I wandered around, packing things away, looking for my old life.  And then I sat down on the couch with this keyboard in my lap—and the phone rang.

Nobody calls on the land line anymore.  I’ve talked about that.  Except those people who have now given me 967 last chances to get a really really great rate on my credit card.  And the people who want me to do something.  For them.  Right now.  Or even later.  And then I understood Sue.  Because there was no way under heaven I was going to answer that phone.  Or even look at the ID.  Or even get off the couch.  And nobody could make me.  NOBODY.  I wasn’t going to answer the door, either.  One time, I even closed all the blinds so nobody could see that I was actually at home, sitting still.  NOT DOING ANYTHING.

(This is the sound of me gently touching my forehead to the wall)

Kathy, Frazz’ other grandmother is so good at grandmothering.  She is so beautiful and so wonderful and she never breaks a sweat.  And I was good, too.  Honest, I was.  I just don’t think she’s going to have  to hire a crane to get her off the couch after the kids leave on Tuesday.

Now look.  I meant to go deft with this one.  I meant to be pithy.  Short and sweet.  And all I did was whine.  And if you say one WORD about wordiness, Michael, I will drive out to the boondocks where you live and smack you in the nose.  That concise enough for you?

I can’t help this.  Any of it.  So don’t feel like you have to tell me not to be so hard on myself.  I’m Irish.  And maybe Jewish.  Somewhere. 

 

Posted in Gin, Just life, mad | Tagged , , | 15 Comments

Me too, me too –

Posted on February 19, 2009 by K

Oh, come on you little bums!  Only four of yous guys CARE??????  (Including Rachel, who already has it?Rachel – I’ll get you a Breaking Rank or a Slumming.)  This hurts.  This really hurts.  Step right up.  Take a swing.  You have till – um, um – MONDAY!!  On Monday we will choose.  Dudes, this is an award-winning book often used to torture students all over the country and in Italy and Australia and Sweden and has even been loved in Pakistan.  Oh, for the love of Mike.  Anyway, here we go:

I’m doing a

GIVEAWAY!!!

My turn.  Not hand made, though.  Well, sorta.  Just not one of a kind.  

 I am going to give away a signed copy of my private printing (it’s paperback, sadly) of

 The Only Alien on the Planet.   

Same old drill: leave your name in the comments – I’d love to say, yeah, like Megs, tell me how awesome I am, but because it’s a choose a number thing (this is NOT a lottery or fringe gambling, please) it won’t make any diff what you say.  Unless you are my brother and leave something mildly abusive.  In that case, I will give your number to somebody who already has a number and double their chances.  But make sure I know how to contact you because not only am I going to give away the book – TA DA – I’m mailing it to you FREE!!!  How COOL is that?  I think next week or the week after, I’m going to be giving away a classroom set of these books, so if you know an English teacher, preferably high school or university, who would put them to good use, let them know that you can appeal for them.  Sorry I don’t have any banners or quilts or anything.  Just this.

Posted in Uncategorized | 33 Comments

AHHHH! AHHHH!!

Posted on February 18, 2009 by K

Warning: this a grass-roots, non-political person’s response to something she heard on the radio.  I stand to be corrected by those who may have first hand, educated in reality opinions concerning these things:

So, I heard Mr. Obama on the radio this morning, saying that, because of the mortgage crisis, the American Dream is tottering on the edge of vanishing.  It struck me oddly.  I wasn’t aware that the American Dream had anything to do with some right to own something you can’t afford, to have more house than you’ve earned—by your labor and by your consistently responsible behavior with credit (which is to say, by hour honorable determination to pay back what someone else has seen fit to trust you with).

I keep hearing—and honestly?  I often hear it with Obama’s name and voice attached—that we are headed for a situation, or that we are in a situation that will be as bad (depends on the speech) if not worse than the Great Depression.

In honor of these assertions, I would like to quote FDR:

 “So, first of all, let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself—nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance.”

I cannot help but feel that our present zeitgeist has been carefully sculpted, politics and media hand in hand, by those to whom it must be some advantage to keep us afraid. And the only advantage I could see in that is that people who are afraid—afraid of being poor, of going hungry, of being passed up by everybody else or of losing what they have—or think they should have, of violence to themselves or their children—they are easy to lead.  It is simple to take power from them.  They give it up freely if they believe that the Strong Voice is capable of holding a threat at bay or giving them what they want.

I don’t understand power.  The only power I want is to keep my children and my loved ones safe from bullies or flood or sorrow or sickness.  Oh, and to keep myself free and undisturbed in order to pursue my own quiet work and enjoyment.  But there are actually people who gather power that other people aren’t guarding, or that they abrogate for whatever reason.  People who want to own the fates of other people.

Why would anybody want that?  But then, why would anybody want a multimillion dollar house or a giant yacht or—stuff like that?  I honestly don’t get it.  I’m drowning in stuff as it is—an embarrassment of riches in kids’ drawings and good books and quilt fabric and history that needs preserving—in my duty to mankind, in worry about my neighbors’ wellbeing (which means in love).  I have more than enough to do in my own little pitiful thirty year old middle class house.  Why would I want more?

I heard some interesting statistics this morning, addressing this Depression business.  In the Depression, unemployment hit 25%.  That was a little bit of a surprise; the way people talk about it, you’d expect the number to be far greater – like 75%.  The actual number was enough, however, to throw the whole economy for a loop.  Now?  The number I heard this morning came in at about 7% nationwide average.  Somewhat short of the thirties.

And the “mortgage crisis”?  What does that mean, anyway?  Mortgage CRISIS?  It sounds like some kind of plague has hit us – and it’s going to get you if you don’t wear a mask in public or something.  Like it drops out of the air.  Not like it’s something you get yourself into by wanting more than you can actually afford and listening to shysters who – when they have never cared a rat’s tail about you before – are suddenly your best buddies and are willing to ignore your wretched irresponsible past in order to shovel you into some McMansion so you can feel like a rap star and they can cruise on the fees (which they get to keep if you belly up or not).

So I went searching for some historical mortgage failure numbers—a lot of people are writing about this these days—and I found this site:

http://www.housingintelligence.com/economics/some-truth-about-historical-foreclosure-rates-p-2.html

It seems that the kind of numbers we’re looking for weren’t actually recorded in those days.  But that missed payments and near defaults were.  I quote here from Jonathan Smoke, who quotes from a number of other people as well:

But in the course of looking for this data, I did find an excellent article by David C. Wheelock, the assistant vice president and economist at the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis. He wrote “The Federal Response to Home Mortgage Distress: Lessons from the Great Depression,” which was published in the May/June 2008 issue of the Federal Reserve Bank Of St. Louis Review. Here are some relevant stats revealed in the paper, though they are not directly applicable to the ratio cited above:

 . . . study of 22 cities by the Department of Commerce found that, as of January 1, 1934, 43.8 percent of urban, owner-occupied homes on which there was a first mortgage were in default. The study also found that among delinquent loans, the average time that they had been delinquent was 15 months. Among homes with a second or third mortgage, 54.4 percent were in default and the average time of delinquency was 18 months. Thus, at the beginning of 1934, approximately one-half of urban houses with an outstanding mortgage were in default (Bridewell, 1938, p. 172). For comparison, in the fourth quarter of 2007, 3.6 percent of all U.S. residential mortgages and 20.4 percent of adjustable-rate subprime mortgages had been delinquent for at least 90 days.”

The Chairman of our County commission, a long time real estate maven, explained this morning on the radio that, nationwide, the number of defaults is, as you see above, far, far removed from the Depression numbers.  And that most of these failures are in four states: Arizona, Nevada, California and Florida.  That leaves an awful lot of states that are not being all that affected by what is being touted as a nationwide crisis.  And further, that most of the defaults are SUB-PRIME lendings.  So numbers that are being thrown at us as though you and I have something terrible to fear, wherever we may be, are really relevant mostly to unstable people who NEVER should have been loaned money in the first place.

And why, why, why then are we so anxious that these people be rewarded by the government, allowed to keep homes they should never have bought and can not presently afford?  And if they stay in these houses, not having proved themselves as responsible financially, how will they maintain them?  How will they pay the property taxes?  The President’s statement this morning included concern about “stabilizing neighborhoods.”  But when people who have not earned the trust of creditors through responsible and long term stability are being subsidized in this way, how will keeping them in these houses by the skin of their teeth result in a stable neighborhood?

I’m asking these things not because I have some vendetta against the people who are finding themselves in trouble over this situation, but because I am TIRED of being worried.  I am TIRED of being told I should be afraid.  I believe strongly that the economy is tottering because we BELIEVE it is tottering, and so we withdraw, we don’t take risks, we don’t spend money, we tighten down the hatches.  We are the victims, in other words, of our own fear.  Also because most of the real jobs that people have traditionally done in this country – real manufacturing, real farming, real service – are being outsourced or institutionalized, there are fewer places for a man to go to simply WORK.  So that when the money gets constipated and the workforce reduced, where does a guy go so he can feed his family?

The American Dream, as I have always understood it, is this: buy some ammonia and a squeegee and go door to door offering to clean people’s windows.  Do this all day long, every day for a long time, and save the money you get, putting it into Cds and Savings accounts.  Advertise with some of that money, and when you have more jobs than you can do, because you do your job like an artist and you are charming and respectful to your customers, hire another guy to help you – making sure that he is trustworthy, and that you have trained him to be excellent.

Pay him well.  And then repeat this carefully over time.  Buy a truck and paint your name on the side, making sure that every job you do is admirable.  Get an office.  Make sure your people and your equipment are always in good working order.  Take care of your employees and your customers.  Add some services, and keep your standards and your service high.  Keep saving your money.  Give your kids a good education, buy a nice little house that will do the job in a friendly neighborhood.  Be satisfied with your life and work hard.  Hire your own kids and make sure they work their butts off.

You own your own house.  You teach your kids to be the kind of people you can count as respected friends.  You work hard and you come home to a place you can call your own.  You help others have a good life.  Eventually, maybe you can sell the company and retire.  There is no lowering government to take away from you what you’ve worked for, to tell you how to spend your money, to limit your ability to serve – you are a free human being who has built a lovely life, and you get to keep it.  Your kids are safe from harm, free to start their own businesses, teach their own kids. You all get to go to church or not, to vote or not, to choose what you will do when the sun rises.  You drive on good roads.  You can buy food from the far reaches of the country.  It’s a miracle, a miracle in history, your life.  And you are free to help someone else.  Because that’s part of it, too.  Real people helping other real people.

And that is the American Dream.  Does it totter?  No, it demands your humility, your work, your thrift, your willingness to be satisfied with what is good and what is enough.  So what was the president talking about?

Posted in IMENHO (Evidently not humble), mad | Tagged | 21 Comments

The new addition –

Posted on February 17, 2009 by K

A few minutes ago, G announced cheerfully that today, M had been gone eight months!

 Only he was wrong.  He had it wrong.  Nobody around here is allowed to round up anything relative to time passing—time is only what it actually is.  Money, you can round up any time you want – if it costs $45 bucks, tell me $50.  That’s a good thing.  Today, M has been gone seven months and thirty one days (or the rough equivalent).  So I don’t want to hear anything that cheerful until tomorrow.

I dropped my phone in the arena this morning. 

I was late to feed because I was getting Max off to his other grandmother’s. At this moment, I am sitting in stunned silence , or I would be if G hadn’t just come in for lunch.  I even had the beginning of the second chapter of a book I’ve been fighting with for several years – it came pouring into my head in the shower a few minutes ago—and that starts the frantic juggling act of dealing with the logistics of getting myself from point A to point Keyboard without losing any of it.  Of course, I lost most of the energy, but I got down the seeds, which is good.  Which is amazing.  Which is astonishing. 

It was the phone I was talking about.  I dropped it in the arena, just outside of the barn.  If you lived in a cabin and you were trying to figure out where to build the outhouse and winter was coming on with the threat of tons of snow and rain – wouldn’t you build it as close as you could to your back door?  Evidently, horses would.  And since they only process about forty percent of what they eat, and since almost all they eat is alfalfa and grass hay, what they deposit on the ground is mostly just fiber.  Not all that gross.  Until it’s been snowed on and frozen and rained on and thawed, and there is lots of it, and the water is pooling all over, and it’s all turned into worse than primordial slush, which is what I dropped my phone into.

I love Lysol.

Today, I am put into mind of the old story about the man who went to his village rabbi, complaining that his mother-in-law was living in his tiny house, and he couldn’t stand it.  No room.  No privacy.  No quiet.  So (this story is much better told in person, and gets better as my brain remembers it’s New York cadences – so long story short) the rabbi advises him to move his cow, his goat, his chickens – all of them into the house.  And over time, like once a week, the guy goes back, and the rabbi allows him to remove one animal at a time.  In the end, he puts the cow out and is AMAZED at the room, the privacy, the silence.  And whaddya know?  The mother-in-law is STILL THERE!!

You can get the same effect with one five year old boy.

So here is a typically huge collection of pictures gleaned out of the last week or so: for your pleasure, I hope.

2009-02-16Snow01.png

February Snow

And just when I thought we were out of the woods—

If you want the full effect, you’ll have to click on the shot. The air is peppered with snowflakes.  Insane with snowflakes.  I think this is the snowiest day we’ve had for years, and it’s coming straight down, not wind-blown, not a blizzard, just a matter of fact downpour of flakes.

2009-02-16Snow02.png

More of the same – but you can see up there that the clouds are breaking a little.

2009-02-16Snow03Break.png

Five minutes later, this sudden, odd light.

2009-02-16Snow04Break.png

So bright, but so odd and gray and angled.

2009-02-16Snow05Break.png

The storm, still stalking us, but from afar.

New Subject: the newest member of the barn family.  Our little, used JOHN DEERE (which nothing runs like a). G  has been searching the KSL ads for months.  And finally, we found this guy, who we have named Bob Olsen in honor of our friend who built our barn, worked in the temple, could back our four horse trailer into a tiny space with his eyes closed, had the loveliest Australian accent, and then succumbed to cancer.  We figure this little hard working piece of contrary metal will honor him pretty darned well.

2009-02-16Tractor02.png

With Frazz’s right ear.

2009-02-16Tractor01.png

With the proud grandpa (who was looking at what, I wonder?)

2009-02-16Tractor03.png

Tractor owner, unloading his machine.

Change of subject: Frazz’s un-birthday.

2009-02-16GinMax.png

With his lovely Mom and the present I gave him.  Which actually turns out to be very charming.

2009-02-16MaxBarn01.png

I’ve posted this picture a couple of times over the years.  But the boy keeps changing.  He looks like a boy, now, not like a little child.  Don’t be fooled.  You’ll notice he still favors making his own tracks.

2009-02-16MaxBarn02.png

And nerding around on the hay.

2009-02-16MsNorris.png

This is the other barn cat: Mrs. Norris.  He is not actually an axe murderer.  He is just calculating how far he will have to jump to land on my shoulders, which is where he always wants to be when he is not slaughtering mice or pooping in my barn. (It is perfectly correct to mention pooping when you talk about barns.)

2009-02-16Findis.png

The lovely and delicate Findis, who does not, as far as I can ascertain, poop in my barn.

2009-02-16MaxZion01.png

I asked the Frazz: “Since your mother is not here, and will not have a violent reaction to horse hair on your clothes, how would you like to actually SIT on a horse this time?”

I was not sure of his answer; in the past the very thought of such a thing has brought on a storm of emphatic reluctance.  (I know – storm and emphatic – but really, I needed both to paint the picture.)

But this time, he was all for it.  “Yes,” he said thoughtfully.  “I would like to do that.”  So we got to the barn, and (careful of his really, by that time, fairly gross boots) I lifted him up on Zion’s back.  Zi is my horse, and I know him and love him and he’s small enough, I could keep hold of the back of Frazz’s pants in case Dustin flicked an ear and sent the rest of them screaming out of the barn in a fit of self preservation.  Then G came and I made him stand in the slop while I took pictures.

Because Zion was eating, he was very willing to stand still.  Assuming no flicks of Dustin’s ears.

2009-02-16MaxZion02.png

Frazz settled on Zi’s back as if he’d been born on a horse.  His weight was right, his balance was right, his legs were long and his heels down, and his hands, one (as directed) full of mane, rested on Zi’s withers.  They were suddenly fused, like one creature.  It was really kind of odd.  

2009-02-16MaxZion03.png

And the really odd thing was that, when the pictures were all taken and G went to drive the tractor up the drive to the barn – Frazz was offered a ride on the tractor and DECLINED.  He just wanted to sit there on Zion.  I am still blinking about that.  So I stood in the muck and held on to him, and when Zi finally decided he wanted to try his luck with the feeder across the barn, I hauled Frazz off quite neatly and safely.

2009-02-16MaxZion04.png

You can just see that human seat belt off at the left, fingers clamped firmly on the waistband of those little jeans.

2009-02-16MaxZion05.png

And now, my dears, I understand the secret of Gin’s photographic genius.  It’s almost impossible NOT to get a good shot of this kid.  What a face.  And do you get a sense here of the complete centering of weight on that horse’s back?  Unfair.  I need to develop a seat like that.

2009-02-16MaxZion06.png

Finale: boy and horse.  Dustin deigns to accept a bit of hay and Frazz dares to offer it.

Now, we are waiting for the huge, record breaking storm that’s pounding California – that dumped seven feet of snow or something on the Donner pass, which is exactly where Gin and K were headed when they drove away and left this boy with us grandfolks.  We can always hope that the weather will discourage the dentist and his wife from putting down roots that darn far away, and will drive them back to the mountains where they belong.  Hope.  Hope.  We have so very much to thank California for . . .

Posted in Family, Gin, Horses, Just life, Memories and Ruminations, Seasons, The g-kids | Tagged , , , | 8 Comments

Input, input –

Posted on February 15, 2009 by K

I find myself wishing this year away.  As though there will be no good in it.  As if it were all winter.  M will not be home in it.  Gin will not be moving back anywhere close.  All is waiting till the year after.  The year when everything will be revealed and relieved and resettled.  This isn’t good.

So I am asking for input here.  I am almost worn out with patient waiting.  Good things will happen this year, must happen – will you name some?  Will you tell me why I shouldn’t just toss this one (I have so MANY left) away?  What good things will be coming to you this?  So I can be happy knowing them.

Sorry for asking.  I just need the hope.

Posted in Uncategorized | 17 Comments